We made a horrible mistake dismissing evolution. In the quest to control time, we forgot that time changes all things. People change, and we will never find a way to control who they become.
~ private conversation with Agent 5 (retired)
Saturday March 29, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Steam coiled out of the swamp into the primal darkness of night. Gant paced the perimeter of the building, not certain if he was more concerned about the creatures with glowing eyes swimming in the swamps or the man inside, whose temper was fraying by the hour.
“Will you stop pacing!” Donovan shouted, punching the aluminum siding of the shack for emphasis. “You’re not helping.”
Gant considered the gun in his hand. Lucky for Donovan, he wasn’t worth the few remaining bullets. Besides, after all they’d been through, he felt Donovan deserved something a bit more personal. “The notes say the machine won’t work tonight.” He’d read them and understood them well enough. If the dates were all correct, there wasn’t a chance to cross back to his reality until tomorrow night. “We have time.”
“This isn’t kindergarten math,” Donovan said through clenched teeth. “I’m not waiting to the last minute to do everything.”
Grumbling profanities in Spanish and English under his breath, Gant continued pacing. He knew what was wrong. Clone or not, leaving Detective Rose alive was an insult. It tore him apart knowing she was out there breathing—any of her. She’d shrugged off his threats. Treated him as inconsequential.
Ignored me.
“Go get a drink before I kill you,” Donovan said. “I can’t stand your pacing anymore! Go get laid. Whatever. There’s a liquor store about ten miles down the main road.”
Gant looked at him, thumb stroking the trigger guard of his gun.
Not.
Worth.
The.
Bullets.
He pivoted on his heel and stalked over to where they’d found two beat-up four-wheelers. One was charged enough to get him to town, where they’d left the college kid’s car.
“Be back by noon!” Donovan called after him.
Flipping the other man a rude gesture, Gant called back, “Yes, Mother.” He gunned the engine and raced across the dirt road. Whiskey sounded good. Maybe a little ninety-proof moonshine. What he wanted was . . . something flammable. Something that would light up the night sky like the fires of hell.
Sam kicked her blanket off and rolled onto her side. The cool breeze from the air-conditioning sent shivers down her back. She tugged the blanket up, then pushed it off again.
Hoss whined quietly in protest. She was interrupting his sleep.
Rolling onto her back, Sam dropped her arm over the edge of the bed and stroked Hoss’s fur. Something had pulled her from sleep, but it wasn’t the heat of the night. Adrenaline raced through her veins, pushing her heart rate up, making her hyperaware of everything around her. Downstairs, the neighbor had left their TV on again, and she could hear the hollow sounds of a synthetic laugh track. Tree branches rattled against the siding of the apartment. In the distance, she could hear the faint rumble of a truck charging down the highway.
This wasn’t like waking up from a nightmare with a faint sense of dread and cold sweat making her skin clammy. This was liking waking up to a nightmare. Opening her eyes to see monsters.
Sam swung her legs out of bed. She slid her foot over Hoss’s flank until it found the soft carpet, stood, and dressed in the darkness. Something had pulled her from a deep sleep to perfect awareness. Quietly opening the door, she tiptoed to the living room.
Mac lay sprawled across the couch, one arm over his forehead, the other dangling off the side of the couch. She really should have offered him the bed. Their green couch just wasn’t built for a tall person. Funny how she’d come to think of in terms of Us and We and Ours.
Car tires squealed in the parking lot outside. All thoughts of relationships pushed aside, Sam ran to the window. A dark car took the turn too fast, slowed for a fraction of a second, and something like a giant cigarette butt flew out the car window. There was a crashing sprinkle of glass, and Hoss yelped in the bedroom.
“Hoss!” She ran down the hall and opened the door to see a bottle with a lit rag explode. The heat of the explosion knocked her backward. “Hoss!” She choked, coughing on smoke.
Strong hands grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her backward. Sam tried to break free.
Hoss limped out of the room. She clapped her hands.
“Out,” Mac ordered, opening the door. “Right now.”
“There’s a fire extinguisher”—she coughed as smoke started filling the room—“under the sink.” Fire alarms were going off. Mac was dialing someone, probably the fire department.
