by Mark Fassett
It was then that she realized her office was mostly dark, except for the light from her computer screen and the last remaining orange glow of the sun streaming in through her office window.
She was confused. Why was she dreaming this? This was days ago.
Shouldn’t she have woken up? She should be in the back of Reggie’s car, not sitting here in a second dream the night…
She hurriedly checked the date on her computer.
It was that night. The night Red died.
And she’d sat here until nearly ten writing the stupid press release while Red was being murdered.
Sat here and done nothing, unknowing.
But it was a dream, wasn’t it?
It felt so real, though, just like at Reggie’s house when she saw the picture.
Just a dream, right? The headache had started to come through.
But she didn’t have a headache now.
The cursor blinked in front of her.
What the hell was going on?
Someone knocked on her door, startling her.
She looked up.
It was the Mayor, the knife of his nose pressed up against the glass.
He opened it up.
“You still here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I need to finish this release for the morning.”
He smiled the friendly uncle smile that had won him his seat each of the last three terms. “Ah, well, don’t stay too late. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“I won’t,” she said.
He shut the door and walked off, leaving Nice even more confused than before. His face had caused her to remember the photo that she’d seen at Reggie’s house, with him and those two girls.
She reached into her purse.
The photo wasn’t there. Neither was the gun.
Of course. It couldn’t be. That had been a dream, right?
The way dreams worked, though, things carried over. You could carry something you found in one over into another. You’re subconscious produced it if necessary.
But neither the photo nor the gun were in her purse.
Her phone was, though.
She pulled it out and started quickly flipping through the photos on it, looking for the photos she had taken at Reggie’s, and they were gone. Not one picture she had taken of the books Reggie had on the Gifted Red had been tracking. Not any of the photos she’d taken between now and then.
Which made a sort of sense.
She looked at her computer, read the paragraph on it a couple times without really reading it. What the hell was going on? If this was the night Red died, then…
She knew what she had to do.
It was a dream, it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t change anything at all, but she decided she had to take the opportunity.
If Red was still alive, she could ask him about that photo.
She could warn him.
It was a dream. It wouldn’t do any good. But she might feel better. The hole in her life that she’d suffered with the last few days, maybe she could make it go away for just a little while.
She shut down her computer. She could finish the release in the morning.
She left her office, shutting her door behind her. She knew exactly where Red was going to be, and she had time to get there. She also had time to get her gun, just in case. Maybe she could see who had killed him, and she could stop the killer.
Yeah.
She could save Red, for once.
She ordered a ride from her phone while she walked down the hallway that lead to the street.
Even though it was a dream, she could do something about it.
Chapter 15
THE DARK WEIGHED on Nice as she stood in the shadows of a dimly lit doorway near the entrance to the alley where they’d found Red’s body. She didn’t know exactly how long she would have to wait, but his body wasn’t there yet, so at least she was early, even with the detour home to change clothes and get her gun.
It wasn’t the worst part of town at all, but a light drizzle fell from the ever-present autumn cloud cover, and not many people were out and about in it. Other than the occasional vehicle driving past the alley, the streets were almost deserted.
A good night to get away with murder.
But they weren’t going to get away with it. Even if she couldn’t stop Red from dying, she’d know who fired the shot that killed him.
Of course, when she woke up, it would be a lie, right? None of this would have actually happened.
No police officer, attorney, prosecutor, or judge would ever believe that the identity of Red’s killer had come to her in a dream.
And what if, as she was beginning to suspect, it wasn’t a dream? The drizzle was too wet. The timeline didn’t jump like she would expect if she were in a dream. Sure, it had jumped backwards twice, but each time, while she was in it, it seemed so real.
But that didn’t make sense at all. How could anyone jump back in time?
Maybe it was just some effect of Aidan playing in her head.
Still…
Someone stepped into the alley, and Nice shrunk back into the darkened doorway as far and as silently as she could. She slipped her hand into her purse and wrapped her fingers around the grip of her Beretta.
The someone, just a silhouette at first, was confident, not looking around, not hiding.
A stray light flashed across his face.
It was Red.
And, as confident as his stride seemed, in that flash of light, his eyes looked haunted, wide and unfocused.
Nice stepped out of the doorway.
