Death in Time

by Robyn Nyx

  “Advanced DNA engineering. It’s nothing new, Landry. You know I’ve been working on it for years now.”

  Landry recognized the sadness in her mom’s voice. She wanted to help so many more people than she already had. Jenkin moved closer to Landry’s mom and draped her arm over her shoulder. She pulled her in as if to comfort her.

  “We were hitting brick walls in terms of fixing diseases, but Elena is closer than she’s ever been. She’s almost ready for test subjects. It’s just never fast enough, is it, Elena?”

  Priscilla. Landry hadn’t thought about the girls since she’d regained consciousness after the regeneration process. She hadn’t called them to check in. Would Jade have told her if Priscilla’s situation had worsened? Jesus, one thing at a time. “You’ll just have to use the old-fashioned methods then.” Sub-consciously, Landry slipped her hand beneath her T-shirt to stroke where there should be scars from her time with Simson. Thankfully, all she felt was smooth skin.

  “Are you volunteering?” Jenkin asked.

  “God, no. That’s not my area of expertise.” She’d never had any affection for interrogation. “I’ll leave you to isolate Dudley and find Kondo. The faster you move on this, the better. I don’t want to return to Chicago and not be sure that I can get back.”

  “You’re getting ahead of us, Donovan. You know the human body is too fragile to jump again for at least three weeks, even yours.”

  Landry’s mom looked serious. “And besides that, maybe it shouldn’t be you who goes back.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I have to go back. I have to finish the mission and bring Muniz back…” Landry paused. And Delaney? “What happens to Delaney and Simson?” And Jackson? I need to find out where she ended up.

  “We have to convene the board, Landry. All the possibilities have to be considered. Leaving them in 2055 doesn’t appear to have made any significant ripples in the time continuum.”

  Ripples? “You want me to kill them?” Fuck.

  Jenkin shook her head. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Donovan. Like Elena said, we have to look at everything we know and consider everything we don’t know. Leave that to us while you recuperate for a few weeks. There’s no hurry to get back—Muniz, Delaney, Simson—they’re not going anywhere.”

  Landry looked to Jenkin. “You have to promise me I’ll be the one to lead the mission.” If I have to beg, I will.

  “Donovan, you know how this works. Like Elena said, the board will meet and decide the way forward…I’ll make it clear you want to go back. You’re sure you want to?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything. I have to go back.” I need to fix this.

  Chapter Six

  July 4, 2055—Chicago

  Delaney squeezed her eyes shut tight and waited for a moment. It can’t be. When she opened them, she expected Landry to be back where she’d left her. Instead, the chain from which she’d hung swung gently in the evening breeze coming through the open window. The ropes that had bound her were in sad little strips on the floor, taunting proof of a bewildering betrayal. Sledge had seemed so genuine. What was her weak spot? What had Landry offered her, coaxed, or persuaded her with? Delaney was certain she’d secured Sledge’s allegiance with promises of riches beyond anything she could imagine. She’d seemed ambitious and eager to make a difference, like she could be a more stable asset than Simson.

  “What the actual fuck?”

  Simson’s voice shattered Delaney’s solitary musing. This changes everything.

  “Aw, shit.” Miller pushed past Muniz, and he stumbled into the table.

  “I don’t understand. What is this?” Muniz looked to Delaney for an explanation. “Where’s the other agent? What’s all that blood? What’s happening?”

  Delaney placed her hand on his shoulder. “Just relax for a moment while we figure this out. I’ll explain everything.”

  Muniz turned as if to leave, but Miller and Walker blocked his path. Delaney pulled him farther into the room and pushed him down onto a chair. “Please…take a seat.” Delaney nodded to Simson, and she positioned herself behind Muniz, placing her hand on his shoulder to keep him in position. Delaney looked at Miller and Walker. “This is probably going to be the part when you pick up your shit and leave.” There could be no pretense. They were in it for the money and nothing else. Landry was gone, and with her any chance of securing the PRU. At least, not until she came back to complete the mission. Delaney was sure she’d be coming back for her.