She looped a leash over Hoss’s head and dragged him outside. Hurrying barefoot down the wooden stairs, she banged on her neighbor’s door, praying the elderly woman would hear something over the sound of her TV.
Slowly, it was dawning on her that someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail on her bed. Delayed shock froze her limbs. If she’d been in bed . . . She dropped her hand down to pet Hoss.
A car rolled up beside her. Sam looked over, expecting to see a neighbor.
The man who stepped out of the car with a twisted grin was no friend of hers. “Hello, Detective Rose.”
“Gant.” Sam stepped back, hand tightening on Hoss’s leash.
He lifted a gun. “Good-bye, Detective.”
Sam lunged forward, but Hoss was faster. Five shots, and Hoss fell backward. Sam lurched sideways as Mac tackled her. All she could do was watch Gant’s car peel away into the night as tears ran down her face.
“I am fine.” Mac tried once again to wrestle the IV needle away from his arm.
The nurse, a middle aged woman with dark skin, bright cherry-red hair, and a Spanish accent snarled at him. “You are going to hold still, or I will sedate you.”
“Mac!”
He looked up to see Sam standing in the doorway, wearing an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of navy-blue scrub pants.
“Let her put the IV in,” Sam ordered.
He narrowed his eyes at her betrayal but sat back in the hospital bed. “I’m not in pain.”
“You have a bruised rib, a concussion, damage to your lungs, and that’s only the partial list.” Sam’s eyes were tight with fear.
He winced as the needle cut his skin. “Sam, sweetie, I’m fine. Come here.” He held out his free hand. “It’s not that bad.”
“You jumped off the balcony, you idiot,” she said through clenched teeth.
The nurse grumbled something in Spanish that was certainly a commentary on his brains, or lack thereof, but he ignored her. “Sam? Are you all right?”
“Hoss is dead. You’re in a hospital bed. And you ask if I’m okay?”
Right. He took a deep breath and was rewarded with a stabbing pain. “Sam . . . I’ll say anything you want. How do I make it better?”
She turned to the window and pulled aside the thick green curtains. There was nothing to see but a streetlamp in the parking lot. “This isn’t on you, Mac. You have plane tickets for Chicago. In forty-eight hours, you will be released from the hospital and fly home.”
“And?”
The room filled with an arctic chill as she turned. “There is no ‘and.’ I arrest Gant. You go to Chicago. We all file our paperwork and move on.”
“You think I’m going to leave after this?” The machine next to him let out a shrill scream as his blood pressure skyrocketed. “Not just no, Sam. Hell no. I’m not leaving you. Nothing you say is going to change that.”
There were marble statues with more emotion on their faces than hers as she crossed to him. She was shutting him out. Closing down all the nonessential systems so she could survive. He’d seen soldiers do it in war zones and at home. He’d done it more times than he cared to consider, but Sam had pulled him out. Forced him to feel something other than burning self-hatred.
“Don’t even try to pull rank,” he warned with a snarl. He wasn’t going to let her slip into the same mire he’d only barely escaped. “I’ll pay off my government contract and retire down here if that’s what it takes. I’m not abandoning you.”
She pressed a bittersweet kiss to his cheek. Her lips were as cold as the grave. “What if I ask?” she whispered.
Ice filled his veins. His free hand curled around her wrist. “Why?”
“You’re hurting me.” Her eyes were so cold. So dark and distant it was like looking into the face of a corpse.
He dropped his hand, but he wasn’t sure that it was his touch causing the pain.
“Please leave. If you love me at all, you won’t want to see me hurt, so leave. Let me have my life back. What little is left, I want to live free.”
There wasn’t a medicine in the hospital that would fix his breaking heart. No way to return the stolen air to his lungs. No measure for the pain as she walked away.
“Where have you been?” Donovan demanded, as Gant got off the four-wheeler.
He glowered. “Getting more bullets. And a drink.” And revenge. The first light of day was breaking across the swamp, and already the humidity was something near a hundred percent. It felt good.
Donovan rolled his eyes. “You’re pathetic. Get in here.”
“What’s got your panties in a twist?”
“Look here.” Donovan held up a rod with a viscous purple liquid. “Know what this is?”
