The Flight of the Silvers

by Daniel Price

  “Queer-looking how?”

  “She moved too fast to get a full eyeball, but the men say her speedsuit was torked to look like normal clothes.”

  Cahill stoked his jaw. “Huh. That is strange. What prompted the chase in the first place?”

  “My men noticed a bloodstain on the driver’s side of the vehicle. They attempted—”

  “Sir, I apologize for cutting you off,” said the female Dep, “but it takes time to set up our drills. If you could point us to the location of the tempic attack, that would facilitate our work here.”

  The chief blinked at her, befuddled. The woman spoke with a scholarly foreign accent, a quasi-British twang he’d never heard before. Hell and wonders. She’s not even American.

  Cahill smirked. “This is Melissa Masaad. Don’t let the skirt fool you. She’s smarter than us.”

  Offering the friendliest smile she could muster, Melissa gave the chief a handshake that rivaled Cahill’s in pure ferocity. It was one of the first customs she learned here.

  “Masaad,” said the chief, as if her name were all asterisks and ampersands. “That’s quite unique. What part of the world—”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Where did you say this attack occurred?”

  Melissa was born in British North Sudan. At seventeen, she moved to the motherland to attend Oxford, where she earned advanced degrees in mechanical science and criminology. She spent the next six years in London as an analyst for Military Intelligence, specializing in the study of temporal weaponry. Ten months into her tenure, she received a Royal Commendation for tracking the perpetrators of a deadly rift attack at a Cambridge aerport.

  Two years ago, at age thirty, she was offered one of the four hundred immigration slots that the United States extended annually to exceptional applicants. She didn’t hesitate to renounce her British and Sudanese citizenship, one of the chief requirements of naturalization. America demanded sole allegiance from its adopted children. Melissa was prepared to give it.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” Sir Edgar Ballott had warned her. He was an old British manatee, an Assistant Director-General of the Security Service. More than her mentor, he considered himself her father figure, albeit one who often imagined her naked.

  “The United States may be a peaceful nation, my dear, but it’s teeming with racists, isolationists, and every other breed of regressive bigot. If you believe they’ll embrace a foreigner and a negress as their equal, then I fear you’re in for an abrupt education.”

  Melissa had kept silent at the time. She saw no purpose in drawing out a futile conversation.

  “I don’t care what the documents say,” Sir Edgar insisted. “England will always be your home.”

  England had stopped being her home a long time ago, since the military began using her research to improve their temporic arsenal. She feared it’d be a matter of years, not decades, before His Majesty’s Armed Forces managed to squeeze an entire Cataclysm into the nose of a long-range missile. God help their enemies then. God damn her if she ever played a part in that.

  The policemen watched the Deps assemble their devices on the highway—four black obelisks, each eight feet tall and covered in glass lenses. They were placed forty feet apart in a perfect square. Thick cables connected them to a portable computer.

  As Melissa helped prep the towers, two state patrolmen eyed her through slitted eyes.

  “Huh. I didn’t even know they had duskers in England.”

  “Yeah. The limers set their flag in a bunch of savage countries. Guess they brought a few back.”

  Melissa ignored them. In her thoughts, Sir Edgar Ballott raised a smug eyebrow.

  A half hour later, the ghost drills were ready. Each system cost two million dollars and required five technicians to operate, at a taxpayer cost of seventeen thousand dollars per hour. All that expense and effort to achieve what David Dormer could do with a wave of his hand.

  Inside the perimeter of the towers, the recent past came to light. The dilapidated Salgado van reappeared in front of a disembodied strip of white tempic barrier. The projections were as brown and grainy as a Civil War photograph until the technicians made their adjustments. Soon the van could almost pass as the real thing.

  Cahill pointed at the ethereal vehicle. “Why are the back doors transparent?”

  Melissa squinted at them. “I’ve only seen that effect during a double-echo, when you view the ghost of a ghosted image.”

  “Ghosted van doors? We don’t even have that technology. What’s it doing on a ten-year-old junker?”

