It feels like I have ten thousand ways of starting that conversation, but I settle for the most direct one.
“Here’s the deal: I need your help to stop a dirty bomb from detonating in New Geneva today and incinerating most of the population with it.”
I can see her eye twitch. I can tell she is processing the full weight behind my words.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe that this is true. Why me? Why come to the person you’ve betrayed for help? You must have known that I want nothing more than to blow your head off.”
She is right, of course. Why her? I could have requested a full platoon of military soldiers to accompany me and it would have been given to me. So why did I come here?
“I don’t know. Call it intuition. This is one of those days when I fear it could be the last.”
“And so your first thought was to see the one person who could actually help that fear become a reality? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“It’s a long story but there’s very little time.”
“Bullshit, Cole!” She cocks the gun again and puts her index finger back on the trigger. “Don’t feck with me, Cole! I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not fecking with you. Today Ahmed Al’Hasi will detonate a dirty bomb in the World Security Center.”
“If you know the target, then why do you need me? Why not take an entire army and get the job done that way? Why would you want to put your faith in the one person you’ve fed to the wolves to save your own ass?”
Was that what I did? Was I trying to save my own ass? I feel a strong sensation in my heart. I can’t shake it but I decide to ignore it. Now is not the time and I’m already in a shitty disposition. I don’t need to pile up crap that will only prevent me from staying focused on my mission. I repeat that inside my head like a mantra. My mission. I need to stop this from happening, no matter what.
“Because you’re the only person I can trust with my life.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Cole. Maybe in your sick head you think I can forgive you for getting me discharged from active duty. And heck, maybe I deserved it. Maybe I went over the line that time. Maybe I could have done things differently. But if I did, maybe you wouldn’t be breathing right now. Have you ever stopped to think about that?”
I have, of course, many times in fact. That’s what made that entire mess all the more painful. But right now we can’t rehash the past. Today isn’t about that. I know in my heart that I will have to eventually, just not today.
“I have, Eleanor. And I can’t even describe how sorry I am—”
She doesn’t let me finish and the canon of her Magnum presses hard against my forehead. I wonder if deactivating Tanya was a mistake. It would only take a thought to bring her back, but without context she might just act rashly. More than that, this is something I need to do on my own. If I have even the slightest chance to get back on my feet and accomplish my mission today, I must face my demons, my fears and my doubts alone.
But right now I’d give anything to be back in my luxurious apartment cracking jokes and exchanging sexual innuendos with Tanya. But if I ever want to experience that again, I have to complete this mission first.
“Cole, chose your next words carefully, and don’t ever try to say you’re sorry to me ever again, or god be my witness, I’ll punch a hole through your brain for your efforts. You’ve taken everything from me. Going on missions and serving my planet was my whole life, and you knew it. In fact, you’re the only one who knows how important this was to me.”
“Alright. Here’s the deal.”
I know Tanya would stop me from talking if she was active. I’m about to break every rule in the book. I just don’t see any other way now. I continue.
“I’m working for a top secret project called Rewind. They send me back in time whenever a terrorist makes serious damage in our world. The nuke I’ve told you about already exploded; it incinerated hundreds of thousands of people and the resulting radiation would surely kill ninety-eight percent of New Geneva’s population over the next few days. I have come back in time to prevent it. This is my job. This is what the government approached me to do after our unit was . . . disbanded.”
I immediately realize using that word was a mistake, a huge one at that. But it’s too late now . . . I’ve said it. I can tell from her expression that she is struggling to compute everything I have just said. But then her lips part to display clenched teeth.
She moves fast. I’m impressed even though I see it coming nonetheless, perhaps thanks most to my improved augment that gives me unhuman reflex levels, or maybe simply because I would have done the same if I was in her shoes. She tries to slam the grip of her gun into my temples. I block the move and disarm her, but not before a single shot is fired. I feel the pain in my neck. The bullet has grazed me. I grab the antique gun and smash it in my hands. Using my repulsor I bring it to melting point, making my job easier.
She stumbles back with fear in her eyes.
“So that’s why you came here? It wasn’t enough that you rid me of my purpose, now you actually want to finish the job!”
I shake my head. “No, Eleanor. I really need your help. I have to stop Al’Hasi, and I don’t trust anyone else to help me do this.”
“And you couldn’t come up with a better lie than time travel? Really? Do what you came to do, Cole. If in this ghost of a man that I see standing in front of me remains a shred of humanity and loyalty for your ex-partner, drop the bullshit and just take me out.”
“I’m not here to kill you, Eleanor! And I’m not lying either. I can prove it.”
“Yeah right. You can prove you’ve time traveled? How?”
“I can show you footage of what’s going to happen. I can probably even show you footage of what your day would have been if I hadn’t showed up.”
Her eyes lock with mine and she looks at me with an intense stare.
“I can’t seem to find deception in your words. But that makes my head spin.”
I can relate to that. I know how I felt when I was introduced to the concept of what would become my new job.
“That’s because I’m not trying to deceive you. I swear on Vassiliki’s grave that I’m not.”
