Wired Read online

  Disclaimer: The usual disclaimers apply. I don't own these characters, I just borrowed them for a few pages. No money or other compensation exchanged hands here either -- unless you count the Bonkers that I doled out to my cats to keep them off the keyboard.

  Author's Notes: Like The Gift, this was also written in response to the "Jim and Blair in the woods" challenge -- it just has a little different twist and allowed me to pin down an idea I've had running around in my head for some time. Thanks to Kareila for beta-work above and beyond the call of duty. Her suggestions made this a MUCH better read.

  Wired

  by

  K. Ryn

  [email protected]

  .

  There's nothing natural about this place.

  [Crackle]

  Blair jerked as if he'd been struck.

  [Image of a forest in reverse. White on black like a photographic negative; a frozen moment of time and place.]

  [Crackle]

  He blinked and the vision seared itself into his mind.

  Blair blinked again and found himself staring down a steep slope. Below him stretched miles of unending verdant forest. The trees were packed so tightly that it was like looking into a green ocean. But it didn't move. There wasn't a breath of breeze. Nor did he feel any warmth from the sun, which hovered in the pale, cloudless blue sky.

  "Chief..."

  Odd, he thought absently, eyeing the green, silent vista. It hadn't looked that way a minute ago.

  "Sandburg!"

  Jim's voice finally penetrated Blair's concentration. He turned abruptly, his feet shifting on the slippery slate underfoot. Blair jammed his walking stick into the rocks, teetering for a few uncertain seconds until he regained his balance.

  "You okay, Chief?"

  Jim was standing less than an arm's length away, his back to his partner. Blair turned to see what was holding his friend's attention and found himself looking up the side of a mountain. The broken shale area where they stood continued for roughly fifty feet, ending at a sparse tree line. Those scraggly firs stretched for another two hundred feet before colliding with a s heer rock wall. Head tilted back, Blair's eyes followed the almost vertical climb of the stone as it disappeared into the wreath of writhing clouds that obscured the peak. Behind those clouds something glowed. Something ominous.

  "Sandburg!"

  "Yeah, Jim?" Blair couldn't take his eyes off of the glowing whiteness. Ominous? Now why did I think that? Uneasy, he took a step backward and had to stab his stick into the rocks again to keep from falling. His shift in balance brought him around so that he was facing the forest once more. He blinked and the static green ocean seemed thicker; darker. No movement below, yet above... the thought of the turbulent clouds around that glowing "something" at the summit pulled at him.

  "I asked if you were okay."

  His partner's voice gave Blair the distraction he needed to look away from the troubling view. He started to answer, then froze, blinking in surprise. Jim now stood ten feet uphill from him. How did he do that? I never even heard him move.

  "Sandburg!"

  The annoyed tone in his partner's voice cut through his dazed musings and Blair managed a quick nod.

  "Yeah... I'm fine..."

  "Then if you're done admiring the view, I'd like to get going."

  "Going?" Blair asked in confusion, still staring at his partner, who had turned his gaze back toward the heights. "Just where are we going, Jim?"

  "Home, of course," Jim answered in his usual firm tone.

  Blair risked another look at the peak and shivered. "And home would be... what way?"

  "Sandburg, I don't know how you made it through all those jungle expeditions with your sense of direction," Jim teased, pointing up the mountain. "That-a-way, Chief."

  Blair raised eyes and then quickly looked away, glancing around in confusion. "Jim... just where are we? How did we get here?" A vague impression of sitting in Jim's truck as they careened through the streets of downtown Cascade teased through his mind.

  "We finished an assignment and now we're headed home."

  "Yeah... I kind of remember that. But how did we get here? I mean, we're just shy of needing oxygen tanks, man."

  "Is that what's bothering you? Your fear of heights?"

  Blair snuck another quick peek and snapped his eyes shut -- that glow was still there. "No," he countered, shaking his head. "Not exactly..."

  "Chief, it's an easy climb. We'll just follow the path."

