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December 2, 2073
True to form, it was just past six a.m. when the shrill siren of Vicente’s mobile phone nearly catapulted him off the recliner he’d been sleeping in.
“You ready for your read-in?” Anit’s tinny voice on the other end of the phone asked him, sounding far too chipper for this early in the morning.
“Sure,” Vicente croaked out, his eyes still closed as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Where do I go?”
“I’ll come get you.”
And the phone went dead.
Sighing, Vicente tossed the phone onto the floor and bent over, putting his elbows on his knees while rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
He still wore yesterday’s trousers and shirt, his tie, jacket, and shoes lying in a rumpled mess beside the chair. When he’d come back from Dalia’s, he didn’t have the will to get undressed, let alone take a shower. He’d just sat in the chair, opened a beer—or two—and watched reruns of his favorite shows. He couldn’t watch the new ones, at least not at night. They were specifically calibrated to hold your attention, all quick cuts, meaningless zoom-ins, and nonsensical plot twists. So he stuck with his old favorites when he came home from work.
It wasn’t really home of course. The shabby one-bedroom apartment with exactly four pieces of furniture in it was just a landing spot until the divorce was finalized. He didn’t expect to get the house. He just hoped to have enough money left to buy a new one.
Groaning, he pushed himself out of the chair and stumbled back to the bedroom, not knowing how long it would be before Anit showed up at his door.
“Asshole better have the decency to bring me coffee,” he muttered, pulling one of thirteen identical suits out of his closet and staging it on the bed.
Yes, he had a bed. But for some reason, the majority of the time, he ended up sleeping in the recliner. Somehow he got better sleep with a clear sight line to the front door. Usually, anyway. It didn’t feel like he’d gotten any sleep at all last night, thanks to Anit and his bullshit.
When Vicente spoke to Janet, she’d been troublingly vague about him being assigned to the detail, not knowing how long it would last or who, specifically, had requested that Vicente be assigned.
She was, however, very clear about the fact that this detail was an inconvenience to the department. He wasn’t the lead agent on any of his cases, but it was still a pain to reallocate his work.
“So why did you say yes, Janet? Details are supposed to be at the discretion of the supervisor.”
He knew the answer even before she gave it.
“What Warner wants, Warner gets. Just try to wrap it up as quickly as possible, please,” she’d said, her characteristic snippy tone replaced by one of annoyed resignation.
That was always the way when Warner came calling. No one liked them or wanted to work with them. But they always got what they wanted.
Thirty-seven minutes after hanging up the phone, there was a knock at his door.
Vicente, having splashed water in his pits and bits and put a comb through his hair, opened up to see Anit standing on the concrete landing in a pepto-bismol-colored polo and jeans. Proper shoes today, no flip flops.
And he had a large cup of coffee in each hand.
“Thanks,” Vicente muttered, accepting the coffee. “Lock the door,” he mumbled as he stepped outside with Anit.
The panel next to his window beeped in acknowledgment and he heard the deadbolt slide home as he followed Anit down the staircase and out to the parking lot.
“I figured you weren’t a morning person,” Anit chirped, a full-on pep in his step as he rolled up on the passenger side of the black sedan, opening the door wide for Vicente. “For me, the earlier, the better. I haven’t slept past five since college.”
“Mmmm…” Vicente grunted, carefully sliding into the car so as not to spill his coffee—his lifeline.
Even in his barely-conscious state, Vicente took a double take at the car’s interior. There was no navigation screen. No LEDs, no electronic controls of any kind. It was all knobs, manual buttons, and an old CB radio clipped to the dash. It looked like something his great-grandmother would have driven.
Anit closed his door then practically skipped around the hood of the car, getting in beside him. Humming lightly to himself, he fished an old silver key out of his pocket and reached for the ignition. But then his hand froze and he turned to stare expectantly at Vicente.
“Well, buckle up, bitch. We’re about safety here.”
Unable to help himself, Vicente laughed and put on his seatbelt. “Is this thing an antique?”
“Nope. Everything is top-of-the-line. Just… custom,” he said, starting the ignition with a smile. “You like the coffee? I wasn’t sure if you were a fan.”
Vicente nodded, taking a sip.
“Good. I wanted to bring a peace offering after roping you in. It was kind of rude, I get it. But that comes with the job sometimes. I know you get it.”
Oh, Vicente got it, alright. Anit wasn’t sorry at all. That much was obvious. But calling a professional liar on their bullshit just led to more bullshit, so he let it go.
“Where we going?” he asked, knowing immediately that Anit was steering them toward the highway.
“Warner. Where else?”
