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June 30th, 2000 The Upper West Side
SAMANTHA crouched down carefully to massage her swiftly swelling ankle. The flow of pedestrians parted around her like a river diverting around an island—and she felt like that island, alone and isolated and gradually being worn down by the water. She blamed her own slow reflexes.
When she’d arrived on the edge of a wide stone step, she’d stiffened as her left foot simply dropped straight down all the way to the lower step. She had felt the joint twist and the ankle sprain. She’d wanted to sit down right there and have a good cry, but looking around and not seeing any of the others had shocked her out of the temptation.
Sam had kept her weight on the good foot and immediately checked her watch. She’d landed right in the center of New York City and the middle of the year two thousand. As she was supposed to. Where then is everyone else?
She’d switched to the locator screen to see the red bar showing her leader Harold to the south but out of range. She hadn’t wasted any time trying to understand why they had become separated. Keeping her weight off her left ankle as much as possible, she’d hobbled down the wide stairs to the sidewalk and then down the next street in the direction indicated.
She’d only even glanced at the Rose Window at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She’d return and bask later, after she’d found the others. She’d come on her own if she had to, since the rest with their different interests and specialties might not be so inclined. Then she could have a good long look around. But not now, not yet.
Kneeling on the sidewalk three blocks south of where she’d arrived, she continued massaging her ankle with one hand while checking her watch. Now Harold was somewhere to the southwest. Either he had moved or she was getting close, but whichever it was, she didn’t want to dally. So she straightened with reluctance and limped as fast as she could the rest of the block to the next intersection.
Sam had to hurry to cross with the light over to the other side of the busy street, all the while being jostled by the other pedestrians and clenching her teeth against the pain. When she reached the opposite corner, she saw the blip appear on her locator screen. Harold, at last.
Maybe her leader would like to take a nice long rest somewhere. He did enjoy taking his ease—she normally found that frustrating, but today would be different. She would appreciate Harold.
Sam slowed her pace as she kept her eye on the watch face. Halfway down the block she turned and swept her eyes across the far sidewalk, looking for her leader. She saw his bald pate first, as he stood against the brick wall in the mouth of the narrow alleyway between two buildings.
Then she noticed Kirin with her long, beautiful black hair, pressing Harold against that wall as she moved in for a kiss. Not the time or the place, Harold. Sam shook her head. Kirin had been working on Harold before they’d left, and Sam despaired of the woman ever changing her ways. Harold should have known better.
Sam stood staring at the pair and giving her ankle a rest. Despite the pain, she wanted to rush over and reunite with her team—but she didn’t want to embarrass her leader by interrupting his moment of weakness. Neither of them would thank her.
She found herself fascinated. She’d never been able to bring herself to chase after a man, no matter how attracted, and watching Kirin pressing herself against Harold was like looking through a window into another world.
Even from the opposite side of the street, Sam could see them kissing. Locked together in a long embrace, Harold held Kirin with more strength and passion than Sam would have thought possible. But then his grip loosened and Kirin backed away from her prey. Sam was too far to see the expressions on their faces, but she bet they were both smiling. She could imagine the peculiar curl of Kirin’s lips in her mind’s eye.
Then Harold slid down the brick wall—just sat there on the ground and stayed that way, still, with his head lying back against the bricks. Kirin stood there for a moment looking down at him before she finally knelt to help the man.
She reached out to grab his hand. Then after a minute she stood up again, raising herself to her full height augmented by those spiky heels.
The woman turned and looked straight at Sam. There was a flash of inexplicable electricity between the two women, then Kirin turned and walked fast down the alley toward the other end, leaving Harold right where he sat. Sam felt like she was frozen in that particular moment in time.
Something was wrong. Sam felt it in her heart, and her feet must have felt it too, because she was stumbling out into the street before she knew what she was doing. She made as straight a line for Harold as she could, dodging honking cars and fighting not to fall flat on her face.
She rolled over the hood of a cab that stopped right in front of her. With her ankle already injured she supposed it didn’t make much difference if she bruised the rest of her body—as long as she didn’t demand too much of that ankle.
At least she managed to get to the other side of the street without killing herself. She limped to the mouth of the alley and leaned over to look Harold in the eye—there remained some life in him but it was fading fast. He tried to say something to her, but all that came out of his mouth was a bubble of blood.
That was when Sam looked down and saw the neat little wound. So little blood around such a tiny hole in his shirt, right through the ribs underneath his heart. She glanced around to see the slim stiletto lying on the ground just a few feet away.
Sam turned back to speak to her leader. Harold wasn’t there anymore though, just his lifeless shell with its hand across his belly as if he’d tried to reach for her. She wanted to cry. She felt the tears welling up, and as she tried to blink them away she noticed that Harold’s watch was gone. Of course.
The tears dried. Poor Harold had been led into this trap, and she felt sorry for him. More than that though, Sam felt a blinding anger toward Kirin, a furnace blazing in her heart. The woman had just tossed the murder weapon on the ground with her fingerprints all over it—no doubt because she had known it didn’t matter. Kirin already had the perfect plan for escaping justice.
