(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 49

The early morning wind was cold. The fields out north of Nakskov had very little tall vegetation to speak of, most of it being trees to mark the edges of the individual fields, so there was nothing to really catch the faint winds that blew about. Colliding and merging, those faint winds became stronger.
"I dont get it," Alex said, sounding calmly frustrated.
"You don't get what"
He didn't look at me, his gaze scanning the horizon in a desperate attempt to find the answers he felt he needed. He wasn't succesful.
"I don't get it, this, whatever this is," he restated, this time adding a few waving gestures at the empty fields. "You said you had a plan, fine, but don't you need something to use that plan on?"
I had a pretty good idea what was going on with him, but ever since the fight at the time traveler hideout, something had changed in him. He was no longer pretending to be in control, for one, and that alone opened up the chance, or at least the hope, that he would become easier to read. Right now, just seeing him at a loss, was perhaps the most honest thing I had ever seen from the guy.
"They hide, you dumbass," I answered with a grim grin. "Did you expect somekind of Welcome to Time Town sign by a floating parking lot or something What do they teach you inspy school, anyway?"
It felt good to talk like that.
"Not a spy. And I wasn't really expecting huge underground villain's lair in the fields of northwestern Lolland, to be honest."
As if to emphasize his words, he said the entire line while glaring right at me, looking away again the second he was done.
I didn't feel like explaining too much. The woman in white had without a doubt already seen us and was contemplating how to react. She would hardly do anything just because of us standing there, but giving the enemy time wasnever a good tactic.
With a sigh and a slow motion, I placed my yellow and brown schoolbag on the ground, frowning a bit at seeing it sink slightly into the muck, getting dirty and moist from the early morning dew.
"That's what you needed from that old school? Tennis balls?" he complained, looking at the bunch of tennis balls I had crammed into the bag. I didn't give him an answer, but simply dumped the balls out on the ground, picking up a couple with my slightly cold hands. With him watching, I began throwing them as far as I could into the field, each in a different direction.
"Look, Ida, I don't know what the hell is going..."
He stopped talking the moment he noticed a creepy smile make its way across my face. When I picked another ball up from the ground to throw, his eyes followed it as it made a slow arc over the empty field... and vanished.
"What the #*@! was that?!" he whispered, as if the question was entirely meant for him to hear.
"That," I answered with unbearable self-satisfaction, "is your villain's lair."
Both of us struggling with the soft earth beneath our feet, we walked farther into the field, leaving the road and the two large cargo vans behind us. I had planned on doing this part on my own, but Alex had insisted on tagging along, leaving the two other agents in either car. It was still unclear if he was being protective or simply didn't trust me, but it felt pointless to start up an argument about this minor change of plans.
"Were out in the open. Are you honestly expecting nobody to see us?"
I shook my head, noticing how slow my movements were. The night's battle had worn me out, and what little sleep I or anyone else had found was too little. But it had to do.
"No, I'm expecting pretty much all the baddies to be watching us, right at this very moment," I replied with a tone that even I could hear sounded very arrogant.
As we walked and the moist ground sucked more and more against our feet, I kept throwing the tennis balls I carried in my arms, even letting him carry a bunch and, on occassion, throw one. As we moved closer to whatever was hiding the place that the time travelers had tried, and failed, to attack, more and more balls disappeared into thin air when thrown. When we could throw in almost any direction at even a slightly forward angle and see the ball quickly fade away, Alex stopped. I said nothing, stopping a few steps ahead of him and turning to look.
"What the #*@! is going on in Nakskov, Ida?" he asked, sounding more like he was churning over uncomfortable thoughts in his own head than actually asking me for explanations.
"Whatever it is," I answered, trying to ignore my own thoughts on the matter, "a big part of the answer is in there."
Standing still, breathing so heavy I could see his chest move and the humidity from his breath turn to droplets in the air, he balled his fists and moved to start walking again. But at the last second, his efforts were cut short.
"Hello again, little girl."
The voice sounded strangely muffled, like a video loading wrong or a radio hit by brutal interference. At first, it was completely disembodied, but as she spoke, the woman in white appeared first as a vague shape, then as humanoid patterns of color that merged into her before our eyes.
"You're becoming quite the little bag of surprises," she said with a grit to her voice. As she took slow steps towards me, her white coat flapping softly in the same wind that kept forcing her to shake strands of hair out of her face, she gave Alex a long and slow glance. I only looked over at the man once, instantly noting how he froze up while staring at her like a hesitant predator trying to measure with his eyes if his prey was, perhaps, a little too big to safely chase. He didn't look like he came to a decision on that, to be honest.
