The Fabric of Time

by Fae York

  Emelia thought about the news reports that she had seen recently and nodded.

  “Well, the violence will just get worse and worse until Thicke comes out on top, shining like a political superstar.” He carefully fished a piece of ice from his drink and popped it into his mouth. “Let’s just say that I think the chaos is more organized than people believe it to be.”

  Emelia almost spit out the sip that she had just taken of her piña colada. “You think that Thicke planned the shootings and riots and robberies and everything in advance?”

  “I certainly don’t think it’s coincidence that Thicke manages to predict unfortunate events before they occur.” He pointed at her with his straw. “He’s either planning them himself, or someone from the future is helping him along.”

  “So it’s the Minutemen who are tipping Thicke off about the future? Is that how it all connects? Why would they do something like that?”

  Aleph chuckled. “As always, you are a few steps ahead of me, sweetheart. The origin of the Minutemen is technically unknown, but I have a theory.” He took a sip of his drink. “You see, the government-sanctioned travelers in my time have rules that they have sworn to follow when it comes to the morality, integrity, and proper documentation of their missions. Well, if I had to guess, I would say that the Minutemen are a group of government officials who have grown tired of abiding by the strict code of conduct that the government strives to uphold.”

  ​He paused to make sure that Emelia was following along, and she gestured with her hand for him to continue.

  “Like I’ve been telling you, the government-citizen relationship has become rather complicated recently. Our ‘utopian’ society is incredibly corrupt, and there are many who believe that we would be better off had the government never been created that way in the first place.”

  The waiter brought back their receipt and Aleph took Emelia’s hand to help her from her chair.

  “Though they would never admit it, the government is terrified that fundamentalists with ideas like that will intervene with this time period. The Minutemen, in my personal opinion, are the government’s solution for precisely that. Under the cover of a mysterious terrorist group, they can go back in time and ensure that everything happens the way that it is ‘supposed to happen,’ but without the constraints of a ‘U.S. time travel approved’ methodology.”

  The wheels in Emelia’s head were spinning so fast that she could hardly keep up. “So you think that the Minutemen are helping Thicke because they want the future government to remain intact?”

  “Exactly. They’re either tipping off Thicke or someone close to him. They may even be causing some, if not all, of the terrorist attacks.” Aleph guided Emelia to the restaurant exit where they waited at the curb for their driver.

  Emelia furrowed her brow, trying to process everything that he had told her.

  He draped his arm over her shoulders and pulled her close. “Don’t think about it too much. Like I said, it’s all just theory. Among other things, the Minutemen are also credited for hunting Artemis and wreaking havoc in the future. For all we know, they could just be some weird cult from the future with no specific objective.”

  Aleph leaned in for a kiss, but his elbow bumped the tiki torch behind them. The torch toppled to the ground and fire spread rapidly, but luckily fizzled out before it did too much damage. The foliage surrounding them was too green to burn.

  “That’s my cue.” Aleph grimaced.

  “Meet me back at the hotel?” Emelia asked hopefully.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Then with a wink, he was gone.

  Back in her hotel room, Emelia waited patiently for Aleph to appear. She slipped out of her dress and into her PJs then put on a Hallmark movie to fill the time. Though Emelia tried to lose herself in the Thanksgiving special that was playing, thoughts of Thicke and the Minutemen tumbled about inside her head.

  She was half asleep, wine glass in hand, when Aleph popped into the living room. He slid in next to her on the couch, placing her head gently in his lap and covering her shoulders with a blanket.

  “Whh deyer noobouut the sreper wepn?” Emelia mumbled into his stomach.

  “What?”

  She turned to look up at him and tucked the blanket under her chin.

  “What do you know about the super weapon?” Emelia asked again and he cocked his head, confused. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. Vane said that right before Thicke rose to power and the new government formed itself, there was some sort of super weapon that killed thousands of people.”

  Aleph shifted underneath her head and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what the weapon was, but I know that it caused a massacre.”

  “When?”

  Aleph hesitated for a moment and Emelia realized that she may not want to know the answer. “November 30th, 2018,” he responded cautiously.

  Emelia sat up and stared at him. “But that’s just a few days from now.”

  “I know, I was hoping you would come with me before it happened.”

  “You were just going to let all those people die?” Her tone was one of shock more than anything else.

  “Emelia, messing with the past is a pretty big, dangerous deal. Plus, an event like that would be impossible to prevent.”

  Emelia wadded up the blanket in her lap. “We have to do something.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Emelia tried to remember everything she had been told about the future. Up until that moment, Emelia had considered her only interaction with the Minutemen to be the attack in her apartment. However, contemplating it now, Emelia realized that even before that moment, she’d had several encounters with the mysterious time traveling faction. The Doe cases.

  According to Vane and Aleph, the Does in the autopsy wing were more than likely Minutemen who had overstayed their welcome in this time period. If Emelia could get back to the FBI, maybe there was something in their files that could help them stop the massacre before it happened. Emelia knew it was a long shot, but she had to try.

