A swift and sudden exit, p.21
A Swift and Sudden Exit, page 21
“I don’t know what the fuck that means.”
Grant was gone for the day, called away to train more hopeful cases than Zera. Byrd had taken it upon himself to continue the session.
He poked her hip with the end of his crutch. “Your hips tell me where you’re going long before you actually strike.”
Zera rubbed the forming bruise. “No they don’t.”
“Yes, they do. ‘Cause your core is weak.” He flipped the crutch around and shoved her shoulder with the opposite end. The force, stronger than anticipated, shifted her balance to her back foot.
“My core isn’t weak, you just waited until I was too tired to fight back,” she said as she straightened.
“Look, I’m just trying to help.” He held up his hands in innocence.
The gesture sent a lance of irritation through Zera. “I know you are, and I appreciate it, but—”
“But nothing.” He limped closer. “You couldn’t get what we needed because you couldn’t defend yourself. And if you can’t get what we need, they’re gonna shut down the program, and if they shut down the program, we’re not gonna be able to counteract the effects of the Storm.”
“Why are you freaking out about this? Kissi told Vylek we got enough data to convince the higher ups of one more trip. We can figure it out.” In reality, Zera couldn’t muster the energy to argue, especially because he was right. If Vylek ever found out Zera willfully ignored orders, trouble wouldn’t even begin to describe her situation.
“‘Cause I need more than one trip. I can’t have you hogging all the glory.” The trademark grin was back, his anxious moment forgotten. He stomped his booted foot, this time managing not to grimace. “If I could just get this stupid thing off I’d be fine.”
“If you don’t quit messing with it, you’ll have it on forever,” Zera said. She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. The ends reached into her eyes now, but who had time for a haircut when she was jumping through time and trying to fix the world?
“Nah, I’ll cut it off myself before that happens,” Byrd said. “Come on, let’s go again.”
Zera’s handheld lit up on the bench, and she walked over to find a message from Kissi expressing, in no uncertain terms, that she needed to return to their bunk immediately.
“Can’t, I’m done for the day.” She tossed the handheld into her bag and picked it up.
Byrd raised an eyebrow. “What, your boyfriend message you or something?”
“Nope.” Zera rolled her eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“But I’m bored now, Zazzera,” he whined.
“Not my problem!”
She walked at max speed to her bunk and slipped through the door so fast her bag caught on the handle and nearly choked her. No sympathy came from Kissi despite the sound Zera made—she only had eyes for the three screens in front of her.
“What’s up?” Zera rubbed her sore neck.
Kissi pointed to the wall. “I found them.”
A newspaper clipping from an 1884 Boston newspaper hung on the wall at the end of the display. Despite the poor quality of the photo, it was obvious the seven people in it had been through a harrowing ordeal. Six men stood in a line, their cheeks dark and sunken and their clothes hanging loose and heavy on their thin bodies, but it was the seventh person who caught Zera’s eye.
Though she was skinnier than ever and her hair was a tangled rat nest atop her head, it was still very clearly Katherine. If Zera needed proof Katherine was exactly as she said, it was here.
“Most of the article is unreadable, but I was able to clean up the image enough to get those guys’ faces.” Kissi brought up different windows with photos of the men, most of which came from the morgue. “There’s a lot of death under mysterious circumstances here.”
“Dammit, so Katherine wasn’t able to save them.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Zera moved Kissi’s abandoned prosthesis closer to her and sank into the other chair. “But you know where they died?”
“Where and when.” Kissi pulled up names, dates, and locations on another screen. All the things Katherine would need to track down her friends. Only one didn’t have a death date.
“William made it all the way?” She scanned the screens until she found his picture. He was a gruff-looking man, probably in his late fifties, with a thick gray beard and dark eyes. No wonder Katherine suspected him—he looked terrifying.
“As far as I can tell. I searched through John Does and every other database I could find, but there’s no record of him after 1969. No death certificate, but no proof of life either. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Not hard to do in 1969 I bet.”