  Eyes still shut, Blair searched his memory for a path and couldn't find one. Of course, to Jim Ellison, ex-ranger, any half-way traversable stretch of ground was like a four-lane highway. Blair took a deep breath and opened his eyes again, prepared to fix his gaze on his partner and not the horror he imagined waiting above. But Jim wasn't there.

  "Come on, Sandburg, let's go!"

  "How did you do that?" Blair's frantic gaze settled on his partner, who was now nearly at the top of the rocky shale, moving effortlessly toward the tree line.

  "You can't watch my back from way back there," Jim called over his shoulder.

  "There's logic to that," Blair muttered, taking a step forward. The slippery rocks shifted and he went down hard, gasping in pain as the knife-like shale bit into both knees. He instinctively looked for Jim, surprised that the Sentinel hadn't heard him cry out, but his friend just stood at the edge of the trees, staring intently toward the rocky crest.

  Bearing his weight on the stick, Blair pulled himself to his feet. Looking down, he realized why he'd slipped. Tennis shoes? Why in the world would I have worn tennis shoes to climb a mountain? Probably because Ellison didn't tell me we were going to be taking a shortcut through heaven.

  He felt something wet and reached down to find blood seeping through his jeans from his injured knees. He started to call out to his partner, but when he looked up to where he'd last seen Jim, the older man had vanished.

  A stab of fear shot through him. "JIM!" Blair scrambled forward, using the walking stick to help him keep his balance in the shifting rocks. "JIM WAIT!" There was no answer, not even the echo of his own voice, which should have been natural in the otherwise oppressive silence.

  There's nothing natural about this place.

  The thought came from out of the blue, but the certainty of it drove him to move faster. He was gasping when he finally reached the edge of the tree line, which seemed strangely thicker than it had appeared from below. "JIM!... Jim, where are you?" Edging closer to panic, Blair searched desperately for some sign of his friend in the closely packed trees.

  Jim's voice floated out of the air. "Just follow the path."

  "Path... what path?" Blair gasped in dismay, pushing forward into the dense foliage. Two steps in and the trees enveloped him; as if they'd been ready to swallow him the moment he got close. "Jim... wait!" Blair yelled, frantically pushing away the sharp stinging needles.

  "Just follow me..."

  "Jim... stop... please... something's wrong!" Why had his "Blessed Protector" led him into this nightmare? He tried to move forward, but the walking stick caught in the branches, trapping him where he stood. He was about to abandon it, when a loud rumbling suddenly throbbed through the trees. Blair tried to spin around. The trees shifted closer, pressing in on him while the sound grew louder. Something was coming and whatever it was definitely had anthropologist on its agenda. He opened his mouth to scream and tasted pine needles. Frantically spitting them out, he drew one last breath. "Jim... help me!"

  [Crackle]

  Blair coughed and groaned in pain.

  [Image of a forest on fire. Flames shooting to the sky; turning the world into a roaring inferno.]

  [Crackle]

  He took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as his lungs rejected the searing heat. Coughing, he fell to h
is knees, only to lurch back to his feet seconds later. The very ground felt like it was on fire. He drew in a cautious breath and tasted the grit of air filled with ashes.

  He suffered through another short coughing fit and wiped at his tearing eyes. As far as he could see there were only the blackened stumps of what had once been trees. Their twisted trunks, some fallen, some still standing, littered the landscape. Dark, greasy clouds of smoke spiraled dizzily into a sky so white that it hurt his eyes to look at it.

  There's nothing natural about this place.

  The thought echoed in his mind and he forced himself to stand still. Get a grip, he ordered himself, taking as deep a breath as he dared. Closing his eyes to mere slits, he forced himself to concentrate. Forest. He'd been in a forest. Fire was a natural thing in a forest, wasn't it? Maybe that's what it was. He'd been caught in a forest fire. No... he'd been caught, but it hadn't been fire that he'd been afraid of. The trees had closed in and there had been a rumbling... he'd been certain that something was about to attack and have him for lunch... he'd called out for Jim...

