Collateral Damage

by Steve Beaulieu

  “Similar?” Bryon asked. He was confused, but somehow transfixed.

  “You see, Mr. Stonemill, I am not the person you see before you. I’m just renting the space for a bit. I’m from the future. I have an ability which allows me to go back in time. Sorta. I can send my consciousness back and I can take over people’s bodies. It can be useful, but usually ends up just being a big pain in the ass.”

  Bryon realized after a moment his mouth had been hanging open. How long had he been stricken dumb? He wasn’t sure, but he was sure that he was about done with this conversation. He began to push his chair back.

  “Stop.”

  Bryon kept moving.

  “Please.”

  The voice cracked a hair. Bryon paused. He looked down at Not-Jimmy—the man who claimed he wasn’t a man. On the face of the waiter, Bryon saw pain. Desperation. A need for something. The voice in Bryon’s head shouted for him to run, but the feeling in his heart stopped him, giving him just enough compassion to listen to this waiter. To listen to Kina.

  He sat back down.

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t serious,” Kina said. “If we didn’t need you.”

  “Who’s we? What is going on?”

  Kina sighed. It seemed to Bryon as if she had the weight of a thousand worlds weighing her down.

  “We—I guess you could say we’re the good guys. I don’t know, The Resistance, The Last Hope, The Remembered. We have many names—more than even I know. What is going on is what will happen. The downfall of humanity as we know it, how you know it at least. I’ve known this world since birth. If I could change it all, I would. I’m not here to prevent anything. Our scientists have told us we can’t affect change like that. But I can change our present.”

  Bryon felt as if he was being told a story out of order. Somehow he’d slept through the introduction and was now in the middle of the tale, but felt as if he couldn’t go back to cover what he’d missed. His mind tried to piece together what had been said.

  “Okay. Let me catch up a bit here. Just nod or shake your head. Your name is Kina.”

  A nod.

  “You’re from the future.”

  A nod.

  “Somehow I’m important to you.”

  A double nod.

  “And no one else can do what I can.”

  With a grave expression, Kina nodded with Jimmy’s head.

  “So, if you need to convince me to do something, why don’t you just pop into my head? Why did you have to be Jimmy? Or the pool guy? Or any of these others?” Bryon waved his arm around.

  Kina held Jimmy’s hand up, showing two fingers. “Two reasons. One: Jimmy won’t know I’ve even been here. I don’t have any influence on the people I inhabit. In and out without the person knowing their bodies were being rented.”

  Bryon considered what she said. It made sense. All the others, from the pool guy to the others in the restaurant, were clueless when Kina left them. “And the second reason?”

  Kina grinned.

  “It doesn’t work on other people with abilities.”

  • • •

  Bryon walked out. He’d square up with Lorenzo later, so he wasn’t worried about that. Instead, he worried about something quickly spiraling out of his control.

  Kina, or Not-Jimmy, or maybe even Jimmy at this point, didn’t follow. Didn’t even shout at his retreating form. Bryon’s car was in the parking garage a few blocks away, so he had some time to ponder things before he reached it. The sun was out and the early afternoon temperature brought residents and tourists both out to the shops and eateries in South Florida. Bryon pushed past dozens of bodies as he spied the tall concrete garage behind the shorter storefronts.

  A hand reached over and brushed his shoulder.

  “Mr. Stonemill…”

  He kept walking. Another hand. Another voice.

  “Please. Stop walking.”

  His feet didn’t pause. Not for one second.

  “Bryon, we need you.”

  He felt as if the whole world was reaching out to him, pleading with him. He knew it wasn’t true, but it felt like it. It was simply one person at a time. As quick as Kina could shift her consciousness from one person to another, he was petitioned for his help. He dare not stop. He didn’t want to help. He couldn’t.

  Suddenly, as if it was just placed right in front of him, the garage loomed—a massive grey behemoth that would be Bryon’s safety. His home plate, as it were.

