Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Cassie shrugged. “All I have is what I stand up in. I’ve been in that position before and may be again. Tell me what’s next.”

  “I have yet to see one member of my former team,” he said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mark Jones. He didn’t work for me for very long, but I thought he had the most potential of any of my staff.” He shot her a grin. “He had the typical computer bloke’s disrespect for authority that was sometimes a pain in the arse when I was his boss, but makes me think now that he might be of use to us.”

  “Might.” Cassie said.

  Callum shrugged. “It seems worthwhile to feel him out before I come up with a plan for getting to David.” He set off down the corridor towards the last door on the left.

  “Or he could turn us in before we even start,” Cassie said, hustling after him.

  “At this point, we have so many problems, it would hardly be worse.” He stopped and looked at her. “Let’s pretend I didn’t just say that.”

  When they reached the door and its scanner, Callum hesitated. He would have preferred a more anonymous entrance, but there was no way through the door without leaving a trail. He put his eye to the box and let it scan his iris.

  “Most everyone has gone home. Do you think he will have left too?” Cassie said.

  “In the seven months I knew him, Jones never went home before eight in the evening.” Callum squared his shoulders and went through the door into the strange inner sanctum that was the Security Service’s secretive technology department. Faced with an all-white corridor, with no windows or adornment other than a red fire extinguisher in a glass case in the corner, he took the passage to the left. He and Cassie walked quickly but steadily, trying to imply deliberation but not haste. They reached Jones’s lab, and with a wink at Cassie, more for luck than because he was feeling that optimistic, Callum opened the door.

  Jones sat on an ergonomic ball instead of an office chair, facing a bank of computers and monitors that took up a ten-foot table on the far wall, and an equally long table on the adjacent one. The room had no windows, and the air conditioning was set to arctic temperatures. Jones had at least twelve computers running simultaneously in various places in the room. He had been focused on one screen when they entered but looked up from what he was doing at the sight of Cassie and Callum.

  “I’ve been tracking your progress.” Jones came to greet them, grabbing Callum’s arm and tugging him inside. Before he shut the door, he took a quick look down the corridor behind them. “I might not be the only one.” Returning to his desk, Jones gestured that Cassie and Callum should sit opposite. “Every corridor, every office, up to and including the janitorial closets, is monitored. You know that, right?”

  “Even the loo?” Callum said.

  Jones snorted. “Especially the loo. Where have you been living—under a rock?”

  Cassie laughed. “I think the Middle Ages are the definition of ‘rock’.”

  Jones barely blinked. “I assume you have a plan for getting David away, Callum?” Jones didn’t ask this accusingly, but as if he really wanted to know.

  Callum studied Jones. Coming on the heels of Lady Jane’s text about Driscoll, Callum thought about leaving the room without another word, but decided he would treat Jones has he had Driscoll: with a friendly face and with the idea of getting what information he could. He hadn’t come here with a plan, just a hunch, and was a little stunned to find that Jones was already three steps ahead of him. “I see there’s no keeping secrets from you.”

  Jones lifted his chin to point at the computer monitor beside him. “They’ll know I talked to you, but not what about. I can head them off for a while, just by saying you came by to introduce me to your wife.”

  “Who’s they?” Callum said.

  “Smythe for starters,” Jones said. “The layers of paranoia go all the way to the top.”

  “Are you offering to help us with David?” Cassie said.

  Jones cleared his throat. “I—” He stopped and shook his head.

  “I understand. Don’t worry about it.” As he spoke, Callum put a hand on Jones’s shoulder. It was a gesture he used often in the Middle Ages to settle a man in his charge. It had been automatic for Callum to do the same with Jones, but Jones looked down at his shoulder out of the corner of his eye, as if he couldn’t believe Callum was touching him. Callum dropped his hand. “I appreciate you talking to us at all.”

  Jones nodded. “I can do that.”

  “You are alone in this lab now?” Callum said.

  “Yes, and—” Jones swept his eyes furtively around the room before continuing, “—its sole purpose is to work on your problem.”

  Callum eyes narrowed. “My problem? What are you talking about?”

  Jones waved a hand up and down the length of Callum’s body. “The time travel issue.”

  “Oh,” Callum said.

  “Coming back here with him was probably the worst thing you could have done.”

  “Believe me, we didn’t mean to,” Cassie said.

  Jones shook his head. “I read your report, but if you could have done anything else—”

  “Tell me what you know.” It came out as an order, but Callum was well aware that it was he who was the supplicant and at Jones’s mercy. If Jones showed anyone the images of Callum and Cassie in the loo, it would be enough to condemn him.

  “To begin with, the Security Service have been working with Meg’s DNA and blood work for the past ten months, and now they’ll have David’s,” said Jones.

  “Wait a minute,” Cassie said. “Meg’s blood work? How would they have come by that?”

  Jones rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “If you give me a minute, I’ll explain.” He took in a deep breath. “When Meg was here last, the research labs had come as far as cataloging the instances where she, Anna, or David traveled.”

  “Right,” Callum said. “We understand that.”

