Echo in Time

by C. J. Hill

  Taylor stood up. Her legs didn’t feel sturdy and her mind still wasn’t clear. What had President Mason said about Xavier during their send-off? The memories were disjointed, didn’t make sense. She remembered pointing to the sign above the city gates and telling President Mason, “Freedom means paying off your debts. After this is over, we’re even.”

  Another memory looped through Taylor’s mind too. She had stood in that same spot by the gates and President Mason put his hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “Have faith,” he told her. “Prayers are never said in vain.”

  Wait, when had that happened?

  Taylor shook her head as if she could shake away her confusion. Right before they left Santa Fe, Sheridan had asked Joseph about Xavier. Taylor could picture herself striding over to the two of them. “Maybe I should insist on bringing someone along too,” Taylor had said to Joseph, throwing the words at him in a challenge.

  But Taylor had another memory of those same moments. That argument hadn’t taken place. Sheridan wasn’t even there. Taylor had only halfheartedly protested Xavier’s addition. She was too eager to leave to say anything that would delay the team.

  Which of the memories had actually happened? It was like holding water in her hands; the images kept slipping away.

  She shut her eyes, concentrating. Taylor recalled walking over to the airbikes. “Let’s go,” she’d told Ren and Lee. “Every moment we stay here is a moment that—”

  With a razor-like pain to her chest, Taylor realized what all of this meant. The white walls of the Time Strainer bay seemed to be collapsing, pressing in on her so that she couldn’t move. She forced her still-weak legs to take her to the computer where Joseph sat.

  “How could you mess with the timestream?” she asked, clenching her hands together. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Don’t worry,” Joseph said without looking at her. “A time vector protection field covers the entire building. Changes can’t affect us.”

  “Sheridan . . .” The word only came out as a whisper. Maybe he didn’t hear her.

  “Anyone outside the building won’t remember the old timestream. They won’t know a change even happened. Although taking Echo during the assassination was such a small change in the timestream, I doubt—”

  Taylor interrupted him with a sound that was half growl and half wail. This mistake had to be undone. Had to. “It changed everything for Sheridan!”

  Joseph stopped typing.

  “I have two sets of memories now,” Taylor said. “An old one and a new one. And in the new one, Sheridan never escaped from Traventon with us.”

  Chapter 13

  Joseph felt as though the room had lost its oxygen. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs refused to work right. Between Echo’s arrival and getting the programs uploaded, Joseph hadn’t thought about the past. As soon as Taylor said Sheridan’s name, he remembered it all. A new set of memories joined his old ones, forking off into a different reality.

  Joseph and Caesar, one of Echo’s Dakine friends, had driven to the back entrance of the Scicenter. They were waiting to meet the Dakine operative who’d agreed to free Taylor and Sheridan. In the new memory, they hadn’t been able to rescue Sheridan.

  A man dressed in Enforcer armor brought Taylor to the car, then leaned in to talk to Caesar.

  “We can’t get the other girl,” he said. “They moved her to an antistraining chamber somewhere.”

  “What?” Caesar asked. “What’s an antistraining chamber?”

  The man straightened. “I don’t know, but I can’t get there.” The man turned and left, striding back to the Scicenter. The car door slid shut and Caesar reached over to the control panel, typing in the address of the Dakine base instead of speaking it. Taylor looked from Caesar to Joseph, panic growing in her expression. “Where’s Sheridan? We can’t leave her.”

  The car moved forward, humming along the rails, gliding away from the building. “We’ll get her later,” Joseph said, hoping it was true. “The important thing now is to take you somewhere safe.”

  Taylor stared out the window back at the Scicenter. “How soon can you get Sheridan?”

  “I don’t know,” Joseph said.

  “It has to be soon.” Taylor turned to him, piercing him with the intensity of her gaze. She gestured to the bruises on her face. “What do you think Reilly will do to Sheridan when she can’t tell him what he wants to know?”

  Joseph was keenly aware of Caesar watching them, straining to understand the twenty-first-century accent. It was a good thing he couldn’t. He would ask questions about Taylor that Joseph didn’t want to answer.