  While setting up the drills, Melissa had kept an ear on the discussion between Cahill and Bond. She listened with great interest about the phantom truck that appeared on the highway, sending one police cruiser into opposite lanes. The ability to create a three-dimensional image of that size—on a fast-moving freeway, no less—was far beyond the capability of any lumic projector.

  Suddenly a colorful streak emerged from the passenger side of the van, disappearing beyond the confines of the ghost field.

  “Whoa! Did you see that?”

  “Rewind and replay,” Melissa told her teammate. “Tenth speed.”

  Even at slow playback, it took three attempts for the technicians to catch Hannah in motion, and then another twelve adjustments to achieve an unblurred freeze-frame. Now every law enforcer fixed their stare on the frightened young thing with the nightstick in her hand, a woman who moved at triple-digit velocity.

  The Deps crossed into the image field, studying Hannah up close. Like breathing underwater or walking through fire, speeding was a perfectly mundane accomplishment with the proper gear. But in her flimsy cotton tank top and grass-stained running shorts, this woman did not have the equipment to do what she was currently doing.

  Cahill tossed a muddled glance at Melissa. “I fig you never saw anything like this in Europe.”

  “No, sir. Nothing even close.”

  While Hannah’s speedy feat was enough to rattle all investigators, her sister’s angry hands truly shook their world.

  Thirty-two more seconds of playback passed before Amanda emerged from the van. Though the ghosts were soundless, the lip-reader on the team relayed the tense words exchanged between the redhead and the two local policemen. A short teenage girl suddenly burst through the ghosted rear doors. One of the officers fired his gun in surprise. Then things got weird.

  Now all the cops and Deps on scene stared in muted wonder at the frozen image of Amanda’s tempic outburst. The technician paused playback just as the policemen were slammed down to the pavement by her shimmering white hands, each one the size of a coffee table.

  Melissa walked a slow, shambling circle around Amanda, straining her mind to find a sensible explanation. To accept this sight at face value involved pushing her skeptical boundaries five yards away from reason, toward the land of aliens and vampires.

  She made several notes in her handtop before rejoining Cahill at the edge of the ghost field.

  “So what are you thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking the Bureau may owe Wingo an apology, sir.”

  Cahill chuckled. Alexander Wingo was a dark legend among the Deps. He’d been a rising star at DP-1, known all throughout the Bureau for his deductive brilliance and flamboyant eccentricities. Thirty-six years ago, a perplexing homicide investigation took him into strange territory, and he became obsessed with a secret society of time-bending superpeople he dubbed the Gothams.

  Wingo soon quit the Bureau to become a full-time crusader. His best-selling book, Children of the Halo, inspired a generation of rumors, myths, and hoaxes. To this day, the Gothams remained a favored topic among the crackpot fringe.

  “Let’s table the crazy stuff for a moment,” said Cahill. “What do you make of the people?”

  “They’re all young and frightened. Given the state of the van, as we
ll as their injuries, it’s clear they engaged in battle before the police discovered them. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find more casualties in their wake.”

  “Motley assortment here. Four adults and two teens. I’d guess they were all kin if it wasn’t for the chinny. Where do you think he fits in all this?”

  Melissa studied Theo’s ghost. “They wouldn’t have left him near the revolver if they didn’t trust him. Whoever he is, he’s one of them. He’s not Chinese, by the way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The tattoo on his left wrist is Baybayin. It’s an old writing script of the Philippines, pre–Spanish colonialization.”

  Melissa had been on Cahill’s staff for twenty-two months now. In her early days, he feared she was hopelessly out of her element, a fish in the desert. Now he wished he could clone a whole team of her.

  “If you want to embarrass me further, you can tell me what the ink says.”

  “It’s been years since I studied the language,” Melissa confessed. “Best I can figure, it says rama. Or possibly kama.”

  “Kama?”

  It wasn’t until she said it out loud that Melissa fit the pieces together. “Karma, sir.”

