The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller (26 page)

Lee was already back at the office holding down the fort. As she passed me the plastic envelopes, she regarded me coolly, daring me to speak up. Somehow I kept my head. I took my envelopes up and down the halls. I had been thwarted. No way around it. Six days remained. I could try to kill Lee, but coming so close on the heels of Joachim's "accident," it could draw suspicion. Meanwhile, the network was shut to me. I didn't see what more I could do besides bide my time.

Maybe that was for the best. Central was on the case now. I was supposed to be maintaining a low profile. Instead, I'd deliberately risked the life of one of the central figures of the conspiracy. Unacceptable.

I resolved to back off, to be a passive absorber of intel. To be a model employee. Not just for Joachim, but for Mara and the Cutting Room.

My pad warbled while I was still on my rounds. It was Lee. Joachim wanted to see us both. I headed downstairs to the hospital, announced myself at reception. An orderly ushered me to his room. It smelled pleasantly of lemon disinfectant. Joachim sat up in bed, tablet resting on the sheet beside him. He gestured at a chair, but didn't speak until Lee showed up a minute later.

"Thank you both for coming." Joachim's voice was notably less ragged than it had been a few hours before. "I'm trying to understand what happened. Everything was normal when I suited up for my walk?"

Lee nodded. "I checked everything. Oxygen appeared full. I've already ordered an investigation—"

"Because it was virtually empty, as I quickly discovered. And when it ran out, then what?"

"I screamed." Lee laughed wryly. "But when I saw you in the dust, I knew there was only one thing to do. Adam must have heard me yelling. He ran into the back, I told him what was happening, and good soldier that he is, he insisted on going outside in my stead."

I set my jaw. The snake. Playing up my supposed part to butter me up and ensure I wouldn't talk while slyly intimating I was nothing but a grunt: wonderful for following orders, but incapable of generating ideas of my own. I tipped my head at the ceiling. Just six more days.

Joachim stared at Lee. "You're out."

"Out?" she said. "Of what?"

"Lee, you idiot, we've had cameras in the office since the break-in. I watched the tape."

She was still for a long moment, then nodded, stony. "So what happens to me?"

"I imagine you'll be demoted." Joachim gestured toward the window.

Two green-suited guards emerged from the door. Each man took one of her elbows. I expected her to argue, perhaps even to fight them, but she was frozen by the same instinct that had overtaken her while Joachim lay facedown in the dust of the moon. She let herself be taken away without a word.

Joachim raised his brows at me. "You look stunned. Do you find my decision abrupt?"

"I don't know what to think," I said.

"Part of me wants to admire her for lying. We're programmed to. Might as well try to squeeze some professional gains out of the instinct." He gave me a cynical smile. "But I don't think the oxygen tank was an accident."

"Sir?"

"I've been in business for a long time, Adam. I've worked every level from skyscrapers to the street. I've known a lot of people. Lee seized the chance to take credit for the accident. With someone that opportunistic, it makes me wonder whether it was an accident at all."

I tried to keep my expression neutral. "That sounds like an extremely serious charge."

"We'll investigate, see what shakes out. But I didn't get where I am by letting worms off the hook." He waved one hand to the side, brushing the issue away. "Regardless, she's the past. Time to move forward. I have an opening up front, Adam."

"I'm happy to cover while you search for a suitable replacement," I said.

"None of my other people are anything but followers. The front desk is the wheel of the ship. I need someone decisive at the helm."

I swallowed. My throat hurt from eating vacuum. "I would be honored, Mr. Joachim."

He grinned crookedly. "Least I can do for the man who saved my life."

I hadn't been that proud of myself since graduating from the Academy.

I worked late that night. Mr. Joachim called in a favor and had one of his friends' assistants train me, showing me how to access Lee's in-house assessments of everyone in the facility and how she'd derived the hierarchal protocol that determined who was allowed to see Joachim and who was shown out the door. I was given a crash-course in scheduling, Mr. Joachim's routine, and the coming changes to my station. I'd be transferred to a new bunk. Allowed to grow my hair. Assigned to a different lunchtime cafeteria and a later dinner. It was a lot to take in, but I knew I could handle it.

