Tainted Waters

by Leah Cutter

  The heat hadn’t been kind to him—then again, he still needed to lose a bunch of weight. He wore a short–sleeved dress shirt and slacks, the sweat evident on his chest and under his arms, even in the dim light. He smacked his fat lips together when he saw me.

  “Sam,” he said, nodding at her. “Cassandra.”

  I’m not sure why he decided that he should always call me by my full name. Maybe to distance himself from me, from us.

  He definitely didn’t approve of there being an us, as in Sam and I.

  “See anything?” he asked.

  Sam shook her head. “Nothing new. As far as I can tell.”

  I wondered at that. Had she already read the reports from the first PAs on the scenes?

  Of course she had. She had access to that kind of thing.

  And of course, she hadn’t thought to share them with me.

  Sam turned to me. I just shrugged. How the hell was I supposed to know what I was seeing? If I was seeing anything different than any of the other PAs?

  Ferguson smirked. I could hear the unspoken, Figures, echoing between us.

  “What have you learned?” I asked. Okay, so maybe it came out more like a challenge.

  Asshole pissed me off.

  Ferguson’s smirk grew more unpleasant.

  I braced myself. This couldn’t be good.

  “You’re good pal, Hunter, I think his name was? Has been teaching other vets how to move,” Ferguson said. “There’s recording of it. Found it on the internet. Come on.”

  He walked us back to the command center under the white canopy. “Johnny, cue up the tape,” he directed.

  A kid who looked as though he was out past his curfew nodded sharply and typed something on his keyboard.

  The recording had probably been done on a cell phone. Had Hunter known it was being taken? He normally paid attention to that kind of thing, and then broke the recording device.

  Maybe not this time, though. He was too focused on teaching, on moving.

  “This first.” He moved his right arm, then his left leg. Precise, slow, like he was swimming through the air.

  Hunter’s voice sounded wrong. It was him, I didn’t doubt that. But I’d never heard his voice sound so low before, like it was echoing out of a great bell.

  “Then this.” He continued moving across the open space—some kind of windowless room, with mats strewn across the floor, one slow move at a time.

  The camera panned back and we got a better look at the other people in the room.

  Shit. There was the guy who planted the first bomb. And the second bomb, as well as the guy who’d just blown himself up. I nudged Sam, who just nodded.

  “Then you put it together.”

  The camera couldn’t catch all of Hunter’s moves. First he was in one spot, then the next, then the next.

  “Here,” the tech guy said. “Let me slow it down.”

  He backed up the recording and slowed it down. Hunter did the exact same movements he’d been showing everyone. Only now they were blinking in slow motion in the background while he moved at a bit faster than normal speed.

  The image stuttered suddenly. Then jumped. Even slowed down, Hunter suddenly went from one position to the next.

  “Is that a glitch?” Ferguson asked.

  The tech frowned, like it was a homework problem he didn’t understand. “No. He shouldn’t be able to move like that. Not with the tape slowed down. Let me try running it through a different filter.”

  I poked Sam. “Hunter doesn’t normally twitch that way,” I told her softly. “He’s shown me those same moves. He’s all about smooth and no wasted effort. There’s something else going on. Something else affecting the quality of the recording.”

  Sam shook her head. “No. Nothing was interfering. It’s just Hunter. Everything in the background is normal. See?”

  I watched the background as the tech tried to isolate Hunter’s jerky movements.

  For a mere second, I could have sworn I saw shadows build. Maybe some of those fucking green vines again.

  Then they dissipated.

  The next time the tech played that section of the tape, no shadows were there. And the jerkiness diminished.

  “Don’t know what brought that on,” the tech complained as we watched again and Hunter was mostly smooth going across the floor again.

  We were all clueless as well. However, I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever glitch had affected that tape was affecting the timelines around this crime scene as well.

  “Hunter’s not the one responsible for the bombs,” I felt obliged to say, though he’d been teaching two of the bombers how to move like he did.

  “Then who is?” Ferguson asked. “’Cause I think we got your boy Hunter down for the case.”

  “It wasn’t him,” I insisted.

  “Then who’s the mastermind behind all these bombs?” Ferguson asked as if he expected me not to answer.

  “The guy holding the camera,” I said. “He gives you a good view of everyone except himself. But I bet he’s the one who’s responsible.”

  Ferguson grunted. His partner asked the kid, “Do we know who uploaded the video?”

  Kid shook his head. “Anonymous uploader,” he said. “Recording was taken in a cell phone. No way to trace it back.”

  Of course not. Hunter was being set up. But I wasn’t about to mention that to Ferguson. He already hated me, and by extension, anyone I’d try to defend.

  “Can we go to the first bomb site?” I asked Sam as we turned away.

  “Sure,” she said. She seemed surprised.

  Was it because I was suggesting that we do something together?

  “There isn’t anything there, not anymore,” she said quietly as we walked back to her car.

  “You say the timeline’s corrupt, like this one is starting to be,” I said.

  “Exactly like this one,” Sam stated. “No one can figure out how it’s happening. The Jacobson Consortium is of course claiming no knowledge as well.”

