“Tyler is not feeling well, and has taken the day off. I will not ask you to take Seven, for obvious reasons. I believe he already suspects there was a timeline fracture, but I will deal with that in time. For today, I would prefer not to have to tell him he was killed. He will not sleep for days once I do.”
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “And what about Sally?”
Artemis sipped her tea. “Sally is no longer with the company.”
Oliver felt a chill run down his spine. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means precisely what I said, Mr. Jones. She is gone. Surely it is not your concern.”
“It’s very much my concern,” Oliver said. He heard an edge in his voice that surprised him a little, but given the circumstances, he felt it was justified. “She’s my friend.”
“Is she?” Artemis raised an eyebrow. “I seem to recall a short time ago you were not certain you could continue working with her, so concerned were you with her monstrous past.”
Oliver felt himself getting angry. No, he realized. He was getting angrier. “I swear to god, if you killed her…”
“Of course I did not kill her, Mr. Jones. She is one of my people, after all. I am not in the habit of killing you. And before you ask, neither did anybody else. She is alive and well.”
“Then where is she?”
“Somewhere she is safe and comfortable, and no longer a threat to herself or anyone else.”
Oliver wondered if Artemis would even notice if he punched her in the face, or if she’d just go on talking like a robot as if nothing had happened. “You sent her to the island, didn’t you? Wherever that is. So she’s sitting in a damn cell?”
Artemis sighed. “She is not in a cell, other than in the sense that the island itself is a cell from which she cannot escape.”
“She made a mistake, damn it…”
“She made quite a series of mistakes, Mr. Jones. She annihilated the cyborgs after they had been rendered harmless in a childish attempt to avenge her sister.”
“She tried to fix that…”
“By altering time, which was an even bigger mistake. The past cannot be changed, Mr. Jones. There is nothing more dangerous. As unpleasant as it may be, we are forced to live with the consequences of the things we have done. If we know we have done wrong, our only option is to attempt to do better in the future. Sally did not do that.”
“You think she doesn’t know she was wrong by now?”
“I think she cannot be controlled, and that she is far too clever and resourceful to remain at liberty. I cannot imagine what she would try next, and I am not willing to find out. Hence, she will live out her days on the island. Put her from your mind.”
Oliver stood up, fists clenched. “Put her from my mind? Are you kidding me?”
“I was not.”
“Do you have any feelings at all, you crazy little bitch? Does anything bother you? What was it you said before? We’re just small pieces, compared to some of the larger ones on the board? We’re just pawns to you, aren’t we?” Oliver realized he was shouting, something he hadn’t done in a very long time. He was surprised to find that he didn’t care. “Our little lives mean nothing to you. You sit there in your high chair and tell us what to do, and the minute we’re gone you don’t even remember us. Sally would have died for you!”
Artemis stared at him with eyes of ice. Oliver wondered for a moment if he’d just bought himself a ticket to the island as well, but it didn’t matter anymore. Good luck to her if she tried anything. He wasn’t going down without a fight.
Artemis took a deep breath. “Do I have feelings, Mr. Jones?” she asked quietly. “Do I? I have been doing this for longer than you can possibly imagine. I have lost more…I have lost every single person I have ever cared for, and it hurts me every day. I feel that loss every waking moment. And since you asked, I remember all of you.”
They stared at each other for a moment longer, neither of them blinking, until Artemis finally looked away. “I remember all of you,” she repeated softly, and for the first time since he’d known her Oliver heard sorrow in her voice. “Get out of my office, Mr. Jones. You may return to work tomorrow, or you may do…you may do whatsoever you may wish. Regardless, I will remember you until the day I finally leave this Earth.” She swung her chair around so she was facing the wall and said no more.
Oliver hesitated, wanting to say something else, but the words wouldn’t come. He turned and left the office, shutting the door behind him.
Chapter 23
Oliver stood on the sidewalk outside the office for a good five minutes, feeling like he wanted to punch a wall, but also realizing that he’d both look stupid to passersby and probably break his hand. Around him cars drove along and pedestrians went about their business, oblivious to the fact that in another timeline they’d all be dead or walking around in cyborg armor. If he told them, they’d just think he was a crazy person. Maybe that explained some of the crazy people he saw ranting on the streets at times. Maybe they weren’t actually crazy; they just knew something nobody else did.
Oliver took out his cell phone and called Tyler. The other man answered on the third ring. “You okay?” Tyler’s voice was groggy and slightly slurred. He sounded like he was well into a bottle of Scotch.
“You know what happened to Sally?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tyler…”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone.”
Oliver sighed. “Fine. We can talk about it later. Are you all right?”
“No. I’m hanging up now. See you tomorrow.” The connection dropped.
