“I talked to James,” I say, measuring my words. What did she think Owen talked to James about?
Hope lights her face and wrenches my chest with an almost physical pain. “Did he say yes?”
Owen promised to free her. I breathe through the tightness. “James doesn’t understand.”
The hope extinguishes.
My head starts to buzz. How can I fix this? How can I get these women out of here without completely warping the timeline? I run a hand along my face and step back farther from the cage.
“Owen, baby…” She’s pleading now. “We can… we can be together, just like I said. James doesn’t have to know. We can go now.” She glances back, and I can tell the others are on high alert. She’s the ringleader, and they’ll follow her. “You and I can go together. The others can make their own way.”
“I want to,” I can’t help saying. Every part of me wants to unlock the cage and go through and take off every shackle. I want to hug them and hold them… not in the sexual way she’s promising, just wrap my arms around them until the tremors I can see from across the room start to calm. I can feel the anger inside me, building. It’s the rage Owen must have felt, only he must have had it ten times worse because he had a relationship with this woman.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m digging through my pocket for the ring of keys. The two keys that weren’t required to open the front door… one for the cage, one for the shackles.
I hold them in my hand.
“That’s right, baby,” she says. “Let’s go now. Quick. Before he gets back!”
I step forward, but it’s like moving through molasses. The universe is pushing back, resisting. It’s stretched as tight as a drum. If I force my way through… if I let the women go… it’s going to snap. I can feel it. Then Owen will disappear, James may live or he may not, and the women… I’m not sure what will happen to them. The time around the edges of the extinction event get twisted. The two times I failed, when I couldn’t stop the murder without breaking the timeline, things were uneven afterward. Different in my memory than in the actual event. Even if I let the women out, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay out.
But the extinction will get Owen for sure. And if he’s gone… they have no hope.
I slowly put the key ring back in my pocket.
The woman’s fingers curl around the bars of her cage. She thinks Owen’s her one hope… and he is. Just not the way she thinks. I look away from the flat expression on her face and run my hand through Owen’s hair, tugging on it. There has to be a solution to this… I just have to find it. If I can’t outright let them go, if that would break the timeline—at least at this moment in time—then maybe there’s another point in time when I could try again. I have to stick closer to the script, not stretch it so far, but I’m completely in the dark here.
The original timeline is nothing like I thought.
I look up from my pacing. The woman is still staring at me with that flat, dead look. It sends a chill through me. But I stride up to the cage anyway and search her face for the light that was in her eyes just a minute ago. The rest of the women rustle, shrink back, but she stays at the door of the cage, eyes widening slightly, but coming back to life.
“I want to help you.” I hook the fingers of my free hand around the bars and stand close. “But I need you to help me first. Where is James planning on sending you?”
She frowns. “I don’t know.”
No, she probably doesn’t.
“Did I tell you when he was coming for you?”
“No.” She looks suspicious now. I’m sounding crazy, for sure. But sitting here, talking to her… I’ve done it a million times before. Owen has done it before. It doesn’t push the timeline.
I press my fist to my forehead, trying to think. In the original timeline, I didn’t walk out of the convenience store with the bag—I had a can of beef stew instead. Originally, Owen went there to meet James about letting the woman go. He left angry. Without the sedatives. Which means James probably brought the sedatives back here and dosed the women himself. Then, when Owen came back to the house, maybe he found James hauling his girlfriend out as the first batch of merchandise. That’s when the murder happened. But then… what happened to the girls? Did Owen liberate them, tear down all the cages, dispose of those, then go on the run in his blood-covered clothes?
That seemed… unlikely.
There’s a shuffle behind the woman. One of the others checks on her. The leader nods over her shoulder, watching me like a hawk the whole time. The other woman returns to the huddle. Owen’s girlfriend keeps sneaking looks at the bag, which I’m still holding, all wadded up in my fist next to the bars.
“James gave you these before, didn’t he?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She pulls back a little now, with a you crazy, man look. I was probably there—or rather, Owen was—so that’s something I should know.
“Is it a sedative?”
“Owen, baby, what’s going on—”
“Just tell me,” I say, trying to pull down the rising anger in my voice. “It’ll help me get you out of here.”
“Yeah. It’s a sedative. Glazes us out for a while, anyway. Not really asleep, but you don’t remember nothing anyway.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t remember anything?” The memory loss that Owen claimed: he said he was unconscious, couldn’t remember anything about the crime. Maybe he really was. But how could he commit a murder in that state? Maybe James dosed him, and he woke up later, in time to—
The woman moves lightning fast. Her hand slips out through the bars and smacks the back of my hand, the one holding the bag. I jerk back and, a half-second later, feel the prick. A single-dose syringe sticks out of the bandage for my tag. I yank it out, staring at it in horror, then look back up at the woman. She reaches for me again, and suddenly there’s a half dozen hands clawing through the bars, grabbing hold of my shirt, and slamming me face-first against the steel cage. I struggle to get free. They paw at my clothes, but they can’t get to my pockets where the keys are. The wire mesh is blocking their reach. I wrench free and stumble back.
