Allergic To Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

to come out that way, but my tone was snappy. “Yes, actually I should be here.”
    “Alright alright,” she said, like she wasn’t convinced but couldn’t be bothered arguing with me. She turned to stare into the hospital room, mirroring my own position. “Poor guy,” she murmured. “He’s here all alone. Doesn’t even know where he is, how he got here.”
    I turned to look at her. “So you believe him too? You believe he’s a time traveller?” I was kind of shocked. How many people were there involved in this whole thing, involved in covering it up?
    She seemed hesitant to say too much to me. I cursed the fact that I hadn’t just lied to her, pretended that I was indeed a key member of Martin and the Man In Black’s crack team of time travel cover up experts. Then she might have been willing to spill the beans a bit more. But I was terrible at lying, as much as I wanted to be good at it. I didn’t have a moral problem with lying, it was just that my brain and words could never form a dishonest sentence. Maybe it had something to do with my years of scientific training, my pledge to the truth no matter the cost involved.
    She shifted side from side and continued on. “Look, I don’t know. All I know is that they turn up here from time to time.” She stared hard through the glass. “They look strange, usually. Their clothes and hairstyles.   Like nothing I’ve ever seen. And it’s always the same: they can’t breathe. And then these guys,” she said, nodding her head towards Martin and the man in black. “They always turn up. Sometimes before the patients die, but usually afterwards.” She paused for a second and looked sad. “But this guy made it. He’s breathing on his own.”
    I’d fully turned to face her as she spoke. I could feel how wide my eyes had gotten. This was it, this was what I had been waiting a lifetime to hear.  
    I was finally being proved right.  
    Bianca elbowed me in the side and pointed for me to look inside the room. The man in black was waving for me to come in and join them.  

    ***  
    I crept towards the bed slowly. I braved a quick look at Martin’s face: his expression confirmed my belief that he was not the one who wanted me to come inside the room. He wore a look of stony disapproval, along with one of disbelief that this was happening, that I had become involved in his seedy secret little society.  
    It was the man in black who smiled at me, almost warmly — or at least as warmly as that bastard could manage — and he opened his mouth to speak. But before he could, it was the man in purple who spoke up.  
    “You have to believe me!” he spluttered, sitting up in the bed, although it looked like the sudden movement caused him considerable pain. The dark eyeliner around his eyes looked garish and cartoonish in the blue tinged light of the hospital room.  
    The man in black placed his hand on the patient’s shoulder and gently got him to lie back down. “She does believe you,” he said in a low reassuring tone. “That’s why we’ve got her here.”
    I scrunched my face up - I was there because I’d fought to come with them. I’d thrown myself in front of a car for crying out loud.
    “This is ridiculous,” I heard Martin mutter, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the man in the bed. He looked like a frightened cat. A ridiculous, feathered, sequinned, frightened cat in a purple jumpsuit. The whiteness of his eyes was exaggerated by the black eyeliner that surrounded them, but the terror in them was real.  
    I sat down and he looked at me, pleadingly. “Please, you have to believe what I am saying.”
    I nodded, feeling the heat of disapproval emanating from Martin behind me.  
    Slight relief flickered across his eyes. “It’s like I have told these guys,” he said, shooting a look of distrust in Martin’s direction. “I was just walking down the street, minding my own business, not hurting anyone!” He gulped and swallowed. “When next