#future proof

By the time she had slipped into pants and a shirt, the doorbell hadn’t been rung again. As if the visitor had left already.

She paused in the hallway to the entrance. The floor was cold.

A shadow awaited outside the front door.

Her heart pounded.

When the doorbell rang a fourth time, she shuddered. Neared the door. Opened it.

A familiar motorcycle was parked in the driveway. A familiar, handsome face awaited outside—and her pulse began to calm at the sight of Valentín Ruiz and his symmetrical visage. He pulled the black beanie off his head to reveal a crop of short dark hair, and nodded in greeting.

“Grant,” he said. His big brown eyes scanned her down and up, registering the absence of socks or shoes, and the pearls of water on her flushed skin. He thrust a thumb back over his shoulder and asked, “Should I come back later?”

She shook her head and ushered him inside.

On the way into the kitchen, she spotted a note from Danielle on the counter:

JOB INTERVIEW @ TI, BACK FOR LUNCH W/ SURPRISE!!!

Dan had drawn a smiley face underneath the note.

Chloe Grant suppressed a grin and resisted the urge to crumple it up before Ruiz might read it, too.

“Can I get you anything?” asked Grant, flicking on the stove to heat up a kettle of water.

Ruiz grimaced and shook his head.

“Nah, I’m good. Just came to talk. Got some stuff to talk about, need to get it off my chest.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

He scratched the back of his head. Rolling his jaw, he looked like he was chewing on the words before he uttered a single syllable. Then his admissions flooded out without further warning.

“Shit, I don’t even know where to start, but I guess I’ll start at the top. You might wanna sit down for this.”

He gestured to an empty corner, looked around, and almost looked exasperated at the absence of chairs in her roomy kitchen.

It only now dawned on Grant that this was the roomiest house she had ever lived in. It had somehow gotten bigger in the last time shift. She wondered if Future Proof’s paychecks hadn’t also gotten bigger in this timeline.

“I know it ain’t my fault that Carter’s… dead, but I can’t help but feel like I should have done something, or more, or sooner. You know?”

She needed to marry the events of conflicting timelines. In a previous one, Ruiz’s actions and affiliation with Celava as a spy harbored a very clear connection to Carter’s death. In the current reality, however, she struggled to see the connection between Carter’s death and Ruiz.

Then again… had the Apex Predator and its biomechanical implant anything to do with Celava and Ruiz’s industrial espionage for them?

Her nostrils flared and she pinched them again.

No blood on her fingers.

The conflicting timelines were messing with her head.

What even were memories anymore? Just more confusion to wrestle with in therapy?

“I know what you’re thinking, but I came to you ‘cause I got a good feelin’ about you, Grant. I’m gonna to tell you something, confide in you, and I can only hope you hear me out to the end, and don’t jump to any conclusions. Please?”

His husky voice cracked on the last word.

She tilted her head. Her lips curled into a weary smile. The mere thought of having to repeat conversations because of temporal anomalies somehow exhausted her on a level she had never even considered before.

The tea kettle on the stove began whistling.

She talked over it.

“You leak Future Proof’s information and data to a red-haired woman named Loretta Corsino, whom you sometimes meet at a café downtown. I know.”

His chin dropped, leaving a mouth wide agape.

“You… know? How?” He snapped his mouth shut, upon which his otherwise trademark confident grin took shape. “Shoulda known. That is what Spencer hired you for, huh? Counter-intelligence? So, have you been keepin’ tabs on me since day one?”

“No, man. I spied on your spying in a different timeline—without Spencer telling me to—and you came clean when I confronted you about it. Hell, I might know more than you do at this point.”

Staring at her, he squinted. The grin faded.

The kettle’s whistling reached a fever pitch. She switched off the stove and removed the kettle. Pouring herself a cup of tea, she looked up at him. Pink color from the tea bag swirled like mist in the hot water, reminding her of her own blood circling down the shower’s drain.

“Though I don’t know what all has changed. Maybe your motivation’s different in this timeline, maybe you’re playing me, or angling for something. Wouldn’t that be a doozy?”

“God damn it, Grant. Were you going to tell me, or what?”

“Hey, I confronted you last time. The time you don’t remember because… well, it… never happened, because, well, hell, I don’t know why the hell not.” She stopped rambling into mumbling and then punctuated it all with a sigh.

She softly lifted and dunked the tea bag in her mug. The reddish mist still swirled, with all the water turned pink.

“Okay, well, what do you know that I don’t?”

She shrugged.

“Actually, not that much. Corsino plays at working for the feds, but she is actually in the private sector. Works for a UK-based company named Celava—Celava Semi-Conductors. Energy, reactors, particle accelerators, real high-tech. The works.”

“Shit. That’s more than I could figure out.”

“I can’t really take all the credit for it. Dan did the legwork. I just tailed you and Corsino a lot, didn’t learn half as much in twice the time as she did.”

“Is she… Bennett, is she still digging on us? On all of this?”

Grant licked her lips.