Taking a long pull on his coffee, Vicente closed his eyes in sheer relief. He wasn’t prepared to talk to the girl right now, not even for a casual chat. Going into an interrogation cold was a bad idea, so he was glad he’d have some time to prep. He’d rather talk to her once, do it right, and deliver the information Anit wanted so he could be done with the whole mess.
“Can I see your credentials sir?” the young guard asked, bending over to look in the car window, a friendly smile on his face.
Had this been Vicente’s first trip to the Warner Campus, he might have been fooled by that smile, by the man’s damn-near sparkling eyes and fresh-faced demeanor.
But it wasn’t his first trip.
And he could see the well-muscled physique beneath the uniform, the smooth, practiced gestures the man used when he took his badge and examined it.
“Thank you, Agent Guerrero. I appreciate it. I’m sure you know where to park, Mr. Chandrasekhar?” The guard asked, handing back Vicente’s badge, his smile still in place.
“Of course! Have a good one, Dale,” Anit responded, driving through the gate.
All smiles. All manners. As if this was an actual university.
It had once been, a Catholic one, funnily enough. But after the Great Reveal, the campus had been sold to Warner Industries to be their training facility. They still called it Warner University, but that was a fraud.
It had been more than ten years since he set foot on the campus, and not a single thing had changed. The high walls topped with razor wire stood strong, without a hint of the spray paint or chipped concrete that blighted most other structures in downtown Kansas City. Every centimeter of the campus was beautiful. No litter. No illegal parking. No cracks in any of the sidewalks. Not a blade of grass out of place.
He’d hated his rotation here. And he could only hope that whoever Anit had brought him here to speak with would not be a retired spook who danced around the truth with every syllable.
As soon as Vicente walked into the echoing atrium of the newly-renamed Kathleen Mulligan building, he and Anit were greeted by two people standing in the hallway, hands clasped in front of them—obviously awaiting their arrival.
“Punctual as always,” said the short, slender-built Asian man, his face set in a practiced neutrality as he stepped forward to shake Anit’s hand.
Even as the man greeted Anit, his eyes were firmly fixed on Vicente’s face, and he had to force himself to maintain eye contact, refusing the impulse to avert his gaze.
“Dr. Hideki Sato, this is Agent Vicente Guerrero of the FBI.” Anit dropped the man’s hand and gestured at Vicente, and the two of them nodded at each other.
No handshake for me, I guess.
“And this is Dr. Jennifer Makeba,” Anit gestured at the thick-bodied black woman standing beside Dr. Sato. “The president of Warner University.”
Unlike Sato, Dr. Makeba stepped forward with a smile and shook Vicente’s hand. “Yes, I remember you from your rotation,” she said politely.
“I remember you too,” Vicente assured her, giving her the lightest of smiles as they silently agreed not to explain why Dr. Makeba would remember one of the thousands of federal agents who had passed through the Warner rotation.
He was glad she was here. Makeba, like nearly every “professor” on campus, came out of the intelligence community. But she wasn’t a spook. She was more of an administrator type. It didn’t make her less ruthless or secretive—just more human than the rest of them.
Sato was a stranger to him. But Vicente could tell this man wasn’t just a spook. He was an operator. Special forces and wet work types were in a league of their own. And once you met one of them, you could never unsee the different frequency they operated at.
Sato was a stone-cold killer. And Vicente was glad they hadn’t asked for his sidearm at the gate.
“Shall we?” Makeba swept her arm gracefully, beckoning him to follow her, which he did, Anit trailing behind as if he were a spectator in all of this.
Their footsteps echoed on the tile as they walked through the atrium—the kind of innocuous reception area that would be at home in any corporate building—and over to the elevator banks.
Sato was the last in and pushed the button with a big 4 on it, a soft beep ringing out before the elevator complied. From his rotation here, Vicente knew the beep meant that the computer had read the chip in Sato’s arm, deeming him a permissible visitor to the fourth floor.
After silently hauling them up four floors, the elevator opened its doors, revealing two security guards standing at ease, though not relaxed.
Dressed all in black and wearing balaclavas, their uniforms sported no agency insignia, no rank, and certainly no name tapes.
“I still say good guys don’t need to wear masks,” said Vicente, nodding respectfully at the two guards as he followed Makeba and Sato.
“The technology we keep in this building can change the entire world,” replied Sato, his voice clipped. “You’d better believe we have the best security money can buy. That means a certain level of discretion.”
Yeah, and the American taxpayer has no way of knowing what kind of murderers you hire to guard your precious tech.
At the end of the hall, they wound their way through a snaking glass wall into a small auditorium, its walls painted brick red.
“Not to be imprudent, Dr. Sato,” Vicente said, shaking his head when offered a seat, “But if the security is so good, how did one of your students circumvent it?”
