by Nels Wadycki
"So," he began again.
"We're going to the data center," Rani interrupted. "That's the only reason someone would come here unless they were after a particular agent."
"How do you know they're not after a particular agent?"
"I don't. I'm going with the odds, and the odds say they're going after something in the data center. There's enough people here that if they were wanted someone special, we wouldn't get to them in time even if we already knew the target."
Jrue shut his mouth and watched the back of their triangle formation as they advanced.
The next few moments passed too fast for Jrue's life to flash before his eyes.
Gunfire echoed from around a corner. A man yelled. It sounded like Justin. Then Marisol rushed around the corner like a tornado blasting across a plain and Jrue, Rani, and Freya all turned to run with her. Whatever they were running from, it was important to continue doing so. More gunfire. The four of them kept running.
--
Marisol had considering setting her comm's alarm clock noise to the sound that the alarms in the Agency headquarters made, but worried that she might try to hit the snooze button in case of a real emergency at work. Whoever had designed the alert system knew well how to get someone's attention, and when the alarms sounded on the Valkyrie Project floor, you knew something major was happening.
Of course, the gunfire helped make that pretty clear too.
Marisol grabbed Justin by the hand and dragged him into the bathroom like an eager high-school student with a new boyfriend. Justin yelped, but Marisol threw him against the wall and covered his mouth. It was so similar she wondered for a second if she hadn't traveled back in time to her high-school days. Justin certainly could have been an apt target for her in those days.
The alarms continued with more urgency and force than anything allowed in a building for secondary education. The sound of boots clomping grew and receded as a group of people ran by outside. Marisol wanted to peek out the door, but held Justin and waited until the sound was almost gone, then cracked the door. She caught the tail end of a few military-looking types headed toward the data center.
She moved her hand from Justin's mouth. "You got your shit together?"
"Yeah, sorry about that."
"No problem. You got a gun in your desk?"
"Yeah. Emergency pistol."
"Okay. Count of three, grab it and meet back here."
It took only slightly longer than three seconds after that before Marisol and Justin were back together at the bathroom door.
They crept through the small home of the Valkyrie Project, which seemed bigger than it ever had, with more twists and turns and desks and rooms than Marisol remembered seeing before. The normally spacious hallways constricted around her, tightening their grip as the two Valkyries drew closer to the data center. She hoped that Justin was free from the tension and nervousness that sucked the moisture from her mouth, but guessed his heart was racing just as much as hers.
The data center's outer security door stood open, but Marisol saw nothing through the narrow pane of duroglass that offered a preview for those waiting to enter. Security doors such as that were made without doorstops on purpose because, well, they were security doors. The infiltrators had propped it open, or someone was stationed on the other side to keep it open.
Marisol held her hand up in front of Justin, articulated her wrist to move the hand back and forth in a truly uncanny impression of a door, and then pointed the gun she held in her other hand and mimicked the effect on the door that would occur upon firing. Justin's answer was much simpler: he nodded.
Marisol raised her gun and fired three rounds as close to the center of the door as she could make them. There was a chance they would penetrate the door; being an "outer" security door, it functioned like a condom for someone with a birth control injection. Condoms could break, but the door didn't. The slugs did what Marisol had hoped, though, and rattled the door enough to shake loose some ripe fruit in the form of an armed intruder. He reacted quickly enough to blind-fire a few shots in her direction, but they flew past her like little minnows searching for food. Marisol responded with fatal accuracy.
As she and Justin approached the door, propped open by the fallen body of the man inside, Marisol picked up on the commotion coming from further inside the room. Then, closer, a skittering noise that Marisol recognized a second too late as a grenade rolling across the floor.
The force of the explosion sent her back into Justin, and as he sprawled backward they both ended up on the floor. Marisol went through a mental checklist of possible injury sites and could feel nothing other than a few possible bruises where Justin had smashed her into the ground when they collapsed in a tangled heap. Justin was already back on his feet, running through the cloud of debris after the pack of foxes following their diversion in a bid to escape the henhouse.
"Just a concussion grenade!" Justin said, his voice coming as though he were shouting from inside a helmet.
Marisol pushed herself up and hustled as well as she could after him on what began to feel more and more like a sprained ankle.
She halted her hobbling run at the sound of more gunfire and a yell from Justin. Marisol needed to ice her ankle, but the ice that ran into her veins at that moment would not do it.
From the shadows leading to a poorly lit emergency exit, Justin stumbled and fell at her feet.
Marisol stood stunned for a moment, the ice in her veins holding her frozen in place. Then she dropped to her knees beside him. She leaned close and a soft breath eased its way from his mouth, its warmth spreading slowly over her cheek. She put a hand to his neck and felt a weak pulse for a moment before it faded.
The rattle of guns punctured Marisol's moment of silence for her fallen friend. Bullets whizzed by her and the sound of boots approached. Justin's body began to stiffen; soon he would be much more difficult to carry, especially on a sprained ankle. But unless the men coming were absolute monsters, his body would be there when they left. Marisol was still reluctant to leave Justin lying there, but she was more opposed to the idea of ending up on the floor next to him.
