The Continuum, page 4
part #1 of Place in Time Series
“Yes, she’s here. No, no, I haven’t told her anything yet. Where? A car? Oh… okay. Yes, sir. Goodbye.”
He hangs up and turns to me. “We need to go.”
“Okay.” His actions are highly irregular, even for him, but Dr. Wells is the kind of person who always knows what he’s doing, so I shrug and follow him out the back door.
When the door opens into the bright afternoon sun, a gust of wind blows through the back alley, carrying with it an unfamiliar, musky cologne. I turn and find myself face-to-face with the largest man I’ve ever seen. He wears an expensive black pinstripe suit, dark shades, and—blending into the shadows of his suit jacket—a military-grade assault rifle.
A scream lodges in my throat, but when Dr. Wells grabs my arm, I swallow it back down, where it rages silently in my chest. The man points us to a dark luxury car with tinted windows.
“What’s going on here?” I ask.
The large man opens the vehicle’s back door.
“Get in,” he says, his voice a deep growl. Dr. Wells complies and gestures for me to follow. With a glare at the giant, I slide into the car’s impeccably clean back seat. It smells brand-new.
“Does this have to do with 1912?” I ask.
Dr. Wells shakes his head but remains stone-silent. The trembling of his hands speaks volumes, though.
The door slams shut, startling me. The dark-suited man climbs in the front seat, and the whole vehicle dips with his weight. He twists around, holding out two cups of clear liquid.
“Drink this.” It’s a command, not a question.
“Are you crazy?” I reach for the door handle. It flips back and forth uselessly; I’ve been thwarted by the child lock.
Dr. Wells takes both cups. He looks at me with an expression that’s a mix of fear and concern, but what worries me the most is that he seems to know what’s going on. He places one container in my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“What is it?”
“It’s okay, Elise,” he says, his voice barely audible. With a deliberate look into the rearview mirror, he turns up one of the cups, swallowing the entire contents in one swig.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask. He nods, but his expression doesn’t reassure me. It seems I’m without any options.
I throw back the contents of the cup. It’s flavorless, except for a slight metallic aftertaste.
I turn to Dr. Wells, but he’s no longer awake. Panicked, I touch his neck, searching for a pulse. His heart beats in a calm, steady rhythm.
My mind tells me to fight, but my body moves so slowly. Out the window, the world blurs like watercolors. It reminds me of being in a Jump, and the sense of panic melts away.
I close my eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
April 12, 2012
I wake disoriented. My mind snaps back to reality quickly, but my body still feels sluggish.
Once my eyes adjust to the light, I’m strangely disappointed. I don’t know what I expected to see—a dungeon with torture chambers? aliens in glass tubes?—but the plain oak table and six cheap office chairs surrounding it are underwhelming and aren’t at all in line with the way my heart is pounding. Who kidnaps someone to take them to an office?
With a glance behind me, I quickly adjust my assessment. Our guard is even taller and wider than the driver who picked us up, and his intimidation factor easily makes up for what the room itself lacks. He has at least half a dozen guns and knives strapped to his belt. His eyes shift toward me and I jerk my head down to stare at my toes.
Dr. Wells and I sit side by side, waiting for whatever event this tense preamble has foreshadowed. Suddenly, the guard at the door holds one hand up to his earpiece and says, “Excellent, sir.”
When the door opens, a pair of tall, slim, dark-suited men emerges from the hallway. The guards dwarf them physically, but there’s something about their movements and the precise angles at which they hold themselves that makes them even more unnerving.
At first glance, they look identical in their Ray-Bans, close-cropped haircuts, and tailored suits, but on closer observation, I realize they’re probably not even related. Slight differences in their facial structures jump out—one has a larger nose, the other’s hair has a reddish undertone—and I store these in my memory, hoarding them like weapons of defense.
At the sight of the pair, Dr. Wells tenses. In a smooth, coordinated movement, the twins-who-aren’t-really-twins simultaneously take their identical seats across from us. The eerie effect sends a shiver down my spine.