“Poison?”
“A stabilizing catalytic liquid,” Donovan said with the careful enunciation of someone who’d read the word but didn’t quite know it meant. “Keeps us from going boom.”
“Does it get us back to reality?” Nothing else mattered.
Donovan nodded. “We turn this on at three this afternoon, and we should wind up back in our timeline a few days before your prison break.”
“How do we go farther back?” A few days wasn’t enough. The airports would still have him on the no-fly list. Detective Rose would still have his fortune sitting in an evidence locker.
“We’d have to wait six more weeks to go back farther, and it would still only buy us a few more days.” Donovan hurled the notebook they’d stolen from the wrecked car at Gant. “Read it over.”
Donovan finished putting the machine together as Gant read over the notes. Most of it was over his head, not that he’d ever admit that. He had the sneaking suspicion that Donovan was, possibly, smarter than he. At least with the book work and math. School hadn’t been a bastion of safety and learning as much as a building full of marks waiting to be taken for their money. Gant had spent more time breaking into cars in the parking lot than in class. Up to this point, it hadn’t affected his upward momentum.
Book smarts weren’t necessary for a con unless you played a professor. It was better posing as an accountant. Numbers never lied, but they could dance if you had the knack.
“Donovan?”
“Eh?”
“What’s an einselected node?” Gant asked as he leaned against a support beam of the warehouse. The metal was refreshingly cool, nicely shaded from the blazing sun outside.
Donovan washed machine grease off his hands from a water donkey they’d found tucked in one corner. “I think it’s like a pillar-of-the-world type of thing. You know in a house where you have walls you can knock out and walls that have to stay because the house collapses without ’em?”
“Sure,” Gant lied as he flipped a page of notes with the Zoetimax watermark.
“Haven’t you ever demolished a building?”
Gant looked up from the stolen pages with disgust. “Why would I want to damage a building? I use finesse.”
“Killing people is finesse?”
“Sometimes it’s the only way to get the lock open,” Gant said calmly. Some part of him recognized that murder was not an option for the average person. He was equally aware that keeping murder as an option broadened his choice of options considerably. Really, it was the difference between believing that only the people with keys should open doors and the belief that anyone who could pick the lock should open doors to take what they wanted. It was baffling that more people didn’t view life that way. For which Gant was grateful to his fellow man. Competition—competent competition—wasn’t good for him.
Donovan sighed.
“Tired of me already?” Gant asked.
“A week with you is more than I planned for,” Donovan said. There was no malice in his tone.
Gant’s fingers slipped to the reassuring shape of the gun tucked into his pants. Killing Donovan was tempting but not yet practical. If the other man was anything like him, then Donovan was holding a crucial detail back so that Gant wouldn’t be able to use the machine alone. It’s what he would have done. Once again, he felt like his control over the situation was slipping.
He rubbed sweating palms along the rough denim of his pants. Detective Rose was dead. His eye twitched. There’d been a dog, a dark shadow of a monster lunging for him. But surely, surely, the bullets had gone through. He’d seen her fall . . .
Gant nodded to himself. Yes, Rose was dead. For good this time. They were out of hell. In the swamps, but away from the English-speaking abomination of a country that had infested Florida. The gas station had strange beer, no sugar skulls, no chili-covered mangoes. Part of his mind ticked over and started calculating how much he could charge the locals to escape. No reason to be greedy. A few grand a head, and he’d still make money hand over fist.
But that meant staying longer.
Not worth it then.
He flipped another page over. Someone had scrawled dates on the back with sparkling purple ink. The loops of the s’s gave it away. Detective Rose had written herself some notes. Purple. He snorted in derision but read the notes carefully. “Donovan?”
“What?” the other man demanded angrily.
“What’s an Emir?”
Donovan stomped across the warehouse. “A what? An emir?”
“Yeah.” Gant held the note up. “Rose said to watch out for an emir. Avoid at all cost.”
“It’s a . . . whatchamacallit . . . prince sort of title. Exalted one. Commander. It’s an Arab title, I think.” Donovan shrugged and passed the paper back. “Who knows, maybe if you travel on the wrong day, this is the Federated States of Arabia or something.”