Her eyes widen. She knows that I would never do that unless I was being truthful. She drops to her knees and a tear runs down her cheek.
“You fecking asshole. You come on the day I finally decided to put all of my pain, rage and fears to rest. You decide to ring the door mere seconds before I’m about to end it all.”
A shiver travels up and down my spine at the realization behind her words. Was she about to shoot herself? That would explain why she answered the door so fast, gun in hand.
I activate Tanya in information-only mode and look at the records from the mission Intel package. I check police-related information regarding Eleanor. Two hours from now a patrol would have found her dead body in her bathroom, blood spilled all over her old, decrepit and shattered mirror. The image grabs at my heart and squeezes. I can barely breathe. Why didn’t Tanya tell me all of this? Surely she knew the moment I gave her Eleanor’s name. But then again she managed to add Eleanor to the mission, and while I didn’t second guess how she managed that, I know it’s not standard procedure to involve anyone else in our missions. Time traveling is dangerous as it is. The ripple effect from too much change in the timeline is something that has to be carefully planned. That’s why the company doesn’t allow two or more agents to do a single mission. So did Tanya lie to me and showed me what I wanted to see when she added her into the mission? Or did the company actually see what we were doing and allowed it for another reason? The questions are hammering my conscious mind to oblivion. I can’t think of a reason, but the fact that Tanya hid the fact that she knew that Eleanor would not survive the day, with or without us meeting, is something I have trouble understanding.
I put my hand over my mouth and let it slowly slide towards my chin. This day is getting we
irder by the minute, and there are things that don’t make sense. That’s when my neuronal net shows me another garbled image of Vassiliki.
“Cole, you’re being used. Don’t trust anyone but yourself,” says Vassiliki.
The image flashes out of existence as fast as it came.
What the feck is happening to me?
“Cole? Cole!” I hear Eleanor say, but she sounds like she’s far away. Eventually she screams my name once more and I get back into the moment.
“Cole! For feck’s sake, what’s going on?”
Her eyes are red, repressed tears burning them.
I take a knee and wipe the tear on her cheek. She pushes my arm away with little to no conviction. I help her back to her feet and sit her on her couch. I go in the kitchen and fill a glass with water and bring it to her. When she doesn’t take it from my hands I drop it in front of her. She looks at it. I need to do something to get her out of this. Feck, I need to get out of this myself before this pile of shit consumes me as well. I want to regain control but the more time passes, the more I lose my grasp on it.
I don’t know how to do it, so I just do what I thought I would do before I saw the coroner’s report and the scene photo of my friend’s death. A death that I somehow prevented by coming here today. It’s boggling my mind but I can’t let it distract me any longer.
“Do you have a brain augment?” I ask.
It takes a little while before she nods. “They removed my top of the line army one, but I got another, a cheaper model in its place.”
I reach with my mind and easily find and hack into it. I show her what I’ve just seen. I know this is one hell of a gamble. It either jolts her back into reality or will forever consume her psyche in the fiery depth of hell.
She loses all color in her skin real fast. I want to tell her I’m sorry for fecking up her life, but I know she doesn’t want to hear that from me now, perhaps never in fact.
She is shocked and something in her snaps. She slams her hand into the glass of water and sends it spinning on the carpet, rolling and tumbling until it smashes against the wall.
“I just want to know one thing, Cole, and please don’t lie to me. Is this true? Are you coming from the future? Are you really trying to stop a dirty bomb?”
“I haven’t lied to you at all today, Eleanor; all of it is true.”
I show her the mission parameters, the data and images of New Geneva post detonation and continue.
“If I don’t find a way to stop it, this is what will happen,” I add.
There is silence for a few minutes. Time seems to stop and I feel trapped. There’s a buzzing in my head reminding me that time is the one commodity I can’t waste today, but another part of me, one that screams at me, is telling me this is an important moment of the day.
Slowly, color returns to her face. She starts to take deeper breaths, and wipes the remainder of her tears before looking in my eyes, her whole expression changed. Her look of resolve sends another shiver up my spine. Her voice is strong as steel.
“What do you need me to do?”
C H A P T E R
X
Mission completion time: T minus 421 minutes.
I’m back on my jet bike flying towards our next destination. I can feel Eleanor’s arm around my thorax, holding me tight. The last twenty minutes have been some of the most emotionally charged I have had in a very long time. We both could have been consumed by what happened back at her apartment, but we weren’t. In the chasm of despair, we have rekindled something we both thought we had lost a long time ago. Partnership. We both want to talk about it but we know it will have to wait, even if it means we never get the chance to have that conversation. We both understand what needs to be done today. For better or for worse, we can’t let emotions, fears and doubts cloud our judgment. Her willingness to overcome death and be part, for one more time, of an op to save others has brought her back from despair. But in doing so it has also brought me back into the present where I need to be today more than any other day.
I activate Tanya back with a mental push.
“What have I missed? I see you’ve convinced her to join us.”
“Yeah,” I answer simply, not feeling in the mood to give any more details.
