by Mike Chen
Markus continued to work while Kin had quietly moved an arm’s length behind him. Knocking him out offered the best chance, the most flexibility. At least then he might have a moment to decide how to get back to his family.
Except he hadn’t subdued anyone in a long, long time. His fingers and toes curled in anticipation, a nagging doubt eating away at him about his rusty agent skills despite cocking his hands and elbows in place.
“All right. Your turn,” Markus said, the holo disappearing, leaving them with only the night sky. “Ready to travel through time?” He turned and, despite the darkness around them, caught Kin’s eye, causing his own to go wide. “What are—”
Before he finished, Kin squeezed the consciousness out of Markus in textbook fashion, Markus’s chin jammed against the crook of Kin’s elbow, and while dust clouds blew up from Markus’s kicking feet, Kin put pressure down on the carotid artery—or at least he tried. Rather than going limp, Markus gagged and struggled, firing his elbow into Kin’s ribs.
“Kin!” he squeezed out. “Stop!” Dirt sprayed up as Markus fell to his knees. Something wasn’t going as planned, or Kin didn’t have the strength to do this anymore; rather than black out, Markus wriggled and fought to get words out. “We’re friends. We’re like family.”
“You’re wrong. A friend would never do what you’re doing.” Kin pushed his knee into Markus’s back, causing him to give. “You’re not my family.”
“Puh...” Something must have started working, because Markus went limp despite continuing to squeeze his breath out. “Puh...”
“I don’t belong there. I belong here. With my family.”
“Pen...”
“My family. I need to be here for Miranda.”
Beneath him, Markus shifted back and forth, sucking in barely enough air to get one final word through. “Penny.”
The sound of thunder rattled through, though only in Kin’s head, buckling his knees while he winced. His hands pressed up against his temples, trying to push the storm out.
Markus broke free from his grip and pushed away. “Penny,” he said again. That word. All it took was one word for Kin’s head to turn into a soup of noise and light. “Penny.” One more time and Kin fell flat on his back, knees curled up in the fetal position, an invisible jackhammer attacking from the inside out.
He’d heard that word plenty of times in his life. Why did it matter when Markus said it?
Kin couldn’t see Markus’s expression, but he heard a hesitation between the battling din in his head. “I’m really sorry I had to do that to you. This will help.”
Kin forced a single eye open, only to find Markus approaching him, syringe in hand. “Don’t,” he huffed. Brush flattened underneath as he rolled to his side, his legs fighting against something formless until a weight came crashing down on him and something pierced his neck.
The injection spread quickly, a cool burst that spidered outward and circulated. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was Markus muttering to himself again. “It really is lucky, isn’t it?”
* * *
Kin’s wrists burned when he opened his eyes. His vision adjusted to the night sky, and he took in even breaths while he watched the scene in front of him: Markus, kneeling and working on the main time-jump accelerator’s settings. His own hands were bound to the accelerator’s proxy handles with what appeared to be plain old rope, the rest of him waiting facedown in the dirt.
Proxy handles—the handles connected to the accelerator. The handles that agents gripped and hunkered over for safe transportation across time.
More memories returned. First details appeared when he looked at the equipment, then other stuff, things that didn’t need visual or audio triggers, they emerged from the woodwork on their own.
“You’ve tied me up.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. And sorry about using the P-word.” Markus stood up and closed the bag at his feet. “That was cheating. You weren’t ready to hear that from a familiar voice.”
“What does that mean? ‘Penny.’ It’s just a damn coin. It’s one cent.”
Markus bit down on his lip and avoided eye contact. “I can’t tell you. Those are the rules. You have to remember yourself. The brain’s not meant to know two different eras. The first metabolizer helped. This booster injection should speed things up. It, um, relieves the inflammation in your brain. Supposed to help you comprehend the different eras. You’ll remember things. And not feel like vomiting when you do.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m taking mine now.” He twisted the cap off, revealing a half-sized needle in a short metal frame. “No tricks. Completely safe.” The syringe pressed against the side of his neck. Markus pressed the tip down, grimacing for a second before looking back up. “There. Done. For me, it’s a precaution. For you, it’ll turn things back on. I should warn you, though—it might hurt when that happens.”
Kin rose to his knees, but all the gears of his body felt out of step, disconnected. A dull burn coursed through his shoulders when he tried to push himself up, only to collapse in the dirt again. “How long have I been out?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes? Something like that. You’re probably sore, huh? The booster is working. Sorry about tying you up. I had to make sure you came back with me.” Markus’s brow wrinkled in tension. “Right, we should get moving.”
The floating control panel disappeared with a few more taps from Markus. “Start-up sequence initiated,” the accelerator’s disembodied voice announced. “Launch in sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”
“Hold on.” The ropes tore against Kin’s skin while he struggled, achieving only a fish-out-of-water flounder with his unfeeling limbs. “I can’t leave. Markus, you said you’re my friend. Help me stay here. Help me find a way.” Dirt plumes kicked up as Kin’s toes dug into the ground, trying to get some form of traction. “Please. I can’t leave my family. Not like this.”