“That’s why we need you to conduct the interrogation,” cut in Anit, stepping between Vicente and Sato, who had narrowed his eyes. “There’s no way the girl could have done it.”
“Drop the screen down,” Makeba called, resulting in a projection screen emerging from its pocket in the ceiling.
Makeba again gestured for Vicente to sit down, an exasperated look on her face.
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, remembering all the times he had raised his hand during lectures in his rotation and that same look had come over her face.
For her, he sat down, turning his attention to the screen.
Both Anit and Sato sat as well, taking seats in the row ahead of Vicente, leaving Makeba to take the floor.
“Based on what we can deduce from security footage and what we found in our searches, Shannan and Dr. Daniel Edwards came into the White Room, which is where the transmission equipment is housed, and Dr. Edwards fled prosecution.”
She waved her fingers, bringing up a picture of a man in his forties or fifties—tall and lanky with a beard.
“Edwards was charged with murdering his husband, Devon Jones, during a fight,” clarified Sato.
Vicente waved him off. “Yeah, yeah I saw it on the news. I’m assuming Edwards didn’t have clearance to come into the White Room either?”
“You would be correct,” Sato said, clearly perturbed that his precious systems had been infiltrated. “Even before his arrest, he didn’t have the clearance. He was a history professor and never handled the equipment himself. The Fitzroy girl is an engineering student so she would have the necessary operational knowledge—but not the access codes. We have no idea how she did it. It’s not even possible.
“She would have needed codes that only I know and even if she had them, there’s an override if I’m not in the room when they’re used. In that case, Dr. Makeba would be alerted to either issue an override or sound the alarm. None of that happened. Yet she was able to send Edwards back in time, then leave the building afterwards, returning for her own scheduled trip like nothing had happened.”
Vicente leaned forward, tantalized by the idea that this girl was some kind of hacking mastermind, but also relieved that his line of questioning would be a simple logistical matter. “Okay. So the main thing you need me to extract from her is how she was able to operate the machinery?”
“Yes,” said Sato.
“No,” snapped Makeba, cutting her eyes at Sato. “That’s a secondary concern.”
Sato let out a sharp pst sound, crossing his arms.
Secondary? Vicente thought. Unauthorized use of a time travel machine is secondary?
“Our main concern is what she did in the past.” Again, Makeba rubbed her fingers together, bringing up a new photo on the screen—A pretty girl with light brown hair tied into a neat bun, her face pulled into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
Shannan Fitzroy. He recognized her from the news too.
“I know you’re not a traveler, Agent Guerrero, but I’m sure you have a passing familiarity with historical garments,” said Makeba, her voice quieter and more tentative now. “When Shannan Fitzroy left here on her scheduled trip, she was bound for Shaftesbury, England in the year 927 A.D. The dark ages. This is what she was wearing.”
Vicente nodded, taking in the long brown garment that bagged around the waist. Simple, handmade. Exactly what he would expect from dark ages Europe.
“When she came back, it was using someone else’s technology. It wasn’t our machinery, which is concerning enough. And… this is the dress she was wearing.”
The picture changed again and Shannan Fitzroy was gone. In her place was a long silky gown lying flat on a tile floor. The dress had a low neckline with pearl embellishments and big puffy sleeves. It was beautiful, obviously expensive. And splattered with blood.
Anit turned around in his seat, looking at Vicente with wide eyes as if to say, you see now?
Vicente felt his mouth go dry. That was a lot of blood.
His son’s blood, based on what Anit said. And he was no expert, but he knew perfectly well that dress wasn’t from the dark ages.
“So where was she? I mean when?” he asked, clearing his throat.
“We don’t know,” Makeba sighed, leaning back in her chair. “The dress is from the mid to late 1600s, depending on where she was geographically. It would be consistent with France and then later with England. Nobility or merchant class, certainly not among commoners. And it isn’t everyday attire. It would be worn at a gala or ball.”
“So using someone else’s time travel technology, she left the 10th century in England, and went to the 17th century, possibly also in England?” he asked. “Is your machinery capable of doing that?”
“Classified,” snapped Sato.
“No,” countered Makeba, drawing another hiss from Sato. “With our machines, she would have had to come back here, enter new coordinates, and only then could she go to the 1600s.”
“You think she changed something,” Vicente said. It was not a question.
“We’d have no way of knowing if she did. Whatever it was… we think it was small. She knew our faces, our names. When she was taken into custody, nothing was unfamiliar to her. So the world was at least mostly the way she left it. But even a small change could be important. Devastating. We need to know what it was.”
Vicente blew out a breath, not liking where this was going. It wasn’t just a matter of logistics. The stakes for Shannan Fitzroy keeping her mouth shut could be very high indeed, depending on what she changed.