“Good afternoon, Miss Morley,” the one on the left—Big Nose—says, nodding toward me. “I’m Agent Baker.”
“I’m Agent Butcher,” the other says in the same deep drone.
I raise my eyebrows, amused despite myself. “Butcher… Baker… what happened to the candlestick maker?”
The agents glare at me, or at least I imagine they do, since I can’t see their eyes behind their dark glasses. The identical, severe pursing of their lips warns me they have no intention of allowing anyone to lighten the mood. I open my mouth to apologize, to reassure them that it was a joke, and a really bad one at that, probably just brought on by nerves, when Baker says, “That’s why we called you in. Agent Chandler has gone AWOL, and you are going to Retrieve him for us.”
“What?”
“That’s ‘absent without leave,’” Butcher says, disdain puncturing each syllable.
“I know what AWOL means. Dr. Wells? What is all this?”
Dr. Wells stares at his hands, refusing to meet my eye.
Butcher interrupts before Dr. Wells can respond. “In recent years, our organization has been very interested in your agency’s work.”
“You’ve been watching us?”
“We are currently involved in using your employer’s technology to serve a greater purpose but have encountered some complications with Agent Chandler’s disappearance. We’ve been following your cases and believe you are exactly the person we need for this job.”
Dr. Wells continues staring into his lap like a kindergarten troublemaker waiting for his parents in the principal’s office. What’s he gotten us into?
Baker picks up where his counterpart left off. “We’ve known about the technology at the Place in Time Travel Agency for some time now. In fact, we had your employer here build us our own technology to aid us in our goals.”
“And… what goals might those be?” I ask, surprised again at my own boldness. Instead of hiding under the table like I should be or working to maintain my normally level-headed demeanor, I seem to be blurting out the first things that pop into my head.
Get it together, Elise.
“We aid in the protection of citizens,” Butcher says.
“Wait…” A realization hits me. “So you’re… government?”
I’m usually pretty good at reading people, but their sunglasses are throwing me off. I feel a sudden urge to rip them off their faces, but the giant with the cache of weapons behind me grunts and I remind myself to behave.
“We can neither confirm nor deny our association with the United States government,” Baker says. “You’re here on a need-to-know basis.”
“We’ll put this simply, in the interest of time.” The corner of Butcher’s mouth twitches at his own joke. “Baker, Chandler, and I are in the same line of work as your organization. Only instead of using this profound scientific knowledge for commercial tourism, risking the lives of all of us in the present for the whims of the one percent—” He spits this part out, his disdain apparent even from behind his dark shades. “—we use it for the greater good of all people.
“Your employer has an arrangement with us. We allow you to continue running your little sideshow—assuming you keep a close watch on your clients—in exchange for the technology and expertise that allows us to ensure the safety of our future.”
“But that’s impossible,” I say. “Dr. Wells has proven it’s impossible to Jump forward.”
Butcher and Baker smirk, an eerily identical twitch that only tugs at one corner of their mouths. Some distracted part of my brain registers that Baker has a dimple where Butcher does not, but the gravity of the situation quickly jerks me back.
Dr. Wells lied to us. He lied to me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him squirming uncomfortably. If it were anyone else, I’d be furious, but Dr. Wells is the one person in the world I can’t ever seem to get mad at. My heart immediately jumps to his defense. He must have had some good reason for keeping this a secret.
“We investigate major plans of action—legislative bills, large corporate dealings, and the like—using the devices that Dr. Wells has built us. We Jump forward to see what effect each action will have on the future. From there, we can guide the path of events, either by blocking legislation, buying out companies, or advising major players in the proceedings to protect our future. We operate under the pseudonym of TUB: the Trial Undertaking Bureau.”
That explains the Butcher, Baker, and Chandler pun. Who knew covert government agencies had a sense of humor?
“So you’re telling me there are alternate future timelines? Parallel universes? Everett’s many-worlds interpretation?”