  "JIM!... Jim where are you?" The anxious cry burst out of his mouth and his eyes snapped open. He spun in a mad circle, searching for some sign of his friend. What had happened to him? They'd been together... no, that wasn't right. They had been together and then Jim had disappeared. Vanished into the trees. He'd left Blair behind...

  Pain stabbed through him at the memory. Jim hadn't waited. Jim had left him behind. He either hadn't heard, or had ignored Blair's plea for help. Another fit of coughing drove him to his knees and this time the burning pain didn't move him. He clung to the walking stick and shuddered.

  "We're not making very good progress here, Chief."

  Stunned, Blair raised his head. A half-dozen feet beyond him, Jim perched on one of the fallen trees, swinging his legs idly.

  "You know, Chief, we're never going to make it home if you keep stopping to take a break every few minutes."

  "Jim, what the hell's going on here? Why didn't you wait for me?" Blair's voice shook with anger.

  "I did wait. You just didn't keep up."

  "You didn't wait. You disappeared. I couldn't find you." The terse sentences tumbled out of Blair's mouth as he shook his head.

  "I knew you were behind me, Chief. You always are."

  The trust in those words, the rightness of them, washed Blair's anger away. "Yeah, that's true. You lead and I follow."

  "Except when you go off on your own, half-cocked," Jim added, a small smile creeping across his face. "Wouldn't want to do that here, so close to home."

  The grin that had begun to fill Blair's face faltered. His partner had turned away and was gazing out across the landscape. "I understand why you're so hesitant to get moving, Chief. It really is beautiful here."

  Blair shook his head in disbelief. All around them stretched the ruin of blackened stumps and fitfully flaming trees. And in the distance, that glowing whiteness that seemed to attract and repel him at the same time. How could Jim call this beautiful?

  "Jim, man, we are definitely on different pages here."

  "Well, what's new about that? We don't see eye-to-eye on everything, Sandburg."

  Blair's head snapped around. Jim was no longer sitting on the fallen tree. He was twenty feet away, still staring into the distance. "Damn it Jim, what's going on?"

  "Nothing's going on, Chief," Jim answered without turning. "I'm just eager to get home."

  Blair shuddered at the words, drawing in a ragged breath as the world seemed to shift around him. The stench of sulfur and the grittiness of ash burned in his mouth and nose. A coughing fit seized him, threatening to double him over. He held onto the stick in his hands, struggling to stay on his feet. "Jim... this isn't... right..." He struggled to choke out the words between the racking coughs. God, my lungs are on fire!

  Raising his head, he tried to focus through eyes streaming with tears. Jim was even farther away now, moving across the broken terrain as easily as if he were following a path through a gentle meadow. "Jim... wait..." Blair whispered, pleading as his friend's dark form seemed to merge with the landscape and disappear right before his eyes.

  Leaving him alone. "NO WAY!" Blair planted the blackened stick in his hand into the ashes and propelled himself forward. Before he knew it, he was running, driven by the need to catch up. He caught a flicker of flowing darkness out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't stop. Didn't allow himself to be sidetracked.

  His foot caught on a half-buried limb and he fell to the ground, tasting ashes in his mouth, feeling the burning of the ground as it seared his clothing and skin. "NO... I won't stop!" he screamed into a rising wind, forcing himself back to his feet. "Jim trusts me... he needs me... I can't let him down..."

  He was tired. And he hurt. His back and legs felt like they were weighted down with lead. His feet and knees burned with every step. His lungs were on fire with each breath. But he wouldn't allow himself even a moment's rest. He had to find Jim. His partner was ahead of him, somewhere. Why the Sentinel didn't see this place as the hell-hole that it was, his Guide didn't understand. But that didn't matter. Until he could figure out what was going on, Blair had a job to do. He had to watch Jim's back.

  Blair's head snapped up as a familiar rumble cut through the screaming wind. Scanning ahead, Blair's heart lurched as he caught sight of his partner once more. "Jim look out!" The screamed warning was useless as his words were carried back on the wind. The black "thing" was moving toward the Sentinel. It crossed in front of Jim... circling... watching... waiting to pounce... Why couldn't Jim see it? Why didn't he listen to his Guide?

