by JL Bryan
Blocks away, she found an industrial yard enclosed by solid sheet-metal fencing. The chain-link gate was the only place through which she could peer inside. The yard stored amusement-park equipment under makeshift tin roofs--roller coaster and tilt-a-whirl cars, Ferris wheel seats, a one-story funhouse painted with creepy grinning clowns. A carousel with cheerfully painted ponies occupied one corner.
The high, solid sheet-metal panels that composed most of the fence would afford plenty of privacy. She climbed over the padlocked gate. Her boots crunched on gravel as she landed.
Raven activated the cube. The start-up image appeared above it, a blue sphere surrounded by orbiting icons. The icons were little meaningless blobs of multicolored geometric shapes, so she touched several at random.
Glowing clusters of text, images, and flowing video erupted from the cube, surrounding her, offering terabytes of data. She didn't know where to begin.
She shifted through the data, all of which centered on a man who made her shudder with revulsion. His face was craggy, his hair sparse and gray, his green eyes hard and reptilian. In most images, he dressed in a black suit and wore a golden lapel pin depicting an eye inside a triangle.
Providence Security , she thought. Her attackers had displayed the identical emblem on their armor.
A bit of memory came back: this old man's face twenty feet high, glowing down on the urban slum-sprawls from every digital billboard, breaking into the flow of advertisements whenever he addressed the public. His voice would echo down the streets and alleyways, and people would throw beer cans at his looming face.
The text identified the hideous old man as Secretary-General Logan Carraway, Supreme Executive of the United States. Raven reached for bubbles of news video and played a few at once, soaking up the different stories. Years of history unfolded in front of her.
"...Carraway successfully won the Senate seat once held by his late grandfather, after a particularly negative campaign against his opponent..." one reporter said.
"...left the Senate after a single term to replace his father as CEO of Providence Security, after rumors of the elder Carraway's poor health made shareholders skittish..." reported another face above a financial news channel logo.
"...Providence Security chairman Logan Carraway narrowly lost his White House bid to Montana Governor Regina Vasquez, long considered a dark horse candidate...pundits are calling this the ugliest election in Presidential history, as supporters of each camp accuse the other candidate of voter fraud and manipulation..."
Raven shook her head, trying to loosen the memories locked inside.
"...demonstrations in Washington have turned to riots as hundreds of thousands of protesters grew violent...we're hearing the Capitol has been surrounded, trapping Congress inside...the mob has overrun the White House, where President Vasquez had a scheduled Cabinet meeting...the President's condition remains unknown at this time...Providence Security chairman Logan Carraway has placed all federal buildings and embassies under full lockdown..."
"Congress today named Logan Carraway Secretary-General of the United States, a position with full control over the executive branch, as an emergency measure until order can be restored..."
"The new Secretary-General began his administration by granting Providence Security an emergency contract to hire three hundred thousand domestic security troops to safeguard the American people..."
"...anti-government radicals attacked a convoy of Providence Security officers in Washington today, in a failed attempt to interrupt Secretary-General Carraway's Senate confirmation for another five-year term..."
"...the new federal prisons bring much-needed jobs to blighted communities like this one..."
"Pause everything," Raven said, and the babbling news reporters froze and turned silent. She clutched her pounding head.
Secretary-General Carraway was the dictator of the United States, granted his title by a corrupt and frightened Congress after he'd seized power. She remembered that much now--how could she have ever forgotten? He was the enemy, the king of all enemies.
Raven double-checked the dates on the news reports. He'd run for President in 2048 and lost narrowly. He'd seized power amid an economic meltdown, riots, and chaos in 2049. His own security agents had already controlled U.S. government buildings and bases all over the world through federal contracts.
The newspapers she'd seen told her it was currently October of 2013. Those newspapers had themselves been pre-printed on paper and sold in vending machines as though it were the twentieth century, before the Internet had ever been woven. Every car she'd seen, and even the bus on which she'd ridden, had seemed like an antique. She hadn't seen a single hologram ad floating above a single business. Most of all, the cities she'd seen were not war-torn by fighting between the pro-Carraway and anti-Carraway factions.
