by Claire Davon
Chapter 4
“He’s right.” Illiria sipped her coffee. Fiona was grateful to see that some consumables also survived. She had been afraid that people would be eating and drinking balanced cubes of meals, designed to keep you healthy and deprive you of taste. You could still put whatever you wanted into your body. That was a relief.
“He was a good leader,” she continued.
The Eiffel Tower still loomed above the Paris skyline. Fiona had never been to Paris until now. She had had little interest in traveling to the European city but now that she was here, even sixty years later, she looked around like a wide eyed schoolchild. All the buildings that had been part of the Parisian culture for centuries were still there – no mere sixty years of time would change that. Their café was near the Arc du Triomphe and Fiona marveled at its medieval structure. She knew that the Louvre wasn’t far away, and the Seine, and all the things that made Paris great. There was so much to explore in this world. She could go to Florence and watch Leonardo daVinci paint the Mona Lisa and then come here and see it.
“We’re talking about the Commander here,” Fiona said, poking at a baguette. It was light and flaky and looked like it would taste buttery. “He’s tried to kill me and change Rogald’s history, or I guess his future. Nothing about that makes him a good leader.” Where was Sonder, she wondered? What was he doing right now?
A more useful skill than time travel would have been telepathy, she thought, looking at Illiria. The woman, as usual, gave nothing away, returning a blank expression to Fiona’s barely concealed angry glance.
Illiria nodded, picking up her coffee again. “It’s rare we get to enjoy time in our stops,” she said, sipping the coffee with a loud slurp, smacking her lips with enjoyment. Fiona stared and Illiria looked at her again. “I am showing my appreciation,” she said in a tone that conveyed how provincial she thought Fiona was. “How else will they know you like it?”
There were a thousand questions bursting through Fiona but she remained quiet. She was afraid if she started talking she would start babbling.
Finally, the silence became too much. “Why doesn’t the Commander just leap back in time and kill me, or kill Sonder, do something to stop this from happening at all?”
Illiria sighed and make a show of setting her coffee cup down. The look she gave Fiona she likely reserved for idiots.
“He’s determined, but he’s not a murderer,” Illiria said. Fiona snorted, remembering the Commander’s failed attempts to kill her. Illiria raised a hand when Fiona opened her mouth to speak again. “He’s not a murderer,” Illiria repeated and Fiona saw some of Illiria’s old loyalty in her tone. “He’s misguided, but he thinks he is doing the right thing.”
Fiona shook her head, wanting to spout all the examples of zealots who thought they were in the right. She almost started lecturing Illiria on Hitler and Stalin before she realized that they may not resonate with the Guardian.
“I don’t understand,” Fiona said when the silence lengthened until she squirmed in her chair. Illiria selected one of the baguettes from the basket and bit into it, chewing as noisily as she had slurped the coffee a moment before.
After what seemed like an eternity, Illiria made that exasperated sound again. Setting her baguette down, she looked over the skyline.
“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
Fiona looked around, seeing the unchanged lines of buildings that made up the French landscape. One good thing about European cities, she thought, was that they preserved history.
“I’ve never been to France,” she admitted. “But I’ve seen pictures and it always looked nice.”
Illiria slammed her hand down and Fiona jumped. She wished Sonder were here right now. Sometimes the enforced togetherness had chafed on her, but at this moment she wanted nothing more than to have him standing with her. She wished she could be taking cues from him about what to say and what to keep quiet about.
“France is pretty. They are all pretty. I don’t mean the cities. They come and go. We have historical records from all the Guardians, back hundreds of years, if you want to investigate.” Then she stopped. “Except you can do that. You can go to all of those places.” She snorted, and Fiona eased back from Illiria, her body tensing. She slid her chair back, trying not to make noise on the pavement. If Illiria’s temper erupted she wanted to have a clear shot away from the café.
“The cities, the Earth, that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean the blackness. Don’t you feel it? The rush of change as you move through it, on your way to a different time and place? That is what I mean.”
Fiona had never considered the black beautiful, but she nodded.
