Recursion (Book One of the Recursion Event Saga)

by Brian J. Walton

  000016.25

  “They’ve left the city.”

  Genevieve lets out a sigh. “Hopefully they’re crawling back to whatever hole they’ve been hiding in. Molly, did you check the label on the sample?” Genevieve asks.

  I shake my head. She holds it up for me to see.

  Unknown Interloper//Apprehended in Los Angeles February, 17 1974

  “That’s the one called Phaedrus,” Genevieve says.

  I feel a thrill, mixed with anticipation and dread. A single thought rings through my mind. We are far from prepared for this kind of mission.

  * * *

  We spend the next hour packing to leave. We know who at least one of the Interlopers is and we have the power to track them. The bad news is that they have the power to track us as well. But why? If they had only wanted a tunnel, they clearly could have taken it during the night. And if they wanted to destroy the tunnel, then I’ve just done that for them. But Phaedrus made it clear that they want more than that. They know about our organization. They know what we want and what we do. Their goal must be something deeper. Something more personal.

  I shoulder my pack and exit into the hallway. Genevieve is waiting for me. “I’ve decided. We go to the Listening Station and then we are taking your route home.”

  “You were the one who wanted to know more about the Order.”

  “No,” she says suddenly. “I want to get as far away from them as possible.”

  Leung is visible in the living room, packing her remaining gear into her bag. She shoulders the bag, leaving the apartment.

  Genevieve purses her lips. “We do not want another interaction with them.”

  I narrow my eyes. “We can track them. The ISD has never had this chance before.”

  “But if we don’t make it back, the ISD will never have that opportunity again.”

  “Imagine if they’re from the future, what we could learn from them.”

  “Molly—”

  I think of the Interloper’s—Phaedrus’—leering grin. The way he said my name. “I need to find out what they want.”

  Genevieve cocks her head at me. “N’est-ce pas clair? To hunt us down and destroy us.”

  * * *

  I gaze out at the surrounding countryside as Genevieve drives the Renault. Leung sits in the back seat. Our destination is a small town about fifty miles east of Paris. The countryside seems to be in a time warp. We pass villages still devastated from the First World War, many of them now mostly abandoned. Farmers in smocks till their fields behind teams of oxen. We stop for a barefoot boy leading a herd of cattle across the narrow, dusty lane meant to pass for a road. Train cars forced off the tracks by German soldiers a decade ago stand as empty memorials of an already forgotten past.

  I lean my head against the window, letting the detritus of a fading past slip by. Night is falling and the exhaustion of the day presses in on me. My head nods down and...

  * * *

  I feel the impact, hard as concrete, against the vehicle. I turn to see if Genevieve is okay, but there is only a gaping hole where the door should be, and water is rushing inside.

  This has happened before.

  Gravity shifts as the car tilts downward, nose first. The shock throws me forward, but the seat belt stops me with my head just inches from the side of the car.

  My breathing quickens. I’m sinking into the East River and, except for the driver who may be dead for all I know, I’m alone. But did I expect anything else? I’m returning home from a friend’s campaign event. So why do I feel like there’s someone else that should be here, in the car with me? Someone that needs my help? I feel a cold draft, but there’s no time to think because the water is pouring in through the jagged opening, already up to my knees. In seconds I’ll be totally submerged.

  The car tilts downward. I struggle with the seat belt’s latch. Finally, there’s a click as it comes free and I am leaning, falling, pulled by the shifting gravity.

  I tumble down to the front of the cabin’s interior, slamming against the closed barrier. The water is up to my chest now.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I’m going to have to swim.

  Deep breaths. One, two, three. The icy river fills the interior. It’s up to my chin now. One last breath and I’m submerged in the icy water.

  I push myself out of the car and into dark water. I have no sense of up or down, or even how deep I am. I swim through the cold water, trying desperately to get to the surface, and then something pulls at me, and all is nothingness.

  * * *

  I awake in darkness. I reach for something but find the dashboard of the car. I’m in Genevieve’s Renault. It’s night now. I take in a breath and feel my heart rate slowing.

  My hand goes instinctively to the chain under my shirt. I can feel the ring through the fabric.

  But whose ring is it?

  The thought brings a rush of terror. Is it my husband’s? I’ve never had a husband. The name James floats briefly into my memory, along with the image of a man with a crooked smile. I’ve never seen that man before in my life.

  Except I have. I met him in Brooklyn in 1994. We were together for five wonderful years before the car accident tore us apart and sent me into a world of government agencies and spies and a secret cadre of time travelers. And at the same time, I never met James. Both realities exist in my memory. Both feel true.

  We pull up a narrow dirt lane toward a small farmhouse and the moon bathes the landscape in silver light. I blink away sleep and open my eyes to find Genevieve staring at me.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Of course,” I say, but the trembling in my voice may have betrayed me.

  I climb out of the car after Genevieve and then help Leung out of the back. A narrow path leads up to a small, stone farmhouse. Its walls are covered in vines, and a chimney juts out of the roof. It looks like one of those gaudy American paintings that are popular in the late twentieth century.

