Waking up in strange places after losing consciousness had already lost what little attraction it held for Richard. His internal computer informed him that he had slept for 37 hours and that his injuries were minor. He wondered why he slept for so long if that was the case, but the computer system did not answer his question.

  A new woman wearing the silver unitard of the Time Travelers greeted Richard,

  “Hello Mr Kain. I trust you slept well?”

  Richard looked around him for a moment, he was back in the bleak steel rooms and hallways that were the trademark of the time police. The woman who leaned over him had large, pendulous breasts that Richard could not help staring at. Her neckline plunged between her breasts and made the effect even more distracting.

  He said,

  “I am great, thanks. Where are my friends?”

  She did not speak while Richard continued to contemplate the contours of her body. He looked up at the woman’s face. Her hair was bright red and curly. She glanced at her breasts and back at Richard. That glance swayed with meaning, though Richard hoped it also offered a future encounter.

  She said,

  “Your friends Robert and Karen are fine. Your sister is receiving temporal therapy now.”

  Memories clogged Richard’s head suddenly. He was up from his bed; the woman stepped back to avoid colliding with him,

  “Did you send those silver things after us, what happened?”

  The red haired woman shook her head,

  “Oh no. Those were sent by one of our enemies. Our agents intercepted their Temporal Transition. We slew your abductors and rescued your friends.”

  “What about Alethia? Is Karen okay?”

  The red haired woman looked down at the floor and said,

  “Our strike teams did not anticipate a second enemy strike team. Our foes have already captured your friends Zoe and Alethia. I am afraid they are as good as dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The woman shook her head,

  “I am not the best person to explain this to you. I am just here to assist with your waking and offer my services in any other way you might require.”

  “Wait, any way?”

  Richard’s eyes slid down the woman’s white nurse’s gown — an obvious affectation for his benefit — and back up her luscious body.

  “Anything really?”

  He sounded a bit too enthusiastic perhaps, but he had been going through a dry spell waiting on Alethia. From a different perspective, Richard might have been bothered by his cavalier attitude toward Alethia’s fate. But right now, a gorgeous red head nodded as he confirmed the third time that she was interested in sex specifically,

  “Wait, let me be clear,” Richard sat up on the bed and faced the woman, “are you suggesting we,” he pointed to her and then to himself, “should have sex? That you want to?”

  The woman nodded again and unbuttoned the middle button on her blouse.

  Richard babbled,

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  She unbuttoned the last fastening on her blouse and let the white shirt fall off of her shoulders. Her skin was pale and lightly dusted with freckles. Her breasts were large, larger than any Richard had ever seen live. Her breath made her whole chest heave,

  “Call me Zella. Scream it out if you like.”

  She crawled to Richard as he started to say something stupid. Thankfully, she moved her lips over his and then pressed her whole body into Richard’s. His responded like the reasonably healthy 31 year old he was.

  Twenty minutes later — neither Richard nor Zella were exhausted by their first efforts — Richard sat on the bed pulling his silver unitard back over himself.

  Zella winked and said,

  “This is justification enough for retrieving people from your time.”

  Richard turned his head and said,

  “How’s that?”

  Zella shrugged,

  “Men and women from my time lack your enthusiasm and stamina.”

  He swore she smacked her lips as she walked out. For his part, Richard enjoyed himself. But now his legitimate concerns returned. He was responsible for Karen, Rob, Rachel, Alethia, and now Zoe being trapped with him. Zella had been flippant in dismissing Alethia and Zoe. But he was not satisfied with leaving them with the Time Police’s enemies.

  His large steel door was closed and locked when he tried open it this time.

  “I guess the doors work when the facility is not under attack.”

  Unlike his last visit, the time cops did not give him any reading material or anything to do other than stare at the blank steel walls. He tried to access media or at least information on his friends through the computer in his head.

  That earned him a sliver of data: Karen and Rob were both stable and somewhat nearby. He could not determine where Rachel was. She had at least four days left of the therapy before he would get to see her, but Rob and Karen should have been awake already.

  Two hours went by and Richard was no closer to locating his friends. At the end of those two hours, the door to his cell re-opened and this time a muscular man with a buzz cut and arms as thick as Richard’s thighs entered the cell. He held a small computer tablet in his hands and he said,

  “Richard Kain?”

  “Yeah, what’s up? If you’re here for the same reason Zella was, you should know I am strict vagitarian.”

  The man looked at Richard and blinked. He tapped something on the tablet and laughed with an abrupt hissing sound that resembled snakes being whacked by a broom more than a human noise. He said,

  “Then neither of us would enjoy such a liaison. I am here to take you to the physical testing fields.”

  “What do you mean, testing fields?”

  “By now, your augments should be fully operational. That means you should possess a ‘super power’. As you are a stealth-type assault operative, your powers should be suited for infiltration and evasion. Combat is a second priority for your role. But you also need to choose a specialty. Please, come with me.”

