Authors: JL Bryan
As Logan parked by the front entrance, lights swooped out from the dense woods and either side of the house, racing silently toward them. They were the three-wheeled motorbikes used by Providence Security in the future, with small artillery mounted ahead of the handlebars. The drivers wore black armor and face shields, and they displayed the golden eye-in-triangle Providence logo on their armor and their vehicles.
The bikes surrounded Logan's car, and the security agents dismounted.
"What the hell is this?" Logan asked.
"Providence Security agents." Raven opened her backpack. "They're searching for me. Now they've found me."
"Oh, these are my guys?"
"They're from the future. God knows what they want, but they won't hurt you. I may have to take you hostage."
"Step out of the vehicle with your hands on your head," one of the agents instructed. His voice crackled from an amplifier in his armor.
Raven pressed her pistol to Logan's head. "Open your door slowly and get out. I'll be right behind you."
"Wait, but I'm just playing along, right? You're not really taking me hostage. Right?" Logan asked.
"That depends on you, doesn't it?" Raven didn't trust him anymore. After losing both Kari and Audra, she was ready to kill him and his entire family if there was any chance of even slightly improving the future.
He opened the door, and she slid out with him, the mouth of her pistol pressed against the base of his skull, ready to incinerate his brain if he turned against her. She pressed herself to his back.
"Release the Secretary-General immediately!" a security agent commanded.
"He's mine," Raven said. "We're going to see Henry Sheffield. You're not stopping us."
"You are not in control of this situation," the agent replied. "Drop your weapon and step away from the Secretary-General, and you will not be harmed."
"Who says I'm not in control? I've got your dear leader by the balls right now. I have no problem blowing his head off if you get in my way."
"Uh, Riley?" Logan whispered. "You're kidding, right?"
"Shut up!" she snapped. "We're walking through the front door. Nobody moves. Understand? Everyone understand my simple orders?"
Something long and sharp pierced Raven's neck. She touched the small metal barb that had buried itself in her skin. A shockdart. Her fingertip found the tiny round battery pack, but before she had time to yank it loose, the dart injected her with thousands of volts of electricity.
Raven twisted and jerked on her feet as the voltage raced through her, then she crashed to the cold flagstones, her body writhing in agony. She felt one of her front teeth chip against stone, and then she blacked out.
* * *
When she awoke, she kept her eyes closed and tried to give no sign of stirring. She sat in a cold, hard chair with her wrists handcuffed to the arms. She heard and smelled a crackling fire and felt warm air drifting over her skin. She was not wearing any clothes at all. Even her bracelet with her time-travel device was gone.
She didn't hear any voices in the room, so she opened her eyes. She found herself staring across a dark walnut desk at Dr. Henry Sheffield, whose unblinking eyes examined her through his glasses. He wore a charcoal suit with a black tie, though it was the middle of the night.
Behind him stood two Providence Security agents from the future. They'd collapsed their helmets, but still wore black data goggles that gave them a bug-like appearance as they watched her. Both men held their plasma rifles trained on her, ready to kill her at a moment's notice.
"She awakens," Henry said. They were in his home office, lit only by the enormous gas-log fireplace across from his desk, which was sealed behind a clear panel and gave no warmth. A glass cabinet stood against the wall behind him. Raven saw her reflection in a dark, narrow window, naked in front of these men and cuffed to a heavy ironwood chair.
"Where's Logan?" she asked.
"He's safe. We don't need him here for our purposes." Henry leaned back and tapped his frog-like lips, looking over her naked body. "The two gentlemen behind me, and their two other cohorts, arrived here Sunday night. They had the most incredible story to tell, but you know most of it already, don't you?" Henry winked at her.
"Where are my clothes?" she asked.
"A clever girl like you knows how to conceal weapons on herself. I thought it would be best to leave nothing concealed. For security purposes, of course." He gave her a lecherous grin. "Your body is hideous, nothing but scars and burns. I enjoy looking at it."
"Let me go, Henry."
