by Lee Doty
There were three quick chuffs and Ash felt a sharp impact in the table behind her, as well as two needles of pain in her left shoulder and her exposed back. Her eyes immediately lost focus as the tranquilizers were pumped into her flesh, the world seemed to do two full vertical revolutions, but she managed to reorient herself and stood up, pushing away from the table and batting the dart out of her shoulder with an absent motion. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to pull the dart from her back, so she simply ignored it.
Ash lurched forward, realizing that now she was in a race with two separate drugs, a seasoned operator, and at least one marshmallow-suited lackey with a tranquilizer gun, all of them trying to be the first to knock her unconscious. The blurry outline of the still-staggered operator lunged toward her and she threw herself toward her target. In her incapacitated state, he nearly bowled her over, but she managed to slip aside and drove a straight palm strike with nearly all her weight behind it at his jaw. She hit him perfectly, jerking his chin to the side, and he fell in a heap. She lunged toward her target, but tangled her numb legs in the slack form of the operator as she tried to step over him. She fell to hands and knees and rolled to her… no she didn’t roll, she’d just slumped to her side, nearly insensate.
“No!” she shouted her denial, voice ragged and slurred. She willed herself to move, to even open her eyes… she might as well have been trying to become a duck. In the red-black world of her closed eyelids, with clouds of shivering black static washing around her, she saw Crow’s face. He was smiling at her, eyes filled with a consoling pity, mouth pursed into a tight frown. “Don’t worry, Ash.” He said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “I’ll be okay, you tried.”
***
“Nothing is okay!” The unconscious woman on the lab floor slurred out miserably without opening her eyes. “And now you’re alone, and I won’t even be in the library for you.” She sobbed, “It’s all a lie, you know…they’re trying to save the world from the Palsy, but I failed. I failed.”
“Are you okay?” Nelson asked from Dr. Smith’s side. She shushed him unceremoniously and furrowed her brow, looking down at the dragon. She looked so small lying on the floor, arms and legs sprawled out thoughtlessly. Of course, she would have looked smaller if she weren’t draped over the high-level operator she’d beaten unconscious while drugged and busy escaping from a set of inescapable restraints.
“I failed, Crow.” The dragon sobbed, “I failed, and you’ll die… everyone… will die.” Then she twitched and fell silent.
After a full minute, Smith was convinced that the dragon was done talking for now and she gestured for the techs to continue. They immediately shot her with two more tranquilizer darts and moved in to get her restrained. Hawkins stirred as they were cuffing the dragon’s hands and elbows behind her back. His eyes fluttered open as they lifted the dragon off of him and began securing her to a gurney. “Did I get her?” He asked blurrily.
“Oh yeah,” Nelson said in a voice as close to serious as sarcasm would allow, “She tripped over your body right there at the end… you knocked her right down, champ. I think you’ve got a real shot at the title now.”
Hawkins gave Nelson a dark look, but the pounding in his head ate his hot reply. He took Nelson’s offered hand and pulled himself to wobbly feet.
“Maybe you should stay down until we can get you properly checked for a concussion.” Smith frowned pensively.
“Yes,” Nelson pounced casually, “Yes, the boo-boos that girl gave you may be more serious than they seem. Can I get you some orange juice, or maybe a pillow?”
“You know, I think I’m going to get some of your nerds to make me an mp3 of that screech you let out when I was charging into danger and taking care of business.” Hawkins said, rubbing his jaw and wincing, “I think I may use it as my ringtone.”
Nelson snorted and chucked Hawkins on the shoulder. “Next time we’ll restrain her so she’s not essentially free if she gets one limb out. Man, that’s never happened before… it’s kinda embarrassing.”
“Glad I could save your bacon.” Hawkins grunted. “Even if it was only by occupying the space she was stumbling through.”
“Well, it seems that no one’s snark was permanently injured.” Smith sighed, finally turning away from the dragon, “but it’s time to get back on the clock.” Smith looked at each of the men in turn, “So, what are we working on that could conceivably end the world?”
“Well, clearly our gen-2 velcro restraints shouldn’t be used on any of the horsemen of the apocalypse.” Nelson shook his head, giving Smith a dull stare, “Let me think… wait… are we buying that we destroyed the world? Are we buying that the dragons are just trying to save it? We’ve seen almost every impossible thing here, but never anything to indicate time travel was possible.”
Smith fixed him with a hard look. “Are you telling me that we haven’t dealt with threats more improbable than time travel?”
“Yes.” Nelson said flatly.
“Dr. Nelson,” Smith took half a step forward and leaned into him, “This is not some low budget movie… we are not going to ignore a clear warning, however improbable it seems… someone implies they’re from the future and implies that they’re fighting us to save the world from something awful we are going to do, we’re not going to just dismiss that out of hand like we did with that doctor’s warning of the zombie plague in ’94.” Smith’s glare intensified, “Now, What are we working on that could end the world?”
“What are we working on that couldn’t?” Nelson said, but flinched under Smith’s harder glare. He raised his hands between them in a gesture of surrender, nodding. “Okay. Let’s walk through this… she said ‘palsy’, so let’s assume something biological.” Nelson thought for a few seconds, before finally concluding, “Nothing.”
