Scatter, p.34
Scatter, page 34
Then SCIF door closed and locked and my brain shot belatedly to not having told Jude which SCIF we were in. I could have given him directions. All he had was Jonquist’s name. What if the SCIF was somehow booked in someone else’s name? How many SCIFs were there in the Capitol? How long would it take Poussaint to convince the Capitol Police to let him enter with his weapons and people? How long before they could find this SCIF? How were they going to break in through what seemed like a very thick door if the guard outside refused to help them?
Mind whirring, I finally let myself finally go beyond the ketamine twins to look at the three people in the room who had stood up on the left side of the long table at our arrival—Things One and Two, and the champagne-fluted face of Dr. Uwe Bent.
Bent’s small mouth and sparkling blue eyes looked no different than he had the last time. No extra knowledge that might have come from Xiaobo telling him about the early text in this timeline. The early ‘wake up.’
As Wenling stepped forward to take charge of the negotiations, though, Bent ignored her and nodded to me. “Dr. Traine.”
“Uwe.” I refused to give respect to a man who’d abducted twelve people for the ‘crime’ of being gifted with the ability to time travel. Not to mention his willingness to have me abducted, assaulted, drugged, lectured, and forcibly jumped back in time over and over again. He deserved whatever Poussaint did to him.
Wenling’s eyes shot back and forth between us. “We have done this before.”
Bent inclined his head. “Three times.”
I nodded, even though my twisted-up insides released the tiniest bit. Either Xiaobo himself had lost count, or he’d deliberately left out our last adventure, which had been Timeline Four. Did that help me? I wasn’t sure. But it was…something.
My clear play here, now that I admitted to what Bent already knew, was to keep quiet about everything else. Because no one but me knew the substance of what had happened in this room or in Jonquist’s hideaway office. I hadn’t told Xiaobo, so he couldn’t have passed it on. And I think only Wenling, at this point, had any inkling how my getting dragged back in time by Xiaobo actually worked in terms of when I remembered things.
Maybe Bent had discovered the mechanism in experiments with his other subjects. He’d certainly tried to persuade me he knew much more about time travel than I did.
But did he really?
He himself had admitted the only people he’d run across with the extraordinary Traine memory were the Traines. Kenny, Kansas, and me. And Kenny was unreliable.
Know what you want.
Save my siblings. Take down SCATTER.
Know what you are able to do.
Still learning, but 1) I now know stuff about time travel that Bent doesn’t; 2) I remember more about what’s gone on, what’s actually been said and shared and threatened and done, than anyone else in this room right now; and 3) I have actual friends who are going to bring the hell of the CIA down on your head, Bent.
Know what you are willing to do.
Almost anything, as long as I can stay sane, and keep my soul together…
I met Bent’s gaze and realized he’d been watching me. I think everyone in the room had been watching me space out for a moment there. Bent was smiling. That couldn’t be good.
He nodded. “The fact you’re not verbally or physically attacking me or anyone else right now means you’re hiding something.”
“Does it?”
“Everyone has their tells, Dr. Traine. Xiaobo, for instance, gets extra belligerent with me when he’s lying. Is this only the fourth time we’ve gone through this, for example, or the sixteenth?”
He waited. I tried to keep my face blank.
Finally, he waved his hand and walked around the table to get closer to me. He sat back against the edge of it. “Regardless, I assume I’ve given you the spiel about how, despite your ability to jump back in time, I can forcibly abduct you and make you join me in our work at SCATTER, though I’d much prefer…”
He launched into the spiel he assumed I’d heard before and he was right. I had. There were a few twists in it having to do with some of the other time travelers who’d join them involuntarily and become enthusiastic participants.
Blah blah.
