Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

  But killing was still killing. “Who’s the field agent?”

  “Kin, I’m not telling you that. For your sake or the agent’s sake.”

  Nervous electricity skipped up and down his body. “I can’t let this happen. There has to be something, some other way.” He grabbed Markus again and pulled, without any sort of direction or purpose in mind other than forward.

  “Snap out of it!” Markus broke free and yelled with a ferocity he rarely displayed. “There’s no beating this. Impossible tasks don’t have happy endings, just burdens. God, I love you, but Penny’s right—you can be so thick.” He grabbed Kin by the shoulders and looked at him face-to-face, his voice carrying a gravelly seriousness that came out at a slow, deliberate clip. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You could quit.”

  “If I quit, then someone else is going to do it. Is that what you really want? Someone who doesn’t care about you or Miranda? Someone who sees this as yet another assignment? What good will come of that? So tell me, what do you want me to do? Think this through.”

  Markus was right; this was in the cards regardless of who handled it. That notion didn’t sit easily. Kin wanted to fight back. He wanted to rip a tear in the universe and find a way to stop this. He needed to, if he only knew how. “Find another way.”

  The bright hues of dusk had started to dim, and stars began accompanying skycar headlights across the sky. “There is no other way. I’m sorry, Kin. I know that’s hard to accept. I’m doing this because you’re my friend. It would be easier to quit.”

  They stood in silence for several minutes before Kin finally gave him a silent nod. It broke the invisible barrier holding them to the small patch of dirt and weeds on San Bruno Mountain. Markus set out on his slow walk away, his drooped head bobbing with each step, and his skycar beeped before the door folded upward into its roof. “Sorry about hitting you,” Kin said.

  “I understand.” The door sealed Markus in, and the rumble of his engine gave the ground a firm shake as he lifted toward the sky. Kin didn’t watch him fly away.

  CHAPTER 20

  Kin’s instinct was to go home.

  Not the apartment he shared with Penny, but his home back in 2014. With Miranda, where he belonged.

  He tried to find another way. He didn’t infiltrate TCB headquarters with guns blazing, nor did he climb in through a ventilation shaft to bypass layers and layers of security. He’d considered it, though, visualizing each plan through its various steps. Each one ended up with a near-zero percentage of success. This wasn’t some kind of spy thriller from Miranda’s time.

  So he reduced it to the basics. To get to her, he’d need an accelerator and the appropriate injections: a mix of standard pre-jump meds and some post-jump stabilizers for himself. Those were the essentials, but even with those supplies, any time jump for him would be risky without a partner. He’d been warned that his body was no longer equipped to make a jump—the chance of doing damage was incredibly high, and going it alone could be deadly. Ideally, he’d bring a doctor with him to inject the stabilizers, but that wasn’t in the cards.

  But a partner was the least of his concerns. Getting an accelerator would mean breaking into the equipment vault of the Resources division ten floors below the TCB’s guarded roof, where a mix of motion and thermal sensors, eye-scanning door locks, and plain old Security guards remained.

  Even if he could get past them, he’d still have to make it down ten floors and break into the vault itself. Mechanized Security bots and guards were the first layer; after that, locks upon locks stood in the way, and the individual accelerators were kept in a motion-, heat-, and sound-sensitive chamber, and the actual equipment was biometric, coded to individual field agents. Only mission planners had access to reset those codes.

  If he somehow miraculously succeeded in getting an accelerator, he’d still have to go thirty-two floors down to the medical bay. Injections weren’t tracked and guarded with the same ferocity as time-traveling equipment, but they still sat behind lock and key, and because recovering field agents stayed in the ward rather than at a public hospital, the entire floor was in a constant state of high alert.

  Then, even with equipment and medication in hand, he’d still have to escape the bowels of the TCB high-rise and fly undetected to the jump point, all before the upcoming scheduled mission next week. Without any backup, without even time to get a blueprint of the building from public records, it truly was an impossible mission.

  Kin came to that conclusion from the rooftop of a parking garage two blocks over. He’d stood, watching the unmarked TCB Security patrol skycar routes circle the roof, blending in and out of traffic. The high level of security made sense; after all, they were guarding technology that could theoretically rewrite the whole of human history.

  Even at his peak field condition, there was no way he could have accomplished it. And so he took one last glance at the roof and walked back to his skycar, each step as heavy as the guilt he felt.

  He could try something like a foolish frontal assault or hope to find a single hole in their security for a sneaking mission. But an instantaneous death wouldn’t help anyone—not Penny and certainly not Miranda.

  Instead, Kin walked with the gritted teeth of begrudging acceptance of the inevitable. One man simply couldn’t break into the most highly secured building on the West Coast.

  That was why he started his car and flew back to his apartment building.

  The skycar hovered over the parking spot about a hundred feet below. Kin sat in the driver’s seat, and his fingers grasped the wheel, the tint of his knuckles become lighter from the tension.

  No sounds entered the car’s interior except for the low hum of the engines and his own breathing. The display overlaid the windscreen, an endless blinking message indicating that the automated parking sequence was ready to engage. None of it registered, though; in fact, very little registered since he’d parted ways with Markus and launched his hopeless scouting mission.

