The Day Before (26 page)

She yelped, and curled tight.

Holt pulled her to her feet. “You never were too bright.” Her cheek burned where she'd scraped it on the ground. Blood, turned black in the moonlight, dripped onto her hands. She tried to brush her hair off the injury and Holt shook her. “We ought to kill her now.”

“Not here.” Marrins snapped. “We still need her. Someone's got to take the blame for all those bodies Emir's machine is dumping here. I'm not having my name blackened. She'll take the rap and pay us all back.”

Sam growled. She tried putting weight on her sore ankle. Pain shot up her leg, making her wince.

Marrins slapped her, then smiled as he rubbed his hand. “Do you know how long I've wanted to do that? Every day since you showed up you smiling at me with your rich-­girl pearly whites, all superior and smug because Daddy bought you a job.”

Sam tried to shake Holt off. “I earned my position in the bureau.”

Marrins hit her again, splitting her lip. “I used to shoot wetback whores like you for target practice. You should have stayed on your back with your legs up. That's all you'll ever be good for. Get her to the car.”

Holt supported her, dragging her forward as she hopped to the car. Running on a broken ankle wasn't an option, but neither was getting back in the car. She looked at the dark tree line, licking her bleeding lips.

Holt pushed her into the backseat. “Run again, and I shoot your kneecaps off.”

Sam sat still the rest of the ride, hoping against all reason someone would find her.

Marrins parked near the back of the laboratory, pulling alongside a propped-­open door. A Wannervan security guard stood in the rectangle of yellow light. “Get her inside and lock her down somewhere,” Marrins ordered

“Got it.” Holt grabbed her arm hard enough to leave bruises.

The guard nodded. “Evening, sir.”

“Any problems?” Marrins asked.

“Not yet.” The guard held up a gun with the safety off. “But I'm ready.”

“Good man. You do your country proud.” Marrins threw him an odd salute. The guard led them into a back hall Sam wasn't familiar with. Holt pulled her down a small walkway, pushing her when metal shelving made the passage too narrow for him to walk beside her.

Holt pushed her into a small room with a drain at the bottom and a flickering bare yellow bulb hanging ten feet overhead. “In.” The officer pulled out a set of heavy manacles used for transporting dangerous criminals.

Sam twisted away from her with a scowl. “You realize what you're doing is illegal, don't you? Kidnapping a CBI agent? I don't care what Marrins told you, there's no place on Earth you can hide.”

Holt scowled at her as she secured the manacles to the wall. “A CBI agent? When we're done, there won't be a CBI. There won't be a Commonwealth at all. We'll get back everything that was stolen from us.”

“With Emir's machine?” Sam guessed as she played for time. “It doesn't work. He killed ­people trying to make it work. All you're doing is staging a very elaborate suicide.”

“The backlash? We already know about that. It's why you get to stay, and we don't.” Holt gave her a nasty smile.

“You can't even go back that far in time,” Sam argued desperately. “Even if you did make it work, you can't go back any farther than when Emir originally invented the machine.”

“Emir babbled all about the iterations and alternate timelines. All we have to do is go find the one where the unification doesn't happen. Marrins gets his promotion. I get the job I want. Everyone is happy, except you. You'll be dead.”

Sam glowered at her captor. “No one will listen to you if you go back in time. You'll wind up locked in a mental-­health ward for the clinically unstable.”

“We'll have proof. Technology and papers. We will make ­people understand how bad this choice is.”

“Technology that can be stolen from high-­tech labs and reports that you could forge? You had some brains, or you wouldn't be an officer, Holt. Try using them. This is futile. Call Detective Altin. Get some help. Get Marrins some help. This is insane.” Sam shut her eyes and tried to find a thread of reason. “No job is worth this.”

Holt leaned in close. “You know the way you speak your mind? I always hated that about you.” The door slammed behind Holt as she walked out, leaving Sam alone in the darkness.

W
iggling her leg, Sam managed to get the running shoe off her swollen foot with a gasp of pain. There was no doubt her ankle was broken. It throbbed in time with her heartbeat. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall outside, and she hauled herself to her feet. Pain shot up her left leg. Wincing, she put her weight on her right foot and struggled to stay upright.