The words flew over and around Markus, doing everything except connecting with him. He hunched over his own handles, kneeling and curling into a ball.
The textbook pre-jump position. He knew that. Of course he did. How could he forget it?
“Forty-five. Forty-four.”
“Kin, just wait,” Markus said. “Wait until you start remembering what—”
A gong rang through Kin’s head, his muscles going limp. His body collapsed down the few inches he’d managed to prop himself up, and the sound exploded again in his head, creating a screaming pressure that demanded a release somewhere, anywhere. His eyes shut in pain as rapid-fire images arrived.
A woman with brown hair and round cheeks standing over a stove. A cat with white paws and a raccoon-like mask. A man kicking a soccer ball. Cars floating in between buildings. A ring on a hand.
“It’s starting, isn’t it? Come on. Stay with me. We’ll get through this.”
“Thirty-seven,” the hardware said. “Thirty-six.”
Information flooded his mind, details lighting up as if the power came back online. Penny. Akasha. The view from their apartment. Markus—Penny’s brother.
The ring he gave to Penny when he proposed.
“Thirty-one. Thirty seconds to launch.”
Another sonic boom hit, this one leaving his entire face stinging harder than he’d ever been punched. He knew he let out cries of pain, but he couldn’t hear them over the nonstop ringing in his ears. More images flew by, mixing with the other ones in a blender that somehow made sense of his life.
Miranda. Heather. Traffic. Bamford. Work.
Right when the noises in his head quieted, a jolt of electricity zapped through him, causing his neck to arch upward while every muscle spasmed. Penny reappeared a thousand times over, a collage of memories overlapping one another, mixing and matching details except for the lone constant of her face.
“Penny,” he said, more to himself than a
nyone else. “How did I forget Penny?”
“You didn’t. You held on to her, even when your memory disappeared. Your lucky Penny.” Markus nodded at the accelerator and its audible countdown. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Just hang on.”
“Twenty. Nineteen.”
He left Penny eighteen years ago on a routine assignment. And yet, after that night in Daly City, after giving up any hope of rescue, after settling in, finding a job, she evaporated from memory. No voice, no images, nothing.
She didn’t even make it into his journal.
“The wedding,” Kin said, fighting the burning in his limbs. “Did I miss the wedding?”
“No, it’s next week.”
Cooking. The cat rescue group. The restaurant she wanted to open. The business loan they were going to apply for. Their life.
How many years was Penny reduced to a symbol—a coin?
The disembodied machine voice continued. “Ten. Nine.”
The future versus the past. He couldn’t choose between his new life and his old life. Not now. Not like this. Miranda and Heather didn’t deserve to be betrayed. Neither did Penny. He needed more time to stop and think this through.
“Stop the countdown. Markus, I remember Penny.”
“Seven. Six.”
“I can’t. We’re locked in.”
“No, I need more time to figure this out.” The pounding returned, a rhythmic tumble coming straight from the rapid thumping in his chest. “I can’t. I need more time.”
“Two. One. Initiating.”
A high-pitched hum pierced the air, followed by a rumble that caused the loose dirt and small pebbles around him to dance. Another hum started low before ramping up in pitch and intensity.
“Markus. Markus, I need more time. I need more—”
Before the final words made it out, a flash of white bled out Kin’s vision, followed by absolute darkness, darker than the night sky over the Northern California countryside.
CHAPTER 9
Kin opened his eyes, and while he saw the bright dots of stars in the sky above, they quickly turned to streaks, and an overwhelming dizziness spun him despite being flat on his back. His fingers reached out beside him, gripping dirt and dead grass.
“Heather?” he called out. “I think I hit my head or something.”
“Hold on one second, Kin,” a voice said before it mumbled something unintelligible—a man, not Heather. The world stopped tumbling over, and his vision stabilized enough that he could see the stars and the twinkling of the Bay Area skyline below it. He took it in, and judging from the proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, he figured they must have gone for a night hike out in the hills by Mount Tamalpais or something. Until a giant beam of light wiped out all his sight.
The light came with a low hum and the rattling of an engine, and as his vision adjusted, he saw the silhouette around the light. A car.
A car floating in the sky.
“Holy shit—”
“Okay, here we go, buddy,” the man’s voice said again. “You’re just a little messed up from the time jump.” A pain stabbed into his neck, followed by a sudden rush of blood that seemed to shake his brain back to the on position.
“Transport Six Two, land and wait for us,” the man said into his watch. “He’s disoriented.”
Kin tried to crane his neck and look around, but every part of his body froze. A familiar pounding attacked his temples, the beat eventually giving way to a single brutal pressure that squeezed from the inside out. “My head.”
Even with his eyes shut, he sensed the bright light above, and the noise grew louder and louder, like it had been wired directly into his brain. “Okay. Okay. We got you.” Hands grabbed his arms and legs, lifting him off the ground until they rested him on a cloud, or at least it felt that way. His eyes refused to open, and his hands searched under him, feeling metal or plastic. When did a stretcher feel so smooth traversing dirt and rocks? He might as well have been flying—or hovering.
