Chapter Text
A Different Version of Me
Lady JaRuc
She looked at her old life one last time, took a deep breath and gently said to herself,
“It’s time. I’m ready for my new storybook to begin.”
—FB/Brokenheart
Chapter One
Kidnapped!
“Who the hell are you, and what the hell is that?” Julia Traylor looked down the sights of her Marlin 336 rifle. Through the scope, she saw a man-sized figure dressed in some kind of strange armor from head to foot. He was far closer to her than she liked. Behind that figure was the oddest flying ship she’d ever seen. She knew it flew because she watched it land in the huge meadow where she’d been stalking a deer.
The figure raised a hand but instead of gesturing to her or removing that helmet, it touched the side of the helmet, and she heard from right behind her, “We don’t have time for this. Wrecker.” That was the last thing she heard before something hit her in the back, and she collapsed unconscious.
* * * *
Used to being alone each summer in deep woods, Julia didn’t make noise when she finally woke up. She lay on a metal floor, one that vibrated slightly. A low hum surrounded her. Not loud but one she noticed. Another benefit of living alone was sharper senses. Nothing was going to sneak up on her if she could help it. As quietly as possible, while still lying on the floor, she looked around while trying to keep her heart from racing. She was inside some sort of metal place. Maybe that flying ship she’d seen earlier? God, she hoped not. She’d never believed those wild stories the local old timers told about aliens, but now a small percentage of belief filtered through her mind. Just enough for reasonable doubt.
Looking over her shoulder, she refused to suck in her breath. While she lay in a narrow walkway, four men stood in a wider cockpit, their backs to her, their focus on the wide bank of windows before them. Each wore some kind of armor on their legs, arms, and core. Joints were free to move though. No helmets.
As quietly as she could, she stood, looking around for anything to use as defense if necessary and offense if possible. She didn’t see her pistol, knife, or rifle, but something resembling a gun lay on a table next to her.
For kidnappers, they’re not very smart, leaving this here. She picked it up and examined it. Not sure if it was set on stun or kill, she decided it was good enough either way. She’d probably wind up dead. Then again, seeing just the backs of these four, if they wanted her dead, she’d be dead already. As it was, she was a victim of kidnapping apparently. But who, what, where, and why were compelling questions that needed answers. While her hand remained steady out of habit, her insides vibrated with fear like a bowl of Jell-O.
The vibrations in the deck beneath her feet grew minutely stronger. The hum increased as well. In the huge windows beyond the men, she saw black filled with a thousand points of light. Suddenly those points stretched out as if the ship’s speed had increased, the lights flashing by. She gasped as the streaks of light suddenly fell back to points of light in a black space while the vibrations and hum calmed.
The gun steady in her right hand, she now faced four men instead of their backs. Shit, they’re big. At least they look like humans wearing armor.
“Where did she get a blaster?” the one with a dark facial tattoo asked with a smirk, his gaze going back and forth until settling on the biggest of the bunch. He didn’t seem worried about the gun being in her hand.
“Uh, I might have left it on the table, Hunter, ‘cause you guys were taking up space at the weapons locker. I wanted to make sure Tech got us back home. I was gonna to put it away, honest.”
The leader turned back to face Julia after giving the big man a disgusted look. He didn’t seem concerned about the weapon in her hand. “I heard you, you know,” he said. At her frown, he explained. “I heard your heartbeat kick up the minute you woke up. Your breathing increased as well.”
“Did not,” Julia said automatically, sounding like a kid the minute she heard her own words.
“Did too,” the man replied, a tiny grin lifting one corner of his mouth.
That brought Julia back to the immediate problem. “Who are you, and where am I?” she asked calmly. At least she hoped she sounded calm.
From left to right, she saw a tall slender man with a face carved of sharp edges with another facial tattoo. His hair was silver, cut short, military style. To the right of what she thought might be a pilot’s chair stood a man not quite as tall with more muscle, the leader, the man who’d spoken. His long hair hung just to the top of his shoulders. A bandana held back his hair. Like the other, he had a facial tattoo, but this one covered half of his face. Strange. To his left stood a slender man slightly taller who had a prosthetic arm and some sort of headphones wrapped around his head, covering his ears. And next to him, closest to Julia, was a mountain of a man. Half of his face was scarred, his left eye milky as if it no longer saw the world. This was the man who apparently brough her into the place but left a blaster available for her to use.
Not being athletic, macho, a feminist or anything like that, she gulped. Size would work close up, but that mountain-sized man wasn’t the most dangerous one of this bunch though he could take her down easily enough.
When no one spoke, she repeated her question. “Who are you, and where am I?”
“Tech.” One word from the guy with the dark-sided face as he continued to face her. His eyes flicked to the pilot’s chair. She caught that.