"I'm here to talk," I said, my mind suddenly getting weirdly confused about what I was actually there fore.
"About what" she asked, her eyes revealing that she was surprised by that reply.
"About you getting the hell out of Nakskov, for starters."
She seemed honestly taken aback by the answer. Not threatened, not intimidated, just surprised. As she stood there, doing nothing except looking from me to Alex and back several times, the air itself seemed to begin sparkling. Colored blurs began appearing like apparitions, fuzzy outlines and transparent shapes. It only took them seconds to unblur, the outlines becoming sharp and the shapes melting together to show their true forms.Men and women, well over a dozen, all with imposing physiques. Many had tattoos that seemed to glow and writhe softly on their skins. Some carried gear so fitted to the shapes of their bodies that it almost looked like thick patches of paint, easily unnoticed at any significant distance.
"I think my admiration for you is at an end, girl," she sighed, not sounding at all like she was trying to intimidate anyone. "My tolerance, too."
There was a strange sense of stand off in the field, the woman in white and her assorted henchmen staring us down. Their eyes rose up a bit when the two cargo vans suddenly left, their engine sounds cutting clear across the open space.
"Your friends left," the woman said, her voice sounded a bit surprised by the apparent ease of victory.
"No, they just had to get out of the blast radius," I answered, making a conscious effort to sound as casual about it as possible. The woman took a step to the side, letting her look past Alex and myself a little better. That allowed her to clearly see the large crate that stood where the cars had been a moment ago.
"A bomb?" she asked, almost as if she was about to laugh. "You're gonna blow us all up?"
"Not quite."
I stood in the field, hands in my pockets, rocking back and forth with a tremendous sense of superiority as the woman in white looked more and more confused. She whispered something, the sound lost to the wind but her lips clearly moving, and as about half her minions rushed toward the crate, the others turned to run. They were too late, of course. As the vans got out of the estimated radius of harm, agent Teglgaard pressed a button, sending a message from his phone to a burner phone that the nameless guy had, of course, been carrying as a safety backup. The moment the phone received the message, it sent a current through the wires connected to its speaker, the ringtone being used to trigger the device put together by the agents and the more tech savvy of the time travelers. A stack of old car batteries released their power into a capacitor that Niels had strung together from assorted materials found in his garage earlier that morning. In an invisible blast, all the power was flushed through the surrounding air, creating a wave of unchannelled electricity. It struck every single robot minion the woman in white had brought with her, the ones that had turned tail and run just seconds ago. The massive energy surged through them, far more powerful than that on the ship or in the house. With sparks shooting out of joints in their bodies, their limbs lost all control and they crumbled to the ground in fits, smoke rising from the overheating fake skin and plastic parts inside. And all the while, the entire sky seemed to flicker along, the vague outline of huge things appearing in a foggy silhouette behind her!
"Alex, put on your socks," I said with a predator smile. Alex wore a more modest grin as he dug the socks out of his pockets. We both stacked several layers, making sure there was enough chaotic time energy in either hand to take down most targets in a single blow. As we walked calmly towards the group of seven or eight people that the EMP blast had left behind, likely because they were her time traveling henchmen and not robot minions, we could hear the screeching wheels of the vans returning. Before we clashed with the now slightly uneasy group of henchmen, I looked to my left and saw the rest of ours pour out from the vans and run into the field!
"As many as we can," I said in a low, calm voice to Alex. The socks were a powerful weapon now, but they would become a risky tool the moment other time travelers got close enough to fight by our side. The energy didn't care who a time traveler was or worked with, it struck indiscriminately.
The first of her goons rushed me with his teeth bared, giving a scream that briefly sounded ferocious. Somehow, my body forgot to flinch, forgot to be frightened by his roar. All I saw was his arms beginning to flare up with pink lines, as some other form of energy that I had no knowledge of built up for him to hurt me. He was too slow. I felt a jot go through my body as I grabbed him by the wrists, my fingers pressing the fabric of the charged socks against his skin with all my might! His roar became a scream as burning pinpricks of mesmerizing colors danced around him, and I used his own weight against him to throw him to my side as he dissolved and finally exploded into colorful dots. I felt them burn against my own skin, but it only stung. I closed my eyes and lowered my head for a second, and as I looked ahead again, I stared at a very tall woman as she, too, bared her teeth. Unlike the now gone man's, however, hers were suddenly growing wildly, her gums bleeding slightly from the change! Coarse hairs had begun to sprout on her skin, and the skin itself was turning bright red as the body underneath it changed much faster than it was meant to.
Before she could fully change into whatever beast she had planned, Alex came rushing in from the side, howling like a banshee on espresso shooters! She barely knew what hit her before her changing body dissolved and erupted into bright spots in the air!