  The door stayed open as the man walked out of the room. Richard was still frozen in place when the man turned and said,

  “Are you coming? We are expected.”

  Richard sped up and the door slid shut behind him. The man held out his hand waiting for Richard to accept it. When he shook the man’s hand, the man said,

  “Excellent. I am Ingram Lorenz. Please call me Ingram. I will be acting as your training supervisor for the next few days while we bring you up to speed.”

  “Training? What kind of training?”

  Ingram smiled and said,

  “This is not unpleasant, I assure you. The greatest discomfort most of my trainees report is trying to decide their secondary speciality.”

  “What are my options?”

  “Well, let’s see. You have medical — a very unpopular option, combat — the most popular option, technician — an option, and several more. Is there something that excites you?”

  Richard’s knee-jerk response was combat, but he kept that answer to himself. The truth was that he knew the least about medicine, but was also least interested in that field. After that, his ignorance and interest converged perfectly at ‘technician’.

  He said,

  “All of those options sound great! Do I have to decide now?”

  “No, but if you don’t decide in the next day, the officers will decide for you.”

  “So what else is in store?”

  Ingram held up his tablet and pointed a metal door before them. He said,

  “We’re here. Go ahead and walk in, I will be right behind you.”

  Richard opened the door and walked into a red leather and dark oak room with three… the only word that fit was gentlemen, standing in the middle. They had receding hairlines and pale white facial hair. One of them, a portly fellow in the center turned to Richard and said,

  “Ah, Dick. Just the chap we’ve been waiting to see. Positively excellent. Excellent!”

  “I uh, thank you.”

  Richard’s unitard had changed shape and color. Now his legs were covered by red tights. In a few places the fabric was sheer and stretched beyond specifications. Two, no three places bore stitch work that attested to the repairs which had been performed on the cloth. His coat was a light brown coat with fraying felt buttons and something heavy situated in the breast pocket. His vest and shirt were much cleaner than the rest of his clothing, but the standard was still very low. At least those two articles did not appear to be frayed and did not bear the evidence of a decade’s worth of repairs.

  A thinner man with a long curled mustache approached Richard and whispered in his ears,

  “These damn Zulus are mucking up the Queen’s peace and the company’s chance at trade in wool and cattle for the horn. Your job is to sneak into the Dutch camp and find out what the dirty lot is about.”

  He turned to the other thin man. The third man wore no beard or mustache, but his sideburns covered his ears and neck and looked like it was making a play for his whole head. Curly mustache man said,

  “Eh Wilson! You vetted and gave a good report of ol’ Dick here. Can you be sure he’s our man?”

  Ignoring Richard set him off. He felt like he watched himself become both angry and then belligerent. His voice was low and even when he spoke,

  “If you do want my help, you’ll address me as if I stood here. Not as if I were a ghost who’s existence you rightly challenged.”

  Wilson and the other man turned to look at Richard, seeing him for the first time. Wilson, Mr Sideburns, nodded and said,

  “Indeed. Terrible manners of us all, please excuse us Richard.” He looked at the man with the mustache and said,

  “Phileaus, please give us some room.” The other man stepped back and Wilson approached Richard.

  “Now man, you know your mission. Do you require further details?”

  Richard said,

  “Only if you would like me to be successful.”

  This was like roleplaying, only he did not know his character yet. He had to rely on the other players to figure out who he was. That was unique, but Richard could handle almost any roleplaying responsibility or difficulty. He looked behind him and did not see Ingram following him like he said he would. With that thought fresh in his mind, the door to the room opened, spooking the three men standing in the center looking over Richard.

  The man who opened the door looked as stout as Ingram had, but his face was all wrong to be Ingram. Then Richard saw his eyes clearly. Any question of the man’s identity fled. This was undoubtably Richard’s escort and backup. He lifted his hand in a flourish and said,

  “My colleague speaks the truth. You ask a miracle of our talents and would pile obstacles before us in the form of information control. Perish the thought! What exactly do you need us to collect?”

  The three men outlined their desires. Richard’s primary mission was the retrieval of the Dutch log books and navigational notes hidden somewhere in the command room. Their secondary objectives required some light assassination. Richard felt like he should have been more concerned about that bit, but he embraced the news they wanted him to kill someone like this really was a roleplaying or video game.

  Surely these people were actors, other operatives, or simulations. That was what Richard assumed. These characters were part of a holodeck-style illusion and thus part of the testing inflicted by Ingram and the rest of the command structure for the time cops.

  Richard wondered how far he would go in this mission before he had to start murdering people willy nilly. Based on his video game experience, he gave his targets a little over three hours of life left before them. He listened to the instructions provided by Wilson with only half an ear. His brain and computer systems would have no problem recalling that information later.