Before anyone moved, Julia said quietly, “Whoever you are, put this thing on autopilot then put your hands up where I can see them, and stand up.” The hand holding the gun…blaster…never wavered.
A few taps on the control panel then two slender hands came up over the top of the chair. A man stood up with his hands still raised. This one looked a bit younger, with light brown hair and receding hairline. He wore huge square glasses. More like giant goggles. He might appear harmless, but Julia wasn’t taking chances.
At a nod from the dark-faced man, the guy explained. “We were on a mission and had just jumped to hyperdrive when a worm hole appeared. We were sucked in. I estimated we had ten minutes and twenty seconds until it appeared again, and we could emerge back in our own time and world. We completed our mission and jumped. We did indeed return to the exact moment we left. Just as I calculated,” he finished, sounding a bit smug.
He adjusted those goggles and tapped a button to one side. A red light came on, and Julia aimed for him. “Female. Adult perhaps. Human.” He nodded to his leader as he gave this information.
“Take me back.” Julia shot her left hand out at them. “Take me back now!” she demanded in a low violent tone of voice.
“We are unable to comply with that request,” the pilot said.
“Why not?” Her voice remained calm and level, her eyes moving from one man to another, assessing which one might make a play for this weapon she held. Her fear ramped up; the man’s assured comment scared the crap out of her.
“We have no idea where we landed when we completed our mission.”
“You landed on Earth. Take me back.”
“We are unable to do that as I explained. There is no Earth in our galaxy.” The guy remained as calm as she appeared on the outside. He was probably just as calm inside while her guts screamed for help.
“What do you mean, no Earth in your galaxy?” Despite her despair, her hand remained calm. She’d faced wild animals in the woods and deranged students at her school. Calm was the best defense. “What galaxy are you living in?”
The man explained, but she understood little of what he said.
“There’s no such place,” she informed him.
He shrugged. “Not in your world or time, but this is our time and place, and I assure you, we are in our world now.”
This line of questioning was getting Julia nowhere. “Who are you?” she asked as she kept the blaster covering the group of five.
“Soldiers.”
“No shit. I can see that. Soldiers look the same no matter where in time or space they might be. Try again.”
“We do special jobs that others can’t handle.” Dark-faced man was a surly dude. The other four seemed content to let him speak.
“And your mission this time?” She held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not going to like this answer, am I?” She could be as surely as him.
He ignored her question and crossed his arms. The big guy saw and crossed his as well. A good follower but definitely not the leader. Dark and Dangerous led this bunch.
“Nuh-uh, arms straight down. I’m not stupid. That knife on your left arm isn’t there for decoration.” She motioned, using the weapon. Arms dropped back to their sides. “Your mission?”
“Tech.” Once more, the leader passed off the explanation to the least offensive looking member of the group.
“Collect a female.”
“Excuse me?” She was sure her mouth fell open as her voice raised an octave. “So, you saw me in the woods, were on a tight timeline, snagged me, and poof, here we are? You kidnapped me and took me…wherever the hell this is?” Kidnapped? To another galaxy? Am I sick? Delusional? She snapped her mouth closed and gave them a hard look. “If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead. So that means you want a female for some reason. If you think I’m gonna lie down and spread my legs for you five, you can think again.”
The mountain-sized guy and the one with the screwdriver arm and headphones looked like someone slapped them silly. Their mouths fell open, and their eyes bugged out. Silver hair never changed expression. Goggles pulled his head back as if he were insulted. Dark guy crossed his arms again.
“Down,” Julia commanded in a deadly quiet voice. She was used to reading young adults in a classroom and watching the expressions on animals as she approached. Right now, two of the five were planning on taking her down.
She straightened to her full five-foot eight and leveled the gun at Dark and Dangerous while keeping a close eye on Silver. “When you rush me, mountain man there will be the one who takes me down…eventually…but you,” she pointed at Dark and Dangerous, “and you,” she swung the blaster to point at Silver, “will be dead before he reaches me.”
“Before blood is shed, let’s reset. Despite how calm you appear, your heart is racing. I’m Hunter.” Dark and Dangerous nodded as he introduced himself.
“Of course, you are,” Julia said. “The name fits.”
“That’s Crosshair.” Hunter gestured to Silver.
“That explains the tattoo.”
The man’s eyes widened a fraction. She’d said something he didn’t expect.
“This is Tech,” Hunter said and gestured with his thumb to the man with goggles. “What he doesn’t know about information and gathering it, you don’t want to know.”
The slender man in goggles nodded.
“The guy with the gear is Echo. He was a reg at one time, but now he works with us.”
Echo leaned sideways a little to get a better view of her.