  “I care about Sheridan too,” he told Taylor. “We’ll find a way to free her.”

  They hadn’t, though. They had escaped from the Dakine base and met up with Elise, the other wordsmith Joseph and Jeth worked with. Joseph had hoped Elise’s DW contacts could help them rescue Sheridan. Instead the DW had immediately sent Taylor and the wordsmiths to Santa Fe. They said it was too dangerous for Taylor to stay in Traventon.

  Joseph remembered other events from the new reality too. They rushed at him in a scramble of images: Dakine assassins converging on Plymouth Street. Echo had fallen, caught by laser fire, and then had vanished. The only proof he had been there was the splatters of blood on the pavement.

  Streetcams had recorded the whole event, and the footage blasted through the newsfeeds. Experts analyzed, theorized, and bemoaned the Dakine’s new weapon: a laser box that vaporized victims. People talked about it for days afterward.

  The Enforcers questioned Joseph for their criminal report, which was normal procedure. Then Joseph and Jeth had been brought into the Scicenter and questioned by a panel of scientists and government officials, which wasn’t normal procedure at all.

  The panel was seated in raised rows on a dais. Jeth and Joseph sat on white medical chairs that threw a constant stream of statistics into the air by their knees. Heart rate, respiration rate, brain activity, everything that might help the panel determine whether someone was lying. Helix sat in the front row on the largest chair like a king on a throne. “Do you know why anyone might have use for Joseph in the future? Was he important somehow? Did he have any special abilities?”

  A dark-haired man leaned forward in his chair. “Was he poised to make some contribution to society?”

  Jeth nodded and blinked away emotion. “Of course, Joseph was important. He was smart and kind and lived a life of honor. Everyone who knew him respected him. He was . . .” Jeth broke down and couldn’t say more after that.

  The scientists eyed Jeth, clearly disregarding what he’d said as the words of a grieving parent. An impromptu eulogy, one Joseph found excruciating to listen to. He hadn’t been smart enough to save his brother. He hadn’t been honorable or kind enough to refuse Echo’s sacrifice. He had let his brother die in his place.

  The scientists then turned their attention to Joseph, demanding the same information from him. “Was Joseph special somehow?”

  “No,” Joseph said. “There was nothing extraordinary about Joseph.” He had felt a hard bitterness at this truth. He wasn’t important. He was only unlucky.

  One of the scientists tapped his armrest and a computer screen flashed in front of Joseph. It showed his school grades, the scores of his computigating tests back before he realized it was better to hide that skill. “He had an extremely high IQ and an obvious gift for programming.”

  “He didn’t want to be a programmer,” Joseph said, which was the truth. The Dakine went after programmers and pressured them to join their organization. “History was Joseph’s main interest.”

  This led the scientists to speak to one another in hushed tones, murmuring things about history. He heard them mention Joseph’s translation skills with twenty-first-century English. “This is bad,” one said. “We can’t have anyone interfering with our time period. Who will they take next? One of us?”

  Joseph hadn’t understood their questions back then, but now h
e did. They had suspected Echo was strained into the future. It made them careful. It made them create an antistraining chamber. And when Sheridan told Reilly she was the physicist he wanted, Reilly put her in it.

  One other memory pressed itself to the surface of Joseph’s mind. When they had first met the DW, Taylor refused to leave Traventon without Sheridan. “We have to help her,” Taylor had pleaded. “They’re probably torturing her.”

  Joseph had literally dragged Taylor, crying, out of the city. “I care about Sheridan too,” he’d said over and over again. “I’ll come back for her. I promise.”

  Now the words bit at him. It was his fault Sheridan hadn’t been rescued. His fault because he had cared more about saving his brother than keeping her safe. His fault.

  Joseph felt a grating sickness that started in his stomach and spread through his entire body.

  Taylor gripped the side of the terminal desk, anger vibrating from her eyes.

  He swallowed. It was difficult to speak. “We’ll rescue her. I promise.”