"I would say it's obvious I don't intend to do that." Henry turned in his chair and illuminated the dark glass cabinet behind him. On the glass shelves inside, lovingly displayed on black pillows under jeweler's lamps, lay an assortment of odd, rusty implements that looked like the tools of an insane surgeon. "These are antiques I've collected over the years. They're authentic. Each one was actually used in a medieval prison at one time or another. This clamp is for ripping out tongues by the root. This handy iron screw was multipurpose. It could be twisted into the eye, the ear, or the rectum, on an as-needed basis, I suppose. Did you know the torturers would send an itemized bill to the prisoner's family? Four pence for ripping out his toenails with an red-hot claw, six pence for crushing his testicles with a hammer. Isn't that funny?"
Raven looked at him stoically.
"Would you care for a closer look at my collection?" he asked gently. He opened the glass door on the side.
"No."
He hesitated, then swiveled back toward her, leaving the glass door to the torture instruments open.
"Good," he said, smiling again. "It would be a shame to dirty them with your blood."
"What do you want, Henry?"
"I sent myself a gift by way of these gentlemen," Henry said. "A gift from my future self. And it's not even my birthday."
Henry set a steel-edged data cube like Raven's onto his desk. He activated it, and a blue sphere appeared in the air above, orbited by a cloud of icons.
"Fascinating device," he said. "I've been studying it almost constantly since these men arrived. I've been so busy catching up on all the future news, I've hardly slept. It's filled with detailed information about events for the next fifty years. There's a long list of our future enemies and where to find them. There's even a special message from me to you, Riley. Would you like to see it?"
"I'm sure you're going to show it to me," Raven said.
Henry touched one of the icons, and it expanded and unfolded into an image of Henry Sheffield from the year 2064, withered and kept alive by cybernetics. Industrial tubes ran into his nose and mouth. His voice hissed from speakers at his neck, transmitted from the black processor plugs on his scalp.
"A special greeting to our runaway time traveler," his voice said. It sounded like Henry Sheffield's actual voice, but even more flat and emotionless, like a thin recording. His shrunken lips smiled around his mouth tube, revealing black and toothless gums.
"You're going to look like rotten death in the future," Raven said to the present-day Henry.
"I'd say I look pretty good for a hundred and fourteen," Henry replied, lacing his hands behind his head as he watched his future self.
"I want to give you my warmest thanks," the future Henry continued. "Our scientists resisted my wish for rapid development and deployment of the time-travel technology. They wanted to test and test again, prattling and hand-wringing about paradoxes and unforeseen side effects.
You
spurred things along for me. Because of you, we absolutely had to send agents into the past. For this particular team, I have provided a special protocol: they are to make contact with my counterpart in 2013, inform him of the situation, and place themselves at his disposal."
"Thanks for that." Henry poured himself a glass of gin and sipped it. "I couldn't ask for a better future self."
"Sadly, despite my gratitude, your usefulness has reached its end," the future Henry concluded. "We can't have someone like you running wild through time, can we? I have advised my counterpart how best to dispose of you from here. I simply wanted you to know, before you go, that your own actions have enabled me to reach back through time and crush your revolution long before it begins. You have changed history. You have removed all obstacles to the new order. So I thank you again, my dear little revolutionary." He gave another black gummy smile, and the hologram froze.
"Well?" the present Henry asked. "Thoughts?"
"They should dip you in formaldehyde and put you in the freak show."
"I'm personally pleased to know I have so many decades ahead," Henry said. "It should aid in long-term planning, don't you think?"
Raven stared at him, waiting.
"My counterpart from the future recommended I kill you immediately after playing his message," Henry said. "It was a clever bit of misdirection on your part, by the way, tossing yourself into the middle of Donkey Hole, Kentucky, or wherever it was. The agents from the future searched the wrong region of the country altogether, and grew distracted by the need to recover their lost armor and equipment from the Kentucky authorities in 2013, after you left those two agents dead on the road." Henry chuckled. "Why are you here, Riley? Why travel back in time?"
Raven didn't speak.
