Flyday

by Laura E. Bradford

  Emily put a hand to Ariel’s jacket, then pulled it back, looking at her fingers. “There’s no blood.”

  Thomas stared at her, eyes filled with tears, and realized she was right.

  Ariel took a breath, and her eyelids fluttered open. “Hey,” she whispered, then winced. “Ow ... flak jacket. Pain. Not cool.”

  “Kiddo!” His eyes widened. “Oh my God, where did you get a bulletproof vest?”

  Ariel closed her eyes. “Di.”

  “Di?” said Emily.

  “Her brother,” Thomas said quickly. “He’s a soldier.”

  Ariel was already unconscious again; he could feel in it her soft breaths. The sirens grew louder, and an ambulance and police cruiser landed on the building, attracted by the gunshots. They checked and covered the assassin’s body, and walked toward the group. A paramedic asked Emily what had happened.

  The princess pointed to Jude’s body. “That man killed my brother, and he was trying to kill me and this reporter.” She looked down at Ariel. “She saved our lives.”

  That simplified matters greatly. The sun burst over the horizon, turning the sky a reddish-orange. The workers asked Thomas questions, but he couldn’t reply. He was crying silently, holding Ariel in his arms, not daring to believe his luck, not wanting to move. It was June 21, 2507, and he was found above a street in Tenokte, very much alive.

  Chapter Twenty

  Over the course of half an hour, a team of doctors poked and prodded Thomas several times, but they found nothing wrong with him—nothing new, anyway. They looked at his X-rays, whistled at the one of his skull, winced at the one of his shoulder, and moved along.

  He slid off the table and went in search of Kira, and in the process passed Emily Montag, who breathed in and out as a physician’s assistant listened to her chest with a stethoscope. Beyond minor shock, she seemed to be doing fine.

  Lt. Kira Watson was arguing with the staff over Ariel’s treatment.

  “She has no identification,” said the nurse.

  “This is an emergency. I authorize it. And the princess is here, for crying out loud. If she can’t authorize it—”

  “I’m sorry. The retina scan can’t identify her, and with no personal ID card, they can’t manually enter her into the computer as a patient. Her treatment’s going to be delayed while they work it out.”

  Kira walked back, scowling. “Commander of the globe!” she said. “And I can’t even get a check-up for her.”

  Thomas stared ahead. “Doesn’t matter. There’s no cure.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll—take her back to the ship,” he said, distracted. “I’ll take her back to her own time if I have to.”

  “Do you even know where lives?”

  “Yes. At least, I know who her brother is.” He looked at the clock. “I’m not supposed to be alive right now. I should’ve died up there.”

  “She really stole Caxton’s gun and shot the assassin with it?”

  “Borrowed,” he said. “She borrowed his gun.”

  Kira smiled. “The assassin’s body was taken to the crime lab, and they analyzed the prints. The one partial print matched Jude’s, and Emily’s testimony and the video evidence stacks up. You found the king’s killer.”

  “Good,” said Thomas. “That’s good.”

  “The Council released Damien, too. He’s under police protection, obviously.”

  “What about Jamie?”

  “We found that someone called his house phone and talked to him right before the assassination. He couldn’t have killed the king. Chalk it up to his mental state.”

  He watched the medical staff pass by. “Right,” he said. “You’re the one who caused his mental state, you know. He was always infatuated with you.”

  “Please. I can’t take credit for all that myself.”

  He sighed. That was true.

  “Delacroix has been imprisoned, and the Council’s looking at his case. They also discovered the full extent of his plans against Emily ... no chance of him getting out anytime soon.” She reached into her pocket and took out a cracked platinum pocket watch. “The other watch seems to be broken, but this one was on Ariel when we took her in. Take it.”

  “You won’t want to use it to find time travelers?”

  “Please. I have enough trouble keeping track of people without adding that into the mix.”

  He pocketed the device, and glanced over at Emily. “Is she safe now?”

  “Yes. Well, reasonably. She’s going to need a lot of security, but the people love her. They’re even trying to modify the laws so she can be coronated early.”

  “How early?”

  “This summer.”

  Thomas smiled. He glanced over at one of the other beds, where a doctor was treating John Caxton, Kira’s assistant, for a broken rib.

  “Seems everyone survived,” he said.

  Kira nodded. “If you want ... I can tell you what happened.”

  He looked at Ariel, lying asleep on a stretcher. No, not asleep, in limbo between life and death. He remembered most of the incident, but needed someone to fill in the blanks.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “You had some trouble with your partner, Agent Six, and I thought a change would do you some good. We sent you to Montréal and I gave you a new partner, Agent 27, Madison Delgado. She was very beautiful, and they warned me there was a risk that anyone would get too close to her. But you must understand, I was working under the impression that you were, well…”

  “Gay,” Thomas supplied, distracted.

  “Yes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you had never dated a woman before. Apparently you two hit it off well. She had an infant son, the father out of the picture, and you loved the kid. You took three classes at a university up there, and spent the spring studying and writing articles.

  “When you came back to graduate, you asked Madison to come with you. She did. But she was working as a double agent, and knew too much about you. Do you know anything about the Red Army?”