I let a part of my memory store his words for analysis later while I looked around the room, trying to feel why the tension was different from my previous times here. Was it just me riding a knife edge of tension, waiting for Poussaint and his troops to arrive? Or was it the distinct tension in Thing One and Thing Two’s stances? Or the fact Bent had brought the ketamine twins into the SCIF this time and positioned them on either side of me? Why had he done that? He couldn’t have known how effective they’d been the last time. He couldn’t remember the other timelines. The only person who could was Xiaobo, who was never in the Capitol itself, so…
Unless Thing One or Two were…
I looked at them closely, first catching the gaze of the South Asian female, who’d subtly worked herself around the table to stand within an arm’s length of Wenling, then the gaze of her white male partner, who’d moved to get closer to Colonel Jian. Neither of the two showed any indication of ghost vision or memories of how things had happened here before.
They could just be good actors, of course, except that everything I’d so far learned of time traveling from myself, my brother, and Xiaobo indicated it pushed the time traveler toward mental instability. Whether it was the trauma that triggered the ability as it did with me, or the identity crises inherent in jumping between different versions of yourself, I was pretty sure I’d catch indications of it in any time traveler I met.
These two didn’t have it, any more than the ketamine twins, Bent, Jonquist, Colonel Jian, or Wenling.
So why…?
“Which of course all went to…” Bent let his voice trail off as he looked at his watch and smiled at me. He pushed off the table edge and walked back around to stand at the end, lord of his domain.
“We’re well past ten minutes. You jump back to redo the timeline now and Natalya or Pasha will jab some ketamine into you. They’re familiar with the indicators of a jump and I’ve found the surprise of a needle, along with the quick action of the ketamine, makes multiple jumps very difficult.”
All blood drained in a cold rush from my head, neck, and torso like cold water rushing down. He was wrong on this point with regards to me, as I’d demonstrated two timelines ago, but that wasn’t what chilled me. It was him knowing about my ten-minute limit. And about me doing multiple jumps. Was that common among his other subjects or had he somehow found out from…Wenling? Lena?
More interesting was his wording. “Redo” the timeline. Not “create a new” timeline, but “redo,” like there was only one. That didn’t match what he’d rubbed in my face back in Jonquist’s office…
I reviewed that earlier conversation and this time saw him about to take back the suggestion that timelines continued. He’d only continued because he’d seen how it hurt me.
He didn’t know! He was throwing out theories, but he didn’t know!
Maybe it was because he needed to believe he was reshaping our world with his work, versus just making multiple messed up copies of it. Otherwise, he’d know that the only people who really benefited from time travel were the time travelers, who could keep creating new time streams until they found one they wanted to stick with. And that only worked if the time travelers were narcissistic, since their actions, like all of mine, left behind significantly more violence, terror, and trauma in the world than before they jumped. For their alternate selves, if no one else.
Bent laughed at me. “I can almost see your struggles with paradox written on your face. Another reason to join us. You have so much to learn from me.”
“Do I?”
He tilted his head, slightly unsettled by my tone. “Ah, right. The whole reason you let yourself be brought here after somehow remembering your other timestreams early in the day. How? I’m assuming Xiaobo. Part of his lying to me this morning. Enough of that. He’ll be punished.”
“No!” Wenling cried out.
She tried to leap at Bent, only to find her arms suddenly pinned behind her and her legs blocked by Thing One, the South Asian woman, who was much stronger and faster than she looked. Even faster and stronger than Wenling, who struggled but finally settled, fuming, biding her time.
As she did, the scuffle between Colonel Jian, who’d tried to leap to her aid, was only now settling. On the ground, Thing Two grunted and sweated to keep the seventy-year-old former PLA officer under him. Bent waited until Thing Two had established control and hauled Colonel Jian back to his feet, the old man’s face now scuffed and bloody.
Bent turned back to me.
“As I was about to tell you, Andre Poussaint and his tiny CIA hit squad will not be joining us today. Instead, we have other guests.”
At that, he waved his hand and Senator Jonquist banged twice on the inside of the SCIF door. The door opened and three men in Capitol Police uniforms I assumed were fake, brandishing pistols I assumed were real, escorted a small line of people slowly into the room.