Maybe if he never walked farther in to the alley, he would never die. Maybe whoever shot him would not take the shot so close to the street. Maybe it didn’t matter. She had no idea.
What did matter, was that if she didn’t talk to him, she’d never get her questions answered.
“Red,” she called out.
He spun to face her, his body alert and ready to fight.
“It’s Nice,” she said.
Then he relaxed.
“Nice? What are you doing here?”
And then he was standing right in front of her, just like that, no transition. His Gifts were definitely working. How the hell could he get shot? He was wearing his outfit, all red, of course, the lightning emblem on his chest. He never wore a hood, never wore a cape, but the suit was padded out with body armor. He could move quickly, but as he’d said time and again, falling still hurt. He wasn’t invincible.
As she well knew.
“I, I have to tell you something, and I need to ask you a question.”
Red looked over his shoulder, then back at her. His eyes twitched a little, displaying a nervousness she didn’t remember ever seeing before, except maybe the first day when he found out she was going to be his liaison.
“Can’t it wait? I’m supposed to meet someone here.”
“Who?” she asked.
“An informant,” he said. “Please, give me a couple hours, and I’ll meet you at Harry’s down the street.
She almost said yes. She wanted to say yes. Harry’s had good coffee. Red had always seemed so powerful to her, but she also knew he would be dead in two hours.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “In fact, I think it would be better if we went to Harry’s right now.”
Yes, definitely best.
“I can’t,” Red said. “I can’t miss this chance. I’ve been chasing this guy for months.”
“I can’t let you stay here, Dad,” she said. She couldn’t quite tell him that he was going to die if he stayed. He would laugh at her, she just knew it. But maybe, just maybe the Dad thing would bring him around.
His drifting eyes suddenly grew focused, and they focused on her.
“You know,” he said. “How?”
“Mom told me,” she said.
Red took a deep breath, then let it out slowly before responding.
“She must have told you when
she died. You’ve known all this time.”
“She told me not to tell you. She told me not to tell anyone,” Nice said.
“Of course she did.”
Red looked around again, then came back to her.
“You should have listened to her. If…”
And then he went silent.
Nice heard water dripping down the alley. A car passed on the street.
“If what?”
Then he leaned in to her and spoke in a whisper.
“If they hear about you, I won’t be able to protect you,” he said. “They could be listening right now. I doubt it, but they could be.”
Red’s nervousness infected her at that moment.
“Who? Who would be listening?”
“These people I’ve been chasing for years. If you tell anyone, it could get back to them, and then they would find you, use you, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.”
“Reggie knows.”
Red closed his eyes.
“Shit. How do you know about Reggie?”
“I went to your house after…”
She couldn’t tell him that. It wouldn’t come out. Why couldn’t she tell him? The answer was easy. She couldn’t believe that he would believe her. She’d just sound like she’d gone crazy.
“After what?” he asked
She had to get him out of here. She found herself looking around for someone, for her father’s killer, just like he was looking.
“Can we go somewhere else?” she asked. “This is not the place…”
“I can’t. Believe me, I want to, but if I don’t meet this guy, I won’t be able to protect you. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”
“Red… Dad,” she said, putting her free hand on his shoulder, her other hand still in her purse, just in case someone came up behind him. It was just a dream, right? If he didn’t believe her, it didn’t matter, right? “You can’t stay here. You can’t. If you stay, you die.”
He pushed her into the doorway, and he squeezed in with her, then scanned the alley for several moments before he was momentarily satisfied there was no one out there.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“They… a couple of cops found you in this alley, a bullet in your head. I went to your funeral. Four days from now.”
“Shit,” he said, and he practically deflated.
“What?”
“You’ve used it again.”
“Used what?” she asked.
“Your Gift.”
Her Gift. How she’d longed for one, especially after her mother told her who her father was.
“I don’t have a Gift.”
“You do. I know you do.”
“How?”
Red shook his head.
“I should never have agreed to the Mayor placing you as my liaison. I wouldn’t have suggested it myself, but after your Mom died, I just couldn’t let myself deny you that much.”
Red fell silent.
The drizzle continued to fall, and all Nice could hear was the drizzle and their breath.
“This is a dream,” Nice said under her breath. “Just a dream.”
“It’s no dream, Nice.”
