by Teya Tapler
“I should’ve seen this sooner,” Mort roared. “He was trying too hard to gain access to the lab.”
The blaming game continued until Ranshen spoke.
“And yet the only one who essentially did something was Lin,” he said after watching and listening quietly for some time. “She was the only one brave enough to defend all of us, and yet she’s the smallest one of us all. We have to be ashamed for allowing that to happen.” Ranshen slowly looked around stopping for a few seconds to look at each of the gang members standing around the couch. Then his gaze fell on Evan. It made her feel sick to her stomach. Ranshen’s gray eyes were trying to charm her and yet they looked colder than ever. “You, my precious, need to rest. Now we’ll take care of you,” he said and smiled. He had discovered the best approach. If he had warned himself from the future he should do as needed. Emil was gone and now she had to disappear too. They already had their third success. Even though the note said that she might help Zull, the note was mentioning both her and Emil. That might have been an indication that they were related. After all she turned out to have a dream for him when he was interviewing with them, didn’t she.
Evan shivered seeing the crocodile like smile directed at her. She wasn’t sure whether his words were really sincere or whether Ranshen knew who she was and was planning to secretly kill her. She gathered all her strength… and smiled back.
Chapter 14
Zander awoke from the low pitch noise of the alarm. As the sound diminished he slowly opened his eyes. The sky was white with a few bright, yellow stars shining right into his eyes. He blinked forcing the details to clear and realized that he was looking at a ceiling sprinkled with recess lights. He was lying flat on his back onto a hospital bed. On the wall ahead, the huge monitor was going crazy, agitated by the change of his status, displaying all his vital signs and how they’ve changed in the last 3 hours. It was announcing to the world that he was awake. The lights blinded him and Zander tried raising his right hand to shield his eyes. His arm was extremely heavy and didn’t move. He tried raising his left hand instead. It felt like an eternity until the simple gesture of shading his eyes with his left hand was completed. His muscles had forgotten how to move. When Zander looked to his right again he saw Mary standing next to his bed behind a smiling nurse who was adjusting some of the bed settings and removing the cast from his right arm.
Zander stretched his cast free right arm towards Mary.
“Hey,” Mary replied to his greeting and took the place of the nurse accepting his half raised hand in hers. “You gave us quite a scare,” she said softly.
“Is Evan okay? Where’s she?” Zander spoke his first words slowly.
“She is okay. She is on an assignment.” Mary tried to sound as convincing as possible. She couldn’t tell him everything at once.
The nurse came back and started preparing Zander for the reanimation process. He had been in comma for couple of months. During that time they were stimulating his muscles and blood circulation but he wasn’t strong enough yet. He needed to undergo intense physical therapy before they could discharge him from the hospital.
“Where are?” Zander looked for Peter and Emil behind the nurse but Mary interrupted him. His speech was getting progressively better.
“On the same assignment,” Mary tried to smile. Then guessing his next question she added. “They had already left when I got the call from the hospital. It’ll be a great surprise for everyone when they return.”
“I’m sorry Miss but you’ll have to leave now. You can wait in the cafeteria downstairs. The procedure will take about four hours. Then you can take him home,” the nurse talked with a polite and highly professional voice.
“See you at the other side,” Mary waved at Zander and left.
Once in the corridor she activated her phone bracelet and called Peter. Emil picked up, “How is he?”
“He’s awake and I’ll drive him home in four hours.” Mary said. “How is it with you? Any new ideas?”
“I guess you didn’t tell him then,” Emil said.
“Give him some time to recover. Once we arrive you can share anything you want.” Mary said.
“We’re still trying to identify who might have done it.” Peter said at the background and Mary heard the phone being put on a speakerphone before his voice became louder. “It’s hard to identify the source of the shot. There were only two security cameras running at the time and because of all the reflections the data is contradictory.”
“What d’you mean?” Mary asked.
“The shot either came from us or from the Galactic Representatives.” Peter explained. “It wasn’t us and the representatives don’t have such weapons at their disposal. It was the TTA employees who transcasted them for the event.”
The Time Travel Agency, or TTA for short, was the public face of the organization their group worked for. It was its cover. At a very special price, to help fund their secret operations, the TTA provided a once in a life time opportunity for some ordinary people to see specially selected historical events firsthand. Behind all the travel excitement on the surface, the real purpose of the TTA was to retrieve criminals from their hiding places in time and space and to bring back the various objects they had acquired illegally.
“Could we suspect any one in particular?” Mary wasn’t giving up.
“We’re thinking of investigating them individually, before you called.” Emil said.
“There are too many TTA employees.” Mary said.
“Not them, the Galactic Representatives,” Peter corrected her.
“Wait for us before you start.” Mary said.
“Only if you bring some gummy bears,” Peter tried to joke.
“Sure,” Mary hung up.
***
When Mary and Zander entered the team base Zander looked around. The place hadn’t changed at all. Emil and Peter had closed on one of the holographic screens hiding it from him and Mary. To his surprise Evan who was supposedly on the same assignment with Emil and Peter was nowhere around. Something didn’t feel right.