“Cole,” says Tanya. “Are you back in the game? We can’t do this if you second guess every one of your moves today.”
I know that. There will be time to worry about this afterwards, and if there is no after, if this is somehow my last day, then I’ll leave this world with questions unanswered, like we all do. But that’s the price every human being has to pay for the privilege of being alive. In this at least I’m no different than anyone else. But right now I just have to put all of this on the back burner and concentrate on achieving my goal.
“About your nightmare,” says Eleanor.
“Yeah? What about it?”
“I don’t know what it is, Cole . . . whether or not it’s just a premonition, a dream, or a subconscious remainder of a previous time jump. But I think you should concentrate on the one thing it might be: a gift, a second chance. We both get one of these today, so let’s not waste it, okay?”
I smile. Yeah, obsessing over it will bring nothing but chaos.
“Agreed.”
Tanya stays silent and I mentally thank her for doing so. Right now I’m not in the mood to talk about anything anymore, and she probably senses that. I’ve talked and thought about all of this for so long and it brought me nothing but grief. An emotion I can’t afford to feel, not if I want to survive this day, not if I want to prevent Eleanor, myself and the rest of New Geneva from being consumed by nuclear fire.
We land on top of the twenty-story high building where Rasul lives. Hopefully he is still there. According to the Intel we have he will be spotted in a turbo tube in thirty-six minutes. I’m hopeful he hasn’t left his apartment yet. As we get off the jet bike Eleanor looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing, but I wondered, how is it you have all that info?”
“When a terror attack occurs, the central AI for New Geneva compiles all the usable data it can find. It analyzes the logs of the day, surveillance, online chatter, and compiles that info so I can use it during my mission.”
“I?” says Tanya using the jet bike’s speakers to make sure Eleanor hears her objection.
“I’m sorry, Tanya, we,” I correct myself.
“That’s your augmented AI? Tanya, huh?” Eleanor asks.
I nod. She knows about my first girlfriend, of course. She made the connection immediately.
“You two must have some interesting discussions in the middle of the night,” Eleanor adds.
I sigh. “In fact we do have some really good conversations, but I can also disable her when I need some me time.”
She looks at my crotch and gives me a look. “I see.”
“Hey, those are not the only moments I need to be on my own.”
“I try not to interfere with Cole when it’s not needed,” says Tanya. “But right now I think we all need to be connected. Eleanor, do you mind if I hack into your communication’s augment and install a direct link so we can also talk directly?”
Eleanor shrugs. “Yeah, why the hell not.”
“Done,” says Tanya.
“That’s weird but somehow an interesting feeling,” says Eleanor. “Yeah, you’re welcome, Tanya.”
“You can actually tell her everything you want with your mind. Just think of her, and she’ll hear the words,” I add.
She flashes me a thumb up.
“What’s the plan guys?” she adds.
“We go in, interrogate him and hopefully get a twenty on the bomb’s current location.”
“In my experience fanatics are difficult to break hours before they strike,” she answers.
That brings back the fresh memory of Samir’s failed interrogation. “What do you propose?”
“Follow my lead. Just make sure you get a bug on him the first c
hance you get.”
“Very well.”
“I like her already,” says Tanya cheerfully.
“Well, thank you, Tanya,” says Eleanor beaming.
* * *
It doesn’t take long for us to arrive in front of Rasul’s apartment door. The second droid is in position hovering stealthily outside, providing real-time video of the inside of the apartment through the windows to my neuronal HUD. I’m not going guns blazing without doing my homework this time. Rasul is sleeping on his couch. I signal Eleanor to go for the door but, instead of kicking it down, she takes a small hacking device from her pocket and quickly opens the door with it, all under three seconds and without making a sound. That’s another approach for sure, but probably the right one. She has the lead, after all.
We step in carefully, stun-set blasters pointing forward as we enter the modest apartment. There’s a foul odor in the place. I’m hoping he isn’t dead. When we reach the living room, we see fast-food wrappers scattered all around. A rat is there, eating the food, and doesn’t seem bothered or startled as we pass nearby. When we reach the couch, we can see Rasul is sleeping and snoring loudly.
“I’m surprised he isn’t preparing himself for this day,” I whisper.
“Yeah, maybe his orders have changed,” answers Eleanor. “It’s possible Ahmed Al’Hasi decided to change his plan because of your earlier encounter.”
“Let’s hope not or we’re wasting our time.”
“No matter what the deal is, I’m sure this guy can be of some use.”
“Why are we still whispering?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says very loudly.
That does it, and Rasul is startled out of his slumber. He jumps awake, but Eleanor clocks him in the face and sends him crashing back to the couch.
“Who are you people?” says Rasul with a strong, Middle Eastern accent, acting surprised pretty well.
I take a few steps towards him, which gets his attention, but Eleanor asks me to back off via our link. I freeze and shoot Rasul a cold stare.
Rewind 717: The Adventures of Time Traveler Anti-Terrorist Agent Cole Seeker Page 10
