Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy)

by Zack Mason

  “Stop drinking.”

  He took that like a slap, visibly hurt by how obvious his flaws had become. “Sure,” he croaked, choking on emotion again. “That’s a given. I’ll do that. But what about you, what can I do for you?”

  She looked hard and long into his beautiful, steel blue eyes. She knew what she wanted, but the fact that she couldn’t have it was as obvious as the drunken tears Mark kept wiping from his face. Those tears were for Laura. Plus, what could a man like him find attractive in a mousy nobody like her.

  “Nothing, I’m fine. Really. Just get better, okay?”

  “Okay.” He smiled for the first time in weeks. She was relieved to see that. She stood and walked out the door, back to her desk.

  ***

  February 16th, 2013, Boston, MA

  Rialto’s plan was still in the rudimentary stages, but it was coming along nicely. A personal visit to his acquaintance, Tony McGuire, in the Boston FBI office provided him with a rough sketch of who the major players were in the Massachusetts mafia.

  He was looking for a couple of men who were second tier leaders in that criminal enterprise. Men who were ambitiously seeking to rule, yet would never succeed due to a lack of opportunity or guts.

  Stanley Graves was one such animal. He was the number two man in the Alcamo crime family. He was a very effective manager and his strategic maneuvering had increased the Alcamo family's status and position significantly. Yet, he was not a naturally charismatic leader. Men did not feel inclined to follow him, and when the current Alcamo head passed on, it was known the eldest Alcamo son would take the lead, whether he was fit or not, and not Graves. Graves not being Italian didn’t help either.

  Rialto had approached him delicately. Once the subject had been broached and Rialto had dissipated the man’s incredulity with a demonstration, Graves had gladly signed on. He knew his future was limited with the Alcamos, and Rialto was offering him unlimited possibilities in fulfilling his avaricious ambition, and all without the inconvenience of having to get other men to follow him. The shifter would also allow Graves to leave the mafia without violent repercussions. They couldn't kill him if they couldn't find him.

  Once Irvine the physicist was done studying the second watch, Rialto gave it to Graves, who would work for him for the next sixteen years until Rialto killed him. Sixteen years would pass for Graves between now and then, but Rialto didn’t have to wait that long. Immediately, after giving Graves the shifter, Rialto shifted forward to the year 2029. He approached his employee at home one evening and killed him, just as he had Ty. Taking Graves’ loosened shifter off his dead body, Rialto then returned to 2013.

  Vincent Torino was a mercenary. Hit man would be a better term, actually, but he didn’t work for any one crime family. He freelanced his services to whoever needed him, which was a neat trick in the world of the mafiosos. His continued existence meant he was either very successful in keeping his hits from being associated with him, or every family was so intimidated by him that they just left him alone.

  Rialto guessed Torino would be excited about the opportunities a time-travel device could bring, and he was right.

  Torino also accepted the shifter and professed permanent commitment to Rialto’s team as part of the deal.

  Rialto was establishing his primary base of operations in that industrial complex down in Baltimore where Irvine had his lab so he could always be near DC, but he was developing a secondary one here in Boston. His prime target was here, so they needed to be close.

  He had asked Torino and Graves to meet him in this abandoned warehouse for an initial briefing. These men would be hard to control, not being governed by the normal ethics of most. They would be somewhat bound to him by common desires and criminal ambitions, but Rialto needed an extra assurance of their faithfulness.

  “Gentlemen, I’ll be brief,” he said. “I am not here to control you or limit your achievement. These shifters are yours to use for your own pleasure, but when I call, you respond. We will work together on certain common endeavors.”

  “And if we don’t?” Graves asked.

  “Look over there. See that shifter?” Rialto pointed to a gray colored device on a table approximately thirty feet away. They nodded. It was actually a plastic mock up of a shifter, but it looked real enough. He’d had Irvine create it specifically for this meeting. Neither Graves nor Torino had any way of knowing it was a non-functional copy.

  Rialto held up a triggering device and made a point of letting them see him depress a button in its center. An explosion immediately ripped through the table, cutting it in half and disintegrating the fake shifter.

  Both men stumbled from their seats as the shock wave hit them. From that distance, it wasn’t a big enough explosion to hurt anybody, but it was clear that if someone had been wearing the watch, they would be dead.

  “Each of your shifters has an explosive device like that one embedded in its core,” he lied. “I have the triggers.”

  Both men glared. They were neatly trapped in his snare and they knew it.

  “And we can’t get these things off, can we?” Torino growled.

  “Sorry. I should also mention that my own device has an extra feature. If my body should become lifeless, my shifter automatically sends an activating signal to all other shifters, detonating them. So, it is in your best interest to make sure I stay alive.”

  They were not happy. In fact, they were seething, but they’d simmer down eventually and get used to it. He wouldn’t push them too hard. He’d help them make millions, billions even. Heck, he’d just give it to them. That would make up for some of their anger. When the time was right, he'd make them work.