  “No Donovan, no money?”

  Delaney tilted her head. “That’s one way to put it, Miller.” Completely fucked is another.

  “I guess we’ll never know if you were all crazy motherfuckers then,” Miller said, as she pulled one of Delaney’s phones from her pocket.

  She tossed it to Simson, and Walker did the same.

  “Not unless you stick around,” Delaney replied. There was no chance in hell they were going for that. They were hired guns looking for a big paycheck. She hadn’t managed to secure their loyalty beyond their greed for green.

  They smiled and shook their heads in unison. “As fun as this has been—and playing with Donovan was great fun—we were promised something it looks like you can’t deliver on. You paid for three days, and your three days are up. No more money means no more mercs. The Cagle Gang doesn’t tend to extend credit. You can ask, but refusal tends to come in the form of chopping off an extremity or two.”

  Delaney’s smile hid the snarl that surfaced in response to Walker’s obvious glee in torturing Landry. “Then we’ll manage on our own.”

  Walker motioned with a casual salute, and they headed out of the building. The sound of their heavy-heeled boots echoed along the corridor, and Delaney didn’t speak again until they’d faded completely. She turned to Muniz. “Do you have your USB stick?” There was no time to dwell on Landry’s current absence. A new plan was necessary.

  “I’d like an explanation. The other woman told me she worked for the FBI. She knew I work for Jay Jenkin. Who are you and who were they?”

  Delaney contemplated her response for a moment before she answered. The last thing they needed was for Muniz to be a problem. It’d be easier if he didn’t realize what she and Simmons were really up to. “We work for Jenkin and Pulsus, as does the other woman, Donovan. She’s been reassigned after losing you to Kelly. We had to employ those two as backup.” Simson nodded as if she appreciated the ruse Delaney was building. “What did she tell you?”

  Muniz laughed, but he sounded anxious. His clenching and unclenching hands indicated he was pretty terrified with the situation. What would Landry do? She had to put him at ease, get him on board, and diminish his discomfort. Muniz had been bundled into a car by a supposed FBI agent, had a car crash, and been kidnapped by a serial killer. He was already a paranoid, nervous wreck of a man, so the past few hours must’ve pushed him to the breaking point. If Delaney didn’t handle this right, he could go into meltdown and be no good to anyone.

  Delaney pulled up a chair and sat opposite him. “I’m sorry to have to press you, Mr. Muniz. Would you like some water? Or maybe something stronger? You must be in shock.”

  He nodded, wringing his hands together and repeatedly pressing his thumb into the palm of his hand like it was a pressure point that might calm him down. “Water. Water, please.”

  Delaney inclined her head to Simson, and she left the room to fulfill his request.

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through today, Lyman. Is it okay to call you Lyman?”

  He nodded but said nothing.

  “Could you tell me what Donovan said to you before Kelly crashed into her car?”

  “She said she worked for Jenkin, and that she’d sent her here. She said that my life and work depended on getting in the car with her.” He shrugged. “That’s all she said. I suppose she was too busy trying to get me out of the city before that crazy woman could attack me…What I don’t understand is how you knew my life was in danger.�
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  Simson returned with a bottle of water, and Muniz held it to his forehead before opening it and drinking almost half.

  “Do you know what Jenkin is working on?” Muniz nodded again and continued to sip at the water. “Do you believe she’ll ever accomplish time travel?”

  He nodded, more vigorously this time. “If anyone can, it’s Jenkin. She has a mind that comes along once or twice in a generation at most. It’s an honor to work for her.”

  Delaney smiled. “You wouldn’t find it hard to comprehend that we might be from a future where Jenkin has invented time travel then?”

  His brow furrowed, and he placed the empty bottle on the table beside Landry’s bag. Delaney wondered what she’d left behind and if any of it still smelled of her. What the fuck? She rolled her head and the sound of her neck muscles cracking made Muniz grimace. Get out of my head.