  And the stuff that did—well, it didn’t matter.

  The act of hitting the flashing orange icon seemed like surrender. It fluttered away, on and off across the lower view in the windscreen while traffic and lights and buildings remained in the distance. Behind him other skycars lined up, apartment dwellers finishing their commute home, the occasional honk urging him to park.

  He couldn’t do it. Parking the car, entering the apartment, returning to the home that he’d just begun to really reintegrate into, all of that represented the future. For now, all he could think of was the past, the consequences of his actions, the things he’d done.

  He’d killed Miranda. Not the field agent on assignment, not Markus, not the AD. He did.

  He’d broken the rules.

  The driver behind finally lost his patience, horn blaring as he pulled around and lined up about twenty feet below before engaging his own parking sequence. Kin’s car started repeating a warning that a vehicle in surrounding traffic engaged manual override and violated the standard traffic routes. Others gradually followed suit in breaking the rules, processing the queue until Kin was left alone, floating in the air.

  The urge to fight something consumed every thought but even if he could snap his fingers and stop the car accident, they’d schedule another one. Unless she was shielded in a protective bubble free from the prying eyes of the TCB and history and unless he could convince the TCB that they no longer needed to pursue her, the same thing would eventually happen.

  He couldn’t do anything except wonder if Markus was possibly right.

  Maybe that was the hardest part to accept. Markus’s submission to the TCB was the same thing as waving the white flag instead of fighting, struggling—kicking and screaming until the bitter end. Markus may have been correct, except giving up felt so very wrong, an action so terrible that Kin wasn’t sure if he could forgive him, if he could still call h
im a friend.

  Skycars swerved around and below him, drivers confident of where they started and where they were headed regardless of traffic rules. Kin watched, envious at the way everyone else seemed to know where to go.

  * * *

  At some point over the next few minutes, the racing thoughts finally subsided. At some point he tapped the flashing icon. At some point the car parked, and at some point he shuffled back to the apartment. He may have even given Akasha a few scratches when he walked in.

  Kin sat on the couch, his limbs stuck in Neutral. Behind him, the door slid shut and a quiet beep indicated that the automated lock had engaged. Down the hall he heard Penny’s voice, a projected whisper. She popped around the corner, waving him to come in.

  They walked hand in hand, Penny stepping with extra care, her feet landing with almost cartoonish silence. She motioned at the bathroom door and pointed once it slid open to reveal a small box of four sleeping kittens and a miniature vapolitter module next to them.

  “I just bottle-fed them,” she whispered. “Now they’re in a food coma.”

  Kin smiled as Penny leaned into him, marveling at the way she adored the little moments, something he simply couldn’t do right now. At their feet, Akasha slithered by, sniffing the air. Penny shooed the cat away, and she obliged with a hiss.

  Markus had spoken about the burden of the impossible task. Perhaps in his twisted logic, he’d taken on this task because he knew that Kin faced another burden of similarly impossible odds.

  He had to act like he’d simply been laid off from a government job, like someone who worked for the water district or the county clerk. Not like someone whose daughter was soon to be murdered.

  Those were the rules they lived by. That was what they agreed to when they signed up.

  “Paw-cific needed a foster for a few days. One of the new volunteers is a commercial Realtor who might know of a good restaurant space. Figured I’d get in good with her,” Penny said. She blew a kiss at the napping felines, then motioned the door closed. Another kiss landed on Kin’s cheek. “Hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t reach you today.”

  He went through the expected motions. Smile. Hug. Let her explain kitten care. Talk about going to the birthday party for Markus and Enoch’s son. Reveal his job situation.

  All because he was supposed to.

  He joined her for dinner, played along while she gave another cooking lesson, laughed at her jokes, helped her bottle-feed four very acrobatic kittens, kissed her good-night when she turned in, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

  The truth pulsed inside him, wanting to surface and unveil itself to Penny. But whenever his mind went there, flashes of Heather’s panicked disbelief went through his mind. That conversation had made everything worse and left Heather worried about his mental stability. Who knew how Penny would react; she might even go to Markus with such a revelation for a whole other level of disaster.

  He couldn’t risk that. Not again. With Penny in bed and Akasha relaxing on a cat tree in the corner, Kin sat by himself again.

  He completed the last step of the new plan: settle into the future. Because he was supposed to. Because the past was dead, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  CHAPTER 21

  As Kin and Penny walked up the driveway to the front door, his entire body reflexively tensed. His toes curled, his core tightened, his shoulders drew into hard knots. His fingers remained interlaced with Penny’s, though within a few steps, something unexpected happened.

  Her tension suddenly matched his. In fact, it may have even exceeded his, so much so that her nails dug into his knuckles.

  Kin paused and looked over at her; her face drained of color, the normal gentleness of her expression erased to a straight neutral. “Oh no,” she said in a barely audible whisper.

  She couldn’t have known the predicament with Miranda or the fact that Kin and Markus faced a friendship dangling by a mere thread, so much so that Kin bit his tongue whenever Penny brought up her brother over the past two days. His generous severance package put her financial worries at ease, and she even talked about being ready to apply for the loan again once she figured out her restaurant angle.

