Relic - Jaid Black Page 0,8

is that?”

“Oh my God,” James murmured. “Holy shit.”

Octavia blinked to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. The structure looming a football field away from their position looked like the ruins of the very castle just outside their previous encampment. Only the castle wasn’t in a ruined condition. Judging by the activity buzzing around it, it was fully functional.

“Were we zapped into an alternate reality?” This from James.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes were unblinking.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Octavia could hear the slight tremble in her voice. She quietly cleared her throat as she tried to make sense of what precisely she was looking at.

During her final internment, she had spent many restless, hungry nights staring through barbed wire at the remains of Bothwell Castle. There had been no greenery, zero vegetation, and certainly no thatched roof huts dotting the horizon. The river Clyde’s water had been bone dry by the time the Xenocanns had transferred her from the concentration camp in London to the one nearest to Glasgow. Octavia couldn’t count how many of those same nights she’d gotten out of her head by imagining what the old ruin must have looked like during its heyday. Ironically, Bothwell had appeared in her mind’s eye exactly as whatever she was currently seeing looked now.

Removing a pair of binoculars from her backpack, she thought to get a closer look. She swallowed a bit roughly. “The question of where we are might not be as significant as the question of when we are.” She simply couldn’t stop staring—not just at the castle itself, but also at the seemingly routine activity buzzing around it. Peasants performing back-breaking labor, knights callously, sometimes cruelly, interacting with them. “That’s Bothwell Castle. I know it is.”

Lieutenant Bellamy laughed a bit uneasily. “Time travel? I don’t know, Octavia.”

The commander let the binoculars drop to her chest. Her head whipped around. She frowned. “And three years ago if someone had told you that you’d wake up the next day to an alien invasion of cannibalistic humanoid reptiles you would have believed them?” She shook her head. “We’ve lived through weirder, James.”

He blew out a breath. “Touché.” He went back to scratching his beard. A nervous habit maybe? “So when do you think we are?”

“Peasants, chainmail… I don’t know, but it can’t be good for me.” Octavia’s nostrils flared in protest. What the fuck had the admiral been thinking? “I’m a woman for fuck’s sake! If we’re stuck somewhere in the Middles Ages I’m pretty much screwed.” Resting her rifle against the closest tree, she squatted to her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

“Come on,” James said after a brief hesitation. “We don’t know for sure that’s what we’re dealing with.” He squatted down beside her so he could lower his voice. “We can’t know until we check things out. Let’s put on our cloaks and do a little recon.”

She thought it wiser to wait until nightfall, but that was simply too many hours from now. “Maybe the doctor went to the castle. I guess it would be the logical thing to do depending on where he landed.” She stood up and snatched back her rifle. “Unless he materialized in front of their backward eyes and is being drawn and quartered for witchcraft as we speak.”

“Shit.”

“I’m not going to pretend I’m a history buff, but I do remember a little bit from my university days.”

“You remember more than I do apparently.” James stood up to his full six feet. “If it needs hunted or blown up, I’m your man. Otherwise…” He shrugged.

Octavia reached for her backpack and shoved the binoculars back inside. She located the black cloak she’d stolen from one of the collaborator’s dead bodies. She put it on, zipped it up to her neck, and donned the hood. “We’re sister and brother,” she told Lieutenant Bellamy as he dressed. “In case it comes up.”

What remained of SEAL Team 9 quickly discovered that, in fact, the question of their connection would never come up. If it did in future, neither one of them would know because they couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying anyway. Equally evident was the fact that they stood out like sore thumbs. Peasants walked a wide gait around them, not so much as looking them in the eyes.

“Do we look like lepers or something?” James muttered. “Because these mother fuckers sure don’t have room to judge. I wish we had toothbrushes to pass out.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” she