by Nels Wadycki
Ana sank into the chair in the briefing room, wishing she could just go to bed. She knew it was too much to hope for a dreamless sleep, but it would still be sleep and not the nightmare of facing the dark eyes of the Raven Natalya.
"Congratulations, Ms. Anderson," Natalya said before she even made it through the door to the room. "Your work is to be commended!"
Ana found herself too tired for a retort.
"I don't even need to bother debriefing you, really. Our information says the factory is a pile of rubble and here you are, so mission accomplished!"
"You don't care that Etienne is buried at the bottom of that pile of rubble?"
"I do care, actually. I care that you were able to let her go, to leave her behind, in order to finish your mission."
Ana winced. She had killed Etienne. Premeditated, calculated, and then justified it. Etienne, like Natalya, worked for the Continuum. If Etienne had known that Ana worked for the United States Intelligence Agency, she would have been at her throat in a second, forcing Ana to fight for her life.
"We were pleased with your ability to react and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Especially such a dangerous situation. Have you ever tried to pull off something like that before?"
"Well, most of the time I try to avoid running into guys with rail guns and blowing up buildings. I prefer to prevent destruction rather than cause it."
"And that's why we had to see how far you would go."
The words slid from her mouth like a snake uncoiling. The sentence dug its fangs into Ana, paralyzing her with what she assumed was a look of dumbfounded shock on her face.
"No better way to assess your potential than in a real-life situation."
"Why would you let her die just to test me?"
"You are more important than you realize. Etienne joined up with the Infinite Army when we recruited her. She knew what she was getting into and was ready to make the sacrifices that we asked of her. Fortunately, we will not need the same sort of loyalty from you."
Natalya rose with deliberate speed like a cloud of thick black smoke. Ana sat frozen in place. The Raven swept from the room without another word, leaving Ana in a confusion of questions and absences of conclusions.
--
Ana's thoughts roiled in her head even as she sat numb while a Continuum doctor checked her for internal injuries. With the external ones judged superficial, and no sign of other physical trauma, she headed toward the exit of the unfamiliar building, her weary brain following recently constructed memories to find her way out.
Ana's heart jumped and memories jumbled when she saw a woman exit a room at the far end of a long corridor. It seemed much longer than really necessary, and made it hard to tell if Ana was really looking at Etienne walking away, or if her imagination had conjured a vision out of guilt and grief.
"Etienne!" she called down the hall.
The woman, apparition or not, did not turn back. Instead she turned right, in the opposite direction of the exit that had been Ana's goal until the moment the lookalike went the other way. Ana found herself with no choice but to follow.
She padded down the hall, the standard-issue rubber-soled athletic shoes turned her into a ninja compared to the thocking high heels worn by the woman ahead of her.
When Ana rounded the corner past which Etienne had disappeared she caught sight of the familiar ponytail, slightly protruding posterior, and last kick of a heel before they were enveloped completely by an elevator.
Ana knew she couldn't catch the door, but she rushed forward to watch the floor indicator next to the elevator. It stopped on four and when Ana hit the call button it came back down to one. Ana jumped in and stabbed at the number four with her finger. The doors graciously slid shut and she ascended.
When Ana stepped from the lift, the silence that had allowed her to follow the sound of a dead woman's heels was smashed by the roar of a train pulling away, accelerating down the length of the building. And there in the last car to speed from sight was her perhaps-not-former-anymore Continuum partner Etienne.
The train plunged into the glare of the setting sun, but Ana knew what she had seen. Her mind provided the perfectly logical explanation that Etienne had survived the explosion that had leveled an entire building. That same mind did not try to argue that it was a probable explanation, just a logical one. But if so, why had no one told her that Etienne had survived? Why had Natalya let her believe she killed Etienne when she blew up the factory?
Then her mind offered up an explanation that seemed probable as well as logical. And quite horrific. The grotesque idea, which made altogether too much sense, was that the Etienne that Ana had followed to the skytrain was an Etienne from the future who had yet to meet Ana. She replayed her partner's ponytail, conspicuous backside, and gratuitous black heels slipping into the steel box that took her up to the skytrain. Ana imposed Etienne onto the memory of Scarface standing outside his apartment, without a clue about their confrontation or exchange of gunfire. Ana pieced together a timeline that would allow her partner to board the skytrain headed for a time machine that would allow her to go back to when Ana would meet her, work with her, and destroy her in a storm of fire and durostone. The only way she could confirm the somehow-not-that-fantastical-anymore idea was to follow the Etienne who just departed on the skytrain.
The next train arrived a minute later, and Ana worried that she was already too late until she stepped onto the train. It was a private transport system, linked only to Continuum-controlled locations. Not that the system map labeled itself as such, but Ana could tell by the limited number and arrangement of the destinations. There were only six possible stops to choose from, and the first one, Transportation Center, sang out like a siren drawing Ana in. Technically, she had only a twenty percent chance of picking the right stop. Ana chalked it up to well-honed Valkyrie intuition while hoping that her guts were not unduly influenced by the physical and mental beatdown endured over the last eight hours.
