Chapter 1 - Treason of Fate

Strangers at Your Funeral

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December 1, 2073

There were few things as distasteful as protesters at a funeral, at least as far as Vicente Guerrero was concerned. There was a time not too many years ago when every single one of the profanity-shrieking, placard-holding middle-aged losers surrounding his bus would have been billy-clubbed in the head and dragged off to jail. Or the hospital. A damn shame those days were over.

Sitting on a shuttle bus with a bunch of other civil servants wasn’t where he wanted to be this morning. But, like all the other attendees, he had no choice in the matter. When the world’s first time traveler dies just shy of her ninetieth birthday, the funeral must be a national spectacle. Even if it means conscripting federal employees to fill out the guest list.

You canceled my leave to make me go to a stranger’s funeral? he’d shouted into the phone at his boss.

Janet hadn’t appreciated his question and went blathering on about the “service” part of federal service.

Her own family won’t go to the funeral, why the hell should I? I’ve never worked with Warner. His tone was far too sharp and he knew he would pay for it when he got back in the office.

As it turned out, he paid for it right then and there. A formal reprimand for Christ’s sake!

He’d shut up at that point and just gotten in his car for the long ride to the shuttle stop. He had a custody hearing coming up and the last thing he needed was to give Dalia any ammunition to make him look unstable.

He’d had to wrestle to keep his blood pressure under control when he saw how many people were being herded onto the bus. He’d never liked crowds and liked forced small talk even less. Thankfully, the ride downtown was mercifully quiet. Everyone else on the bus had also been sent there under duress, so they all minded their own business, buried in their devices. Vicente had even gotten some reading done—a nice change of pace.

The funeral was equally tolerable. Several speakers got up and listed out the accomplishments of the deceased. Kathleen Mulligan had been the first person to travel through time and make it back… the first person to destroy one major world religion, and leave two others in shambles.

The speakers didn’t phrase it quite like that, of course. They said she “shone a light on centuries of lies” and “spoke truth to power.” A lot of canned slogans from the turn of the millennium. Basically, a bunch of hot air from people who liked being on camera.

Despite his forced attendance, he ended up cracking a smile or two. Some of the old people told genuinely funny anecdotes about Mulligan. She was a famously no-nonsense woman who got more blunt and acerbic as she aged. It was hard to believe you could talk back to your boss like she did and not be punished for it. But it was a different time, one that Vicente desperately wished he had been born into. In her day, if you got fired, you could just go find another job. It was like they grew on trees.

Not so anymore.

As the news predicted, none of Mulligan’s family members were at the funeral. The old broad was a widow twice over with only one child—a daughter who made it clear with her media silence that she wouldn’t attend. And her granddaughter had just made the news herself… for breaking temporal law. That left the twenty or so old-timers at the front of Union Station who had worked with Mulligan along with hundreds of federal employees, none of whom had actually met the dead woman.

What a sad way to end a long life.

When he’d boarded the bus after the service, he’d been hoping for a similarly peaceful trip back to the park-and-ride so he could go home. No such luck.

The protesters had arrived at some point during the service and pushed the barricades out of the way in one spot, making it hard for the bus to get out of the lot. As the bus crept inch by inch, trying to get to the exit, a loud bang from the other side of the bus jolted Vicente in his seat, along with the man next to him.

“Those idiots just threw a water bottle at the windows! How can they behave like this?” A young woman yelled, jumping to her feet and searching the faces of anyone who looked over forty years old. Typical.

Most of the passengers his own age and older averted their eyes, as if they were complicit in the unruly behavior outside.

When the indignant girl’s eyes settled on him, he didn’t look away. “Everything that’s wrong with the world,” Vicente said. “They blame her for. You’re too young to remember.”

“I remember just fine,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her blindingly white blouse. High collar, ruffled sleeves. Classic New Victorian fashion.

“You remember what? The assembly they had for you in elementary school?” another man grumbled, his badge declaring he worked for the EPA. “They have a right to protest. They have a right to be angry.”

“And we have the right to correct them,” the young woman said.

A single, unanimous huff of derisive laughter burst through the bus. Everyone over thirty-five, including Vicente, just couldn’t help it. The girl was like a caricature of the New Victorian generation. Rigid, obsessed with rules, decorum, and propriety. It was understandable given the chaos of their early childhood years. But still insufferable.

“I have the right to correct them,” Vicente said, standing up in his seat and pointing to his badge where the letters FBI were printed in bold blue. “And only then if they break the law. You don’t.” He looked meaningfully down at her badge, which had the sad green letters of the USDA. “But I think the local cops have it all in hand.”

As if in agreement with him, the bus lurched forward, freeing them from the unruly crowd and turning onto the main street.

The other bus occupants sighed in relief. But not little miss fancy pants.

“It’s not proper. No matter how angry they are… it’s not proper,” she seethed.