  He found his car, clicked the key fob, and reached for the door. He hadn’t noticed the woman until it was too late. She slid in between him and the car’s driver side door.

  She was beautiful, her hair a mess of black curls and her eyes a blazing emerald, but Bryon knew she wasn’t who she looked like. It was Kina. Somehow she’d tracked him. Found him in the middle of this solid garage.

  “Kina.” Bryon said it as a statement. Not a question.

  “Yes, Mr. Stonemill.”

  His shoulders drooped and he stepped back. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  She leaned against the car. Again, her actions seemed natural for her, but unnatural for the body she inhabited. As she leaned, her posture still spoke volumes. She was guarded, hesitant.

  “As I said before, we need you. The war is getting out of hand. We need your skills. Your talents.”

  Bryon peered around the garage, slightly unnerved by the conversation. He’d never revealed his “talents” before. If this was an elaborate ruse, someone knew his most closely guarded secret.

  “So you...your talent is time travel right? You must be pretty good to be in all those people on the sidewalk. Probably...what...over a dozen in the last ten minutes between the restaurant and here?”

  “At one moment or another, I’ve been in the heads of twenty-seven individuals. But you overestimate my abilities. Since we talked in the restaurant, it has been mere minutes for you. For me, it has been nearly five months.”

  “Five months?” Bryon spat.

  “You know just as well as I do that our abilities have limitations. For me, I cannot just jump from person to person, no matter how it might seem to you. I can travel back in time, but it comes at a cost. To do what you’ve seen me do, I fall into a vegetative state for a day afterward and then I have to recalibrate my temporal senses, so to speak.”

  Bryon felt himself nodding before he could stop himself. He frowned, unsure of how to proceed. He sighed.

  “Fine. Tell me about this war. Tell me why you need me,” Bryon said. He saw the look on her face as he spoke and held up a hand. “No guarantees, but tell me anyway.”

  “The war has been going on for my whole life. No one remembers why it happened, just that it did. We’re still trying to figure it out. Maybe if we can figure out how it started, we can figure out how to end it.”

  Bryon walked to the wall of the garage and sat on a concrete half-pillar. “Go on.”

  “Some might not even call it a war. If you were to see the world we live in, you might even call it a ‘police issue,’” she said. “There aren’t many of us. A couple dozen. Maybe a few more. We operate in cells so I’m never quite sure how many of us are left, but we’re all like me. We all have abilities. We’re all like you.”

  Bryon didn’t reply. He wanted to see what she knew without him outing himself.

  “Because of my abilities, I was tasked with finding people who can help us. People from the past that we can bring forward.”

  “There are others?” Bryon asked, suddenly intrigued.

  She hesitated. “Well...there will be. You’re the first.”

  He frowned again. He heard a tire squeal and looked away to see a Jeep snake its way through the multi-story structure.

  “What do you know about me? You’ve found me, but I’ve never said anything to anyone about any talents or abilities. What do you think you know?”

  She beamed. “Geoff wasn’t sure, but I told him I knew you had abilities. I knew you’d be perfect. It was your stats. T
he history of the war is completely locked down by the government, but no one ever cares about who looks at baseball statistics. We’ve watched highlights from your career. I know your career batting average by heart. Before we’d ever met a few months ago, I knew you better than I knew my own mother.”

  “And…” Bryon prompted.

  “And you are telepathic. Mildly maybe, but telepathic. All the talent in the world couldn’t have prepared you for Grickle’s curve in the bottom of the eighth inning. And stealing home in the ’19 All-Star game? And your last contract where you were able to single-handedly wrestle more money out of General Manager Don Pullman than anyone ever thought possible?”

  He held up his hand. “Okay.”

  Bryon took a deep breath. They found out. Damn. He had no idea how they’d figured it out, but they had. He’d never told anyone...not really. When he was eight he complained to his mom about things other kids were saying about him. She took him to a psychologist for a few sessions until he figured out what was happening. He played the part and was “cured” within three months. Never again did he mention his gift; he hadn’t wanted it to be a curse.