“And that big man is Wrecker.”
“We’re the cavalry when someone wants things done right,” came a booming voice from the man with the scarred face and white eye.
No sooner did the walls stop vibrating from that declaration than something small and quiet zipped past Julia and across the space to hide behind Hunter’s leg. Sheer willpower prevented the woman from shooting…a kid?
“What the hell!” Julia kept the gun level as she examined a child that peeked out from behind the soldier’s leg.
“That’s why we need a female,” came Wrecker’s booming voice. His grin totally changed his face.
All muscle. Few brains. But a big heart. Julia softened toward him momentarily. Not enough though that she let down her guard.
The little one was about three, maybe four. Older maybe? Julia knew that kids developed at different rates so judging age by size wasn’t always a good idea. A girl. Big eyes. Smooth skin. Slender. Frightened. Julia scared her. The soldiers didn’t scare her though.
But these men scared Julia. If she believed their story—and it was a tough one to believe—she wasn’t in her own time or even her own galaxy anymore. And she’d been kidnapped to be a baby sitter? A nanny? What the hell!
Reality had a way of jumping up and biting a person in the butt at the wrong time. Julia put out a hand and let the bulkhead hold her up, her gun hand still steady. Her mind raced. So did her heart, just like Hunter said, but how did he know? Intuition or more than that…a problem for another day. Thankfully, the men made no move to disarm her as she fought with reality. A battle she thought she might be losing.
“You’re scared.” Silver…Crosshair…folded his arms over his well-muscled chest and gave her a nasty glare.
“Scared?” Julia breathed a deep lungful of air, feeling her face twist into the perfect picture of emotion. “I’m terrified, you stupid man! I’m a plump ordinary teacher who likes to live alone during summer in the wild so I can reset my mind away from drugs, unwanted student pregnancies, failing grades, and administrators who think they know how to do my job. I’m not an adrenaline junky or an athlete. I’m just a person who’s been kidnapped into a galaxy that never heard of my planet, and I’m almost afraid to think of the consequences. Scared? I passed that a long time ago,” she admitted, cutting her left hand through the air.
“Then give me the gun, and let’s get on to our next mission,” Crosshair said as he held out his hand and took a step forward.
Julia’s mind might be confused, she might be terrified, but her hand remained calm. The blaster came up, its aim centered on his chest. Even as he stopped, the child moved from Hunter’s side to run to Crosshair. She hugged his leg so tightly that it drew his attention. He grunted and tried to ignore her. Few can ignore a determined child. She clung to his leg with one arm as she stretched her other up to him. Clearly, she wanted him to pick up her.
Thick silence filled the space around the group.
Would he pick her up?
Julia shot a quick glance at the other men. None smirked or rolled their eyes. This wasn’t the first time the kid demanded the guy’s attention. With her weapon still leveled at his chest, she watched as he sighed deeply, stretched down one hand, grabbed the child’s hand, and hauled her up his body to tuck her into the curve of his left arm. She clung to his neck, facing Julia.
“She’s your daughter?” It was hard to ignore the resemblance. Crosshair sported a head of silver/white close-cropped hair. The child’s hair was a curious combination of his silver hair and gold, hers longer with soft curls. Silver-golden hair that went down her back. Where the man’s eyes were light brown, hers were a deep golden brown. But her face and the soldier’s face were identical.
The child said not a word, but Crosshair shook his head. The little girl wasn’t his, but the resemblance was remarkable.
“Where do I fit into this? You taking me…it was spur of the moment, wasn’t it?”
Hunter nodded, his arms once more crossed over his chest.
“Can I go home again?”
Tech shook his head.
Though Julia didn’t lower the gun, her mind raced. “What’s the plan?”
Hunter sent a glance around to each member of his team. Crosshair still held the child who clung to his neck, their faces close.
“We’ll drop you and the kid off on a planet where you two can live a good life. She’ll be safe.”
“Nope, not happening.” Julia saw all kinds of problems with that plan. “On Earth, we have a saying: dance with the one that brung you.”
Obviously, that meant nothing to this bunch. Then it dawned on Tech. “You want to stay with us?”
“Nope, not happening.” Hunter repeated Julia’s words. His face settled into a scowl.
“Get over it, dude. You kidnapped me. You keep me. I’m not getting dumped into God-knows-where on a planet God-knows-where with a bunch of strangers while you five go flying off, happy to be rid of me and the girl. I don’t know where you got her or why. I sure as hell know where you got me and why. So, I’m sticking to this bunch like glue. Me and the girl. You try dumping us someplace, I’ll hunt you down like I do a wild animal.” She gritted her teeth as she promised retribution if they tried tricking her into leaving.