The door creaked open.

“Hope this is the one,” Marrins said. Yellow light from the back hall of the lab turned his florid face a hideous mask. He grimaced at her. “Can't imagine what you want with her.”

“No,” said a cultured voice. “I don't imagine you do.” Sam gasped.

Dr. Emir walked into the room . . . or someone who looked like Dr. Emir. He wore a crisp, starched white lab coat, and there were fewer lines on his face, and no glasses. “Detective Rose, I'm so pleased to have finally caught up with you.”

She leaned back against the cold wall.

Marrins shrugged and stepped outside. “We'll be waiting for you, Doctor. Ten minutes, then we need to get this show on the road.”

Emir gave her a chill smile as he closed the door. The bare bulb overhead swayed in the breeze from the air-­conditioning vent. “Detective Rose, you cannot begin to imagine the inconvenience you have caused me by running through this iteration.”

Sam cleared her throat. “It's agent, not detective.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Your cover has been blown, Detective. Mr. Marrins was kind enough to show me the autopsy records. The aging trick was risky. I wouldn't have done it.” He chuckled. “But I appreciate the artistry that went into killing your doppelganger. Tell me, did you enjoy watching yourself die? I admit, I have no stomach for that sort of thing. Marrins proved useful there. I promised to show him how to reverse time, and he's bent over backward to please me. Shooting my other self from this iteration was too unpleasant a task to undertake myself.”

“I am CBI Agent Samantha Rose, everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” The words came out in choked gasps.

Dr. Emir stepped closer, dark eyes boring into her as his smile turned cruel. “Really, Samantha? Aren't you done playacting? Bad enough that you had to play the part of a junior agent, but do you truly wish to stay lost in this third-­rate, self-­destructing time loop? You've proved your point. The machine needs better security, better controls. I will recommend you to Director Matthews.” His hand fluttered like a priest granting a blessing. “The promotion is yours, Detective.”

Sam drew herself to her full height. “I am Agent Sam Rose, of the Commonwealth of North America. I don't know who you are, but I will not go anywhere with you willingly.”

“Childish, Detective.” Emir pulled the key to her cuffs out of his jacket pocket. “Try not to be more tiresome than you already are. The agent I'm using insists that the Samantha Rose from this iteration is dead, so we're no longer in danger of collapsing into this history. All will be well. Shall we go home?”

She held her breath as he leaned in. The handcuffs fell off with an echoing click. “I saw you dead,” she said

“The Emir of this iteration, yes, of course. He had to be removed to destabilize this iteration. The doctor, the soldier, the paladin—­all the local einselected nodes near the machine have been deactivated. Ideally, the other nodes would be closer, and we could deactivate them as well, but I feel confident that we have reduced this iteration to yet another bad dream. Horrid little place, isn't it? Come along.”

Obviously, the drugs Marrins used to incapacitate her hadn't worn off. That explained the fuzzy feeling in her head, the somewhat muffled sound, and the dead doctor politely offering her his shoulder so she could hobble down the corridor. It was like having her wisdom teeth removed all over again. Any moment now, imps and goblins would jump out of the walls to play in fairyland until the sedatives wore off. What a shame the drugs didn't do anything for her throbbing ankle.

Emir unlocked a side door that opened to his office. Police tape still wrapped around his desk. “Give me a moment. Let me collect the dial.” He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out the original blue dial for his machine. “A little present for my other self. It was cruel, I know, but I couldn't resist giving him a chance to escape. It's not in my nature to run, though. Abandoning my work is unthinkable in any iteration.”

“
The other iteration. He comes to my lab. He is stealing my work. Changing my formulas. He sneaks in here when I'm not looking. Not he, me!
” Emir's lunatic rants echoed through her mind.

Another iteration.

A working machine.

A way to travel through time.

What would Marrins . . . the nationhood vote? Marrins wanted to go back and prevent the Commonwealth from forming, that's what Holt was going on about. Marrins would remain an FBI agent, with guaranteed promotions every few years.

