Time's Mirror: A CHRONOS Files Novella (The CHRONOS Files) (6 page)

“Does the fake meat taste like meat?”

“Yes.” His voice is hesitant. “Okay, not exactly. It’s meat, but I’ve yet to find a replicator that produces anything as good as the haunch of a freshly killed stag cooked over an open fire.” I wrinkle my nose at that and he adds, “Sorry. But it’s true.”

“It’s okay. So…people don’t eat out? They just order up what they want at home?”

“Oh, restaurants? Sure. Plenty of those. There are three in the OC, in fact. People still need somewhere to go when they want to socialize. Did you…”

He hesitates, and I get the strong sense that he’s not really into the idea.

So, even though the idea of sitting at a cafe and soaking up the sunshine while we eat is very tempting after so long inside, I shake my head. “I’ll get something at my apartment.”

My apartment.

One the one hand, those words are exciting. I didn’t think I’d be on my own for at least four or five years.

On the other hand, Deb is supposed to be here, too. We had it all planned. We’d go to college in either Boston (her choice) or California (my choice). After a year in the dorms, we’d get a place together off campus. A place that would let us have a dog (my choice) or maybe a cat (her choice).

I don’t want to live by myself. I wouldn’t have wanted that even in my time, and it goes double for here and now.

An image of the girl in the rubble—that other me—flashes into my mind. It’s the same image I see most nights when I close my eyes, and as usual, she’s holding the jagged rock that I smashed down on her head.

You won’t be alone, Pru. I’ll be there. I’ll keep you company each and every night.

A shiver creeps through me, but Tate doesn’t notice. He’s nodding toward a building up ahead. “They’ve got you on one of the upper floors. So you should have a good view of the fireworks. They shoot them off at midnight over near the National Mall.”

“Every night? Isn’t it loud?”

He laughs. “No, doof. It’s New Year’s Eve. Did you forget?”

I shake my head, even though I kind of
had
forgotten. Which was nice, because I’ve been
trying
to forget.

“What’s wrong?” Tate asks.

I want to go home,
I think.
But I just shake my head and say, “Nothing.”

He puts one hand on my arm and turns me around to face him, bending down so that he can look me in the eye. And he
does
have to bend down, because he’s way over six feet and I’m barely five four.

“Hey…you hardly talk to anyone other than me. So don’t tell me it’s
nothing,
when it’s clearly something. Otherwise, I’m going to tell CHRONOS they need to start the therapy sessions again—”

“No.” The therapist didn’t have Sutter’s eyes, but he had…
something
. Some way of reading my body’s responses to his questions. About my feelings. About my dreams, and no way was I telling him about those. So I just stopped answering any of the questions. Eventually, they stopped scheduling me for his sessions. Mission accomplished.

“You’ll think it’s stupid, Tate.”

“Try me.”

“Fine. It’s just…if I was home with Deb on New Year’s Eve, I know exactly what we’d be doing. Same thing we’ve done the past three years.
Billboard
Top 100 Countdown. It was probably even going to be on MTV this year. We’d listen tonight and record it on the Walkmans so we could listen again later. And we’d write each song and artist in a special spiral notebook and compare them to our predictions.”

“You like music, then?”

I give him a
well, duh
look. “Everybody likes some sort of music. But that’s not the only thing. Whoever gets the most predictions right takes half the loser’s Christmas cash. Deb has won each year…although she never takes my money.”

“Then what’s the point of winning?” Tate asks.

“Exactly! If I win, you better believe I’m making her pay up. And this year, I would’ve won. I was tracking Billboard each week right up until the accident. I’d have mopped the floor with her.”

He laughs. “Okay, this is probably going to piss you off because I know you don’t think of him as your father, but that’s one hundred percent Saul Rand. The man would bet on anything…and he didn’t like to lose.”

This is the second time Tate has said I remind him of this Saul person, and I narrow my eyes, because yes, it does piss me off. It seems disloyal to even think about him, like I’ll jinx any chance I have of getting my
real
dad back if I learn more about this other father. But there’s also a slightly sad note to Tate’s voice, and it occurs to me that he probably misses Saul. Maybe he needs to talk about him?

