The Time Portal 6: The Philadelphia Experiment: Time Travel Paranormal Romance Read online

  THE TIME PORTAL 6

  The Philadelphia Experiment

  By

  Joe Corso

  Published by Black Horse Publishing

  Cover Art by Marina Shipova

  The Time Portal 6

  The Philadelphia Experiment

  By Joe Corso

  Black Horse Publishing

  www.blackhorsepublishing.com

  Copyright 2015 by Joe Corso

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  All Rights Reserved

  Also by Joe Corso

  The Time Portal Series

  The Starlight Club Series

  The Old Man and the King

  The Revenge of John W

  The Adventures of the Lone Jack Kid

  Lafitte’s Treasure

  The Comeback

  Engine 24 Fire Stories

  THE TIME PORTAL 6

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  AN INVITATION TO BOOK CLUBS

  PROLOGUE

  The titanium handcuffs Heinrich Mueller had locked around Lucky’s wrists neutralized his extraordinary ability to create and manipulate the time portals. Removing the handcuffs was a difficult chore, but Rufio Albio’s blacksmith, who worked at his Roman villa, had succeeded in filing off the handcuffs. When the cuffs were removed, Lucky discovered that he had lost many of his evolving abilities. He had retrogressed back to the beginning, when during his convalescence; he first discovered the time portals. His wish now was that as time passed, he would regain all or some of his lost abilities. His new abilities allowed him to manipulate the vibrational frequencies of his body, which allowed him to create a time portal at will that would take him anywhere he wanted to go in the past. All he had to do was to think of a portal and the shimmering shower of pulsing light immediately appeared before him. He hoped those lost abilities would return, but because of the debilitating effects the titanium bracelets had on him, he lost that ability. He discovered something he never knew. He found out the hard way that titanium was to him what Kryptonite was to Superman.

  Lucky learned to create a portal when he was imprisoned by the mad billionaire in his dungeon in Romania and forced to create one. Kouras wanted Lucky to take him to his ancestor Vlad the Impaler, and he hedged his bet by kidnapping the sleeping Princess Krystina, who was languishing in the Compound hospital ill and near death. Lucky tried saving her life by taking her from the 12th century, where the treatment was primitive, to the present where he hoped the Compound’s doctors could utilize the modern medical facilities and had access to the latest in medical technology and medicines to restore her health.

  Kouros ordered his hired mercenaries to kidnap the princess, keep her under sedation, and take her to his castle without Lucky being aware that she was there. Lucky couldn’t create a portal to take Kouros to visit his ancestor, so he turned him down. It was when Kouros showed him the still sedated princess that Lucky had no choice but to try to help him. Kouros took delight in explaining to Lucky in great detail how his men had kidnapped the princess from the Compound hospital. Lucky found himself in a no-win situation. He had no other choice but to accommodate Kouros and attempt to create a portal on the fly, which was something he never thought he could do. He was placed in an old cell in Kouros’s ancestral dungeon. After many unsuccessful trial-and-error attempts, Lucky discovered that deep within his subconscious mind, the ability to create a portal had always been there; he just had to find a way to access it. When he successfully created his first portal, he began to evolve faster than even he could imagine. Unfortunately, his reaction to the titanium handcuffs closed the floodgates to his evolving abilities.

  After Lucky and Mickey rescued the princess and neutralized Kouros, Lucky brought Jack Kinsey up to date on his resolution to the Kouros problem. Some time passed before Lucky saw Jack again and, when he did get to see him, he had many things on his mind. He was mentally preoccupied when he approached the door to Jack’s office — and then something strange happened. Without any effort or intention on his part, and without realizing it, instead of opening the door, he walked through it. Lucky hadn’t been aware of what he had done, but Jack and Mickey witnessed it with their own eyes and watched it as it happened. When they told Lucky what he had done, he was as surprised as they were. He was mutating quickly and he didn’t know where or even when it would stop. He was philosophical about it, though, believing that God would never give him more that he could handle. He believed God knew what he was doing when he blessed him with the ability to see things differently from other people after he recovered from his injuries. His impaired vision allowed him to see the vibrating colors of shimmering light…the time portals.

  Lucky performed Google searches to see if it were possible for a person to pass through solid matter and he read scientific papers written about the vibrational frequency of a human being. And how if a person in theory slowed down his body’s vibrational frequencies to that of an inanimate object of say, a wall, and if his theory was correct, could he walk through the wall? Upon further research, he found that all matter, even inanimate matter, is not solid. All matter is alive with subatomic particles vibrating at specific frequencies. If one could control his body’s vibrational frequency to match the vibrational frequency of the molecules in a wall, or in this case, a door, in theory, you should pass right through what appeared to be solid matter.