  He knew of only one thing that put Penny in this state, and through the open front doors of Markus and Enoch’s home, he saw it.

  “He didn’t tell me he invited them,” she said, and on cue, her mother paused in midstep across the entryway before looking directly at them.

  “Penny!” she exclaimed, arms already outstretched. Edith Fernandez stormed through the open door, crossing the threshold and wrapping her daughter in her arms.

  “Hi, Mum,” Penny offered, her voice filled with a pep that didn’t reflect how she looked.

  “We’re so glad you made it. You know, your father thought you might not show. Figured you’d be obsessing about that silly restaurant idea.”

  “I wouldn’t miss Benny’s birthday party—”

  “That’s what I told him! ‘I know Penny gets carried away with her ridiculous ideas, but she wouldn’t let her family down like that.’ Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m decorating the cake. Sorry, sorry to come and go. You know me, attention to detail. But you can help me later. Markus said you tried the Mars spices in a dessert but got the ratios wrong.”

  “The ratios were actually quite—”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to use them properly.” And with that, Edith disappeared back into the house, Penny’s self-confidence somewhere in tow.

  They remained motionless halfway up the driveway, wind from the bay rippling through their clothes. Penny turned her back to the hillside Marin house and faced a view that would have been completely unattainable for Kin and Heather in twenty-one-A. In this era, rising sea levels and migration to off-world colonies had made this type of real estate affordable, especially for a midlevel TCB retriever agent and a hologram media designer.

  “I can’t go in.”

  “Your parents spit out noise. It means nothing.”

  “Easy for you to say.” She took his hand and pulled him back toward the house. “You’re not living in the shadow of England’s most revered baking couple. Let’s see how many times Mum mentions her awards today.”

  Kin had spent the last two days peering through archival blueprints of the TCB’s building, trying to find any conceivable plan to break in and steal a time-jump accelerator as a means of contacting Miranda. For now, though, being pulled out of that anxiety and back into the passive-aggressive feuding that occupied Fernandez family events offered the strangest kind of soft landing place for his mind.

  At least it was familiar.

  “Right,” Penny said, shaking her head and stiffening her posture. “I’m not listening to a single word they’re saying.” She held up the gift bag in her hand. “This day is about Benjamin, not his grandparents.” Kin waited for her to take the first step, then stayed at her side as they trailed the noise of children through the home out into the backyard. “There’s so many of them,” she said, pointing and counting under her breath. “Thirteen kids. Nine adults.”

  They hadn’t talked about children since Penny’s awkward mention on his first night back, although her nerves about them was well documented over the course of their relationship. “Ah, it’s not too bad.” A girl, probably about seven or eight, ran by while dribbling a soccer ball, and he reminded himself to exhale after several frozen seconds.

  “Hanging out with Markus and Enoch and Benjamin is one thing. That’s easy. This looks like—” she paused at the sliding glass door and squinted “—this looks very...tiring.” She nodded at her father, who sat barefoot in a lounge chair, glass of wine in hand. “Better than the alternative, I suppose.”

  “It’ll be fine. They’re great at this age,” he said before realizing what he’d given away. “I mean, easier than wrangling mouthy line cooks and waitstaff, I bet.”
He stepped through the door without another word and avoided her confused look.

  Enoch marched over, dodging the cross fire of kids chasing the ball on their small lawn. “Hey, guys,” he said, trading hugs with both of them. He wiped sweat off his olive forehead and looked back at the high-pitched cacophony behind him.

  “Sorry we’re late.” Penny pulled out two wrapped boxes from the gift bag, and Enoch nodded to the picnic table with unbalanced towers of packages.

  “It’s okay. Markus is still at work. He had to go in late last night. Said it was an emergency, someone else called in sick. Oh, well—figures, right?” Enoch glanced around with a look that told the opposite of his accommodating words. “He’s not answering calls, though, at least since this morning.”

  A sympathetic smile came across Penny’s face, one that was more than a mere polite gesture. “He should try to lose his job,” she said, thumbing in Kin’s direction. “No more long hours, and he’ll get paid for a whole year.”

  Enoch and Penny thought that meant disappearing into the TCB building and getting stuck in meetings or whatever, only Kin knew that Markus had a retrieval scheduled. Even though the TCB had beacons to boost accuracy triangulation for agents jumping back home, the technology still wasn’t perfect, and they had a return window of a few hours. Markus must have been hitting the late part of the window.

  Was he returning from killing Miranda?

  “The kids are getting restless for cake. And the younger ones will be hitting naps soon. And the much older relatives will stay past their welcome.” Lines were etched across Enoch’s face, and they stayed even as Benjamin ran over and grabbed his leg. “Hi, buddy. I know, I know, you want cake.”

  “Why did he invite them?” she whispered while tousling Benjamin’s hair. Enoch shook his head in response.

  Despite his emotional tug-of-war with Markus, things had settled down enough for Kin to engage his son. “Hey, Benjamin, having fun?” he asked, kneeling down to meet him face-to-face. The boy’s bright blue eyes turned and locked in.