  To Richard’s surprise, they only waited an hour before a small row boat picked him and Ingram up. During that hour they waited on the quay, Ingram only spoke to Richard to answer directly and then as perfunctorily as he could manage. Any mention of time travel or testing met a stone faced expression that held more than a little irritation behind the eyes. Richard abandoned that track quickly, so as to avoid angering Ingram.

  The two boat men were silent and Richard had grown tired of this simulation. He did not say a word to the two men, though he considered suggesting they bathe more regularly. That offer died on his lips as their boat slowed, approaching a shore.

  Richard and Ingram slipped off the boat without a sound. The two men hopped out and stood in the waste-high water. They pulled reeds and other grasses down from the shore, covering their boat’s wooden edges with the plant matter.

  They still worked at the camouflage as Richard crested a short rise. From the grass-decked crown he could see a large port city. He guessed the time put them somewhere in the seventeenth or eighteen centuries, though he was not a serious enough student of history to be sure. Besides that, how closely could the time cops simulate the era without going there? Richard felt sure that if he knew more about this period of history, he would have been able to find a dozen different anachronisms. Or maybe a dozen different schmucks like himself crawling through the grass trying to prove themselves to a shadowy time government. That seemed plausible.

  He led the two of them to an alley near the end of the port city. Here the least desirables in an already filthy city congregated. The women and children here dwarfed the men, many of the kids were dark skinned and wan. Like pictures of foreign children charities used to tug at American heartstrings.

  Nice. Dark touch shadow time government.

  Richard walked through the small mob ignoring their presence. He instinctively knew that he had to pass through them like this. Paying too much mind to the urchins, handicapped and prostitutes would have triggered a feeding frenzy. As it was, he had to pull two different sets of hands out of his coat before he cleared the group.

  Ingram did not have the same trouble, going so far as to deliver a harsh elbow to the head to one of the women who did not step aside quickly enough. That confirmed for Richard that this was not a real time travel session, but an elaborate simulation. He wondered if it were possible to fail one of these because he was starting to grow bored with ‘playing by the rules.’ He was a super hero. Super heroes did not have to avoid beggars on the street or sneak into the bad guys’ lair unless those bad guys also turned out to be super powerful.

  But the gamer in Richard insisted that he at least give the scenario an honest shot before he turned it into a murder free-for-all. He looked back at Ingram whose eyes flicked to a doorway down a nearby street. Richard remembered that was their contact within the Dutch settlement. It would be this guy who told Richard and Ingram where their targets were and would help them arrange sneaking into the governor’s mansion.

  He turned down the street and knocked on the doorway. He stood there for five minutes while he listened to people shift and move things behind the door. A short man wearing a navy blue mumu — Richard did not know another word for it; smock? His face was gnarled and worn from age and sun exposure. He had a harelip as a well so his speech required some attention,

  “What do you want?”

  Richard looked back at Ingram who nodded. Richard said,

  “We’re here about Lord Adelsmith’s donkey. I understand you had some medicine for him?”

  The man’s eyes bulged and he took to staring at Richard with the halting movements of a bird of prey. He even stood on his tip toes and sniffed Richard with an exaggerated motion.

  Ingram glanced back at them, but otherwise kept his eyes on the street. Finally, their contact nodded and said,

  “Let’s see about that medicine why don’t we?”

  He ushered the two men into the small shack dwelling. College students would have turned this place down, even rent free. Two fresh rat corpses hung over the lintel and the floors were covered in dirt and droppings. A skinny stuffed cat stared at Richard from atop a broken wardrobe without any drawers. He moved to touch the stuffed cat’s fur and it hissed at him and jumped from its perch.

  The old man cackled at Richard’s response and beckoned the two of them over to the shack’s corner. Only a short dresser occupied the corner and the man nodded to Richard as he struggled to move the dresser. Richard sprang into action to help the man and managed to get the dresser moved out of the corner. Right at the base of where the dresser sat, Richard could see a seam in the floorboards.

  The old man, who still had not introduced himself, pulled the trapdoor open and waved for Richard and Ingram to lead the way down the stairs. The two moved, but Ingram watched the old man carefully, daring him to betray them in some fashion. Richard could not see the bottom of the stairs from the top, but resolved to walk down them anyway.

  As the light faded behind them, the old man lit a torch. That cast flickering shadows over the narrow hand-cut tunnels. Richard was surprised these were here in the first place, his geology was all but nonexistent, but he still wondered how one built a dry basement this close to a coastline.

  At the bottom of the stairs sat a large wooden door bound with flat steel strips. Richard started to knock on the door, but the old man pushed past him and threw the door open himself and walked in. Beyond the door, several men dressed in similar garb to Richard and Ingram waited. Richard did not require his vast roleplaying and cinema-going experience to identify these men as Bad Dudes.