He nodded in acquiescence and sat down. She was right. It wasn’t proper to protest an old lady’s life or to celebrate her death. And the placards the sweaty, bald men held above their heads were objectively false: LEGACY OF HATE, REST IN HELL, and oddly enough, MILLENNIALS RUINED THE WORLD. It was a small bunch, given how important Kathleen Mulligan had been. But they were loud. And like the young USDA girl had observed, they were really, really angry.

It would be a twenty-minute drive back to where they’d parked their cars, so Vicente sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. Even with the shit show his life had become lately, at least he could be sure that if he died tomorrow, he wouldn’t have protesters at his funeral.

Any hope he had of a peaceful drive back home shattered into pieces as his car announced, “Call from Dalia. Do you wish to answer?”

His phone interface waited patiently as he let out a long sigh, his fingers gripping the steering wheel tighter.

“Yes,” he responded through gritted teeth.

It was her week with the baby and usually she left him alone on those weeks. There was no good reason for her to call him.

“Hey Dalia. Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Did you send someone over here to spy on me?” she hissed into the phone, the pitch making him wince.

Here we go again. Ever since she’d hired that lawyer of hers, it had been one stupid accusation after another. Are you seeing someone else, did you cancel my credit cards, did you tamper with my car? And now all of a sudden, it was a spy.

When Dalia had dropped papers on him, it was obvious she thought she’d be handed full custody without question. The baby was only six months old when she filed and she probably figured that, as the mother, she would be the default caregiver. But she worked long hours as a nurse and her shifts fluctuated. Plus she didn’t have a support structure to watch the baby when she was at work.

Meanwhile, his work schedule was fixed and he had his mom to babysit whenever he needed. Dalia’s head about exploded when Vicente made it clear he wouldn’t be relegated to an occasional weekend visitor just because she got bored with their marriage. Oh, excuse me… she was unfulfilled.

“No, I didn’t send someone to spy on you, Dal. Are you at home? Is someone creeping around the house?”

He tried to keep the smile out of his voice because he knew for a fact Dalia recorded all their phone calls, which was weird. Why she wanted a record of her acting like a hysterical lunatic was beyond him. What she absolutely wouldn’t be getting was a recording of him being hysterical. So he kept his cool, every time, through every accusation.

“Yes, there’s a creep flashing a badge at my front door asking for you!” she snapped.

At once, the smile dropped from his face. “What badge? FBI? Cops?”

“Hold on.”

He could hear her jostling the phone.

“Hold up your badge to the doorbell again, please!” she shouted, again making Vicente wince. A moment of silence followed, then, “It says Temporal Investigative Service. Are you sending some asshole from Warner after me?”

“What’s his name, Dalia?” he asked, needing to get off the phone with her and call his office about this. There was no reason for anyone from Warner to be asking about him.

“I didn’t see. It was Anit some-long-ass-Indian-name. And he can piss off because—”

“Dalia!” he nearly screamed, cutting off her tirade. “Tell the man to go wait in his car and I’ll be there in a few minutes. Where’s Julito?”

“It’s not your day until—”

“I’m not coming for the baby, Dalia. I’m coming to see the spook outside your door. Now where’s Julio?”

Finally understanding something was wrong, she muttered, “Sleeping, where else would he be? I know you think I do nothing but party but I can tell you—”

“Just stay in the house with the door locked. If he tries to get in or doesn’t back away from the door, call the cops.”

The other end of the line was quiet for a minute, then he heard Dalia say, “Sir, my soon-to-be ex will be here in a few minutes. He says to wait in your car for him.”

“Will do,” a distant male voice replied.

Another moment of silence. “Okay, he’s going away,” she said. “What’s going on? Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, mostly honestly. “I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Just stay inside.”

He ended the call and pressed harder on the accelerator, veering into the left lane as he barreled towards Dalia’s house. Which had been his house, until recently.

When he pulled up behind the plain-looking black sedan parked outside Dalia’s house, the driver got out, flashing a solicitous smile.

Vicente did not relax upon seeing the familiar face. Anit Chandrasekhar came immediately to mind when Dalia read the name off the badge, but he couldn’t be sure it was him. They had met during their two-week rotation at Warner University required of all federal agents. He was a good guy, as far as Vicente knew. But there was no reason for him to be here. Anit was in the CIA.

Like most spooks, Anit dressed casually, no men-in-black-type suits for him. Instead, he wore loose-fitting cargo pants, flip flops despite the cool temperatures, and a rumpled polo shirt. It was the type of look that would have driven the complaining New Victorian girl on the bus into hysterics. He could almost hear her hissing, “That isn’t work appropriate!”

But spies set their own rules, which is why Vicente hated them. It wasn’t long into his FBI career before he realized that CIA/NSA types were mostly psychopaths, thinking that because they employed their psychopathy in the service of the state, that made them better than the average serial killer.

