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“What kind of monster are you?” Darius breathed heavily, his eyes full of fear and pain.
“You’re the monster! You were going to destroy those beans, and now you’ve infected me with the plague. Who knows who else you’ve infected during the last week and a half. I’ve got to get these beans back to Professor Littleton and tell her to make that medicine.”
“You fool!” He lapsed into another coughing fit, his body curling into a ball. When he recovered, he spoke with difficulty. “You don’t seem to have any idea what’s going on here. Everything you’re saying, it’s nonsense. You’ve been lied to, don’t you see that?”
“I may not understand everything,” she admitted, “but I do know you blew up a building and thousands of samples like those beans, thousands of valuable plants, and at least one that could cure a plague.”
Darius tried to sit up but sucked in his breath and fell back, winded by pain. “I didn’t blow up that building,” he gasped.
“Right,” Dani said sarcastically. “Who else?”
He groaned through his teeth. “Bryan. He’s the one who planted that bomb.”
She laughed shortly. “Bryan? He was trying to stop it. He’s the one who saved all the Genepac employees. He’s the one who told us about you.”
“Exactly.” Darius sucked in his breath. “He told you about the bomb just in time for you to see it blow, but not in time to stop it. It was all staged so he could get you people on his side. And it worked. Please, I know you don’t want to kill an innocent man.” He winced and gritted his teeth. “My God, how can you people endure this kind of pain?”
Dani lowered her weapon, thinking through everything that had happened over the last few days. It was so hard to figure it all out. Darius looked pathetic on the floor, bleeding, coughing and writhing in pain. He wasn’t going anywhere. Before she killed him, she had to ask herself, was there any chance he was telling the truth? Obviously, she didn’t want to kill an innocent man. There was still the chance that one of her neighbors had heard the gunshot and called the police, but it wasn’t much of a chance. The people living in this building weren’t really the cop-calling type.
If he was wounded as badly as he appeared to be, she needed to make sure he didn’t bleed out while she worked out her next move.
She knelt beside him and unbuttoned his shirt, then pushed it over his left shoulder to inspect the wound. The process of moving his arm caused a fresh release of blood. It also caused him to cry out like somebody had held his hand on a hot burner.
“Look,” she said firmly, “you need to be quiet or I’m going to have to gag you.”
He looked at her helplessly with tears in his eyes. She checked the wound more carefully. The bullet had nicked the deltoid muscle, cutting the shoulder open and going right on past. It was only a flesh wound. She could see the bullet hole in the wall by the bathroom doorway. She used the collar of his shirt to dab away some of the blood to see how deep it was. Darius groaned and his head slumped forward. He’d passed out. She’d never seen a man react this way to a flesh wound. She took advantage of his unconscious state to wrap one of her new shirts tightly around the wound to stop the bleeding. Then she put towels on the bed and managed to wrestle Darius onto it, laying him on his back. He moaned, but remained unconscious. Dani cuffed his right wrist to the bedframe just in case. Exhausted by the effort, she sat in a chair and watched him for several minutes, trying to figure out what to do next. Her headache had worsened, pounding through her thoughts and making it hard to focus.
After a few minutes, Darius woke up, yanking on his right arm until he saw that he was handcuffed. He met Dani’s gaze and watched her steadily, clearly relieved that she was no longer pointing a gun at him.
“How bad is my injury?” he asked.
“It’s not serious.”
“It hurts a lot.”
“So I figured, based on your hollering and screaming. I’ve got nothing here for it.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Dani sat back and crossed her legs at the ankles. “I haven’t decided.” She leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
“Are you feeling okay?”
She thought it was a strange question, considering his condition. “I’ve got a rotten headache.”
“That’s the first symptom.”
“Of the plague?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t have the plague. It’s the first symptom of temporal asynchrony. By tomorrow, you’ll be nauseated and dizzy. Then you’ll get steadily weaker and you won’t be able to eat without vomiting.”
She regarded him momentarily before stating, “So it’s true. I can’t live here.”
“Neither of us can live here. That much of what they told you is true.”
She glanced over to where his transporter beacon lay against the far wall.
“You’re sick because you have temporal asynchrony,” she stated, testing the idea in her mind.
“Yes. I haven’t got much time left. But I don’t care about that. All I care about is that those beans get back so they can be cultivated and a cure for the plague can be produced.”
“This doesn’t make sense. Why would Swenson want to stop you from doing that? Why would anybody want to prevent a cure for a deadly disease?”
“I myself wouldn’t have believed it of her, but she’s willing to see this mission fail just to get rid of me. She doesn’t care about the beans. That’s not her interest. Bryan went after them to prevent me from getting to them, that’s all. He was trying to delay me here so he’d have time to find and kill me. And he very nearly succeeded.”
“Why does Swenson want you dead?”
“I’ve been asking myself that. We’ve had our differences. She disagrees with me about how to use time travel to the best advantage of humanity. I think she may be more interested in how to use it to her best advantage. Obviously, I can’t condone that. She may be in charge of the lab, but I’m the one who controls the machine.” His voice wavered weakly and he spoke with labored breaths. “I didn’t think she would kill me for it, but I was obviously wrong. With me out of the way, she’ll have no opposition. Controlling a time machine gives a person a lot of power.”