  Any group of men where none of the eyeballs, hands, feet and ears sum to an even number is highly likely to contain Bad Dudes. Maybe Richard could reframe that as a thesis. Whatever, these men led rough lives as evidenced by the deprivations of their flesh.

  Ingram barely noted the men, even though they stared at him with daggers in their eyes and in their hands. Richard tensed for a moment, but Ingram smiled and sat next to him at the table. Still ignoring the other men, he said,

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Are we safe to speak here…?”

  “Oh, name’s Carlisle. And yeah, you can speak here. Ain’t that right, boys?”

  Richard had a bad feeling because all of them snarled and laughed in response. Ingram nodded as if that was the answer he expected. An out of place sound tripped up Richard’s hearing. He froze and tried to filter out the sounds of the men in the room with him. He did and heard the sound again. It was the soft click sound of a metal sliding against metal. It was coming from further into the room.

  Richard looked around him as Carlisle spoke to them about the Dutch. This time, Richard heard the noise near the doors they had entered. Ingram seemed oblivious to the sliding sounds, so Richard kept them to himself.

  Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a metal hammer being drawn back against a spring. He shouted, “Down!” and threw himself at Ingram.

  He scrambled over each other to upend tables and hide behind them. Richard raised his head next to his own table and saw that Carlisle had already knocked the table over and was pointing his own pistol at Richard and Ingram.

  Okay, it’s murder time.

  Richard ripped the shipping protections off of his speed and strength and flew into motion. Two of the thugs in the room did not see him coming. His computer offered guidance on disabling the men he attacked, but that was not really part of Richard’s plan. All of his attacks killed. The first to stop breathing was their contact Carlisle, who tried to stab Richard. The next several men fell as they shifted to engaging with Richard and Ingram.

  Too bad for these bits of ones and zeros!

  Richard’s inner voice exalted at his newfound power. Hopefully, his leadership would appreciate this when they reviewed the tapes of his work.

  Ingram defended himself against the last two ruffians before Richard calmed down enough to check his environment properly. All of the escorts, save the two attacking Ingram, were dead or dying. Richard wasted no time dispatching both men, this time he thought that he severed their spines.

  Once the last one fell, Richard started laughing.

  “Oh man, this was awesome! Let’s do this sim again tomorrow! Ing. How do we get out of here?”

  Ingram’s face was pinched with anger. He walked up to Richard and said,

  “We do no such thing. This was a live exercise and we have to abort it now. Why did you kill the last two?”

  “Wait, live exercise, what the heck do you mean?”

  “What does that phrase usually mean to you?”

  “I mean is this not a simulation? Are these real people?”

  The words crashed against Ingram’s expression and Richard could read the answer in Ingram’s face. Richard shouted,

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I thought this was a simulation!”

  Ingram ignored him and shouted a foreign-sounded series of words into his own shoulder. Above them at the top of the stairs, Richard could hear banging. From the opposite side of the small tavern-looking room, Richard could see the entrance the gunman shot through. He ran when he saw Richard and Ingram make quick work of his friends.

  “Follow the gunman, but don’t kill him! Or do, I guess it doesn’t matter now!”

  Richard hauled ass. He did not need to be warned twice. Ingram ran right on Richard’s heels. Richard shouted,

  “Are we really back in time?”

  “Yes, but this is a flawed alternate timeline when the British and Dutch interests in southern Africa turned into a series of political intrigues and triggered World War I just under three centuries early. Why did you have to kill them all?”

  “I told you I did not know they were real, you might have mentioned that!”

  Of course, how real could alternate timeline people actually be? Metaphysics aside, Richard decided he did not want to hurt anymore of them for no other reason than they seemed to be averse to it. Instead he ran until a flashing light surrounded him and he found himself back in a large cylindrical room with a platform in the center. This looked just like the time machine he used to escape the time cops the first time. Now, Richard knew how to use the dialing device and knew the exact sequence he needed to return to his real home.

  But that was not going to happen until Richard found Rob, Karen, his sister, and Alethia. Ingram looked furious at Richard as he spoke,

  “You need to return to your room and we will arrange a debrief later.”

  He shook his head at Richard and left the room as a blue path presented itself to Richard’s vision and showed him the path back to his room.

  There he found the same bare metal room with a hard metal bed in the center. Richard pouted that the test had been unfair and arbitrary. Richard did not know the stakes, so how could make a good decision without all of the facts? The failure made him want to slink out of his room and back to the time machine. There he could escape to whatever time he felt like, basically without repercussions. Richard turned those options over in his head. No matter how he considered his choices, he needed to stay here to rescue his friends. Hopefully, this would let him find Alethia too.

  Richard laid back on the hard metal bed under him.

  This is unfair.