Hovering. A flying car. A floating stretcher. The man’s voice. Markus? Heather wasn’t here. She was gone, dead for a century.
He was in the future.
* * *
The next time Kin opened his eyes, the world returned with a sharpness he hadn’t felt in years. And it wasn’t only his (better-but-not-quite-twenty-twenty) eyesight, but the dull ache that always burned in his knees seemed fainter. For a second, the only urge he felt was to scan the room, assess the situation and figure out an escape route.
His mind fired off faster and better than it had done in ages, and it wasn’t from agent-trained techniques. He didn’t have to ask where he was as he sat up in the hospital bed. He just needed to look next to him.
A small black disk sat on the bedside table with a floating holographic message ironically showing traditional handwriting. This is from Penny it displayed with Markus’s name signed and dated underneath.
Penny.
The very name brought up an avalanche of, well, everything, soon counterweighted by the life he’d just left. According to the medical chart floating in front of him, he’d been under for two weeks at TCB’s medical wing—two weeks of metabolizer-powered healing to his body and mind.
Kin checked the disk’s date again. He’d missed the wedding. The holo message deactivated the instant he touched it, and he held it for the sheer sake of holding on to something tangible.
Life details suddenly returned with startling clarity and definitive pieces about his life finally fell into place. He’d joined the top secret TCB academy at age twenty-two, with his first mission a year later at the Toronto branch before transferring to San Francisco. That last mission, Kin had skimmed the intel instead of digesting the plan thoroughly. He’d trusted his gut, his ability to scan and visualize and decide, only to totally misjudge the target’s ability to blend into crowds, which led to her pouncing on him just outside the safe house. And when those details started to fade after he’d been stranded, in their place came a lurking apprehension about instinct, along with an urge to craft detailed plans and stick with them. That, combined with his agent-bred organization and visualization skills, made him perfect for the IT field of 1996, where he was stuck.
At the time he was thirty-two years old, but he easily passed for twenty-three thanks to his metabolizers. Trapped in the past, he’d aged at a natural rate for eighteen years, but now his body would resume aging in the modern extended rate.
He’d just look far older than all of his friends and peers.
Suddenly, the door opened and Markus burst in.
“You’re awake. Let’s go.”
Kin straightened up, stinging pains tapping a beat against his temples. “Good to see you, too, Markus.” Markus Fernandez. The detail awoke, along with the fact that names no longer revealed anything about ethnicity, since generations of interracial partnerships from the twenty-first century onward had rendered them meaningless. His pale complexion and sandy hair matched his accent more than his surname.
“I’m serious. We have to go. I’ll explain on the way.” Still clad in standard operational gear rather than civilian clothes, Markus overrode the floating semitransparent bed controls. “Come on.”
“Soccer match?” Beneath him, the bed adjusted, handles coming up under his arms and the base forming a floater chair that elevated out of the bed frame. The foot of the bed detached and sank, and Markus grabbed the handles that had popped out behind Kin.
“I wish. Agent Melete is missing in your time. Your old time. They think you might be able to help.”
The word missing pumped adrenaline up and down Kin’s body, like his mission work had never paused. Markus tilted and turned the floater chair, handling it with an ease that wasn’t possible with wheelchairs from Kin’s past life.
They dashed through hallways and up elevators, passing through rows o
f offices and stations, Markus providing background while huffing and puffing. On assignment in 1991, Agent Imogen Melete’s beacon tracked her until it became static earlier in the day. The Timeline Monitoring team confirmed that the archival delta—the difference between archived timeline records and the current timeline—hadn’t reset to status quo yet. At that point, the retriever lost contact, though Melete’s beacon kept pinging. Yet neither confirmation nor retrieval signals arrived.
“Do you think she’s alive?” Kin asked as they passed through one set of security doors.
“Her vitals are transmitting. We haven’t received an emergency recall yet. But something’s wrong. You know the area best. Maybe we’re missing something. It’s a long shot but...” Behind them, heavy sliding metal doors bolted shut, leading them to a set of bulletproof glass panels. They opened, and Kin took in a sight he hadn’t encountered since his first academy tour. He hadn’t bothered to—he was a field agent, after all. Why would planning and monitoring stations interest him when his job consisted of staying stealthy and on the move?
The Mission Control war room.
Three rings of workstations, holos of data and security feeds and scurrying people, all towering over him. In the middle floated a massive grid of information. The combination of images and texts made for a dizzying array of color, and it took Kin several seconds to parse out which department sat where among the rings. Security Overwatch, which monitored gravitational field shifts caused by temporal distortions. Timeline Monitoring, which tracked and pinged for discrepancies and specific timeline changes. Mission Oversight, which relayed information between retrievers and other internal teams. And about three dozen people from various other departments dashing back and forth creating a wall of cross-chatter.
