A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) (11 page)

She gave back the book and sat down, making a show of looking over the food on her tray, deciding whether to start on the salad or the sandwich.

“Are you going to turn me in?”

“Depends.”

“I never take them out of the building,” he blurted. “I just read them here.”

“Them? This isn’t the first one?” She kept her tone casual and unaccusing. She wasn’t really interested in getting anyone in trouble, and besides, this was the most intriguing thing that had happened to her in the six months she had worked here. Maybe she should have stepped out of her little bubble sooner.

“No,” he confessed, sheepishly. “I guess I really incriminated myself there, didn’t I? In my defense, I take really good care of them.”

“Oh, I can see that,” she glanced sideways at his pile of napkins and food wrappers, under which he had been hiding his book earlier. “And nobody has ever noticed? How long has this been going on?”

“Nobody notices me at all, actually. I’m an intern.”

She knew the feeling. “Nobody notices me either.”

“I sure haven’t. I’d have remembered, if I did!” His ears turned a little pink at the tips.

Dani flushed. She’d forgotten what happened when she let down her “don’t talk to me, I’m busy” defenses. Still, a little infatuation could be useful too, if she didn’t let it go too far. Besides, she could do worse.

She smiled, shyly and a bit,
just a bit,
flirtatiously. “So you’ll be remembering now?”

“Oh yeah. Definitely.”

“I’m Dani.”

“I’m Anders.” Anders Peerson, she knew from the personnel records, but she didn’t say anything.

“So, Anders, what are you reading? Anything good?”

“Actually, yeah. It’s kind of a sci-fi spy novel.”

Better and better. He might actually want to help her even without the threat of being reported. “Would you recommend it? Maybe I’ll borrow it when you’re done,” she teased.

“I only recommend books to people I know well.”

Was that an invitation or a rebuff? She wasn’t sure.

His voice grew a little softer. “I’d love to recommend a book to you, actually, when I know you a little better. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in months.”

“Me too.” Inexplicably, she felt more lighthearted than she had in a long time. Whoa, girl. Remember your assignment, she reminded herself.

They conversed over vegetable barley soup and sandwiches with tall piles of deli beef. He found out she was on her own, without parents or siblings. She found out he had an older brother whom he idolized. He bought her a coffee. She tidied his mess while he was gone. He ignored his book, leaning forward to absorb every detail when she talked about her favorite old movies. She laughed at his stories about growing up in a family that packed up and moved every two or three years.

As the hour drew to a close,
Dani
wished it could continue. Suddenly, she remembered her assignment. “Hey, you work in Financial Services, right?”

“I’m flattered you noticed.”

She laughed. “I had a student ask me the other day, in one of my presentations, something I couldn’t answer.”

“What do you need to know?”

“Where do we get our money from? Who funds the institute? Is there a public record somewhere, or even something general that we let people see?” There, that sounded like a legitimate reason for asking, without any trace of a hidden motive. And it had the added advantage of being completely true.

“I can probably dig something up for you. Does it have to be public? I can access some files that the general public can’t. I have a talent for ferreting out useless pieces of information in places most people wouldn’t think to look. I was kind of known for that in college.” He laughed sheepishly. “Thus the fascination with spy novels.”

“Oh yeah, I suppose.” She squelched the eagerness that she felt bubbling up inside her and tried her best to appear only casually interested. “I can get a general picture from it and summarize for the kid.”

“Sounds good. After work, then? Do you get off right at five?”

As they talked, they were standing up, gathering belongings and trays. Preparing to go their separate ways.

“Yes, right at five. I’ll meet you outside the security gates, on those benches under the clock tower.”

“It’s a date, then,” he said. “I mean … let’s do it.”

But as Dani dumped her wrappers in recycling, deposited her tray on the rack, and headed back to work, she entertained the lingering conviction that he meant something more.

She felt astonishingly upbeat, even when she looked over her afternoon list and discovered more—many more—time decay checks. One thing about boring task lists: They gave her time to think.

Back at the library shelves, she was happy to discover that the next twenty-two items were small enough to fit on one tray. She could fit one more into her lab coat pocket—whoa, what was this? She realized she still had the four sample materials in her pocket from yesterday. She’d have to remember to take those back to the supply room. Oh well, they had probably twenty more sets there, so these wouldn’t be needed any time soon.

She carried the items back to the scanner station. This batch could keep her occupied for at least an hour and a half, and she could plan out her next step. Kat and Marak would be pleased with her progress.

Dani was a little surprised that she was enjoying this so much. Maybe she missed her calling, she thought wryly. She wondered idly what the market was for academic espionage. She was half-qualified; they’d have to consider her, anyway. Whoever “they” were.

She stepped into the observation box and placed the items on the small table there, arranging them in order by their tags, then stepped into the box and let the sensors integrate with her brain. The rest of this she could almost do with her eyes closed, if she didn’t have to set and check the parameters.

She placed the first object in the chamber.

HUNTER’S OFFICE. 1320, Wednesday, June 7, 2215.

It was t
ime. Hunter stood and moved out from behind his massive desk. Its size was meant to make him less accessible and more intimidating, but he always preferred to stand.

With a quick gesture of his hand, he pulled the connexion icon over to the center of the sparsely populated viewwall. Another twist and a microphone icon pulsed, awaiting his spoken command. “Dr. Brant,” he spoke into the air. The microphone vanished. He waited only seconds before the scientist’s image appeared on his wall. His own image to her was blank. They expected that. It protected their privacy, he always assured them, should anyone look over their shoulders and see the screen.

