The Rewind Files

by Claire Willett

  It was also aggressively decorated for Christmas.

  “It was summer when I left,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Carter gently. “You were in the Slipstream for eighteen months.”

  “Eighteen months?” I shrieked, struggling to my feet as Calliope forced me back down into the chair.

  “Yes.”

  “Eighteen. Months.”

  “Yes.”

  “A year and a half. A whole year and a half of my life, just gone.”

  “It was the only thing we could think of,” said Calliope. “The Slipstream was the only place no scan could find you.”

  “But it’s all moot now, since my tracker was live today,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Now they know you’re back. We suspected this might happen. Granted, we thought you might have a little more time, but Leo was ready from the moment you landed, just in case.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “So a year and a half ago, when my mom hatched this plan, you guys picked this exact date to set the Chrono-Splice and bring me through.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  I turned to Leo.

  “You,” I said. “Driving around the building every day, playing the sad weirdo – you spent eighteen months running a long con on a team of armed men just so that when this day came you’d be able to get a car into and out of that garage.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “My God, that was a gamble,” I said. “Did Mom know?”

  “Not about that part, no,” said Leo. “We were hoping she’d be back by now, or at least in contact.”

  “But she hasn’t been?”

  “No,” said Calliope. “I can track her vitals, so I know she’s still alive, but I don’t know where she is. But in the meantime, until we hear from her, we’re all carrying on and trying to investigate from this end as best we can.”

  “The last time I saw you was on the video Comm,” I said, “when Carter and I told you and Mom about Opal.”

  “Yes,” she said. “She had me scrub the call from the records and told me to never, ever mention what you had said to anybody. Then she disappeared for a couple of days, and I didn’t see her until the week afterwards when she came to me and asked about the security protocols around cargo-dropping – could I send a small object through the cargo-drop to Carter’s apartment without the central transport logs cataloging it?”

  “I said no, you have to scan the item first and report its contents, then get approval, then scan it again before sending to make sure it matches. It’s how we keep terrorists from cargo-dropping chemical agents and explosives. There’s no way to drop something secretly using Bureau equipment.”

  “That was when she told me about the Gemstone drive, and the files Agent Carstairs had found. She told me the whole story, and swore me to secrecy. She said she suspected a mole inside the Bureau, and that until we knew who it was, nobody was safe. That was when the rumors started.”

  “What rumors?” I started to say, then yelped in pain as I felt the raw metallic burn of alcohol on the cut in my shoulder.

  “Son of a bitch, Calliope,” I snapped.

  “You perform surgery on yourself with a nail file, you get the best antiseptic money can buy,” she said. “You’ll thank me later when you don’t die of blood poisoning.”

  “Keep talking,” Leo said to Calliope. “Distract her.”

  “Eyes on me, Reggie,” said Carter firmly. “Don’t look at Calliope, look at me. Squeeze my hand if you need to.” And he took my hand in his. It was warm and strong and comforting, and I remembered how he had held me on the balcony of the Watergate while I cried about my father.

  “Reggie, I need you to stay very still,” said Calliope. “I have ice, but no anesthetic.”

  “Work fast, then,” I said. “The rumors. Keep going.”

  “Your mother told me that Director Gray had told you that there was a possibility that Agent Carstairs might have – that your father—”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’d forgotten. Gray said there was a chance that the Chronomaly in Ohio could have been caused by a Ghost.”

  “A Ghost?” asked Leo.

  “A dead agent,” I said. “Agent Carstairs had a field mission that put him within Short-Hop distance of the place where Grove and I got caught in the Slipstream. He said there was a possibility we had to consider that Carstairs was the one behind it.”

  “It’s technically possible,” said Calliope. “We don’t know how long the Chronomaly of the war was hidden in the system. Carstairs could have done it thirty years ago. But it would have taken a massive amount of data manipulation to keep it camouflaged as a natural occurrence, which means somebody would have had to keep it going after he died. Gray was clearly not the only one who spotted that as a possibility. Somebody else thought so too.”

  I stared at her.

  “Please don’t be saying what I think you’re saying,” I said. Calliope’s needle pierced my skin but I hardly felt any pain. I was too horrified by what she had just said.

  “I don’t know where it started,” she said. “Nobody does. But within weeks, everyone in the building was talking about how Agent Carstairs had planted a Chronomaly in the General Timeline to create a war that never should have happened, that Deputy Director Bellows had been covering his tracks since he died, and that when Director Gray discovered it, she arranged that the agent sent back to investigate should be her daughter, to ensure that the truth never got out.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I was,” she said.

  “That’s treason.”

  “Yes.”

  “They think we did this?”

  “Director Gray doesn’t,” she said. “And nobody who knows you or your parents really believes it. But the story was leaked to the press. The outcry was huge. The idea that Leo Carstairs, national hero, tragically dead in the line of duty, was a traitor to his country the whole time? That story is too juicy to pass up.”

