by C. J. Hill
Lee and Ren chose a room with an exterior wall that faced away from the street. There was less chance anyone would see them emerging out of the side of the building that way. Once they had locked themselves inside the room, Ren drew an oval on the wall. Each of them thrust their laser cutters into the outline to cut the hole. Unfortunately the steel interlacing in the wall kept diffusing the lasers’ energy and made cutting the hole slow work.
Ren and Lee immediately turned it into a contest, each straining to pull his laser cutter faster than the other. Ren was winning. “So your leaders favor assassination after all,” he said, gloating at Lee. “That’s typical. You wave the banner of peace with one hand and carry a dagger in your boot.”
Lee pulled harder. The veins in his neck stood out, and a line of sweat formed at the base of his short-cropped hair. “I don’t see why you’re complaining. Your leaders favored assassination all along.”
“Yes, but my leaders agreed to abide by the council’s rule. I thought yours did too.”
Lee’s cut was now slightly farther ahead of Ren’s. He let out a laugh. “The council voted not to order an assassination. That didn’t mean nobody else could order one.”
“Be careful,” Ren said. “If you twist your word too often, it will break apart.”
Joseph didn’t comment. From his perspective, it was a good thing the council leaders kept secrets from one another. If Abraham’s group had known one of the bodyguards was planning on killing Reilly, they might not have offered Joseph their help saving Echo.
Lee turned his attention to Joseph. “How did you figure out who Reilly’s assistant was? My sources couldn’t locate any personnel files.” He nodded toward Ren. “The only reason Ren’s leaders didn’t give an assassination order is that they couldn’t find any information about Reilly.”
“Not true, Brother Lee,” Ren said, huffing as he pulled. “We know Reilly used to date your mother. Have you ever considered your resemblance?”
Lee wiped the sweat off his forehead before it dripped into his eyes. “Watch your insults. Remember, I carry a dagger in my boot.”
“Coffee,” Joseph said, hoping that rerouting the subject would end their argument.
“What’s coffee?” Ren asked.
“A drink from the twenty-first century.” Joseph’s laser cutter’s handle was heating up and he had to shift his grip on it. “It had a mild but addictive stimulant in it. Reilly still has the habit. Taylor smelled the coffee on his breath when he questioned her. When we got to Santa Fe and she realized coffee wasn’t available, she told me about it.” Joseph adjusted his grip again. The handle felt so hot, he was afraid it would overheat and stop working.
“The Agrocenter in Traventon has several coffee plants to keep Reilly supplied. Xavier’s contacts found out the beans are delivered to a man named Tariq. They planted a receiver on one of his shoes and found out he’s Reilly’s main assistant. Brings him everything. They’ve been tracking Tariq’s crystal ever since.”
A memory came to Joseph, unbidden.
He and Sheridan were sitting on the couch in his apartment. Her long red hair spilled over her shoulders in gleaming waves. She watched him, her large hazel eyes showing their interest in everything he said. Joseph had just learned about Tariq and had told her about him. “Reilly’s assistant brings him whatever he wants: women, food, and a whole assortment of pleasure drugs.”
“No wonder Reilly has trouble finishing his project,” she said.
“Right,” Joseph agreed. “Women are a big distraction.”
Sheridan nudged into him, playfully upset. “How would you know? I never distract you.”
He dropped a kiss on her lips. “You distract me all the time. You and thoughts of you.”
Thoughts were all he had left now.
Joseph forced himself back to the present, back to the conversation. “When Tariq isn’t fetching things, he stays close to Reilly. Reilly doesn’t go a lot of places. Mostly he stays in the Scicenter, and . . . ,” he said with a pang, remembering the reports from the new timestream, “and the detention center.”
Joseph hated the way his memories kept shifting, how painful ones overshadowed the happy ones. All of the time he and Sheridan had spent together in Santa Fe—it was gone, as unreal as if he had imagined it. Now he had memories of sitting in front of a computer in Santa Fe, not only working on the program to save his brother but also studying the detention center’s layout and computer systems.
He had checked in on Taylor daily, mostly to remind her she had to eat if she wanted to be strong enough to go on the mission. He’d also gone to see her because looking at her was like looking at Sheridan. He had wondered every day what Reilly was doing to her, had imagined horrible things.
Joseph gave his laser cutter a particularly strong pull. He would find her today. And he wouldn’t even flinch when he killed Reilly.
They had almost finished the hole when Joseph’s memories shifted again and he realized what had happened. He let go of his laser cutter, left it there, while he leaned against the wall, heart pounding. He took a couple of shallow breaths.
Lee paused and scanned the room. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Joseph lied, and made himself return to his laser cutter. It would be too complicated to explain that the past had just altered again. This latest change didn’t affect what they needed to do right now—get to Sheridan. But he would have a long talk with his brother about it when they met again.
A new memory bloomed in Joseph’s mind.
He was sitting at the meeting with the scientists who had questioned him about Joseph’s disappearance.
Helix eyed him with particular suspicion. “You were dating Allana Arad?”
Joseph swallowed, trying to hide the fact that even hearing her name made him feel like hitting something. He unclenched his fists. “Yes,” he said. “Her and a few others. It wasn’t serious.”