“The Commander has run the same scenarios we have. He has checked your parents and tested what would happen if he eliminated Sonder.” She shook her head. “You are so untrained, so much a novice to this immense task. We all thought you would fail. If the Commander tries to kill you by destroying your parents, the Event comes a hundred years earlier. Some of us are already dead in that scenario. If he tries to get rid of Sonder, which seems like an elegant solution since he is the power behind your abilities then… it isn’t good either. One or both of you dead creates a ripple that is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” She nodded and got the attention of a waiter. They paused while he refilled their cups and then backed away with a bow. He looked uneasy and Fiona wondered if he sensed the strangeness in them. It was almost a repeat of the debacle in Santorini with Rogald, and Fiona winced.
“Has he…tried?” Had there been a world where she didn’t exist? Where Sonder didn’t exist? Fiona paled.
That elicited a chuckle from Illiria, who gave her a pitying look. Fiona jumped back as if Illiria had bitten her.
“He ran scenarios,” Illiria said. “Computer simulations. We have that ability at the base. Before he went rogue. We found them in his data bank, although he tried to wipe the evidence. If he tried to kill your parents they would survive and go on to have you. If he tried to stop Sonder from the accident that sent him to the Guardians, Sonder walked down the street and was struck by a car. Among other scenarios. These things happen as they are meant to.”
“Then…why am I trying to stop the Event? Shouldn’t that happen too?”
Illiria shook her head. “That was no natural phenomenon, Fiona.”
#
Fiona thought back to the disasters she’d seen, Thera, Ubar, and the ones they’d been exploring. Sometimes she wanted to scream with the destruction around her, the devastation at each of them. She had done her duty by the Voice and seen for herself what the disasters did, but they left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“You are good at ghosting,” Illiria said, toying with the cup handle. “I pride myself that that’s Sonder’s Guardian training. You’ve been hard to find since Santorini.” She paused. “That almost went very wrong. The Commander was closer than you know.”
Fiona thought about the Commander as she remembered him, big, snarling, with a blaster that looked like it could take off half the cliff wall they were standing in. She shuddered.
“But…Rogald…” Fiona sputtered to a stop, the question thick on her tongue.
“If the Commander changed your life or Sonder’s, the time line implications were horrific. He was willing to take a chance on Rogald.” Illiria’s words were flat, but Fiona heard anger buried under the icy exterior.
“But you…and Rogald?”
“That is not your concern.”
Fiona looked at her, one part of her mind stalling with the idea that Sonder had willingly left himself behind in Illiria’s place to give Fiona and Illiria time to talk. She shouldn’t waste it, but she wasn’t getting anything of significance.
“Why are we here?” Fiona said, picking off a layer of the baguette that was growing stale in front of her. “Why am I here?”
Illiria sighed. “If there had been any other way,” she began, and now the anger could be heard in the sharp tones of Illiria’s voice.
The woman didn’t like her. Well, sister, Fiona thought, the feeling is mutual.
“If there had been any other way,” she said again, “I tried. I ran scenarios, trying to stop the Event without using you. They all failed. Everything we tried failed and has always failed. You are a wild card, something neither of our groups understand. As much as it is distasteful, you appear to be our only chance.”
Fiona was done running from that responsibility, as she had in Santorini. She swallowed and nodded, spreading her arms in the hopes that Illiria could see her sincerity.
“I was told to study the disasters, but I don’t know what we’re looking for. There’s always a bump, a wrongness to the disasters we go to, but that’s all I’ve been able to determine.” She looked at Illiria and the woman gave her a sharp glance, her expression unreadable.
“Have you ever heard it, Illiria?” Fiona asked. When Illiria said nothing, looking at her with her brows drawn together, Fiona continued. “It. The Voice?” Illiria shook her head. “It is part of this, somehow, just as you and I are. I don’t know if it’s human or alien or what it is, but it sent me back to before the Theran volcano erupted. I have my marching orders. So here I am.”
