Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

  “Kin,” Penny said, cradling his head in her arms. “These hikers were passing by. She’s a doctor.”

  Kin could feel the air coming in and pushing out, the rise and fall of his chest. And yet, something was missing...

  “EMT, actually. You’re pretty lucky. We didn’t even see you guys over here. It’s like you popped up out of nowhere.”

  “Right. Thanks.” He turned to Penny. “What time is it?”

  “I...” Penny looked around, her eyes blank while she processed the question. Given the circumstances, the urgency of time and deadlines must have slipped her mind. “Afternoon? I think?”

  The plan. They needed to get to the plan. “Wait.” Kin propped himself up by his elbows and looked directly at the hiker couple. “What day is it?”

  The man’s brow furrowed into three dark lines as he glanced at the woman. “Saturday the twenty-eighth. It’s about four in the afternoon.”

  Saturday. The twenty-eighth. Four in the afternoon. The afternoon of Miranda’s thirtieth birthday.

  The afternoon before she uploaded her project.

  They were late. Not just a little late, but later than Kin or Markus predicted even in a worst-case scenario. Kin stood up, mind crunching numbers and options, only to collapse down to his knees, Penny offering a steadying hand. They’d barely arrived within the range of sneaking past TCB detection.

  Miranda had mere hours.

  “We need to go. We’re late.”

  “Kin, you can’t even walk.”

  “Look, let’s get you checked out,” the man said. “Your name’s Kin? I’m Alex, and this is Briana. Whatever you’re late for, I’m sure it can wait. We’ll drive you to the hospital. We’re parked right down the path.”

  The world—a sprawling landscape of trees and brush overlooking the Santa Cruz mountains—spun around, creating a dizzying effect that nearly stole Kin’s dinner straight out of his stomach. Landing from a time jump was never quite like this. He pressed his feet into the heels of his boots, searching for definitive ground beneath him before he tried his first stride forward. “We need to go. Miranda.” They had to travel north about a hundred fifty miles. But how?

  “Listen to me.” Penny grabbed him, arm matching arm. “You can’t help Miranda if you keel over on some mountaintop. Let them take you to a hospital. Then we’ll do what we need to do.”

  Markus was set to commandeer Miranda’s car at twenty past eight. If they hadn’t intercepted her by then, Markus would be forced to carry out the original mission. A car. They needed a car, though they didn’t even have a spare hour to get the rental Markus reserved for them. Percentages jumped through Kin’s mind with possibilities and consequences leaping in and out so quickly that he had to remind himself to take a breath to sort it out.

  At least that was what he tried to do before another dizzy spell sent him face-first into the dirt.

  “Kin!” Penny rolled him over and sat him up. His equilibrium swirled about until finally settling into something normal. “Please. We need to get you to a hospital. Then we’ll get to Miranda.”

  The dizziness subsided, leaving only a trace of the familiar stinging temple in its wake. Kin looked over his shoulder; their gear—complete with the accelerator, proxy handles, and bags, all safely untouched—remained out in the field. That provided a starting point. If Alex and Briana thought that it seemed out of the ordinary, both hid it well. Perhaps the specter of a near-death collapse put those suspicions on the back burner.

  “You’re right,” he exhaled. “I’ll pack up our stuff. Our camping gear,” he said, nodding to the dormant accelerator.

  “We can help,” Briana said, only Kin waved them off.

  “No, no. I took a lot of this equipment from work. If anyone gets in trouble for breaking it, it should be me.” He powered out a wry grin and a chuckle, motivated equally to buy time and assure Penny. “Gimme a minute.”

  The case for the injections lay open at his feet, probably from Penny fumbling it when they landed. Kin kept a straight face while scanning despite only seeing two syringes in the case.

  There should have been three.

  The two in the case were the booster injections they would take prior to jumping back to their native era. Where was the extra stabilizer, the post-jump injection that only he needed?