  He realized after a few moments he’d never let out the breath he’d drawn in. He exhaled slowly and turned his eyes back to Kina.

  “You’re right.”

  Her eyes lit up and she screamed. It was just a second or so until she clapped a hand over her mouth, but Bryon could still see the grin behind her fingers. A few seconds later, she pulled her arm down. “I’m sorry. I...I thought you would have abilities, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. I...I’m just happy to meet you, Mr. Stonemill.”

  He gave a curt nod. “You can call me Bryon.”

  He paused. She was looking at him as if he was Santa Claus caught in the fireplace on Christmas morning. “And you were right about me. I’ve known it since I was a child. I didn’t know what I could do with it, but I was a sports nut as a kid, so all my efforts went into exploiting it on the field or court. Football doesn’t lend itself as easily and basketball took more talent than what I had. Baseball worked and the contracts were great without a salary cap in the Majors. So that’s what I did. I played baseball and got good—really good. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I could read the pitcher’s mind right as he was winding up.”

  He hesitated. While he’d never said the words out loud, it felt good. A relief to get the burden of his abilities off his shoulders.

  “So why’d you retire? You could have kept playing forever,” Kina noted.

  He’d thought the same thing thousands of times over the years. When he was twenty years old and just starting out in pro ball, he thought he might quit when he was fifty. Or sixty. His power might eventually fade, but he could still put a ball in play until he died if he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t. After a decade, he began to get bored, but pushed past it to have record-breaking seasons in his 30’s. Eventually though, Bryon felt he’d mastered all he could in pro baseball and called it a career. All he had left was waiting for the inevitable call from Cooperstown and a Hall of Fame induction speech.

  “I was bored. There was no challenge anymore. It was the same thing day in and day out. I was good at it...but…”

  “But you didn’t love it. Not like you used to,” Kina finished.

  Bryon nodded.

  “And now?” she probed.

  “Retirement. I wake up, go swimming, eat fine meals, and watch all the movies I missed out on the last sixteen years.”

  “All alone.”

  She was right. Of course. He’d never gotten attached. There had been women, of course, but he always kept them at arm’s length...more to protect himself and his secrets than anything else. Besides, reading minds sucks when all the women only want to be with you for your money.

  She pounced at the expression on his face.

  “If you’re out of challenges, come with me. Come to the future. We need you. You can turn the tide of the war and save us all.”

  He looked at her. His mind was swirling with a mess of questions. He didn’t know what to ask, but found his mind moving in a direction he didn’t expect.

  “I’m in.”

  • • •

  The look on Kina’s face was priceless. What was swirling through her own head, Bryon didn’t know—mostly because for a few seconds, the look in her eyes shifted, her pupils dilated and changed. He could now sense the woman’s thoughts. Ellen was her name. The woman standing before him wasn’t Kina. Not anymore.

  The woman blinked a few times as her own mind regained control. Bryon figured it might be best to stay still, so when she finally fixed her own eyes on him, he was still perched on the concrete pillar he’d found minutes earlier.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  At least she wasn’t a baseball groupie, Bryon thought to himself. He assured Ellen that she’d appeared to have had an episode of some type and he was just waiting by her side. He knew based on her memories that she’d had a few unexplained seizures as a child. She squinted at him a few times, checked and smoothed out her skirt and then took off at a fast walk before he could say, ‘boo.’

  As for Kina, Bryon had absolutely no idea what had happened. Had something happened in the future? Had the government closed in on her position? Had she been killed mid-transmission? He’d only talked to her for perhaps half an hour, but he was suddenly invested in someone else. Someone else who knew his secret.

  So he waited. He watched dozens of vehicles come and go, yet he waited. It was mid-afternoon before he went home, yet he still had a feeling he couldn’t shake. Something was imminent, ready to happen at any moment, but what would it be? How would it happen? Or would it even happen at all? While he’d agreed to go with her, Kina had never spelled out how it would happen. She’d never indicated how exactly he was supposed to go with her to the future. Was he simply to wait, and age at his house until the appointed time? Would someone whisk him away in the middle of the night to some time unknown to him?

