by Daniel Price
Soon the slimmest figure approached and removed her mask. Even with rain in his eyes, Theo had no trouble recognizing the dreadlocked woman in front of him. His lips curled in a feeble smile.
“Melissa Masaad.”
Though the Deps within earshot all traded baffled looks, Melissa wasn’t entirely shocked to hear her quarry say her name. She’d seen the man’s work in two different states. It was because of him that she now believed in augurs.
“Hello, Theo.”
He muttered something under his breath before falling unconscious. Melissa looked to her team in confusion.
“Did you hear that?”
“No, ma’am. I couldn’t make it out.”
Neither could she. The part she heard was nonsensical. She could have sworn she heard him say “private school.”
Disturbed, Melissa wiped the rain from her face. “Take him to the hospital. Call me the minute you learn what’s wrong with him.”
A trio of agents emerged from the tent with Amanda strapped to a stretcher. Even in her unconscious state, the other Deps kept their rifles fixed on her. No one wanted to take any chances.
Melissa approached the gurney and checked her prisoner’s pulse. After four weeks of chasing ghosts, it was a marvelous thing to finally touch the real Amanda Given.
She rooted through Amanda’s pockets, procuring a handphone. The tiny light flashed green in announcement of a new text message from David’s phone.
We haven’t heard from you in a while. Is everything all right?
Melissa smiled. She’d just captured two dangerous criminals without spilling a drop of blood. Now she had the tool that would lead her to the rest of the group. Everything was more than all right. It was a beautiful day.
TWENTY-SEVEN
She’d grown used to her conspicuous nature. Everywhere she went in her great adopted nation, she could feel the heat of inquisitive stares. She was a dark-skinned beauty with overpronounced cheekbones, exquisite almond eyes, and a flowing hairstyle that was far too exotic for uncultured minds to process. She spoke with an accent that few Americans had ever heard before. To top it all off, she carried a badge.
Her fellow Deps were no closer to cracking the enigma that was Melissa Masaad. Even those who saw beyond her standing as a dusker, a limer, and an occasional erection-inducer couldn’t get around the fact that she was a little bit off. She talked to herself in hallways, chewed on her hair in meetings, and derailed conversations with peculiar non sequiturs. Though she scored her fair share of acrimony for her early rank advancement, it seemed rather fitting that Melissa would seize the reins on the Bureau’s strangest case to date.
Now fifteen agents watched Melissa with muted puzzlement as she lay atop her guest desk in the bullpen. She’d spread herself out like a bearskin rug, her chin propped on a thick phone directory. Her handtop rested on the edge of the neighboring desk.
“Advance.”
The screen displayed a new page of transcribed dialogue. Through ghost drills, the Deps had reproduced more than seventy hours of fugitive chatter, every word the Silvers had uttered in the Ramona motel and the Evansville resort. Melissa had read all twelve hundred pages. She had enough questions to keep her captives busy for weeks.
Howard Hairston stood at the hallway junction, glaring at the two local agents who peered up Melissa’s skirt. She raised her head to look at him.
“Is everything ready?”
“We’re all set.”
The skinny young Dep had become Melissa’s right-hand man in the wake of her promotion. You can’t do it all yourself, Andy Cahill had warned her, on his last day of work. The minute you become the new me, you need to find a new you.
“How is she?”
“Surprisingly calm,” said Howard.
“Did you find a—”
He held up a tempic screwdriver. Melissa smiled.
“Wonderful. Thank you, Howard.”
She climbed off the desk and arched her back with a wince. After the day’s double raids, her spine was a sore and angry beast. Now she was about to interrogate a woman who, under the worst circumstances, could snap it like a breadstick.
The Charleston outpost was a small operation—seventeen employees in an old brick building that stood alone on a tree-lined hill. The hallways were lit by antiquated filament bulbs and stacked with dusty radio equipment. The local Deps specialized in solving broadcast crimes, everything from the illegal transmission of foreign film and video (“mudding”) to the hijacking of lumivision signals for the purposes of mischief (“surping”).
The most wanted felon in the office was a legendary figure known only as Surpdog. At least twice a month, the mysterious assailant would preempt a random broadcast with fifty-four seconds of guerrilla video, an ever-changing montage of beautiful images from other nations. After eighteen years and 452 surpings, all the agents knew about their target was that he hated American isolationism and was extremely good at covering his tracks. Melissa liked Surpdog’s message. She hoped the Deps never caught him, if he even was a he.
She stopped at the door to the makeshift interrogation room and blew a heavy breath. Howard eyed her cautiously.
“Be careful in there. We don’t know those machines will work.”
“I appreciate the concern, Howard. I’ll be fine. Say, when’s your birthday?”
“Uh, February 10th. Why?”
When she was a field agent, Melissa didn’t do much hobnobbing with her peers. Now that she was a supervisor, she figured she’d have to start asking people how their weekends were. She’d have to give them cards on their birthdays.
