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December 3, 2073 9:52 A.M.
Monica stared down at the weighted bar, the paltry 120 lbs of plates mocking her. All around her, the sounds of men grunting and metal clanking resumed, all of them pretending they hadn’t heard her gasp in pain—hadn’t seen her drop the bar.
They all had the manners to mind their own business while she removed two plates in shame.
Agony radiated up her arm, nerves firing anew with every beat of her heart as she stared at the physical embodiment of her failure.
“You’re not gonna cry are you?”
Camacho’s rumbling voice sounded from beside her, drawing Monica’s wide, but completely dry, eyes up to where he stood at the cable machine.
“I might if you don’t put your shirt back on,” she snapped, drawing approving snickers from the other candidates in the gym.
Camacho laughed, snatching up his white towel from the ground as he walked over to her. He left his discarded shirt right where it was.
Standing in front of her he flicked his fingers in a “commere” gesture, looking at her right arm. When she held it out to him, he squeezed her forearm, his thumb instinctively finding the exact spot where her bone had fractured.
“Just because it’s healed doesn’t mean you’re a hundred percent, you know.” He gave her a disapproving look. “What was your clean and jerk before you went?”
“The doc cleared me. And it was one-sixty.”
Camacho let out a low whistle, dropping her arm. “Damn, you’re a beast. And you thought you could just dive back in at that same weight after a broken arm?”
She had, actually. When she and Alfredo had arrived at Union Station, Dr. Makeba had taken one look at them and shooed them off to medical. Among her other injuries, the x-ray revealed that her slap-dash cast hadn’t cleanly set her bone, and that they would need to rebreak and reset her arm if it was going to be right again.
But she had finals. There was no way she was going to allow that. No medical hold for her.
The last of her course work finished in two weeks with exams, and her final physical test. Then the spring semester was her last, but there was no course work. It was interviewing, politicking, finding the best placement. And with everything she’d gone through, she absolutely would be getting the best placement.
“I haven’t been stuck at 120 since I was a freshman,” she muttered, looking miserably down at the bar.
“Come on. I’ll spot you,” said Camacho, slapping her on the shoulder. “You’ll knock it out and then maybe we’ll see how 140 treats you.”
He leaned closer, this time speaking loud enough for only her to hear. “Injuries come with the job. You’re good.”
She nodded. Camacho knew that better than anyone. He was the top of the class and had been hand-picked for Dr. Sato’s travel team, unlike her. She shouldn’t have been angry. After all, the trip was to imperial China. Camacho, being a mix of Filipino, Mexican, and Korean could pass muster. She never could. Instead, Monica had been assigned to Dr. Storm’s team—her fair skin allowing her to blend seamlessly into the streets of London.
If only she’d taken more after her bronze-skinned father, none of this would have ever happened.
With Camacho standing behind her, his hands hovering just below her elbows, she bent down in front of the bar and grabbed hold of it, pushing away the too-fresh memory of her recent failure. She winced, sucking air hard through her teeth as she yanked the weighted bar off the ground, hoisted it to her chin, then drove her arms straight up above her head.
The move completed, she heaved the bar back down.
“Awesome!” Camacho beamed, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You didn’t even need me. But when you go up to 140, just let me—”
He trailed off, his face going slack as something behind her caught his eye.
The entire gym followed suit, all conversation and clanking coming to a halt.
A knot in her stomach, Monica slowly turned around, sweat trickling down her forehead.
Dr. Sato stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest as he scanned the room, mouth pinched tight as he took in every face one by one.
Not me, not me… she silently prayed.
Dr. Sato had never come into the gym before, never ate with them in the meal hall, never mingled in the common areas. His office, his classroom, and the TSC. Those were the only three places he could ever be found.
Nothing good had brought him here.
Bile shot up Monica’s throat as Dr. Sato’s cold eyes settled on her face, the look of them making it clear he had not come to give her happy news.
Beside her, Camacho took two steps back, removing himself from Sato’s glare, or perhaps readying himself to apprehend her if given the order.
No one said a thing. No one asked him if they could help or what he needed. They were all in the program, all had spent countless hours under the unyielding tutelage of the man. They waited until he was ready to speak.
“Where is your phone?” Sato called, not moving from his spot in front of the door.
“It’s on me,” she answered without hesitation, managing to keep almost all of the tremor out of her voice as she patted the pocket of her pants.
“Good. Bring it here. We have an errand to run.”
The men around her remained still as she walked forward—shoulders back, head up. She didn’t look back at Camacho or any of the rest of them. She couldn’t read Sato, couldn’t see what he was there for. And neither could the rest of them. If everything was okay, she’d be back in class this afternoon and none of them would mention this incident.
If it wasn’t fine… then she wouldn’t be in class. And none of the guys would ask what had happened to her. It would be like she had never been there at all.
Is this about Shannon? Did Alfredo do something? After the FBI guy had come to her room yesterday, Alfredo had left and she hadn’t seen him since.