Gant tried to remember anything about the Arab nations as Donovan walked away. They weren’t Mexican trade partners, and the Middle East wasn’t a place he ever intended to visit. Too much sand. He couldn’t even remember if they had decent dried mangoes.
Something whined behind him.
Looking over his shoulder, Gant scanned the visible parts of the swamp. The low, keening sound didn’t sound entirely organic. “Donovan!”
“I hear it.” The other man pulled his gun. “Four bullets left.”
“I’ve got five.”
“Did you get any more when you went out?”
Gant nodded. “They don’t have standard sizes, but these will work in a pinch.” Donovan grimaced. A too-small bullet in their guns was risky, but the measurements here were all off by a millimeter or two. They risked a misfire or the guns exploding. Between that risk and the possibility of landing in jail here, though, the gun was a better bet.
“Take the north side,” Donovan said, as he walked out the south entrance. In the daylight, he wasn’t silhouetted against a backlit warehouse, but it was a dumb move anyway.
Gant took more care as he went to check the swamp side of the hideout. He peered around the corner and waited, watching for any changes. The birds were still singing peacefully. Somewhere, a cricket was humming. The keening whine seemed to come from all directions at once. He would say it was an echo, but there was nothing for the sound to echo off. Swamps weren’t known for their rocky canyons for a reason.
Biting back a curse, Gant moved carefully through the tall grass. Tiny insects rose in black swarms. Prickly sticker seedpods clung to his pant leg as his boots squelched in the mud. The water was still. No ripples caused by an underwater intruder or an incoming airboat. He looked around to see Donovan peering down the road using a sniper scope Gant hadn’t known the other man had. A nice tidbit to file away for later use.
You’ve been keeping secrets from me, friend.
Donovan shook his head and circled his hand.
With a nod, Gant followed the order to walk the perimeter, looking for anything out of place. A bent blade of grass, a suspicious glint of metal, anything to tell him what was making the sound. He looked up at the gray clouds rolling in from the coast. Just how far out could one hear a drone approaching? He watched the tree line for movement, peering at the dark green canopy as if he could pierce it by will alone.
The warehouse walls rumbled. “Oh, hells, no.” Underground? How could anyone possibly tunnel through this wet earth? He ran in the direction he’d seen Donovan go as the ground shook. The walls of the warehouse buckled outward. “Donovan!”
As the ground bucked, rippling under his feet, he stumbled and rolled. Clutching his gun with white knuckles, Gant scrambled to his feet.
“Gant!” Donovan skidded around the corner.
“What did you do?”
Donovan shook his head and lifted a finger to his lips in a command for silence.
There were voices inside the damaged warehouse. “Team One, check the perimeter. Team Two, identify the machine. Commander, where is this place?” The voice was definitely a man with an accent that Gant pegged as British, but it wasn’t quite British. University English, perhaps, learned as a second language at an expensive school.
“Unknown, sir. The location is not listed as any known contact site.”
Gant’s hand tensed around the handle of his gun. He knew that voice.
Donovan tilted his head to the side in question.
With a nod, Gant confirmed what they’d heard. Detective Rose just wouldn’t die. He shook his head. Five bullets left, and every single one had her name etched on it.
Heavy boots stomped on the cement floor of the warehouse. Sounded like Team One was moving out.
“Do we run for the tree line?” Donovan asked breathlessly. “We can’t survive a shoot-out with them.”
“What’s the standard federales team have? Six men? Five?”
“For a sting, it’s twelve,” Donovan said with an angry frown. “Too many for us to take out quickly.”
Gant felt himself cheering up. Long odds against overwhelming force was his forte. “But they’re moving together, with no eyes outside. They go out, we go in.”
“And going in gets us, what, exactly?”
“The four-wheelers, you idiot. Shoot Rose. Grab machines. Leave in a roar. They’ll follow the tracks. We can drop the four-wheelers by the main road and take a boat back while they’re still hunting.” It would work because it had to work. Their window of opportunity was too narrow for anything else.