Oliver looked at his phone for a moment, not sure what to do next. He really had nobody else to call. Who was he going to tell about any of this? Who wouldn’t tell him to go see a psychiatrist and get on some medication to make the crazy go away? After another minute, he stuck the phone in his pocket and headed for the train station. Going home and sleeping for the rest of the day sounded like a pretty good plan.
He was nearly to the station at Embarcadero when he spotted someone he recognized, a girl in her late teens with long blonde hair. Today she wore an ill-fitting purple suit that had obviously been made for a man, along with a green vest and a tie to complete the outfit. The clothes looked vaguely familiar, but Oliver wasn’t sure from where. That was the least of his worries, though. The fact that he was seeing the girl at all was strange. She was the one who had been skipping along with the cyborg patrol back in Russian Hill, back when he and Tyler had gone to steal a Humvee. The cyborgs either hadn’t noticed her presence or just didn’t care, but neither of those things seemed very likely. Tyler hadn’t been able to see her, either, he remembered. The girl had clearly seen Oliver, though. At the time she’d waved merrily at him.
She spotted him again now and walked over to where he stood, smiling broadly. “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m doing the Joker,” she said. “I wasn’t quite finished with the costume, though.” She ran her fingers through her blonde hair, which turned dark green at the touch. Then she rubbed her head with both hands to mess it up. “I might do the makeup, too, but I haven’t decided yet. I don’t like to cover my face.”
There would have been a time when Oliver would have been so startled by this turn of events that he’d either have been rendered speechless or just run away, but he was no longer that person. “I didn’t mean the costume,” he said. “I meant who are you?”
The girl pouted. “You really don’t recognize me yet?” she asked. She searched his face. “No, you don’t. Now that you’re finally waking up, you will soon enough. I don’t want to ruin the fun for you.”
“Why couldn’t the cyborgs see you in the other timeline?”
“Oh, that’s right,” the girl said. “I almost forgot you saw me over there. I was going to come and say hello, but I was having such a good time. True chaos is so rare these days
, and a whole broken timeline? That was just…” she sighed lustily, “exquisite.”
Oliver had thought his frustration couldn’t have gotten any worse after his confrontation with Artemis, but it turned out that hadn’t been the case at all. “You know what?” he asked. “I don’t have time for this.” He turned to go.
“Aw,” the girl said. “I know. You’re having a bad day. Poor Sally Rain. She was one of mine, if only for a little while. And now she’s all alone on that island.” The girl bit her lip. “Well, she’s not really alone. There are other things there, too. But nobody for her to talk to. Even the monsters that are smart enough to have figured out language don’t really have anything to say.”
“How do you know about her? How do you know about any of that?”
The girl sighed, then stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “I missed you so much,” she whispered into his ear. “I really did. You were always my favorite brother.”
Oliver stared at her in shock. “Brother? You’re wrong, I don’t have any…” Oliver was an only child. He didn’t even have any cousins that he knew of. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
She grinned at him. “No, I haven’t. It took me so long to find you, big brother, but I finally did. Now we’ll just have to see what happens next.” She rubbed her hands together eagerly and Oliver saw a glint in her eyes. “Maybe a family reunion? Now that would be chaos.” She laughed merrily. “But it won’t be today. You’re not quite there yet. You can’t even remember who you are!” She turned to go. “Oh, say hi to Jeffrey for me.” She giggled. “A talking cat! That’s so perfect! Maybe I’ll get one, too.” She skipped away from Oliver and was lost in the crowd a few seconds later.
It occurred to Oliver that he’d failed to ask what she meant when she said he was finally waking up, but that opportunity was gone. But all things considered, on the list of unusual things that had happened to him in the last six months, this encounter wouldn’t even have rated in the top ten. Still, the girl had known about Sally Rain and Jeffrey. He suspected he’d see her again soon. Maybe next time she’d be a little more willing to answer some questions.
Oliver looked at the sky. The morning fog had burned off and the sun was bright overhead. The world had moved on without a care. He decided he was done thinking about his interesting life for now. Maybe he’d take Jeffrey for a walk down by the water. The cat would enjoy that. Or maybe he’d just go to bed. But no matter what, he was taking the rest of the day off. He could deal with his problems tomorrow. Nothing at all strange was going to happen today. It just wasn’t allowed to.
But of course that wasn’t how things worked out. It wasn’t even close.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Storm lives in Anchorage, Alaska. He may or may not have a time machine. It’s not as if you’d know the difference, anyway.
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ALSO BY MATTHEW STORM
The Interesting Times Series
Interesting Times
Interesting Places
Nevada James Mysteries
Broken
The Riley Flynn Series (as M.J. Storm)
Riley Flynn and the Runaway Fairy
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2014 Cranberry Lane Press
For Clark Fair and Terri Zopf-Schoessler
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY MATTHEW STORMThe Interesting Times SeriesInteresting TimesInteresting PlacesNevada James Myst...
Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) Page 18