“Do you see it as coincidental that both your brother and she disappeared?”
“People who get on the wrong side of the Dakine often disappear. That’s not coincidence. That’s their policy.”
Helix shook his head, making his black-and-gray-striped hair shiver. “When the Dakine are through with people, we find their remains somewhere.” He pointed to the crystal on his wrist. “These surface eventually.”
Joseph thought about saying, “You’re right. It’s the government that makes people disappear.” Over ten years ago, Joseph and Echo’s mother had joined the Traventon army and disappeared on a defensive patrol against San Francisco. The government said she had been permanently reassigned to one of the out-city posts, but Joseph knew it wasn’t true. She was dead. The government didn’t like to admit that any of its war measures were unsuccessful.
Joseph hadn’t pointed out this fact to Helix. Instead he said, “Perhaps Allana’s crystal will surface somewhere.”
Helix let out a grunt, and his eyes narrowed as though he was certain Joseph was withholding information. “You’ve seen the streetcam’s recording. She wasn’t taken somewhere. She vanished—was swallowed up in the air.”
“I don’t know what happened to Allana,” Joseph said, more firmly.
But now he did.
Echo had strained her. She was in the Time Strainer bay.
Chapter 17
Echo pulled Allana from the Time Strainer chamber and laid her gently on the floor. His shoulder burned at the effort. He’d been so intent on saving her, he’d forgotten about his injury. He ignored the throbbing pain shooting down his arm and checked her for laser wounds. He didn’t see any. Her face, smooth and perfect, looked nothing like the waxy one he’d seen in the newsfeed. No streaks of blood covered her metallic silver hair. Her eyes were shut, her lips open, drawing in breaths in a normal rhythm.
Relief washed over him. He had managed to take her before the Dakine assassins got to her.
Allana’s crystal went off, the low, scolding buzz already changing from warning mode to the ever
-loudening restriction alarm. He turned to call Xavier and found him already standing there, peering down at Allana.
“That’s not Sheridan.”
Echo gestured to her wrist. “She needs a crystal blocker.”
Xavier knelt down beside her and opened his pack. “Who is she?”
“It’s Allana,” Taylor called over from behind the computer terminal. “Because that’s what we need right now. More Dakine.”
“Allana?” Xavier pulled a blocking band from his pack and clamped it around Allana’s wrist. He pinched the ends together, activating a glue that melded the band in place. His motions were swift, angry. “You didn’t have permission to take anyone from the past.”
Taylor stayed seated at the computer terminal. She was viciously tapping out something. “Oh, that has a lot of weight coming from you. Using the Time Strainer has become one big party for the dead, hasn’t it?”
“And how did you get here?” Echo called back to her. “Shouldn’t you have died a few hundred years ago? Welcome to the party.”
“That’s different,” Taylor said.
Echo squeezed Allana’s hand to wake her up. “I had to save her.”
“You realize,” Taylor called over, biting into each word, “Allana is the reason you were killed in the first place.”
Allana moved her head, lolling it from one side to the other. Echo squeezed her hand again. “It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t realize what the Dakine were like any more than I did.”
“Hmmm,” Taylor said, still typing. “I’m not sure all of your memories returned after you reconfigured. Do you happen to remember, for example, that Allana dumped you for your brother?”
That memory hadn’t been lost. It was there in Echo’s mind as vividly as if Allana had just finished scraping her words across his heart.
Last night, he and Allana had been in a car on their way home from the VR center. It had been like a dozen other dates they’d been on. Better, really, because this made two times he’d been out with Allana this week to Joseph’s one. Echo kept track of those sorts of things.
Allana pushed her hair off her shoulder, a silver wave that reminded him of polished steel. She leaned back in her chair and let her gray eyes rest on him. There was a smirk in her expression, a look that said it was her right to be adored. “It’s time we redefined our relationship,” she said softly.
He grinned at her. “Fine. I’m ready to upload something new.”
She ran her brightly colored fingernails along the seat fabric between them. “I’ve been thinking about becoming exclusive with someone. . . .”
He nodded. He knew she was going to tell him that if he wanted her to give up her other boyfriends, he would have to give up all his girlfriends.
Echo dated several girls, although since he and Allana had started matching up, he saw the other girls less and less. Funny how that happened without him even noticing it. He always said he wouldn’t get attached to one girl until he was old and boring, and here he had already snipped the other ones away. He wouldn’t tell Allana that. Not yet.
Still giving him a coy look, she said, “I’ve decided I fit best with Joseph.”
It took Echo several seconds to process the words, to make sure he had actually heard his brother’s name in that sentence. “With Joseph?” Echo repeated.
“You understand, don’t you?” Allana asked, only mildly apologetic.
No, he didn’t. He didn’t understand how she could sit there with that sultry pout on her lips and tell him she wanted his brother. Echo felt the ring on his finger, twined from her silver hair and given to him on the day he agreed to join the Dakine. His throat felt tight. “You told me,” he said slowly, “you had never met anyone you were so effortlessly synchronized with—”
“That’s the problem,” Allana said. “You and I are too much alike. If we stayed together, we would dare each other into more and more trouble. We need to be balanced with the responsible kind, the kind that can clean up our indiscretions. For me, that’s Joseph.”