He wouldn't talk. Would he?
Slowly, carefully, Monica pulled her phone from her pocket as she walked toward Sato, holding it away from her body like a dead rat.
Every man stood on edge watching her progress, the air sucked out of the room.
She came to a halt in front of him, the strength of his stare making it hard to breathe. Flat footed, they were the same height, but he seemed to loom over her as he snatched the phone.
“Come with me.”
Without hesitation, Sato wheeled around and marched out the door, leaving her to follow, silent and obedient, not asking the stream of hysterical questions running through her head.
What happened?
Are you mad at me?
… Am I ever coming back?
They’d all be answered when they got to where they were going. One way or another.
Any hope Monica had of Dr. Sato’s visit being benign was quickly dashed as he led her, not to the Torrence building where all security candidates took their classes, but to the TSC. There were no offices in that building, no classrooms. It held the time travel equipment, the beating heart of Warner University. It was also where the holding cells were. The very fact that Warner had holding cells told any random passerby all they needed to know about what this school really was.
In her very first week as a security candidate, she and her classmates had been taken to the cells as part of their initiation tour and told that part of their job might be to lock up their friends, classmates, even their roommates in one of these.
“If you think that might be a problem for you,” Senior Candidate Johnson had warned them, “you should drop out now. There's no room for pussies in this job.”
Even before she was accepted into the program, Monica had known she would be signing her rights away. Once you started dealing with time travel, luxuries like freedom of speech, a right to due process and an attorney—they all went out the window. You followed the rules to the letter, or you went away forever. And that was the best case scenario. Every single candidate at Warner, regardless of their career path, signed their names to those stipulations.
With that stroke of the pen, Monica had signed away any right she had to even ask what Dr. Sato was going to do with her.
The cold air of the TSC’s over-aggressive air conditioner nipped at Monica’s bare arms as she followed Dr. Sato into the lobby, the drying sweat in her clothes giving her goosebumps as she walked. He immediately turned left, away from the elevators, meaning they weren’t headed to cells.
The new direction did not ease the knot in her chest. There was only one type of room down this hallway—the conference rooms, as they were politely called.
They were actually interrogation rooms; there was no other way to describe them. Every room was without windows, despite being on the outer rim of the building, and while the walls and doors were glass, a flick of a button smoked them out, making it impossible to see in or out.
Dr. Sato led her to the third room, halting outside the door and glowering at her until she walked ahead of him into the room.
“Sit down,” he said, pointing to one chair at the small table before closing the door behind him, a soft beep announcing the lock engaging.
“I just want you to know that I intend to fully cooperate,” she said her voice shaky and tears glistening in her eyes as she looked up at him.
The snap of his fingers sounded like a firecracker and she jolted back to avoid his index finger jabbing into her nose. “Stop it. You will not manipulate your way out of this.”
His voice left no room for argument or protestations of innocence. Still shaking, she cleared her throat and struggled to swallow the desperate sobs threatening to strangle her. She should have tried harder to stay stoic. It was something Dr. Sato said frequently—people who cry in front of others want something, even if it's as simple as attention. “Never overlook an adult who sobs before you,” he had said. And she'd nodded along, agreeing with every word. And now here she was crying like a child.
He wasn't wrong though; she did want something from him—clemency.
Getting a hold of herself, Monica took another deep breath and craned her neck to look up at him as he stood over her, focusing on his throat instead of his disappointed face.
“What questions do you have for me?”
“I have just received a most troubling message from my friend Anit Chandrasekhar,” he said, moving away from her and slowly lowering himself into the opposite chair. He moved slowly, gingerly, as if he were a delicate old man—rather than 150 pounds of solid muscle that could snap her in half like a twig.
“After speaking with Shannon Fitzroy, who you assured me you were not friendly with, Anit seems to think that you lied, both in your statement to him and,” Dr. Sato's eyes raised to meet hers, “and also to me. Why would he say that, Miss Savala? What would make him think you would lie to me?”
He bit off every word, his eyes hard and his mouth turned down in betrayal.
There was so little she could say, and none of it would get her out of this. Everything they had done up to this point was to make sure there’d be no blowback on her. That was the deal—Alfredo would take his lumps, if it came to it. So would Shannan. But Monica would still be able to graduate, have her career, and make her family proud. That was the deal—the deal they had made.
From the sound of it, Shannan was changing the deal.
Typical.
Out of options, she leaned forward, needing him to believe her. “I did lie to you. But not to protect myself,” she whispered, bearing down on her insides to keep any hint of tears from rising up again. “I need you to understand I would never do anything to disrespect you or bring disrepute to your door or to Warner. I hope that my behavior up until this point has made that clear.”
He didn't interrupt, but he didn’t look impressed either.