I didn't get to bed until well after lights out. My day started blurrily early, but I threw myself into the task, ruling the front desk like a firm but fair king. I knew much of my enthusiasm was chemically induced, but I let myself ride its currents. The better I worked, the more likely Joachim would take me deeper into his counsel.

I was so caught up in catching up that I didn't have time to browse the personnel files for anything revelatory. That night, I closed up the office and headed to dinner. I was glad to see most of the gray-uniformed workers had already left. Among the remainder, I easily picked out Vette's augmented face. I sat across from her and explained all that I had accomplished.

"Wonderful work," she said. "They killed her, you know."

My blood curdled in my veins. "Lee?"

Vette nodded, spooned up a heaping bite of reddish mush, and held it at eye level. "Here she is."

My gorge rose. "There's no way."

She glanced at me, then shook her head sharply. "Not like that, weirdo. They wouldn't be
that
crass. They mulched her. Fed her to the tomatoes. And then fed the tomatoes to us."

"That's..."

"Nuts? I know, but you can't waste resources in a place like this. Congratulations on your victory, though. Tomorrow, you'll literally be shitting her out."

I couldn't believe Vette would be so vulgar. She had clearly spent too long in the lower levels. I hoped her return to Primetime would restore her civilized values. I ate just enough to avoid the interest of the guards, then deposited the leftovers down the cafeteria garbage chute.

That left me with five days. Joachim returned to the office, but said he was putting his moonwalks on hold until I'd been adequately trained to train one of the
other
underlings to hold down the front while I handled things in Joachim's personal office.

Throughout the day, I peppered him with questions about my duties, hoping to prod him into revealing something about the facility's underlying purpose, but he remained steadfastly focused on the bureaucratic aspects and byzantine politics of their little game. I began to wonder if that's all it was: deliberate foolishness cooked up to pass the time, to lend meaning to lives stripped of it the moment they'd brought an end to life on their Earth.

I skimmed the files of the other managers. The public records were all business, but Lee's notes included blatant references to G&A's former criminal wing. Several of Joachim's colleagues had been drug dealers, contract killers, and black marketeers. A few had been peeled off from state special ops programs. Others appeared to have once been legitimate businessmen, with a special emphasis on entrepreneurs. The talent assembled was deep and diverse. Everything you might need to launch an empire of time travelers. Which made it even more puzzling that their chief interest appeared to be wasting time on petty games of power.

Understandably, Lee had no file on Rupert Joachim, AKA Silas Hockery. To get that, I was either going to have to do some hacking, or swap favors with one of the other personal assistants.

I didn't know whether I had time to pull that off, but I could sure as hell steal everything I did have access to. While I greased the skids with my fellow/rival assistants, I slapped together a program that would slice and retrieve every file I could find onto my tablet. I scheduled it to go off thirty minutes before the Pods would take me away.

After lunch, Joachim poked his head from his office. "Cancel tomorrow morning."

I hunched over my tablet. "Which meeting?"

"All of them."

"Who should I schedule instead?"

"Don't worry about it. Just close the office until I say. No interruptions. Not even you."

"As you wish."

I set to cleansing tomorrow's schedule. We personal assistants had a network all our own, intended to allow us to talk shop, exchange favors, etc. I scoured it for hints, but found nothing relating to Joachim's mysterious meeting.

I closed up, ate, slept. I got to the office early. Joachim was already there. I locked the front doors. He locked his. I diverted all calls to the message service, got to work on some clerical backlog, and watched for the knock of Mr. Joachim's secret guest.

It never came.

A soft pop went off behind Joachim's door. I got up, spooked that it must be the airlock, but then Joachim spoke too softly to make out the words. Another voice answered. Might be a video call, but the office's lines were all routed through the front. Everything was quiet. Shut down.

I frowned, glanced at the closed door, and dialed up the feed for the new security cameras in my employer's office.

I've seen a lot. Dozens of other worlds. Some of the worst crimes you can imagine. But nothing prepared me for what I saw on my tablet.