It didn’t.

“Vin, how are you?” Anit asked, giving his hand a firm shake as soon as Vicente got out of the car.

“Doing alright. Been a long time,” he said, not bothering to fake a smile. “What can I do for you?”

Anit looked sheepish, shrugging his shoulders and looking down in an almost-convincing display of aw-shucks shyness. “I’m sorry about coming here. I didn’t know about the divorce.”

“Why would you?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

Clearly seeing his approach wasn’t working, Anit squared his shoulders, dropped the BS friendliness, and leaned back against the trunk of his sedan, crossing his arms. “You heard about the Warner student we popped recently for Temporal Malfeasance? Shannan Fitzroy?”

Vicente nodded, his eyes squinting in confusion. “Yeah, Kathleen Mulligan’s granddaughter. I saw it on the news. Why?”

Anit looked over his shoulder, making a show of checking that Dalia hadn’t stuck her head out the door to eavesdrop on them. “We’re trying to nail down exactly what happened while she was in the past. It’s important. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

Still confused as to why the hell the CIA was reaching out to him, at his ex’s house no less, Vicente nodded again. “It’s delicate work you do. But what does that have to do with the FBI?”

“Not a damn thing. But we need her to talk. And she refuses to speak to anyone affiliated with Warner or the CIA.”

“And you thought I’d be right for the job because…” he trailed off, losing patience with whatever game Anit was playing here.

“Because she had blood on her clothes when she came back. Blood that matched your DNA.”

“Come again?” Vicente asked, taking a step back. “I don’t know that girl—”

“We know,” Anit held up his hands in a calming gesture. “It wasn’t your blood. It was someone related to you. That’s why we think she might talk to you.”

His two weeks at Warner had taught him enough about time travel to know that even the slightest involvement with this case would be a huge complication, one he did not want.

“You’re the CIA. Don’t you have ways of making people talk?”

“We’re the Temporal Invest—”

“Same thing,” Vicente made a slicing motion with his hand, cutting off the semantic nonsense. “Enough with the crap. I’m not interested.”

The cocky bastard leaned farther back onto the car with a smile. “The blood we found on her was from a male. Your son.”

What? Vicente stepped closer so he was leaning over Anit. “I have one son and he’s an infant,” he jabbed his finger at the house, just in time to see Dalia move away from an upstairs window.

At the sight of her, Anit raised an eyebrow. “You sure? I mean, can any of us really be positive we don’t have kids running around out there?” He craned his neck to look up at Vicente, not at all intimidated by the massive size difference. “Wouldn’t want to throw a wrench into your custody case after all. Having some other kid out there-”

“I don’t have shit!”

“The blood says you do.”

He could feel sweat seeping through his shirt as he wondered for the first time if their conversation was loud enough for Dalia’s doorbell camera to pick up. His blood pounded in his ears and he lowered his voice. “She came back from time traveling. Who knows what relative of mine she met.”

“Not an ancestor. A son,” Anit pressed. “And she came back from ninth-century Britain, so I doubt she would have met any relatives of yours.”

The smile morphed into an outright smirk. It was the face of a perfect bitch of man who always got what he wanted without raising a finger.

Unclenching his hands—fists would do him no good—Vicente stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “What do you want?”

Anit let out a sigh of his own, satisfied and content. “Just to conduct a full debrief. That’s it. You’ll be assigned to a detail, read into the program, and then after we hear the whole story,” he shrugged again, “You go back to looking for kidnappers.”

“I’m anti-corruption,” he snapped.

“Well then this is right up your ally.” Anit lifted himself up off the car, fished a card out of his pocket, and held it out. Then he waited for Vicente to take it from him. “You can reach me here if you have any questions tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow after we get clearance from your Agent in Charge for the detail assignment.”

“Great,” Vicente said, his teeth clenched.

“See ya.” Lifting a hand like they were old friends, Anit got back into his car, started the engine, and drove off carefully and casually.

Vicente was left standing in the street in front of the house that used to be his, where his one and only child slept, and where his ex wife was plotting to destroy him in court.

He didn’t wonder anymore why Anit had come here to solicit his help. And he didn’t doubt for a moment that if a single thing went wrong with their prosecution of the woman they wanted him to interrogate, he would be the one they threw under the bus for it.

“Jesus, I hate spooks,” he said, getting back into his own car, sending a text message to Dalia before he drove away.

“Sorry for the inconvenience. You shouldn’t see him again. I’ll see you for the hearing next week.”

Then he shut his phone off, not wanting to hear her combative response.

One thing was for sure, if he was going to get sucked into an investigation, one that could screw up his custody hearing at that, he definitely wasn’t going in blind. He needed to find out about Shannan Fitzroy, what she was accused of, and what in the hell she’d done in the past to have gotten his son’s blood on her.