“No matter.”
She cleared her throat, adjusted her skirt, then opened the door to her eminent guest.
Amanda sat on a worn brown sofa, the only conventional piece of furniture in the large room. Her wrists and ankles were fastened to the floor by thick metal chains, giving her just enough slack to sit upright. She wore a dark blue jumpsuit with the DP-9 logo emblazoned across the right breast, plus a grated metal collar that wasn’t tethered to anything. A quartet of slim mechanical towers surrounded her in a perfect square formation. Each one was six feet tall and filled with humming blue bulbs. They reminded Amanda of bug zappers.
Melissa pulled a folding chair to the center of the room. The two women studied each other.
“Well, here we are,” said Melissa.
“Here we are,” Amanda echoed.
“You like the new color?”
“What?”
“Your hair. That was quite a change, going from red to black.”
Amanda blinked distractedly. “Oh. Yeah. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you like it better black?”
“I don’t know why you’re asking me about my hair.”
“It’s just an icebreaker.”
“Well, congrats. You made me more nervous.”
Amanda still reeled from the knockout gas. She had no idea of time or place. For all she knew, she was in some government black site in central Asia. Or maybe she’d died and gone to a strange little corner of Hell, where all the demons were beautiful and droll.
Melissa flipped through a stack of color printouts. “And your physical state?”
“Queasy. My ears are ringing like murder.”
“Normal side effects of the gas. You’ll recover in an hour or two.”
“I feel like none of this is happening. Like this is all a dream.”
“That could also be a side effect,” Melissa said. “Or possibly just denial. In either case, I assure you you’re not dreaming. Unless I’m the one in denial.”
Amanda eyed her in leery wonder. She’d spent many nights imagining her interrogation at the hands of federal agents. This woman couldn’t have been further from her expectations.
“Where are we?”
“West Virginia,” Melissa replied. “Roughly eighty miles from your place of capture. Do you know my name?”
“No. How the hell would I?”
“I thought maybe Theo told you. He seemed to know it.”
“Is he here? How is he?”
Melissa chewed her lip in contemplation. It was too soon to start bartering for information. Amanda could use a good faith token.
“He’s on his way here. He was taken to a hospital for tests. From what I’m told, he’s been given painkillers and is now sleeping like an infant.”
Amanda let out a dismal chuckle. Melissa cocked her head at her. “What?”
“Nothing. That’s all I wanted. I just wanted him to get some relief.”
“Well, that you accomplished. I’m Melissa Masaad, the DP-9 agent in charge of this investigation. I’ve been eager to meet you for quite some time.”
“No doubt,” said Amanda. “Where are you from? I can’t place the accent.”
“I’m North Sudanese, formally educated in British schools.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About two years,” she replied, with a provocative glance. “You?”
Amanda narrowed her eyes defiantly. “Born and raised in the USA.”
A storm of mad cackles brewed in Melissa’s throat. Seemingly every page of the ghost drill transcripts featured one of the fugitives remarking on how much they missed their world, how different things were on this one. Chronokinesis by itself was difficult enough to process. No one in the Bureau was ready to embrace the idea of chronokinetic aliens.
Heavy chains rattled as Amanda scratched her neck. “You’re lucky I’m so stupid, Melissa.”
“How are you stupid?”
“I was warned there’d be civic cameras at the health fair. I didn’t listen.”
Melissa shook her head. “Whoever told you that was misinformed. We have no cameras there.”
“You don’t?”
“No. Installing a civic camera is a monstrous bureaucratic procedure. Worse than traffic lights. No one would go through all that paperwork just to monitor a five-day event.”
“So how did you find us then?”
Melissa clicked her pen against her chin in busy thought.
“We can discuss that later. I imagine you’re curious about some of the devices in this room.”
Amanda touched her new metal collar, then examined the four humming consoles around her. “I assume it’s some kind of shock fence thing. Like they use for dogs.”
“No. The collar’s a separate fail-safe. Should you get belligerent, my associate watching through the camera will press a button and the embedded capsules will release more pacifying gas.”
“So what’s the purpose of these big machines?”
Melissa eyed her suspiciously. “You haven’t tried your tempis yet?”
“No.”
“Go ahead.”
“No.”
“It’s not a trap, Amanda. I’m genuinely curious.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fine. I’ll show you myself.”
Melissa procured the tempic screwdriver from her pocket and jutted it toward Amanda. The moment it crossed into the quadrant of blue light towers, the tempic point rippled wildly and then vanished.
Amanda cast a baffled stare at the towers. “What are these things?”
“They’re solic generators. Have you heard of them?”
“No.”
“If temporis were a family, solis would be the mother. It’s the power source behind every tempic device, every lumicand, every shifter, every juve. It’s also the catalyst that turns a little bit of sunlight into a lot of electricity. Nearly everything in the civilized world runs on solic generators. These four only look different because I removed the protective casings.”