  “That’s why she went on the run,” I said. “She was about to be arrested for treason. She knew we had to find the real traitor to clear her name. And Dad’s.”

  “And ours,” said Leo.

  “What happened after that?”

  “Well, there was an epic investigation,” said Calliope. “Every senior agent and tech with high enough security clearance to have planted the Chronomaly was placed under house arrest. Some of them still are. Gray is, Yasmina is, and I think a few others that were known to have worked closely with your parents in the past.”

  “Everyone else was let go but placed under heavy surveillance. Support staff and apprentices were interrogated and then released, and the building was closed down. The investigation is still technically going on, and they won’t reopen the Bureau until it’s completed. Which might be never. Very convenient, if you’re an enemy agent who doesn’t want a Chronomaly repaired.”

  “Why aren’t you under house arrest?”

  “On paper, I don’t report to Katie Bellows,” she said. “I report to Harold Grove. And Grove was out on medical leave when all of this happened.”

  “They asked me some questions about you, and the mission Gray and your mother sent you on. I said exactly what your mom told me to say – that you were on an administrative research mission as punishment for jumping to Ohio to rescue Grove without filling out the requisite paperwork, and that if you were doing anything else while you were there, I didn’t know about it. They pushed me around a little, but they couldn’t get me to say anything else, so I think they finally gave up and decided I didn’t know anything.”

  “What do you mean, they pushed you around a little?” I said sharply, and Calliope looked away. I had never seen her embarrassed before, and it made me deeply uneasy.

  “Just show her,” said Leo gently, putting his hand on her shoulder, and something indefinable passed between them that I didn’t understand.

  “Show me what?”

  Calliope se
t down her med kit, stood from her chair, and wordlessly turned around. Very gently, Leo lifted up her sweater, and I drew in my breath sharply, fighting back waves of nausea.

  Calliope’s back was a mess of ugly red welts, laid out in a precise, tidy symmetry of criss-crossing lines. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen. The scars running one direction – at an angle from her left side towards her spine – looked different from the ones running the other direction, and I realized it was because they were newer. She had been tortured twice.

  “Stun rods,” I said softly, and she nodded. “Somebody flogged you. And enjoyed it.”

  “It’s not so bad,” she said gruffly. “I got off easy. Yasmina’s are worse.”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know who they were. I was told I was being questioned by the FBI, but these men looked like private security.”

  “Black uniforms, high-end body armor, no visible badges?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they’re the same people that are guarding the Bureau right now,” I said. “Whoever we’re up against has their own private militia, apparently.”

  “Well, whatever they’re paying them, they earned it,” she said, pulling her sweater back down and busying herself once more with stitching up my shoulder. “They seemed to demonstrate very high rates of employee satisfaction.”

  “Calliope—”

  “It’s true. I bet their personnel files are full of glowing reports from their supervisors. ‘Mr. Blah Blah continues to impress us with his commitment to going the extra mile for a job well done.’”

  “Calliope, I—”

  “Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t. Don’t apologize.”

  “This is my fault.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “This was because of me. Because they were trying to find out what you knew about me. If I hadn’t—”

  “You stop that right now,” she said. “I mean it. I don’t ever want to hear that from you again. I chose this job. I chose to help your mother. I chose to help you. I chose this. Katie Bellows told me that fifty-six million civilians were killed in a war that should never have happened and asked for my help to stop it. If a web of scars on my back is the cost of that, I’ll pay it. Happily. And I’d do it again.”

  “We’ve all made choices,” said Carter quietly. “We all had a chance to run, and we didn’t take it. We’re in this together.”

  I looked at him suddenly.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You. Last time I saw you was outside the Chinese restaurant. You said you’d just come from the bombing raids.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Or, no, not exactly. I wasn’t at the site of the bombings. I was there just before they hit. I went to the White House.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “That’s the thing I wanted to tell you. I signed up for a spot on the free tour, but when I arrived that day – the afternoon of the bombing raids – I was told that the building wasn’t open to the public that day.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” he said. “No tours, not even any meetings. I asked why, and the tour guide said it wouldn’t be very interesting anyway, since there were no staff in the West Wing that day.”

  “No staff at all?”

  “Right.”

  “At, what, like noon on a Tuesday?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you ask why?”

  “She said they were redoing the floors.”

  “Holy shit,” I said. “They knew. They knew the bombs were coming. Somebody knew.”

  “I came back to tell you,” he said. “I went to the apartment first, and saw that the evidence wall was missing.”

  “They got the police photos too,” I said. “That moron Detective Barlow gave them to somebody else claiming to be there on my behalf. And the printouts of Gemstone. But I have the drive.”

  “Oh, thank God,” said Calliope.

  “So I tracked you to the restaurant,” Carter went on, “to tell you not to go home, that it wasn’t safe. Just as the cab pulled up, I saw a car stop right in front with two men in it, with hats pulled down low over their faces. I didn’t get a good look at them, but they were watching the restaurant. There was a third man, too, standing on the corner – a blond-haired man pretending to read a newspaper.” I felt my blood run cold.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve seen him before. I’ve never seen his face, but he seems to turn up everywhere I go.”

