Millennium Crash

by James Litherland

  The nurse looked at the watch and nodded. “It’s right—and it looks exactly like that watch of your sister’s. Why do you both wear a man’s watch? And the same one?”

  The image of Harold as she last saw him helped Sam feel sad. “Our father—he gave each of us one just like his. Now we wear them to remember him by.” That was stretching the truth past the breaking point, but it might be as close as this woman could understand anyway. “Mine has an engraving on the back. LD—3. Loving Daughter, and I’m the third.”

  Mildred shook her head. “So why does she have two of those same watches?”

  “She wears our father’s watch now all the time—she got it after his death. She carries her own with her as well.” Sam shook her head. “But not her ID.”

  Mildred nodded, her face filled with sympathy as they stepped off the elevator. “We locked up your sister’s belongings, most of them, for safekeeping. But at least she still has the watch she was wearing with her. She clearly values it a lot.”

  “You probably can’t say, but I bet her purse held nothing but the watch and some cash. She doesn’t like banks. So I’m glad you’re keeping everything safe for her.”

  Sam followed the nurse down several hallways to a separate wing, where they stopped in front of the door to room 414.

  Mildred held up a hand. “Stay right here for a moment while I make sure it’s okay.” Opening the door and leaving it open, the nurse stepped into a large, pleasant private room. Sam listened in.

  Mildred entered with, “You’re looking better.”

  Kirin’s voice, “Is that some kind of joke?”

  “No, dear—I understand you’re upset, but your strength is returning. That’s good.”

  “What will be good will be getting plastic surgery to fix this. And soon.”

  “And you’ll need to be in good health before the doctor will perform that—regardless of how much money you have. Now, your sister’s come looking for you. She’s concerned, and I’m sure you want to see her. But don’t let her tire you out. And just buzz the nurses’ station if you need anything.”

  There was a long pause. If anything more was said Sam didn’t hear it, but a moment later Mildred marched out of the room. “Now, don’t wear her out. She needs her rest.”

  Sam nodded without saying a word and stalked on in to get her first look at Kirin’s condition. The woman was propped up in bed with bandages over most of what could be seen, even over her left eye, and one of her legs was in a cast. She didn’t appear pleased to see Sam, but that was to be expected.

  Kirin glared out of the one eye. “Looking for my jewelry? The cash? They’ve got it locked in a safe, and you’re not getting your hands on any of it.”

  “I’m not interested in the jewels or the money.” Neither did Sam think them Kirin’s, but she wasn’t going to argue about that. “I did want to see what shape you’re in.”

  “Come to gloat, is that it?” Even lying there in the hospital bed, Kirin still had her long, luxurious black hair, the alabaster skin and fine, classic bone structure—what could be seen of it.

  “If you hadn’t been trying to escape justice for the crimes you’ve committed, you’d not be here.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me that this is justice—well, let me tell you something. I have all the money I’ll need for the best plastic surgeons. They’ll make me as good as new.” Kirin snorted. “How did you follow me? I thought I’d left you far behind.”

  Sam smiled. “This was just a bump in the road to you?”

  Kirin glared back at her. “Don’t imagine you’re going to finish the job. I’ve got my finger on the call button, and I’m strong enough to fend you off until help comes. Then you’d be in big trouble.”

  “I didn’t come to kill you. I came to offer you a second chance. To make a deal.”

  Kirin snorted again. “You have nothing to offer me. Next time I Travel, I’ll just make sure you’re a long way away. Or dead.”

  “I don’t think so.” Sam’s smile was grim as she removed her watch. “Our watches look exactly the same, so don’t bother calling the nurse. I made sure to give Mildred a good look at mine.” As she talked, Sam swapped her watch for the one on the bedside table. “The only difference between them is something they wouldn’t even understand.”

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  Sam ignored that. “Now, this is my offer, and I suggest you take it, since you can no longer Travel. And you no longer have access to the trust fund.”

  “I’ll get that back from you. I swear.”

  Sam ignored that, too. “You could allow me to take you back to the others and answer for what you have done.”

  “You don’t think I’d possibly go along with that. I’ll stay in the past where no one can touch me.”

  Sam held up a hand. “I didn’t imagine you’d go along with that. Not now. Someday you may want to atone for your actions, though.”

  Kirin narrowed her eye in suspicion. “So what’s your offer then?”

  “Just this. Keep your ill-gotten gains and try to live and be happy. If you can. I won’t pursue you anymore.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Without a leader device, you’ll have to answer to the contemporary authorities if you commit any further crimes.”

  Kirin’s unbandaged eye twitched as she tried to glare Sam down. Sam stared straight back.

  Silence stretched between them until Kirin decided to speak. “Now you have access to the trust, you can Travel. Take my advice and only Travel to the past. Because I will pursue you. With the money I have and the knowledge to invest it, I can still make myself incredibly wealthy. I’ll be able to hire people to hunt you down.”

