The Rewind Files

by Claire Willett

  “I cannot believe I’m going along with this,” she snapped again, but with less conviction. “But fine. I will call you back in twenty minutes from my desk with a mission plan. And all you are going to do – I mean it, Reggie – is sneak in, run a scan and then get the hell out. That is all. Just one scan.”

  “Just one scan,” I repeated. “You’re a saint.”

  “Whatever. Dark clothes, cover your hair, no shoes. Go get ready. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.”

  “Did you pack me a Microcam?”

  “Check the Bible in your big suitcase. Microcam is in Second Timothy. Earpiece is in Ruth.”

  “This is a weird job.”

  “Just go get dressed,” she tapped on the screen and it went black.

  I had done a fairly half-assed job of unpacking; my work clothes were neatly hung up in the closet (even in 1972 I feared Mark’s wrath) but everything else was piled in a heap on the floor of the bedroom closet. One of the cases, which I hadn’t opened, contained a small pile of books, carefully curated by Mrs. Graham and surgically modified by Calliope to hold a modest collection of tech equipment.

  I pulled out the heavy black King James Bible (apparently my alter ego was Protestant, a wise move on Calliope’s part; post-Kennedy, Catholics weren’t popular in the Nixon White House) and flipped it open.

  Midway through the Old Testament I found the first of two small, flat, square hollows carved neatly out of the center of the book and holding a small metal box, the case for a new earpiece. This one was multi-channel, so I could communicate with up to three different Comms at a time, unlike the standard-issue one I had been using. Apparently being a field agent came with a significant tech upgrade. The second hollow was towards the end of the New Testament and held the Microcam.

  On a whim, after I had removed both, I turned the book upside down and shook it to see if Calliope had hidden anything else inside. Nothing.

  I hadn’t looked in any of the rest (“standard field agent kit” was all Calliope had told me during my mission brief) so I reached for the next book, a small leatherbound volume labeled The Collected Writings of Abraham Lincoln, and opened it to find a larger square hollow, about the size of the palm of my hand – inside was a Short-Hop, which would allow me to make smaller jumps (six months or shorter) from here without having to transport back home and re-set coordinates from the lab. It was pre-loaded with five round-trip jumps, charged and ready.

  I didn’t have a weapon, as such, but there was a low-impact stun pistol inside Peyton Place in case of emergencies and a really good scanner, way better than the tiny one on my wrist Comm, in Great American Poetry Volume III.

  I flipped the scanner on to test it – I hadn’t gotten the chance to use a Mark-10 Chrono-Scanner since the Academy and I had a little crush on it. I switched it to stealth mode to dim the screen and turn off all the sound, then scanned my bedroom top to bottom. Instantly the black screen on the scanner lit up with thousands of tiny little blinking red dots. It was picking up traces of Slipstream radiation from everything in the room I had touched, which was pretty much everything in the room. I turned it around to scan myself and adjusted the settings so it would filter out all radiation coming from me. Instantly the red dots all disappeared.

  I pinned the Microcam in my hair and put in the earpiece, stuck the scanner in my pocket and rummaged through the top drawer of the jungle-green dresser, where I had dumped everything in the small suitcase which Mark, waving a vague hand, had indicated contained something called “accessories.” (“Like, to a crime?” I had asked, as he looked at me with a deep and pitying sadness.) The best I could do was a square of navy blue satin, which I tied around my head like an old Polish grandmother, hoping that the sheen of the heavy fabric was dull enough not to catch the light. Then I slipped my apartment key into my pocket and crept out the door.

  Calliope rang in right on schedule, buzzing me from channel 1 of my shiny new earpiece. Channel 2 clicked on shortly after, but my mother knew better than to interrupt while a tech was doing her job. “There’s a night guard in the lobby,” Calliope said, “and no through-way from the apartments to the office building, except through the parking garage.”