  “Uh—someone at the base mentioned it. I take it it’s a rebel group?”

  “Yes. It’s been around for quite awhile, and they were responsible for a revolt in Italy the year before your capture. Madison was working for them, but apparently she didn’t know enough about the secret police to satisfy them. In August of that year, around the time the epidemic started, her group gave her a choice: give up your identity, or they would harm her son.

  “She chose to give up you. Five of them ambushed and kidnapped you. According to their reports, you thought it was some sort of prank at first. Then they broke your leg and your wrist, and cut your chest almost to ribbons, and you realized they weren’t joking.”

  Thomas flexed his wrist. “What did they want?”

  “Names, information. Anything they could get about the secret police. You knew my name and several others’, and you were always pretty clever, so you probably knew more than you let on.”

  “And?”

  “You didn’t tell them anything, and we found you. You disappeared around Friday afternoon, and early Monday morning we received a call with your whereabouts. It was from a female operative in the Red Army. And …”

  “And?” said Thomas.

  She sighed. “We didn’t get there fast enough. There were shots …” A pause. “We found you lying on the floor, not moving, not breathing. We had to revive you.”

  He tried to remember what they’d told him after he woke from his coma. The bullet had gone through the front of his skull, passing straight through the side, hitting very little brain tissue. After undergoing surgery to close up his skull, he didn’t wake up, and started showing signs of infection.

  “They wanted to take you off life support,” Kira continued, “but you were talking. In your sleep you were saying things, asking questions of people who weren’t there. So they kept you on it. Suffice to say, you recovered.”

  “What happened to Madison?” />
  She was quiet for a moment. “Thomas, do you really want to know? Even if it’s not the answer you were hoping for?”

  He nodded.

  “Thomas, the rebels who kidnapped you, they … shot her. In front of you.”

  He closed his eyes. No wonder she didn’t want to tell him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You should have told me.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t. Not when you didn’t even remember her. I just wanted you to start over, Thomas. How would knowing that have helped you?”

  “But I never knew. All these years, I’ve been wondering…”

  “Does it make you any happier to know?” she asked. “I didn’t think it would.”

  “No,” he replied, finally. “But now I know.” He paused. “What about her little son? Her baby?”

  “He’s fine. Growing up with his father in Montreal.” She paused. “We arrested five people responsible for your kidnapping, and they were executed by lethal injection. But according to all of their statements, there’s one more kidnapper at large. They all pointed the blame at him for killing Madison. He wasn’t in the building when we rescued you.”

  “He’s still out there?”

  Kira nodded slowly. “The suspect’s name is Peter Masaccio. He’s rumored to still be running the Red Army, although they’re quite underground now.” She paused. “Thomas, if you want to leave the secret police, I’d understand. You went through a lot. But if not … we still have a place for you.”

  Thomas thought of Madison. He had no memory of her murder … but he was remembering more and more every day, so that could change. “Kira,” he said, “does the secret police have an office in London?”

  She smiled. “I’ll let them know you’re coming.”

  He took Ariel back to Zoë’s ship. Jack had cut the wires to the TV, at the pilot’s request, and so they went on with their activities in blissful silence. When Thomas arrived, he lay Ariel down on the couch.

  Zoë kissed him, then sat down, recounting all the details of Damien’s release. When she finished, she looked down at the time traveler, suddenly subdued. “Will you take her home?” she asked.

  “I don’t know where she belongs.”

  “With Dimitri Reynolds.”

  “But when?” he said. “I can’t look up the date she went missing. Not now.”

  “Then don’t,” said Zoë.

  A pause.

  “I hear you did some good piloting,” said Thomas.

  “Not good enough. My father could’ve done better.” Zoë said it almost without realizing it, then looked surprised. She grabbed her jacket, then opened the hatch of the ship with a creak.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t stay here. When I look at her, I think about Jamie.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Thomas. My mother died of the falling-sickness.” She walked out the door, and in a moment Thomas heard the metallic slam of the hatch.

  He stood there for a moment, anguished, wondering if he should rush after her. Finally he walked back to Ariel’s side and sat down.

  For an hour or two he put cold cloths on her head, waiting for her to sweat out a fever while the world outside was celebrating the summer solstice.

  He couldn’t do it. He walked over to his room in the ship, screamed and pounded and cried, and turned and saw a robot staring at him with wide, bicycle-reflector eyes.

  “Is something the matter, Mr. Huxley?” said Jack.

  Thomas slumped to the floor. “Jamie’s dead. Ariel’s sick and I don’t know what to do. I just found out that the person who killed my old girlfriend is still alive. And Zoë’s out there, and she won’t even speak to me.”

  “I am sorry,” said the repair-bot, his eyes flashing. “Those problems are beyond my repairing capacities. I can only offer my deepest consolations.”

  “Thanks anyway,” said Thomas.

  “Death is a part of life. It must always happen.”

  “Right. Next time, tell me something I don’t know.” He walked back to see Ariel.

  What had changed to make him live? She could tell him if she woke up. He tried to think, tried to trace the path through time, and realized it was like trying to visualize a storm by looking at the debris. He was alive. Did it even matter?

