Scout joined her, strangely dissociated from the man’s pain. He’d come here to kill an innocent girl; he’d already killed her not-so-innocent mother.

  Fate. He’d made his own.

  “If you could get to a hospital right now, you might live,” Neeley continued over the sound of the instructor calling out commands among the growing noises of New York City coming awake: horns blaring, a constant hum of traffic.

  The man blinked, as if that could convey a message. He reached under his jacket, but Scout was faster, taking his gun before he could get to it.

  “He’s still insanely angry,” Scout said. “Even more than before. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “That’s why he’s going to die,” Neeley said.

  “Fear,” Scout said. “Fear is now spreading inside him.”

  “Too late,” Neeley said. She put her boot on his chest then began to apply pressure, jostling the jagged edges of the ribs she’d shattered. “The liver is unique among all the organs. It gets blood via two routes, the systemic and the hepatic. I’d say at least one of them has been severed already, but”—She adjusted her boot and pushed down—“if both go, you bleed out in a matter of minutes. All internally.”

  The man’s eyes were wide, a look Neeley had seen many times before. They were almost always surprised when the end came, even when they brought it upon themselves.

  Scout looked away, through the trees. The exercise group was winding down. Roland stood between, a rock of humanity, and Scout understood why Neeley was with him. Safety. Roland emanated safety. Nothing would get through him as long as he stood between.

  She looked back, and Neeley was also staring at Roland.

  “Who was Gant?” Scout asked.

  Neeley’s eyes widened. “What?”

  Scout’s Satphone vibrated in her pocket, and a moment later, the familiar ringtone of Assembly for the team Zevoned: Lawyers, Guns and Money.

  Roland had been called, too, and was coming toward them.

  Neeley stepped away from the dying man. She pulled a piece of paper out of an inside pocket then handed it to Scout. “Courtesy of Hannah and the Cellar.” But her eyes were on Roland, and there was a worried crease at their corners.

  Neeley’s own Satphone vibrated in her pocket, a particular cadence as unique to Neeley as being Zevoned was to Roland.

  Hannah needed her. Now.

  The Possibility Palace

  Where? Can’t tell you. When? Can’t tell you.

  “She had a point,” Eagle said.

  “Who?” Moms asked. She thumbed through her worn Nightstalker Protocol, lost in thought.

  “Lara,” Eagle said. “We’ve been reacting, jumping through a hoop for every mission. I’ve been remiss in my duties. I should have started a Time Patrol Protocol already. We should have anticipated having new personnel to brief. And we—”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.” Moms shut the Protocol. “We’ll start one. I don’t think Lara is here simply to be a member of the Team.”

  “Why not?” Eagle asked.

  “She’s too different. She’s like Scout, but she’s not Scout. Whatever she did to fix the problem from Scout’s mission was different. I wonder if Dane even knows what he’s dealing with.” She focused back on Eagle. “I think you and I need to get a handle on what the heck has been going on. Let’s treat it like a regular military op and get a feel for the overall scenario.”

  Eagle went to the freestanding blackboard in one corner of the team room, where Dane chalked in their mission after they were alerted. He wrote two words together on the blackboard, his block letters crisp and precise. Then he outlined them. Next to that, he wrote another word, then outlined it.

  Eagle drew a line between the two blocks.

  “The war’s bigger than that,” Moms said. “We’re part of our timeline. The Shadow is another timeline. Or several others.”

  Eagle nodded. “Yes. But let’s keep it as simple as possible, because it’s going to get crowded on this Op-Board pretty fast. Right now, we’re fighting the Shadow. That’s our bottom line.”

  “All right,” Moms agreed. “Simpler is always better.” She smiled. “We have to keep Roland’s attention.” From anyone else, the words about their teammate might have been negative, but Moms had nothing but admiration for the team’s weapons man and consummate warrior.

  “Let’s focus on the Shadow,” Eagle said. “Who, and what, have we run into from it?” He started writing even before Moms could give him the first answer, so she waited, letting him list them.