  “Okay, but once I get to the parking garage, how do I actually get inside the building and up to the sixth floor, if everything is locked?” I asked as I stepped into the elevator and closed the door.

  “One step at a time,” she said. “Right now, just get to the parking garage.”

  “I’m just saying. . . You know I can’t pick a non-computerized lock, right?”

  “I know.”

  “Because if you’re expecting me to figure out how to break into a building—”

  “This will go a lot more smoothly if you stop talking.”

  The elevator slowly made its way down to the underground garage. When the door opened and I stepped out onto the concrete floor, everything was still and silent. The garage lights somehow made everything more sinister, casting heavy shadows in corners and making an ominous buzzing sound. I suddenly felt very exposed, and caught myself nervously eyeing each car I passed to make sure nobody was watching me from inside it.

  “Stop,” said Calliope sharply. “Duck.” I dropped behind a dark sedan just three or four cars from the door that led from the parking garage to the stairwell. “Someone’s coming,” she said. “Just one. Security guard making his rounds. He’s going to exit from the door to the stairwell and is probably going to enter the door next to it, which leads to the lobby. You’re okay. Stay where you are until he’s gone.”

  Heart pounding, I crouched as low as I could, praying I wouldn’t make a noise. I heard the door clang open and then close behind him, and waited for him to do what I hoped would be a perfunctory check and then go back inside.

  Nothing happened.

  “Calliope?” I murmured as softly as I could.

  “He’s still here,” she said. “Don’t move. I can’t tell what he’s doing.”

  “Are there cameras?” asked my mother, who I had forgotten was there. “Any feeds you can tap into?”

  “No cameras,” she said, “and I couldn’t get at them anyway. It’s 1972, nothing’s networked. Reggie, I need you to see if you can get a look at him through the car windows. He should be in your Microcam’s line of sight.”

  I rose very, very slowly from a low crouch until my eyes – and the camera in my hair – could see through the windows of the car to the door a few dozen feet away. The security guard stood there, with the door open, and he appeared to be scraping at something on the door latch with his fingernail. He was totally occupied with this task and was paying no attention to me, so I decided to get a closer look. I ducked as low as I could and crept from car to car until there was only one Volkswagen and about six feet of garage floor between me and the security guard.

  “It’s tape,” said my mother quietly. “The burglar taped down the catch.”

  “Why?” asked Calliope. “To keep the door from locking behind them?”

  “Or,” she said, “to let someone else in.”

  I felt a chill at this, and looked around me nervously.

  “No life signs besides you and the guard,” said Calliope, reading my mind. “Well, now we know how the burglar got in, but if he pulls off that tape—”

  She never got a chance to finish her sentence. The guard pulled off the tape and I saw him flick it off his fingers onto the ground, then open the adjacent door – the one leading to the lobby – and disappear inside. Faster than I’d ever run in my life, I bolted over to the stairwell door and caught it just before it closed all the way.

  “That was impressive,” Calliope admitted.

  “Eh. It’s just a really slow door,” I shrugged. Then, before I really knew what I was doing, I had picked up the small X of white tape the guard had dropped on the ground, and I neatly replaced it over the catch.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Calliope incredulously.

  “If you were planni
ng a break-in, and you had hired help, you’d send him in first, wouldn’t you?” I said. “I think whoever is already in the building is the little guy, and whoever this tape is for, that’s the one we want. I want him in the building. I want to get a look at his face.”

  I climbed stair after stair, tiptoeing in my stocking feet. As I passed the door leading to the third floor, my heart froze at the sound of loud voices on the other side of it. The stairwell was brightly lit, I was dressed exactly like a burglar, and there was nowhere to hide. I sprinted up the next flight and paused for breath on the fourth floor, looking down below me to see if I had been spotted.

  But the door never opened, and the voices faded away.

  Safe.

  I exhaled deeply and pressed on.

  When I reached the door labeled “6th Floor,” I stopped in front of it, heart pounding.