Leading them was Kansas, shuffling slowly, looking as bad as I she had when I’d managed to get her “released” in my last timeline. Her square, bony face sagged like a skeleton’s, like she hadn’t eaten or slept in many days. Dark circles ringed her eyes and her hair fell over them in loose, coarse clumps. But her head came up as she passed Wenling and she jerked to a halt.
“Lizbeth?” she croaked, her tongue cracked and dry.
Wenling looked at her and gave a fleeting smile. “Shades of girlfriends past.”
Kansas’ mouth sagged open, and she looked around the room. Saw me. Saw Bent. Saw all the strong-arming going on. I could almost see things snap together in her amazing brain, starved and sleep denied or not. Even as I finally put together Kansas’ always-unspoken sexual preference and the year she found what she’d thought was love then lost it, only to now realize what it might have been instead—just a way for ‘Lizbeth, AKA Wenling, to get information that might lead her to SCATTER.
Kansas nodded at Wenling and tried to gather enough moisture to spit in her face, but finally just shook her head and let herself get shoved onward by the uniformed goon.
Following her, scampering erratically, looking around the room in terror, came my office manager, Megan, of all people.
Then, terribly, Lena entered, looking stricken and tearful.
And finally, his head hanging so low I couldn’t see his eyes, trudged Jude.
These were pretty much all the people I cared about most in the world, other than Kenny.
The SCIF door slammed closed. I heard the snicking of locks.
Thing One muscled Wenling past the newcomers and marched her to stand at the far end of the table on the right-hand side. The South Asian woman stayed behind her, still holding her in what looked like a painful arm lock.
The “Capitol Officers” then guided Kansas and the others in to line up beside Wenling along the right side of the table. Except for Jude, who hung back.
Before I could say anything, the ketamine twins, Natalya and Pasha, shoved me to stand in the middle of the left side of the table, facing the women across from me.
Megan looked at me, wide-eyed. “J-Jackson? What’s going on? They came to get me a day after we spoke and said you needed me in Washington. You’d paid for the ticket. Everything. Then they locked me in a room…and…”
“It’ll be alright,” I said. “Just hang in there.” I tried to sound calm and reassuring, but my head was buzzing with fight-or-flight adrenaline and questions yelling so loudly that I could hardly look at these people in front of me. These pieces of my heart.
And Jude…?
Bent had spun his backside off the table and was now leaning forward onto it, supported by his splayed fingers in a kind of aggressive version of finger steepling that screamed, I am in control here.
His focus was all on me.
“These women were all backups, you understand? The original plan was one of simple persuasion, showing you how joining SCATTER would fill your intellectual thirst to understand your condition, your moral desire to make the world a better place, and your emotional need to have someone teach you how to better manage your power and life.”
“You did a crap job,” I said.
Bent nodded his head. “Perhaps. Yes. The Senator, the surroundings, the bully tactics. Poor choices in retrospect.”
“You think?”
“Though, to be fair, we didn’t yet know who, exactly, we were dealing with. We’d only just started accessing your computer records and didn’t wholly believe all the wonderful things your friend Dr. Spiegelman told us about you.”
“Jude?” It almost stuck in my throat as another set of puzzle pieces started to fall together for me. I looked over at where he stood against a far wall, his head still down, unable to look at me. His pudgy arms, that had held and steadied me through so many emotional rollercoasters in university and beyond, crossed over each other on his soft chest like he could somehow hold in what he’d done.
Bent cleared his throat to draw my attention back to himself. “For me, of course, this is our first meeting. I was disinclined to credit you with the kind of brilliance and determination that Dr. Spiegelman warned me you possessed. I assumed those were of the academic kind, and that your escape from the Demon Monks was mostly due to luck and the assistance of your brother.
“But then you called your university buddy almost an hour before you were to come here and I realized that in the same way you managed to charm the pants of two of the smartest women I’ve ever met, Dr. Lena Cortland and Ms. Zhou Wenling, you might well have charmed Xiaobo to betray me, to somehow contact you when there was no need.