  “I saw you come out of the restaurant,” he said, “and all three men looked at you like you were the person they’d been waiting for. The two men started to get out of the car, and the blond man dropped his newspaper and started coming towards them, which was when I ran across the street. I thought if I made a scene, it might scare them away. And then the second I touched you, boom. Slipstream.”

  “How did we get separated?”

  “That was my fault,” said Calliope. “Carter wasn’t under suspicion then. Nobody was watching him. I didn’t think he’d need an evac, I assumed he would just stay in 1972. I only set the Chrono-Splice for you.”

  “So I arrived back on the transport platform to find a small army of our uniformed friends with the stun guns, waiting for you,” he said. “They were more than a little surprised to lock onto you and get me instead. I got a little bit of a shakedown – very light, nothing like Calliope’s,” he hastened to explain as he saw the look on my face.

  “I’m fine. I’m really fine. They didn’t even use stun rods, just fists. A broken nose was the worst of it. I finally convinced them that I was who I said I was – a high-level research Embed who had been given the same cover story about your mission in 1972 that everyone else got. I said that Agent Bellows was there on a research mission about the evolving roles of women at the White House, that I had been tasked with briefing her on domestic service, and that when I had arrived at the Chinese restaurant where she had asked to meet me, I was force-jumped with her the moment we shook hands”

  “And believe me, my surprise at you not landing right next to me was very real. They eventually realized I had no idea where you were. So they slapped me around a little bit, revoked my security credentials, told me the Bureau was closed pending investigation, and sent me home. Calliope came to my parents’ house and found me, and then we tracked down Leo.”

  “All done,” said Calliope, and I looked down at my shoulder. I was relieved to see, now that it was all cleaned up, that the gash wasn’t nearly as huge as it had seemed when it was covered in blood. There was nothing left but a neat row of precise, tiny stitches, only about three inches long.

  “I owe you one,” I said.

  “Just be careful with it,” she said. “It will be sore for awhile.”

  “Fortunately, we have a few days of downtime,” said Leo. I rose and went over to the far corner of the room where there was a huge, real Christmas tree, festooned with a hodgepodge of ornaments I recognized from my childhood, along with some decidedly amateurish strands of fresh cranberries and paper garland and other handmade ornaments. I went to inspect the tree more closely, then turned back to Leo.

  “You made glitter pinecones,” I said, my tone slightly accusatory.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Glitter. Pinecones.”

  “It was Carter’s idea.”

  “I was running from my life from armed guards and you were just hanging out here, drinking apple cider and making glitter pinecones.”

  Leo and Carter looked at each other.

  “We ran through many different scenarios where you might be mad at us about something,” said Leo. “We didn’t cover pinecones.”

  “Everyone stop yelling about pinecones,” said Calliope. “Reggie, where’s the Gemstone file?”

  “In my bag,” I said, gesturing. “Help yourself.” She rifled through my purse until she found it, then pulled it out and kissed it fervently.

  “Hello gor
geous,” she said. “I’m so happy to see you.” She took it over to a digital projection port near the wall, plugged it in, and instantly an air-screen materialized in front of the fireplace, projecting Carstairs’ Gemstone files in front of her.

  “She’ll be dead to the world for the next four hours,” said Leo. “I’m going to go start on dinner.” He made his way over to a marble-topped kitchen island that faced out into the rest of the great room and began pulling out pots and pans, leaving me alone with Carter.

  “Why isn’t this place being watched?” I asked him. “Gray, Yasmina, somebody would have known where my mom’s safe house was. Or been able to trace it. There’d be real estate sales records, she’d have driven out here before, they could find it through her tracker. How is it possible nobody’s found it in all this time?”

  “Because her tracker’s never been here,” said Carter. “That’s the brilliant part.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This wasn’t her safe house,” said Carter. “It was his. Leo Carstairs built this place thirty years ago. Nobody ever knew about it but the two of them. And after the Bureau switched from wrist Comm trackers – which could be removed – to subdermal ones, she never came back.”

  “Carstairs never had a subdermal tracker,” I said, realizing. “They implemented those after he died.”

  Nice work, Mom, I thought approvingly. I had learned about all of this in school and completely forgotten it. One of the security measures implemented in the aftermath of my dad’s death was the costly (and painful) embedded tracking system, based on the supposition that Carstairs might have survived the Sharpeville Massacre if his equipment hadn’t failed.

  Mom had received the information with disdain – “A subdermal tracker wouldn’t have made Colin Daisey good at his job” had been her response – but the fact remained that during the entirety of my father’s career, he had never been assigned a tracker that could not be removed at will. If no registered agent had been in this house for twenty-five years, then it meant nobody in the Bureau knew it was here.