He pulled her close, put his arms around her, and hugged her like she’d wanted ever since her mother had died.
“How do you know? What’s happening to me, then?”
“You’re Gifted like I am,” Red said into her ear while he hugged her. “You can sort of rewind your life.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
But she knew. Each time she’d done it, she’d gone back to a specific point in her life, sort of like déjà vu, except that anything that happened after was different.
Red released his hug and stepped back a little.
“When something you don’t like happens, or maybe when you get stressed, you can skip back along your timeline, and try something else. Once you’ve practiced so that you can do it at will, you can skip backwards even microseconds, and put yourself someplace else.”
“That’s how you evade bullets,” she said.
Red nodded.
“Then, what happens? Why do I remember everything I did for the next four days?”
“You remember. No one else does. Nothing ever happened for anyone else. I don’t know if we end up in an alternate universe or what happens, but no one else ever remembers what you do.”
“Then, please, let’s get out of here,” she said. “You’re going to die here.”
“I know,” he said.
“What?”
“I know I die here. Or there. Or somewhere. I am meant to die tonight, wherever I happen to be. There’s a group of people, a group of Gifted, and they’re looking for people like us. They want to use us to influence things.
“When I learned what you could do, that you were the same as me, I went back and changed things.”
“Like the picture,” she said.
“The picture?”
“The one of Mom and me. Reggie showed it to me. I distinctly remember him being in the picture, but when I saw it, he wasn’t there.”
“I didn’t do that,” he said.
“Then…”
“You did it. That was your first time. That’s when I realized things had to change.”
Things grew silent between them again. The cold had started to seep into her jacket, and the things Red told her…
She was Gifted.
Not only was she Gifted, if what Red was saying was true, she didn’t dare tell anyone, not until she found whoever it was that was chasing her father. If they found out about her, they’d chase her, too. If she didn’t tell anyone, she wouldn’t have to worry about them finding her.
Of course, Reggie might know.
No. He knew she was his sister. He didn’t know about her gift.
The shot, when it came, surprised her, but it didn’t seem to surprise Red at all. It entered through his chest, just where she had been standing while he hugged her.
She sank to her knees and pulled her gun from her purse.
A dark stain emerged from the bullet hole to the left of where Red’s heart might be and spread down his chest. He slid down against the far wall of their alcove.
“Nice,” he said. His voice was airy.
She turned to look at him.
“Listen to me. Don’t go too far back. If you go back too far, you might not exist. The farther you go back, the more things you risk, the less control you have after.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Promise me,” he said. His eyes closed.
“I promise. Why can’t you blink back right now?”
“I can’t,” he said. “We… cancel.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She wanted to go to him, to pull him close to her, but the killer was out there somewhere, and she was afraid if she left the safety of her side of the doorway, that she’d be a target, too.
“I love you,” she said.
He didn’t respond with words.
His hand reached out to her, though.
She started to reach out to it, and then his body shuddered, and his hand fell to the ground to lay in a puddle.
He was gone.
Don’t go too far back.
In her grief, she felt the headache starting to come on. A pressure in her temples.
Would she always have to endure the headache?
She didn’t know.
How far was too far back?
She didn’t know that either.
But she knew how far back she wanted to go.
She heard footsteps in the alley.
She closed her eyes and thought about her mother. She probably couldn’t save Mom from the cancer, but if she asked better questions, maybe she could save Red.
Maybe they could work together.
She blinked.
About
Mark Fassett lives in western Washington with his wife, children, and cats. He’s a fantasy and science fiction author whose novels include
Shattered, Grim Repo, and Minders. He’s also written several novellas in those same genres.
Learn About New Releases
Click here to join Mark’s mailing list and get notified about his newest releases!
Find Mark Online
Website - http://www.markfassett.com
Twitter - http://twitter.com/mark_fassett
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/markfassett.writer
E-Mail - [email protected]
Other Titles
The Sacrifice of Mendleson Moony
Minders
October
A Wizard’s Work
Shattered
Fragments
Lords Of Genova
Questioner’s Shadow
Grim Repo Files
Grim Repo
Parted Out
Novellas
Dreams of Earth
A Tower Without Doors
Zombies Ate My Mom
Zombies Bought The Farm
Find them all at RavenstarPress.com