Only four of the woman's minions were left when the rest of ours arrived, and they were taking worried steps backwards.
"I asked you nicely, lady, but now Im telling you," I shouted across the field. "Take your remaining stooges and get back to..."
My mouth stopped talking all on its own as I spotted new blurry forms taking shape from behind the veil that hid their invisible base. Three dozens, easily. I didn't even move when the rest of ours, perhaps emboldened by seeing me and Alex clear the first wave, stormed by me, howling and screaming like animals! Jens and Niels were swinging around some homemade devices, Emilie ran circles around enemies while getting in one suckerpunch after another. Weird energies flew through the air and punches and kicks fell fast and hard.
And in the middle of it, the woman in white! My eyes found her as she grabbed someone by the metal rod he was swinging at her, and holding the rod swung the guy away with a fiery frown on her face. She looked at some of her own people and yelled an order, but the screaming and shouting between us drowned out her words before I could hear them.
My feet suddenly took on a life of their own. Digging into the thick, Nakskovian soil, they launched me forward at her. I dodged one arm swung at me just at the edge of my sight and evaded another that seemed to be swung in my path, but at someone else. Hands ahead of me, the energy in the socks practically burning as I came down on my target, I was within arm's reach when she reached out and snatched my wrists right out of the air.
"This shit ends here," she growled, pressing her own hands into mine. Golden lines along the inside of her fingers flashed with a brilliant light as I felt the buzzing energy in the socks evaporate like the morning dew around us. As she tossed me aside to yell new commands, I felt the first touch of true fear since arriving. I was on my feet by the time she was done with orders and turned her attention back to me, but I was still struggling to regain my courage.
"You don't get it, do you, you little cunt," she hissed as she took long, quick strides towards me. With quick flicks, I got the socks off my hands and dug deep into my pockets for new ones that still brimmed with that weird time energy. "This is all history. There is nothing for you to change. You're the past, you already happened!"
"#*@! your past, here's a present for you!" I yelled as I threw myself at her again, a part of me deep inside feeling a bit proud at the quip! She sidestepped me with ease, but at the last second, I got a hold of her long, white coat. With a loud growl, she pulled her arms out of the coat's sleeves and tossed it far away as it started to dissolved into colored dots. However, by not touching it, she was apparently spared.
"That is #*@!ing it!" she roared, and her voice seemed to vibrate as she, likely by accident, stepped inside the veil that they had all come out of moments earlier. Her shape seemed to blur, outline and background merging ever so slightly, as she flicked her now bared arms outwards. It looked like the bones in her arms cut out through the skin as the arms suddenly, for just a second, disassembled and reassembled. A fog of pink and purple swirls began dancing around the arms, sputtering like bared electrical wires in the rain. I only caught a brief glimpse of Emilie as she threw herself at the woman, but the swirling colors around the woman's arms blew her back with ease. I struggled to keep my eyes on the woman, but for a split second, I checked that Emilie got herself off the ground, damaged but still breathing!
"Fine!" I yelled back, swinging my bag from off my back and into my arms. With a quick pull, I opened it up, and tennis balls instantly fell out. The woman glared at both me and the tennis balls, angry but uncertain by the whole gesture. That changed as I picked up the balls and held them against my body as I hurled them, one by one, at her! They sizzled against her protective swirls, a few forcing a pained flinch out of her as it struck just right to touch her. She didn't dissolve in dots of colors, but she was realizing the predicament. And as she began to become a blur of shapes and colors, I pressed on, picking up the balls I had thrown at the veil earlier, the time energy from the school still in them. My own hands soon began to blur as I stepped through the veil myself. The sky became dark, and strange architectures emerged, little more than contours against the black sky behind the veil, poorly lit from inside long windows and thin strips of light outlining pathways on the ground.
"What, lost your balls?"
She lowered her arms and the swirls around them with a vicious grin on her face. She was right. I had no tennis balls left. The bag was empty, and there were none on the ground near me to simply pick up and continue. With a howl, I spun around and hurled the bag itself at her, and she ducked out of the way. Breathing heavily, exhausted and with a rising sense of terror inside of me, I cast a glance at my wrist. Mischa's watch showed a few minutes to half past seven.
She was enjoying it. I had seen her proud and arrogant, even gleeful, before, but this was new. There was a tranquil satisfaction in her eyes as she made a minor twitching move with her arms, causing the colorful swirls to intensify.
"I give up."
She stopped, a slightly baffled look sliding over her face.
"I give up," I repeated. "I surrender. I yield. I whatever. You win."