Well, Sam wouldn’t let that happen. She could think about the rest of it later—right now, Kirin was putting more distance between them, and Sam had to prevent that, no matter what it might do to her injured ankle. That meant she had to run.
She stepped away from the corpse, turned, and sprinted for the other end of the alley. She had to grind down so hard against the pain she felt it would crack her teeth as she pounded across the pavement and leapt over the detritus in her way. But she’d no choice if she wanted to catch her quarry.
Unaware of Sam’s injury, Kirin would assume she was being pursued full speed and make haste herself in an effort to lose Sam. And all Kirin needed to do was get far enough away to Travel without her pursuer being in range to be caught in the field. If she managed that, Sam would lose any hope of finding her.
Sam didn’t dare glance at her locator to check, but Kirin might already be that far away—she could only hope Kirin was too preoccupied with running away to notice if that had occurred. A slim thread of hope indeed.
At the south end of the alley, Sam checked her watch and quickly lifted her head to the left to scan the crowd and pick out her target. Kirin had already crossed to the next block to the east and was moving fast. One advantage Sam had was the other woman’s height and long, flowing jet-black hair—Sam should be able to keep Kirin in sight without constantly checking her watch.
Sam did follow that distinctive head as she hurried through the crowd of pedestrians. And as she felt another stab of sharp pain up her leg, she reminded herself that she had another advantage—Kirin’s tight skirt and high heels would restrict her movement.
It was sweltering, and Sam was glad she’d worn shorts for the anticipated summer weather because it also meant she moved free. And with her running shoes on, hopefully it would be enough to compensate for the sprain.
Kirin didn’t turn back to look for her pursuer, but she could check her locator. Though if she did, Sam never saw. She was glad for once that her own lack of height might help obscure her from view. If only the fool woman would waste the time trying to look back.
Kirin must’ve taken Harold’s leader device because it could Travel on its own—neither Sam’s nor Kirin’s helper watches had that ability. They only worked in proximity to a device like Harold’s. With that now in her possession, Kirin could Travel when she pleased, and if Sam were out of the range of the field, she wouldn’t be able to follow the murderess through time.
And Kirin had only to Travel into the past to get beyond the reach of whatever authorities might be seeking justice for Harold.
Sam knew she had been given the responsibility for stopping Kirin. The woman had murdered Harold, and Sam was a witness, the only witness to the evil act, the only one who knew. More than that she understood the further crimes Kirin could commit with Harold’s device and the access it gave to Travel throughout history. Clearly the woman was without the conscience which would prevent her from doing terrible things. Sam was the only person who was in a position to stop that.
So she kept running, trying to ignore the pain and the fear, to avoid thinking about the extra damage she was doing to her ankle. But she failed.
Sam felt the tears welling up again even as she ran. Not for Harold this time, or even for the pain, though she could blame that if she wanted. No, she cried because she was destroying herself.
Sam had always been able to run like the wind, ever since she was a little girl, and it made her feel alive and free. Now she was likely doing permanent and irreparable injury to her ankle. She might not run again. She’d be fortunate if she could still walk properly after this, and she couldn’t imagine being that person. It wouldn’t be her.
She turned her tears into flight, increasing her speed as she stoked the fire of anger burning in her belly. Even so she could tell she was losing ground to Kirin. The woman would be checking her watch, so Sam didn’t have to worry about slowing down to check her own in order to know whether or not she was still in range. She focused on her quarry.
She also needed to pay attention to the people and objects in her path. People tended to get out of Kirin’s way, but they ignored small Samantha and forced her to weave around them. That slowed her down almost as much as her ankle.
Sam ran down one painfully long block, then a short one, and by the time she had crossed the next intersection, the distance between herself and Kirin had lengthened considerably.
Sam estimated that she might’ve already fallen out of range. She tried to pour on more speed, but her ankle refused to comply—it wasn’t just the pain she was fighting, her foot wasn’t working right. She found herself slowing down.
She struggled forward, but all the willpower she could pour into her legs failed to transfer into faster movement. Soon she would likely catapult herself into the pavement.
With the tears flowing freely now, Sam looked into the distance where she saw Kirin crossing over to the entrance into a massive park in the middle of the city. The woman almost danced up some stairs, even wearing those heels, and it almost made Sam want to cry. She had failed.
Kirin turned at the top of those stairs and gazed behind her, searching. Sam was too far away to see the woman’s eyes, but she felt them connect, and it seemed they were staring right into each other. She knew when the other woman glanced down at her locator. Sam didn’t need to check her own to know she was well outside the range of the Travel field.
She could sense Kirin’s smile of triumph as the woman fiddled with the watch, Harold’s device, so she could Travel—away from Sam and away from justice.
Sam stopped fighting the tears then, and her eyes flooded. The whole world blurred through the water. And then it vanished.