Clearly, Donovan agreed—with the sentiment, if not with the plan. With a nod, he led the way, which suited Gant to the bone. The bigger should always go first. Donovan was his shield. That way, at least, the smart one in the partnership got out alive. They moved away from the sound of Team One’s beating the grass to circle the building. Inside, six people stood hovering around the machine and a bright blue portal. Four were dressed in gray scrubs and held various bits of tech. The other two stood to the side supervising: an older man with a trim goatee and Detective Rose, still alive but thinner than Gant remembered her being hours before.
“I’m beginning to see why you hate this woman,” Donovan muttered.
The old man looked up. “Mr. Donovan, is that you?”
Donovan’s brow furrowed.
“Captain Joachim Donovan? Dishonorable discharge was it, or did you walk away in another fit of morals?” The man laughed at a joke no one else saw.
Rose turned, a sneer etched into her elegant face. “We can see you, Donovan. Stop being an idiot and get over here.”
Rage poured through Gant like lava in an erupting volcano. “You traitor!” He struck Donovan across the head with the butt of his gun. “You filthy, lying, whoreson!” Another beat against Donovan’s thick skull. Gant brought his knee up, catching the larger man in his kidneys.
Donovan lashed back, slamming a heavy fist into Gant’s ribs. “Shut up. They don’t know me.”
“On the contrary, Captain, I’ve studied your life quite extensively,” the man with the goatee said over the sound of their brawl.
Gant got ahold of Donovan’s neck and squeezed. “Who is he?”
Donovan’s face turned red as he choked out the words, “Don’t. Know.” He pushed Gant away with brute force and brought his gun up, aimed at the strangers. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“To kill you,” Rose said. “Iteration three is already crumbling, fracturing in your absence. Faster than we anticipated, but your presence here is subverting predominance.”
Strong arms gripped Gant from behind. He snarled, bent his back to crack his head backward into a nose, and hit the solid plastic of body armor. He roared in fury, squirmed, and felt his shoulder pop out of place.
The old man watched him with the scholarly interest of an entomologist spotting a new species of flea. “Bring them inside. The heat outside is quite oppressive.”
“An excellent reminder of why such iterations should not be preserved,” Rose said. She was ignoring him again. Acting as if she hadn’t fumed at his court case, demanding his death. Acting as if he hadn’t tried to kill her hours before. Acting as if she were another clone of the Rose he’d killed. How many Roses existed?
“So very calm, Detective Rose,” Gant said through gritted teeth and pain. “I see you washed the smoke off.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Smoke?”
“I set your apartment on fire!” Fleck of spittle fell from his mouth as he screamed. Gant didn’t care. Let her see the anger. Let her see the fire burning in him.
“You’re mistaken, sir. I live in residential building 3–42, and there has never been a fire in that building.”
The old man patted his shoulder. “Perhaps he saw another iteration of you. A detective, you say? How typical of the Roses of the world, don’t you think? Always enforcing laws.” He chuckled, as if this were a joke.
Donovan was pushed beside him, held by two soldiers wearing full black body armor.
“A detective shows a lack of initiative,” Rose said. “This is an iteration with a strong military. If the shadow of me living here had ambition, she would have sought glory there.”
The old man nodded. “A weakness. Make a note of it. It will make her easy to destroy in the long run.”
Rose wrinkled her nose, giving the impression that such concerns were beneath her. “This iteration is flawed. The entire historical structure is baseless. They’ll topple without our help. Fade into the oblivion of nightmares.”
“You—” The soldier holding Gant jerked him backward so he bit his tongue instead of shouting at Rose again. With a snarl, he spat the bloody salvia at her feet. “I’m not done with you.”
“You never started with me,” she said. It was a cold dismissal. Too cold.
For the first time since the fire, Gant felt a tremor of fear unsettling his soul. This . . . wasn’t what he’d imagined. Detective Rose wasn’t supposed to ignore him. It went against everything he knew. Dread touched him, the knowing that came before the fall of the axe. His death was coming, and it was wrong in every way.
“Captain Donovan,” Rose said, ignoring Gant. “You and I must talk.”
“I got nothing to say to you, lady.” Donovan sneered at her.