She brightened upon exiting the short line train to find that there was only one way to go. Ana took off in that direction down a passage enclosed on one side by glass panes that deconstructed the city lights into a thousand tiny stars. The other three sides were constructed of a mosaic of fused glass that reflected the lights and turned them into a galaxy that fell away in places while rushing toward her in others. It gave the sensation of running in place, with her feet sliding over the smooth sleek surface.
At least until she reached a corner that angled ninety degrees into the heart of the Transportation Center.
The walls became grainy silver as they led into the building. The dimly reflective surface resembled the baking sheets Ana's mother used to use when she made cookies for her children. But they gave no clue as to whether someone in noisy high heels had been through recently, and Ana couldn't help but think she'd tricked herself into believing that Etienne—or anyone else for that matter—had come this way on the tram that preceded hers. Had it just been her wish to undo what Natalya had said about the test? Or had it actually been some part of her intuition that drew her there?
Ana stepped across the threshold from the slippery nebula of the entryway showcase and the silence of space fell away as the rough-hewn silver walls hummed around her.
Something lived within those walls, perhaps mechanical rather than biological, but sending chills through the walls to permeate the air required for a human presence. The cooler air seeped into Ana's mouth, dragging a metallic taste across her tongue on the way to her throat and lungs.
She took a few cautious steps out from one feeling of disorientation and into another. Her body adjusted to the increasing unease that grew in her mind, adapting and becoming accustomed to a feeling of distortion and unreality as though it were shielding her from a giant elephant filling up the front room of her apartment. The strange sights and unnerving revelations of the past few days sank their teeth into her and images of Jrue and Etienne and Memo walked out of the brushed metal walls on o
ne side of the hall and out of sight right through the other.
Ana closed her eyes and rationalized. The security here used the same technology that had convinced her that Memo protected a cache of documents and materials at Triton Laboratories. The Continuum and Triton Labs appeared to be at odds that did not preclude them from acquiring the same type of security systems from some third-party vendor.
Ana didn't know, and wasn't sure she wanted to know, how the system knew to project the people who would confuse and concern her the most, but she opened her eyes and marched forward alongside and through the apparitions. They ignored her and she passed through them without any of the odd sensations one would anticipate when making contact with a ghost or specter or demon. Really high-quality projections, that was all they were.
Until Jrue came from behind her and yelled, "This way! Come on! They're right down here!"
Ana jumped to the wall and pressed her back to it as he turned and faded into a wall twenty meters down the hall. No, it wasn't a wall, there was a doorway there. That most lifelike of the hallucinations had gone through a real door. And it was about time there was a door. The hall was long enough already, even though Ana had covered only about fifty meters.
Ana picked up the pace from her steady, controlled walk, but after her fast walking didn't seem to close the distance any faster, she broke into a jog and then a full-out run.
The twenty meters seemed to stretch to twice or three times that as the intensely realistic holograms swirled around her. As Ana came to the door, she was already examining the controls to work out what she would need to get through. Not that she'd brought any sort of proper tools with her. She wore her Continuum communicator, and while it was more advanced than the latest model from the Agency, the training the Continuum had given her left her with knowledge of only the bare essentials. Trial by fire sort of thing, the fire surrounding her, blazing with holographic flames.
Standing in front of the biometric scanner and keypad on the security terminal, she ran a quick search to see if the terminal was broadcasting. No such luck. Hardwired.
For Plan B, Ana looked at the list of items that were broadcasting. Outside of the usual network feeders, she saw a cluster of nine devices on a closed network labeled Whiteholme. Nine high-powered machines might be enough to generate the sort of visions that continued to appear and disappear at random intervals, but even if that was the case, it didn't help her get through the large loading dock-sized door through which the ultra-realistic projection of Jrue had passed. Following an imaginary friend after an imaginary foe. Ana did not stop to think about what she was doing. Somehow she knew she was on the right track, no matter how crazy it seemed.
So Ana patched in to one of the standard feeders and exploited a hole that allowed her to project a map of the nearby network. From that she located the security panel intent receiver. She also noticed that the physical location of the Whiteholme network was just beyond the door. Ana hesitated. If the security system had conjured up the image of Jrue which led her to this door, shouldn't she naturally be wary of what lay beyond?
Before she could decide on a next action, the door hissed and opened. Ana's reflexes saved her from the bullets that screamed at her from inside the room. They also allowed her to catch a glimpse of Etienne on the other end of the gun. The protection of the edge of the door gave Ana enough time to realize she had actually been following Etienne and not a figment of her exhausted imagination. Small comfort considering her alleged partner had just tried to gun her down.
Etienne came around the corner in a crouch, expecting that Ana would have gone low as well. Ana went over her, jumping as high as she could to hurdle the second round of gunfire directed at her. She landed behind Etienne, catching herself in a rolling somersault, but able to stop herself close enough to kick and catch Etienne's big fucking ass. The strike sent Ana's friend-turned-foe sprawling, but the Continuum agent didn't drop the gun, the only thing that made this an overwhelmingly uneven fight.