  For the hundredth time, Cahill locked his gaze on Amanda and her great tempic arms.

  “I get the sense that none of these people are out hunting for victims. They only attack when cornered. I suppose I should find some comfort in that. At the moment, I just want to break out the wet card and drink myself silly.”

  “Understandable, sir. I imagine you’ll be postponing your sunset now.”

  “Why in worlds would you think that?”

  Melissa laughed. “Are you joking? A case like this?”

  Andy Cahill was set to retire in three weeks. He’d been a Dep for over forty years, since the days before tempis and aeris, juving and shifting. Like the Silvers, he’d been born into a world where time only moved in one speed and direction. Cahill had adjusted to the new reality better than most of his generation.

  But now it seemed the game had changed again, and this time he wasn’t ready to follow. He was old, he was tired, and he had Melissa now. She was sharper than anyone he’d ever worked with. She had decades left to her.

  “Darling, the minute I get back to the office, I’m making you the lead on this case.”

  “Sir, I’m not at a level to—”

  “You will be. I’m putting in those papers too. You’re ready for this. Trust me.”

  “All respect, sir, it’s not my readiness that concerns me. The directors—”

  “I’ll handle the idiots above me. You’ll have to handle the idiots below. A lot of them won’t like the fact that you’re cutting in line. And others . . . well, I don’t have to tell you why they’ll have problems. You’ll just have to earn their trust or push them out of the way.”

  Cahill held her arm, then jerked his head at Amanda’s ghost.

  “Just promise me you’ll find these people. Whoever they are, they’re scared, they’re reckless, and they’re powerful. You track them down. You haul them in. And for the ones who hurt those troopers, you make damn sure to give them their due karma.”

  The chief interrupted them with updates. His men had just discovered the original van in question, abandoned twelve miles away at the edge of a national forest. Additionally, the registered owner of the vehicle—one Martin Salgado—had been located in Terra Vista. He and his son were found hunched forward in the front seat of a drifting aerocruiser. Cause of death was currently unknown.

  Having two fresh new avenues to explore, two dotted lines to the dangerous oddities, Melissa Masaad took a heavy breath, then plotted her next several moves.

  SEVENTEEN

  For those traveling east, Ramona was the last pocket of suburbia in San Diego County. The town was home to fifty thousand people, twice the population of the Ramona that had existed on the Silvers’ world. In the wake of the Cataclysm, millions of East Coast emigrants made a cold rush on California, crowding every city, burg, and hamlet until the state cracked in half. By 1940—when Ramona, CA, became Ramona, CS—the local headcount had tripled and the town had bulged a half mile in every direction.

  Theo groaned like an old man as he hunkered down on a wooden park bench. He’d spent the last four hours trekking through the margins of civilization, all the ranches and branches and gulches of South California. He wanted nothing more than to take a deep nap, but he knew from experience that cops didn’t take kindly to rumpled dozers. The last thing the group needed was more police attention.

  At 11:30 on a Monday morning, the playground park was only minimally occupied by human life—two mothers, three toddlers, and four weary Silvers. A string of single-level storefronts lined the street across from Theo, brandishing offers both familiar and strange. An auto supply shop professed to be the number one place for custom liftplates and swore that none of their parts were tooped. A spa clinic advertised a special on Circadian Adjustment Therapy, inviting all to Extend Your Day the Natural Way. A business called Farsight Professional Augury peddled fortune-telling services with the elegant veneer of a bank. A fancy sign boasted that their staff had a prediction accuracy rating of 68%.* Theo was too far away to read the asterisk’s fine print.

  He rested his face in his palms, dreading all the new headaches ahead of him. He was used to wandering cashless through California, but never sober, and always alone. He wondered if he’d be better off without the group, and vice versa. He didn’t know them very well (and vice versa). Besides, what did he bring to the table? He wasn’t all that resourceful, and he didn’t sport an eerie talent like each of them did. Of course, after witnessing Amanda’s tempic blowup, Theo didn’t feel too bad about being left off the weirdness wagon.