  In the meantime, he needed to get done with this meeting so he could shift forward to 2029 and kill Torino. He was just lending them these shifters after all, even if they didn’t know it yet.

  April 17th, 2013, Boston, MA

  Mark rubbed his temples vigorously, staring at the financial statement in front of him. Something was definitely off. He’d thought his accounts were a little low last month when he’d gotten the summaries from his accountant. This time, however, there was no doubt.

  His total net worth should have been somewhere around $25 billion. This month’s financials showed only $21 billion. He checked the previous month’s summary. It also showed around $21 billion. Yet, he distinctly remembered $25 billion. Somehow four billion dollars had disappeared.

  Mark snatched the phone receiver from its base.

  “Savannah?”

  “Yes, Mark?”

  “Get Ty on the phone for me, please. I need to see him right away.”

  ***

  “What’s up, Mark?”

  Ty sat opposite Mark in his office dressed in casual slacks and a polo shirt. He was slouched comfortably, hands laced behind his head.

  “Something’s wrong with my accounts.”

  “What do you mean ‘something’s wrong’?” Ty asked.

  “We’re missing some money.”

  “How much?”

  “Roughly $4 billion.”

  Ty let out a low whistle. “That ain’t chump change. Did someone steal it?”

  “No....I don’t think someone stole it....at least not this year.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m supposed to have around $25 billion all together. My latest statement, which just arrived, only showed a net worth of $21 billion. If it’d been stolen or embezzled, previous statements would still show the $25 billion, but they don’t. They also show $21 billion.”

  “Maybe you’re just remembering wrong.”

  “Could be. At least, I could be wrong if I wasn’t so sure about the fact that I had $25 billion, not $21. Plus, last month, I thought the accounts were slightly lower than I expected, but it wasn’t enough of a difference to be sure. This time, though, I’m sure.”

  Ty asked, “How do you explain the previous statements matching this month’s, then?”

  “For the sake of argum
ent, let’s say something happened in the past to change the outcome of one of my financial transactions, which would affect the whole of my portfolio, say to the tune of four billion dollars. Now, let’s say this change happened twenty years ago. How would we perceive that change in history today?”

  Ty’s face lit as he suddenly grasped what Mark was saying. “Well, you would remember things as they had been, since we always seem to remember the way things were before we change them, but all the financial statements in your filing cabinets would instantly be altered to reflect the financial history they represent. Any change in the past would be virtually undetectable from documents or any other physical evidence. Your memory is the only thing you can rely on to know if you’re supposed to have two dollars or two trillion dollars to your name.

  “Exactly. Theoretically, if I’d written last month’s balance on a napkin to compare with the statements later, what I’d written on the napkin would change as soon as the past changed.”

  “So, why aren’t our memories affected this way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They both fell quiet, processing this new set of mind-bending, time-travel hypotheses. Ty finally broke the silence.

  “What are you suggesting, Mark? How can the past change by itself?”

  “That’s just it. It can’t.” He paused, preparing him for the full weight of what he was about to say. “The only way the past can change is if somebody with a shifter goes back and changes it.”

  “You don’t think it was me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Please tell me you don’t think it was Hardy.”

  Mark grimaced. “I guess it could have been, but no, I don’t think it was Hardy.”

  “How could you know? You two parted company pretty steamed.”

  “I just know. There are things which haven’t happened yet....I just know.”

  Ty gave him an odd look, wondering what that cryptic remark had meant.

  “Then, what?”

  “Somebody must have a shifter besides the three of us.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Same way we got ours? Maybe they found it. Who knows? Maybe whoever has the other shifter is the same person who left these shifters for me to find. There’s no telling.”

  “You really think someone else has a shifter?”

  “I don’t know. It’s either that or my memory has gone completely to pot.”

  “What if something we went back and changed happened to accidentally affect one of your past investments negatively?” Ty asked.

  “Can you think of anything?”

  “No...”

  “I can’t either.”

  “Then, how in the world will we figure it out?” Ty grumbled. “Do you mind if I take a look?” He motioned to the statements laying on Mark’s desk. Mark nodded in assent.

  Ty picked up one of the documents and studied it.

  “Mark, this says $18 billion.”

  “What? Let me see that!” Mark snatched the statement out of Ty’s hand, scanning it furiously.

  “$18 billion,” he whispered. “Someone else has a shifter, all right, and they’re targeting us.”

  ***

  It hadn’t taken Mark long to figure out which of his financial dealings had been attacked. Logically, for his net worth to drop so dramatically, some change had to have been made early in his wealth building process. Recent changes wouldn’t affect the overall balances that much. It was like following a compass that was one degree off. In short distances, the error wouldn’t affect your path significantly, but over a great distance, the difference would be huge.

  Luckily, he remembered and was familiar with most of the early enterprises he’d entered into. To lose more than 25% of his net worth in two fell swoops, Mark took a guess that a change would have to have taken place in his accounts prior to the 1980's. So, he studied his financial summaries dating before then. Most of the stocks he remembered purchasing were still on record.