  “If I could get DNA samples from the Doe travelers at the FBI, do you think that you would be able to identify them in your time?” Emelia asked.

  “Definitely,” Aleph confirmed, his eyes alive with excitement. “You know, that just might work. Even if the Minutemen aren’t connected to the super weapon and the massacre, that data will help us figure out who they are and possibly how to stop them.”

  Emelia could feel herself grinning from ear to ear.

  “So . . . you’ll let me go back to work?” she asked, more enthusiastically than intended.

  “I’ll give you one day. You’re in enough danger as it is,” Aleph cautioned.

  “Deal.” Emelia was already itching with anticipation. “In the meantime, do you think that you could dig up more information about the massacre from 2131? Minutemen or no Minutemen, we can’t just let those people die.”

  “I’ll see what I can find. We’ll do everything that we can to prevent it, I promise.” He took her hand. “But Emelia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “After all of this, swear to me that you will come back with me to my time. You’ll get the information we need, tell Jay you’re quitting, and you won’t look back. No more excuses.”

  “I promise,” she replied. “No more excuses.”

  17 DNA

  Emelia arrived back at her apartment late on the evening of November twenty-fifth. She trudged through the front door at 2:45 a.m. and set her alarm for 7 a.m., then climbed into bed with her jeans still on. The second her head hit the pillow, she drifted off to sleep.

  Morning came and before Emelia knew it, her alarm was sounding on the nightstand. With just over four hours of sleep, she popped right out of bed and began to get ready for the day.

  Though the time change didn’t seem to be affecting her as much as she had expected, the temperature change hit her like a ton of bricks. Emelia pulled on her work clothes with chattering teeth, praying that
it wouldn’t take long to get used to D.C.’s frigid winter weather. Then again, after today, the weather would be the least of her problems.

  Work that day would be a bittersweet experience. Though Emelia was dying to get the information that she and Aleph needed, going back to work meant saying goodbye to the FBI.

  Even though Emelia had the entire plane ride from Hawaii to take it in, she still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that she was quitting. Jay was not going to take it well, and Emelia worried about how she was going to take it herself.

  As much as Emelia hated it, she couldn’t stay at her job. Not only would it put her own life at risk, but also the lives of everyone around her—Meredith Jane was proof of that. To keep everyone safe, Emelia would have to disappear. So, as soon as Emelia had what she and Aleph needed, that was exactly what she planned to do.

  Emelia arrived early to her office and was surprised to discover that her inbox was empty.

  Jay has been looking out for me, she thought and felt a pang of sadness, knowing that today was probably the last time that she would ever see him.

  Opening her door, Emelia couldn’t help but notice that all her plants were nearly dead. Though it made her cringe, she didn’t stop to water them. The plants were just another thing that Emelia would have to leave behind, and there was no sense worrying about them now. The rest of her office portrayed nothing out of the ordinary, so she sat down at her desk and logged in to her computer.

  Her email was filled with junk, except for one note from Jay, giving her instructions for her next assignment. Emelia opened it up and began to dig into the case, but her brain kept drifting to the Doe files. She smiled; it was just like old times. Staring at her computer screen, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand. It was her last day and Jay deserved her best work; Emelia would get to the Doe files as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  If it were up to her, Emelia would have walked through the door of the FBI and marched straight into the autopsy wing to gather the DNA samples. She would have gathered all the information needed in the morning, then devote the rest of time to a normal workday. Unfortunately, Emelia had to maintain her cover, and that meant that the Does would have to wait.

  Emelia planned to work through her cases until one of them required her to observe a body firsthand. Then, while she was examining that body, she would take a look at the Doe bodies as well.

  When the day ended, Emelia would head to Jay’s office to give him the news that she would be leaving the Bureau before collecting her personal belongings on the way out.

  Emelia had already come up with her story for Jay, it involved an exaggeration about how traumatized she had been by Meredith Jane’s death and a lie about her unexpected inability to work like she used to. Emelia was clicking her way through a case, rehearsing her lines in her head when, to her horror, Vane walked in through her open office door. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” Emelia shrieked, eyes wide. “How did you get through the front door? Secur—”

  But before she could call for help, he put his hand over her mouth and closed the door behind them. She squirmed under his grip, and he sighed.

  “Emelia, stop squirming,” he said, lowering his voice.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she stopped resisting his hold and he released her.

  “Listen, I’m sorry for barging in on you like this,” Vane whispered, his tone seemingly sincere, “but it’s for your own good. You can’t be here, I thought that I made that clear.”

  Emelia snapped, “You also left me in the middle of nowhere with no idea of what I was supposed to do,.”

  “Well I told you not to leave, and you clearly didn’t take that instruction very seriously. You aren’t safe, not here, not anywhere. What were you thinking?”

  Emelia stared at the ground, trying to decide how to respond. She couldn’t let Vane know about Aleph, but she also needed to come up with an excuse for her disappearance. Aleph had said that Vane was dangerous, that meant that Emelia needed to stay on his good side until she was safe in 2131.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Emelia shook her head. “But I didn’t know what else to do. My adopted aunt was killed in my apartment, I was attacked for no reason by a man I didn’t know, and the stranger who saved me started spouting off about time travel right before he disappeared before my eyes. I needed to get away, so I left. Can’t you understand that?”