  Little did Lucky realize how much damage titanium could do to him. The titanium handcuffs took away his ability to control the vibrational frequency of his body and, more importantly, he could no longer create a portal on the fly, which he now depended on.

  But the one thing he was grateful for was that he hadn’t lost the ability to travel through any of the portals he had originally discovered or even those that he was yet to find.

  Lucky decided to map out the portals, starting with the Compound portal, and then the jail portal, which he discovered while he was imprisoned at the Compound. That first portal was in a parade field, and because portals were new to Lucky, it had taken him a while to fi
gure out what a portal was and how to use it. That first portal took him to 12th century England, where his time-traveling adventures began. He fought Tor, the reigning champ, winning a boxing match to earn money to purchase a jewel-encrusted knife. When the king heard about the stranger who defeated the local champion, he had his men at arms locate and then bring the stranger to the castle where Lucky fought and defeated the king’s champion.

  Lucky discovered the Compound’s prison portal when Dirk Sommerville incarcerated him while he was recovering from a failed assassination attempt. When Lucky was captured by the military police working under Dirk Sommerville, Lucky discovered a second portal when he was held captive in the old Compound prison, which hadn’t been used since the Second World War. But as he studied the portal, he thought it might be difficult to use it because it was situated between two cells. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Lucky managed to squeeze into the portal and, when he stepped out of it, he found himself in the Australian Outback. That was where he met and became friends with Charlie Hodge, an old rancher who lived in the Outback.

  Now that Lucky could no longer create a portal, he decided to map out the locations of the portals he knew. Lucky went to his study, which was nothing more than a small storage room that the king’s household staff had cleaned out and tidied up and made ready for him to use. The staff brought in a small desk, three lamps that hung from the rafters, and some chairs and writing utensils, which was all he needed. The Compound field portal, which Lucky considered the main portal, was the first one he had recorded. The other portals followed that one. He made notes of the portals he discovered. Then he drew the portals on parchment in the sequence in which he discovered them. When he was finished, he had a basic map of where they could be found. He went back over the map, portal by portal, until he was sure he had them in the right order. He omitted the portals he had created on the fly because he could no longer get to them. But he was satisfied with the portals he drew; they would do just fine.

  The portals missing from his map were portals he had discovered while being held captive with Mickey and Duke in Heinrich Meuller’s castle. And although Lucky had lost his ability to create a portal, he hadn’t lost the ability to see the curtains of light when he found them, which meant freedom for him and his friends. After intense meditation, he discovered that there were two such curtains of light in the room they were imprisoned in. Unknown to Mueller, Lucky could see the time portals just as he would have if he were free, even with the titanium handcuffs on his wrists. Satisfied that he had found a way out of his prison, he took a deep breath to relax, and then he planned his escape. Once he escaped from Mueller, he would figure a way to remove the titanium bracelets, which were draining his power, and when the time was right, he’d come back and take care of Mueller the Nazi. The first portal led them deep into underground catacombs in either Italy or France— he didn’t know which. If he didn’t fare better with the second portal, then he’d have to decide which was the better portal to use as an escape route. Much to Lucky’s relief, the second portal proved to be a much better choice because it brought them to Sicily during the early days of the Roman Empire. And what was more important was that it took them to a sprawling Roman villa owned by a Roman aristocrat named Rufio Albio, a Consul to Rome and a friend of the emperor. Lucky and his friends discovered that Rufio was the person responsible for transporting wild animals from Africa to Rome to be used as sport in the Roman Coliseum. Lucky drew a second portal map, which included the portals that he discovered since drawing the first map. With the inclusion of this new information, it completed the time portals Lucky had discovered up until the present.

  Lucky placed the drawing in his shirt pocket. And when he returned to his own time, he’d get on the computer and print a copy of the drawings that he’d keep in his wallet for future reference. He checked to make sure his Compound Military I.D. was in his wallet along with his personal cards and it confirmed what he already knew — all was in order.

  CHAPTER ONE

  12th CENTURY ENGLAND

  Princess Krystina, Lucky, and Keisling were sitting in the garden near Tor. Lucky had given Tor the task of guarding the princess and, in performing those duties; he was wounded trying to protect her from being kidnapped by the Inquisition priests. He was strong enough now to sit up, his face had color, and he was getting stronger with each passing day.