  Taylor drew her hand back and slapped him hard. “Sheridan was safe until you changed the timestream! We don’t even know if she’s still alive.”

  Joseph didn’t flinch from the slap. Didn’t argue. With numb fingers, he minimized the QGP data screen and flipped back to the screen that operated the Time Strainer. “We’ll strain her here. You have the same DNA, so we’ll use yours to find her DNA energy signal. We’ll take her before they put her in the antistraining chamber.”

  “It won’t work,” Taylor said, rubbing her temples. “They put those shielding chips into us as soon as we stepped out of the Time Strainer.”

  With a lurch to his stomach, Joseph remembered that new memory too. The scientists had not only created an antistraining chamber, but they had also designed chips that created a field to scramble energy signals from a person’s DNA. One of the scientists had injected them into Taylor’s and Sheridan’s necks as soon as they reconfigured in the Time Strainer.

  And all this had happened because Echo’s disappearance warned the scientists that people could be snatched from this time period.

  Joseph let out a groan of disbelief, of pain. He wanted to hit the terminal, to break something. Instead he went through the computer’s files until he accessed the detention logs. “They wouldn’t have killed her. They want her to help them with the QGP.” He scrolled through names of prisoners. “I’ll find her. The antistraining chamber was in the Scicenter. She might be in the building right now.”

  “What if they gave her a memory wash?” Taylor turned and paced the floor behind him. She gripped her hair as though she wanted to rip it out. “Reilly threatened to erase her memory if she didn’t help him.”

  Lee and Ren were both on their feet now, peeling off the useless gas masks. Lee turned his mask over in his hands, checking it. Ren lifted his laser box and scanned the room.

  Joseph didn’t speak to them. He skimmed through the detention logs, his thoughts spinning and scattering like shattered glass. He needed to find Sheridan’s information among the lists of criminals.

  Instead of walking over to the computer where Joseph sat, Ren and Lee strode over to Xavier. He was still working on Echo’s shoulder. “What in the name of darkness happened?” Ren demanded. “Why didn’t our gas masks work?”

  “Who shot you?” Lee asked, and then added, “Why did you change hair and face colors?”

  Echo looked up at them placidly. “I have no idea who either of you are.”

  Ren’s mouth dropped open. “He has amnesia too?”

  Joseph didn’t explain anything. He tried, unsuccessfully, to block them out and concentrate on finding Sheridan’s location.

  Taylor paced over to them. “That’s not Joseph. That’s his twin brother, Echo. Joseph is over there.”

  Ren’s and Lee’s gazes went from Echo to Joseph, taking in their similarities.

  “I thought Echo died months ago,” Ren said.

  Joseph remained silent.

  Taylor let out a grumble. “He did.”

  Echo lifted his head. “It’s just a shoulder wound. The med is fixing it right now.”

  Taylor went on, spitting her words out angrily. “Joseph discovered a way to combine Reilly’s QGPs to create a functioning one. He used them to change time and save Echo’s life.”

  “He did what?” Lee demanded.

  Xavier finished brushing artificial skin over the top of Echo’s wound. “We’ve brought you back to life at a great price. Remember that and live accordingly.”

  “I hate to disagree with everyone,” Echo said, finally able to sit up, “but I think I would remember being dead for months.”

  Lee marched over to Joseph. “Who in the council knew what you were planning? What did you exchange for Xavier’s help?”

  Ren stormed over to Joseph as well. “Did you destroy the QGPs already?”

  “Would someone,” Echo called out, “please explain to me what is happening?”

  Xavier pulled out a pair of shoes and some clothes from one of his packs. He handed the clothes to Echo. “These are laser deflecting,” Xavier said. “I’ll help you put them on.”

  Ren looked over Joseph’s shoulder and scanned the names on the computer screen. “Who are these people? What are you doing?” He turned to Taylor. “Have you destroyed the QGPs?”

  “No,” she said, still pacing back and forth between the Time Strainer and Joseph’s computer terminal. “We can’t destroy them yet. If I can think of a way to get around the shielding chips, we can use the QGPs to save Sheridan.”

