Empire Games Series, Book 1(11)
“But your relatives might disagree,” cautioned Gomez. “So remember: 911 is your friend.”
*
The not-exactly-cops invited Rita to stay the night. They positively insisted—with a formal politeness that said don’t even think about refusing. They thoroughly creeped her out with their solemn last-meal formality, the inadvertent intimidation of power. She was getting a no-caffeine headache by the time Gomez finished with her phone. They made her bag up her burrito and escorted her back to her room, or cell, or whatever the hell you called it: the motel-grade accommodation with the handle on the outside and no window.
I’m not a world-walker, she repeated to herself as she lay sleeplessly on the narrow bed. I don’t come from another world, I can’t wish myself between universes, and they’re not my family. But sleep came reluctantly, and she was troubled by incoherent dreams tainted by a nameless sense of urgency.
She woke early the next morning. Gomez knocked on the door at six thirty. Her black suit was spotless, as severe as a uniform. Her only sign of individuality was a brooch in the shape of an infinity symbol worn on the lapel. Rita was already showered and dressed. “Your ticket is on your phone,” said the cop. “Jack will run you out to the airport. You’re booked via Minneapolis on Delta.” She looked as if she hadn’t slept—didn’t need sleep, like she was some kind of government terminator robot running on bile, paranoia, and electricity.
“Uh, right. Let me just zip up my bag.”
“Take your time.” Gomez’s tone inverted the meaning of her words.
The agent stood at parade rest, waiting patiently by the door while Rita slung the last of her things into the suitcase. As Rita straightened up, she asked, “Who are you people? Really?”
“If you call the DHS and ask, they’ll tell you we work for them.”
“But—” Rita caught Gomez’s quelling look. “If you say so.”
Gomez relented slightly. “There are lots of operational directorates within DHS. We’re part of a unit that not many people have heard of. You don’t need to know more than that.”
You have to be most afraid of secret police when they take you into their confidence and tell you things, she remembered Grandpa Kurt explaining: it means they want you to believe. But why would they even need that? They had the guns, the dogs, and the secret jails. If they wanted you to do something, they could force you to do it. So they only try to make you believe something if they want you to convince someone else whom they can’t touch. Your future self, or some future acquaintance. They do it and they make a liar of you.
Rita smiled vaguely and nodded. Her forehead throbbed. “Great. I’m ready to go now. Wherever you want me to go?”
Jack drove her out to the airport: “We dropped your rental car off last night. And I processed your ticket myself: you’re good for a checked bag, and you’ve got an hour until boarding.”
“But I—” Rita stared at the e-ticket on her phone. “Hey, this is first class!” A stab of gratitude gave way instantly to suspicion. They’re trying to make me grateful. Why?
“Least we could do,” Jack said. “Have a good flight now.” He seemed less inhuman and unbending, less inclined to hate her on sight, than Gomez. She found herself instinctively mistrusting him, resenting him for stimulating her pathetic sense of gratitude. Good cop / bad cop, she reminded herself. At least Gomez was honest.
Jack dropped Rita beside the baggage drop-off outside the terminal building. Dazed, she handed her suitcase over, then shifted her handbag up her shoulder and walked into the check-in area. Her head was spinning. I need to talk to someone, she realized. She instinctively reached for her phone, then stopped. Wait. More of Gramps’s stories came back to her. Not here, not on my phone.
Security was the usual heaving human zoo, with people being called out for random DNA checks on either side of her and explosive sniffers buzzing around overhead. Miraculously, Rita didn’t attract any unusual attention, despite the itching implants that had triggered the body scanners on the way out. She paid no attention to the cameras that tracked her across the concourse, the Segway-riding robocops, the whole panoply of national security displayed around her. With increasing confidence she walked toward her departure gate, knees weakening with relief at the realization that in another ten hours she’d be home.
The day passed in a blur of airplane seats and security checkpoints. There was incoming e-mail on her traitor phone: she didn’t dare reply to any of it. There was a Call me when you get in from Clive-the-bastard, the boss who’d sell her out as soon as look at her. An Are you okay? from her roomie Alice, to her surprise. A note about furnace repairs from her landlord. Nothing from her most recent ex. Irrelevant yatter and babble on the social side, pleas for support from her theatrical group’s manager, marketing junk from bands she’d followed years ago. Normally the knowledge that the feds could snoop on all network traffic didn’t bother her: but having seen her phone rooted right in front of her, she felt frozen, gagged by the knowledge of an intrusive presence. And all because they thought she might be carrying the virus of the paranormal around in her genes.
They think I’ve got world-walker connections? A hysterical laugh tried to bubble up. She took hasty shallow breaths to drive it back down again before someone noticed. World-walkers were shadowy nightmare figures, twenty-first-century reds under the bed. Terrorists who could flicker in and out of reality from other worlds where history had taken a different path, bearing stolen nukes or suitcases full of heroin. The ultimate enemy, the last president but two had declared them. She just about remembered her parents and grandparents gathered around the TV, red-eyed, trying to follow the news on their PCs as well. They killed the president in 2003, back before the government had built working para-time machines to go after them. Not to mention strip-mining fossil fuels from the neighboring uninhabited parallels. Back before they canceled the War on Drugs and replaced it with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.