Illiria gave her a puzzled look. “Many of us wonder what created the bases and the equipment,” she said, the words coming slowly, as if Illiria was reluctant to speak. “Some of us think it’s aliens and some think it’s humans, only no kind of human we have ever encountered. People from the future, or another dimension.” She shook her head. “Ever since we discovered the ability to move through time, and the first people were taken to the bases, we have asked that question.”
Fiona paused. If they had been sent to protect the time stream, or try and change it, each against the other but achieving the same goals, it had to mean something. She wondered for the first time how it was decided who went to the Guardians and who to the Liberators.
“The Voice is part of this,” Fiona said, “But I don’t know why or how. So, why are we here? What is this all about?”
Illiria smiled, a baring of her teeth. Fiona felt a chill and shivered, although the day was warm.
“We’re here to give Sonder time to track the Commander,” she said.
#
Fiona jumped to her feet, uncaring that the waiter and the patrons of the café started in surprise. She turned, not knowing which way to go. She cursed the fact that she needed to build the image of the place in her mind. Fiona tried to summon what she remembered of the other tablet, the one Sonder had used to jump. It had been a mistake to come here. She should never have trusted Illiria.
“Relax, Traveler,” Illiria called after her, impatience lacing her tone. “You are impulsive, aren’t you? This would have been much easier if you had been experienced.”
“You,” she forced the words out past the lump in her throat, “you let him follow the Commander? You set all this up? Sonder said bait. He didn’t say danger.”
“Sit back down.” There was ice in Illiria’s voice, and Fiona suspected this was the voice Illiria used when she was leading a team. Well, she didn’t lead Fiona Jensen.
“Sonder knew,” Illiria said. “Think back, Fiona. Stop letting your emotions get in your way and use your brain. If you can.”
“He…knew?” Fiona asked. He had known and he hadn’t told her. Fear curled in Fiona’s stomach. She thought back, over their meeting with Illiria, knowing she was missing something.
“The Commander can track mechanical things, but not you. Given time, all devices can be tracked. I needed to talk to you without interference, but my belt signature is too distinctive. Sonder knew what had to happen. The Commander has a fix on me, but when he went to the place I was supposed to be, I wasn’t there. Sonder was. I am trusting Sonder’s skills to be able to get away and then to follow him.”
There was a noise, like a chime, and Fiona started. Illiria seemed unsurprised.
“About time,” Illiria said. Picking up a piece of equipment, Illiria pressed a button. Fiona realized it was a phone, one appropriate to this modern era. Not like her poor SmartPhone, sixty years obsolete, nothing more than a brick.
“Rogald?” she asked and Fiona could see a small image of the Liberator on the screen. It reassured her, although it made little sense to be soothed. Rogald had no reason to love Fiona or Sonder. They had stranded him in the 1950s and they were on the Guardian side of the time travelers, not his Liberators. Yet here he was, speaking to Illiria. Fiona’s skin crawled with impatience.
“He took the bait,” Rogald said. “Sonder is tracking him.”
She wanted to ask how Sonder was, wanted reassurance that he was unhurt and that this crazy scheme hadn’t killed him. Fear laced with fury overwhelmed her, making spots dance in front of her eyes.
“Good,” Illiria said, and frowned at Fiona. She studied Fiona for a moment and her frown deepened. “Are you up to this, Traveler?”
Without knowing what “this” was, Fiona nodded.
Chapter 5
They jumped to the spot where Sonder had gone on his mission, a small warehouse in an industrial area of an unnamed city. It was empty of Guardians, but held a Liberator.
The last time Fiona had seen Rogald he had been both a teenager and a grown man. A sense of unreality descended over her, and she put out a hand to steady herself. Fiona felt dizzy, out of proportion to the blackness, but stiffened her spine and straightened. There was work to be done. No time to be weak.
She looked around at the small space Illiria had taken them to. It was a single room in the back of the warehouse that held only dirt and rusted shelving. There were no signs of life.
Fiona swallowed uncertainly, and gazed Rogald and Illiria. Bravery was not the absence of fear, she told herself, it was acting in spite of it.
