by C. B. Lewis
“And that’s how you did it? You hacked it?”
Janos raised his eyebrows. “Your brain has switched off, yes? No. I did not hack. I only have a few seconds to do this. I cloned the computer.” He held up his false hand. “I put small machine inside my hand. People try not to stare at false hands. It took me time to get through firewalls, but they were not too difficult.”
Kit sank to sit in the nearest chair. “We’re all going to jail, I hope you know that. I mean, lying to the police was bad enough, but stealing their information?” He pointed a shaking finger at Janos. “You don’t get to lecture me about banging Jacob now.”
Janos flashed a wry grin at him. “I would not lecture. I am in relationship with a man born one hundred years after me. How can I judge you?” He sat down at one of the other chairs. “I found the video file. Can you fix it now? Undo what you did?”
Kit hesitated. “I don’t know. I can try.”
Janos nodded in approval. “This is your job today. We do not have many people to do this. We do not want too many people getting worried.” He glanced around the room, then scaled up one of the images. It was distorted, but it was recognizable as a man’s face. He was gaunt, with pale eyes, a crooked nose, a high round forehead, and receding hairline. A thin beard and moustache circled his mouth. “You recognize this man?”
Kit nodded. “He’s the one in the video.”
“I thought so,” Janos said. “He is older than this John Smith. I would say sixties. Maybe seventies. With medical advance, it is difficult to tell now.” He gazed at the image. “If you can work on video, find out what he says. This is most important now. If he is the one who sent this Smith, then we must know who he is.”
Kit nodded. It made sense. Based on the estimated time of the technology in Smith’s eye, his benefactor could be alive and accessible in the present. “Do we have any access to facial recognition software?” he asked, shedding his coat and picking up a slate.
“Your policeman is ahead of us there. They have run searches for him and for Smith. Neither of them have any trace.”
“He must look very different,” Kit mused, staring up at the face. “And Smith. Don’t they have his DNA?”
“Now, yes, but not on any present records.” Janos pulled up an image of the dead man, and Kit had to look away, feeling nauseous. “They keep searching with different specifications.”
“You know what they’re doing now? I thought you said this was a clone?”
Janos waved a hand dismissively. “I check time frames for searches. They have been changing the parameters all the time. I think they will still be doing this.”
“Do we have any ideas about him?”
“We know more than they do,” Janos replied. “We know a parameter they will not search.”
Kit looked up at the body. “We know he might not even be alive yet.”
Janos nodded. “If they follow time-travel rules, a man should not go back into his own timeline.”
“For people who came to the past to abduct someone? You really think they’ll follow the rules?”
The other man sifted through some of the images. “This is the problem, yes.” He got up from the table. “You must work in here today. The less people who know of this is better.”
Kit, already opening up the video files, glanced up. “How many people, exactly, know what you’ve done?”
Janos’s expression was opaque. “Two.”
“Two apart from you?”
Janos shook his head. “Two.”
Kit laid the slate down on the table. “You didn’t tell Dieter? Jesus.”
“I tell no one else, because if no one else knows, then no one else can be in trouble.”
“Apart from me.” Kit sagged back in the seat. “This is what I get for lying to the police for you?”
“This is what you get when you know more than everyone else about everything,” Janos countered. “Much of this, you already know, so if you are asked, you can say you saw it all in police station. If truth is revealed, I will be in trouble anyway. This way, at least someone in the TRI will know what has happened, but will not be compromised.”
Kit stared at him. “You’d be locked up.”
“If I am identified as man from the past,” Janos said quietly, “Dieter is afraid I will be closed up like a specimen in a lab. I think he is not wrong.” A brief, sad smile crossed his lips. “If it happens, then I want to make sure we find the ones who harmed Sanders. He saved my life with Dieter and Dr. Bellevue. I owe him for three years of good life I should not have had.”
Kit’s throat felt tight. “You don’t need to risk your freedom on an off chance.”
“They cannot solve this,” Janos said simply. “We may be able to.”
“But still—”
Janos pushed his chair back and rose. “It is done now, anyway.” He nodded toward the slate. “You work here. I will lock the door now and change your security access, but now, I must go and speak to my team.”
Before Kit could make any further protest, Janos strode toward the door, swiping his pass over it.
Kit stared blankly at the door, then looked back at the slate Janos had left for him. He didn’t even know if he could undo what he had done, but Jacob’s team would be working on it already, and if anyone had a chance of beating them to the punch, it was him.
He toed off his shoes, making himself comfortable. Decoding was a bastard at the best of times, but when he was the one who had scrambled the code, it was only going to be worse.
At some point, Janos returned with food, but Kit barely even noticed. He might have eaten some of it as he worked. He was finally getting somewhere when one of the screens projected on the wall illuminated, and a data transfer window opened.
Kit blinked at it in incomprehension.
He touched his ear, triggering the earpiece, then routed the call to Janos’s team, requesting his presence.
Janos was there in less than two minutes. “You have done—” He cut himself off and burst out with a furious litany of Hungarian. All at once, he was bending over the desk, shutting down the screens and projections, until the room was darkened by their absence.