  The words sounded petty and childish to him, even in his own mind. He wondered how he managed to sound petulant in his own head when he decided that he needed a more comfortable bed to whine in. The computer in his head presented certain frustrations. Richard could invoke any of the multiple warnings he had previously dismissed as well as a host of others. But he could not figure out how to perform a simple search in the system.

  He could not find a Terminal session to use or a manual and started to grow frustrated with the system, so he laid back and imagined himself somewhere better. ‘Anywhere but here’ was better with at least one partner, but Richard could easily close his eyes and see himself on a white sand beach. His chiseled body attracted as much attention from passersby as the skimpy bathing suits the women in Richard’s imagination wore.

  Those women huddled around him, tossing accolades and compliments Richard’s way. He smiled as the sun cast its warmth down on him. He wiggled his toes and felt the fine grains of sand stick between them. Richard opened his eyes and the image did not fade right away. He could see it projected against the harsh steel of the room like the computers needed more information before they could solidify the fruits of Richard’s imagination.

  He laughed in triumph and changed his focus. If Richard could be anywhere feeling sorry for himself right then, he wanted to be in his childhood bedroom. Wolverine posters decorated the walls as well as a tall poster of Alicia Silverstone. Richard carried a crush for her well after her career ended. He could see his old black and white Mac sitting on his dark wooden desk near the corner of the room. His bed had Transformer sheets, not from the terrible live action films, but from the original animated series.

  Optimus Prime had watched over his sleep for a decade before the irrational fear a woman might see his sheets and deem him a child had finally forced him to shelve the covers and replace them with something in a nondescript monotone.

  The image came to life in Richard’s head, helped along by his neural enhancements as well as his need for comfort. Something in the back of his mind served as a warning for Richard. He did not have as much time as he seemed to believe. He needed to find his sister, Rob, and Karen before something happened to them so they could help him track down Alethia. She was his real goal, of course.

  He opened his eyes and found that he lay on the bed situated in the middle of his childhood bedroom. The Transformers sheets under him felt like flannel, just like he remembered. Excited by the return of his youth, Richard shot out of the bed to see if the comics and toys from his childhood also appeared. Sure enough, he had his old Transformers and He-Man figurines and his precious Skull Mountain set.

  Richard lost two hours removing all of the die cast metal figures, including his vintage Go-bots toys, and arranging them by size and relative power. Which bad guys were more or less powerful than the corresponding good guy created an essential dilemma for youthful Richard Kain and provided hours of play.

  When the door opened, Ingram was there. A flash of light dispelled Richard’s childhood possessions and brought him kicking back to his present. He was tired of moving forward in time and wanted some way to pause or reset. Besides, Ingram looked pissed.

  “Follow me, Mr Kain, now.”

  Ingram turned without waiting for Richard to stand and walked off. Richard scrambled to keep up with the other time cop. When he left the room, the hallway looked different to Richard, but he could not say how. He stared at the corner of the hallway leading to the right, away from the direction Ingram walked. That corner was definitely shorter the last time Richard looked. With everything clad by featureless, dull steel, Richard could not say how he recognized any part of the structure. But the longer his gaze rested on the corner, the more certain he became that the corner had moved.

  He shelved that information because Ingram stopped before a door and motioned for Richard to enter.

  Richard hung his head so he did not have to look Ingram in the eyes and entered the room. This room was all white with a massive marble tank holding exotic sea life opposite the doorway. Between the fish tank and the door sat a white desk with a woman wearing a blue suit sitting behind it.

  “Hello Mr Kain, I am Amanda Blank. Please have a seat.”

  With her words, a chair materialized for Richard. He blinked at the woman and sat down in the chair. She folded her fingers in front of her face as she leaned forward and stared at Richard. Her pale blue eyes felt like they were trying to look through him rather than at him.

  Amanda remained silent, watching Richard for some reaction, he did not know what.

  Tired of waiting, he said,

  “I guess I am here because of the training exercise.”

  Amanda shrugged,

  “Let’s assume that is the case. What do you have to say about that Richard?”

  “Look, I thought it was a simulation, not actual time travel. If I had known that I would not have gone berserk and messed everything up.”

  “Why?”

  “I am sorry? Why what?”

  Amanda lowered her hands and said,

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you believe this was a simulation?”

  “I did not imagine that you would just throw me into a dangerous or sensitive situation without a briefing and without knowing it was real.”

  “Okay, then why did you ‘go berserk and mess everything up’?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, that would be refreshing.”

  Richard did not know what to make of that remark. Everything he had told Amanda so far was the complete truth.

  “The people we were contacting started to annoy me. And I thought they were ones and zeroes, therefore expendable. I would never hurt real people!”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I would prefer not to hurt them. Or did you mean I really thought they were ones and zeroes or did I really kill them because they were annoying me?”

  Amanda nodded and said,

  “How are you interested in helping us, Richard?”