She got up, saying another quiet goodbye, and took off in the opposite direction.
--
Ana stood for a moment in the angular door frame that opened into the home of the Valkyrie Project, surveying the random areas of destruction between untouched offices and cubicles.
Then Jrue appeared, his face ashen and somber, his shoulders slumped forward as he took several cautious steps while surveying the strange combination of technology and trash.
He looked up for a moment and spotted Ana and small creases of happiness flashed at the corners of his mouth, before falling back below the surface.
He walked in her direction while she couldn't help but jog.
"Is it—?" She hesitated, unsure if 'over' was the right word.
Jrue nodded.
"Yeah. They're gone."
"What's the damage?"
"What you see here, and"—he paused—"and Aerin is looking at the data center with a couple other techs to figure out what they took, and"—he paused again—"and they killed Justin."
Ana's heart disappeared and without anything to pump her blood, it stopped moving. Her face paled to within a few shades of death. The dam that had been holding back the pain and chaos in her head split down the center and tears from the glacier of icy emotion rushed through forming rivers down Ana's cheeks. Her jaw clenched and teeth ground together to hold in the sort of wailing sobs that usually accompanied such tears. She had hoped it would get easier or that she could at least come to accept the casualties that came among team members. It was an implied part of the job description, but you couldn't go to a firing range to practice mourning the dearth of a family member.
And it had happened in the sanctity of the ninth floor of the Agency building. It was like someone had broken into her home—not her tiny apartment, but her old, real home—and killed her family while t
hey sat around the dinner table.
The hinge of her jaw released long enough to get a few words out.
"Were there any others?"
"No. They got in and out before anyone else could go after them. Of course, that probably means they got what they came for."
"How long did the whole thing take?"
Ana knew the time the alert had gone out. Not more than forty-five minutes had elapsed.
"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes tops."
"And you were here for the whole thing?"
"Yeah, I was in the Eastern Conference when everything got locked down."
"Where were you before that?" Ana heard her voice rise in pitch as the dread tension threaded its way up around and through her spine.
"I was at home. Made some pad thai. What's wrong?"
"I just saw you, but you were not here, and not at home."
"What do you mean? Where was I?"
"On the other side of a teleportation field in a Continuum base. But if you were here, then you weren't there. You couldn’t have been on the other side."
"A teleportation field? In a Continuum base? Ana, let's get you some water."
"Water? I don't need water. You were there! You threw me a gun because Etienne was trying to kill me. I left it in the car since I couldn't bring it up here. I'll get it; I'll show you."
Jrue grabbed her arm before Ana could turn away. The confusion that blanketed his face turned to concern.
"Ana, it's okay. I am sure it's a shock, but you don't need to freak out. Let's just go sit down and we can talk."
"A shock? This is a shock? No. Learning that a Valkyrie was killed? I prepare for that. It is not an unexpected occurrence. Tragic? Yes. But not a shock. You know what was a shock? Natalya telling me that burying Etienne under an exploding building was just a test of the Continuum's control over me. That was a shock! Following Etienne—turns out she was still alive!—to a place that distorts the physics of our universe, that was a shock! Seeing you on the other side of a teleporter and having you give me your gun so I could kill Etienne—for real this time—that was a shock! And coming back here to find out you weren't on the other end of that teleporter because, oh wait, I guess it really was a time machine, well, that's a shock! So, I am in shock, yes. And I'm being super insensitive to Justin and everything he did for me, but there are kind of some big things on the agenda today."
Jrue pulled Ana closer to him. She almost punched him for his abject condescension, for treating her like a child after a nightmare. But after relieving herself of the knowledge that had built up within her like a charged-up rail gun, she melted into the safety of his strong, warm embrace. At least until he spoke again.
"I know you've been working almost constantly, and it's been even more stressful than usual. Are you sure it wasn't just an extremely vivid daydream or something?"
Ana pushed him away and balled up her hands in preparation for actually hitting him. "How about 'or something'? I said I'll go get the gun!"
Jrue sensed the attack coming and held his hands up. "Okay, we can get the gun in a second. Let's just calm down here."
"You're supposed to trust me! You're supposed to believe me! I'm supposed to trust you!"
"Ana…"
Then she remembered the key, its small dense weight tucked into her pocket. Though she'd left the gun, she had brought the key. Ana yanked it from her pocket.
"This key," she said, holding it up. "You threw this key through so I could shut down the machines."
Jrue stared at it, confusion once again riding high across his face. He touched the chest pocket of his vest.
"I used to keep it here. They told me it was for emergency safe house access," he said, his voice slow and cautious as it crept across a bridge riddled with holes of missing information that left precarious spaces over a precipitous drop. "But I lost it a while ago. I even filed a report. And I don't remember ever giving it to you."
