You can read all previous chapters for Treason of Fate HERE.
December 3, 2073, 6 a.m.
The federal penitentiary holding Shannan Fitzroy was in St. Joseph, about an hour north of Kansas City. It was still dark when Anit showed up at the door, again with two cups of coffee in his hand. Though this time, he kept the morning enthusiasm to a minimum as they drove.
There wasn’t much to say at this point. Vicente had been texting Anit for most of the night as he frantically pulled whatever information he had on Shannan. It seemed, for the moment at least, that Anit was talked out, something he found oddly disquieting.
“I’m surprised Warner doesn’t have its own prison,” he said, looking out the window into the darkness.
“Senate never woulda gone for it,” Anit replied, not bothering to raise his voice over the music.
The Summit Level 4 correctional facility was privately owned and funded, with minimal taxpayer subsidy. It was located far away from any federal courthouse or main thoroughfare—the kind of place they put you when they wanted you to just disappear.
He wondered if Shannan hadn’t been Kathleen Mulligan’s granddaughter if her arrest would have been made public at all.
“You get your prep done?” Anit asked.
“As much as possible. You were right. There wasn’t much out there about Shannan herself. Found some good stuff about her grandmother though. It gives me something to work with.”
A day ago, Vicente had been boiling with rage at Anit, ready to tap the guy with a pipe for waylaying him outside the house like that. But last night, he’d been sitting in his living room, elbows on knees, texting him like an excited schoolgirl.
Vicente: K I got the links you sent to Shannan’s profiles. Not much there. Looks sanitized, honestly. You got something more substantive like a psych profile I can look at?
Anit: Yeah, I just emailed it to you. Though it’s pretty unremarkable. Basically the girl is ‘always on.’ Like sitting for a permanent job interview. Wasn’t much help to her interrogator.
Shannan didn’t have much of a social media profile. He’d been hoping for in-depth vlogging or, at the very least, an active schedule of posting photos of her personal life. But no such luck. Just a single, sanitized profile with corporate-looking photos and tepid opinions on food, movies, and music. Not one ounce of vulnerability or authenticity. That in and of itself was revelatory. Either she had something in her life that she wanted to keep hidden or, like Anit said, she was in permanent reputation management mode… and had been since she was a pre-teen.
How exhausting.
The requirements for enrolling in Warner University were stringent and included regular psychological evaluations. Despite being the grandchild of the first time traveler, Shannon was not exempted from these. Though the notes from her interviewing psychiatrist made it clear she had, in a roundabout way, found a way around them.
“Subject presents as polished, well spoken, and familiar with psychiatric evaluations. Though I see no sign of undue stress or personality disorders, I do not perceive the subject as being their authentic self in this evaluation.”
Vicente had to wonder if the psychiatrist had actually called Shannon out to her face or simply saved it for the notes that would inevitably land in front of her advisor. But since her advisor was Daniel Edwards, it was unlikely that she was scolded for her lack of candor.
Having so little to work with on Shannan herself, he’d focused on her grandmother. There was plenty of material on Kathleen Mulligan, more than he could possibly go through, actually. News articles, documentaries, interviews, and two separate feature films made twenty years apart.
So he’d done what everyone else did when they had to get a lot of information in a short amount of time. He fired up YouTube.
“Jackpot!” he’d yelled, grinning as he saw the first video listed, with well over a million views: “Kathleen Mulligan: The Worst Millennial” narrated by a pink-haired Asian girl. The thumbnail for the video showed a thirty-something Kathleen standing in front of Warner University, scowling down at the crying baby in her arms. Not the frustrated grimace of a first-time mother—a venomous look that made Vicente recoil.
“Okay, clearly not maternal…”
The video had been a two-and-a-half-hour breakdown of Kathleen Mulligan. Her birth in 1984, her largely unremarkable life and career in academia, and the birth of her daughter, Meghan, in 2016, followed by a divorce in 2017. Then it got to the good stuff.
In 2026, Kathleen was part of a team to investigate the truth of Christianity and other religious myths. Ostensibly the trip was to test the time travel equipment but everyone knew that was bullshit. The CIA—or whatever agency invented the machine—could have sent them anywhere. They chose Galilee.