Amanda recalled seeing a tall metal cylinder in the basement of the lake house. She’d figured it was a water heater.
“Will I get sick from all this exposure?”
“Solis isn’t harmful to living creatures. The casings are only used to protect the equipment.”
“Why is it harmful to tempis?” Amanda asked. “You said it’s a power source.”
“Yes, in the same way that helium powers a child’s balloon. Add too much and it pops.”
“Meaning I’ll pop if I try.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’m not a screwdriver. You have no idea how this will work on me.”
“I have no idea if it’ll work on you. We’re both taking a risk. But what choice is there? You have a history of violence, especially when threatened.”
The room fell into tense new silence, broken only by the hum of the generators. Melissa noticed a rectangular discoloration on the wall behind Amanda—twenty feet wide, five feet tall, and two shades lighter than the faded beige around it. She didn’t know why it bothered her.
By the time she focused on her captive again, she saw glistening tears. Melissa pushed a pack of tissues into the solic field.
“Guess it doesn’t feel like a dream anymore.”
Amanda took a tissue. “No.”
“Would you like some time alone?”
“Just ask your stupid questions. I know you have a million of them.”
“I do, in fact. Does that mean you’ll cooperate?”
“Not at all. I just want to get this part over with.”
“I understand why you don’t want to talk about your friends—”
“I’m not saying a word about them.”
“—but are you willing to discuss your enemies?”
Melissa pulled a printout from her stack, a grainy ghost image of Amanda in the hallway of the Piranda Five Towers. In the photo, she conversed with a slight-statured man dressed like a hotel manager.
Amanda scowled in bristling contempt. “Evan Rander. He’s a psychopath. I’d give him to you on a platter if I could.”
“He shot a manager to death, five doors down from your suite. The same pistol was used to kill a young couple in another tower. We presume he did it to get a view of your twelfth-floor hideout.”
Amanda stayed silent. She’d learned about their deaths on the news. It tortured her to think they’d all be alive now if she’d picked a different hotel.
“We also know he drugged you,” Melissa said. “We found traces of pergnesticin on the glass fragments. It’s an extremely powerful narcotic. For what it’s worth, I don’t hold you responsible for your actions that day.”
Amanda dabbed her eyes. “Thank you.”
“He went to a lot of trouble to poison you. Why does he hate you all so much?”
“I have no idea.”
“I think you have some. Zack and Evan had a lengthy phone discussion on September 19. We were only able to reproduce Zack’s half of the conversation. What did Evan say to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Zack never told you?”
“Zack barely speaks to me now.”
“That’s surprising. From all the scenes we ghosted, you two seemed quite close.”
Amanda closed her eyes in anguish. “I’m not talking about Zack. And I have nothing left to tell you about Evan.”
“Fine. Let’s jump back two weeks. On September 6, you and your companions were attacked in Terra Vista, in the office of a scientific organization called the Pelletier Group. You’ve mentioned a man named Rebel as the leader of the assault.”
“I have?”
“You all have, in private discussions. Who’s Rebel?”
“No idea.”
“You’re lying. Why are you protecting the man who tried to kill you?”
Amanda kept quiet. She feared any talk of Rebel and Gothams would ultimately lead the Deps to Peter Pendergen.
“Eighte
en physicists died that day,” Melissa reminded her. “Two went missing.”
“That wasn’t us.”
“An entire family of security guards, dead or missing.”
“We didn’t kill anyone!”
“Tell me what happened that day.”
“Why do you even need to ask? Just use your damn ghost drills.”
“We tried,” said Melissa. “The entire property had been temporally reversed several years. If it wasn’t for city records, we’d never know the Pelletier Group had ever set foot in the building. A feat like that is utterly unprecedented. Who do you think is capable of doing such a thing?”
“Not a clue.”
“You’re lying again. See, the drills were good for something. I’ve followed every conversation you had in the Five Towers resort. You believe your generous influx of money came from Azral and Esis Pelletier, a couple who don’t exist anywhere on record. You also believe they’re responsible for the deaths of the physicists. Tell me about them.”
“No.”
“Now you’re protecting the Pelletiers?”
“Now I’m protecting you.”
Melissa lowered her head. “I’m not sure you realize the gravity of your situation.”
“Is this the part where you threaten me with jail time?”
“Do I even need to? You know what you did to those policemen. To Constantin Czerny.”
“Wait, what?”
“Which part are you confused about?”
“I didn’t do anything to Dr. Czerny.”
Melissa retrieved a photograph of the ill-fated physicist, lying dead on a coroner’s table. A ghastly red wound ran across his bulging stomach.
“Autopsy shows that he was impaled with a tempic projectile. It expanded inside his abdomen, like a blowfish. I know every tempic weapon out there. None are able to change shape like that.”
“That wasn’t me! I tried to save him!”
“I assume you stabbed him by accident. You were all under attack. Tensions were high. He may have startled you.”
“Someone else did that to him!”
“Someone else with your singular talents?”