Joachim sat at his desk, all smiles. Across from him, and very much not smiling, sat Kellendor Davies. Director of Central Chrono-Security, Primetime.

In a daze, I routed the audio to my earpiece.

"...hope it wasn't a long trip," Joachim was saying. He looked extremely pleased with his joke.

"Right," Davies said. "Don't have a lot of time here, Joachim. I have several points. One by one."

"As you wish."

Davies twirled his finger, indicator the facility. "First off. Lot of wasted space here. It's a damn city. And your people lord it up like feudal barons. I don't like it."

Joachim was more reserved than I'd ever seen him. "It seems to me this is our business."

"And that makes it mine. I want this place pared down. Efficient."

"I don't see the problem. We're self-sufficient."

"It's extra people. Extra eyes and ears and mouths. All of it pointless. I question your team's focus."

Joachim leaned forward, smiling, and clasped his hands. "It must look silly. Yes? A game. A way for us to puff ourselves up."

Davies nodded once. "Precisely. Foolish."

"I can assure you its purpose is the opposite. We have a problem with our organization: it is made entirely of alpha dogs. Everyone wants to take over. That drive is why we chose them, and that's why we're working with you—each one of us will have our own empires, won't we?"

Davies nodded again. "If that's your greatest ambition."

"It strikes me as worthy," Joachim chuckled. "Well then, this grand game of ours is kindergarten for emperors. Additionally, we're conditioning all the alpha dogs to act as a pack—and to learn their place within it. If we didn't impose a stable hierarchy, things could get very, very messy."

"Awfully baroque way to do it."

"But effective. Wolves yearn for order. They've developed ways to establish it without tearing each other apart. If this looks like a game, that's because it is—but it's a game with a purpose."

Davies' stern face looked ready to argue, but he waved one hand. "So long as your first focus is on the task."

"Of course," Joachim said. "Although it would be easier for us to focus if your friends weren't sniffing our tracks."

"They're not. I've commandeered the investigation."

"Oh dear. Do you think your people will find anything?"

"Just enough for them to slap each other on the back for a job well done." Davies removed a small chip from his vest and slid it across the table. "Your latest targets."

Joachim plucked the chip from the table and placed it in his suit pocket. "I'll send them straight downstairs."

"Do better," Davies said. "No messes."

Joachim smiled, but I knew my employer well enough to see the menace sheathed behind his teeth. "Growing pains, that's all. You'll like what you see."

Davies affected an expression that conveyed he knew better than to hope. He glanced at his handheld link. "One minute left. Anything else?"

"I believe that covers it."

Davies nodded. They passed a minute in silence. With a pop of displaced atmosphere, he vanished. I cut the camera feed to my tablet.

A few minutes later, Joachim strolled out from his office. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing." I jerked my thumb in the direction of his private airlock. "It's so quiet you'd think we were out there."

He chuckled. "And here I am under the delusion I'm important."

"Is your meeting over already, then?"

"Yeah." He nodded vaguely. "Director checking in. Too important to stop by in person, but that's not about to stop her from micromanaging my every move."

I laughed. My chest felt as empty as a cave.

I said nothing to Vette. I didn't even want to
think
about what I had seen. Because if it were true—and there was, when I allowed myself to believe it, no other option—then the trouble I'd thought we were in was nothing compared to the real thing.

I wanted to make a play for the chip Davies had given Joachim, but I didn't have the reach. Anyway, I couldn't risk it. Not when I was sitting on something that could shake Primetime to its core.

I bided my time. I was the model assistant. I did everything I was asked. Three days later, while I was lying in my bunk in the darkness, the ceiling less than two feet from my face, the Pod whisked me back to my own world.

"What's the matter?" Mara said as I climbed out into the backup Cutting Room facility. "You look like someone walked over your grave."

I shook my head. "Meet me where we met before. Three hours."

She bit her lip, then nodded. I went out and got the best anti-surveilliance gear I could get my hands on, then headed to the park on the hill where the woods were made of trees that had never grown in Primetime. Mara showed up shortly thereafter, Vette in tow.