  When he was done, he turned to her. “What have I missed?”

  “The Spartan mercenaries,” Moms said, knowing he hadn’t missed it, but was including her. “Roland and Ivar both ran into them. From a timeline that pays off the Shadow with mercs.”

  Eagle added that in, then stood back to look at the updated board.

  Eagle pointed. “I’m including the woman leading the team you wiped out in pre-history under Diana.”

  “I agree,” Moms said. “The ones she led were probably Spartans, too, but I didn’t get a chance to chat with any of them. Talking to Roland, I think the woman I saw with the bow was from the same place as the Diana he ran into. The Spartan merc he met said she was in charge. Remember, that Spartan’s mission was to kill Roland. And Scout thinks the two guys who came after her on her first mission were probably Spartans. Not Legion, or she wouldn’t have made it back.”

  Eagle indicated the third level down. “The genetically engineered Monsters the Shadow sends are all spoken of in legend. Yeti, Grendel, Kraken, Chimera, and the like. We know they’re real. Not legend.” He rapped a knuckle on the word above the Monsters: Legion. “These worry me the most. Trained killers. Assassins. Are we sure they’re Shadow? They targeted Pandora as much as Scout.”

  Moms sighed. “I think it’s safe to assume they’re from the Shadow. Pandora indicated that, not that we can trust her. But you just brought up where it gets complicated.”

  Eagle nodded. “That’s why I’m drawing it out.” He wrote a new entry on the board: GAIA: Pandora.

  “You’re naming Pandora’s timeline Gaia?” Moms asked.

  “For lack of anything else.” Eagle folded his arms. “Scout said Pandora’s daughter, Pyrrha, was killed by one of the Legion during the Independence Day mission. Doc debriefed that Thyia, her granddaughter, seemed to be on a recon mission when he ran into her in Philadelphia, wanting to see what he would do with the conundrum of two Declarations in 1776. Can we assume that Gaia-slash-Pandora are enemies of the Shadow? Does that make them our allies?”

  “We have to assume,” Moms said, “that we’re allies when it’s convenient to them. If not, well... You know what Nada would say.”

  “‘Just tell me how to kill it.’”

  Moms turned to him. “You’re the team sergeant now, Eagle. Maybe we need to move away from Nada–Yaddas?”

  “Maybe we need to remember them,” Eagle countered. “Nada didn’t originate most of them. They’re classics of military experience and knowledge. But he boiled things down to the essence. I’m the team sergeant, and it’s my job to use whatever is best for the team. I’ll add to them when I come up with something new, but Nada covered a lot of ground with his wisdom. He earned it the hard way.”

  They were silent for a moment as they glanced at the name carved into the rectangular table in the middle of the room.

  Moms turned back to the board, hiding her face from Eagle, blinking surprising tears out of her eyes. “All right. We know there can be an infinite number of timelines. One of them isn’t an ally, but is definitely an enemy of the Shadow. So let’s sort those out, which means we subordinate Gaia to that grouping.”

  “You’re right,” Eagle agreed. He erased his last entry, then wrote OTHER TIMELINES on the board and began to make the connections and additions.

  “I’m not sure if Legion and Diana are other timelines,” Eagle said. “But the Jagers are, although it’s likely their timeline has been wiped out by now.”

  “They hunt Grendels,” Moms said, “but also hate the Shadow. So any we run into, we can ally with.”

  “We run into any, it means there are Grendels and Aglaecas there.” Eagle stepped back. “There’s more to all this.”

  Moms smiled. “What happened to simple?”

  “You were right,” Eagle said. “More wild cards, variables. Doc and Ivar are having a hell of time trying to sort the missions out because of that.”

  “Fates,” Moms said.

  “Yeah.” Eagle chalked them in above. “They’re the ones I want to know about. Hell, Ivar said one of them brought a kid back to life. Pandora said they’re more powerful than anything. That they come before all else.”

  “Gods?” Moms asked.