  Panic fluttered through Kin’s body, pricking his throat and lungs in the form of stuck air. He maintained his stoic face while searching through the brush and dirt when his fingers came across something cold and metallic.

  Cold. Metallic. And cracked across the middle with drops of liquid oozing out.

  That noise. That strange crunching noise when Alex moved next to Briana, right after his hearing returned.

  Kin didn’t have the strength to hide the emotions bubbling inside him. He turned his face away from Penny’s view and vowed that if he survived this, he’d tell Markus that the TCB needed to invest in stronger materials.

  Now they were really off the plan. And running out of time.

  “Everything all right?” Penny called out.

  For now, though, broken syringes didn’t matter. He was a field agent. His training dictated that if something went wrong, he’d simply execute the mission until he had to face it. Anxiety and a thousand what-ifs shut down.

  Miranda. The rest could wait.

  Penny stood at an awkward distance between her time-traveling fiancé and a pair of hikers who were born about a century before her. Reality sank in as Kin gingerly checked the different pockets and packs and assessed the situation.

  The path down. The couple’s car. The distance to Miranda. Time, time ticking away.

  They seemed like reasonable, friendly people. He calculated a high percentage of being able to convince them to at least take them partly there, and then they might get another vehicle...

  Assess and execute. Even with that, no options came with a certainty that identified the best choice.

  He pictured their equipment again, visualizing everything they’d brought before lingering on one item, his instinct screaming to forget the percentages and go with the one sure thing he could do.

  Regardless of what he promised Penny.

  The last time he chose instinct over percentages on a mission, it got him stranded, stuck, failed. It also led to Miranda ultimately being born, which brought him here.

  His instinct would save Miranda. In order to go with his gut, he still needed a plan. He gave a reassuring nod to Penny and waited until she stepped ahead before pulling the gun out of his bag and sticking it in the back of his waistband. “Ready to go. We should hurry.”

  * * *

  Alex and Briana led Kin and Penny down the nearest hiking trail, one markedly different from the agents’ route up the rock-and-tree-laden steep side. During the journey Kin stayed quiet—he claimed a headache from the would-be seizure—but his mind was more alive and awake than it ever had been. Years of agent training and experience compounded with an urgency that only a parent-child bond could create, his mind a mixture of calculated risks and dangerous impulses.

  Another five minutes from the trailhead sat a small parking lot and a lone muddied SUV, one that had logged probably at least six or seven years of adventure.

  Time for one more. “I forgot to ask,” Alex said, “what insurance do you have? I can look up the nearest—”

  He stopped, mouth caught open, and no further words arrived. Briana turned, too, only to freeze and slowly put her hands up.

  Penny finally spun around. Unlike the couple next to her, her expression didn’t change. Instead, it remained stone-faced, like she didn’t understand what she saw. “What are you doing?” she quietly said.

  “We need to go.” Kin continued holding the gun on Alex, though he motioned Briana to stand by him. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Kin, let’s take it easy.�
� Penny spoke with a hesitant cadence. “You’re not thinking straight. Remember how we got here. Remember the warnings from the doctor. You’re just a little off right now.”

  “Penny, I promise you I am 100 percent here. I’ve thought this through. Keys,” he said to Briana. “I need your keys. Toss them here.”

  Briana looked at Alex and then at Penny, who gave an anxious nod. The keys flew through the air and landed at Kin’s feet with a jingle. “Briana. Alex. I’m very grateful for what you’ve done. Now I have to borrow your car for one day. Borrow, not steal. One day only. Twenty-four hours. Come back to this parking lot. Same time tomorrow. Your car will be waiting for you. I’ll hide the keys under a rock behind that sign. Got it?”

  The couple bobbed their heads in unison without looking at each other.