He waited while she stood and closed the door to her office. That was good. What he had to say would not be overheard.

“You are alone?” he asked her.

“Yes. They just left. What did you want me to see?”

“Something has come into my possession that might, shall we say, dredge up old memories. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want out where someone might access it inadvertently—or intentionally.”

“Someone already has, obviously.”

“I have gone to the trouble of ensuring that I have the only copy. I just want you to know the enormity of what I’m protecting you from. You have a holographic projector there, as I suggested?

She tapped the desktop device to her left. “I have it. Here’s the icon.”

A small rotating image of a hologram appeared on his viewwall. “Will you have privacy long enough to watch it?”

“Yes, my office door is closed. I won’t be disturbed.”

He waved again at a corner of the screen and sent the recording to her projector. As he played the recording on his projector, she would be able to view it simultaneously on hers. Another quick glance through the glass door assured him that his executive secretary was busy with a list he had given him earlier, his back to the soundproof office, oblivious for the moment as to anything that occurred within.

“Watch.” He touched the start button.

A garden bloomed before them, late summer flowers and tree branches nodding gently in the breeze. A fountain gurgled in the background, and birds chirped. The scents of late-blooming lilacs, hybrid tea roses, and honeysuckle mingled with faint smells of city exhaust settling down from the air overhead. On a cobblestone patio to the right of the hologram sat a bistro set, two white wrought-iron chairs and a matching table.

A distinguished-looking middle-aged man emerged from the left, his hand on the elbow of a young woman in a fluffy pink sweater. His gesture was one of support, not control. His expression was sympathetic, his actions considerate. He pulled out a chair for the woman, who was clearly shaken.

On the viewwall, he could monitor Dr. Brant’s reactions to what she was seeing and hearing. As he watched, her face hardened, which was not what he’d hoped. He did not want to strengthen the hint of resistance she had been showing. He frowned. She would know this scene well, would remember sitting in that chair some nine years earlier. She would remember Dr. Mitchum Seebak and the conversation they had that day. He could only hope that the memories would stir up the guilt she had buried.

There it was now: another emotion crossing her features. He saw shame, followed by regret, and those responses, in the principled woman that he knew her to be, would be enough to secure her firmly in his grasp. Ironic that he could use her very principles against her this way.

In the hologram, the other scientist was speaking. “Please, sit, Marielle. Relax. I’m here to listen, but not until you’re ready.”

“I’m ready, Mitch. I have to talk to someone.”

He nodded. He brushed her hair back away from her face, and gently wiped a tear from her cheek. With another man, this might have been a presumptive or possessive move, but with him it seemed almost fatherly. He handed her a tissue and waited quietly for her to compose herself.

She breathed quietly and deliberately for a few moments, closing her eyes and inhaling the peace of the garden, clearly willing it to calm her before she spoke. Finally, she opened her eyes.

“I killed him, Mitch.”

“Killed him? Who?”

“Nicah Myles. I drove the helicar that hit him and Elena that night. I killed him, and I put her into a coma.” She looked up suddenly, alarmed. “Please don’t tell Lexil!”

“Of course not!” He reassured her. “But surely, it was an accident?”

“That’s the thing. It wasn’t. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose, but it was preventable. It should have been prevented! Oh, Mitch … I was drunk!” She buried her face in her hands, weeping, trying to stop.

When he draped his arm over her shoulders, it made her melt down completely. He pulled it back, wanting to give her space, and patted her back reassuringly, if a little awkwardly.

The hologram ended. Dr. Brant turned her attention from the projected image back to her viewwall, looking at him directly. “What are you going to do with this?” she asked.

“Not a thing, Marielle. I’m looking out for your best interests—our best interests. By showing you this, I’ve forced the source object to experience time decay, and you know of course that that makes it unusable.”

She nodded.

“No one else can view this scene, unless they get it from me. Surely you can see that I’m doing this to protect you.”

“As long as I continue to cooperate.”

Good. She was getting the message clearly. “Yes, unfortunately, that’s what they want. But I told them you have every intention of cooperating, so there is no point in even bringing that up, is there?”

“No, no point at all. Are we done here, then?”

“Yes, done, except for one thing that they’ve requested. I’m certain you will want to help with it, for our, uh, mutual benefit. To keep all this contained.”

“Name it.”

“It is time to cut personnel, strategically. We’ve observed certain, shall I say, extracurricular access to files. Such access could threaten us—all of us—personally. You’ll take care of it?” He waved a list of names from the corner of his viewwall to the icon that represented her screen.

She studied it, making note of each name. Since she had gone through the treatment, her incisive mind and photographic memory had returned fully. She wouldn’t need to refer to it again. By morning, those employees would be gone. “Yes, I’ll take care of it.”

“Good. It has been a pleasure, as always. I don’t have to remind you to say nothing of our conversation?”

She shrugged. “You’re the man who’s keeping it all together.”

He nodded. As she signed off, he returned to the chair behind the wholly unnecessary desk. People were amply—and very satisfactorily—intimidated without it.

RIACH LABS, Alki Beach, Seattle, WA. 1430, Wednesday, June 7, 2215.

When Dani emerged from the observation box, she had a moment of vertigo. She steadied herself on one of the support pillars nearby. She shook her head to clear it. Things felt strange, although she couldn’t put her finger on why, nor be any more specific than that.