"You gave it to me in the future. That's why you don't remember."
"If I went into the future from the past, why wouldn't I remember it? I would have already been to the future, given you the key, and come back before now."
"Give me a second, I'm sort of new to this whole time travel thing," Ana said. She thought for a moment then asked, "What if the Agency sent you through and when you got back they flipped one of those switches in your head to make you forget it?"
"I thought we fixed those switches with that doctor in DC."
He had a point there. Ana thought a moment.
"If they already made you forget, then it could have been before we went to the doctor. It could have been any time since we met. It's not like we've been inseparable. We both have pretty hectic schedules."
"Ana, you realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?"
Ana went back to wanting to smack him. Instead, she took him by the arm and led him to the nearest darkroom. As soon as the door shut, she started again.
"Do you realize how ridiculous it's not? A time traveler who forgets he has traveled through time? That's why they were messing around inside your head. They designed your brain that way, Jrue."
"Where did they get the technology from?"
"Same place the Continuum got it: the future."
"And with both of these groups sending people back in time, they're not worried about messing up the future? What if they change something and then, boom, they don't figure out time travel anymore?"
"There must be something in the future they're fighting over. Maybe the Continuum achieved their purpose, whatever that might be, but the Agency sent someone back to stop them, so they sent someone back to prevent that."
"And eventually they ended up with whole armies traveling back and forth in time?"
"Okay, yes, it's starting to sound ridiculous." Ana hesitated. "But Natalya said Etienne was part of the Infinite Army when she joined the Continuum. That sounds an awful lot like a code name for a Time Travel Army."
"Have you tried to fit the evidence to any other explanation?"
"I haven't really had much time to think about it since I just left the time machine to respond to the alert here!"
"Then maybe I should take you home, and we can both get some rest, and we can think about this more when we've recharged."
Ana didn't want to recharge. Or rather, she didn't want to have to recharge. She wanted to just keep going, but she recognized that her nerves were frayed and her mind had yet to come to grips with all the information that needed to be processed.
"Okay. Let's go."
--
The small silver hovervan dove into its home like a flying beetle, compact and full of buzz. Upon landing, it spat forth the members of the united Blue and Gold teams like a rush-hour train stopping in the Loop. They had made it to the roof of the Agency building and through the final door before anyone knew they were off the ninth floor. Now they were back in the bowels of the city, untouched and unharmed, but not entirely off the hook.
Jordan did not fear the rebuke he knew was coming. His leader had been silent the entire ride back and no doubt the other members of the team felt the tension building as they broke out of the Bubble and sailed past the increasingly smaller buildings of the rest of the city.
As soon as they stood on the platform outside the van, he laid in. "Jordan! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking it was my life or his!"
"The Valkyrie Project saves people and you killed one of them!"
"Yes, Guillermo. Do you think I didn't know that?"
"I know you knew. I just wonder how long you knew."
"Long enough that you don't need to spell it out."
"Good, 'cause there's no way to fix it now."
11. APRIL SHOWERS
Ana didn't know the exact definition of "drizzle," but the rain at Justin's funeral seemed like a good starting point for one. It was a cold, ugly word, a perfect match for the day and Ana's feelings. It did not apply to the tears that ran down the faces of sev
eral ladies who stood around Justin's coffin. Those were tender and sweet, overflowing their eyes with love and loss.
The suburban cemetery ensconced itself in ashy gray trees, as though there would be no green spring growth in this place of death and mourning. Perhaps the whole world was just a cemetery, full of people who had not yet figured out they were dead.
Justin was gone and while Ana had lived through the passing of six other Valkyries before him, the innocent simplicity of the Project's mission had grown twisted like the limbs of the trees near Justin's grave. Someone had shattered the security blanket that wrapped the home of the Valkyries and the Agency around it. They had stolen data and taken a life.
When the funeral concluded, the data would become the more important piece as the Valkyries hunted the group that disturbed their sanctuary. The threats to the Valkyrie Project were mounting and the strain and fear scratched themselves in harsh tones across the faces of all the agents who worked the floor. The intruders who had disturbed the frenzied harmony of the Project had accessed, and presumably taken with them, what little information on Androkal the Valkyries had. The stunned bewilderment that invaded the office had turned quickly to impatience for revenge. Everyone wanted to protect their own, their family, but Ana soured at the thought that the Agency, with all the safeguards and rules and regulations, had put up such a mediocre defense and offered so little in the way of follow-up.
Ana thought the Valkyrie Project was an example of the good the Agency could do, a tiny diamond sparkling against the backdrop of loaded guns and lies. But the glittering refractions grew more dull the longer you looked, as you noticed the flaws inside the gem and realized that it looked like nothing more than a minor jewel atop a tarnished crown. The people telling her what to do were just as clueless as the foot soldiers who did as they were told. Ana wondered if sticking with people who appeared less and less competent and more and more insidious really moved her toward the goal that had been the underlying core of her life for fourteen years.