Dan, in fact, wasn’t. In fact, Danielle Bennett wasn’t having any of this—any of the espionage, counter-espionage, the research and development, let alone the dangerous field work and specimen containment that Grant and Ruiz and the others were conducting for Future Proof.

She could still hear Dan in her mind, urging her to quit the job. Yesterday.

“No, man. She’s outta the game.”

And Grant had been thinking about doing the same.

Indeed, she had just been thinking about it again, under the shower. Both before and after the nosebleed.

She pinched her nostrils again. No blood.

Good.

Ruiz stared at the mug between them and scratched his head again. Shook his head again.

Clearly, it was taking a bit to wrap his head around everything. His expectations had crashed face-first into Grant’s surprise knowledge.

“Celava, huh? You think they made those things? Those… Apex Predators, from the future?”

Grant shrugged.

“Might not even be from the future, for all we know.”

She said those words out loud before ever having thought them. It sent a shiver down her spine.

It’s from 2,000 years into the future. I have no earthly idea how anything on our planet would evolve this fast.

Burch’s words echoed in her mind.

Ruiz had nothing.

“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “Even assuming Celava sicced that thing on us as a hit against FP personnel, well…”

The words died before she finished uttering the rest.

Funny how Ruiz hadn’t been there when disaster struck.

His eyes glistened, glittering with sadness. Yet a hint of suspicion flashed within her mind.

Sending another shiver down her spine.

Enough with the paranoia.

She shook her head, silently arguing against herself.

“You’re dubious of Spencer, I get it,” she added. “So am I. Sometimes, at least.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I hoped for the good in you, hoped I wasn’t makin’ a mistake by talking to you, telling you all this. Honestly, I’m glad you already knew. Makes things almost easier, I guess. Though… I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I have a family to support.”

Family?

He didn’t have a family to support before the time shift.

Ruiz continued, “I thought I could just walk away if push comes to shove. Corsino didn’t seem like the type to get me iced with wetwork, but after the thing with Carter? Shit, with what I heard about what happened down there, I’m surprised only he was killed. That thing on the autopsy table is no run-o’-the-mill dino, that thing is a fuckin’ monster. If someone from Celava or another corpo team was behind that, if they wanted people dead, shit, then I just… I just don’t know anymore.”

Grant bobbed the tea bag in her mug. Squeezed it out with a spoon, then put it aside.

She didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t think he was wrong about anything he was saying.

His waterfall of words continued. “Shit, Grant, I don’t care, but I feel like I could have at least done something. Or done somethin’ sooner. That kid didn’t deserve to clock out like he did. I don’t know—it feels like I have his blood on my hands.”

In some ways, Ruiz did. In another time, in another world.

But if she understood the changes in reality correctly, then those times and worlds had ceased to exist. Recursive changes that rippled forward through time, evolving into a new and singular reality.

In other ways: Ruiz was innocent, as far as she was concerned.

“Tea?” she asked, extending the mug to him like a peace offering.

Ruiz graciously took it. The pink liquid’s surface shimmered as it shook, as the mug shook in his hand.

He had the shakes in this timeline, too. Seemed like some things were inescapable.

She said, “Fuck it. Just quit. Dan’s right—we can’t keep doing this kinda work forever. Job’ll kill us, one way or another. If you opt out now, they’re not gonna have a lot to lord over you.”

He gripped the mug in both hands, suppressing the tremors.

She turned and prepped herself another mug of tea.

“And, no, before you ask—you can’t smoke in here.”

“How’d you—never mind.” He sipped his tea. His nostrils flared as he inhaled the steam from his mug. “I can’t just up and leave.”

He turned his back on her, to stare out into the backyard lawn of her new home.

The grass outside was perfectly trimmed, the tall fence obscured any features of the neighboring houses in this patch of suburbia, and it now looked and felt all so deeply artificial to Grant.

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t. I take responsibility for my actions. We can only stop this machine from the inside. Whether it’s these Celava kooks, or Spencer and his own legion of mad scientists, I think this time Anomaly shit and messing with it is going to doom us all. Real apocalypse shit. You know that lady on the board—”

“One of the corpo horsemen of the apocalypse? Yeah, I know who.”

He scoffed with the hint of a chuckle.

“Yeah, that one. You know her cronies are engineering some kinda new bio-weapon for us to use on the specimens in the field? You know as much as I do, that ain’t gonna end well.”

Ever so slightly, the world darkened around her at the thought.

“Mhm.”

“Are we the bad guys? I think we’re the bad guys if we don’t do anything about all this shit.”

He turned. Locked stares with Grant.

His eyes glistened still, wet with a sheen to suggest tears being held back.

“I just don’t know anymore,” he said. “On good days, I’m thinking Spencer might be the good guy in all this. You know he might be from the future, right?”

