Run Cold

My feet pound across the permafrost, enraged mammoths thundering behind me. Just ahead shimmers the portal. In a swarm of snowflakes, I leap through this doorway back into my time, stumbling as I land.

The scientist throws a switch, cutting off the Ice Age from his lab. He’s saved me from the herd’s vengeance, but I am no safer with him.

“Did you get it?”

Gasping for breath, I try to warm the frosty air in my lungs. Somehow, I find the energy to nod.

He snaps his fingers, a sound I’ve learned to dread. “Well?”

“Sir, I beg you, don’t do this.” With a shudder, I clutch to my chest the package I brought back. Inside is a blood sample I risked my life to take from a woolly mammoth, one containing a disease endemic to that species. It’s a potential bioweapon, one that could kill millions of people.

“Are you defying me?” His voice is more frigid than the era I just fled.

Tears well up in my eyes. I set the package by a row of test tubes. So many people will die, all coughing up blood, which will be on my hands. My own blood runs cold at the thought.

Nevertheless, I obey the scientist. Only the heart he built that pumps within me enables my blood to run at all. He holds its remote control.

Pamela Love worked as a teacher and in marketing before turning to writing.