“You…were…there!” Tanner hissed in a spray of pink saliva, his words coming faster, the sentences breaking down into one long stream of slurred accusations as for a brief and shining moment his mind became clear and Jamaisvous’s face shimmered into stark clarity and focus-but only in a memory, in a view Doc had snatched as he was hurled into the gateway by Welles and his security team, a glimpse of a solitary figure standing slightly back and watching the struggle to shoot the most unwilling subject into the future.
“You were there,” Doc repeated, trying to bring his foe down through fading brute strength. “Lurking in the shadows, observing when I was trawled from that pit of filth, another hundred years of my life stolen away in a single heartbeat! You were there, snickering when I was sent screaming into this future hellhole of a world, taken from the arms of my wife, my children, you were there, you arrogant son of a bitch, you were there!”
“Of course I was there, you quote-spouting hayseed!” Jamaisvous gasped in response, finally finding his voice as he stomped down with his injured leg, trying to free himself from Doc’s iron grip. “If I were not, how could I know anything of how Operation Chronos was designed? Sure, I read the manual, but hell’s bells, man! I could never hope to master it without some prior knowledge!”
“If you knew so much, why did you need me?” Doc asked as he continued to hang on, dragged across the floor as Jamaisvous moved closer to the dormant mat-trans chamber.
“Even with what I knew then-and combined with what I know now-it’s not enough! Not near enough, damn your eyes! We never fully understood how the matter-conversion array could be realigned for temporal transport! It was a working theory, goddammit! A fluke! And so were you!”
“I do not accept such simple explanations, then or now.”
“Perhaps if you had been less inclined to sabotage and violence, and instead focused on doing as you were asked, you would have been returned to your wife and family. Instead, you made dealing with you a most unpleasant experience, and finally, tragically, they decided to cut their losses and get rid of you in a manner that best suited their immediate needs. They’d been peeping into the future and a few, a select few, saw what was coming.”
“Armageddon.”
“Yes. I suspected but never really knew for sure. Word had gone out among the power elite, and the puppet masters can rarely keep a silent tongue in their empty heads. You were supposed to be trawled backward in an attempt to alter the future time line. Too bad you were too damn arrogant to stick to the bargain.”
Doc felt his heart ache with agony. Every word out of Jamaisvous’s mouth was a reminder of what he had lost.
No, not lost.
What had been taken from him, boldly snatched away even as he had been snatched like a flailing rag doll and tossed into the unforgiving winds of a cyclone.
“You are the reason for your eventual downfall, Tanner, not I.”
And then, Tanner’s remorse and grief were transformed into a new mass of emotions, and the driving one pulsing through his brain and heart was hate. He pulled on the captured foot harder, trying to twist it into a painful position.
Jamaisvous swayed on his feet, stomping down again and again on Doc’s forearm and wrist to release the insanely tight grip the man had on his ankle. Freeing himself, the self-appointed lord of El Morro Fortress stumbled toward the mat-trans chamber, ready to flee and abdicate his domain. He looked around, his eyes narrowed to slits as he tried to find the lost blaster, but he didn’t see it. What he did see was Dr. Tanner determinedly crawling toward him.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Jamaisvous snarled. “You never did.” And then he lashed out at the crawling figure, using his good leg as support to raise his other, bleeding leg in a kick and driving home the point of his polished dress shoe right into Doc’s chin, snapping the man’s head back and causing his upper body to go high before slamming down painfully face-first to the hard floor.