“I lied to cover for the misbehavior of Dr. Chandrasekhar. I apologize fully and without reservation for this lie but please believe me—”
“Doctor Chandrasekhar?” he interrupted her. “He's a doctor is he?”
Monica blinked rapidly, not sure how to respond to the question. Was this some kind of a tactic to throw her off balance? If so, it was working.
“I- I’m sorry I'm not sure what you're asking me,” she stammered. “I never had him in class but Shannan always called him…” she trailed off as a look of realization washed over Dr. Sato's face.
What is going on? What did I just do?
He leaned forward, his face hard and unyielding. “Anit Chandrasekhar is not a staff member at Warner University. He is employed with the Temporal Investigative Service, just like you hope to be one day. He has never been directly in the employ of Warner. Something tells me that isn’t the only thing you and your co-conspirators changed in the timeline. What did you do? Tell me now.”
The room seemed to sway around her. No! Everything is the same! We didn’t change anything. That was the whole point of stopping Alfredo—keeping the timeline intact!
Could he be lying to her? From the look on his face, and the barely contained fury rippling through his whole body, she didn’t think so.
“I have not altered the timeline nor am I aiding anyone who attempted to. There has been no change.” She kept her voice low and tone even. She refused to give in to the hysteria clawing its way through her chest. “When I spoke to Dr… Agent Chandrasekhar yesterday, he didn’t correct me. When I called him Doctor.”
“He's good at his job.” He sneered at her as if she was the lowest form of life who ever existed. “So what is this disrepute you were supposedly trying to save me from with your lies?”
His disgust with her hit like a punch to the solar plexus and it took two deep breaths before she could bring herself to answer.
“Shannan seduced Dr. Chandrasekhar over a series of months in order to steal his access codes to the TSC machinery. She used them to send Dr. Edwards to the past to escape his prosecution,” she said, nearly choking on the words. Even though she'd been left no choice, it made her sick to speak it out loud. She'd never been so grateful for anything as she was for not knowing exactly where or when Daniel had been sent.
Just because her life was fucked didn't mean his had to be.
The anger in Dr. Sato’s face abated, his jaw slackening just slightly as his eyes went unfocused.
“That's how she did it,” he said, seemingly to himself. “We couldn't figure it out because the access codes she used no longer exist.” His face changed contorting into a look of fury. “And you knew and did nothing.”
“No!” she borderline screamed, leaning forward across the table. “I didn’t know any of this until after—”
“After what?” The table shook with the force of his fist slamming onto the surface.
How much does he know? Frozen in her chair, Monica couldn’t look away from him, dared not let one single tell of deception give her away.
“After I used an unauthorized device to travel forward in time to rescue Shannan from an alternate future created by Alfredo’s malfeasance in 1688.”
His face registered no surprise, no confusion. “And she returned with you to 1688?”
She swallowed hard, trying desperately to read something, anything, from his face, and failing. “Yes.”
“Anyone else go back with you?”
This time, the tears won out and Monica looked down at her lap, trying to rid herself of the memory of him. His face, his laugh. She had tried to scrub him from her mind entirely, nearly succeeding until this moment.
“Yes. There was a local in the alternate timeline who helped me rescue Shannan. His name was Syed. He came back with us.”
Dr. Sato was quiet a moment, staring at her, letting the seconds tick by as some of the tension slowly eased from the space between them. He leaned forward on the table, resting his chin in his hand. “And you got there in time to stop Candidate Jaramillo’s malfeasance?”
His tone was softer now, like a parent who wants you to know he’s not mad, just disappointed.
But she still couldn’t look at him, not with this mess of tears running down her face. “We got there two weeks early. There was confusion on when exactly Churchill died. So we had time to find Alfredo before he ruined everything.”
“And you did?”
“Yes.” She let her finger flit around, gesturing at the world around them. “And we thought everything was okay.” She sniffed hard and wiped her face, lifting her chin to look at him. “We stopped it and didn’t do anything else to endanger the timeline. None of us. I swear, we didn’t know anything was different.”
Dr. Sato craned his neck, looking behind him at the row of white cabinets affixed to the wall and, without raising from his chair, leaned back and opened one of them, coming back with a box of tissues. He set it in the middle of the table and pushed it lightly toward her.
“I don’t see any reason you should continue to imperil your future for the sake of those two. Do you?”
She gave a single shake of her head, not daring to speak as she pulled four or five tissues from the box, furiously wiping her face.
“Then you tell me the truth. All of it. And we’ll see if you’ve left me with any option to save you.”
Blowing her nose, Monica took the opportunity to close her eyes and consider her options one last time, only to find she didn’t have any.
She opened them again, wadding the tissues in her hand and tossing them in the trash beside her. Dr. Sato sat quietly, waiting for her to begin, the anger fully gone from his face now. In its place, a strange comingling of hope and curiosity.
He wanted to save her. For once, someone was on her side.
But with what she was about to tell him, she honestly had no idea what he would do with her once he found out what happened back there.