Smith glared more intensely.
“We haven’t engaged in active biological weapons research since ’78.” Nelson began to prod his tablet, “We’ve done nothing except defensive work since then, and we haven’t needed to do any defensive work since 2015.” He prodded the tablet some more, “Our research into trying to improve the race genetically ended in ’92, the last disease we tried to cure was in 2011… nothing.”
“We’ve got no active biological projects?” Smith persisted.
More prodding, more head shaking, “None.”
“Do we have any particularly dangerous samples on ice?”
“Well, of course.” Nelson said, continuing his research, “But nothing is outside the safes on the containment level, and really nothing that I’d imagine getting called ‘the palsy’… we’ve got some killers that disassemble cells, some that destroy nerve tissue completely… of course there’s ‘the scourge’ from that wacko in ’94, but nobody’s ever called the biting undead a palsy. We’ve got nothing that acts like any kind of palsy.”
“Okay,” Smith said, thinking furiously, “are we aware of any threats like this in the world? Anything that someone in the future might have blamed us for?”
Nelson continued his research for a few moments, then, “Nothing.” He said, looking up at the doctor, “If we’re on the brink of a plague, there are no omens or likely suspects in our current threat list.”
Smith nodded, then rubbed at the bridge of her nose for a moment.
“I am not buying the time travel.” Nelson said finally, “And we’ve got absolutely no corroborating evidence or anything even mildly suspicious, and zero suspects to investigate even if we did.”
“Agreed.” Hawkins added, “…and I can’t see ‘preventing a pandemic’ in the actions of the dragons so far. They’re mostly pilfering tech, destabilizing reasonable governments… the kind of thing you’d expect from any number of global bad actors or the secret police of said bad actors… maybe some ultra-high-end organized crime syndicate?”
Smith was silent for a long time. Finally, Hawkins put a hand on Smith’s shoulder and asked softly, “Chief, do you buy this?”
“Of course no
t.” Smith said flatly, “Though I’m inclined to think that she believes it.” Smith inclined her head in the direction of the unconscious dragon. “And I’m hoping to get an idea of what they’re hoping to hit.”
“It looks to me like her target was you, chief.” Nelson said.
Hawkins raised his eyebrows, “Now that doesn’t make any kind of sense.”
“They assassinated the president of Belarus and four cabinet ministers before they…” Hawkins started.
“Chief.” A voice from the intercom broke into their conversation, “We’re getting that anomalous signal again, and we’ve got it triangulated to the lab, I think our dragon is the source.”
Smith fixed Nelson with a steady look. He brought up his tablet and prodded it for about thirty seconds. “Ok. This time we had the telemetry in place… it’s her.” He prodded some more, “No data… just a simple osculation at 33 MHz. Maybe it’s a beacon? The source is diffused throughout her body… maybe it’s an isotope decaying in her bloodstream with some kind of molecular amplifier… from the pattern of the diffusion and the timing, I’d say it spiked not long after her fight-or-flight hormones started pumping… I’m guessing the hormones that came with her attack might have been a trigger.”
“But you say it didn’t contain any data,” Smith observed, “So what was the point?”
“Possibly they’re trying to fix her location,” Hawkins started, “But then they’d likely already have that from the original, weaker signals, so maybe this one was a message.”
“With no data?” Nelson cut in, “What could a message with no data possibly be?”
Just then, a distant rumble reached them through the floor and the alarms began to sound.
“How about something simple like ‘now’?” Hawkins said, turning for the door.
Delivery
Chicago, 2020
There is no freedom without truth, no real choice without facts. A choice without the premise of truth is a choice made by others: by the situation, by the liars, the manipulators.
Those who do not love truth do not love or deserve the freedom they deny themselves.
-Dr. Therese Smith
“A Shadow Among the Stars”
An autobiography published posthumously
(after declassifications and redactions made it possible), copyright 2062
There was a shocked moment where Jo just stared at Dr. Smith as she held the pizza box in the doorway of Jeremy’s apartment.
“You!” Jo said finally, realizing that she had nothing better to say. Anger tightened her grip on the pistol. She clenched her jaw, but then blew out a breath, frustration bleeding into resignation. “Of course. Of course you.” Jo said, shaking her head.
“How much do you remember?” Smith asked.
“Obviously not enough.” Jo spat out, “What is going on? Who am I?”
“That’s the real question, isn’t it, Jo?” Smith said, holding up the pizza box, “Would you care for some pizza while we talk?”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Jo almost shouted, exasperation loosening her control.
“Jo, I know you feel betrayed. That you feel like you’re being played with, but ask yourself, have I or Jackie or Jeremy ever tried to control you? Have we tried to manipulate you? Have we ever hurt you?”
Jo wanted to scream, but her mind kept playing with Smith’s questions, distracting her. Smith was right. She wasn’t being manipulated, at least not in any way she could decipher. “You lied to me… everything I know is a lie.”