Echo didn’t argue with her, wouldn’t submit to that sort of beggary. He put his crystal to the car control panel and said, “Stop.”
The car slowed to a halt. The word stop, his own word, kept reverberating in his mind. Stop. Stop. Stop. He couldn’t stop Allana’s decision. Couldn’t stop the anger he felt building inside him. The anger at her. At Joseph. At himself. If he had been better somehow—more like Joseph . . . But no. Echo wasn’t Joseph, and no matter how much he looked like him, he would never be him.
Allana leaned toward him. “You’re not going to tell me good-bye?”
“I’m bad with good-byes.” The door slid open, and Echo stepped from the car without taking another look at Allana.
“Echo,” she called after him. “It might not always be this way. Things might change.”
He didn’t answer. The door slid shut behind him and the car moved on. He wished he could ignore her last comment, just forget everything about her, but it cycled through his mind. Things might change? Did she expect him to plug himself somewhere and wait for her to reconsider? Was she playing a new game—one in which she claimed Joseph and then expected Echo to pull her away? Neither was going to happen.
He took out his comlink and deleted her information. She was gone to him. Gone. He fingered her ring, the one braided from her silver hair. He meant to fling it onto the street. He didn’t, though. Couldn’t. It represented that moment in time when she had given a part of herself to him.
Now he stroked the same silver hair away from her face. “Allana,” he murmured, desperate to see her wake up, to know she was all right.
Her eyes fluttered open. She blinked at him, confused. Not seeing him at all.
“Your vision will clear in a moment,” he told her.
After another blink, her eyes focused on him. “Assassins . . . ,” she whispered. “They’re coming for me. They were waiting. . . .” She turned her head, took in her surroundings.
He knew what she was feeling. That odd sensation of being ripped from the street and finding herself somewhere completely different. “You’re safe for the moment.” He didn’t say more. He didn’t know how long they would be safe.
Allana let out a breath so heavy with relief, it seemed to ripple over her entire body. She sat up, shaking, and flung her arms around Echo. She pulled herself to him, laid her cheek against his chest, and let out muffled sobs.
He wound his arms around her, murmuring assurances into her hair. He hadn’t completely forgiven her for choosing Joseph, but holding her this way felt like forgiveness. She clung to him so tightly, so completely. Had facing the void of death made her realize she loved him?
Echo was aware, vaguely, that there were other people in the room. Xavier still stood near them, shaking his head. Taylor sat at the computer tapping out commands. It didn’t matter.
Xavier went back to his post by the door, reading his scanner again. Taylor stopped typing. Echo didn’t check to see where she had gone or what she was doing. Allana pulled away to gaze into his eyes. She looked vulnerable, fragile, like she wanted to cling to him forever. “I was on my way to see you, to warn you. I thought we would have more time, and then I saw the cars—the assassins.” She gulped hard, finally noticing the Time Strainer beside them. “How did you get me here?” She sat up straighter. “Where are we?”
“Those questions will take some explaining.”
She sighed and rested her cheek against his chest again. “That’s fine. All that matters is we’re safe and we’re together.” The last part of her sentence was a question, an invitation.
Echo hesitated, then ran his hand along the curve of her back. “Yes,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
Allana pulled away from him again and gave him an admiring smile. “I should have known you would find a way to save me, Joseph. No one is as smart as you are.”
Joseph. She thought he was Joseph. In Echo’s urgency to save Allana, he had forgotten he’d traded
places with his brother. He’d cut his hair and changed it back to blond. He’d erased his crescent moon and replaced it with Joseph’s blue star. Of course Allana had mistaken him for Joseph. That had been the idea.
Slowly, Echo peeled her arms from around him.
She stiffened at his sudden coldness. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not Joseph.”
Her mouth opened and shut in surprise. She flushed, gulped. “Echo . . . what are you . . . why would you . . .” Then she understood. Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “You meant for the Dakine to shoot you?” She looked around the room again. “Where’s Joseph?”
“He left.” Echo stood up, a tightness running through his whole body. “I saved you, Allana. Joseph didn’t take the time to do that. But you were right about him being the smartest—that obviously isn’t me.”
Echo turned from her and saw Taylor leaning against the terminal. She had seen the whole thing, watched his and Allana’s love scene turn into a farce. Taylor didn’t look at him with any pity though, just icy anger.
“We need to get a few things clear,” she said. “I know you’re Joseph’s brother and he loves you, but I will shoot you and leave you with the scientists if you pull another stunt like that.”
Echo stared at her in puzzlement. He’d understood the bulk of the threat, but the part about getting things clear—what needed to be cleared? Was there still gas in the room?
Allana got to her feet and stood beside him. “Who is that girl? What did she say?”
Taylor strode over to Allana, staring her down. “I am your boss.” She annunciated the words clearly. “And you had better not give me even two seconds of grief, because I already want to shoot you.”
Allana’s gaze fixed on Taylor’s rank badge. 5,328,121. Most people hid that sort of rank. “Really?” Allana drawled. “When did people in the five millions become the bosses of anything?”