As a Retriever, my priority has always been to ensure the integrity of our present timeline, to make sure clients don’t alter history. I’ve always operated on the assumption that the way things had happened were the way things were supposed to happen, and any alterations would be… well, wrong, and potentially dangerous. Travel to the future was never a variable I had considered, and now my mind spins, trying to sort through the implications.
“The choices we make today will affect the future, and it’s our duty to determine which of those choices is best.”
“What about democracy? Free will?” What would the freedom-loving citizens of America think if they knew the biggest decisions in our country are being determined by this bizarre precognition?
“We operate within the system. We’re simply using the available resources to ensure we make the most educated decisions possible.”
I have a bad taste in my mouth and could really use a drink of water… not to mention a few hours of sleep to let this all sink in. “Can I use the restroom?”
My request is met with a moment of silence before Butcher concedes. The giant guides me down the hall to a washroom and stands at attention outside the door. The tiny, sterile bathroom feels as claustrophobic as the conference room was, but at least I’ve distanced myself from the agents’ suffocating presence.
I wave my phone in the air but can’t get a signal in this concrete bunker. I climb up onto the edge of the sink, holding the phone as high as I can, hoping for even one bar. Blast it. Maybe I should’ve upgraded to one of those fancy new smart phones.
Not that there’s anyone I could call, anyway. My only relative, an estranged brother, knows nothing about my work, and any of the other Retrievers would love an opportunity to Jump guns-a-blazing into the future on a secret rescue mission. Aside from that, any acquaintances—neighbors, high school friends, and the like—I’ve purposely kept at an arm’s length for years, a necessity when spending so much time in the past.
My work with PITTA has created such distance between me and everyone else in my life that I don’t have anyone to turn to. I hop down and splash my face with cold water, willing myself to stop wallowing and focus on the task at hand.
Back in the conference room, I know what’s coming: the details of my mission. Before agreeing to anything, though, I need to talk to Dr. Wells. Even his evasiveness today and his past lies don’t negate the fact he’s the only confidante I have right now. When I make the request to speak with him alone, the agents nod knowingly, as if they’ve been expecting it.
“So… Doc?” I ask. “What’s really going on?”
When he speaks, his words are slow and deliberate. “Elise, I know this isn’t what I hired you for. Jumping forward is different, and I honestly don’t know how this is all going to work out.” His brow furrows and he looks as if he’s about to cry. This confrontation would be a whole lot easier if I could bring myself to be mad at him.
I reach out to squeeze his arm, to reassure him I don’t think any less of him, although I wonder if perhaps I should. As I lean in, he reaches his arm around me and pulls me in for a full-on bear hug. My muscles tense.
“The room’s bugged,” he whispers directly into my ear.
I pull away, and as he meets my eye I’m stricken by the terror in his gaze. He clears his throat. “We must cooperate with TUB. They’ve provided us with certain protections in the past from people with more dangerous motives.”
“You mean terrorists?”
“Terrorists… and overambitious men who want to alter the timeline. TUB also helps us take care of clients who become… problematic.”
He looks at me pointedly.
Joe’s response to my question earlier today pops into my head: “Same as always… blacklisted, taken care of. He won’t cause trouble for us again.”
I’ve been incredibly, stupidly naïve. How much of what PITTA does has been hidden from me?
Butcher and Baker burst through the door, urging me to sit so we can continue our debriefing. I resist, frozen in place, and the guard shoves me into the seat. For the rest of the discussion, he hovers next to me, his rifle’s muzzle gleaming in my peripheral vision.
“Are you ready to cooperate?”
I have no choice. It doesn’t matter how much I believe in democracy and free will and the Constitutional rights of the people and the Star-Spangled Banner and warm apple pie and all of those inspiring, patriotic American sentiments. The decisions have already been made, the deeds already done, and I’m helplessly ensnared in the middle of it all.
It’s just a Retrieval, I tell myself, just like any other.
