by C. J. Hill
In a few more minutes, Joseph, Ren, and Lee would reach the mobile crystal on Charles Street. They would need a car to meet with the DW and need one to get to the detention center. Lee kept his stride casual and he smiled, as though the three of them were talking about the latest light-ball game. “How come none of us remember the plan to free Sheridan?”
Joseph had his own comlink out, looking at the detention-center layout. “We were in the protection of the Scicenter’s time vector field when the past switched, so we didn’t change. We still remember the old timestream even though a new one replaced it. But our brains aren’t designed to deal with two different realities at the same time. Our minds are mixing them together, rejecting the new memories.”
Joseph turned his comlink to a video feed and tapped in Mendez’s number. Mendez had a secret comlink, one he used only for DW business. He would know what to do and how to help them rescue Sheridan.
Mendez’s face appeared on the screen. As usual, his expression was stern and unreadable. “Yes?”
“We have a problem,” Joseph said. How could he explain this in a short time? “We need help with the detention center. Is there somewhere we can meet?”
Mendez’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you? How did you get this number?”
Joseph stared at him, not wanting to hear what he was hearing. “Mendez, it’s me. Joseph . . .” Even as he said the words, he knew they wouldn’t matter. The timestream had changed, and apparently in the new one, Mendez wasn’t their contact. After a moment’s thought it made sense. Sheridan had found Mendez in the old timestream, and he’d been their contact ever since. In the new one, someone else had the job. Joseph searched for that memory and could vaguely picture a man—an unassuming older man you normally wouldn’t notice in a crowd. Joseph couldn’t remember his name or comlink number.
Mendez gave Joseph a scowl to show he didn’t like being bothered. “I don’t know who you are. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”
“No,” Joseph said. “While I was working with the QGPs, I inadvertently changed time. That’s the problem. We need to rescue Sheridan from the detention center, but I don’t remember how we planned on doing it or who our contact was.”
Mendez shook his head. He looked like he was about to turn his comlink off.
“Wait,” Joseph told him. “Ask about it. Someone in the DW knows what I’m talking about. We have a contact there.”
At the mention of the initials DW, Mendez’s eyes turned into cold slits. “Is this a joke? You call up a stranger and accuse him of belonging to the DW? I wonder if the Enforcement Department would think that was funny?”
The screen went dark. Mendez had ended the call.
“Great,” Lee said. “That went really well.”
Ren’s pace was faster now, angry. His dark ponytail swished across his shoulders with every step he took. “Didn’t you realize this might happen before you changed time? Didn’t you make contingency plans?”
Joseph stared at his comlink, unwilling to clip it back onto his belt yet. “I knew Taylor and I would be safe. . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The pressure he’d felt earlier was there again, pushing against his chest.
“Maybe Mendez will call back,” Lee said. “You told him to ask people about what you said. Some of them know about our mission. Somebody will understand what has happened.”
“He’s not going to call back,” Ren said, his words coming out in a sharp rhythm. “It sounded like a trap. Strangers claim to know someone in your organization, although they can’t remember who. Mendez probably thought his comlink was compromised, and he’s incinerating it right now.”
Ren was right, Joseph knew. Not only was their mission damaged, but he had also messed up their way back home. Were they even supposed to meet at the Fisherman’s Feast restaurant when this was all over? If not, where were they supposed to go?
Joseph searched his memory but could only think about the night before he left Santa Fe. He’d forgotten to meet Sheridan for dinner. How could he have forgotten? How could he have messed everything up this badly?
“So what do we do now?” Lee asked.
“We do what we have to,” Joseph said. “You have paramilitary training, and I can figure out a way to outsmart the Enforcers. We’ll find a way to rescue Sheridan by ourselves.”
Chapter 19
As Taylor rushed out into the hallway, she braced herself. She knew what would happen, had gone through it during training. Enforcers. Darkness. Gasbots shooting at them.