  “Any way I can, really. You guys have helped me a lot. I mean, I want to save my friend Alethia from whatever happened to her and I want to see Karen and Rob again.”

  Amanda said,

  “Once they have completed their assessments and training programs.”

  “How come I have not had to go through additional training?”

  “Because your nano-upgrades have already matured. You will remain a low-functioning asset until your death.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Your friends Robert and Karen have not had their implants mature or fix yet. That same process was interrupted when you fled our facility.”

  “But they were never here in the first place!”

  “Exactly. The process never started and therefore did not have a chance to end prematurely.”

  “Does that mean I am like, broken or whatever?”

  “No, your implants will simply not perform as efficiently as they could. And you might encounter some minor side effects.”

  “Like what?”

  “Difficulties concentrating, recollection problems, some minor health-related symptoms.”

  “Don’t the nanites fix that?”

  “Think of this as the minor symptoms of rejection. Your body has not fully accepted your implants and the window to trick it into accepting them has shut.”

  Richard had a weird feeling that Amanda withheld something from him, something about the nanites. But he had no idea how to find that information out exactly.

  “Huh. That sucks… Whelp, was there anything else? Can I see my friends now?”

  “As I said, they are busy.”

  “Alrighty, then do you need anything else from me?”

  Amanda studied Richard’s face for a few seconds, like she translated the lines of his face into a difficult language. She shook her head and said,

  “You are dismissed, Mr Kain. I am ordering Ingram to keep watch over you while you are recuperating. He will also let you know when your friends are available.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  Richard stood and left the office before Amanda could say anything else to him. Ingram stood waiting and led him back to his cell. When the door locked behind him, that confirmed the label Richard gave to his room. He was not a guest here.

  He closed his eyes and conjured his childhood room. This place was perfect. His Nintendo sat under the cheap old TV his parents let him keep in his room. Richard plugged Legend of Zelda in and proceeded to engage in some therapeutic nostalgia.

  A day later, Ingram interrupted Richard’s ‘all cake and pie breakfast’ with a harsh knock on his door. Richard opened the door, surprised that Ingram did not just barge in. Ingram stood there with a small stack of clothing in hand.

  “We have remedial temporal studies now. Put these on.”

  Ingram followed Richard back into his room. Richard said,

  “You want me to change, right? I need some privacy.”

  Ingram nodded and turned his back to Richard.

  Richard rolled his eyes and stripped out of the silver unitard and into the brown jerkin and breeches Ingram had brought him.

  “Are we heading to a Renaissance festival?”

  Ingram frowned and said,

  “No, this is remedial temporal studies. I believe this will be valuable to you.”

  “Remedial, huh? Is this the class for idiots who can’t figure out what is up?”

  Ingram nodded his head with such subtlety that Richard recognized it as a micro expression as Ingram shook his head.

  “We use this course to teach our children the dangers of time travel. So they learn respect for what the Time Enforcers do.”

  “You know, that’s the first time someone told me the name of our club? That’s weird because usually people have the name before they even know what their club is going to be doing.”

  Ingram could tell the question was not in earnest, so he stared at Richard and said,

  “We have a schedule, do you need anything before we leave?”

  Richard shook his head and followed Ingram’s brisk pace through the hallways. He finished in the time machine room. This time they stood on the discs while the system translated them somewhere else. Richard had no sensation of motion or that he even went anywhere.

  Richard started to ask a question because he stood in pitch blackness that made his hand invisible in the lack of light. Ingram coughed and put his hand over Richard’s mouth. A few seconds passed and Richard’s eyes adjusted to the light. The two of them stood in a dark room with well fitted floorboards over head. The tiny shafts of light that poked through the ceiling were the results of people stepping on the boards and creating gaps in the workmanship.

  Richard nodded at Ingram and he other man removed his hand from Richard’s mouth. He beckoned for Richard to follow, so he did. Ingram crawled though tight spaces filled with carved and painted figurines. The floor changed from broken stones to cobbles of the same type, only these were regularly replaced and repaired. The air smelled stagnant, almost like a swamp, but the humidity was too low for that.

  They arrived in a small white stone chamber with more of the dark gray cobblestones in the floor. A single door led from this room. The hallway they followed here seemed more like a poorly constructed secret tunnel than a real hallway.

  Ingram turned away from Richard and returned to face him with an eyeball missing. Ingram said,

  “Gods above, you are fucking dense. We don’t have long to chat, so shut up and listen. You and your friends are in serious trouble. Within the next two days, your friends Rob and Karen will either die or complete the treatment course to become Enforcers. You do not want that and neither would they if their free will weren’t in question.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I said shut up. I am taking a huge risk here. Your friend Alethia is fine, so is her friend Zoe. Rob, Karen, Rachel, and you are in danger. Even if the nanite therapy is successful, the treatment strips decades from your lives. Each of you will not live more than five years after receiving the therapy. You are lucky that your implants matured without being here. That is why you can lie to your supervisors and why you still have some free will. Because of that, I want to offer you assistance. Accept my help and I will ensure you can free your friends before the conditioning is finished. I will help you escape if possible.”