Looking briefly over both her shoulders, clearly thinking it was a trick, she then turned her skeptical gaze at me.
"You give up? What exactly do you give up?" she asked. It was obvious to anyone, had anyone been there, that she was trying to quickly make sense of an unexpected turn of events. I just wiped a bit of blood from my lip and staggered a bit, my body suddenly seeming to realize its injuries.
"This. This whole... thing," I answered, waving my hand in the air at the carnage around us. "We'll leave you alone. I'm done, I can't... this... I just can't... any more."
My breath was uneven, lungs too often empty when I wanted to say a word. I stretched and could hear my own whimper clear as day. I felt pathetic. But there was no other way.
Still keeping the swirls alive, the woman in white shouted out a command, and everything became still.
"Everyone, we're done!" I yelled, following her lead. The sounds died down completely, although a moment later, the injured ones began whining loudly, knowing that now, they could.
"You think I'll let your friends go?" she asked, sounding a bit like it was an honest and sincere question.
"No. But if you give them a head start, Im sure they'll accept the terms."
She looked around the field, taking in the situation. She knew she had the upper hand, but something about her suggested that she would rather round people up quietly, one by one.
"I accept," she said, sounding a little cheerful, of all things. The swirling colors around her arms faded, but her eyes still scanned the surroundings, wilfully paranoid that there was a trick to be sprung, still. But nothing happened.
"Everybody, back to the vans," I yelled, not taking my eyes of her. I knew that most in the field could not even see me, being on the other side of the veil. From the inside, we could look out, everything just toned down in color, like a screen in power saving mode. But those outside could not see us, the way I could not see the hidden base before I stepped through the veil. It was still there, its outline towering against the dark sky inside the veil.
"You really think this will work?" the woman asked, her voice now a little confrontational. "You think you'll actually be safe?"
My eyes flickered, going from her to, briefly, her various minions around the field. None of them seemed very hyped about the surrender, most just looking on a bit confused as our people dragged the ones worst hit back to the cars.
"I have no idea. I bought them some time, and that's enough for..."
"Time?" she asked, laughing a bit as she spoke. "You bought them time?"
I nodded, looking at her with uneasy confusion in my eyes. She lowered her gaze, almost like a movie villain, and chuckled.
"You have no time, you dumb little #*@!," she sighed. Then she looked me straight in the eyes. "You're history. Literally. You, this, all the past. It all happened a long time ago, and nothing you do will change even a footnote in the archives about this age."
All of a sudden, she seemed to have a trembling in her voice, an anger or frustration mixing itself into the restrained chuckle.
"You are all already dead," she added, her voice turning into a sneer. "You did nothing with your life and then, you died. Your friends, your family, the people you see when you walk the street, all dead, all gone. None of this exists any more. It's all past. It's all history."
As she spoke, her tone climbed from soft mockery to a scolding snarl, until she was hissing at me so close that I felt the warmth of her breath in the cool morning air.
"Get the #*@! out of my face," I growled, trying to hide the fear building up in my chest. She stood for a moment, motionless, and then she backed off, taking a few steps back to leave some room between us again.
"Your friends seem to have crawled back into those metal boxes you like to call cars," she said with a strangely mocking tone, as if the concept of cars was somehow offensive to her. I quickly looked over my shoulder, seeing Jens in the distance carry Emilie into the back of one of the vans. She was holding onto him, so she was still alive and aware of her surroundings. That was good.
Still staggering, I took a deep breath, then started dragging my aching legs back towards the road. After a few steps, I stopped, turning around slowly and painfully to look at the woman one more time. She looked back, having perhaps never taken her eyes off of me. When she caught me glancing at the ground, she grabbed the school bag and looked inside. Without a word, she pulled out a tennis ball that had apparently somehow hidden itself inside. As it sputtered, the time energy trying to mess with whatever kept her rooted in the moment, she looked me straight in the eyes. Then she threw the ball away, and hurled the bag at me. It hit me straight in the stomach, making me buckle over in pain, whimpered loudly. As I struggled to get back on my feet, I saw her giving me a tired smile.

Agent Teglgaard sat behind the wheel in the van as I climbed into the passenger seat. I was gasping for air, having just thrown up at the side of the road from sheer pain. Perhaps not pain alone. There had been some blood in it, too.
"Get us to the clinic," I managed to say over the pain. The agent looked at me, asking with just a stare if I was going to make it. With a strained stare back, I tried to change the subject.
"Everybody made it," he said as the engine began to rumble to life.
"Good," I replied, knowing too well to stick to short sentences.
"Did everything go as you wanted it?"
I nodded. Then, everything turned dark.