  “Okay, open the door, and then hard left,” said Calliope. “There’s an unoccupied corner office with no vital signs. It should be unlocked.”

  “And then what?”

  “Just get out of the stairwell first, Reggie, there’s nowhere to hide. Go.”

  I took a deep breath and silently pushed open the door just enough to quickly shimmy through it, praying that the shaft of light it let in with me couldn’t be seen. Then I gently pushed it closed, and stepped into darkness.

  My eyes took a second to adjust, and my first stab at a “hard left” sent me face-first into a file cabinet with a loud thunk.

  “Goddammit, Reggie,” Calliope hissed in my ear. I stood frozen in place for a long, terrifying moment, but it seemed no one had heard anything. I clung to the wall for safety and crept alongside it until I located the doorway Calliope had mentioned.

  The office was indeed unlocked. The door was about half ajar, so I slipped behind it where I could peer out through the gap between the hinges to get the lay of the land.

  “Okay,” said Calliope. “Take a breather. No life signs within 100 feet. I’ve got them all on screen and they’re not moving. Let’s decide what you’re going to do next.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “I’m inside the property manager’s files,” she continued. “This whole floor is leased to the DNC. That means whatever they’re looking for could be anywhere. You’re going to have to be quiet and quick. I can guide you towards the life signs and get you close enough to do a scan while you’re still mostly hidden, and then the second it’s done you run. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “This is where it gets real, Reggie.”

  “I know.”

  “All right,” she said. “Duck low so you’ve got the cubicle walls for shelter. Go right, then left, then right.”

  I followed her instructions and found myself in a long hallway full of offices with closed doors. I could see, at the far end, flickers of light coming from the one open door.

  “Don’t speak,” said Calliope in my ear. ”Just tap your earpiece once for yes and twice for no. Can you see the room they’re in, over there at the end of the hall to the left?”

  I tapped YES.

  “Okay. They’re six doors down from you, on the left. The door to the office across from them is open. On your right-hand side, four doors down is an unlocked office. Can you get in there without being seen?”

  I tapped YES again, and then crept silently to the fourth door.

  “Stop,” said my mother. “Don’t touch it. Fingerprints.”

  Dammit.

  “She’s already touched the stairwell doors and the cubicle walls,” said Calliope.

  “Then she’ll have to go back the way she came and scrub them as she goes.”

  “That could mean destroying evidence. Erasing the real burglar’s fingerprints. Isn’t it better to leave them? Hers will just come up as unidentifiable.”

  “It’s risky.”

  “Oh my God, just make a decision,” I hissed. “I’m literally just standing in the hallway.”

  “Go inside. Use your sleeve to touch the handle. Just get out of the hall.”

  I turned the handle as slowly and gently as I could, praying it wouldn’t creak or rattle. It opened smoothly and I stepped inside, closing it silently behind me.

  “Okay,” said Calliope briskly. “To your left is a door that connects to the adjoining office, which connects to the one next to that. You should be able to get to the room right across from where the burglars are, scan, and then get back here in about 30 seconds. Can you do that?”

  I tapped YES as I moved through the two consecutive doorways and found myself in an empty office with an open door. Through the space between the door and the wall, the men in the room across from me were clearly visible. And I could hear them now, too.

  “Where’s Jimmy?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He’s coming, though, right?”

  “Yeah, he’s supposed to be coming.”

  “Good, because I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to be looking for.”

  “Just help me with this, would you?”

  I heard a scraping noise and squinted into the crack in the door, trying to see.

  “Reggie, don’t move, life signs approaching,” said Calliope.

  “Hang on, I want to get a closer look.”

  “No, don’t move, someone’s coming. Just wait until the coast is clear, then do your scan and get out.”

  I shook my head. Something about this felt wrong. Why break into a building if you didn’t know what you were supposed to be looking for? Why didn’t he know what he was here to steal? Why would you rob an administrative office? What could they possibly have inside these cubicles worth all this trouble?