  “This is the Listening Station?” Leung asks, staring around at the small building with skepticism.

  “No,” Genevieve answers. “But Henri operates the Station, and we’ll stay with him tonight.”

  Genevieve knocks on the door and, a moment later, an old man opens it, his face illuminated only by the moonlight.

  “Henri,” Genevieve says. “C’est Molly.”

  She asks in French if he remembers me. Henri smiles, his face transforming into a mountainous landscape of wrinkles, and he responds in English, “Of course I do. Hello, Molly.”

  I step forward and give him a warm hug.

  He breaks out of my embrace, laughing, and gestures for us to follow.

  Leung and I trail Genevieve into the house’s cozy main room. A fire burns in the fireplace, casting the room in a homey orange glow.

  “Par ici, par ici,” Henri says, waving for us to follow. The stone walls make the hallway feel like a tunnel. The light recedes as we retreat to the back of the house. There are no lamps in the hall, no electricity in the farmhouse at all.

  The door to the back room creaks loudly as Henri pushes it open. The room with two small beds. I remember that the beds mattresses are stuffed with straw and the pillows with sheep’s wool. It’s been years since I’ve stayed here, but something about it feels strangely like home. Leung drops her bag on the bed with a dry, crunching sound and gives me an appraising look.

  “It’s better than you think,” I say.

  “Ça va? D’accord,” Henri says, retreating into the hallway.

  “Henri?”

  He pauses in the doorway. Backlit by the glow of the fire, his wispy hair makes a white halo around his head and I realize with a start just how much he has aged since I’ve seen him last.

  “How long have you been with the ISD?” I ask.

  Henri thinks for a moment. “Quarante-deux ans,” he says, and then nods. “I started in Ostrava as Station Agent. I transferred here when I became too old to run the Station.”

  I can hardly fathom i
t. “Forty-two years for the ISD? That’s as long as ISD Command has been in existence.”

  He smiles and shrugs.

  “You’ve probably heard just about everything about the ISD. But how much do you really know about them, about what—?”

  Henri takes a step forward, his brow creasing in worry. “Ce qu’on fait, tu veux dire?” He seems my look of confusion. I really need to brush on up my French. “Er—what you do?”

  I nod.

  He places his hands on my shoulders and says in halting English: “These tunnels give great power. I don’t want that in the—how would you say?” He holds his hands out.

  “The wrong hands,” I finish.

  Henri smiles at me. Station Agents don’t travel much and are given limited intel of events in their future. I think about the world that he hasn’t yet seen. Of state-sanctioned mass surveillance and drones that allow us to kill from air-conditioned basements in Nevada over seven thousand miles from our targets. Would he trust a government of today with such great power?

  “You’re right,” I say.

  He pats me on the shoulder and shuffles up the hallway toward the front room.

  I return to the room and sit on my bed, taking out the tracker. Leung watches as I thumb it on, waiting for the display to brighten. Genevieve appears in the doorway. When the numbers finish rolling, I tell them. “They haven’t moved.”

  Genevieve nods. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  * * *

  But sleep won’t come, not even after lying here for an hour. An hour of listening to the slight shifting of Leung’s and my bodies against the straw, the sound of Leung’s soft snoring, and still nothing.

  Genevieve’s words tumble through my mind. The Order wants to destroy everything the ISD has, she said. But it doesn’t make sense. Everyone who travels always experiences the lure of a new time period. Knowing as much as they do about the ISD, the Order must realize that their actions are putting tunnels at risk. I know that I could never do that. So what then?

  I remember my dream from the car ride yesterday. I had dreamt of a husband I never had, but why is that troubling me now. And then I feel the chain around my neck. My breath catches in my throat and I take the chain out. The ring gleams at me in the moonlight.

  I’ve heard of this happening before. Anomalies and phantom memories. They are usually the result of an agent trying to change their own history. But that’s not what I’m doing. But the Order has already caused one Recursion Event when they started the Station fire. Could the two things be connected?

  If they are, then I am missing something. The Order would have to be traveling to another point in my timeline and then returning to this one for me to be aware of these anomalies. Either that, or they’re somehow changing my past from this present timeline. But if that’s the case, then I have no idea how.

  I open my bag. If they’re changing my past, then it’s not just about the ISD. They want me. I am struck by the image of Phaedrus hiding outside the farmhouse window and reaching inside with long, ghostly fingers that needle their way into my dreams while I sleep. I pull out the tracker. I thumb it on. The needle doesn’t move. The numbers don’t turn. They’re gone.

  August 20

  It is cold in the farmhouse when I wake. The early morning light seeps in around the drawn curtains. I uncurl, dragging the blankets off me, inch by inch. Leung is still sleeping. The cold in the room is bracing, but still better for waking up than the watery coffee from yesterday. A gust of wind billows the curtains outward. I gasp when it hits me. The weather must have changed after I went to bed. I rush to shut the window, lean against it, and take a breath.

  I steal quietly to the washbasin by the window. I splash frigid water on my face and pull my hair back into a ponytail. A quick glance in the window’s reflection reveals the shockingly dark shadows under my eyes. I certainly didn’t get into this line of work for its glamor.