“This is tactically dangerous,” Smith said, instantly focusing Jo’s attention, “Letting me stand here in an unsecured doorway leaves us more exposed than necessary. Let me come in, secure the door, and I promise I will answer every question you have with disgustingly frank honesty. My teams are keeping a low profile, but they’re on the street, in the lobby, and on this floor… we should at least have some warning before we’re interrupted.”
“I kind of thought that was going somewhere else,” Jo said, “I was getting ready to tell you that your teams would never capture me alive.”
“We haven’t ever captured you, Jo. We never could have taken you alive… we never could have. The enemy gave you to us, and I think you are ready to remember why.” Into Jo’s skeptical stare, Smith added, “My teams are here to try to protect us, Jo. Let’s sit. Let’s talk. You can have some of the pizza if you’d like. No charge.” She smiled hopefully, lifting the pizza box slightly.
Still, Jo hesitated, mind racing, searching for Smith’s hidden tactics, trying to form responses, but she couldn’t get a grip on the situation, on Smith’s motivations or goals… she simply didn’t have enough information.
“Jo, what’s your other option?” Smith prodded after another moment, “Take me hostage? Start shooting your friends?”
“Friends?!” Jo shouted, “How could we be friends? I’m like some kind of experiment to you people! Some kind of freak to be tested and examined—lied to.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever lied to you, Jo.” Smith said, her voice calm. “There are truths I’ve withheld because I thought it was best, but I’ve tried my best to not violate your trust.”
“Violate my…” Jo’s voice almost cracked and she cut herself short. “Are you even a psychiatrist?”
“I am also a psychiatrist. My psychology degree is from Yale… the diplomas on the wall behind my desk are all real.”
“And this is all about my amnesia?” Ash didn’t bother masking the sarcasm.
“Yes, mostly. Believe me, we are just as interested to find out who you are, or even what you are.” Smith tried to catch Jo’s eyes, “Though honestly, this is also a bit about trying to prepare you for a job offer.”
“Your organization needs better killers.” Statement, not question.
“I’d prefer to say that your skills and abilities would be useful to us.” Smith said.
Jo snorted derisively, “Call it what you want, it doesn’t change the truth.”
“Except that we try to save lives when we exert force.” Smith gave Jo a direct look. “Criminals and the police both carry guns, they both sometimes kill, yet there is no moral equivalence between them.”
An idea struck Jo, her eyes opened a bit wider with the inspiration, “I’m a killer and you have me working with children. Why?”
“Because you asked. It was a risk that bordered on immoral from a certain perspective, but I think I know you, Jo. I have quite a bit of faith in you. I overruled the saner voices in our organization… I made it possible.”
“Is Anaya even your daughter?”
“Foster daughter.”
“For how long?”
“Since a week after you requested the work. You remember, we talked about my fostering plans pretty openly.”
“You are a monster.” Ash said, wide-eyed with shock.
“This is a popular opinion in some circles.” Smith acknowledged. “I prefer to think of myself as dedicated, but I suppose there were more than a few Nazis with similar illusions.” Smith jerked her head in a quick shake as if clearing it, “Anyway, I’m still in this open doorway with this heavy, yet unfortunately cooling, pizza box, I feel like I’m giving you a taste of the ‘disgusting honesty’ I’d promised earlier.” Smith raised her brow and dropped her chin in an implied question, “So…”
“Fine.” Jo brought the pistol back to her chest, angling the barrel cross-body and down at the floor, “I’m not going to say ‘don’t try anything funny’ as you realize that at the first sign of fishy I’ll just start shooting like a maniac, right?” Smith nodded, but Jo added “Uh… because I’m on the edge, okay?”
“Nonsense,” Smith said, striding into the room like she’d been invited for Thanksgiving dinner, heading for the table, “Firstly, you’d shoot like a professional marksman’s most private fantasy, not a maniac.” Smith gave Jo a familiar smile and a sidelong look as she set the pizza box on the table, “Secondly, I’ve seen you under amazing stress
and have never seen you anywhere close to any edge… I’m doubtful your heart is even racing right now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jo said as Jeremy closed and locked the door.
“That I’ve seen you shoot.” Smith said, “That I’ve seen you do quite a few other impressive things, and that I’m appropriately terrified of what would happen if you made that decision.” Smith opened the pizza box and the smell that had been tainting the air moved out to fill it. Jo’s stomach actually made a hungry sound and she blushed. Smith smiled, shaking her head with amusement, “And yet, as terrified as I should be, I know you, Jo. Just as I understand that you will blush from the slightest faux pas, I know you don’t kill out of frustration. In fact, I don’t think that if I pulled a gun right now that you’d kill me.”
“Don’t think I won’t shoot.” Jo warned in a tone so casually merciless that it scared her.
“I didn’t say you wouldn’t shoot me, Jo.” Smith said carefully, nothing but her lips moving. “I just said that I don’t think you’d kill me unless you had to.”
Jo’s gaze became harder and Smith’s face drained of color. Jo could tell that she was terrified, but still in control. “Fair enough.” Jo said with a nod, “Gut shot it is.”