Everything happened quickly. Doors in the hallway opened; people walked out. She saw the surprise on their faces, the fright. Most rushed back into their rooms. Two Enforcers dressed in the black laser-deflecting armor rounded the corner. Both lifted their laser boxes to shoot.
Xavier threw down two vials—the sleeping and concealing gases. A black cloud exploded into the hallway, instantly darkening the area and masking the group.
The Enforcers shot anyway. Slivers of light cut through the cloud, arrows in the roiling darkness. Taylor lunged against the left wall. She hoped Xavier hadn’t been hit. She wanted to call out to him and tell him to use a disrupter. She didn’t speak for fear it would give away her position. She pushed forward along the wall, hurrying toward the stairwell. More shots cut past her. She felt the heat of one hitting her back.
She knew why Xavier hadn’t used his laser-disrupter box. It would destroy their own laser boxes as well as the Enforcers’, and he didn’t want to lose those weapons. He was gambling that the Enforcers wouldn’t be conscious long enough to hit any of them. A dangerous gamble for him since he’d given his shirt to Allana.
With one hand on the wall, Taylor hurried down the hallway. A voice from the building’s speaker repeated, “Air toxicity is high. Evacuate the corridor immediately.” Colored spots of light flicked on the wall, pointing the way to the elevators. She reached the bend in the hallway. The gas had arrived there first, a wave of darkness that covered everything she could see. It wouldn’t last long though. Three or four minutes. The building’s air filters were already working to clear it.
Taylor heard noises in front of her. Footsteps, an Enforcer calling for backup, people coughing. She couldn’t tell where anyone from her group was. For all she knew, everyone else had been captured.
Even if she got separated from the rest of the group, Taylor had been trained to continue on with the escape plan. She would use a lock disabler on the stairwell door, go to the roof, and zip line to the building just east of the Scicenter. From there, she would use another zip line to go to the building behind that one—the courthouse. The idea was to get far enough away from the Scicenter to avoid the Enforcers converging on and searching it. Once she made it to the courthouse roof, she would take off the scientist overalls, use a laser cutter to get inside the building, and then blend in with the streams of people who were coming and going inside. The DW had taped a mobile crystal underneath a bench outside the courtyard. She would use it to take a car to the Traventon Plaza Recreation Center, then go to Fisherman’s Feast.
It was one thing to complete a mission alone during training; it was another to consider that possibility in a darkened hallway surrounded by people who could kill her. The voices in the hall stopped, replaced by the thumps of people hitting the floor. Where was the stairwell? Shouldn’t someone on the team have reached it by now?
Taylor heard the clicking sound of doors being locked. The building’s sensors had realized that anyone who hadn’t passed out by now was wearing a gas mask—was an intruder. In another moment the gasbots would come out. They wouldn’t be able to locate movement through the black cloud, but they would still shoot randomly into the hallway. The group needed to make it to the stairwell before then. Xavier wasn’t protected.
The next sound was the twang of small doors springing open to release gasbots.
Had she missed the stairwell somehow?
A rectangle of light flashed a few yards ahead of her. Xavier had
gotten the stairwell door open. His profile was visible against the outline of light.
“Run!” he yelled to the others. If they could all make it through the doorway before the gasbots reached them, they could lock them out.
Taylor sprinted toward the door. She heard footsteps behind her. Echo and Allana. She also heard the whir of the gasbots moving down the hallway. The ripping sound of laser fire filled the air. Streaks of silver light cut past her.
Seconds later, Taylor ran through the door. Allana followed her, gasping so quickly that the air filter in her gas mask flapped back and forth like a trapped butterfly. Echo came in last and pounded the button to close and lock the door. Taylor was fairly certain Echo could have outrun Allana. He had kept behind her to shield her from laser fire.
Xavier had already turned on the speed boosters in his shoes. Taylor and Echo reached down and turned on theirs as well.
Allana looked up the stairwell, still gasping. “Why are we going up?”
“Because they’ll expect us to go down.” Xavier motioned for Allana to come over to him. “Hold on to my back. You won’t be able to keep up otherwise.”