She smiled, and Gant realized she was a monster. The pretty outfits and pageant-queen smiles were the disguise of a monster, and now he saw the teeth. “Oh, no, Captain. We have much to say to each other. I spoke to your crew in Iteration 3 yesterday. They were very, what is the word, hmmm . . . broken?” Her dark eyes flashed with devilish delight. “Yes, broken is the term. Arms. Legs. Fingers. Jaws eventually. The youngest one held out longer than anticipated, but I know there is more than one way to skin a man.”
“Cat,” Donovan corrected. “The term is more than one way to skin a cat.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I’ll make a note of the wording. However, I was skinning a man. He only screamed after that, but it was enough. I had what I wanted from him. Clever of you to hide here in another iteration.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Donovan said.
“You don’t need to,” Rose said.
The man with the goatee clapped. “Oh, bravo, Commander. So much menace.”
Rose’s glare promised pain to the man, but he missed the glance. “You don’t approve, Dr. Emir?”
“Torture produces erratic results.”
“The promise of torture produces good results,” she countered.
“But in this case, it isn’t required. Question the captain and let’s be done with this. Our window is small.”
The soldier holding Gant shook him. “Sir? What do you want done with this one?”
“Captain Donovan’s little pet?” Emir looked at him with eyes filled with a glittering madness. He’d seen the look in the eyes of prisoners in isolation. The ones on death row who would go cackling to their executions looked like that. “Put him in the corner in case the captain needs persuasion. That is your weakness, isn’t it, Donovan? You never left a man behind.” Emir chuckled, and even the birds went quiet.
“Don’t you dismiss me!” Gant shrieked, straining away from his captors. “I’m worth ten of him! Ten! Do you even know who I am?”
Emir looked at him. “You are nothing. Donovan is an einselected node.”
Gant gasped in shock. “A pillar?”
“You’ve heard of them?” Emir’s voice couldn’t have been more surprised if a fish rode a unicycle past him. “The beasts are learning, Commander. What do you make of that?”
“They’re still only shadows of things,” Rose said. “When we’re done, this one won’t even be a memory.”
Sam’s phone rang with a piercing wail she’d programmed in for Ivy Clemens. She grabbed it, aware of the hazard lights turning on in her side mirrors. “This is Rose. Give me good news.” She steered the car to the side of the road and left the wipers on.
“We found a body,” Ivy said breathlessly. “He’s not going to make it.”
“Gant?” Please, God, let it be Gant. Let me lock this bastard away forever. Let me put my nightmare behind bars.
Thunder grumbled across the sky. “No,” Ivy said. “He’s been muttering in Spanish, but he’s said Gant’s name a few times.”
“How much longer does he have?”
Ivy took a deep breath. “Ma’am, the ambulance is here, and they don’t even think he’s worth the ride back. The only reason I found him is that I saw lights in the scrub. It’s a restricted area because it’s box tortoise breeding ground, so I followed. I found this guy before I got too far in.”
“They wanted him to be found.” She tried to wrap that around Gant’s sick obsession with her and couldn’t. “Was there anything on him? Marks, other than the beating?”
“Nothing,” Ivy said. “But whoever worked him over knew what they were doing. All the cuts are neatly spaced out.”
“Either a serial killer or an interrogation.” She swore under her breath, then switched to French blasphemies because they sounded better. “Did you write down everything he said?”
“Better than that, I had my recorder on. Want me to send you a transcript?” Ivy sucked in a breath. “Oh. He’s gone, ma’am. Dead. The EMTs are pulling the blanket over his head.” There was a heavy silence. “Why don’t I feel anything?”
Sam knew that one. “Because you’re still on the job. When you get home after this is all over, you’ll cry. You’ll wonder if you could have done something more. You’ll wonder if this was fate, or destiny, or divine intervention. You’ll be able to see his face every time you close your eyes. But we’re still at work, Ivy. We still need to find Gant. I need that transcript.”
Ivy drew in a deep breath and exhaled. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll transmit it right away.”
“To my phone,” Sam ordered. “And send me your GPS coordinates. Call Edwin to meet us.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ivy hung up, and twenty seconds later, Sam’s phone buzzed with an incoming file.
She programmed the coordinates into her car’s GPS first. As it calculated a route, she played the audio file. Broken phrases streamed past in bastard Spanish.