“What is it?” Kit asked, blinking away the afterimage of the blueprints.
Janos looked at him. “I left an automatic trigger for your policeman’s slate,” he said.
His brain still sloshing with code, Kit blinked at him. “Eh?”
“It means that any time the original computer is in range of my hardware, it will update the copy.” Janos seemed to realize his words weren’t getting through. “It means your policeman is within a hundred meters of the building.”
The conference room phone hub illuminated.
“No,” Kit corrected, feeling light-headed. “He’s in the building.”
Chapter 29
JACOB WASN’T surprised to learn that Mrs. Ashraf was unavailable. She was his first point of contact, so when the woman on the front desk confirmed she was absent, he only had one other choice. Kit was going to kill him.
The woman put a call through to whichever room Kit was presently occupying. She relayed Jacob’s message, then informed him someone would come down to escort him, if he could wait in the waiting room.
Jacob sat down in the same seat he had occupied on his first visit, barely even two weeks earlier.
It felt like so much longer, but also like no time at all.
He sighed, leaning back in the seat, and rested the back of his head against the wall.
Whatever had started in this room when Kit stuck his head around the doorframe, it was a lot more complicated than he’d ever intended it to be. He wasn’t meant to give a damn about some man who was younger than his son. He hadn’t been looking for a relationship. Even a one-night stand was stupid. True, he’d had them before, but he was crap at them. And this? Now? This was something different.
It wasn’t a relationship, really. Not yet. But it definitely had the potential to be something more
than he’d first expected.
He heard the elevator doors opening in the hallway and footsteps approaching. They were too heavy to be Kit, who moved as light as a skinny cat. Jacob had already started to rise when Janos Nagy appeared in the doorway.
“Detective Ofori.” He held out his hand.
Jacob shook it once. “Mr. Nagy. You’re here to escort me?”
Nagy nodded, motioning for Jacob to follow him. “Since I know some of what is happening, it is better for me to do this. Especially after news from yesterday.”
Jacob fell into step alongside him. “I’m sorry for your loss. Did you know Sanders well?”
“He gave me this job and opportunity,” Nagy replied as they stepped into the elevator. “He was a good man. This is not the end he deserved.” He leaned against the rail of the elevator, mirroring Jacob’s stance. “Mariam is staying with Ben today. He needs her more than we do.”
“Understandable,” Jacob murmured, thinking of the poor, scared little kid. Ben had trusted him to find his father. He should have been there to tell him. He’d promised that he would try to find him, and he had failed. He cleared his throat. “How’s Rafferty? He was the one who confirmed what happened.”
Nagy’s expression showed nothing, but he inclined his head. “As good as can be expected.” He stepped forward as the elevator came to a stop and pressed his palm to the console. The door opened. “This way.”
The conference room was where Jacob had first met Nagy, but this time, Kit was the one waiting there.
He was eating a sandwich, and snatched up a napkin to wipe his mouth. He looked like hell, nothing like the mischievous man who had run out of Jacob’s flat that morning. His face was pale and his eyes bloodshot, a symptom Jacob was coming to recognize.
“Coding?” he guessed.
Kit nodded, swallowing the mouthful of food. “They didn’t let me know to expect you.” The accusation was hanging on every word.
With Nagy still standing there, Jacob knew he couldn’t say anything overt. “Unfortunately, we have questions we need answers to. Given everything that’s happened, we were hoping Mrs. Ashraf or yourself might be willing to help us.”
Kit methodically folded the napkin, then laid it on the edge of his plate. “So it’s to be an interrogation?” There was a sharpness to his voice that said he was on edge already, which wasn’t unexpected. No one liked to be surprised by a policeman, even if they were sleeping with him.
“It’s a request for information,” Jacob said quietly. “We need to know what we’re dealing with, and why it was worth killing Sanders.”
Nagy went to stand by Kit’s chair. “I think we must tell him,” he murmured, and Kit looked up at him, clearly startled. Nagy pressed his hand to Kit’s shoulder. “Tell him what Sanders was working on. Maybe this will help.”
“You know Sanders wouldn’t—”
Nagy lowered his voice. “Sanders is gone. His ideas can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Pieces fitted into place.
“You’re the one who decoded the whiteboard?” Jacob wondered why he hadn’t realized before.
A muscle in Kit’s cheek twitched. He turned from Nagy to Jacob. “Mariam told you?”
“She mentioned that it had been decoded, but she didn’t say who had done it.” Jacob approached the table, sat down. “Look, I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be asking these questions, but two men are dead, and we need to know why.”
Kit stared blankly at him, then pushed his plate away. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Jacob was brought up short. He hadn’t expected such immediate acquiescence.
Kit propped his forearms on the table, leaning forward. “Okay,” he repeated. He looked like death warmed up. “I’ll tell you what was on those whiteboards. You know he’d experimented in teleportation.”
Jacob nodded. “We were told the tests were abandoned, because of the usual problems.”
“They weren’t as abandoned as he suggested.” Kit turned his hands over, picking at his thumbnail. “He was trying to work on teleportation that moved people forward.”
“Forward? Forward how?”
Blue eyes met his. “In time.”