“Not really, no. But harder to do as time went on. If we assume he’s like Katherine, then he somehow found a way to stay under the radar until the 2040 Storm.”
“Or he’s buried in a backyard somewhere.”
Kissi paused, then turned. “Do you think Katherine killed him?”
“I don’t know,” Zera said too quickly. “I mean, she killed Robert. And she implied she’s killed people before. But it sounded like it was all in self defense. The last one for sure was.”
But just because the most recent death was self defense didn’t mean the previous ones—or later ones—were. A sliver of doubt crept into the back of Zera’s mind, casting a shadow on her understanding of Katherine. She’d survived through times where women had little power in society. For someone who supposedly wanted to die, what had she done to ensure her survival?
“Guess you’ll just have to ask her next time you see her.” Kissi showed her a different list with the names and locations of Katherine’s companions. Most of them landed in places on their map where Kissi had found spikes in the data.
“Maybe…”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
Kissi glared. “So you weren’t gonna say, ‘maybe I can help her save some of her friends’?”
“No.” Zera turned her attention back to the wall so she wouldn’t have to look Kissi in the eye.
“Say it, then,” Kissi said.
“Say what?”
“Look me in my face and say you’re not gonna try and change something in history.”
Zera met her gaze and said, “I’m not gonna try and change something in history.”
“Thank you, because that would be dumb.”
“Katherine will do the changing.”
“God dammit, Zazzera.” Kissi dropped her head into her hands.
“Okay, you’re right,” Zera said. “I can’t change anything. That’s what we’ve been told this whole time.”
“Exactly,” Kissi said. “You’ve already gone way off course. You buried a body, for God’s sake.”
“Okay, that was one time.” And she still had nightmares about it. “Katherine was a fun distraction, but I’ll focus this time. For real.”
“Thank you.”
“Does this mean you don’t want me to get Katherine’s blood anymore?”
Kissi pursed her lips. The question was a low blow, rooted entirely in Zera’s own selfishness. She didn’t want to leave Katherine behind after everything. Despite the conversation, she still hoped somehow, someway she could save her from her fate in Central Park.
Zera pulled the ring out from under her shirt collar and slid it back and forth along the chain, if only to keep her hands busy.
“No. You shouldn’t,” Kissi said eventually. Her voice had no waver, no sign she was trying to talk herself out of it.
“But if I got it anyway, what then?”
“Then you would be a supremely shitty friend.”
“Shitty enough that you wouldn’t forgive me?” Zera was needling, she knew it. But she couldn’t save Katherine without Kissi’s help.
Kissi glared. “Zazzera, listen to me. You’re a grown woman, I’m not gonna tell you how bad an idea it is. You have to think about everyone you’re saving, instead of focusing on the one you can’t.”
Zera’s cheeks burned and she started sweating anew. She wanted to fight back, but only because Kissi was entirely right. “Yeah, of course. My bad.”
“I get it, it’s probably super hard to let people go. But if you come back without data again?” Kissi shook her head. “I don’t know, Zera. I don’t know if I can get over that.”
Zera swallowed and nodded. “Right, you’re right.”
Kissi tapped one of the tablets. “Katherine’s in Chicago, by the way. For your next trip.”
Somehow, Zera managed to feel more guilty. “Look, Kissi—”
“I’m telling you this because I trust you’ll do things right this time.” Kissi looked her full in the face now, deadly serious. “Don’t break that trust.”
Zera nodded again. Vylek’s reprimand was rough, yes, but nothing like Kissi’s. It was time she remembered her priorities—and her real mission.
But she could do both. She had to do both. She just had to figure out how.
Zera anticipated a lot more colors when hitting the ‘80s, but she was severely disappointed.
Chicago, at first glance, was just another city. The attire was closer to what Zera was used to seeing back in the modern day, and while the cars looked like they belonged in a museum, they crowded the streets like any other traffic-fueled empire. The hustle and bustle felt more normal than all her previous travels combined.