  Vane held her gaze for a few seconds and Emelia was worried that her answer was too vague to be satisfactory. She was just about to embellish the lie a little more when he broke eye contact and nodded.

  “Okay. Yes, of course,” Vane said, though he didn’t seem happy about it.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked, trying to change the subject before he asked for any more details about her impromptu vacation. “This is a secured facility.”

  At first Vane didn’t say anything, but instead held up a badge that gave him top-level security clearance for any sector of the FBI.

  Emelia raised her eyebrows.

  “As far as your coworkers know, I am part of a very confidential government program,” he said, “and even if I didn’t have the badge, I could probably travel right into your office if I wanted to.”

  Emelia had never felt more relieved to be leaving 2018 in just a few short days. If she were to stay, Emelia would have to live day to day knowing that Vane could show up anywhere or anytime. Though he had been tolerable thus far, Emelia was sure that Vane was not a patient man. She knew that he was after her DNA, or so Aleph had said, and Emelia was never going to comply. The longer she resisted, the more unpleasant Vane would become.

  “That’s comforting,” Emelia said sarcastically. “So, what are you doing here now? Have you come to whisk me away to your luxurious safehouse again?”

  Vane rolled his eyes. “You know, you would think that after I saved your life, you would treat me with a little more respect.”

  Emelia bit her tongue. As far as Vane knew, she had no reason to dislike him. Had Aleph not been part of the picture, Vane would be the only person that she could turn to for help.

  “I know. You’re right, I’m sorry. I guess seeing you again just reminds me of everything crazy that has happened to me in the last few weeks. It’s still a lot to take in.” She sat back down at her desk and motioned for him to sit in the chair across from her. “I guess I still don’t understand what it is you want from me?”

  Vane gave an exasperated sigh. “In the future, there is a woman named Artemis. We aren’t sure exactly what it is, but there is some connection between—”

  “No, that part I understand,” Emelia interrupted. “What I don’t understand, is what you want from me now? I get that I am in danger because of my connection to Artemis. I also remember you saying that I am somehow a big part of the operations of the future. However, I don’t get what you want me to do? What do you expect to happen now?”

  Vane hesitated for a moment, clearly taken aback by her directness. “I need your DNA,” he responded flatly. “If we can figure out your connection to Artemis, maybe we can stop the Minutemen from hurting you.”

  Emelia swallowed. There it was, out in the open. She knew that once Vane knew the truth about Artemis, both Emelia and her future self would be in serious danger. On top of that, knowing the connection would not stop the attacks of the Minutemen, it would only encourage them to eliminate her. Emelia chewed on the inside of her cheek. Vane also hadn’t said anything about her DNA being the key to forward time travel.

  “Okay,” she said, pulling out several strands of her own hair. Emelia knew that hair wouldn’t do anything for him, but at least it would make Vane think that she was willing. He frowned at her offering and pushed her hand aside.

  “That won’t work,” he said.

  “Oh, okay. Well, if you want, we can go down to the lab and I can draw you a vial of blood�
�” Emelia started to get up from her seat.

  “Thank you,” he said, shaking his head. “But neither of those options are viable. Hair and blood decompose during forward time travel, just as they would after death.”

  “Well, what if I ran some tests here and handed you a copy of my genetic code when the results came back?” She said trying to sound helpful, knowing that she would severely alter any copy of her genetic code before handing it over to Vane.

  “Actually, to get the most out of your DNA in the future, I need a physical sample.” Emelia knew that “getting the most of her DNA” meant studying its properties for forward time travel, though Vane seemed intent on keeping that information from her.

  “Oh,” she said, “I hadn’t thought of that. So . . . then . . . I guess that means you’ll need bone?”

  “I only need a small sliver,” he offered, nodding his head, “not the whole bone. A tooth would even work.”

  “Not to sound ungrateful for what you’ve done for me, but I’d like to keep a full set of teeth.” Though the statement was true, it was not at all why Emelia didn’t want to give Vane her tooth. She was stalling for more time. “Could we set up an appointment with a doctor?”

  Before Vane could answer, the lights in her office flickered and electricity pulsed through the air. Vane swore and sprung out of his chair.

  “I have to go,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”

  Vane ran out of the office and disappeared just as a spark flew out the power outlet inches from where he had been sitting. Smoke wafted limply from the short-circuited socket and Emelia breathed a sigh of relief. She’d timed him out.

  Emelia glanced at the clock, happy that she hadn’t wasted too much work time dealing with Vane. If everything was to go as planned today, Emelia needed to crack down on her cases and use every second that she had.

  Emelia had six cases done and two to go when she started to worry—not a single case that day gave her the clearance needed to get into the autopsy wing. Emelia scrolled through the documents on her computer once again, hopeful she had missed something.