  “You’re from the future?”

  “We are.”

  “And you were sent to protect me?”

  “That’s right. We need to get you to Jenkin. You’ve been safe roaming the country to this point, but now you’re not.”

  Muniz began to press his thumb into his palm again, and Delaney wanted to grab his hands to stop him. The sound of his fingers rubbing hard over the bones of his hand grated, and Delaney clenched her jaw to contain her irritation. She was trying hard to concentrate on her next moves and ignore the fact that she’d lost Landry.

  “You knew Nelida was going to kill me, and Jenkin sent you back to stop it?”

  “Yes.”

  Delaney relaxed a little when Muniz stopped twisting his hands. He grinned widely, like a geek on Christmas day unwrapping a chemistry set. He stood, and his chair fell back with the force. Delaney waved off Simson’s move to contain him.

  “She did it!” He almost skipped across the floor. “Oh my goodness. With time travel and my advancements in fuel technology, we could save the world from extinction. We could save it from the plague of human nature.” He moved to the window and took in deep breaths of the warm summer air.

  Simson stepped closer and offered Delaney a bottle of Jack. “You have a plan?” She kept her volume low.

  Delaney took a swig and savored the burn as it traveled down her throat and into her stomach. She’d need more of that to wash away the disappointment of not killing Nelida Staton. And even more to cleanse her mind of the inexplicable part of her that seemed to be glad Landry had escaped. “More or less.”

  “And Donovan?”

  “She’s long gone. But the 2076 she lands in depends on what we do in the next twenty years.”

  Simson screwed up her face, clearly not understanding the science. “Won’t she just be coming back to stop us?”

  “She can only do that if we don’t succeed with our new plan.” Delaney picked up some discarded bolts and a bottle of used oil. She poured a horizontal line of it onto the table and added another at a forty-five-degree angle from the end of the original one. “Where the oil meets is us right now in 2055.” She placed a bolt in the dark, thick liquid and tried not to think about its resemblance to the tar inside her head. It was threatening to engulf her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it other than press on. “The end of the horizontal line is the 2076 we came from. We changed the future by saving Muniz and by us staying in it.” She laid another bolt at the open end of the second line. “That’s the 2076 we created by doing that, and that’s the version of 2076 Donovan has jumped forward to.”

  Simson traced her finger through the grease. “So even though Donovan is now in the new 2076, we still have the power to affect what she jumps to?”

  “You got it. Don’t you remember that part of the induction?”

  Simson scoffed and wiped her hand on Landry’s bag beside Delaney’s crude depiction of the time continuum.

  “Jesus, Delaney, that was decades ago. Science isn’t my strong suit. But doesn’t that all mean that no matter what we do, Donovan can come back to try to change it all, and make it all disappear?”

  Delaney nodded. “If we haven’t got to where we need to, then nothing we do will matter. We could die in a decade in a ball of fire car crash, but Donovan might show up with four more operatives in five seconds and change our future.” Delaney shoved Simson. “This is a head-fuck of the highest order. You shouldn’t waste your energy thinking about it. Concentrate on making sure my plan—”

  “What year? What year are you from?”

  Muniz had been so quiet, Delaney had almost forgotten he was still with them. His boyish excitement was a stark contrast to the quiet man they’d rescued earlier. His resilience was impressive and unexpected: they’d found him four-pointed and naked. Delaney thought he might take a little more time to recover.

  “We’re from 2076. We’ve been running missions for three years now, but we only received more detailed information about your demise six months ago.”

  “And Elena? Is Jay still working with Elena?”

  Too many fucking questions. “Lyman, you need to rest after what you’ve just been through. Let’s get you settled for some sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow. We can talk on the road.”

  Simson raised her eyebrows with an unspoken question. Delaney would tell her the plan later. Right now, she needed to clear her head with the rest of the bottle in her hand. If she thought too much about what Landry’s escape could actually mean for her and for Ilsa, she might be tempted to sit on this filthy floor for the next twenty years and wait for her new fate.