Timemyst Machine. . .
Federated States of Mexico. . .
Escape with Gant. . .
Rose followed. . .
Emir is coming. . .
Emir is here. . .
Emir knows he was a soldier. . .
Einselected.
The words changed to pleas for help as she sped through the rain.
Gant stood in front of the warehouse in the rain. His heart raced as his vision blurred. He swayed on his feet, not certain anymore if he was dying or not.
A car drove cautiously down the muddy road. It stopped, headlights framing him. No bright red sports car. No windows rolling down so the occupant could look at him chained like a dog. But still he knew who was there.
He took his gun out and took the safety off. There was one bullet left. For him or for her, he hadn’t decided yet. “Come out, Detective Rose!”
The dome light turned on, and he saw her, black hair pulled back, tan skin wan from fatigue and stress, pale lips unpainted. She was a ghost of herself.
Gant chuckled. “Come out, Detective. Come out and arrest me.”
She cocked her head to the side, her shoulder shrugged as if she were sighing, then the door of the little gray car opened. The car beeped in protest as she excited with the engine still turned on. “Mr. Gant?”
Gant held up his gun. “Present.”
“I’ve come to help you, Mr. Gant. My name is Agent Rose from the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation.” Metal flashed in the light from the car; he aimed but realized the shape was wrong for a gun. “This is my badge, Mr. Gant. Do you see it?” She waited, then repeated everything in Spanish.
“I know English, Detective.”
She shook her head. “I’m not a detective,” she said in English. “I’m not with the police. I’m with the bureau, and I want to help you. Can I walk over to you? Can we talk?”
“Talk all you want.” Gant laughed. “Talk ’til you die. You can’t make me go back to prison.”
She took two steps toward him. “Which prison were you in, Mr. Gant?” Her voice was perfectly calm, unruffled, unstressed.
His eye twitched. “Repisa de la Roca Prisión. You put me away for fraud. Tried to get me to hang for murder. Didn’t happen, though.”
“Repisa de la Roca Prisión? Rockledge doesn’t have a prison, Mr. Gant. They have a rehab center. The Hammond Center has always been a rehab, from day one, although I admit it does look a bit like a prison. I checked, but they have no record of you ever being there.”
His breath escaped in a hiss. “I’ve haven’t gone there yet! I will! In 2072, you sent me there. You chased me like a terrier chasing a rat! You hunted me down, and in 2074, I escaped. I killed them all. Killed Wilhite in the parking lot. Killed the guard in the laundry, too.”
“There is no Wilhite,” Rose said as she came close to him. “These people you remember killing do not exist. They never did. Not here.”
“No.” Gant shook his head. “No. I know they exist. I saw ’em. I broke their necks with my bare hands. I felt their pulses stop.” He remembered it like it was yesterday, or like it was a dream. When he slept, the memories were strongest. He dreamt and relived his life breath by breath.
She stopped in front of him, rain streaming down her unadorned face, dark green T-shirt plastered to her skin.
“You wore jeans?”
“Kitten heels and a pencil skirt seemed out of place.” She shrugged. “Where’s your friend, Mr. Gant?”
Gant pointed the gun at swamp. “In there. Dead probably. They took him away still screaming, but now it’s quiet.” Too quiet. His throat tightened with an unwelcome sensation of fear. “We found the machine.”
“Emir’s time machine?”
His eye twitched at the name. “Didn’t know about him until today. The rich use it as a toy. Hop back in time. Go forward, too, I suppose.”
“I don’t think it goes forward.”
“Has to. I’m making it. I’m going to make it take me home.” He realized he was trembling. “I’ve got to go home.”
Rose lifted the gun from his hand. She flipped the safety on. “You are home. This is reality now. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“NO!” His shout echoed across the empty lot, and thunder rumbled in response. “No. This isn’t where I belong. Send me back!” He grabbed fistfuls of her shirt. “Send me back! No one knows me here. No one respects me here.”
She touched his cheek with a cold hand. A ghost. She really was a ghost. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gant. I can’t let you use the machine.”