  “What you may not know is the rest of what has happened. Meg was seen by a midwife at that clinic outside of Aberystwyth. As part of a routine examination for a pregnant woman, the midwife ordered a blood draw and various tests,” said Jones. “The Security Service acquired that blood and took over a lab north of Cardiff for the sole purpose of analyzing Meg’s DNA, trying to isolate what is in her makeup—in the whole family’s makeup—that allows her to shift between worlds. Meanwhile, here in Cardiff, we’re working day and night on the physics of what they can do, as well as our surveillance systems.”

  “What kind of surveillance systems?” Callum said. “I get the feeling you don’t mean cameras at every round-about.”

  “I do not,” said Jones, “though Britain now has five million cameras in use, and I have access to all of them except those on closed systems.”

  “Five million?” Cassie said. “How is that possible?”

  Callum’s jaw would have been on the floor too, but he already knew this from when he worked here before. He hadn’t been gone as long as Cassie.

  “Five years ago, we had two million,” said Jones. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “You’d better tell us,” Callum said.

  “We are preparing not only for David or Meg’s return, but trying to identify any other people who might be doing what David’s family is doing.”

  Callum stared at him. It had honestly never occurred to him that there might be other families out there like David’s. “We don’t know of any other travelers to Wales—”

  “Wales, England, Germany or Borneo, we don’t care,” said Jones. “We’re looking purely for the ability to shift, whether to the past, to the medieval world you came from, or to a different one entirely.”

  “Wow,” Cassie said. “You’re serious about this.”

  “That’s not all,” said Jones. “Another section is trying to build a device.”

  Callum and Cassie absorbed that stunning bit of information in ten seconds of silence.
/>   “You’re trying to build a time travel device,” Cassie said, “like in Dr Who?”

  “Yes!” said Jones, clearly excited about that in a way that he hadn’t been about the DNA.

  “I hope you aren’t using a blue police call box,” Cassie said, deadpan.

  Jones gave her a sour look, but Callum said to Cassie, “How do you know Dr Who? I’ve only ever met three Americans who’ve watched the show, and one was David.”

  “My roommate in college watched three seasons in one weekend after a bad break-up. I had no choice.” Cassie bit her lip. “Did you ever notice how the Doctor always shows up when he’s needed, even if he intended to go somewhere else?”

  “Kind of like David,” Callum said, “except I can’t see how he was needed here.”

  Jones waved a hand to draw their attention. “Regardless, now they have access to his genetic material too.”

  Callum ran a hand through his hair and got to his feet, pacing back and forth in front of Jones’s monitors. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but then again, it shouldn’t be surprising that once the Security Service accepted what was happening, it would try to control the process in every way anyone could think of.

  He paced back to Cassie, who was looking down at her feet. “Driscoll indicated that large amounts of money might be involved,” he said.

  “Mucho money,” Jones said. “On top of which, the Americans have discovered that there’s a puzzle to solve and are screaming at us to share the rest of it with them.”

  “The family is technically American,” Cassie said.

  “Technically.” Jones scoffed. “We’re not going to share. Not something this big, and especially not if the Americans can throw more money at it than we can. They’ll want to take over.”

  Cassie had her arms folded across her chest. “David doesn’t know any of this. He’s down in the interrogation room, possibly spilling his guts. We have to get to him.”

  “You can’t get to him, as you say,” Jones said flatly.

  “We have to try,” she said.

  Jones was still shaking his head. “Since you left, Callum, the entire station has been focused on this problem to the exclusion of all else. Smythe has gone somewhat mental on the subject.”

  “He’s trying to atone for screwing everything up the first time,” Cassie said, and when Jones stared at her, she added, “Callum told me.”

  “What did happen when I went off the balcony at Chepstow Castle?” Callum had an almost morbid interest in the answer to this question. It was like attending his own funeral.

  “Initially, the focus was on damage control. Several of our men witnessed your fall: Leon from the battlement and others, whom Natasha sent to find you when your mobile cut out, from the balcony itself. Having you disappear like that wasn’t something Lady Jane or anyone else could dismiss, even if they wanted to, which they didn’t. Natasha was pretty gutted to learn you’d gone.” Jones said those last words casually, but then reddened, glancing at Cassie before looking towards a monitor.

  Cassie appeared oblivious, but her poker face was excellent, so Callum might well hear about Jones’s comment later.

  “So what happened after Callum vanished?” Cassie said.

  “Everyone stood there at first like they couldn’t believe it,” said Jones. “I was communicating with Natasha and had been watching the live feed from the castle’s cameras. While none were pointing at the water, three tourists caught the fall on their video phones. I killed the cell towers in the area before any of them could upload to the internet. After that, we shut down the town completely. Between you and me, it was probably a violation of their rights, but before anyone could leave Chepstow, they had to surrender their cameras and mobiles for inspection.”

  Cassie looked at Callum, a little open-mouthed. He nodded. “You’ve seen only the tip of the iceberg of what we’re capable of.”

  “After that, Lady Jane sent Smythe to settle things down. He’s a ponce, but he really pushed us; I’ve kipped in the office more times than I can count in the last six months. A team cleaned out your flat, moved your money to an offshore location, and scrubbed the internet clean.”

  “Hard to do,” Callum said.