  “Why would you help me?”

  “Because I am a spy for the Enforcer’s enemies and I have seen your personality inventory. You have no respect for authority and utter loyalty to your friends. You are not only likely to accept my offer, but you are very unlikely to share it with anyone who could eliminate me. Besides, I am offering you a sincere chance to save your sister and your friends. I think you will eventually take it.”

  “Shit, are you serious? Is this some kind of trick?”

  “Shhhh!”

  Ingram held up his hand and peered into the darkness behind him. Richard waited ten seconds before he said,

  “Look, you need to…”

  “I said shut up, someone is coming!”

  Richard bit his lip and looked into the shadows of the hallway. A woman with short brown hair, a purple toga and clinking brass bracelets on her arm appeared. She checked both of them with a passing glance and nodded to herself.

  “You are both still here, good. Let’s observe.’

  They stepped out of the hidden room and locked the door behind them. Richard wondered what culture would be fine with both toga’s and the outfit he wore along with Ingram.

  None of the similarly dressed citizens passing by them seemed to take notice. Richard wanted to stare after them, for no other reason than garb ideas for the SCA, but he was too distracted by the random message from Ingram. It sounded like a trap, something he was supposed to fall for so Ingram could boot him out of their club. That made perfect sense to Richard from a certain perspective. At the same time, a voice in his mind told him that Ingram’s words made sense and that Ingram represented the only chance Richard and his friends had.

  His words also condemned Richard. Had he really shortened his friends’ lives by decades and subjected them to mind control by a nefarious time traveling organization? If what Ingram suggested was true, then Richard had only a day to act.

  He worried these thoughts like a cat with a mouse under paw. The virtues of ancient Greece, Rome, or Persia — wherever and whenever he was — held none of Richard’s attention. The new woman never introduced herself but took control upon her appearance. Richard and Ingram followed her through the past for hours before she returned to the nook and a flash of light returned them to the steel tunnels of the Enforcers’ hideout. Richard wished he knew whether to call them the good guys or the bad guys.

  They led him back to his room and the woman told him to write up a report of his experiences, a report that would be reviewed by his supervisors later.

  Richard sat down at his old wooden desk to write the report. His pen was unresponsive. Despite his distractions, Richard remembered the entirety of his journey. But he was not sure where to start and besides, he could not stop himself from running Ingram’s words over and over again in his own head.

  He decided to see how thoroughly he was being observed, he wrote on his page in block letters,

  “I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR AMANDA BLANK ABOUT A POSSIBLE TRAITOR!”

  Richard took deep breath as he finished the last word. He had a plan already, hopefully it would work.

  Minutes later a new woman appeared at his door. She was short and square shaped. Likely, she could tear Richard in half, but he was distracted with the thought that she was the first unattractive person Richard had seen in this time.

  The woman had nothing to say to Richard, ignoring his attempts to make casual conversation. She led him back to Amanda Blank’s office and opened the door for him. Amanda sat at the same desk she sat in before.

  Once the door was closed, Amanda said,

  “You have some information for me about a traitor?”

  “I do!”

  Richard wove a lie just for Amanda’s benefit. The nameless woman who led Ingram and Richard through the past tried to offer Richard a ‘way out.’ Which was crazy because Richard had no interest in escaping this place, or so he told Amanda Blank. Once his story was done, Amanda dismissed him and the same short woman escorted him back to his cell.

  Richard sweated out the next two hours. He was not sure how much time Karen and Rob had remaining, but he hoped that something good would happen soon. Reality rose to the occasion with a brief knock on Richard’s door. Before he could rise and open it, Ingram fell through. He was covered with blood and coughing as he waved for Richard to close his doors.

  “You didn’t talk to anyone about me, did you?”

  Ingram’s voice was a wet croak. Richard could see two small holes in his torso. Richard shook his head and said,

  “What is going on?”

  This was starting to become his motto.

  “I escaped a death squad, that is what is going on. They do not know where I am right now because of this.”

  Ingram held up a round metal sphere about the size of a football.

  “You need this, but not right now…”

  Ingram shook his head and said,

  “Sorry, you need it now. Now for real. Relax for a second and let me bind your nano computer to a true map of the facility.”

  Ingram touched Richard with the metal sphere and for a brief moment, his computer system went apeshit with warnings. Then they faded away and Richard could suddenly control his own internal systems perfectly. He accessed the personnel records of himself and his friends. In those fleeting seconds, Richard read their entire files.

  “Holy shit!”

  “What did you find?”