Maybe Agent Chandler has just broken or misplaced his Wormhole. Maybe he’s waiting out there in the future, anxious to return to the present. After it’s all over, then I can worry about all the moral implications. For now, I need to survive this.
“Fine,” I say. “Tell me about this job.”
CHAPTER NINE:
April 12, 2012
After the debriefing, I’m taken to a holding room. It wasn’t designed for comfort. Between the ash-gray concrete walls and the armed guard outside the metal door, I’m trapped. There’s a bed in one corner and a counter with a sink and a mini fridge in the other. A small adjacent room has been furnished with a toilet and a claw-footed tub. It was obviously added as an afterthought, as it’s the only thing in the entire area that looks new or clean.
The whole thing reminds me of a castle dungeon. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to a 13th century prison I recently had to break into on a Retrieval. The client had attracted the attention of a married nobleman and was imprisoned for witchcraft by his jealous wife. Fortunately, the guard had been willing to let me in for a small bribe, and from there, we Extracted away.
I wish I could Extract my way out of here.
The florescent lights emit an incessant buzz, and I still can’t get any signal on my cell phone. I sigh. Might as well make the best of it.
I grab a soda from the fridge—not my caffeine of choice, but it’ll do—and lower myself into a steaming-hot bath, eager to wash off the grimy feeling that’s been clinging to me since setting foot in this building. After drying and throwing my clothes on, I slip into the other room and find, much to my delight, that someone’s left me a backpack.
It contains not only the hard copies of the case files I was promised (they must not trust me with a computer) but also a new toothbrush, a single-serve packet of instant coffee, a carton of Easy Mac, and an MP3 player full of ‘90s grunge music. Despite my travels, there’s a special place in my heart for my own generation’s music, and somehow, the distorted guitar riffs and emotionally charged angst always remind me of home.
“Thank you, Dr. Wells,” I mutter.
I put the headphones on and run the water until it’s as hot as I can get it, then concoct the instant coffee in a flimsy paper cup. The room lacks a table, so I balance the drink between my knees and sit on the edge of the bed, pulling out the bulky file with “CLASSIFIED” printed on it in thick, red ink. I scoff. If I were in charge of top secret info, I’d mark it “BILLS” or “TAXES” or “INVENTORY OF AUNT MARGE’S CERAMIC FIGURINES” instead. You mark it as “CLASSIFIED” and of course people are going to want to peek.
The top page includes a photograph, the caption confirming that it’s an image of Agent Chandler. He looks nothing at all like Agents Butcher and Baker. He’s smiling, for one, and his unruly hair is blonde. I wonder if this was taken before he became an agent and if when he signed on he had to cut and dye his hair and vow to hide behind those infernal sunglasses for the rest of his life. Seems like the kind of thing this humorless organization would do.
The file has been marked up rather brutally, and no amount of squinting allows me to decipher what was printed underneath the dark, black slashes. There’s obviously a lot that TUB doesn’t want me to know. What I’m left with are mere fragments, scraps and hints of the previous life of Agent Chandler: an Ivy League alumnus with master’s degrees in computer science and cyber security, as well as a PhD from MIT. He was hired by TUB about two years ago and isn’t much older than I am.
I check my watch and curse the time. I’m going to need more caffeine. The pile of information on my lap is simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming, and my coffee has disappeared. I can’t remember the last time I felt so ill-equipped, though it was probably back in high school, back when pop quizzes involved simpler things, like verb conjugations or algebra.
What I can decipher between the obscured lines reveals that Agent Chandler has been in the year 2112 for six months. Even looking at the dates on the page makes my stomach lurch.
Chandler originally arrived in October 2111 to research an immigration issue and was supposed to check in every two months. He checked back in December, but missed February’s scheduled Extraction. I gnaw a fingernail, a habit I gave up long ago but which still resurfaces when I’m particularly stressed. TUB should’ve sent a Retriever months ago. With the length of time he’s been gone, anything could’ve happened to him. He could be anywhere. He might even be dead. Why have they waited so long to send someone?