  “For once, I might believe them,” I told Sam. “I think it might be something else at work.”

  Because my life just couldn’t be about normal things, like fights with my girlfriend.

  No, some stupid gods were probably involved as well.

  Ξ

  The pile of flowers, candles, notes, and cards had grown outside the Thai restaurant on University, to commemorate the two students who’d been killed by the bomb. The memorial spilled onto the sidewalk, wax and petals strewn artfully.

  Two kids who would probably have never known each other in real life. Who’d both just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, walking away from each other when the bomb went off. Him, a street kid, straggling behind the rest of his group. Her, a first–year engineering student.

  The pathos was off the charts. All we needed now was the weepy boyfriend making a stammering speech about love.

  The smell of green curry wafting out from the restaurant made my stomach churn. When was the last time I’d eaten? It had been daylight, I was sure.

  But Sam was all business. I wasn’t about to suggest a late–night snack, followed by my favorite dessert (her). In part, because that was what she was expecting me to do.

  The planter with bamboo, now struggling to breathe with all the cards and incense sticking out of the dirt, stood to the right of the bomb site.

  I walked to the curb and turned back, deliberately lining myself up with the planter.

  All the other PAs, when they’d viewed the scene, had stood directly opposite the bomb site. Which made sense, until you knew you were looking for a fast fucker.

  I closed my eyes and opened my area of knowing. Honestly, felt kind of amazing, being able to do that here. I’d been on these streets when I’d been homeless. Had panhandled just two doors down. Now, I was one of the PAs, one of the blessed.

  I was going to help stop this fucker who was bombing my city.

  The blue lines fanned out. I followe
d the brightest in, riding it into the past, until suddenly I was there, last Saturday, with the pale blue skies and the sleepy feeling the Ave has late on a Sunday afternoon.

  Only the view wasn’t right. It was like a spliced film. Kids were walking together, laughing. A guy hurried by, playing something on his phone.

  Then the scene shifted. As if a couple of seconds had been edited out. The girl who had been several feet away was suddenly closer.

  What the hell?

  I kept trying to make sense of it. Why was the scene doing that? It had nothing to do with alternate timelines. Not like how I’d seen them.

  And those damned shadowlike things that I’d seen at the other bomb site. They crept in sometimes as well. Vines and sickly flowers and thorny bushes, springing out of nowhere.

  What the hell?

  I waited until the bomb went off, trying to see if something odd happened then. It did—two seconds after that, there was another, longer glitch.

  I opened my eyes and turned to Sam. “What the hell?”

  She shrugged. “This is why the cops had wanted to talk with you. Ask if other timelines were bleeding into the main one, which is why it jumped that way.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. That’s not how the other timelines look.”

  “Are you sure?” Sam asked.

  I sighed. I didn’t want to go down the alternate pasts. I knew that marked me as very, very, different than the other PAs.

  But hopefully, this one time, being different would be a blessing.

  “Let me check.”

  Ξ

  I stood in the still muggy afternoon on University Avenue, outside a Mexican restaurant. The smell of chilies and refried beans filled the air, along with Mariachi music. The same people were mostly on the sidewalk, the girl laughing, the guy playing a game on his phone.

  Instead of a planter with bamboo struggling to grow, an ashcan stood directly in front of me.

  Then everything jerked and slid, like it had in the original timeline.

  I blinked and forced myself out before the bomb exploded. I was getting awfully tired of that thing going off.

  “Same,” I told Sam grimly. Whatever was affecting the main timeline was also affecting the closest alternates. “Let me try one more.”

  Before she could say anything, I closed my eyes again. I deliberately chose the weakest timeline, the one farthest away from the others.

  There was no jerkiness in this timeline.

  There also was no bomb.

  When I came back up, Sam stood with her hands over her chest, looking angry.

  Or maybe that was just me—I was pretty sure since she’d met me that she’d started being angry all the time.

  “Farthest timeline away, no shifting, and no bomb,” I told her.

  That at least took away some of the angry lines from her pretty face, made her look puzzled instead. “So the shifting time is related to the bomber.”

  “I think so,” I said. “How far out does the time shift?” I asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Sam said, looking wonderfully perplexed.

  “Okay, so, obviously, close in, here, the time seems to shift and be wonky,” I explained. “What happens if you do a reading a block away? Two blocks away? Is it all like that? Or is it really localized?”

  Sam blinked. “I don’t know. I don’t see how that could help.”

  I sighed and tried not to roll my eyes at her. “You might be able to see more from farther away. Have it be more clear.”

  “Oh!” Sam said. She shook her head. “We were always trained to stand as close to the scene as we could get. So we could have the best view.”

  I nodded. It made sense.

  It also made me question the usefulness of the training Sam had gotten. Of course, most of her training came from the Jacobson Consortium.

  We walked down to the corner and tried again.

  The shifting was much, much worse.

  “What the hell?” I asked when Sam asked me to go look as well.

  “Why is it worse here?” Sam wondered out loud.

  “Not a clue,” I admitted cheerfully. “Come on. Let’s see if we can figure out the area of effect.”

  We pulled back, checking every half block. The few people who were out stared at us, or hurried past quickly. I even heard one guy muttering multiplication tables under his breath.