My heart races and my vision blurs. I shake my head, and suddenly I’m two places at once: Owen’s dingy, fetid basement, and my well-lit office on the thirty-fourth floor of the Department of Corrections.
No! I focus on the cage, the women, the smell of urine, anything to anchor me here in the past. Slowly, my vision clears. I’m still here. Whatever sedative was in the syringe must not have fully dosed me. I give thanks for well-applied bandages by tattoo artists.
The women seem alarmed that I’m not falling over from their attempt at sedating me. Then I realize: they didn’t grab the sedative from the bag. They already had it. They were planning on sedating Owen, or possibly James, all along. Only I know that in the original timeline, Owen was the one who had the memory loss. And James was the one who got hacked to bits.
I stare back at the caged women. They killed James.
At that moment, I hear the front door upstairs open and close. Heavy footsteps creak across the main floor and pound down the steps. I stand in the middle of the basement, clutching the bag of unused sedatives, as James walks into the room.
Chapter Four
Owen was innocent after all.
This thought paralyzes me as James stalks across the floor, glaring at the unopened bag in my hand.
Owen is innocent.
Well, innocent of the murder. Obviously not innocent of human trafficking. But that means I’m not in control of the murder… because if he didn’t commit it, then I can’t stop it.
I physically shake that thought from my head. There’s still a way to save this—a best-of-all-possible-scenarios option somewhere in the myriad. I just have to keep it together and stay in the timeline long enough to figure it out.
James stands in front of me, accusing me with his body language. “You haven’t given it to them yet.”
“We were… having a discuss
ion.”
“A what?” He looks mystified, then concerned. “Look, man, I know you’re into her…”
She’s a murderer. She’s going to kill you. I know it was justified… or will be justified. I know they were trying to escape. I know the rage they must feel. I understand it. At the same time, it horrifies me. I need to find an outcome where that doesn’t happen. Where these women don’t have to win their freedom by losing their humanity.
James is still talking. “…but she’s bought and paid for, man. You need to just forget it.”
I drop my gaze to the bag, nodding, buying time while I flip through the possibilities, trying to find one where everyone lives. I slip one hand into my pocket and find the key that will unlock the cages. I turn toward the women trapped behind steel bars, but even that motion has the universe pushing back on me. Still.
Option One: I release the women. I fight the universe, the timeline snaps, Owen goes extinct, we go back to where we started—only without Owen—the women use their hidden syringe on James instead, which may or may not work, they may or may not brutally murder him, losing their humanity in the process, and the only sure thing is that Owen is dead.
Shit. I take my hand off the key ring and the timeline relaxes. I look back to James. He’s glaring at me, waiting for me to administer the doses.
Option Two: I convince James to release the women. Maybe the universe won’t fight him, the women will go free, and James and Owen will go with them, shepherding them to safety somewhere. The only problem: getting James to go for it. And I’m not entirely sure it won’t snap the timeline anyway, jumping us back to Option One, which is no good.
“I was thinking…” I say slowly to him. “Maybe we could just let them go.”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. Let’s do that.” He strides forward and grabs hold of my shoulders with both hands. The stink of his nervous sweat momentarily drowns out the urine smell. “At what point did you see any indication that Armando would be okay with us just releasing his merchandise? We’re go-betweens, nothing more. Unless we decide to screw with their system, and then do you know what we are?”
I shake my head.
“Dead.” He shoves me away. “I love you, man, but I am not dying for you. Or for them.” He gestures to the cages. “Now stop being an idiot and hand out the doses.”
Option Two is out.
I slowly open the bag and look inside, poking around and buying more time.
Option Three: I dose James with one of the sedatives and let the women go free. Maybe the universe will allow that, because James will still die—once the buyers come after their merchandise. With James dead, there’s not as much of a warp in the timeline. Whatever the buyers do to him, it can’t be worse than what the women did. At least, I hope so. And the women don’t have to lose their humanity in the process. Owen already wanted to help them escape—that’s not stretching the timeline at all. The buyers commit the murder, so Owen stays off Death Row. But he’s got the tag, so he’s in jeopardy of going there if he ever commits another crime. But he knows that. Maybe it’ll keep him clean.
It’s my best option so far.
I reach into the bag, pull out a dose, and slowly turn toward the cages, like I’m going to administer it. I pause when I get there, examining the dose. It’s a simple one-pump-action thing. I flip up the safety cap to expose the razor-thin needle. The women shrink back, all except the leader, Owen’s girlfriend. She’s glaring defiantly at me. I can see why Owen likes her—she’s a survivor, a fighter. She has spirit—a spirit I don’t want crushed any more than it already has been. I’m facing her, James behind my back. I give her a quick wink, and her face transforms with the shock.
I drop the bag, whirl around, and rush at James. His eyes go wide, and he stumbles back. I aim the syringe for his neck, but he gets an arm up to block me. James is smaller than Owen, but surprisingly strong. He shoves a fist in my gut. It doesn’t have too much power, but still, I’m gasping for air as I grab hold of his shirt, yanking him close to try again. But now he’s got a hand on my wrist, holding back the syringe from his face. I let go of his shirt to try to transfer the syringe to my other hand.
