Project Enterprise Mega Bundle by Pauline Baird Jones

Author:Pauline Baird Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942583196
Publisher: Pauline Baird Jones

23

Doc didn’t want to open her eyes. It took a few heartbeats to remember why.

She sniffed. No cordite, so not a post bomb moment.

She was upright. Holding onto something hard and cool. She took a peek. A marble sink. A Garradian marble sink.

She was in a bathroom. A Garradian bathroom.

There were worse places to be, worse places she’d been.

She still had the peeps. She could feel them in her head, though they were as rattled as she was. Almost destroying the fabric of time twice had that affect.

She lifted her lids. Saw her face, her body in a mirror over the sink.

She was wearing a dress.

That was new.

Not that she’d never worn a dress, but wearing one in this galaxy was new. It wasn’t just a dress. It was a modified Morticia dress: black and clinging with sleeves that had drifty points that stopped at her knuckles. It wasn’t long. She never wore long dresses. If she had to lift them to kick it filled her hands with something besides knives or guns. She touched the a-bit-lower-than-her-usual neckline. What was up with that? This dress was fitted—she felt her back and sure enough, no gun snugged into the curve of her lower back. She yanked at the skirt, feeling out of proportion relieved to find a knife strapped to one thigh, a small, but lethal hand gun strapped to the other. Minimal was better than nothing. The heels went with the dress, but holy foxtrot they were high enough to be a different kind of weapon.

Her hair was shorter than last timeline, but longer than the hair cut before that. It brushed her shoulders, utterly straight and about the same length as Cleopatra’s was supposed to have been, but sans the bangs. She didn’t do bangs. Got in the way of a gun sight if she didn’t keep them trimmed.

Her makeup was exotic and a bit creepy.

What was going on? Where was she?

She studied the bathroom, not able to fully appreciate the nice accoutrements. Situational awareness the size of a bathroom was not helpful, even if it was a nice bathroom. The stone walls looked familiar. This had to be the Kikk outpost. The peeps wanted to help, but they were fetal in a dark corner of her brain. Okay, outpost, dress—could be a party. But why was she packing creepy with her other armament? What was her mission objective? Did she have a mission objective? She hadn’t at the last party in this galaxy, two timelines ago.

Her heart thumped again—hard—as she froze on another thought.

She pulled up her sleeve and turned her wrist to the light.

It was bare. It was gone. Her ma’rasile mark was gone.

Her hand wrapped around the spot.

It is what you said you wanted. The peeps sounded reproachful.

I did. I do. It’s just—

You like him.

Her chest felt tight, like something wanted to explode out of the center. It wasn’t tears. She didn’t do tears. Okay, she’d had a rotten couple of timelines and maybe she’d earned a good cry, but that didn’t mean she’d do it.

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