  “You can’t die, kiddo,” said Thomas. “That’d mess me up. Just open your eyes. I’ve got your time machine. What day do I take you back? When’s the first moment your brother misses you?”

  His phone rang, and he scrambled to pick it up. “Hello?” A pause. “Yes, I know I’ve been reactivated as an agent, but I can’t right now, I—” Another pause. “Fine. Just give me a minute. I’ll be there.”

  That afternoon, Thomas found himself sitting at the head of a long table. The Council had called him up to present his findings on the assassination.

  His heart was grieving for a dying friend. But life, as they say, goes on; and he needed to present a case for Damien’s innocence, so he let them ask questions: with one disclaimer.

  “With all due respect, I don’t really have any new information for you,” he said. “I’m just a journalist.”

  “You were a homicide detective,” said Marietta Jones, chairwoman of the council, sliding a file toward him. “Solved every case you started. And you used CPA resources to investigate this case, didn’t you?”

  “CPA?”

  “Celestial Protection Agency,” said a council member. “The secret police.”

  He hadn’t heard that euphemism in years. So his secret was out, and he was pinned up against the wall.

  “Don’t worry; we’ve met thousands of agents, many of them testifying on cases like this. The lieutenant gave her recommendation to you. Please, just tell us what you know.”

  Thomas stood. He thought of Ariel, of a fever taking away that perfect mind…

  “I suspect that Commander Delacroix wanted to kill Emily before she could be crowned. He was the highest-ranking person outside the royal family, and he was in your favor. By default, the throne would go to him.”

  “I see. We’ve reviewed your recording. It’s very informative about the matter.” The woman slid the music player over to him. “Lt. Kira Watson has also testified about this case. Do you think Delacroix hired the assassin who attacked King Richard?”

  “Not quite. I think he simply took advantage of the situation.” He pulled out a laptop and opened a file. “This is the profile for a man arrested on the Lunitron four years ago. Name: Jude Fawkes. No one knew how he got on the ship, and he disappeared from his cell without a trace. Deleted from the main files, naturally, but Project X kept a copy.”

  “Project X?”

  “A mission dedicated to investigating time travel,” said Thomas. “As you can see, the prisoner they found had fingerprints and a retina scan that matched that of a man who, according to your files, went missing nearly a century earlier.”

  One of the Council members looked at the date of birth. “So the cross-referencing was a mistake?”

  “Either that, or Fawkes hacked into the file to corrupt it. The facts are these: a man, acting alone and probably with rebel sympathies, assassinated your king. The Commander threw a new plan into motion, planning to harm the princess. And the assassin found out I was investigating the case, and came after me.”

  “And your friend shot the assassin, correct?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes distant. “But she doesn’t have any information for you.”

  “The CPA are seriously investigating time travel?” said a Councilman. “Have they found any evidence it exists?”

  Thomas smiled. “No clue. I deal with facts. You’d have better luck asking a conspiracist. But think about it: is it more likely that people are popping in and out of time randomly killing people, or that one rebel managed to get a clear shot?”

  The Councilman realized the silliness of his question. “Thank you, Agent Nineteen. That is all.”

  Thomas
reached for the laptop, then paused. He had written about their news, all their laws and decisions, commenting on the world they controlled. But today he was a clandestine agent, telling them what to do. He gave a businesslike smile and left the board room. Damien would go free; the real assassin was dead, his body in Celestial custody. But he still felt troubled and sad when he thought of Ariel.

  He stepped outside. The day was sunny with patchy clouds, and not even a whisper of chance for rain.

  2.

  Zoë, dressed in a loose tan jacket and jeans, walked into Apollo’s office—then stopped. The lawyer had pulled his leather-bound books from the shelves, and his knickknacks were scattered on his desk. He lowered an iron scale into a cardboard box.

  “You’re leaving?” she said.

  Apollo nodded. “Retiring. I’m finally moving to San Francisco.”

  “Northampton’s closer, you know.”

  “True.” He dusted off a statue of Lady Liberty (besides Zoë, the only woman he allowed in his life) and put it in the box. “Still, I could use a change of scenery. Heard the news about your friend. I’m very sorry.”

  Zoë glanced down. “I should’ve paid more attention to Jamie. All the signs were there.”

  “Perhaps. Or, perhaps it’s just destiny. Maybe there’s a reason things happen, and it’s not just random.” He sighed. “Don’t blame yourself, my dear. Life’s too short for that.”

  She nodded, her eyes watering. “It’s just … Kyle, and now Jamie … I can’t go on like this. I just can’t.”

  “I know it’s hard for you, with your parents gone, but trust me, things get better. You have a lot to look forward to. Motherhood, for one.” He winked.

  She put a hand to her abdomen, jolted. “How did you—?”

  He shrugged. “I just know these things. Also, Damien might have mentioned it.” He put his briefcase on his desk, rolled the dials on the brass combination locks, and popped it open. “I don’t do murders anymore, like you said. I mostly handle financial matters. And I’m very good at prenups.” He took out a piece of paper, then put it on the desk. “Standard form. You can look it over, then make any necessary additions.”