“You knew Saul pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” he says. “He was my roommate for a couple of years, around the time I started field training. Before he took up with Kathy. All the historians were supposed to serve as a mentor for a first-year historian from a later cadre. Usually people do it a year or so after they go active, but Saul either put it off or Angelo forgot to assign him. So he got stuck with me. But we hit it off pretty well, despite the age difference.”

“Was he…nice?”

“Um…” Tate considers it for a moment. “No. At least, not in the conventional sense of the word. Saul could walk into a room and manage to whizz half the people off before he finished his first drink. He was definitely a character. Smart. Too smart, maybe. But…he was good to his friends. Helped me out of a tough situation once.”

I want to ask about that, but Tate’s face clouds over, so I don’t press the point. We walk along in silence for a few minutes.  He seems to be lost in his own thoughts, not really paying attention to the pace. My right leg, the one that got the worst of the whole shattering business, starts to twinge. I’ve walked twice this far in my physical therapy sessions, but the ground here isn’t as even. And Tate’s legs are like forty feet long, so I’m taking two steps to his one.

“Is it far?” I ask him.

“Just a few…blocks…” He stops and looks at me. “I’m such an idiot. Do you need a lift?”

Is he asking whether he should call some version of a future cab or offering to give me a piggyback ride? I feel myself blushing just thinking about the last option. Maybe he’d sweep me up in those arms like the guy on the front of that
Wicked Loving Lies
book I swiped out of Mother’s desk drawer last year…

“God, Pru! You’re all flushed.”

Of course, that makes the situation even worse. “No. I’m okay. Just…maybe we could stop for a minute or two?”

“Sure! Absolutely. No problem.” He scans around until he locates an unoccupied bench in the park across the street. Then he reaches down, pulls me against him and upward with one arm, to the point where my legs are barely touching the ground.

“No, Tate! I can walk…really.”

Tate doesn’t listen, and I’m wishing I hadn’t said anything, just kept going. But…I’m also kind of happy that he doesn’t move away from me when we reach the bench. He leaves his arm around me, giving me a slightly worried smile.

“Better?”

I nod, rubbing my right knee. “Just needed a little break. You have long legs…it’s hard to keep up.”

“Sorry. We were talking and then…I wasn’t really thinking. But it’s not my fault you’re a short stack,” he teases. “That’s clearly your mom’s fault. I think Kathy was even shorter than you.”

“She is. You knew
her
pretty well, too, didn’t you?”

I want to ask whether he really thinks she did it. But I
know
he thinks she did it. Everyone here does, and it’s hard to blame them, given the evidence. I have to admit there’s still a little part of me that has a tough time buying it, though. Mother is a pain in the ass and a major thorn in my side. I don’t like her, but I can’t imagine her killing anyone.

“I would have said that I knew her about as well as I knew anyone at CHRONOS, aside from Saul and the guys I roomed with when I was taking classes. Kathy and I were a few years apart, but we had three, maybe four, classes together. She was sharp. Pretty. High strung. Jealous as hell when it came to Saul’s time.” He glances across the street, his eyes settling again on the large white structure a few blocks down. “But if someone had asked me to bet on a building Kathy would blow up, I’d have ranked the OC a million times higher than CHRONOS HQ.”

It seems almost like a change of topic…going from her being jealous to talking about the OC, but they must be connected. “Was Saul seeing someone else…some girl who lived there?”

“More likely four or five of them,” Tate says, chuckling. “Saul wasn’t exactly…monogamous. I know several girls who tried to warn Kathy, and she turned on every one of them. But the girls weren’t the reason she was jealous of the OC—or at least not the main reason. It was Campbell.”

“Really?”

Tate catches my expression and laughs. “Not that way. Saul prefers women, generally, although…” He doesn’t finish whatever he was about to say, even though I make a little
gimme
gesture with my hands.

“Nah. He’s your father and…I think he was joking.”

“He made a pass at you?”

“No! It’s just…there’s this test we all have to do where we go back in time and encounter an earlier version of ourselves, okay? It’s a bitch. I had a headache for a week. Saul, on the other hand, said he had no trouble at all, and was hoping he could borrow a key and do it again. Said he wouldn’t mind a little…um…private time with himself.”