“Hi guys,” Zander said.
“Hi Zander,” Emil and Peter stood up and hugged him one after another. “How are you?”
“Where’s Evan?” Zander asked. “Where’s her assignment? Why aren’t you with her?”
Emil and Peter looked at Mary wondering what else she did or didn’t tell Zander that they had to rectify. She shrugged and then looked at Zander.
“Sit down first.” She pointed at the sofa and Zander complied feeling he might not like what was to follow. Mary looked at Emil and Peter and continued after Emil nodded in approval. “Evan came here with you.” Mary started with a calm voice. Her thoughts raced trying to find the best words to describe the worst situation they have ever encountered. “She’s not hurt, she’s okay.” Mary continued, using present tense, not believing her own words. “She came to the Galactic Committee building to help us destroy the pearls. Then before placing the fifth pearl, she got transcasted. That happened yesterday at two pm.” Mary ended bluntly. There wasn’t a better way of saying that Evan was gone. Mary was to tell the whole truth.
“We worked all night trying to identify the shooter and Evan’s possible location,” Emil said. “We personally checked each hypothesis and visited the suspected locations.”
Zander couldn’t entirely comprehend what were they talking about. In his mind he was still hearing Evan telling him that she loved him. He couldn’t imagine that she was gone. Having Evan so close, just to lose her again was hard to swallow. The thought of her being lost was unimaginable. She must have received the implant by now. Zander remembered that when such a thing happened to them Peter would bring them back.
“Doesn’t she show up anywhere?” Zander asked.
“She didn’t receive the implant.” Mary sat next to Zander on the sofa and put her arm around his. “When it happened we were still waiting for the procedural approval.”
“Couldn’t you just wait?”
Zander was beside him; he pulled his arm from Mary and moved a few inches away from her.
“We were pressured from much higher up than we could afford not to comply with,” Emil said and looked down. The image of Evan with her pixie haircut carrying the shining pearls towards the transcaster flashed in front of his eyes.
“We’re now trying to identify who did it. Here,” Peter had the images from the two security cameras playing in parallel on two holographic screens. “It’s hard to see from all the reflections. It is either us or the Representatives. The scientists are not in the trajectory.”
“D’you know who those guys are?” Zander came close and pointed at the group of the Representatives. He knew that none of his colleagues was to blame.
“I was just pulling the records for all of them. Everything is accessible except the records for Chancellor Kotzmere. Because of his status they’re locked.”
“Let’s look at what we have. Give me the first batch.” Zander sat behind one of the holothreens and the virtual keyboard materialized in front of him.
“I’ll split them between all of us.” Peter send files to Emil and Mary too.
“Talk to you in an hour,” Emil started banging on the virtual keyboard.
All of them dug deep in the data, tracked locations, travel records, bank transactions, hotel visits, and even grocery receipts. Every now and then someone stood up to pour some coffee and then returned to sift through the piles of data from the last 6 months. They were going wide and deep leaving no stone unturned.
After one hour they turned back to the center of the room and looked at each other. One by one they moved their heads from left to right indicating that they haven’t found anything tangible to grasp on. Peter send them the next set of files and they continued plowing through the piles of data for the next person.
The following checkpoint wasn’t any different than the first one. They haven’t discovered anything. The Galactic Representatives were clean and they still had no idea how to check on the Chancellor.
Emil put his feet on one of the floating chairs and looked at the ceiling. Peter put a handful of gummy bears in his mouth under Mary’s critical look while Zander elbows on the table put his head in his hands. They needed to do that all over again.
“Did you look at the visual archives?” Zander asked.
“She’s not there,” Peter said. ”I did a visual search in the whole archive. It came out with no matches ten minutes ago.”
“How about some of our enemies?” Mary wasn’t sure what she was thinking about yet. “I know,” she smiled silly, “we do have a huge fan group in the local prisons, but could it be possible that some of them had someone on the outside.”
“I see where you’re going. Let’s check them individually.” Peter said and turned towards the screen. “Who do you want to start with?”
“The 906 Inquisitors,” Emil said. ”Since the pearls were their invention it kind of makes sense to start with them.”
“Pulling images of the gang members,” Peter said. His holographic screen displayed portrait pictures of Mort and Kevin from their capture date, the Amanda’s post mortem shot and what looked like the remains of two other men; one bald and the other one with a huge beard. Their facial features were unrecognizable.
“Where is the other guy, Ranshen? “ Emil asked. He had noticed that there was one body less than what he had counted during his undercover mission with that group.
“This one,” Peter pointed to the bearded man,” was identified like Ranshen. “According to this document Mort had confirmed it during the post-hold interrogation process.”
“This’s not Ranshen. He didn’t have a beard. He had gray eyes, white face and fire red hair.” Emil traveled deep into his memories. “And he had a scar running from his left temple down to his neck. That guy looks nothing like him.”
“I haven’t seen him but what you are describing looks like Chancellor Kotzmere to me, minus the scar and the fire-red hair. He has gray eyes and pure white hair.” Zander said.