  “Rob had to have his ‘madness’ corrected, what? Karen is a supervisor and is currently rejecting the supervisors program so they had to ‘increase the intensity.’ What does all of this mean? Why have you passed terminal senescence?”

  Ingram paused as Richard asked his questions. Each was answered with a stunning degree of completeness.

  Rob developed psychopathic narcissism and had to be ‘treated.’ He was presently suspended in the air by cords and was being shocked repeatedly by some sort of automated system. Karen’s eyes had been fixed open like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. The Enforcers were injecting her with something while forcing her to watch coruscating images. Rachel was the only person who was not being mistreated in some way. She was simply unconscious. As soon as he thought about it, the computer in his head showed Richard the shortest path to his friends.

  As a finale, the computer showed him the effects of terminal senescence. Several figures with arched backs and opened mouths appeared before his eyes. They bled from their mouths and noses and most of them looked like they writhed in excruciating agony.

  Ingram watched Richard while he sucked in air passed his bloody, torn lips. He said,

  “It showed you, yes? You and your friends need to escape this place. Anyone who remains will become a willing soldier for the Enforcers. If you can, find the Keepers. They are the natural enemies of the Enforcers. Ingram dropped the ball into Richard’s hands and whispered,

  “Or use the time machine in room 2351. It is far from where you were taken and the last confirmed location of Keeper activity. I programmed the sphere for you. If you can find the time machine there, you should be able to escape without the Enforcers knowing where or when you went.”

  Ingram coughed and stood up.

  “They will come to check for me soon. I can still use my enhancement and I would like to blow out rather than fizzle.”

  With those words, flames licked over Ingram’s eyes and skin. Fires broke out in Richard’s steel room and Ingram shouted,

  “Run, Richard Kain, run!”

  Richard ran out of the room and activated the location finding algorithm in his head. A soft blue light showed him the path to his friends. Richard shifted to the form of the stocky woman from the other day when he heard boots approaching from the distant halls. He — or she, whatever — made room for the four soldiers to pass. Richard tried not to look any of them in the eye on the off chance they might recognize him.

  Rob’s room was the first in Richard’s list. Once he was out of sight of the other soldiers in the facility, he ran to find Rob. No one tried to stop him before he got there. No one guarded the door to Rob’s torture chamber either. Richard touched the metal sphere to the doorway and it opened. Rob hung within the room in the same position and scene the computer had shown him.

  Well, that means the thing is not a trick.

  He sort of wished the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. But the smells wafting out of Rob’s room shook Richard to his core. They had not even bothered to set the computer to clean the mess Rob made of himself. This was barbaric at best and reminded Richard of mental healthcare in the US from the fifties.

  Richard tapped the sphere against the wall and the various armatures and wires suspending Rob from the ceiling retracted and lowered him to the ground without injuring him.

  “Rob! Rob man, can you hear me?”

  Rob’s hand shot out to grab Richard by the throat. Even with his own lightning reflexes, Richard could not compete with Rob. Rob ground his teeth and squeezed Richard’s throat,

  “Who the hell are you and what is happening to me?”

  Richard gargled and realized that Rob only saw a frumpy woman when he looked at Richard. Without further delay, Richard shifted back into himself,

  “It’s me, Richard! It’s jailbreak time, Rob! We’re gonna grab Rachel and Karen and get the hell out of here.”

  Rob reacted to Karen’s name,

  “KAREN! THEY HAVE HER!”

  He shot up, and then staggered to hold his head,

  “Agh, it hurts. Where is she, Richard?”

  Richard’s systems had chosen Karen to be last, but when he wondered where she was, a pink line appeared separate from the original blue line that now led to Rachel. Rob shouted again,

  “Where is she?!?!?!”

  He slammed his shoulder and arm into the steel of the doorway and looked outside. He screamed a blood curdling roar and charged from the door with a leap. Someone else’s screams pulled Richard out of the room. Four small balls of light floated around Rob. Two of them, the pink and blue balls seemed to block or absorb impacts. The yellow ball flew into one of Rob’s assailants, they stopped moving as the ball touched them. Rob used their pause to snap the man’s neck. When the green ball touched a victim, they recoiled from Rob and Richard and ran gibbering down the hall, as fast as they could run from both Richard and Rob.

  Richard did not move from the doorway he stood at. He watched Rob finish the last of the four-person strike team without taking even a single injury.

  That must be his superpower.

  Richard wondered exactly what the yellow and green spheres did, but he did not have time to wonder as Rob returned to the doorway.

  “Tell me how to get to her, Richard!”

  Richard debated his next course for less than a second. He touched Rob with the metal sphere Ingram had given him and Rob’s eyes opened wide.

  “Oh, thank you my friend!”

  He charged away, following his own version of the path to Karen.

  “Well shit.”

  That statement provided a satisfactory summary of Richard’s feelings. He peeled off after Rob, hoping to intercept his friend before he killed anyone else.