I'm in the past , she thought. I've gone back in time. How? Why?
A white light swept the storage yard through the chain-link gate. She dropped to the ground and deactivated the data cube, making all the holograms vanish. She avoided the moving spotlight as she crawled to the carousel and hid behind a green dragon with a giant forked tongue.
Flashing blue lights joined the spotlight, and Raven shuddered. Police. She would be sunk if they caught her--trespassing, no identification, a strange gun in her backpack.
"We know you're in there," a harsh male voice barked over an amplifier. "Come out slowly. Keep your hands where we can see them. We're watching you."
Raven doubted they could actually see her, because they kept sweeping the light from side to side as though searching. She crawled across the floor of the carousel, past pink unicorns and a lion wearing a crown, then climbed one of the candy-colored support posts to the tent-shaped golden roof.
She lay flat as the spotlight passed again, then she stood on the lip of the carousel roof, facing the sheet-metal fence. It was only a few feet away, but it would make a terrible crash if she struck it, giving away her position. She needed to leap over it altogether, and that meant a drop of twenty feet to the concrete sidewalk on the other side.
She heard the cop calling for backup. She had no choice but to get moving.
Raven backed up along the sloping, plastic-gold carousel roof, took a deep breath, and ran down the slick surface. She jumped off the lip, glided over the fence, then curled up into a ball as she fell to the sidewalk.
She slammed into it on her side. The flexible armor in her jacket took the brunt of it, but her teeth clacked together and pain flared along her ribs. She wanted to lie still until the agony passed, but there was no time. She pushed herself to her feet and ran toward the bus station, crouching and hiding whenever she heard an automobile.
The Greyhound station was more crowded than she'd left it, with passengers arriving for the early-morning buses, including her ride to Pittsburgh.
She shivered on the bus-station bench until it was time to board, worried about local police as well as Providence Security agents.
I'm in the past , she thought again and again. I'm in the past, or I'm completely, entirely insane.
She didn't know which possibility frightened her more.
Chapter Five
The early-morning bus to Pittsburgh was more crowded than the dead-of-night bus to Columbus had been. As more and more passengers piled on, Raven did her best to look bitchy and unapproachable, hoping to scare everyone away from the empty seat beside her.
Unfortunately, an elderly woman in a plastic rain bonnet took the seat, undeterred by Raven's hostile glare.
"Would you like a Halls eucalyptus, sweetie?" the lady asked. She offered a package of cough drops from the enormous purse in her lap.
"No, thank you," Raven replied.
"You look so pale and shivery, you could be catching cold. I get such bad colds and they make my feet ache, too, but do you know what straightens me right out? A Halls eucalyptus. Would you like one?"
"No, thank you."
"On your way to see fami
ly?" the old lady asked.
"Sure."
"I just saw my daughter and my granddaughter in Ohio. My granddaughter had a ballet recital. Would you like to see pictures?" The old woman brought out a phone before Raven could answer and proudly displayed images of a porky seven-year-old with blond pigtails, dressed in a pink leotard and a puffy rainbow-colored tutu. "That's my Candace. Isn't she the prettiest?"
"Certainly."
"And this is one with my daughter beside her...my son-in-law..." The old woman continued flipping through her pictures as the bus started down the road. "Patrick--that's my son-in-law--he's just started as the manager of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Plain City. That's west of Columbus. Could you imagine making that drive each day? My daughter, now, she likes to buy shoes. I ask her, what are you going to do with all these shoes in your closet? Outfit a parade?" The lady chuckled to herself. "Look at those purple pumps she's wearing. Not practical at all, that's what I say about that sort of shoe. I've always preferred flats, but then I was a nurse for thirty-five years, and a waitress before that."
"Mm-hmm." Raven looked out the window, watching the suburbs crawl past.