  Sam was taken aback by the bitterness in Kirin’s voice. “I’m not worried about your wealth and what it can do. Neither am I interested in using the trust funds to try to get rich like you. And I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You should be. If you stay in this time or show up while I’m alive, I’ll find you. And I’ll give you the same thing I gave Harold.” The woman laughed. “I may even make arrangements so that after I’m dead and gone, there’ll still be a price on your head.”

  Sam was glad she’d kept Bailey’s presence a secret. She would need that advantage—because she believed Kirin would do what she said. “I’m giving you the chance to end this now. I said I won’t pursue you and I won’t. But if you come after me, you’ll have only yourself to blame for whatever happens.”

  “Get out.”

  Taking a last look at the woman, Sam left without another word. She ran into Mildred of the pink scrubs further down the corridor and walked with the nurse to the elevator.

  While they waited, Mildred took a good look at Sam’s face. “As bad as that?”

  Which was when Sam realized that she was crying. She rubbed the tears away with the back of her hand and punched the elevator button again. She’d been through so much. It was just that this was the last straw, wearing her down to the nub.

  She summoned a smile for the nurse. “I’m fine. But my sister—you may be able to fix the scars on the outside, but how can you heal the ones on the inside?”

  Mildred shook her head. And as Sam was getting onto the elevator, she heard a warning. “They’ll be waiting for you to fill out some forms—”

  The closing doors cut off the rest, but Sam was grateful. When she stepped out on the ground floor, she started looking around for another exit, one that wouldn’t take her out through the lobby but rather avoided the office lady in her flowery dress.

  Sam found a side entrance and slipped out and kept her head down. She circled the building looking for Bailey. Of course she found him sitting up straight on the wooden bench with his eyes fixed on the front entrance of the hospital, watching for her to come out. She veered wide and approached him from behind.

  “We’re both still alive.”

  If she’d hoped to see the man jump or start, she would have been disappointed. He just sto
od and turned to look at her. “So what did happen?”

  She loosed a long sigh. She wanted to sit down on the bench he’d just vacated and not get up. But she didn’t.

  “I got Harold’s Travel device back—swapped it with my own. And I told Kirin that I won’t be chasing her anymore.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “She swore to come after me. Hire people, hunt me down for the rest of her days.” And then some.

  “So what do we do?”

  Sam looked up at him and smiled. “We make preparations. Kirin has a lot of recovering to do, so that gives us some time. But she’ll be busy making her own plans.”

  Bailey grimaced. “We don’t have any idea what those plans might be. How will she come after us?”

  Sam’s smile was thin. “Not us. Me. She doesn’t know about you, and with those helper watches she can only track me now. At least that was how they were supposed to work. Since we can’t rely on that, you’ll have to stick close to me so we can preserve that advantage. And I’ll need you there by my side when she does attack.”

  “Her advantage is all that money, so we’ll need resources of our own. We had better get back to the city and visit the bank.”

  “The best resource I have is you, Bailey. You’ve got the experience and skills to handle whatever she comes at me with. Help me make plans.”

  He grunted. “Right now we barely have enough for a bus ticket back into New York City. At least I can carry you to the station.”

  Sam shook her head. “I can walk.” She started strolling in what she hoped was the right direction, Bailey by her side. “By the way, the answer came to me—why we Traveled with Kirin at such a distance. I was hoping you could explain to me how it actually works.”

  “You know what the answer is but you don’t understand it?”

  “Because it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  The moan of a strong wind came from her partner, and Sam figured that was an expression of his exasperation with her.

  She squinted into the distance and tried to say what she knew. “Kirin still had her own helper device on her all the while she was using Harold’s to Travel. I don’t understand how these things work, but her having two devices must be responsible for the two of us Traveling with her.”

  Bailey plodded along. “I don’t understand how they work, either. But since the helper devices generate a kind of field of their own that’s supposed to merge with the main one, it must have combined in a different way with both of them together like that. That’s my best guess. It’s not my area.”

  “Mine either. But that must be it. The helper device did its thing when she used Harold’s to Travel, making the field bigger or wider. Or whatever. And our devices did their thing.”

  “That must be it.”

  Chapter 13

  The Former Preacher’s Tale

  July 29th, 2000 The Bronx (on I-87)

  ANYA sat in air-conditioned comfort in the back seat of the hired car as it glided serenely along the busy highway—and she was sweating. This isn’t like me. She couldn’t remember the last time a sudden crisis had caused her this kind of anxiety. Maybe because this had been building for three weeks—she’d seen it coming, dreaded it, and yet failed to do anything to stop it.

  Of course, it wasn’t like Turner to call in a panic trying to explain the problem with incoherent rambling. Nye couldn’t just be gone. Her helper device couldn’t Travel on its own, and it was impossible for another leader to come and leave again so soon.

  Anya would be better equipped to deal with the situation once she understood what had happened. She certainly couldn’t rely on the little she’d gathered from her flustered helper. Once she found the man, she would get Turner to make sense.

  She tried finding her peace. The problem was past preventing—she needed to do what she always did in a crisis. Deal with it. She’d left Tate at home and could depend on him to take care of everything there, so she needn’t worry about that.