He's willing to destroy this world to change jobs.

“Quickly now,” Emir said. “That fat native who calls himself an agent will come poking along any moment now. That is one pseudohuman being I will not regret losing in any iteration.”

He punched in a series of numbers.

“Philistine, the fool thought he could only travel back in time. Marrins is a complete cretin.” The machine trembled. A deep purple light shot out of the front, spinning like a vortex. As the rotation speed increased, the color melted from purple to blue to a vibrant white. “Time to go.” Emir grabbed her arm as the machine shook sideways.

Burning cold embraced her, stealing her breath, then she was falling onto a flat gray surface. Sam gulped down air and looked around.
Damn. Mother Mary, forgive me. Saint Samantha, Saint Jude, help. I am in so much trouble.

Against all reason, her ears buzzed. It would have been nice if drugs could explain this rather than the more logical conclusion that she had a minor concussion and had just stepped through time.

No one took notice of her as Emir sauntered toward a computer screen, happily regaling his ­people with tales from his latest trip. Names appeared on the screen in front as the lights dimmed: DR.—­Emir, PALADIN—­Rose, SOLDIER—­MacKenzie . . .

“Who are you?” a querulous but all-­too-­familiar voice demanded.

Sam pivoted and looked into her own face. Different, yes, but still recognizable, even with an ugly bob of black hair framing sharply angled cheekbones. Whenever
here
was, they apparently had a famine going on. Healthy ­people had more flesh on their bones. Beside her, Emir's machine beeped as the vortex slowed, and the white light gradually dulled to a dark blue.

“Rose?” Emir stepped onto the platform and stared at them in horror. “What is the meaning of this?”

“It means you missed,” the other woman said. “You brought one of their nodes home with you.” She drew a weapon in one fluid motion.

Sam threw her head forward, slamming her face into her doppelganger's. She staggered and fell to the ground, the gun dropping to Sam's feet.

Emir reached out as Sam fell. She rebounded, using all her weight to throw Emir back as she stood with the new gun. His eyes rolled back as he flailed in pain. The other-­Sam scrambled to her feet, grabbed at her shoulder, and pulled her away. The strange gun dropped from her hand. Sam rolled into the vortex as it chimed again.

This time the cold was a heat that seared her to her bones.
Almighty and merciful—­

The floor slammed into her. Or she slammed into the floor. Sam wasn't sure—­she thought she'd been holding still. Gasping for breath, she lay on the floor, looking at the line of grungy yellow tape. She was back in Emir's lab, safe inside his tidily taped circle . . .

Safe beside a machine that let killers wander between worlds.

And away from two ­people who wanted her dead but closer to two others who wanted her dead. Good job, Sam.

Lights flickered, and someone shouted.

Shaking, she scrambled to her feet, limping toward the door as fast she could move. No one was in the hall outside. She limped down the long hallway to the laboratory atrium. Empty. Marrins's muffled voice came from the rear of the building, where he had dragged her inside; shadows moved in Emir's lab, but the atrium was dark.

She ground her teeth, took a deep breath, and ran for the darkness.

Pain like cold fire shot up her leg. Hot tears burned the cut on her cheek where she'd skidded on the gravel earlier, but she made it, collapsing in a shaking heap next to the empty security guard's desk as lights swept the atrium.

A muted shout came from the depths of the lab. Sam pushed the chair away and pulled herself into the space under the paneled desk. Silently, she rolled the chair back into position.

Heavy footsteps ran down the hall with a confusion of shouts. A gun fired. The lights turned on.

Sam hugged her knees to her chest.

“What's going on?” asked the security guard who'd greeted them at the back entrance, close but not near the desk.

“Someone drove up to the lab,” said Holt, her voice tight with anger.

Sam smiled in her dark hidey-­hole. Backup had arrived. She took a quiet breath and debated getting out to cover the back entrance so no one could escape. Her ankle throbbed, and she decided it probably wasn't an option.

Leaning her head back against the cool wood of the desk, she waited. The front doors squeaked as they opened. Sam leaned forward, trying to peek through the crack between the desk panel and the floor to see what was happening.