  Krystina gazed with warmth at her husband. “Will my husband be leaving me soon, or has he decided to remain here with the woman who loves him?”

  Lucky had a shadow of a smile on his lips when he answered her. “Since my powers have left me in a weakened state, I have decided to remain here with the people I care for.”

  Keisling remarked laughingly, “If what I witnessed was you in your weakened state, I would hate to see you when you have full command of all your powers.”

  Everyone laughed. This was a good time to be alive, to be happy. Tor would live a while longer, and Lucky was among his friends, especially his new friend, Leonard Keisling. Keisling had been in a Spanish prison, placed there by the inquisition. One morning, a guard opened his cell and told him that he was to appear before the Inquisition. Keisling thought this was the day he would be sentenced to the guillotine. Instead, he was offered his freedom if he agreed to travel under escort to England. His job would be to kidnap the princess and, once he had possession of her, he was ordered to bring her back to the Inquisition to stand trial. He was promised his freedom if he succeeded.

  Once the journey to England began, he waited for an opportunity to escape. When the opportunity presented itself, Keisling killed two of his guards. He escaped and made the difficult journey to England, where he informed King Robert of the danger awaiting the princess.

  Lucky liked the charismatic, devil-may-care soldier of fortune that had fought by his side to save the princess and, through trial by combat, the two had become friends. When Lucky got to know Keisling better, he found that he reminded him of his friends back in the future. He was bright, courageous, and honorable; those were the qualities Lucky looked for in a friend and Keisling had them all.

  Lucky sat back on his comfortable lounge, surrounded by his wife and friends and the people he cared for. As he relaxed, his thoughts drifted to Rufio in his Roman villa, and Leonardo in his Florence workshop, and the promise he made them that he would return to aid them if they should ever need his help. With his ability to create a portal no longer possible because his powers were neutralized by the titanium handcuffs Heinrich Mueller locked around his wrists, he couldn’t see how he could keep his promises to those men . . . But that was a problem for another time.

  At that moment, in the middle of a pleasant conversation with his wife and friends, a feeling Lucky couldn't describe washed over him like a foreboding black cloud. Lucky sensed something was happening at this moment in the future, which involved him. Keisling noticed the look on Lucky’s face.

  “What’s the matter, my friend? You look as if you have seen a ghost.”

  Kristina noticed it too and she took hold of his arm, which shook him from the foreboding he sensed.

  “What’s wrong, my love?”

  Lucky looked confused. “I… I don’t know for sure, but I sense something is happening in the future that I must deal with, something important. I can’t explain it, but I must leave. I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  Keisling stood. “You may have need of me. I’ll go with you.” His remark stopped Lucky in his tracks. He would have liked to take Keisling with him, but he was afraid Keisling couldn’t handle the future.

  “No, my friend. I’m afraid I would lose you if you saw what the future is like. But I would ask this of you. I’ve assigned Tor as the princess’ protector, but he is recovering from his wounds and cannot perform that service for me yet, so I ask that you protect my family while I am away.”

  Keisling nodded and grabbed the hilt of his sword. “You can leave England with peace of mind, my friend, because no harm will
come to your wife and son while I live.”

  Lucky had breakfast with his wife and friend. He was wearing his traditional black outfit minus the balaclava he usually wore when he left the castle. After breakfast, they walked him to the moat, where he said his goodbyes to them, but before leaving, he pulled his wife aside.

  “Krystina, I’m so sorry to have to leave you, especially after you asked me to stay a while longer and I promised you I would. I’m not like normal people any longer. When these feelings come over me, I must heed them. Something is not right in my own time and I have to know what it is so I can help fix whatever it is I’m sensing. I promise you that as soon as I take care of the problem I will return as quickly as possible.”

  He loved his wife, but what he had to do couldn’t wait, so he wore his balaclava and he strode toward the portal that waited for him on the other side of the moat near the vendors’ empty stalls.

  Present

  Lucky stepped out of the portal and onto the parade field, and headed to the administrative building located not far from the portal. Then he bounded up to the third floor to Jack Kinsey’s office. As he walked past Kinsey’s secretary, he gave her a brief smile and, without saying a word, he charged into Jack’s office. When the door flew open, Jack almost jumped out of his skin.

  “Jeez, Lucky, you have to stop barging in on me like this. You have to give me some sort of warning beforehand.”

  “Sorry, Jack. I was in such a hurry to talk to you, I wasn’t thinking straight. Jack, something’s happened. I feel it. I know something is not right and I knew I had to return to the present to take care of whatever it is. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that came over me.”