"I have the entire recital on video somewhere in this thing..." The lady played shaky footage of several little girls in leotards stumbling into each other on a set made of construction-paper flowers. "The recital's forty minutes long. We can watch it all the way to Pittsburgh!"
They did, with the old lady pausing the video several times to tell anecdotes about little Candace and her favorite clothes, toys, and food. "She's a good eater, my Candace, eats just about anything you put in front of her. Oh, and she loves her chocolate milk, she'd drink it all day if she could!"
Raven felt displaced as she watched the towns and cities they passed. Some were hollowed-out ghost towns, but none were damaged by the war. It was strange to see the world so peaceful, with the triangle-eye logo of Providence Security hanging nowhere. The cities were beautiful now, so open, so fragile, so ripe for the coming destruction.
"You look ill, sweetie. Would you like a Halls eucalyptus?" The lady held out the package of cough drops again.
"Why not?" Raven popped one in her mouth and felt cooling menthol in her nose and lungs. "Thanks."
"Here, you can really see the little ribbons on Candace's ballet slippers..." The old lady pointed to the video on her phone again. The six-hour ride to Pittsburgh felt like twelve.
In Pittsburgh, Raven bought a black Pirates baseball cap and pulled it low. She ate a hamburger at a Wendy's, still amazed that food was so plentiful and cheap.
On the bus to Philadelphia, Raven felt relieved to be alone again. She couldn't have handled eight more hours of Candace tales. Now she had only eleven hours to pass until she reached New York and transferred to her final bus to New Haven.
Raven covered her mouth and whispered a request for soft classical music. Her sunglasses sprouted tiny black earbuds and played Mozart. Drowning her brain in music seemed like a good idea.
She was exhausted, and she let herself drowse. She might not get another chance after she reached her final destination.
Raven closed her eyes and saw herself on another bus. It was stripped down, no padding on the seats, graffiti all over the interior and rusty holes in the walls and roof. Ropes held the side door shut. Instead of a dark night outside, the sun was scorching bright, and they seemed to be crossing a desert. Scrubby cactus grew by the road, and tall heaps of rock cast deep shadows in the distance.
She sat with her friend, Kari. They were sixteen years old, wearing armor-lined jackets and holding plasma rifles. The bus was crowded with other young people, mostly between the ages of twelve and seventeen, so many that they had to sit in the aisle and on each other's laps. They sang an angry fight song, child crusaders on their way to the next slaughter.
The war had no front. It was everywhere, one urban battlefield after another, fought with bombs, rockets, firearms, digital viruses, propaganda, and sometimes bottles and bricks--a dirty, vicious war that had raged for years. On one side, the dictator who'd seized control of Washington, supported by the powerful megacorporations and a corrupt Congress. On the other, the popular resistance, struggling against an enemy equipped with the latest tanks and aircraft, plus an army of trained men in black uniforms. The dictator didn't mind running up trillions in public debt as he tried to put down the revolutionaries.
The young people around her looked like children, but they were hardened fighters. Many had lost their parents to the mass arrests and joined the resistance at a young age, or their parents had been resistance fighters who'd died. They had nowhere to go, so they fought, traveling to hotspot battles as they flared up in different cities, helping to combat the dictator's forces wherever they decided to clamp down. In some places, the local police and National Guard were sympathetic to the resistance. In others, they were loyal to the new power in Washington, and the fighting became extra nasty.
Raven and Kari had learned bits and pieces about weapons from ex-Special Forces officers, hand-to-hand combat from martial arts masters, and info-tech skills from expert hackers. Such itinerant teachers drifted through the slums where Raven and her kind lived, typically on the run from Providence Security themselves. Hundreds of thousands of Providence Security agents served as the dictator's private army.
Raven and Kari had drifted from one resistance group to another over the years, but they had always stuck together, until the final mission.