Illiria didn’t even look in Fiona’s direction. Instead she walked to Rogald and, in a move that surprised Fiona, kissed him. The Liberator responded, his arm curving over the Guardian’s back and pulling her against him.
After a long moment, Fiona coughed. Rogald raised his head and gave Fiona a wink.
“I am tracking them,” he said, separating from Illiria and nodding at his belt. “The Commander is jumping in rapid succession, shifting between time and space as quickly as possible. We would have lost them if not for Sonder’s digital bread crumbs. So far Sonder is keeping up.”
“What are we doing?” Fiona asked, twisting one hand around the other.
Illiria looked exasperated, but Rogald shot her a glance wreathed with indecipherable meanings and the woman didn’t say anything. Fiona smiled at the Liberator in gratitude. Illiria’s scowl deepened.
“The Commander’s simulations always ended without accomplishing his goal,” Illiria said. “He ran them where he sent Sonder on another mission besides the one that yielded you. Sonder found you anyway. He tried many different, elaborate ruses and you and Sonder always came together. He is more integral to this than any of us imagined.”
Fiona wondered if that’s why she had seen him in her dreams for all those years. Had it been a dream? Or had it been foreshadowing? Or something else, some sort of time memory in a way she didn’t understand.
“Why not just kill me?” Fiona asked, although Illiria had answered that. Her reassurance didn’t seem sufficient. “Wouldn’t that solve all of his problems?”
Illiria and Rogald shared a glance.
“I told you he ran that simulation as well. The Event happened sooner,” she said, shaking her head. “What I didn’t tell you is that in several of those scenarios the time stream ruptured, causing the Event within days after you died.” She paused. “From that point forward there were no more scenarios removing you from the equation.”
Fiona frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.” Why were they standing there, she wondered, why weren’t they chasing down Sonder? She focused, trying to pick him and the Commander out of the time stream, but she could find no trace of him.
“What I don’t understand,” Fio
na continued, “is why that mattered. The Commander wants me dead.”
“Yes,” Illiria agreed and it was Rogald’s turn to frown. “He does, but not so that the Event would occur. He thinks you caused the Event and that stopping you will ripple into time and stop the Event as well. So far none of his scenarios have borne that out, but he’s a man obsessed with an idea.”
“I caused the Event? He can’t believe that.” She thought about the Voice, and the things it had shown her. Should she trust them with the full extent of what it had shown her? Rogald might be an ally, but Illiria? She had let Sonder follow a crazy man. She would let Fiona die if it weren’t for her abilities. No, Fiona had no reason to have faith in Illiria.
Although…Illiria had also given them enough time to get away in Santorini, ensuring that Rogald’s time line was preserved.
“The legends of the Traveler pervade both of our groups,” Rogald said. “You were something most didn’t think existed. People couldn’t jump through time on their own. Some considered it unnatural. Think about it,” he said when Fiona frowned. “We need these to move through time,” Rogald gestured to his belt, where a blue light blinked, matching a colored light on Illiria’s belt. “People aren’t supposed to be able to freeze or stop time without help.”
Illiria shot Rogald a murderous look but picked up the thread. “Humans are meant to experience time sequentially. We Guardians and Liberators were given an assignment, to monitor and correct time anomalies, and recruit people along the way. It is a handful of humans only, and we are behind the scenes. We were given these devices, and bases that only the devices can get to, and turned loose to do a job. By what and by whom, we don’t know. It is unclear how the Guardians and the Liberators got started, since tracing us back to our origins is a paradox unto itself.”
Fiona mulled that over. It made a weird sense.
“Time and tide wait for no man,” Rogald said. “That’s what Chaucer said. Even for time travelers, it holds true. We shift through time but it still goes forward. We age, we grow, whenever we are in time. And the Earth continues to spin on its axis year after year for those who do not have the power we do. It moves to this inevitable disaster, the Event that none of us know how to stop. We can’t even go there.” He pushed a hand through his short brown hair.