“Did you invent the time machine?”
He nodded. “I did, along with a team of talented scientists. Gavin Hale for one. His betrayal is hard to take, I have to say. I thought of him almost like a son. Pamela must have promised him something impossible to turn down. Maybe a dinosaur.” He chuckled involuntarily, then began to cough. When he recovered, he said, “It was my lifelong dream to conquer time travel. I’ve studied temporal mechanics all my life, and I’ve been lucky to get the resources and people to actually make it happen. After all the experiments, all of the failed prototypes, we finally had a machine that seemed to work. We sent inanimate objects back at first. Then a couple of mice.” His eyes lit up, and for the moment he seemed to have forgotten his physical distress. “They survived. Then at last we sent a human. There were a few bumps along the road, but eventually we worked them out and we were ready for an actual mission. This is what we came up with, a cure for a deadly virus. I knew it would be difficult. There are so many hazards involved in time travel. Look what’s happened to you, for example, and Frank Bryan.”
“But you killed Bryan.”
“I know. What was I supposed to do? It was self-defense. He shot at me. He would have killed me. You don’t know how surprised I was at that. And how heartbroken. He and I were colleagues, friends. I’ve been sick about it ever since. I never thought I would take another man’s life. It was like a nightmare. It happened so fast and seemed so unreal.” He lowered his head sadly.
He seemed sincere. It was easy to believe him. Dani had been told repeatedly that Darius was very shrewd, that he could spin a tale that would keep her guessing, that she couldn’t believe anything he said, that she mustn’t listen to his lies. “Shoot first and ask questions later.” Had she received those instructions so he couldn’t manipulate her or because Swenson had not wanted her to hear what he had to say?
“When I started on this mission,” Darius said, his voice soft, “I certainly didn’t expect to be running for my life away from my own people. And I never imagined anyone would die. We’ve made many advancements in the field, but it’s still very risky, and I’m not sure it ever will be any easier. I’m beginning to think it’s too risky. This seemed like such a simple mission. Just go back, grab some beans and return. Save the world.” He shook his head wearily. “I was naïve.”
“Why would Swenson go to such elaborate means if all she wanted was to kill you? Since you both live in the future, why not just poison your coffee or something?”
He looked momentarily puzzled, then seemed to understand. “Things are different in the future. You can’t just go around poisoning people and get away with it. Murder is virtually unknown.”
“Really? Human nature has evolved that far in only two hundred years?”
He looked like he might have laughed if he wasn’t in such distress. “It’s not evolution. It’s technology. There are many types of deterrents. Various kinds of monitoring. And there’s the brain implant.”
“Brain implant?” Dani leaned forward.
“It serves a number of useful purposes. It’s like the chips you have in your pets except that it’s always active. For example, nobody can ever get lost because it transmits your GPS location. It also monitors your vital signs and sends an alert if something’s not right. It allows you to communicate with certain types of machines. Well, you have that now, don’t you? Implants that allow disabled people to move machines with their thoughts.”
“I guess,” Dani mumbled, though she didn’t know much about such things.
“It also diminishes pain. It blocks pain receptors in the brain. Not entirely, of course. Without pain, we wouldn’t know when to pull our hand out of the fire. But it reduces the intensity.”
“Seriously? Then why are you carrying on so much over a little flesh wound?”
“The implant doesn’t function here. It’s off the grid. I find it very disconcerting being so out of touch with information. And I’ve never felt this kind of pain in my life. I can’t believe you live with this.”
“Maybe we get used to it.”
“Maybe. That’s probably right. You learn biofeedback techniques to cope.”
“Let’s get back to the implant. Does that have anything to do with the little gadgets everybody wears over their ears?”
“They’re related. The little gadget is a computer. We call it iJinn. It does basically everything your smartphone does. Communication, clock, calculator, maps, access to the World Wide Web. It’s hands-free, though. The iJinn gets its instructions directly from the implant in your brain.”
Dani remembered Dr. Swenson telling her what time it was without consulting a clock. “That’s freaky.”
“You think so? Add up everything you have right now in this time and you already have all the technology. Most of it is even already applied in some field. In my time, it’s gone to the masses.”
“What does any of that have to do with what you said, that people can’t commit murder?”
“If the implant detects brain chemistry related to extreme aggression, it blocks the neurotransmitters that send signals to the body’s motor functions. Essentially, it creates a state of temporary paralysis.”
“Wow,” Dani said. “That’s gotta make police work some kind of different!”
Darius nodded. “That’s why there was no way Swenson could kill me. Even if she could overcome the effects of her implant, killing someone and getting away with it would never happen in the middle of a modern, networked city. There are too many eyes on everything. Too many audit trails.”
“But you killed Bryan. And he tried to kill you.”
“Remember, the implant gets no signal here in your time. That’s why it was such a good plan they came up with. Pamela knew that the past was the only place she could get rid of me. When I didn’t return, it would have been simple for Bryan to tell a story about how I was lost on the mission. I got hit by a car or fell off a building or something. There would be no way to disprove his story, nor would anybody think to question it. Nobody would suspect a crime.”