Raven understood. Her data cube was filled with nothing but information about the future dictator, and she had traveled back in time with a gun. Her mission, she thought, was becoming obvious.
Chapter Six
Raven reached the Port Authority building in New York at two in the morning. She had barely slept during the bus ride, waking every ten minutes to check her surroundings, as though her body had an internal alarm clock that didn't want her to grow too comfortable.
During a layover in Philadelphia, she'd visited a sprawling discount store and purchased clothes to help her blend better with the locals. She hadn't seen other women in combat boots and fatigues, so she'd bought sneakers, comfortable dark blue jeans, and a simple white blouse to lower her profile a bit.
She searched the cavernous, fluorescent-lit Port Authority terminal for a place where she could sit with her back to a wall and her eyes on the crowd. She had several hours to kill before the bus to New Haven.
Even at this late hour, people flowed in every direction in the crowded terminal. Travelers from a wide range of races and nationalities lugged their suitcases across the tiled floor, the women dressed in everything from burkhas to hooker boots. Raven moved along with the crowd, keeping her head low.
A young man approached from the opposite direction and tried to lock eyes with her. His interest in her felt like a threat, and she swerved to avoid him.
He stopped walking and looked her over. From the corner of her eye, she saw him turn back and approach her again, and she prepared to block and counterstrike.
He looked dangerous, his blond bangs dirty and unkempt, his irises a stormy dark gray. His sharp cheekbones were prominent under his eyes, and he clearly hadn't shaved in days. He wore ragged clothes, with holes in his dark plaid shirt and worn-out jeans. He was a few years older than her, in his early or middle twenties.
"You look like you've had a rough ride," he said. His voice was low and quiet as he followed alongside her.
She kept walking and didn't acknowledge him. If he tried to attack, she would have to break his arm, and that would draw everyone's attention.
"New York Port Authority," he said, gesturing to the multinational crowd around them. "A good spot for a couple of time travelers to meet, don't you think?"
Time travelers? Raven tried not to let the surprise show on her face. She slowed to look him over. Was he somebody she knew? She didn't feel the slightest hint of recognition, but most of her mind was lost in its fog of amnesia.
"Let my buy you a coffee,
Raven," he said. "There's a horrible-looking vending machine over this way. Your bus doesn't leave for a few hours, right? You told me this was a long, dull, kind of scary night at the bus terminal."
"I told you what? When?"
"In the future. Coffee?" He pointed back over his shoulder.
"In the future," Raven repeated, not sure what else to say. Her instincts told her to run, but this strange man knew her name. He might know other things that could loosen up her memories.
"Don't act like you've never been to the future." He grinned. His teeth, unlike the rest of him, didn't look like they belonged to a homeless, hungry drug addict. They were perfectly straight and porcelain-white, and they made the rest of his appearance seem like a disguise. "I need to talk to you for a second. What else did you have planned? Nothing. I already know that. That's why I came...that's why you sent me back to this night, after you've arrived in 2013, but before you reach New Haven--"
"Sh!" she snapped.
"Coffee?" he offered again.
"I want a coffee anyway," she said. "Just keep your voice down about where I'm going. Anyway, I'm not going...where you said."
"All I know is what you told me." He led her through a spacious area that looked like a shopping mall, but the lights were off and the gates were down for the night.
While the coffee vending machine churned and spat mysterious black fluid into paper cups, Raven studied the strange young man. He'd turned his back to her while he got the coffee, as though he trusted her. She didn't see any obvious guns under his clothes, but plenty of deadly weapons could be concealed.
Though he acted familiar, she didn't trust him enough to tell him about her amnesia. That put her in a difficult place, because she couldn't even ask his name without tipping him off.
"Solid black, just the way you like it." He handed her a hot paper cup and looked at her carefully with his unusual eyes. "Isn't it?"
"Maybe." She took the coffee from him. It tasted strong but foul, and she grimaced. "I like my coffee black, but I don't think this is coffee. It's more like tar, with just a subtle hint of paint thinner."