  “Oh, no,” Eagle said. “Let’s not go down that rabbit hole. Roland was already acting freaky. We put God on the board, and he’ll lose it. The Fates seem above the war between us and the Shadow, except when they intervene. Which seems inconsistent. Why would they allow anything in our timeline to be changed if it was already written?”

  “I’ve got a headache,” Moms said. “But there are answers in all this that we need to figure out.”

  The chalk hit the board as Eagle added three more ‘variables. ’ When he was done, he stepped back. “Miss anything?”

  “There may be some duplication,” Moms said. “What if the Fates are the Ones Before? Dane says they send messages every so often.”

  Eagle shrugged. “We haven’t had any direct contact with the Ones Before. The Space Between is the link between timelines, which also means we could use it to access to the Shadow’s timeline if we’re ever able to mount an attack.” He pointed the chalk at the top left. “Atlantis. That’s where all this started. Where all the timelines started splintering. When it was destroyed.”

  “But I went before Atlantis’s time on the D-Day mission,” Moms said. “Maybe this all started in pre-history.”

  “Perhaps,” Eagle allowed.

  Moms picked up a piece of chalk. She drew a circle around everything. “My question is this: why us? Why our world? Why is the Shadow intent on destroying us? How do we pose a threat to it? When we figure that out, then all the pieces will fall into place.”

  “When—” Eagle began, but the door opened, and one of the analysts stuck her head in. “I am to inform you: Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

  * * * * *

  Blood is a different red. Different from the red on the cards in the tests, the simple ones to see if my eyes are working right, and I just want to tell the fellow sitting over there, my eyes aren’t my problem. But this red all about the kitchen is different than the card red. Darker. More depth—although, can color have depth?

  I know I’m dreaming, but that doesn’t mean much. Other than the blood splattered all about, it’s not a nightmare yet, although this doesn’t look like it’s going in a good direction.

  They rarely do.

  I’d like to wake up. Seems if you know you’re dreaming, you know you’re asleep, then you should be able to wake up. But I can’t. That’s an odd thing about me. Among many others. I hear voices on the other side of the door. A man and a woman. Doctor Jenkins and the night nurse? Not the Russians. No accents. But in a dream, who knows? Do people have accents in dreams?

  Yeah. I’ve heard accents before in dreams.

  The questions can’t erase the blood. It’s a kitchen. Our kitchen. My family’s kitchen. I bet that serial killer from that T.V. show, another crazy person like me—except he’s a made-up person and I’m a real person, at least I think I am—what was his name? Dexter, that was his name. He’d make sense of the splatter, the patterns, because that’s how he hid who he was. In plain sight. Pretty smart. Even though he was made-up. His eyes worked okay. But it was a show, and when you make things up, sometimes they’re smarter than reality.

  I’m really, really afraid this isn’t a show, even if it is a dream.

  I want to wake up. I look up as if awake is some place above my head, and if I could just reach it and pull myself to consciousness, then everything would be fine, and there would be no blood in the kitchen. No blood trail leading to the door out of the kitchen.

  Because I don’t want to see what’s on the other side of that door.

  Not once more.

  I’m lying on a very hard, made-by-the-lowest-bidder bed. Cheap, scratchy sheets. Pitted acoustic tile in the ceiling. Stained.

  Dreaming, but I can see where I am. But am I there? Or is this a dream on top of the dream that was sliding into nightmare?

  There’s someone with me. In the room, in the kitchen, whichever, both. Watching. Just watching.

  Someone here with me, where the awake is.

  I hate when they just watch. They give nothing. Can’t grab onto just watching. No dream-line out.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  That was real. A dream-line. I grab.

  “Lara, are you all right?”

  I snatch onto the words. More than the words, there’s depth to the words, like there’s depth to the red in blood. I work on my eyelids, to see beyond what I’m seeing.

  “Lara?”

  I can hear my eyelids raise. I know you’re not supposed to hear that, but I can. Maybe others like me can, too. But I’m really scared there aren’t any others like me.

  I’m even more scared there are.

  “You were having a bad dream.”