The pink-haired girl spent a lot of time speculating on why Kathleen didn’t tell anyone what she saw on that extended trip to observe Jesus until 2054. Maybe she was afraid for her life. Maybe she was struggling with the loss of her own faith. But for whatever reason, she finally told the world when Shannan was five years old… and still being raised by her mother.
The mother, Meghan, was really the only angle Vicente had at the moment. By all accounts, she was a neglectful, nasty harpy who made invasive, embarrassing social media posts about Shannan when she was little. A lot of “Mommy needs a drink” energy. And there was no father in the picture. Not even on her birth certificate.
There were no custody hearings or formal arrangements of any kind, but around Shannan’s twelfth birthday, she went to live with her grandmother permanently.
Unhappy childhood, a feeling of being unwanted, and growing up without a father. Shannan had been cursed with the perfect ingredients to become a pliable people-pleaser. And considering how pretty she was…
Good thing Dr. Edwards was gay. Any other advisor might have seen an opportunity for himself.
In addition to being pretty, the pictures and videos of Shannan revealed she had a graceful gentleness about her. It was hard to imagine her standing against the intelligence apparatus, being the angry, bull-headed prisoner that Anit had described.
Something changed her. What was it? And when did the change happen? Maybe it was Daniel’s arrest in and of itself, radicalizing her against the government. Maybe her grandmother’s death—the only person who cared about her, gone. What did she have to lose? Or maybe it was something else. Something that happened to her in the past.
What happened to you, honey? And how exactly did it involve my son?
It was only after he found out the why that he would even bother asking what she’d done in the past.
Vicente had been to several Federal penitentiaries to question prisoners, and Summit was no different from the rest of them. Bright and sterile, colored in all whites, blues, and grays. Uniformed corrections officers in peak physical condition—all men, all bald or with crew cuts.
After surrendering their weapons to the duty clerk, Vicente and Anit were escorted by two guards through a labyrinth of locked doors and mantraps. The guards, whose names remained a mystery due to the absence of name tapes on their uniforms, led them silently through the maze-like structure. Each step echoed through the hallways, amplifying the sense of isolation and confinement. The first floow was obviously for administration, as there was no sign of any prisoners. No cells, no common areas, not even a convict on work detail. Just guards. A lot of them.
Finally, they reached the interrogation room. The darker-skinned guard opened the door and Anit nodded his head, gesturing for Vicente to go in.
“I’ll be watching from behind the mirror,” he assured Vicente. “If she flips out or if you need a break, just yell for the guard and someone will be in there in less than a second.”
Vincente nodded, oddly disappointed Shannan wasn’t already in the interrogation room waiting for him. Seeing how she reacted to a new face would be informative. It also was a subtle power play, being the last to arrive. Now he would be the one waiting on her.
Not a great start.
Anit's voice cut through his thoughts. “I’m not going to tell you how to do your job. I know you’re good at this. But at the end of the day, we need to know what she changed. And we need to know why. Whatever hoops you want to jump through leading up to that, you have free rein.”
Vicente took a deep breath, trying to get his head right. The stakes were high, and he knew that the information he extracted from Shannan could have far-reaching consequences. If he got the information he was sent here to get, then he’d go back to his regular life. Or at least that’s what Anit had promised.
Then again, if it turned out Shannan had changed something major and Anit thought Vicente knew too much… what then?
He blew out a breath, hand drifting to his hip and the empty holster on his belt.
His heart rate higher than it had been a minute ago, Vicente stepped into the sterile, white room and sat at the table, his back to the mirror.
The door closed behind him and he was enveloped in the near silence of the room, the buzz of the lights the only sound.
Sitting up straight, he stretched out his arms, determined to look as charming as possible when they brought the girl in.
When you’re interrogating men, you have to make them respect you. When it’s women, you need to make them love you, even if only a little. If you don’t forge that bond with them, that instinctual need to please, they either won’t talk at all, or they’ll lie. Only after you get them where you want them can you believe anything they tell you.
It wasn’t hard to do. He was a good looking guy, always had been. But it was more than attraction; it was the need to feel safe with someone. If you ended up in an interrogation room, chances were high you hadn’t felt safe in a while. Vicente was there to provide that, whether the woman thought he was purty or not. After all, he’d gotten his fair share of lesbians to tell him everything he wanted to know. Maybe his skill at manipulation wasn’t something he should be proud of. But it was never malicious. And he never lied to the perps, even when the law permitted it.