“Ewww.”

“Yeah. But the really
ewww
part is that I think he was serious. I mean, not about borrowing a key for that, because the only way we could jump was with the rest of the cohort. But about being attracted to himself.” He chuckles when I wrinkle my nose. “See. I told you that you didn’t want me to finish it.”

“It’s okay. He’s not my dad. I don’t care what you say about him. And there’s a word for that, right? Narcissism. We learned all about it in psych class.”

“Yes. Saul is a classic narcissist, but…like I said, he could be good to his friends.”

“And this Campbell guy was his friend?”

“That’s an excellent question. I don’t think
friend
is the right word, but Saul was definitely obsessed with Campbell. He spent more of his time figuring out ways to annoy that old man than he did on his job. They’d have these mental jousting matches that lasted weeks about some stupid point in history. Everything else, even your mother, came second to proving Morgen wrong. He was either madly in love with the guy or he hated him. Maybe both. Even after he moved in with your mom, he spent most of his spare time at the Club, and it pissed Kathy off.”

“But the Club isn’t just for guys. She could go, right?”

“Well, yeah. Go and be ignored while Saul yakked to Campbell. Kathy went to some events, like the big New Year’s Eve bash, but…”

That, of course, reminds me that it’s New Year’s Eve, and apparently it reminds
him
that he’s reminded me. “You’re thinking about your sister again. The music contest thing.”

His vague phrasing makes me realize that a lot of what I say probably makes zero sense to him…MTV,
Billboard
.

“It’s no big deal. And it’s only New Year’s Eve for
us
. It’s not like Deb’s listening to it right this second without…me…”

I can’t breathe. I push myself off the bench and start walking away, fast, even though my leg objects and air is only coming through in tiny, panicky sips. I need to get out of here, because I’m about to cry or scream or something else that will make me seem like a blubbering little brat. And that’s not how I want Tate to think of me.

“Pru?” Tate catches up with me in a couple of his giant steps and takes my arm again. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head, because I simply won’t, can’t talk about it, but then he leans down, his blue eyes level with mine and just oozing sympathy and dear God I want to punch him because now I
am
crying.

“Deb isn’t listening right this second because she’s already listened! Without me. Each year until she got old and bored with it, and then she died and she’s been
dead
for more than two hundred years. Deborah is dead and my dad is dead and it’s all my fault because I swiped that stupid frigging key and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Come back to the bench, Pru, okay? Sit down.”

I don’t have much choice, really, because he does that half-picking me up thing again, and my butt hits the bench almost before he’s done talking. He puts his arm back around me and says, “You need to cry, then cry. My shoulder is waterproof.”

His shirt is waterproof too, as it turns out. That’s probably a good thing, because it’s two or three minutes before I get myself back under control. Unfortunately, there are now two gray streaks on his shoulder.

“What’s wrong with your eyes? You’ve got dark circles—”

Oh, great. Raccoon eyes on top of everything else.

“Mascara.” I rub the area under my eyes with my knuckles, hoping I’ve gotten the worst of it.

“What’s it for?”

“Making a mess when you cry.” He gives me a strange look. “I’m joking. It’s to make your eyelashes look longer. Darker.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “You can probably get that done in the Juvapods and it won’t rub off. But…you don’t really need it. I mean, your birthday is coming up in about a month, right? You’ll be sixteen. That’s the age everyone starts field training, so you don’t look much younger than the last batch of CHRONOS trainees you’ll be working with at the museum—well, the three of them who weren’t at headquarters that day. You’ll fit right in just as you are.”

If we count from my actual age when I landed, I just turned fifteen two months back. But February 4th is my birthday, and if everyone wants to let me skip ahead ten months or so, they’ll get no argument from me.

Tate never even mentioned my earlier lie about being eighteen. As I see it, there are three equally plausible reasons: he didn’t hear what I said, he doesn’t think age is important, or he just plain isn’t interested. And since there’s no way I’m going to admit I put the damn mascara on so that
he’d
think I looked older, I just nod toward the OC building. “Let’s go.”