  “Sheridan?” Lee asked, and Joseph could see the realization hit Lee and Ren, the fact that they now had two separate memories of the events leading up to this moment. In one, Sheridan had seen them off, standing somberly with the council members as they left the city. In the other she was never there and Taylor had been anxious the entire trip to Traventon. She had kept pressing everyone to go faster, hadn’t even wanted to stop to sleep. In that one, part of the mission had been to rescue Sheridan.

  The council had promised Taylor that after she destroyed the QGPs, Ren and Lee would meet with a DW contact and try to free Sheridan. It had always been a vague promise. What, Taylor had asked them more than once, constituted “try”? The council wouldn’t give her or Joseph any details, though. They said that doing so could endanger their contact.

  “Fine,” Echo called over again. “No one has to tell me what’s going on. Apparently I’ve been dead for months. What’s another few minutes of complete confusion?”

  Lee put his hand on his forehead, rubbing at the space between his eyes. “Which memory happened? Which is the truth?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ren said, raising his voice. “Saving Sheridan was never our primary mission.” He waved his hand at Taylor to emphasize his point. “You can’t save one person if it means letting countless others die. You need to destroy the QGPs and make sure this government never rebuilds one.”

  Joseph didn’t join the discussion. He had found Sheridan’s file. “Taylor,” he called, and didn’t have to say more. She hurried to the terminal. He clicked on Sheridan’s name and skimmed the information. She was at Detention Center Thirteen, a high-security prison about ten kilometers from here. Several interrogations were reported. Each listing brought a sharp pain to Joseph’s chest. What had happened in those meetings? What tactics had Reilly used? It was Joseph’s fault she was there. His fault.

  He skimmed the details until he reached the end. The last thing listed was a memory wash order. Sheridan was scheduled to have her memories wiped clean tonight.

  Chapter 14

  Taylor read the words memory wash in Sheridan’s file with numb horror. Right now Sheridan was alive and knew who she was. She remembered Taylor and their life in the twenty-first century. In a few more hours, that wouldn’t be the case. The sister Taylor had known would be completely gone. “We have to rescue her now,” Taylor told Ren and Lee.

  Ren looked upward in e
xasperation. Lee was still rubbing his forehead as though he had a sudden, persistent headache.

  “I won’t go back to Santa Fe without Sheridan,” Taylor said. She could hear the panic in her voice but didn’t care. “If that means delaying the QGPs’ destruction, so be it.”

  Joseph said nothing. He had accessed layouts of the detention center and was copying them onto his comlink.

  Ren’s dark eyes fixed Taylor with a stare. “Destroy the QGPs now.” He gestured in Joseph’s direction, piercing the air with his forefinger. “If Joseph found a way to combine the QGPs’ energy to make them work, the government can too. They’ll use that power to kill innocent people.”

  Taylor shook her head. “Joseph is smarter than anyone the government has working for them. They won’t be able to figure it out.” Even as Taylor said the words, she wasn’t sure it was the truth. Reilly was smart enough that he’d managed to build a time machine. She turned to Joseph. “You didn’t leave any record of Echo’s reconfiguration on the computer, did you?”

  “No,” Joseph said.

  Ren didn’t appear to be reassured. He stalked off toward the Time Strainer, switched into a language Taylor didn’t understand, and let out a stream of angry-sounding words. Probably cursing her. Lee switched to another language as well. It might have been the same one or a different one, but the two of them clearly agreed about something for once.

  While Xavier helped Echo dress in his laser-deflecting clothes, he gave Echo a brief rundown of what had happened—including the fact that his rescue had rearranged events so that Taylor’s sister was in a detention cell. Echo shot a few sympathetic looks in her direction then, which Taylor ignored. Echo looked so much like Joseph that she couldn’t help but be angry at him too. Or maybe that wasn’t why she was angry at him; maybe it was because his life had cost Sheridan’s freedom. At any rate, he could keep his sky-blue eyes and model-perfect face to himself.