“Hence, we proceeded with plan B. Bring these women here, including your cute little puppy of an office drone. Now we’re ready to seriously ask you to join us of your own free will. Fun, yes?”
“Fun how?”
“It’s a game. I’m going to ask you again to join the SCATTER team voluntarily, with no reservations, and every time you say no, I will shoot one of them.”
As he reached into a rear waist holster to bring up what looked like Glock, Jude’s head finally shot up. “That wasn’t the plan! You can’t! There’s no greater good in—”
Bent aimed his gun straight at Jude’s head and Jude shut up.
Fighting both an urge to trigger a series of jumpbacks that could reset this nightmare and an urge to leap across the corner of the table to grab Bent by his long, scrawny neck, I asked “How did you get Lena here?”
Bent raised his eyebrows. “You mean did we abduct her like we did your brother and sister? No. Jude just asked. Told her you needed her. Love makes people very easy to manipulate.”
“Love?” I turned my face back to catch Lena looking at me, her eyes filled with tears of confirmation. Which somehow changed…everything.
“Jackson, don’t!” Kansas cried out from beside Wenling. “You cannot give in to this man! You have no idea what he’d capable of! What he’s planning!”
Wenling used the distraction to kick at Thing One’s shins and twist herself free. Then she threw herself onto the table, rolling across the middle of it so fast she was on the floor to my left before Bent had fully processed it.
His gun came up, aiming to the right of my head, then my left, as I felt Wenling ducking right and left behind me. A second later, her hands grabbed the back of my suit jacket, shoved me forward toward Bent, and literally ran up my legs and back to throw herself at him with an ungodly screech, jacketed elbows high like two swords about to slash down on either side of Bent’s neck.
He shot her while she was still going up. BOOM! BOOM!
Smoke from the muzzle met red puffs from the chest of her blouse.
She thumped face down on the table top.
Lay still.
40
Choices
In the silence after the bang and thump of Wenling’s body, a wild commotion broke out near SCIF door.
Colonel Jian’s face had contorted in grief and he was moaning and shouting in Chinese, his voice so blurred with emotion that I could hardly distinguish the individual sounds.
But rather than let the old man run to Wenling, Bent signaled Thing Two, and the big-boned man clubbed the back of Colonel Jian’s head so hard the old man fell forward and lay still.
Like Wenling lay still.
Blood oozed out around her chest, dark brownish-red and viscous, making a small lake on the table top.
In the renewed silence, Bent released the clip from his Glock—ssslick!—examined it, and shoved it back in. Kuh-snik! “Get rid of the body,” he snapped.
Thing One, who’d failed to restrain Wenling, now jumped onto the table, ran across it, scooped the up the bloody corpse as if it weighed nothing, and ran with it to where, having knocked again for the SCIF door to be unlocked, Jonquist held it open for her.
When she’d exited into what I assumed was now a protected hallway, given all the sights of abuse and murder it was hosting, the SCIF door closed again.
Bent called for attention. “Heyup!”
He aimed the barrel of the gun at Megan’s face.
Her skin went white and she shut her eyes, her lips have open and trembling.
“So what do you say, Jackson Traine? That’s one down. Will you voluntarily join SCATTER and participate in our experiments, following my directions with positive intent and an open mind? Or do we make it two?”
I stared at him. My entire body felt empty, a battered husk. I was just a consciousness floating above it, taking in the man’s high forehead and blue eyes that had not a whit of human compassion within them. I knew why he’d chosen Megan first. He deemed her the furthest from the center of my heart. He figured I might need at least one more dead body to persuade me and he thought he could kill Megan to shake me up, but not push me so far as to mentally freeze of go berserk on him.
Kansas would be next. Not because I loved her less than my own life, but because I was sure Bent had heard my reaction to him saying Lena loved me. Boom! He figured he could blow away Kansas and I’d still do anything at all to save Lena.