"At first, I suspected you might have come to assassinate Logan, but this must not be the case, as you've been sleeping with him for weeks. So what is your plan, Riley?" Henry asked.
"I'm in love with Logan. I don't have a plan besides that, not anymore."
He laughed. "I understand. You're clever . Why kill him when you can use him? I'm right, aren't I?" He leaned forward, smiling with his sharp teeth. "I've had time to think about it, Riley. They showed me your image from security footage at the time-travel lab. 'Of course,' I said, 'that's the dull girl Logan brought to lunch the other day.' I see it now. Perhaps your rebel friends thought you would kill him, but you had other ideas. Why not fuck him instead? Why not make yourself queen?"
She shuddered. His words were much too similar to Kari's.
"Where is Logan?" she asked again.
"This made you interesting to me for the first time," Henry said. "As the stupid orphan girl sleeping with Logan, you were obviously useless. As the girl from the future, though? Then you might be a powerful ally, with all your knowledge. Possibly even an acceptable mate for Logan, if he absolutely insisted on carrying it so far. I was willing to give you a chance. I was willing to wait and see. After what you've done tonight, it's unfortunately clear you can never be trusted--"
"You would have changed your mind, anyway," Raven said. "Logan and I get engaged, and you arrange for me to die in a plane crash. The future's already updated, Henry. The information in that data cube is already obsolete. It tells you about a direction that the future no longer takes."
"I'm sure it will still be useful to me, thank you," Henry said. "Obviously, you can never be allowed near Logan, or anyone else of value, ever again." The gaze of his protruding eyes crawled down her bare body. "However, I believe I could find other uses for you. Your future experience would be terrible to waste. If I chose to keep you alive, you would have to remain here, isolated, in a secure room..."
"You can't kidnap me and keep me in your basement." Raven's eyes flicked to the man's collection of medieval torture devices.
"How can you kidnap a person who doesn't exist? Who has no family, no legal identity?"
"Logan wouldn't allow it."
"Logan is only a boy. He does not need to know all that happens. But you are not just a girl, are you?" He licked his lips. "You're a deceptive little snake, that's what you are. I should put you down now to be safe."
The two security agents tensed, waiting for the formal order to roast her alive.
The heavy oak door to Henry's office swung open and the other two agents from the future entered. Like the two already present, their helmets and face shields were collapsed, and they wore black data goggles. One of them was female, but she had a shaved head like the others, and her face wore the same flat, blank expression.
"I told you two to wait outside the door!" Henry snapped. "Leave us!"
"Keep going," Logan said as he followed the two agents through the door. Logan wore an annoyed scowl on his face. "Seriously, Henry? You're going to lock me in a room in your house? By the way, you've got a broken window now." Logan saw Raven, naked and handcuffed in the high-backed ironwood chair, and hurried to her side. "What the hell is going on? Are you okay, Riley? Get her clothes," he told one of the agents standing behind Henry.
"And my other belongings," Raven added.
"Yeah, get all of her stuff." Logan glared at Henry. "What are you doing to her?"
"Logan, you do not fully understand the situation. Don't get her things!" Henry shouted to the agent, who'd stepped out from behind Henry's desk, heading for a row of large drawers built into one wall. The agent stopped.
"Do what I said," Logan told him. "Henry, you forget that these are my men.
My
family owns Providence. I am Secretary-General Carraway."
"Don't be stupid," Henry said. "I locked you away, very briefly, for your own protection. It will take a great deal of time for me to explain what's really happening. I already told you her identity is false, but I have now learned the truth about her--"
"I already know," Logan said. "I'm way ahead of you."
"Then you know she is an assassin, and her mission is to kill you." Henry gestured at the data cube on his desk. "I have all the information here. Security footage. She is a terrorist and an enemy of Providence Security."
"Wait right there," Logan instructed the guard approaching with Raven's clothes and backpack.
"We cannot return her weapon," Henry said. "Or her time-travel device. Think rationally, Logan."
A wicked smile flashed across Logan's face. He brought out his cell phone, aimed it at Raven, and took a snapshot of her.