  I wanted to reassure him that we weren’t telepaths, but post–cogs. All we’d be able to hone in on was him cheating on his wife earlier that day. With another man.

  Shame on him.

  There appeared to be two hotspots, where the shifting time was constant: the original corner, as well as two blocks away, just outside an apartment building.

  “So what do you think?” Sam asked, eyeing the building.

  “Don’t think we could get a warrant to search the whole thing,” I told her dourly. “We really don’t know what we’re looking for.”

  Sam shook her head. “Not what. Who.”

  “You think the bomber might live there?” I asked.

  Sam shook her head. “Yes. No. I don’t know. But something—someone—in there…there’s just something off.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. But Sam had these feelings sometimes. Like when she’d first met me, and had tried to warn me about what I saw.

  It was an untrained, and un–trainable, gift. Therefore the Jacobson Consortium had tried to deny that it existed.

  Fortunately Sam had stubbornly ignored her teachers in this aspect and continued to pay attention to these occasional feelings.

  We looked at each other. I sighed and shook my head. I had no idea how we were going search that building.

  “I’ll talk with the police tomorrow,” Sam said, turning away reluctantly. “Maybe there’s some probable cause that we can find.”

  “Good luck with that,” I told her, not completely sarcastically. While on the one hand, I hated having anyone’s civil liberties curtailed.

  On the other hand, I really wanted to nail this fucker to the wall.

  “Can we go back to the first spot? I want to check something,” I told her.

  “Sure,” Sam said.

  We walked companionably back to the corner where we’d discovered the first hot spot. I desperately wanted to hold Sam’s hand as we walked. Finally, about half a block away, I said fuck it and grabbed her hand anyway.

  She frowned at me, then her expression lightened. “So you’ve forgiven me?”

  My immediate response was honest, so I went with it. “No,” I said. “I just wanted to hold your hand.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, twining our fingers together.

  We walked, together but apart, back to the corner.

  “That’s what I thought,” I told Sam, walking just past the corner and down. “I’ll bet it isn’t the corner that’s the hotspot. It’s the bus stop.”

  “Why would that be?” Sam asked.

  I looked at the routes, then let go of Sam’s hand to write down the route numbers on my phone. “If it’s a person, then the areas of anomaly might be where they hang out a lot. Like their apartment. And their bus stop.” Because the Minneapolis transit system wasn’t ever going to win any awards for promptness, and so if the bomber had to take the bus to get around, he’d end up hanging out a lot here, at his closest bus stop.

  One of the routes seemed familiar. Took me another minute to look it up on my phone.

  “This goes out to the VA hospital,” I told Sam. “Only one transfer to the light rail.”

  Sam nodded grimly. “Is Hunter the one behind the bombs?”

  I snorted. “Hell no. Hunter wouldn’t threaten to kill a thousand people. He’d just go ahead and do it.” If Hunter wanted someone dead, they’d be dead. Bombs struck me as too imprecise, too impersonal, for Hunter. Too messy.

  “But maybe someone in his group,” Sam persisted. “That group of guys he was teaching…”

  “I still think it’s the guy
behind the camera,” I told her. “Since it seems that more than one of them is in on it. You saw the white guy, right? With the acne? Who set the first bomb? He was in that group, in that recording of Ferguson’s.”

  “No,” Sam said sharply. “You should have said something.”

  “I thought you would,” I told Sam honestly. She was the one on the case officially. Not me.

  Sam opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Never mind.” She yawned suddenly. “Look. It’s late. Why don’t we call it a night?”

  “Okay,” I said, stung. “I’ll call you in the morning,” I said, turning away. I wasn’t about to beg her for a ride. The walk would do me good.

  “Cassie,” Sam said.

  I turned back.

  I recognized that smile of hers, that come hither look. It was what had gotten us into this trouble in the first place.

  “Or you could just roll over and wake me up,” she said.

  “That,” I said, coming back toward her and taking her hand again, “I would be happy to do.”

  Chapter Eight

  God, I wanted a cigarette.

  It was early morning, that quiet time I’d always liked, particularly after staying up all night doing naughty things to a hot blonde. That time when I felt like no one else was awake, when it was just me and the world.

  Some would reflect about their life and deeds at times like this. Me—I just bathed in the glory of being sticky and satiated, lying next to Sam who was dead to the world.

  We (maybe, possibly) had a lead on the mad bomber. Someone Hunter knew. Someone Hunter had trained.

  Someone who was probably trying to set Hunter up.

  I sighed and turned over, only to find Sam’s eyes wide open, watching me.

  “Hey,” Sam said quietly. She looked absolutely gorgeous, with her bedhead hair and too–knowing eyes, the makeup all kissed away.

  “Hey,” I said. I held out my arms for her and she snuggled in against me, her head against my chest, her skin spread out all along mine.

  This was Heaven.

  I knew it couldn’t last.

  “You okay?” came Sam’s quiet voice.

  “Last night, when we were on the Ave, doing our post–cog thing?” I asked tentatively.

  “Uh–huh,” Sam said, encouraging me to go on.