  Information, a voice in my head told me, and I suddenly remembered Kitty’s story. My blood ran cold. This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill burglary. They weren’t here for money or computer equipment or to pinch the high-end whiskey from the private stash in the corner offices. They weren’t robbers. They were spies.

  “Stay still,” Calliope ordered me. “He’s coming.” And sure enough, I heard footsteps approaching down the hall. A tall man in a business suit, wearing a pair of surgical gloves, rounded the corner. I felt the men in the office freeze, and the flashlights switched off.

  “Cool it,” said the new voice, “it’s just me.”

  “Hey, Jimmy,” said one.

  “Man, where you been?” said another irritably.

  “I got held up. You guys aren’t done yet?” said Jimmy.

  “The ceiling panels were a pain,” said one of the other voices.

  Ceiling panels? I thought. What the hell? What possible use could the ceiling panels be? I crept slowly around the half-opened door to get a better angle, praying that none of them would step out into the hall where I’d be instantly spotted.

  “Use the goddamn scanner already,” hissed Calliope.

  I pulled the scanner out of my pocket, checking that it was still on stealth mode, synced it to Calliope so she could see it on her handheld, and carefully scanned the room top to bottom.

  The screen flashed full of red dots, startling me so badly that I almost dropped it.

  “Holy shit,” said Calliope, who never said “shit.”

  “How is this possible?” I whispered.

  “What?” asked my mother.

  “Look,” said Calliope, and I knew she was showing her handheld screen to my mother. I heard her breath catch in her throat and then there was a long, tense silence.

  “Can anyone explain to me,” my mother finally said in a strange, unreadable voice, “how a group of burglars from the 1970s got their hands on 22nd-century Chrono-Technology?”

  The scanner’s black screen roughly mapped out the layout of the room, just as it had back in my apartment, and was filtering out all radiation coming from me. None of the vital signs were red – that is, none of the men in the room had come through the Slipstream themselves or had direct contact with somebody who had – but there were at least a dozen hot spots all over t
he room.

  They appeared to be tiny objects, composed mostly of plastic and metal, with some electronic function that my scanner couldn’t identify. Some moved as the vital signs did – as though attached to the men – while others were scattered around with no clear pattern.

  “The readings are weird,” I whispered. “They’re not actual Chrono-Technology – they’re some kind of antiquated device the scanner can’t identify, but they definitely came through the Slipstream.”

  “Someone in the 22nd century is manufacturing 20th-century electronic devices?” asked Calliope. “Why?”

  “You know why, Calliope,” said my mother. “You do it all the time.”

  “It’s a field mission,” I said softly.

  “An off-the-books one,” said my mother. “There’s no registered agent activity anywhere nearby.”

  Unlicensed time travelers with their own secret transport and prop shop? The thought made my blood run cold. This wasn’t just one rogue agent. This was something big.

  “Regina, we need eyes in that room,” said my mother. “We have to know what those things are.”

  “I’m on it,” I said, and looked around desperately, willing a brilliant idea to come to me, when I spotted a pencil cup and tape dispenser on the desk nearby. I unpinned the Microcam from my hair, grabbed a pencil, tore off a small piece of tape (wincing at the tiny tearing noise, which thankfully went unheard) and taped it to the end of the pencil.

  “You’re going to have to tell me what you see,” I murmured as I knelt down on the floor and slowly, slowly reached a hand out to set the pencil down square in the middle of the hallway.

  “Carpet,” said Calliope. “Fix the angle.”

  I turned the pencil a quarter turn to give the Microcam a better view.

  “Got it,” she said. “Five men, well, we knew that already. They’re all wearing suits and ties and rubber gloves.”

  “Can you get their faces?” asked my mother, but Calliope shook her head. “Nobody’s facing out this direction. I’m capturing side-profile of a couple of them, but that’s it. I’ll run it through the database later and see what I can find.”