Allana groaned out a protest. Taylor didn’t wait around to hear more of Allana’s complaints. She bounded up the stairs, the boosters in her boots hissing as they rocketed her upward. It was like jumping on a trampoline. She took the steps four at a time, could have even done more, but leaping that far made it hard to turn in the stairwells.
The sound of the group’s jumping steps echoed all around. Could anyone outside hear them? Had the Enforcers figured out where they’d gone? Every time she made a turn in the stairwell, she expected to see black-clad Enforcers careening downward toward them. She looked for their dark forms, for the helmets that made them seem inhuman.
Echo passed Taylor, and then a floor later, Xavier passed her too. His movements, even carrying Allana’s extra weight, were precise and athletic. Every time he landed, Allana jostled against his back and let out a small ooof! sound.
When the group reached the nineteenth floor, Xavier’s boosters began to burn out. Echo switched places with Xavier then, carrying Allana on his back. Xavier took the lead, even though his boosters were only half strength. “I’ll go ahead and get the door open,” he said, and disappeared around a stairwell bend.
Just past the thirty-first floor, Echo’s boosters ran out. They weren’t designed to carry two people.
“I can’t carry her,” Taylor said. Her boosters were getting low too, and Allana weighed at least as much as Taylor did.
“Go,” Echo told Taylor. “It’s only four floors. We’ll run up the regular way.”
Allana looked put out by this news, which irked Taylor. Boosters or not, the rest of them had sprinted up twenty-seven flights of stairs. Allana hadn’t done anything but hang on to men and pretend they were her personal ponies. Still, Echo took Allana by the hand, murmured words of encouragement, and pulled her up the stairs.
Taylor gritted her teeth as she left them. Allana had dumped Echo and then broken Dakine rules so that assassins had hunted him down. And yet Echo still treated her like she was a damsel in distress. What sort of sign did he need that it was time to move on? A literal knife sticking out of his back?
When Taylor reached the top floor, Xavier was leaning against the doorframe and getting his zip-line shooter from his pack. Taylor told him Echo and Allana were on their way, then took his place in the doorway to keep it open. While she waited, she pulled the gas mask off her face and shoved it into her pocket. Xavier, soundless as a cat, padded over to the far edge of the building to set up the zip line.
Echo and Allana finally appeared. Allana was red-faced and out of breath. Strands of her silver hair clung to her neck in sweaty tendrils. She must have never exercised a day in her life.
Taylor motioned for them to follow her. “We need to go to the side of the roof. Be quiet, quick, and stay near the building’s edge so the people on the floor below don’t hear us.”
Taylor went that way, carefully placing each foot on the roof. It felt like there should be a breeze up here so high. Instead the air felt stagnant, trapped against the opaque dome that covered the city.
Behind her, Allana panted out the words, “Couldn’t you have come up with an escape plan that didn’t involve running up stairs?”
Taylor ignored her. She’d reached the edge of the building and picked up her pace. “Hurry,” she told the others.
“Sangre!” Allana cursed. “We shouldn’t be so close to the side of the building. I can’t . . . sangre . . . This is too dangerous.”
They weren’t that close. The edge was a sidewalk’s width. Taylor went faster, just to show she wasn’t afraid. “We don’t want the people down on the street to notice us and report us.” The team was counting on the fact that people down below on the streets were used to ignoring the videos that played on the tops of buildings. Their gazes wouldn’t be drawn up here because of movement.
Echo’s voice was gentle and coaxing as he spoke to Allana. “You won’t fall. Here—hold on to my belt and watch my back.”
Taylor laughed and looked over her shoulder at Echo. “If you want someone to watch your back, I think you chose the wrong person.”
Allana took hold of the back of Echo’s belt. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.
Taylor never explained the twenty-first-century figures of speech and didn’t plan on starting now. She kept walking along the ledge. The trick was not to look over the side of the building.