“I’m not sure; his white hair might be a wig. When you think about it, all representatives wear white wigs.” Emil was starting to doubt himself and his memories. The mission to retrieve Mort’s notebook was not so recent.
“Let’s try it just of giggles then,” Peter said and pulled the Chancellors picture into the image editing tool. “You said that he had fire red hair, right? What was the hair cut?” Peter pulled some options for Emil to choose from.
“That one…I think,” Emil pointed to a relatively short crewcut.
When Peter finished the manipulation, Emil gasped. On the screen he saw Ranshen Mort, Zull Mort’s brother. Ranshen was looking at him the same way as on the day he interviewed to become a group member. He was looking down on Emil, diminishing his existence, considering him inappropriate for anything, until…the reader entered the room.
“There was another member of the gang,” Emil said.
“Wait what about him,” Peter asked.
“Yes, that is Ranshen Mort.” Emil returned to the starting point. “There was another member of the gang.”
“Kevin?” Mary asked.
“No, not Kevin. A girl, a reader from the cast away group.” Emil said.
“That group of readers was cast into the open space.” Peter pointed to the records from that transcast on one of the holographic screens at the far end of the room. “The archived data was recently released. There’re no survivors.”
“But she said,” Emil started then he heard something. A tiny voice inside his head reminded him to tell Zander that she was there. ”D’you have a recent photo of Evan?” Emil suddenly asked Peter.
“I have the image from the return transcast. The camera that monitors these premises during our trips has a decent resolution. Here it is.” Peter ran the footage of Evan and Zander showing in the living room. Zander lying motionless while Evan looked around and when she saw the polka dot box on the table pulled her silver necklace and put it around her neck. When she sat with her back at the wall and knees close to her chest Peter paused the film and took a screen shot.
“What d’you want to do next?” he asked Emil. “D’you want to run it through the digital archives?”
“Sure,” Emil said. “Could you do something else as well, while the archive is searching? Could you load this image in the photo manipulation program?”
“What’s next?” Peter said when Evan’s picture was all set up.
“Shorten her hair and die it burgundy color.” Emil said.
Without saying anything Peter complied and in just a few seconds, Emil saw the image of Lin, Mort’s assistant looking at him from the screen.
“What does this mean?” Zander asked. “Why are you doing this? You don’t’ think that”
“She was there. She was there the whole time. She was before my eyes for so many months and I didn’t realize it. I need to go back.” Emil spoke frantically.
“What are you talking about?” Zander asked. It was still hard for him to understand.
“Evan was Lin, Mort’s assistant. She was the one who helped me get in the group and later gave me his journal.” Emil said.
“We need to bring her back,” Zander said.
“I’ll pull the transcast records. That way we’ll have the exact date, time and location of your departure and you won’t bump into yourself while going back there,” Peter said as Emil went to pick up the weapons and tools for the mission.
Zander glued to the screen where Evan with deep red and much shorter hair was looking at him.
“The search in the digital archive’s done,” Peter said and Zander shifter his eyes. The screen in front of Peter was empty. Evan’s image hasn’t been found. If Emil had seen her among the Inquisitors her presence there had remained undetected by the law enforcement yet.
Zander turned to Emil. “How was she?”
”She was… okay. She’s a brave girl.” Emil started then added in a softer voice, “You’ll hav
e plenty of time to talk with her when we bring her back.”
“I’m coming with you,” Zander tried standing up but wobbled and Emil helped him sit down slowly.
“No, you are not. At least not yet,” Emil said. “You have to finish the recovery process. Mary will keep you company while Peter and I are out. We’ll be back soon.”
“That’s the time and place we are returning to.” Peter showed the transcaster gun settings to Emil.
“What’s the margin of error?” Emil asked. “We’ve to go back no later than 30 minutes after my departure.” He finished his sentence in his thoughts. Or we might be too late.
“30 minutes is too close.” Peter said. “When you add the other factors the chances of running into yourself almost triple.”
“Wait! There’s another way.” Everyone looked at Zander as he spoke. Emil raised his eyebrows. “We might be able to find her if we search for her?” Zander said. ”Like… when we get transcasted somewhere unexpectedly...”
“She doesn’t have a locator chip implant. The application didn’t get approved on time.” Peter said.
“Keep on ta-alking, keep on ta-alking.” Emil turned to Zander. “What d’you me-ean?”
“Well…I…sent her…a locator bracelet.” Zander said.” For her 21st birthday.”
“What? You did what?” Emil exploded. “Why? How could you? Do you know how many-”
“rules have I violated by doing that.” Zander completed his thought. “Yes. 37. I’ve violated 37 rules but I had to send her the bracelet. I needed to be able to know where to find her.”
“So, you were using a different locator during the party then? The invisible spray was just a decoy?” Peter asked.
“The spray was for you. Yeah, I was tracking her with the bracelet. It’s far more accurate than the spray.” Zander said.
“Only 37. Ha! Only 37 violations! Do you know that you already had violated enough rules to be banned from this team forever? Do you?” Emil yelled at Zander. “You’re so lucky that we haven’t had inspection for years. You are so, so lucky.”