When Darius broke into another coughing fit, Dani roused herself and filled a glass of water, bringing it to him. She held it to his lips and helped him take a few sips, then she stood over him, observing his miserable, fragile-looking body.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said.
“I wish there was some way I could prove to you I’m telling the truth. If you can’t trust me, take the beans and return with them yourself. Don’t give them to Swenson, that’s all I ask. I’ll give you the name and address of my associate, Dr. Cortazzi. If you get the beans to him, he’ll know what to do.”
“But you’ll die here.”
“I will. But if Cortazzi gets the beans, countless lives will be saved and everything I’ve worked for will be achieved.” Darius closed his eyes and rested his head on the pillow. Within a few minutes, he appeared to be asleep.
Dani began to worry that she’d shot the good guy. She wished there was some way to know for sure that he was telling the truth. Swenson had warned her not to let him get inside her head. Just buying a little time, she told herself. Time to think.
She remembered the envelope he had handed her. She retrieved it from the table and opened it to find a piece of paper inside, a yellowed page from a magazine. She read through it quickly. It was technical, mostly beyond Dani’s understanding, but she got the idea. The article described the medicinal effects of the black beetle bean against certain viral infections in humans. The author was Gail Littleton. The date in the page header was thirteen months into the future. Even if this artifact were authentic, it didn’t prove Darius was telling the truth. It didn’t prove he wanted to save the beans rather than destroy them. Still, regarding truth and lies, she had heard her share of the latter from Swenson too.
Dani phoned Gail Littleton, who answered immediately. “Dani, it’s so nice to hear from you. Is everything all right? Is your girlfriend safe?”
Dani had completely forgotten how she’d flown out of Gail’s house this afternoon. “Yes, she’s safe. But I need your help. I know you don’t practice medicine, but you do have a medical degree, don’t you? You’re a medical doctor?”
“Yes. Why? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, but I have a situation. Could you come over and bring a medical bag? With some strong painkiller, if you can. I’m really in a bind. Please don’t ask any questions on the phone and don’t talk to anyone. When you get here, I’ll explain everything. Can you come?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
Dani gave her careful directions, then hung up, hoping Gail could help explain what was going on here.
She retrieved the transporter beacon from the floor and stood with it in her palm. An easy twist and she would be thrown two hundred years into the future. Maybe. If that wasn’t a lie too. She remembered being unable to find her own device earlier. She searched through all the compartments of her duty belt, then searched all of her clothing. I can’t lose that thing, she reminded herself, trying to remain calm. She began a systematic search of the rooms, under furniture and in drawers. There wasn’t much to search, as she had so few belongings. But the beacon was nowhere to be found.
Dani was tired, sweaty and hungry. Though there was nothing she could do about her hunger right now, she could freshen up. She showered quickly, leaving the door open to the main room in case Gail arrived, and put on the outfit she’d intended to wear on her second date with Gemma. When she came out of the bathroom, she heard Darius mumbling. He was still sleeping, dreaming.
About fifty minutes after her call, Gail showed up wearing a long overcoat and carrying a black bag. She looked relieved when Dani opened the door. “I was afraid I’d gotten the address wrong,” she said. “This place is a little…seedy. Sorry, but…this isn’t where you live, is it?”
Dani shut the door behind her. “Not normally. Thank you for coming.”
Gail moved toward the bed as she sloughed her coat off her shoulders. “It’s him!” She spun around to face Dani.
“Yes. I shot him. I was hoping you could patch him up and give him something for the pain.”
Gail took a few tentative steps toward Darius, who did not stir. Apparently realizing she was safe, the doctor removed Dani’s makeshift bandage to visually examine the shoulder. “Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?”
“Gail, that’s such a long story,” Dani replied, feeling exhausted. “Let’s talk about that later. Right now, can you do something for him?”
Gail pulled on a pair of gloves and set to work cleaning and disinfecting Darius’s wound. “Doesn’t look bad. I’ll sew it up and he should be okay.”
Dani returned to her chair and fell into it.
“Where are the beans?” Gail asked.
“They’re right here. Safe and sound. He said he wanted to preserve them, not destroy them. He said he isn’t the one who blew up Genepac.”
“Then who did?”
“Agent Bryan. So he says. The man he killed.”
“But then why have you got him cuffed to the bed.”
“I haven’t decided if he’s telling the truth.”
Gail worked unhurriedly while Darius remained in a state of semi-consciousness. Dani felt herself nodding off too and had to jerk herself back into wakefulness more than once.
“Can you get me a glass of water?” Gail asked.
Rousing herself, Dani went to the kitchen. When she returned with the water, Darius’s eyes were half open. Gail took the mug, then held a pill up in front of his eyes. “I want you to swallow this,” she said. “It will help with the pain.”
He opened his mouth and she put the pill on his tongue, then poured the water slowly after it. After he had swallowed the pill, she dipped a cloth in the water and wiped it across his forehead, cleaning off beads of perspiration.