  I wriggle into a pair of wool pants and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I finish with a wool overcoat and appraise myself in the dirt-caked mirror. I look like an eighteen-year-old boy studying at Oxford. Not my favorite look, but it’ll do.

  I pad back to the bed and sit, taking the tracking device from my pack. I flip on the switch and power it up. There are really only a few reasons that Phaedrus could have been off the tracker. Either he is dead, or no longer in this time period.

  The screen comes to life.

  000007.32

  I stare at the tracker. Phaedrus left and now he’s back, much closer than before. The ISD knows of no tunnels in this area except the Paris tunnel, and that’s been closed. But the Interlopers must have access to a tunnel we don’t know about. They could have done anything in that time. They could be returning with reinforcements and fresh supplies while we’re on the run. I take in a breath. We need to send that message now more than ever.

  * * *

  It is only a three-mile drive to the Listening Station. I check the tracker as we drive. The numbers decrease even as we drive. They are only six miles away now.

  “How do they know about the Listening Station?”

  Genevieve shakes her head. “How do they know about the Paris Station? How do they know about any of this?” She regards me carefully. “They have someone on the inside.”

  I open my mouth to respond when Genevieve says, “We’re here.”

  The Listening Station is an old church, located on the edge of a small town abandoned in World War I. The ISD had chosen the church for its remote location; it’s been kept off-grid for over fifty years. Hikers won’t find it on any map and every permit to build in this area has been unilaterally blocked. It’s near enough to France’s zone rouge, or red zone—an area deemed too dangerous for travel from all the World War Two debris left behind—that a few well-placed signs keep away the rest.

  We turn down a dirt road, lined by trees. It has started raining again and now the wind is howling, whipping the branches into a fury.

  Genevieve stares out the window as I drive. I can see her reflection in the glass. She has a distant look on her face. “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks…”

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Just something I remember from university.”

  We stop as a clearing opens on one side of the road and the church comes into view. It is a small, forgotten parish, surrounded on three sides by trees. Its stained-glass windows are cracked and broken. An old graveyard sits behind the church; its broken, crumbling markers stand as sad reminders of the mourners that no longer visit.

  Genevieve and I climb out onto the wet, overgrown grass. I lower my pack and open it, taking out a radio. I hand it to Leung, who has moved to the front passenger seat of the car, and then take out another radio for Genevieve and myself.

  I take out the tracker from my pack and turn it on. The tracker now points northwest and the distance reads:

  000003.48

  We’ve driven about two miles since we left the farmhouse. “They’re close,” I say.

  I put the tracker back in my pack and hand it to Leung.

  “You good?” I ask.

  Leung turns on the radio. “I’ll be okay,” she says.

  I follow Genevieve to the church.

  Genevieve pushes open the doors and we step into the narthex. The doors to the sanctuary have fallen inward, giving us a clear view inside. There is a hole in the far wall, behind the altar where a tree had fallen in. The opening must have let in the necessary air, sunlight, and water years ago, because the sanctuary now resembles a greenhouse more than a church. Vines grow on the walls and bushes and small trees climb over the pews, the unrelenting march of nature having taken over for the parishioners.

  “This way,” Genevieve says.

  I follow her to a narrow door at the far end of the narthex. Genevieve opens the door, revealing a twisting staircase leading up to the bell. I pause at the staircase. The Order is close, and if they’re after me, then Genevie
ve needs to know.

  “Is something wrong?” Genevieve asks.

  My hand goes to the ring. “I’m having dreams.”

  “What kind of dreams?” Genevieve asks.

  “I keep dreaming about this car accident.”

  “A car accident?”

  “I’m with my husband.” I pull the chain out from under my shirt, showing Genevieve the ring. “This car accident was the last time I saw him.”

  She shakes her head, climbing the stairs. “It was a traumatic experience,” she says. “It’s normal to dream about these kinds of things.”

  I follow after her. “This is different. I dreamed about the accident two nights ago, just before the attack on the Paris Station. I had the same dream when I slept during the drive to the farmhouse. But this time it had changed.”

  “Changed how?” Genevieve asks.

  “It was still a car accident,” I say. “But James wasn’t there at all.”

  “It was only a dream.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “You said that you thought the Interlopers were targeting the ISD. That certainly makes sense. They would want to have full control of the tunnels. But what if it’s me they want? I’m experiencing conflicting realities. It’s not just my dreams that are changing, but my memories too. I remember two lives. One with James, and one without. I know it’s crazy, but I think The Order is trying to change my life.”

  She frowns at me. “If they were doing that, then they wouldn’t be here. They would have to be changing it at some other point. That’s the only way you could be having conflicting memories.”

  “They went off the tracker last night.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I wanted to be sure it wasn’t an error, but they were back this morning. Genevieve, they could have a tunnel nearby.”

  Genevieve shakes her head. “They were off the tracker for only a few hours. Doing a mission like that would have added months—”

  “Using the tunnels we know of,” I say.

  “Speculation, Molly. What is it about these dreams that has you so worried?”