  Chapter Seven

  On the way back to the factory, Brooke stopped by her temporary storage locker for some supplies. She pulled one of her pre-packed bags from the wall that contained five days’ worth of clothes. She knelt at the safe bolted to the far corner of the unit, punched her code in, and took out her wallet. Brooke flipped her ID open and pulled out the small color photo behind her credentials. The smiling faces of her mom, dad, and sister looked as fresh as the day she’d taken the picture. You would’ve been proud today, Dad. She slipped it back into place. She’d missed them being undercover with the Cagle Gang. There hadn’t been many opportunities where she could get away to come here.

  Stop it. She didn’t have time. She stood and looked at the small armory fixed to the wall. Brooke liked order, even in a non-permanent space. Her stash wasn’t over-the-top. It was no high-tech, destroy-a-city, weapon-for-every-occasion collection. Neither the FBI’s nor her budget would stretch to that. She was a simple undercover operative who might need to get herself out of a sticky situation. She laughed as she unclipped the SIG P662. Time travelers and a serial killer—a sticky situation? “Understatement much?”

  Brooke shrugged her shoulder holster on and slid her gun into it. She scanned the ammunition and selected the hollow-point center-fire cartridges. She piled ten boxes into a backpack and looped a loaded double magazine pouch onto her belt. She took the only knife she owned, a folding Buck, and pushed it into her pocket. Generally, knives as a means of defense made her uncomfortable. The necessary proximity of a knife attack was the playground of psychopaths. But they were invaluable for rescue and escape. And Brooke needed to rescue the bio-guy, Muniz, from Delaney. If she managed to make him safe before Donovan returned, surely she would’ve earned her pass away from the present.

  She picked up the keys to her car and headed out. Brooke paused and grabbed her favorite leather jacket as a last-minute thought. It was extra protection somehow. Maybe it was because it was the last thing her parents had bought her before they died. And if she was going to end up in 2076, she didn’t want to be without her lucky jacket.

  * * *

  Brooke parked her car a few blocks from the factory and jogged the rest of the way. If she was spotted and had to run, she figured she was far lighter on her feet than any of them. She entered the building opposite and took up her surveillance station. She could see Muniz at the window and could hear Delaney and Simson talking. Through her binoculars, Muniz looked calm enough.
He certainly didn’t look like he was under any duress. Or at least he didn’t realize he was. He turned and walked away. The voices were relatively faint, but she could make out Delaney.

  “Let’s get you settled for some sleep. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow. We can talk on the road.”

  Damn it. She’d hoped to be back before Delaney discovered they were gone, and it looked like she’d missed the part where they’d talked about their plans. Where were they going tomorrow? She could hear them getting Muniz sorted into one of the smaller rooms that had previously been used as office space. It was hardly the luxury hotel accommodations he’d been used to, but it must’ve felt better than facing death with his serial killer girlfriend. Christ, what happened? She might never know. Delaney was a professional; she would’ve covered her tracks and disposed of the body. If Delaney had killed her, Diane Kelly would likely never be found.

  “You were about to tell me what your plan was, even though whatever we do might be a literal waste of time.”

  Brooke recognized Simson’s voice. She’d heard no one else and suspected Miller and Walker were already gone.

  “And what would you suggest? We wait here and do nothing until Donovan returns?”

  Delaney sounded on edge. Brooke hadn’t considered how she’d react to Donovan’s disappearance. It was Simson who seemed unhinged, not Delaney, but maybe between her attachment to Donovan and her plans going to hell, it’d be hard for her to stay together.

  “I guess not.”

  “So, shut the fuck up and listen.” Delaney. “We have to get to Jenkin and Elena.”

  Who the hell is Elena?

  “I don’t follow. Won’t you affect the future if you grab Donovan’s mom? Have I already had too much to drink?” Elena is Donovan’s mom? This is messed up.