  “I know this doesn’t make much sense. And it probably won’t after I return your car. Understand that we’re doing something good here. We’re not harming anyone. In fact, it’s the opposite. Problem is, we need to go now. It’s that important. Twenty-four hours. Right here. And don’t even think about calling the cops before then. Otherwise, you’ll never see your car again,” he said, his tone rising with a snarl. Penny turned to him, but he knew that if he saw her reaction to his empty threat, he’d break character. “Do the smart thing and wait. It’ll be like nothing ever happened. I’ll even leave it with a full tank and this,” he said, reaching into the bag and holding up a wad of era-specific cash. “Consider it a rental fee. Got it?” They nodded again, and without losing eye contact, Kin knelt down and picked up the keys. He thumbed through to the car key with the large unlock fob. The car beeped as he pressed it down, and the driver door’s autohydraulics sprung it open. “Penny, put the gear in the back. We’ve got to catch Miranda.”

  Penny remained petrified, her mouth stuck open and breathing deep.

  “Penny,” he said, maintaining eye contact with his targets. “Trust me on this. We’re not hurting anyone. We’re giving them their car back. This is the only way we can get to Miranda.”

  “But...but... Markus—”

  “We don’t have time to coordinate with him. We have to leave. The plan has changed.”

  If someone had driven into the parking lot in the precious seconds that ticked by before Penny responded, things might have crumbled into dust. But instead she quietly agreed and gathered their things. Gun still trained on the couple, he handed the key to Penny.

  “What do I do with this?”

  “There’s a slot next to the steering wheel. Put it in there and turn.”

  The couple exchanged confused glances while they waited for Penny to start the car. It came to life with a low hum, the product of supercharged hydrogen battery technology that became popular several years after he’d left the era.

  Penny stepped out of the car and dashed to the passenger side, her legs nearly tangling into a spilled mess. Kin waited for her to get settled and buckled in before taking the driver’s seat. “Twenty-four hours. I promise.”

  The back tires tossed up clouds of dust that filled the rearview mirror. When it finally started to dissipate, Kin realized that neither Alex nor Briana had moved. They got smaller and smaller until Kin made a hard left turn onto the frontage road leading to civilization.

  CHAPTER 28

  Every few minutes Kin caught Penny glancing at him—a quick twitch of the eye before abruptly snapping away. Over forty-five minutes into their journey up Highway 17, only the sounds of classical radio kept the car from being totally silent.

  “It’s really too bad we landed late,” Kin finally said. He glanced at the bags of gear in the back seat—gear that they brought, not the things that Markus stowed away for them. They simply didn’t have time to coordinate with Penny’s brother. Instead, things fell into their backup-backup plan, hashed out on the fly for this worst-case scenario. “I know how curious you are about this era. I’m sorry.”

  Penny nodded, an almost reflexive gesture without eye contact.

  “I don’t know how things will play out. Or what kind of time we’ll have after...everything. Maybe a few hours will open up before we have to jump back.” He adjusted the rearview, although rather than look at the mirror, he peeked to gauge Penny’s reaction.

  The car rumbled along, bouncing over uneven pavement.

  “So maybe we will get to eat somewhere good. It’s not like we’ve got time to get Markus’s ration packs. I mean, you have to eat, right?”

  Penny continued to stare at the road, elbow propped up against the window. “Have you done that sort of thing before?”

  “Eat before a jump home? Yeah. Sometimes it makes you nauseated when you land, but—”

  “No.” Finally Penny straightened up and turned to engage him directly. “What you did to those people. Have you done that sort of thing before?”

  Kin’s teeth pressed against his bottom lip while considering his answer. Part of the reason agents kept their job secret stemmed from the practical nature of denying time travel’s existence. However, secrecy also relieved agents from the burden of the job’s nastier elements, and while his response stewed, a new list formulated in his Kin’s head: the things he’d tried to forget, the nights when the dirt and sweat and blood didn’t seem to wash off no matter how justified. “Not like that, exactly. No.”

  “Worse things?”

  Seconds ticked by before he could answer. “Yes.”