  Lara opened her eyes to Moms leaning over her. Lara was completely disoriented, not sure where she was, her eyes darting about as she jolted upright.

  Moms put a gentle hand on Lara’s shoulder. “Just a bad dream. You’re in the team quarters. In the Possibility Palace. You’re safe.”

  “Was there blood?” Lara asked, blinking hard, giving her head a couple of shakes.

  “Maybe in your dreams,” Moms said.

  Lara looked at the corner. The man with the black eyeball was sitting there. “Enjoy yourself?” Lara asked.

  “This is my team’s bunkroom,” Moms said to him. “Don’t ever come in here again.”

  Frasier stood. “Were you having sweet dreams?” he asked Lara.

  “You were in them,” Lara said. “Except your head was chopped off. But you still kept talking. How does that work?”

  “Funny girl,” Frasier said.

  “Go.” Moms voice was cold, threatening.

  Frasier left, the door closing a little too hard behind him.

  Lara reached down and felt the bed, the sheets. “This is nicer than the bed I was just in.”

  Moms smiled. “Must have been a crappy bed, ‘cause this isn’t that great.” The smile faded. “We’ve been Zevoned.”

  “‘Zevoned?’” Lara swung her legs over, putting her feet on the tile floor. Another anchor in reality.

  “A tradition from who we were before the Time Patrol,” Moms said. “Ever since Roland got his name from Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, we started using Warren Zevon’s songs. Lawyers, Guns and Money means there’s a mission.” She headed for the door to the corridor leading to the team room. “Everyone’s on their way here. Come on. I’ll show you the way.”

  Lara got out of bed.

  Just cause I can’t remember doesn’t mean I’m that Lara.

  * * * * *

  Dane had six folders stacked in front of him and was reading a seventh as Frasier entered the room. The psychologist took the empty chair facing a stack of seven similar folders. “What day?”

  “Nine-Eleven.” Dane pointed at the sheet of paper on top of the folders, his attention on whatever he was reading.

  Frasier picked up the paper. “I figured this date would come up. Biggest one in the last couple of decades.”

  “Which means that particular mission has the least variance,” Dane said, looking up. “The closer a year is, the less it can spread.”

  “But it’s a significant day in world history,” Frasier said. “It’s completely changed our world. Our timeline. Imagine if it hadn’t happened.”

  Dane stared at Frasier. “That’s something I don’t do. Because it did happen, and we’re still here. We still exist.”

  Frasier backtracked. “Of course. I understand.”

  “I don’t need you to understand,” Dane said. “I need you to accept, with all of your being, that the mission of the Time Patrol is to keep history intact. No matter how difficult that might be.”

  “Yes, sir.” A sheen of sweat lined Frasier’s forehead.

  Dane looked back down at the mission sheet. “Let’s get to work. We’ll start with the most recent.”

  Frasier frowned. “Russia? I don’t get it. Why not New York City? But it also says a fifth plane on Nine-Eleven?”

  “Another secret,” Dane said. “Like the second Israeli team at Entebbe. There was a fifth plane that disappeared that day.”

  “What happened to it? Who took it?”

  “You never heard of it,” Dane answered. “Only a handful of people knew about it then and know about it to this day.”

  “What plane?” Frasier asked. “It says the Barents Sea, which is north of Russia.”

  “An An-225,” Dane said. “Still the largest plane in the world. Only one was supposedly made. That one is in service with the Ukraine and available for contract work. But there were two built. On 11 September 2001, while the one everyone knows about was doing something else noteworthy, the second was on a very special mission, and it disappeared. We still don’t know what happened to it. It appears the Shadow wants to change that.” He stopped the discussion by picking up a file then scrawling a name on the mission sheet. “Eagle takes the Two Thousand and One mission. He’s our pilot.”

  Frasier raised an eyebrow above his prosthetic eye, but didn’t say anything further.

  Dane tapped the second file. “The one that concerns me is Eighteen-Fifty-Seven.”

  Frasier looked down at the mission sheet. “Why?”

  “Moms has a direct connection to it.”

 

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