“It’s an old saying,” Echo told Allana. “When men went to battle and fought by hand, they could only see the enemy in front of them. They needed comrades to watch their back. The term came to mean anyone who protected you.”
Taylor turned around to face Echo, going backward as she did. “I’m impressed you knew that.”
“I’m a historian,” he said.
“So are Joseph and Jeth, but their knowledge of past slang is pathetic.”
“Oh,” Allana said, her tone changing from frightened to condescending, “you’re one of Joseph’s historian friends. That partially explains your rank, I suppose.”
Echo didn’t pay attention to Allana’s commentary on his profession. His attention was riveted to Taylor and her backward progress. “You’re the one who needs to watch her back, or you’ll go off the edge. You do realize how far down it is, don’t you?”
“I’m fine,” Taylor said. She was; she could judge where to put her feet by seeing where she’d come from. Still, she turned around. Her comlink pulsed out a tingling sensation and she smelled pine trees, the signal that Joseph had messaged her. While she walked toward Xavier, she looked at the message.
It read, Have you destroyed the QGPs yet?
She used the speech-to-text function to send a message back to him. “Have you already rescued Sheridan? How is she?”
A moment later she got another buzz and a whiff of pine. Be reasonable, the message read. Think about what Sheridan would want you to do.
“I am. Sheridan would want me to rescue her.” And then because Taylor was still angry at Joseph, she whispered into the comlink, “By the way, Echo used the Time Strainer to save Allana. Lovely girl, except I’m afraid she’ll jeopardize the whole mission. Do you have any messages for her?”
It took only a moment for the scent of pine to wash over Taylor. No, Joseph wrote back, but tell Echo the next time I see him, we’re going to have a long talk about that choice.
Taylor let out an incredulous grunt that her comlink wrote as Chuuu! She erased it, and said, “That’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Tingle. Pine. What does that mean?
Taylor had reached Xavier. He’d already set up a stand, a thin rod about six feet tall.
“You tell me,” Taylor said into her comlink. “Then I’ll know you have Sheridan and her memories are still intact.”
Xavier aimed his zip-line shooter and shot. A nearly invisible cord zinged across the distance b
etween the buildings, connecting somewhere on the other building’s roof. Xavier pulled the line tight.
Another tingle and whiff of pine. Mendez isn’t our contact anymore. Do you remember who is?
Taylor let out a stream of swearwords, which the comlink did its best to phonetically transcribe. Frustration gripped her. She didn’t know the new timestream well enough to be able to retrieve those sorts of details. “How are you going to rescue Sheridan without outside help?”
We’ll do it, Joseph wrote back. If you remember our contact, message me. Otherwise we’ll meet at the old rendezvous place.
The Fisherman’s Feast restaurant was still run by DW. That wouldn’t have changed. Taylor and Joseph could go there and ask to speak to the chef. He could check up on their story.
“I’ve got to go,” Taylor said into her comlink. “Let me know when you have Sheridan.” Taylor shoved her comlink back onto her belt.
Xavier had attached the line to the stand, then used his laser cutter to slice the line from the gun.
Taylor peered over the edge of the building. The ground somehow seemed farther away than it had in the VR programs. The Enforcers’ cars converging around the building were tiny. She could make out several rail-jumpers zooming along the streets that led to the Scicenter. Most Enforcers used cars like everyone else, but in emergencies they called elite Enforcers who rode rail-jumpers. The high-speed bikes could jump over the slow-moving cars in front of them. From here, they looked like little leapfrogging toys.
Xavier attached a handle and two slender rope harnesses to the zip line. During training, Taylor had argued against using the harnesses because they took longer to get into and out of, but Joseph had told her the council wanted every safety measure possible to protect her. Now she realized the harnesses were for Echo as much as they were for her. Joseph hadn’t known how injured Echo would be after his transportation into the future.
Xavier unbuckled the first harness. “Two people will have to share.” He eyed Taylor, calculating. “I’ll wrap the harness around you and Allana. It won’t be comfortable, but it will work.”