  “I...” Penny rubbed her face, fingers pressed against her brow. “You’re so gentle. How can you do something like that? I mean, I can’t imagine you running across Victorian England to assassinate someone. That’s not you.”

  “Actually, I couldn’t do that. Time jumps max out at a hundred fifty years. Go any further and the energy needed literally implodes you.” Kin gave his explanation with a joking tone, one that he hoped would restore levity to the conversation.

  But Penny didn’t reciprocate. “You know what I mean,” she said, her voice as dry as her blank stare.

  He’d prepared himself for this. He knew Penny would react with some mix of shock, fear, accusation, or other jumbled harshness. Even then, even with his feelings compartmentalized, the question bored an ache in his chest. “This job. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to set things right. That’s the life of an agent.”

  “And Markus. Does he do these things, too?”

  “Not as often. He’s more involved in planning and support. He’s had to get involved before. You can’t chase criminals across time without getting your hands dirty eventually.”

  “It’s just...a lot to swallow. I could accept the existence of time travel. I could handle the fact that you had another life, a daughter. Even a wife. But violence? That’s not the man I know.” Penny tilted her head back, angling into the curved rest above the seat. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  The question came with equal parts hesitation and confusion. Her hands rested on her knees, though a visible tremor still rumbled through her fingers, and if he found a way to peer inside her mind, he was sure that her usual rapid-fire questioning occupied her inner monologue.

  “I’m not a killer,” Kin said after several moments of silence. “There’s a difference.”

  “That’s not an answer.” The reluctance left Penny’s face, and in its place stood a chiseled determination. “Have you killed anyone?”

  “In my line of work—”

  “Yes or no, Kin. Have you killed anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  The highway remained a straight line to the horizon and beyond, large patches of farmland zooming by on either side. “How many?”

  “Four.” Penny’s eyes continued to elude him. “I completed twenty-eight cases as an active field agent across eight years, including my last one. Twenty apprehensions. Four eliminations. Three instances where backup was needed and another agent finished the case.�
�

  “Killing is killing.” Her voice barely crept above the rumble of the car.

  “Look, I know it’s not exactly what you want to hear. I suppose there’s always going to be a question about whether or not it was justified. At the time, in the moment, there was no other way. The people I killed, it came down to them or me. They were criminals hired to alter history. These are professionals. During those cases, I was shot at, hit with a crowbar, and stabbed. You know the scar on my left shoulder blade?”

  She turned to him with a nod and an uncertain posture. Almost reactively the scar tissue on that wound began to ache. “You’re probably wondering if killing someone changes you. And it does. The first time I did it, the TCB sent a psychologist with the retriever agent to talk me through it. It was my seventh case. We stayed an extra week in the past. I’m sure police officers or soldiers feel the same way.”

  “What did the psychologist tell you?”

  “He said everyone reacts differently. I felt like everything became more immediate. Heightened. Life seemed more real, more important. Miranda would call it PTSD.” Kin took his focus off the road for a second to meet her gaze. “I don’t know if I believe in fate. Probably not. Not after the things that I’ve seen. But a few days after I returned from that case, Markus invited me out for a pickup soccer game to try to get my mind off it. For some reason you decided to show up.”

  The car’s navigation system told them to veer off onto Highway 680 toward the Sacramento area. The click-clack of the turn signal filled the car, ten times louder than it normally was thanks to the absence of words. Several minutes later, after going up and over the merge, they sped on the highway toward Miranda.

  “Markus told me it was a barbecue,” Penny finally said.

  “I think he wanted people to bring food. We didn’t, though. We only wanted to play soccer. At least until I met you.” Kin took in a sharp breath. All the time spent worrying about Miranda, trying to figure out how to maintain a relationship with her, how to break the rules of time to stay in touch, and yet he never considered the impact on Penny if she ever found out. “For weeks, Markus tried to talk me out of it. He kept saying that we were too different, too opposite. He wrote me a list of why we shouldn’t go out.”