I don’t see the gun until it’s in my face.
I grab that instead, thrusting it away. James and I wrestle, hand to hand. I grimace, reluctantly give up on the syringe, drop it, and work on fighting him for the gun. Finally, my greater size works in my favor, and I’m able to force him backward into the basement wall. I slam his hand holding the gun against the wall, and the shock loosens his grip.
The gun falls.
I’m after it, reach it before he does, stand up.
I back away from him, gun pointed at his chest, my heart about to explode out of Owen’s body. I can’t get any air, in spite of panting like I’ve just run a mile.
“Owen, dude, no.” James’s hands are up. “I wasn’t going to shoot you, man, I swear. But shit! You were trying to… why’d you have to try that, man…” He’s almost crying with fear.
I’m shaking. The gun tip wavers a little. I can’t tell if it’s fear or adrenaline or what.
Option Four: I kill James.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I swallow.
Option Four: I kill James. James dies, but at least it’s not via torture; the women are free with their humanity intact; Owen commits the murder, for real this time, without the extreme circumstances, but he still ends up on Death Row, because he has the tag.
My finger is on the trigger. I give it a little touch, thinking about pulling it. The universe doesn’t nudge me to stop me. In fact, I almost pull it by accident, like the universe wants James to die. He died in the original timeline. This won’t break it.
Because James is already dead, I tell myself. This way he won’t be tortured.
It doesn’t help.
I pull the trigger.
The crack of the shot stabs my ears and whips my hand up in the air with the recoil. James falls to the floor with a hole in his head. My gun hand sinks slowly to my side.
I stare at him. For a long time.
I have a random thought about how seventeen cases has made me a pretty good shot.
Eventually, my breathing slows. I’m still in the timeline. The women stare at me from the cages, wide-eyed. My hand is shaking, but I manage to dig the key ring out of my pants and toss it to them. The universe doesn’t break when I do it.
A pool of blood is slowly spreading under James’s head. The gun is still in Owen’s hand. There’s one more thing I have to do before I go back.
* * *
You can’t remove a Shift tag. Not without taking off a good chunk of your arm, and even then, a tattoo-removal artist risks losing their license and going to jail for accessory to murder. And then there’s the microchip embedded in your bone. No one’s hacked off a limb to get rid of that, at least not that Corrections has tracked. And the numbers are all associated with you in the future. You, or your limb, would be found eventually.
You can’t escape the future.
But you can camouflage a tag, so that it doesn’t stand out so much. Corrections—or any kind of law enforcement, really—won’t be fooled. But it reduces the stigma. To the casual eye, you’ve got a leopard with unusual spots, or a peacock, or, in Owen’s case, a dragon with diamonds running down its back. Camouflage is also illegal, but you’d be surprised what a gun to the head will motivate a tattooist to do.
It’s a large tattoo. Large, painful, and time-consuming.
When I’m done with the tattooist, bandaged up for a second time, I return to the basement. The women are gone. If they were illegals, they’ve already melted into the cityscape. If not, they might be on their way to the police. I kind of doubt it, though. They’re unlikely to want to be the kind of targets that witnesses can become. Either way, I hope they’ll be able to piece together a decent life now.
In the original timeline, there were no cages, no evidence of human trafficking. In this timeline? I can’t be sure what will
happen. Perhaps Owen will clean it up. Or maybe the traffickers will come looking for their merchandise, find nothing but empty cages and a dead body, and decide to cut their losses and erase any connection between them and the crime. However it turns out, the universe must be okay with it now, because it’s not shoving on me to clean up the mess.
I stand over James’s body, slowly cooling in a pool of his own blood. This is where Owen will wake up. This is when he has to figure out what to do next. I’ve already wiped his prints off the gun and laid it next to James. If Owen’s smart, he’ll look at his arm and figure it out. If not, he’ll be back on Death Row again, but this time ineligible for the Shift.
Either way, he shouldn’t be in my office when I return.
I close my eyes, pull in a couple of deep breaths, and picture the thirty-fourth floor of the Department of Corrections. When I open my eyes, I’m sitting in my chair, under the neural net. The sun has moved to a spot where it’s now shining in my eyes, time continuing to march forward no matter where my mind is. I lean out of the glare and peer around at Owen’s seat.
It’s empty.
I reach for the trash can next to my chair and throw up the contents of my stomach.
Chapter Five
“So where’s your patient now?” Alyssa sits across from me. She’s my post-travel therapist, and it’s her usual opener. I don’t know if she’s looked into the case file—all she’ll find there is the tag number and my travel log.
“Don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth. I searched for Owen in the Corrections database when I got back—as soon as I stopped throwing up and most of the shakes had passed—but there was no record of him being picked up. “He went off the grid after the murder.”
“So the murder still happened,” she says. “That’s your third failure-to-complete. How do you feel about that?” She gives me a small smile, acknowledging the artlessness of that line. I think she’s doing it to lighten the situation, ease the burden of my third washout. At least this one didn’t result in an extinction.
Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel Page 6