“I know how to use it. I’ll share with you.” He fumbled in his pant pocket for the notebook he’d grabbed from the dust. Donovan’s blood was splattered across the cover “Here. Emir dropped this. He knew all about the machine. Said everything was over now. Anything you want, you can have. I’ll go my way. You go yours.” Same deal that had gotten him into this mess could get him out.
She took the notebook from him and slowly turned the first few pages. “Just to be clear, we’re talking about a shorter man? Not much taller than me? Santa beard with a nice tan and looked like he’d been living off diet shakes?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Dr. Abdul Emir.” She closed the notebook. “He’s a narcissistic sociopath with the morals of, well, hmmm . . .” She tilted her head to the side and looked up at the growling clouds. “I’d say with the morals of a parasitic leech, but that’s very unfair to leeches. He’s not a nice man.”
“He tortured Donovan.”
“Yes, that’s something I can see him doing.”
Pain pierced Gant’s head. It felt like someone was twisting a knife behind his eyes. He clutched at his forehead. “Please. Please make it stop.” His knees sagged, and he sank to the ground.
Rose sat down with him.
“I’m being ripped apart. I’m being . . . hurt!”
She pulled his head close so it rested on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. If I understand the notes from Henry and Emir, you’re being cut off. And I’m going to make it worse.”
The pain brought tears to his eyes. “Make it stop. Send me home.”
“There is no home but this. Donovan was a node. If Emir killed him, there is no reality for you to return to.”
He shook, great rolling tremors ripping into his muscles. “I killed people.”
“No,” she said, patting his arm. “Well, you killed the Jane Doe in the purple shirt. She was an iteration of me, but that’s not the sort of thing I can write in my report.” Rose shifted in the mud, settling in as if they were about to have a picnic. “She had a nice funeral. We named her Juanita in the end. Oh, and there was Bradet. We didn’t hit it off, but he was a citizen in my district, and I feel responsible for him. Did you cut him?”
Gant shook his head. “Donovan.”
“Well, then, you probably won’t go to trial ever. It would be a waste of the judge’s time, and the Commonwealth frowns on that sort of thing. Big show trials are a waste of taxpayer money.” She sighed and patted his head again.
“What’s happening to me?”
“The worst possible thing I can imagine. You’re going to the hospital. They’ll give you an IV, patch you up, and in the morning, someone will come to talk to you. The state provides excellent therapy care. You’ll probably tell them everything. You’ll talk about the machine, and Donovan, and the strange man who came through the blue portal to kill you.”
“I’ll tell them his name,” Gant said.
“Yes, and they’ll look it up. Dr. Emir was executed outside his laboratory in Alabama last summer. Murdered by a rogue CBI agent who wanted to go back in time to change the nationhood vote.” Rose put a companionable arm around his shoulder as he shivered. “You see, no matter what you tell them, no one will believe you. You and I will be the only ones who know the whole truth. Others will suspect. My partner will make a very educated guess, but he’ll also keep his mouth shut. When I tell everyone you’re mad, they will believe me.”
Lightning illuminated the dark purple clouds. “Marrins. He was the agent. He didn’t understand you can’t change your past. You can go back and witness the past, but it won’t change what you remember, what you lived. You can’t change your past, only your future. You can only step forward. Even if it means your future tomorrow starts two years ago. You will keep moving forward.”
“I went back in time.” Gant sat up as an idea took hold, a life raft of sanity in the sea of madness. “You don’t know me because I haven’t murdered anyone yet. You’re saying my past is your future. I remember killing those people, but they aren’t dead yet. I still have to kill them.” He looked her in the eye. “I will.”
She raised one eyebrow in mocking question. Then she smiled pityingly. “No, Mr. Gant. You will go to the hospital. You will tell your story, then you will be taken to a care facility for people like you. People who have lost touch with reality.”
“It’s the truth! You know it is! You know I traveled through time!” Fear choked him, strangled his words. “I’m sane.”
“I know it’s the truth. I believe you . . . but no one else will. No one will ever, ever believe your story.” She leaned closer. “Why did you come here, Mr. Gant? What were you trying to gain?”
He took a deep breath. “I came to escape my past. I was going to run away before my crimes were ever committed and live in freedom forever. It would be the perfect crime.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Gant, you succeeded. You got away with murder.”