  “That was my job,” said Jones. “You’d be amazed how significant your presence was, even with your service here.”

  “I had a life before the Security Service, believe it or not,” Callum said, taking the news of his invisibility in stride.

  “You don’t now,” said Jones. “You have no living family, so disappearing you was easier than some.”

  “So I don’t exist at all?” Callum had expected no less and had ordered the same kind of scrubbing twice before for other agents caught in compromising circumstances. The Security Service deliberately recruited unattached people for that very reason. While those agents hadn’t time-traveled to another universe, they’d committed unforgiveable breaches of security and had to be virtually killed and reborn as someone else.

  “You’re dormant, but not dead,” said Jones. “Now that you’re back, it won’t be hard to resurrect you. You’ll have been on assignment in as remote a place as Lady Jane can dream up.”

  “You mean like Scotland?” Cassie said, with a laugh. Jones looked at her quizzically, and she explained further: “He’s MI-5. You guys don’t go to Madagascar.”

  “We do when requested for training or in a goodwill exchange,” said Jones. “Lady Jane will come up with something plausible.”

  “Well, don’t start the process yet.” Callum looked at Cassie. She raised her eyebrows, and as he continued to look at her, she shrugged. He continued, “We don’t necessarily intend to stay.” He didn’t mention Driscoll’s odd request.

  “No. You don’t mean it!” Jones’s mouth fell open.

  “I do mean it,” Callum said.

  “How could you return?” said Jones. “I thought you couldn’t time travel without David?”

  “We can’t.” Callum looked harder at his former colleague. “You don’t really think you’re going to be able to prevent him leaving if he chooses to, do you?”

  “You do!” Cassie poked a finger at Jones. “Haven’t you learned anything at all from Meg’s disappearance?”

  Jones shook his head and didn’t seem to have heard Cassie’s protest. “You still don’t understand. Our superiors are going to do everything in their power to prevent him from returning—and when I say everything, I mean it. He’s in their clutches now.”

  “I think I liked it better when you didn’t believe us,” Cassie said.

  “Those days are long gone,” said Jones.

  “I wonder how David is taking being believed instead of dismissed?” Cassie said.

  Jones made an involuntary motion with his hand.

  Callum’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

  “The plan was not to tell him,” said Jones.

  “Not to tell him that you believed him?” Cassie said, and when Jones nodded, she added, “That’s twisted and a little sick.”

  Callum squeezed her hand. “David can take care of himself.” He turned back to Jones. “Have you managed to discover anything from Meg’s blood?”

  “At one point, Smythe assured Lady Jane—based on no evidence—that identifying what allows the world shift would be a doddle. He assumed, as did we all, that her DNA would be different, but so far—nothing,” said Jones.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that,” Cassie said.

  Jones smirked. “That’s not to say we aren’t trying with everything we’ve got to break down her genome nucleotide by nucleotide. Meanwhile, we’ve had better luck with the when than the how.”

  Callum nodded. The moment their time-traveling occurred had been the crucial piece of knowledge that had allowed Lady Jane’s husband to backtrace the family’s world shifting in the first place.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cassie said, looking from Callum to Jones and back again.

  “It has to do wit
h what happens to time and space,” Callum said.

  “Of course.” Cassie wrinkled her nose at him. “That explains everything.”

  “It does, in fact,” said Jones. “I’ve all but identified the exact wavelength and frequency of the intersection between the two worlds that David’s family manages to manipulate.”

  Callum exchanged a glance with Cassie. She looked as concerned as he felt. Jones seemed pretty pleased with himself, but to have the Security Service so invested in this project was not good news. Callum much preferred it when Meg’s file was buried under a dozen others on his desk.

  “We have our work cut out for us, I guess,” Cassie said.

  Callum rose to his feet.

  Jones held up one finger. “One moment.” He turned back to his desk, checked a few things on his monitor, and scribbled onto a notepad. It seemed Smythe was still driving his staff hard. Jones then walked to where Cassie and Callum waited by the exit.

  Jones stuck out his hand to Callum. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” Callum shook.

  Then Jones shook Cassie’s hand, but as he turned to open the door to let them out of the room, he slipped a piece of paper into Callum’s left hand. Callum covered up the action by hustling Cassie ahead of him and pocketing the paper. Jones clearly didn’t want a camera to see what he’d done; Callum would have to look at what he’d given him later.

  Cassie didn’t argue with the way he urged her on. Instead, as Jones closed the door behind them, she said, “How are we going to get out of here unseen?”

  “I don’t want just to get out of here,” Callum said. “I want to find David and then get out of here with him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But how are we going to do that—?”

  Cassie’s question was interrupted by a distant klaxon coming from the depths of the building.

  Chapter Thirteen

  September, 2017

  David

  They’d brought David the computer and hooked it up to the internet as they’d promised. Once that was accomplished, he answered Natasha’s questions while he worked, as he’d promised. The brand of computer was one he’d never heard of, and a quick check of the specs showed him how the world had changed in the four years since he was here last, in ways that he probably couldn’t even begin to catalog. His fingers had been itching for a chance to check out Natasha’s cell phone since she’d set it on the table between them. He wanted to take the computer home.