It took her more than three hours to stand upright after she landed in the back of a massive shipping center that was supposed to be Millennium Park. Only problem was, Millennium Park didn’t exist yet. Gravel, dirt, and other questionable oddities stuck to her, but at least her sick and the bit of blood she coughed up would go relatively unnoticed in the area.
There was a pull in her gut like in St. Louis, but it wasn’t nearly as strong this time, and Zera either figured it was a figment of her imagination, or her insides were giving up. Men, women, and children stared as she passed them on the busy sidewalk, but whether it was due to her clothes, her hair, or just a sense of wrong about her, she didn’t know.
As the sun sank, the street lights and store fronts flickered to life. She had one day before the storm would hit, which meant she had one day to find Katherine and get her blood, as well as the data she needed to keep the program running. Next time—if she managed a next time—she and Katherine needed to set up a place and time so there wasn’t any disconnect.
Downtown came to life after dark, and with no sign of Katherine, Zera followed the noise until she found the busiest area and set up shop at a bar. Best case scenario, she could garner attention from somebody and get them to pay for her meal, maybe even give her a place to stay. Worst case scenario, she could dine and dash and find a nice park bench to hold her for the night. The women in the bar absolutely sparkled, free from their work days and chattering away, whereas tired men tried to muster the courage to talk to them.
Another night, in another time, Zera would slide right up to one of the vibrant ladies or flirty guys and start a conversation. But she needed to stay focused, not get distracted by the pretty people.
“Why so lonely?” A man sat on the stool next to her, laying his hat on the bar top. His courage wasn’t short, though he certainly was.
“‘Lonely’?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.
The man grinned, apparently taking her question as a flirtation. “Well, since you’re sitting up here all alone,” he said, with an honest-to-gods wink thrown her way. It was quickly followed by holding his hands up in an innocent gesture. “Unless you’re waiting for your fella. I’m not trying to be a homewrecker or anything.”
Zera opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again. “No, no I’m not waiting on a—a fella,” she said, trying the word out and discovering she hated it. “Just a…friend of mine. But I’m not sure she’s coming out tonight.”
“Wanna phone her? I got a spare quarter you can borrow.” Coins jingled as he rummaged in his pocket, but Zera waved him away.
“No thank you, I don’t know her number. She didn’t know I was coming to town tonight, it was kind of a surprise?” She didn’t mean to end the sentence as a question, but the longer the conversation went, the more nervous it made her.
The man smiled. “From outta town, huh? Whereabouts?”
“Oh, uh, um…”
He mistook her struggle to lie for hesitancy to share personal information, and shook his head quickly, sticking out a hand.
“I apologize, where are my manners? The name’s Hank, Hank Rockler.”
Hank Rockler was an eager man, either trying to impress Zera and take her on a date, or something a little less formal. Turns out, people were people no matter what decade, and while navigating 1980 Chicago would be a challenge, Zera never had any trouble when it came to chatting with a guy at a bar. Memories of her early twenties reminded her she’d certainly done more for less before. This would be cake.
Following this realization, it was easy to talk to Hank. He carried most of the conversation, and when he graced her with a question, she usually just told him a variation of the truth. After all, what was he going to do, look her up on social media? New York was a distant, imaginary land to Hank, home to rude people and those damn Yankees. Baseball was a vague memory from the time before the 2040 Storm, but Zera managed enough bullshit to keep the conversation going long enough for a meal.
“Well, whaddya think, Zera?” Crowds packed the streets now, and music drifted from somewhere a few doors down. Hank carefully wiped his mouth and tossed the napkin onto his plate. His hands were smooth, Zera noticed. No hard labor. “Wanna hoof it?”
“Hoof it where?” she asked. Even if she needed a place to stay for the night, Hank didn’t seem like the type of guy to make such a leap so fast, and it made her throw up her guard again.