And he had to agree. She definitely changed something. What other reason would she have to refuse to give a full debrief?
“And she wouldn’t talk to anyone when she came back? She didn’t say anything?”
“Nothing helpful,” Makeba sighed, holding her arms out at her sides. “She was pretty hostile, actually. The only word she said was ‘Lawyer.’ Which of course she knows perfectly well she isn’t entitled to have when it comes to time travel malfeasance.”
“So interesting that a corporation is given the power to decide that,” Vicente said, looking straight at Sato.
“Plus, it was a busy day,” interjected Makeba. “We had the building re-dedication where we welcomed two other travelers back from their trip, only to find out one of our faculty members had died while in the past. It was a terrible shock. It cast a somber note on the whole evening. Then a few hours later, Shannan came through in the White Room, which she wasn’t scheduled to do.”
Vicente nodded, quietly wondering why the death of a Warner professor during an excursion in time didn’t end up on the news.
“Have you talked to her friends? A boyfriend? Maybe they saw a change in her leading up to her trip.”
Sato turned around in his seat, looking resolute now instead of irritated. “I did. I interviewed all her instructors and her parents. She was closer to her grandmother, but the poor woman was in no state to speak to me.”
Vicente nodded. “I went to her funeral yesterday.”
“I remember,” said Sato, which sent a chill down Vicente’s spine. “The other two travelers who came back that same day were friends with Fitzroy. But they said they didn’t know anything. Apparently, there had been nothing unusual about her behavior. No new ideology. No increased vigilance or secrecy. Everything was normal.”
“You sure they were telling the truth?” Vicente asked, knowing full well how easily and fluently teens and young adults lied.
“Monica is one of mine,” Sato said, leaning closer to Vicente. “She is a stellar candidate. Unassailable character and one of only three women selected for her cohort. She was telling the truth.” His shoulders relaxed slightly and he made a waffling gesture with his hands. “The boy… Alfredo. I don’t know him.”
“Me neither,” agreed Makeba. “He was Mel’s protege—Mel Storm, the professor who was killed. He loved Alfredo like a son. Obviously we don’t encourage that kind of favoritism, but it happens.”
“Would I be able to have a chat with them?” Vicente kept his tone as neutral as possible. Of course he didn’t doubt Sato’s assessment of this Monica girl, who was a paragon of truth. He was just doing his due diligence.
There was a pause. A look between Sato and Makeba. Then, “Yes,” she said. “They live on campus.”
“Together?” Vicente asked, his eyebrows shooting up.
“In the same dormitory. I don’t think they’re an item,” smiled Makeba.
“They’re definitely not,” laughed Sato.
After that, there wasn’t much to say. Makeba promised to send over the contact information for Monica Savala and Alfredo Jaramillo, asking only that he tell her what time he planned to speak to the students.
Since they lived on campus, he could hardly refuse. He doubted anything happened here without her knowing.
It was still early morning, and as he and Anit walked back out to the parking lot, Vicente wished they could just hop in the car and get the hell off this campus.
Time travel was terrifying, which was why he hadn’t even considered being a Warner Liaison. Investigating corrupt assholes was straightforward, virtuous. What these time travel people did—playing God under the guise of studying history—it made him sick.
For all he knew, this crazy girl had changed their whole world for her own benefit, thinking herself righteous for doing it. And none of the rest of them would even know it.
“Just some advice,” Anit said quietly as they got in the car. “If you’re gonna talk shit about what Warner should and shouldn’t be allowed to do, let it not be to Sato.”
Vicente closed his own car door behind him and looked at Anit, seeing there was no trace of mirth or sarcasm on his face.
“Cuz he’ll have me whacked?”
“You know what’s funny?” Anit stared straight ahead. “When Kathleen Mulligan came back from her trip through time, Christianity died. The system that made the Western world… gone. It took them a few years to know their religion was dead. But it died the day she came back and told us what she saw.”
Anit turned his head, staring hard at Vicente. “But the idea that people are good, that they have a soul and can be redeemed… that stuck around for some reason. Even in people like you who never believed in a god.”
Vicente stared back, wondering for a moment if Anit himself was planning on shooting him.
“But the thing is, there’s only power. No good, no evil. No truth, no justice. Just power. Hear me when I tell you Sato has it. Play nice with him. You hear me?”
Not knowing how to respond to that, all he could do was nod, facing front again, unable to maintain the intensity of his staring contest with Anit.
Message received loud and clear. Don’t poke the bear.
But oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid for his life, even with the warning.
What he really wanted to know was what would happen to that girl after he interrogated her. After she wasn’t useful to Sato anymore.
But he knew better than to ask. He’d poked enough for one day.