  It was as if something was behind him ready to strike at a moment’s notice. A snake lying in the grass.

  Yet nothing happened. Kina vanished. He plodded through the next few days, something gnawing at his gut. Nothing.

  A week. Nothing. Two weeks. Nothing. After most of a month went by, Bryon was almost convinced he’d imagined the whole thing. There was no Kina. There was no futuristic war for the survival of people with abilities. There was nothing.

  Nothing…

  Until three months, to the day, after he’d last seen Kina.

  • • •

  The playoffs were in full swing, and the Mariners had a first-round tilt against the Royals. As the premier player for Seattle over the last two decades, Bryon Stonemill was called on to be the face of the team in pre-game interviews and post-game celebrations for the national networks. For the better part of two hours, he talked to the TV analysts about how the Seattle lineup compared to the Kansas City pitching and vice versa. He brought his signature bat with him to showcase how the hitters ought to position themselves in the batter’s box. He talked about it all, yet he left out what made him successful. He always did. It was his advantage, and no one else’s.

  He walked out of the makeshift studio in the bowels of the stadium, clutching his bat and wishing he could scrape the layers of foundation off his cheeks. Best to leave it on in case he needed to be on camera again though.

  “Mr. Stonemill?”

  The voice was quiet. He almost missed it, even though the massive hallway was dim and quiet. He turned, sure that a TV producer had been sent to bring him back in for some voiceover work or commercial. He didn’t see anyone at first, so almost resumed his walk, but a slight figure emerged from behind a chair cart. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, dark hair, and a figure that suggested she’d missed more than a few meals in her lifetime. Bryon had been to countless baseball games over his life, but this woman didn’t fit in. The more he looked at her, it seemed to him that she would have been
out of place anywhere.

  Then he reached out with his mind. His telepathy. What he found jerked him back so hard, he stumbled and nearly fell over.

  It was Kina. Not Kina in another person’s skin, but literally Kina. In person.

  “Kina?”

  She half-smiled, looking both relieved and exhausted.

  “It’s so nice to see you...to finally meet you, Bryon,” she said. She stepped closer by a couple feet and paused. As she did, Bryon felt strange. Was this the moment? Was this the time he would leave his comfortable, but placid life and go into some strange unknown future?

  Long ago, he’d learned to be careful with his power, to get what he needed from someone and get out. Balls and strikes were one thing, but Bryon found that his relationships worked better if there was a certain amount of mystery. Typically, Bryon didn’t probe a person any further than necessary, but his curiosity got the better of him here. Kina was unknown, not just to him, but to the early twenty-first century. She was a girl out of time. He couldn’t help but be fascinated.

  But something in her mind made him question everything. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was off.

  “What’s going on, Kina? Why here? Why now?”

  She pursed her lips. Her eyes darted around the empty hallway, the din of a bustling stadium above their heads.

  “Things have...changed.”

  Bryon glanced around, nervously. He’d been waiting for this moment for three months, but something was wrong. “What do you mean? Is it related to our last conversation? When you got cut off?”

  “No...I...kind of.”

  From the fragments of her mind, Bryon was beginning to piece together the mystery in front of him, but he needed to hear her voice as well. He needed her to say it, so he took a name from her scattered thoughts.

  “Who is Remington?”

  She stopped her advance toward him, her eyes wide. “How do you know that name?”

  “You came to me for a reason, Kina. You came for my abilities. I couldn’t sense your thoughts before, but now that you’re here…”

  She closed her eyes briefly as if she couldn't believe her own stupidity. She spoke slowly, afraid of the words. “Remington is my boss. He’s the leader of The Remembered. When I was talking to you before, he figured it out. He discovered the moment the war really began. He yanked me out of my temporal visit, but I figured out how to come in person, so here I am.”