  "JIM, PLEASE! It's right behind you!" He threw himself forward at a dead run, stumbling and falling. A reviving burst of determination pushed him to his feet. He took two steps and ran headlong into a wall of snarling night. He fell back, sobbing as the world around him came unglued.

  Blair clung to the walking stick as the wind shrieked around him, whipping his clothes to tatters. It burned his face and arms, driving ash particles like thousands of tiny knives into his skin. The stick shuddered, bursting into flame. He nearly threw it away, but something deep inside made him cling to it, as if it represented his grip on reality. He felt the skin on his palms burn and char as the stick blazed in his hand.

  "Jim... Jim, please... listen to me... I'm your..."

  [Crackle]

  Blair flinched as thunder rolled overhead.

  [Image of a night-black forest. Dark jungle canopy overhead, draped with vines that sent long tendrils snaking down; sparks at their tips like lightning, vaporizing anything they touched.]

  [Crackle]

  Either I'm dreaming, or I'm losing my mind, Blair decided, peering anxiously into the darkness.

  He preferred the first option. If he was dreaming, then he'd be home, safe at the loft in his own bed, surrounded by the clutter of his normal life. Not here, where reality seemed to be bending at right angles with every breath.

  If he was dreaming, all he had to do was wake up and this would be over.

  Resolutely, he squeezed his eyes shut. Count to ten. Simple. He could do that.

  Focusing only on breathing and counting, he followed his own directions. Upon reaching 'ten,' he swallowed hard and opened his eyes.

  The vision of yellow, unblinking cat's eyes, was not what he'd hoped to see.

  A strangled cry caught in his throat. He staggered backward, coming up hard against one of the huge trees. Blair slid to the ground, screwing his eyes shut in panic. WAKE UP ALREADY! Teeth chattering, he counted again, this time out loud. He was conscious of the flat, deadened quality of his voice. Shivering, he forced himself to open his eyes and he groaned in despair. The cat's eyes were gone, but the jungle remained.

  Guess that answers the question. I'm losing my mind.

  A nervous laugh bubbled out before he could stop it. That loss of control disturbed him. He concentrated on trying to center himself and several deep, calming breaths later, he felt a
s though he'd regained at least some command over his shaky mind -- at least enough to take another look around. He was surprised to find that he was still holding a walking stick in his left hand. As he stared down at it, the image wavered -- a hockey stick, a roughly hewn tree branch, a charred remnant of wood -- until it finally solidified into a silverish-gray metal rod.

  A hockey stick? Sure, why not? You've lost your mind, remember? He stared at the wire rod in his hands, sensing the power running through it. The staff throbbed, as if charged with a life force of its own. He laughed again and glanced around, expecting at any minute to see either a flurry of white dressed medics ready to wrap him in a straight jacket, or Rod Serling, stepping out of the jungle, a lit cigarette dangling in his hands. Right... Not insanity, no thank you. I'm fine... just stepped off into the "Twilight Zone" carrying a hockey stick. I'm sure there was a good reason...

  It suddenly occurred to him that there had been a reason. Something about the memory of the hockey stick in his hands felt... right. Real. Natural.

  There's nothing natural about this place.

  The words triggered a terrifying fragment of memory. He'd had the hockey stick in his hands... he was running... screaming Jim's name...

  "Chief, what's the deal here?"

  Jim's voice brought him to his feet. He stared in confusion at his partner, who leaned casually against a tree, only a few feet away. Blair opened his mouth to speak, but uncharacteristically, nothing came out. Which was real? His friend standing safe before him, or the intense feeling of danger that lingered in his mind? ... running, screaming Jim's name, trying to reach him before...

  "Before what?" Jim's calm, steady voice echoed the words that rang in his head, but still he couldn't answer. Couldn't take his eyes off his friend.

  "You know, Chief. This has got to be a first." A smile flickered on the older man's face, warming his blue eyes.

  "A first?" Blair croaked, surprised that he still had a voice.

  "You. Speechless." Jim's smile widened into a grin. He was almost laughing. "It's too bad Simon's not here. He'll never believe it."