  There it was. Absent from his real estate holdings were the properties he’d bought in Atlanta prior to 1970. He’d purchased a number of what would one day be prime commercial real estate in two communities he knew would experience explosive growth after 1980, Buckhead and Midtown. After 1984, he’d begun selling those properties at a tremendous profit. Whether or not those sales had been the seed for 25% of his wealth, he didn’t know. He couldn’t recall the original sales prices, or even how many there had been.

  He was pretty sure that something else had been changed too though. His accounts had first dropped to $21 billion, and then to $18 billion. That seemed to indicate two changes to what he’d done, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find the other change.

  With $18 billion in the bank, it wasn’t like their operation was going to start struggling any time soon, but if some mischievous person with a shifter could drop him by that much so easily, then the guy could take everything if Mark let it go unchecked. They had to do something about this and fast.

  He and Ty had arranged to meet later that afternoon, so Mark waited until he got back.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Ty asked.

  “Not yet. I’m just going to do some preliminary investigation work. It’ll be less conspicuous if I go alone. Stick around, though, because as soon as I figure out who’s doing this, I’ll need your help. If somebody’s got a shifter, they’ll shift out as soon as they see us. We have to take them by surprise and pin their arms behind their back.”

  Ty nodded. “What'll we do with them then?”

  “Not sure. Bring ‘em back here and question them, I guess.”

  ***

  All of those real estate dealings had been done through one real estate agency in Atlanta. He’d bought up the properties between 1955 and 1970 and begun selling in 1984. None of those sales were showing up now on his financials, and tax records from Fulton County were no longer in his files.

  He’d personally sat in on some of those closings and knew he'd received copies of deeds, etc. There was no doubt he’d purchased the properties. The question was why Fulton County suddenly had no record of them.

  Visiting his Atlanta real estate agency, they were quickly able to provide him with records showing that as far as they knew, he had in fact purchased the lots through them. So, that part of history hadn’t changed. Checking further into his own files, he’d found copies of the deeds he’d received after the closings.

  Understanding dawned. Someone in the County Clerk’s office had to have illegally altered the records of all his properties.

  He went to the Fulton County Clerk's office and checked the deeds on file for the properties he could remember off the top of his head. Of the three properties he could easily recall, two showed they were owned by an unfamiliar corporation at the time when he should have been the owner. A third was registered to a different company, but further investigation revealed that both those corporations had the same parent company. After that, he hit a wall. The registered owner of the parent company was one John Smith.

  Whoever “John Smith” was, he was the man Mark was after. This Smith had a shifter and he must have bribed one of the employees of the County Clerk’s office to change the names on the deeds. Must have been a pretty big bribe too. Mark was sure altering official real estate records would carry a stiff penalty, and it was an easily detectable crime.

  Research revealed a possible culprit. A young man by the name of Jeffrey Wilson had worked in the Clerk’s office until 1971, and then abruptly quit. Circumstantial evidence indicated that was the year the last change had been made to Mark’s property records.

  If Mark was going to identify “John Smith”, he was going to have to stake out Jeffrey Wilson.

  March 23rd, 1971, Atlanta, GA

  It was a nice spring day in late March and pear trees were blossoming throughout Atlanta, though a crisp breeze made the air a bit chillier than one would hope.

  “Fill me in,” Ty said.

 
He sat next to Mark on a bench in a small park across the street from a sidewalk café in downtown Atlanta.

  “That young man over there in the brown tweed jacket is Jeff Wilson. He works at the Fulton County Clerk’s office. I’m pretty sure our mysterious shifter is going to meet him here for lunch and give Wilson a envelope full of cash so Wilson will falsify the deed records to some of my properties, illegally putting them in the names of other corporations. Later this afternoon, Wilson will deposit $100,000 into his checking account, which is a lot of money for a county clerk in 1971. Two weeks from now, the young man will flee the country and live in Mexico for the rest of his life.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Just in case this Smith knows our faces, we’ll keep a low profile. We'll wait until he shows up for the meeting, then follow, and try to catch him by surprise.”

  “Do you think it’s smart for us to be sitting together on this bench?”

  “Why not? We’re far enough away.”

  “Dude, a black man and a white man sitting together on a bench in Atlanta in 1971 ain’t keeping a low profile.”

  “Ah....sorry.”

  “I’ll shift back and get some beat up clothes. I can hang out in that alley over there and pretend to be a bum.”

  “All right.”

  After a while, John Smith showed up as they'd hoped, but somehow he must have spotted Mark. No sooner had he sat down than he glanced Mark's way and bolted, racing off down the street. Instantly, Mark was on his feet in full pursuit.

  Smith turned sharply down the alleyway where Ty had been waiting, but the speed at which everything happened caught Ty off guard, which allowed Smith to momentarily slip past him.

  “Ty!” Mark yelled. He was still too far away to do any good.

  Ty recovered quickly and turned. He would gain on Smith in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, a short burst of static electricity crackled, and Smith disappeared before their eyes.