  Staring out the window into the dark, she realized she should be grateful—that they’d gotten the phone installed before this emergency and that she had been able to find a hired car in the middle of the night to take her into the city. She should be glad to have the resources to pay for this kind of help, when she didn’t have the ID to rent a car. She ought not to be driving in the state she was in anyway.

  She wondered if they were getting close. Looking up into the rearview mirror and the reflection of the driver’s impassive face, she asked. “Is the hotel much farther?”

  “We’re about to cross into Harlem, so it’ll be another fifteen or twenty minutes, mam.”

  “Thank you.” She sighed and sank back into the seat. If only Nye hadn’t insisted on spending almost all of her days in the city. If only Turner hadn’t been so willing to chaperone her on those trips. If only.

  Anya and Tate had been happy enough to enjoy the comfort of their new home, to spend their time reading newspapers and listening to the radio, even watching terrible television in the name of research. Of course, the best part had been bicycling around their rural neighborhood and meeting the natives.

  Nye, however, wasn’t interested in interviewing subjects. She wasn’t satisfied with the idea of filtering information from media sources. She wanted to make hands-on observations of the city whose ruins had always fascinated her, and she had to be there doing that to the exclusion of all else. And every day the girl spent in the city, Anya worried a little more.

  She couldn’t deny the trips into the city when a chaperone was available, and Turner hadn’t hesitated to volunteer at every request. Which meant the two of them had been spending most of their time in the city. More potential for some kind of trouble.

  Now that trouble had arrived.

  Of course, she’d been aware of Nye’s tendency toward obsessing over her work and not acting with prudence—it was why Anya had insisted on a chaperone for the girl. But Turner had his own research and work to do for the team. He couldn’t supervise Nye every single minute. There had been reason to suspect a problem might develop, and now it had.

  Absorbed in her thoughts, the time slipped by, and Anya was surprised to look out the window and see they were pulling up in front of the Hotel Ngaio—this was the place Turner and Nye were using as a base of operations in the city.

  Anya was already opening the door before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. She wouldn’t wait for the driver or the doorman to open it for her.

  The driver looked over his shoulder as she was sliding out. “What did you want me to do, mam?”

  She paused. “This will probably only take ten or fifteen minutes. I don’t know yet where I’ll want to go after.”

  The driver nodded. “Then I’ll just keep circling the block until I see you’re ready, mam.”

  Anya almost ran into the hotel, where she found Turner pacing back and forth in the lobby, waiting. As soon as he noticed her, he rushed over. When he opened his mouth to start explaining, she shushed the man, grabbed his elbow, and steered him over to a sofa standing against the far wall of the lobby. So they could have some privacy.

  She sat them both down and started things in a quiet voice. “Now why don’t you try and state exactly what happened, with clear details so I can actually understand you. And keep your voice low.”

  He took several long, deep breaths and calmed himself before speaking. “I was working late, trying to get my website properly set up. It was getting on toward midnight when I remembered Nye.”

  Anya kept from shaking her head. Turner’s supervision had been more lax than she’d realized and this was the result. “You were working here in your hotel room? Where was Nye, the last you knew?”

  The man shook his head and blushed. “I wasn’t here. Ms. Dervan had volunteered to help me. She has an incredible computer workstation, and I was in her apartment while she was teaching me what I needed to know.”

  “There’s no need to blush, Turner. I trust you wou
ldn’t be doing anything inappropriate. And I’m glad the woman is helping. Your website will be one more way the others can find their way back to us. But what about Nye?”

  “She had been roaming around the city somewhere, but she’d promised to be back at the hotel before dark. She knew I’d come searching for her if she failed to return, and drag her back in the middle of her research. Because I’ve had to do that several times. But I thought she’d learned her lesson.”

  Anya snorted. “This is Nye we’re talking about. It’s not that she doesn’t know what she ought to do. She always has. She just gets so absorbed she loses track, and loses her good sense.”

  Turner’s face flushed deeper red. “I’m sorry. I guess I got too involved myself. Anyway, it was late, and before I headed back to the hotel I checked the locator app to see if she was in that direction.”

  Anya frowned. “You must’ve gotten some kind of a bead on her.”

  On their first foray into the city after the move to Little Piece, Turner and Nye had discovered that with Anya’s leader device that far away, their own helper devices had defaulted to track each other. It should have made it that much easier for Turner to supervise his charge.

  Turner stared off into the distance. “It pointed to the north. Even though I was on the Upper West Side already, I assumed Nye had wandered that far and stayed out late again. So I set off to track her down, like I had before. I ended up taking a taxi to the north end of the Bronx without it ever changing direction or turning to a blip.”

  Anya nodded. “At which point you must have realized that it was pointing at me up in Chickadee County.”

  “I admit I panicked then. I used that cell phone I’d gotten for emergencies and woke you up and I got you to come. Then I realized it could just be a bug in the programming. The locator app might’ve returned to its normal function—stopped tracking the nearest device and gone back to pointing to the leader, like we thought it was supposed to.”