Ana rose, running into the room containing Whiteholme, turning as soon as she cleared the door to hit the security panel. From the inside, the panel allowed her full access to the controls and after the door slammed shut, Ana locked it down, hoping to give herself time to find a weapon, or at least something that would give her a chance to survive. She spun back to face the room and took in what even her well-trained powers of observation had been too overwhelmed to comprehend in the second before going for the door controls.
The nine large terminal boxes on the Whiteholme network connected to each other not just over the data network, but physically, via a crackling purple field which projected an image of a entirely difference location on its twenty-meter-high screen. Jagged white lines of electrostatic discharge shot like lightning at the walls, lapping at them with highly charged tongues. Ana held back her first instinct, which was to try to figure out what the scene in the field was, and instead looked around the room for any sort of defense against Etienne. Seeing nothing in her immediate view, Ana ran to the other side of the projection. There was nothing there either, and nothing displayed on the other side but the slow pulse of the purple-tinged octagon.
Ana returned to the door control and could see from the reactions of the display that Etienne was trying to get back in. How long before she could enable a security override and come in to kill Ana?
"Ana!"
Jrue's voice came out of nowhere, and at first she assumed it was the holographic security system fooling her once again. Then she saw him, running toward her, shaded in the purple of the Whiteholme field.
"Ana!" he called again.
The image that had run by her in the hall—could that have been him? It had to be, but she couldn't make sense of it. How had he run through the closed door? Had he gone into the field that glowed and sizzled in front of her?
"Ana! You need to shut down the terminals! They're trying to send more kids through!"
Ana jolted and her instincts took over. She moved toward the field and saw them, a line of children ready to march through the purple haze. Whiteholme was some sort of quantum teleportation device. Fuck. Was there anything the Continuum wasn't capable of? Mind control, time travel, teleportation. Ana shut down the part of her mind that made the room begin to spin just as it started to nauseate her. She slammed her stomach back down into its rightful spot and focused on the slack-faced kids marching toward her.
"What do I do?" she yelled over the hum and crackle created by the field.
"I've got the key here. I'll throw it through."
"Can't you come through? I don't know what I'm doing!"
"I can't risk it. The key should make it through."
"What about the kids?"
"They're treated. No time to explain, just take the key and shut it down!"
"Do you have an extra weapon you can throw through too? Someone outside is trying to kill me!"
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine now, but I don't know how long that will last!"
Without hesitation, Jrue threw his gun at her. It looked like it would burst as it passed through the field that separated the two locations. A white and red outline flared around the weapon like a sword being drawn from a fire for tempering, obscuring it for a moment before it came through. Ana caught it. The metal burned her hand, and she dropped it to the ground.
"Here's the key. It will fit a slot in each terminal. You'll have to turn them all off."
The key came through, slightly less white and red around the edges, and not as hot as the gun.
Ana picked up the gun, cool enough for her adrenaline to dull the sting of hot metal. She shook the key to cool it as she headed to the first terminal. There was a small circle on the side with slots that matched the protrusions on the key. She jammed it in and turned it to the right.
The terminal shut down and the octagonal field distorted and shrank.
Ana went to the next one and shut it off.
When she got to the sixth terminal
, the door shielding her from Etienne started to rise. Ana had been afraid to blast the panel for fear that the default behavior would be to open the door, but now she had nothing to lose. She fired Jrue's gun, barely aiming, and got a few quick hits in. The screen sizzled and popped, and the door halted about a meter up. Enough room for Etienne to slip though, but Ana fired a few extra shots through the opening to discourage any such attempt.
As Ana shut down the ninth terminal, Etienne risked rolling through the narrow gap under the door, shooting wildly as she came. None of the shots came close to Ana, but she pointed and plugged three of her own into Etienne's chest and head before she could tell her instincts to spare her. She had been trained too well. She was under too much stress. She was too overwhelmed with other thoughts. She had already killed Etienne once. All good excuses for once again leaving herself without a Continuum agent to interrogate.
But she did have nine interconnected machines capable of shrinking distances of who knew how large into millimeters. They were too big to be removed without assistance which would almost certainly draw the wrong kind of attention, but Ana could use the opportunity she had in front of her to help the Agency reverse-engineer the technology.
She started with the last device she had turned off because it was the closest and they all appeared identical. It was, of course, possible that they could all contain different machinery that worked in harmony to create the teleportation field, but Ana had to start somewhere.
An idea wriggled its way free from the back of her mind like a fish darting away from the teeth of shark. Ana shut it down by recalling the image of Jrue as he tossed his gun through the field. Even through the purple and gray filter, he had looked just as he had the last time she'd seen him. Nothing added, and nothing missing. There was no way Whiteholme was the Continuum's time machine. But Jrue had been altered in the Sleepwalkers project in an attempt to allow him to move through time. Did the Agency know enough about time travel to make use of the Sleepwalkers? No. No, a thousand times no.