  A three-year-old girl in a little pink romper wandered away from the playground and studied Theo from a curious distance. It took a few moments for him to notice her.

  “Uh . . .”

  Theo scanned the park behind him. The two mothers on scene remained rooted at the swing set, hopelessly distracted by the sight of a shirtless David.

  He shined the girl an awkward smile. “Hi.”

  She shyly bit her fingers. On seeing Theo’s bloody arm bandage, her half grin melted away.

  “It’s just a scratch,” he assured her. “A little owie. Listen, you should probably—”

  One of the mothers, a chubby woman not much older than Theo himself, hurriedly scooped the girl into her arms. She shot Theo a glare of nervous judgment, as if he were holding a fishing rod with candy on the hook.

  With a jaded sigh, Theo turned his gaze back to the augury service. He wondered if people were all that friendly here in Altamerica.

  Hannah rested in the comforting shade of a sugar pine tree, her mind even more exhausted than her legs. All throughout her trek, her thoughts had run circles around her. I wish I knew what Azral was wow I bet every cop in the state is looking for Christ I really broke their fingers when damn we’re all gonna starve if Amanda can’t Jesus what did she do to those policemen?

  By the time she’d reached Ramona, she couldn’t conjure anything more than a few impure notions. David stood bare-chested against a nearby elm tree, staring off into the distance like a high-fashion model. For a teenage genius who didn’t eat a lot of protein, he sported a surprising amount of muscle tone. The skin on his chest was hairless and glistening. To the women of the park, he was the thing to look at. He wasn’t just the group’s David anymore. He was Michelangelo’s.

  “What are you thinking about?” Hannah asked him.

  He continued to gaze at an empty patch of grass as he absently tapped his wristwatch.

  “David?”

  He shook his head and blinked at Hannah. “I’m sorry?”

  “Just checking up on you. You look so lost.”

  “Actually, I was scanning the local pa
st in my head. I can’t help myself. Everywhere I go now, I nose through history like a curious dog.”

  “Yeah? See anything interesting?”

  “Oh yes. Every year, around October, they host a candlelight vigil in this park. Everyone wears white robes and masks, and no one says a word. It’s quite eerie. There was also a gruesome murder here about five years ago. Some poor woman got stabbed in the neck.”

  “Ewww. God. Why would you even look at that?”

  “Guess I’m just in a grim mood.” He grew a sheepish smile. “Though I admit I keep coming back to a sunbather who was here last weekend. She’s . . . quite nice to look at.”

  Hannah was sure the girl would feel the same about him.

  “You probably think that’s creepy,” he said. “It is creepy. I should stop.”

  “Sweetie, you do whatever makes you feel good.”

  Mia sat alone at a nearby picnic table, forcing her anxious gaze at her journal. For the fifth time in four minutes, she lost the fight against her teenage id and drank David in. In the corner of her vision, she caught Hannah smirking at her. Mia suddenly grew hot with humiliation and anger until she took a second glance and saw that the actress wasn’t mocking her at all. Merely empathizing.

  Mia reeled with guilt. She kept misjudging Hannah, even after everything that happened today. While Mia had to be rescued from her attacker in Terra Vista, Hannah saved herself. While Mia couldn’t handle her one simple job of keeping Amanda in the van, Hannah did everything that was asked of her. She took on armed policemen with just a nightstick and set her friends free.

  Too tired to find the right words, Mia shined Hannah a look of warm regard, and then quietly resolved to think nicer of her in the future.

  The future . . .

  She focused on her journal again, scanning all the hints and warnings of her elder selves. If the notes were right, then Mia was due to visit the rebuilt New York (“So beautiful, it brings me to tears”) and ride a flying taxi (“Holy @$#%!”). She was supposed to meet a man named Peter, who was either great or untrustworthy, depending on which of the two contrasting notes she chose to believe. And of course the prophecy remained that Hannah would one day save her life. Mia no longer had trouble envisioning that scenario.