Jacob stared at him and leaned slowly back in the chair. “Time travel?”
Kit shrugged and looked back down at his hands. “Call it what you like. The problem with teleportation is the existence of matter being in two places at the same time, as well as the messy stuff. His theory was that if you went through a gate and it took you forward a couple of seconds, there would be no overlap.”
Jacob felt like he was sitting in the middle of a science fiction film. “Seriously? Time travel?”
“I’m just telling you what was on the board.” Kit’s voice was flat. “You wanted to know. I’m telling you.”
“Would it….” He shook his head. He could scarcely believe it, not when teleportation was still a pipe dream. “Could that even be possible?”
Kit laid his hands flat on the table. His jaw was clenched, and he pressed his fingertips against the tabletop, watching them whiten.
Jacob leaned forward. “Could it?”
Nagy pressed his hand to Kit’s shoulder.
Kit slowly curled his fingers into fists. “Based on the equations on the board, I don’t think so.” He took a slow breath and released it. “It’s impossible to go forward, because until that moment happens, there is only the potentiality of the future.”
Jacob frowned. “So what did the gate do?”
Kit shook his head. “He built it himself. It could do anything or nothing. We didn’t know. Maybe he thought it worked. He was definitely desperate enough to try.” He looked across the table at Jacob. “If we had the settings, I can bet you anything he was trying to get to Ben.”
“So could it plausibly have worked to teleport him?”
Kit hesitated. “Maybe. Without all the schematics, I don’t know.”
“It is a big risk,” Nagy said, “but he must have believed it was worth a try.”
“To save his son?” Jacob nodded. “I can understand that.”
“And he died because of it.” Kit propped his elbows on the table and pressed his face into his hands, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t know what else you want me to tell you.”
Nagy patted his shoulder. “I will fetch us tea. We need it.”
Kit nodded into his hands, but as soon as the door closed, he looked up. “What the hell, Jacob?”
Jacob rose from his chair, circling around the table to sit down closer to him. “I’m sorry, but I had to come. People were asking questions about the fact I wasn’t asking questions.”
Kit looked away from him. “I get it,” he said. “I do. But you could have warned me.”
Jacob touched his knee. “I wasn’t going to bother you. I was going to speak to Mrs. Ashraf.”
Kit’s gaze drifted down to Jacob’s hand. “And yet, here you are, bothering me.” His eyes lifted to Jacob’s face. “Is this turnabout? I come to your work and now….” He covered Jacob’s hand on his thigh, dragging it upward.
“Kit….” Jacob protested halfheartedly.
Kit reached out with his other hand and caught Jacob’s tie, pulling him closer. “I have had a shit morning,” he said, his voice lower than usual. He searched Jacob’s face, and his breath was warm on Jacob’s lips. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Does it help?”
Kit shrugged. “Can’t make it worse,” he said, and kissed him.
Jacob pulled back. “Is this a distraction?”
Kit rose from his own chair and pushed Jacob back into his. “Does it matter?” He straddled Jacob’s thighs and pulled Jacob toward him with his tie, claiming his mouth again.
Jacob let himself indulge, just for a moment, sliding his hands up Kit’s thighs and squeezing his arse through his trousers. Kit made a low, appreciative sound, shifting closer on his lap, his hand still clenched in Jacob’s tie, his tongue darting against Jacob’s.
/> When Kit reached down between them, Jacob broke back from the kiss but was held in place by Kit’s grip on his tie. Jacob swatted him sharply on the backside, shook his head. Kit drew back at once.
“Not right now?” he guessed.
“Not when Nagy will be back any moment,” Jacob replied.
Kit reluctantly braced his hand on Jacob’s shoulders and pushed himself back to his feet. He let Jacob’s tie trail between his fingers as he stepped back. “You might want to get back to your seat.” He nodded downward. “You’ll be able to hide that under the table.”
Jacob’s cheeks reddened. “You’re an arsehole.”
It was almost worth the risk to see the small, pleased smile that lit Kit’s face up. “Sometimes,” he agreed.
Chapter 30
ALL THINGS considered, Jacob’s unexpected visit didn’t go as badly as they’d feared.
He went away with the answers he needed to the questions he’d asked, and quite possibly a cock still coming down from half-mast. Janos saw him out, and as soon as he was gone, Kit collapsed back in one of the chairs, hoping the tremors in his hands had gone unnoticed.
He was still slumped there when Janos returned.
“You did well.”
Kit rolled his head to the side to look at him. He felt wrung out. “I told him time travel was possible. Mariam’s going to kill me.”
Janos waited until the door slid closed, then typed in a code to lock it. “You implied it might be,” he corrected. “This is very different. He does not think it could happen, and there is no reason he would suspect the TRI is using it.” One side of his mouth turned up. “Small truth, hiding the big truth.”
Kit pushed himself back up in the seat, running his hands over his face. “You said he was like a dog with a bone. It might be enough to make him wonder.”
“Wonder what?” Janos returned to the table and sat down. He started opening up the new files, including the CSU report from Sanders’s basement. “Everyone knows time travel is impossible. What could make him think this is the reason for the attack on Sanders?”