“I know a little speakeasy just north of here. Plays some great music, and has, uh, a little bit of stronger pop if that’s something you’re interested in.”
Real alcohol? Not crappy, questionable shit from her future?
“Fuck yeah Hank, let’s hoof it.”
This response startled Hank, who looked about ready to bolt out of the restaurant, potential lay be damned.
“I mean, uh, that sounds great. I’m not the best dancer, though,” she said. The archive on base held many videos of the popular dances, but after a disastrous attempt which ended with Zera’s wrist nearly broken and Kissi sporting a large bruise on her forehead, they’d decided to forgo any further dance lessons.
“That’s alright, I can teach ya,” Hank said. He held out a hand and gave her the brightest smile possible. There was an innocence about him that made Zera think he was just a little too young for her, but she was in Chicago in the ‘80s, Katherine was nowhere in sight, and she had nothing better to do.
“Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said, taking his hand.
After all the times Katherine had taken Zera’s elbow, it felt weird holding onto someone else now. But Zera took it in stride, letting Hank lead her down the busy street. The guy only came up to her eyes, even with the hat, giving her enough clearance to scout the area. Time after time she made eye contact with men scanning, just like she was. She was used to watching a deadly landscape, but this was post-Vietnam, and the war that trained them was much deadlier.
“Lookin’ for your friend?” Hank sounded so much like the old timey announcers, and every time he spoke Zera had to remind herself not to laugh.
“Yeah, I know it’s a long shot, but…” She shrugged and tried to appear unassuming.
“Hey, if you feel lucky, you get lucky.” As the words left his mouth, his smile dropped, and his eyes went wide. “Not that—I mean, I’m not saying anything of the sort about you, Miss Zera, you—you’re a respectable and modest lady—”
“Holy shit, Hank, it’s cool,” Zera said, his chagrin making the muscles of her neck spasm. “I know what you meant.”
“Oh. Okay good, thank God.” A nervous laugh bubbled from his chest, and Zera very nearly patted him on his awkward head.
“Hank, you don’t ask a lot of girls out, huh?”
“What? Of course I do. I mean, well, not a lot, I’m not that type of guy, but I get my fair share of dates. Women like me.” Red colored his cheeks, and he was so tense her fingers were starting to lose feeling from his arm squeezing. A gentle wiggle reminded him of their placement, and he tried to relax.
“I’m not judging,” she said. “I’m just curious.” Back in the day, Zera knew what it was like to be so nervous around a pretty woman that words never quite worked right, but something about Hank’s nerves was a little different. “What do you do for work?”
“Me? Oh, I’m a lawyer. Just got accepted to the bar and started at McCormick last week.” He didn’t bother being humble, but at least the brag came across cute.
“Look at you, big lawyer man,” she said, easily the dumbest response she had.
Hank ate it up. “Thank you. That law school thing was no joke, but now I’m rolling in the dough. I mean, at least I will be, once my paycheck comes through.”
“They like to take their time with those, huh?”
“Oh, this way.”
Hank tugged her down an alley, and immediately her hackles raised. Inspired by Katherine, she’d strapped a knife to her thigh and had a few more weeks of combat training, but would that be enough? Hank didn’t seem like the type to either start a fight or end one, but looks could be deceiving.
Her sense of alert deflated as they stopped at a green cellar door. Hank made a show of looking this way and that, ensuring the coast was clear before knocking a three-tap pattern. One half of the cellar door opened on silent hinges, the shadow preventing her from seeing the person’s face.
“Password?”
Hank lowered his voice. “Easy on the breeze.”
This was, without a doubt, the most ridiculous thing Zera had ever been a part of. And she was loving it.
A man opened the cellar door all the way and slid the cover off a lantern, giving them just enough light to navigate the steep, dark stairs into the ground. Hank was very kind and held her hand the whole way, but Zera was used to tougher climbs while also sporting an environment suit. Stairs were easy.