After he was done interrogating a person, they weren’t surprised or betrayed at what happened next. He never told that terrible lie of, “Tell me the truth and you can go home.” Never. Any interrogator who had to fall back on that line was an embarrassment to his profession.
Vicente waited for the body language that indicated the person was about to confess—the lean forward, the slump of the shoulders, putting head in hands. Or maybe all three. And then he would reassure them. “I know you’re scared, but if you trust me I’ll be with you for what comes next.”
And that was the truth.
The lock on the door beeped, giving Vicente a fraction of a second to focus before the door swung open. Two different guards escorted Shannan into the room.
Her eyes fixed on the floor, the pretty girl he’d seen in the pictures looked like a malnourished caricature of herself. Her long, light brown hair was tied back in a sloppy ponytail, a few stray strands framing her face highlighting the dark circles under her eyes. She was cuffed and her ankles were shackled, the metal clinking with each labored step she took.
No one said a word as the guards led Shannan to the opposite chair, helping her sit, pulling her cuffed wrists to the metal loop on the surface and securing her in place.
Only when the guards took their hands away and stepped back toward the door, did Shannan raise her eyes and look at Vicente.
She blinked, her eyes narrowing in… what was that? Confusion?
In a flash of shock and terror, Shannan’s eyes widened, her mouth fell open slightly, and the color drained from her face.
She knows me…
Vicente said nothing to the guards, didn’t stop them from exiting the interrogation room. Instead, he sat silently, waiting until the door clicked shut to speak.
“Miss Fitzroy, my name is—”
“Vicente Guerrero,” she said flatly, her lip curling slightly. “You were handsome.”
Now it was his turn to narrow his eyes. “I was handsome? Sorry, but we haven’t met.” He lowered his voice, lifting the corner of his mouth just slightly. “I’d remember.”
Her handcuffs grated against the metal ring holding her hands to the table and her mouth twisted into a pucker of disgust. “We haven't. But we will. Sorta. Maybe.”
“From the look on your face, it doesn’t seem like I was nice to you.”
“No. You weren’t.” She bit off each word, glowering at him the same way Dalia did whenever they argued.
“Was my son?”
Shannan went perfectly still, her mouth pinching all the tighter as she tried in vain to hide the sadness pulsating across her features.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, her shoulder hunching slightly.
A win. Not a touchdown by any means. But he’d gained a yard.
He had intended to wait to bring up the blood on her dress, to ask about the DNA that had brought him here in the first place. But since she’d made it clear she knew him, or some future version of him, playing coy would be a mistake. It would prove to her that he was the same asshole she had encountered.
Reaching into his back pocket, Vicente pulled out his badge and held it out across the table, letting her take a good long look at his credentials.
“Was I in the FBI when you knew me?”
Now it was surprise flickering behind her eyes as she pivoted her gaze from the badge to his face, then back again. The lines around her mouth softened.
“No, definitely not. I’m not even sure the FBI existed in the timeline I met you.” She looked past him, at the mirror behind him. “And I’m surprised those cunts even told the FBI I was here.”
He didn’t react to the sudden venom in her voice, as it wasn’t for him. Instead, he leaned into it. “The cunts behind the mirror asked me to talk to you because they thought maybe we knew each other. The dress you were wearing had my son’s blood on it. Which is a surprise to me, since my son is just a baby. This isn’t something I normally do, but under the circumstances…” He spread his hands wide in a helpless gesture.
I don’t want to be here either, honey, his expression said to her.
To his surprise, she looked down at her lap, this time in shame, her cheeks going pink.
He let the silence linger for a beat before leaning forward. “It seems I have some atoning to do. I’d like to do that, if you’ll let me. Will you tell me what happened? Will you let me help you?”
“You won’t believe me.” She shook her head, not raising her eyes.
“I know the truth when I hear it, and I’d like to. Even if it’s ugly.”
At that, Shannan raised her head and looked him in the eye, the barest, most humorless laugh escaping her lips. “Isn’t it always?”