A feather dropped. It shattered the mirror of reality in Grant’s mind, and she fell through it—

Something she had never considered, yet—

Ruiz added, “Corsino told me some stuff about him. I looked into it myself, and some things are pretty fuckin’ odd. Guy appears outta nowhere in the business world, all his history is so vague that nobody can really confirm it, and he ends up building an international corporation, with an HQ literally built around an Anomaly that connects the present to the future. Oh, and, uh, if you look at how he made a killing on the stock market, you’d think he knows shit before it even happens. Motherfucker invested in all sorts o’ tech companies before they got big, like some motherfucker who knew the numbers to win the lottery multiple times over.”

Another sip.

She hadn’t looked into this, but with what she knew, it checked out. For now, it made sense.

In her mind’s eye, she sat across from Spencer at the CEO’s desk, in the clinically cold corner office he occupied atop the towering skyscraper.

The man shaped like a knife shook her hand and welcomed her on board.

Malachi Spencer had always had a strange air about him. More than a sense of superiority. It was like he knew everything.

Grant jolted as if she had been shocked—the doorbell rang again. Like she had sensed it before it happened. The hairs on her neck stood on end.

An overwhelming sense of dread filled every fiber of her being.

Ruiz squinted again. He sniffed, took another sip of tea, and washed away any deeper emotions before they could fully surface. Saved by the bell.

“You expecting someone?” he asked.

“No…”

Grant wandered back down the hall, heading towards the door.

The sense of dread grew as she sensed an overwhelming presence, and spotted three shadows through the milky glass of the front entrance.

Her feet were ice cold by now.

She opened the door.

Malachi Spencer stood there, dressed in a brown winter coat, looking as sharp as ever.

Two taller men in suits flanked him—sporting sunglasses and earpieces, towering hulks of bodyguards she had never seen in Spencer’s company before.

Then again, as it now dawned on her, she had never met Spencer outside of Future Proof’s skyscraper.

“Miss Grant,” said Spencer, enunciating every syllable with a sharpness to match his exterior. “We need to speak.”

With a curt wave to his hired muscle, he directed them to wait outside and invited himself in. Grant stepped out of the way without thinking, though her ears flushed with heat, with anger welling up deep down over the audacity of him just barging in like this.

She closed the door and followed him into the kitchen—

Had he known?

Upon laying eyes on Spencer, astonishment crossed Ruiz’s face.

The words spilled out of Spencer’s lips with absolute authority and precision. “Before either of you ask—I knew you were here, and we need to speak as well, Mister Ruiz.”

Spencer straightened the collar of his coat yet didn’t deign to remove it, despite the warmth indoors. He exchanged a glance with them both.

Ruiz asked, “Did you chip us or something when we signed up?”

Spencer glowered.

“No, Mister Ruiz. You’re carrying around cell phones. It’s dead simple to know where my employees are at all times. I just need to ask Singh to trace you, and you may be found without fail.”

The expression on Ruiz’s face faded from astonishment into vexation, like he had just been punched in the face.

“Sorry,” Grant said with a tremor to the word, suggesting she wasn’t sorry at all. “But what are you doing here?”

Spencer arched a brow.

“I know enough to guess what this meeting between the two of you is about. There are rogue elements in Future Proof,” Spencer said. He raised a slender hand to shush them before either Ruiz or Grant could interject. “I know about your espionage for Loretta Corsino, Mister Ruiz, and I encourage you to keep doing what you’ve been doing. I am counting on it.”

Ruiz and Grant exchanged another glance.

It really was as if he had known everything already.

“Keep it on the downlow, though,” Spencer continued. “You two are not the rogue elements I am concerned about. I trust you both to continue doing your work inside and outside the company to the best of your abilities, and to the full extent of your conscience. That extends to Bennett.”

He peered down at the pink liquid in Grant’s second mug.

“Your tea is growing cold.”

She didn’t care about her tea right now. Pinched her nose again.

Still no blood. She hoped she had seen the last of it.

Something about Spencer felt like he was about to unload more on them. Before he could, Grant cleared her throat to get some words in.

“Well, if you’re going to play with an open hand today, how about you go all-in? The more we know, the better we can operate. At this point, I think we all know a bit too much to the point of being a liability, but not enough to really sniff out these rogue elements. I’m guessing that’s what you want us to do, right?”

“Correct. Like you, Miss Grant, I remember other timelines. Mister Sears—yes, I remember him—was one such rogue element. I wiped him from existence,” said Spencer with a clarity, honesty, and brutality that pummeled Grant in the gut like an avalanche of stones. “I discovered his trail and connection to Celava, and all the skeletons in his closet that he put in there to undermine us. I made sure he would never exist.”

She could feel the blood draining from her own face.

“Woah, woah, hold up. You’re saying you killed Sears? You—you what, you scrubbed him from the timeline? Are you insane?”

Ruiz said nothing. Sipped his tea. His hand no longer shook.

He answered instead of Spencer, saying, “No. He’s just cold as ice, and reminding us of what he’s willing to do if we mess with his well-laid plans. Ain’t that the truth, Mister Spencer?”

Spencer’s absence of a reply weighed heavier than any verbal threats he could possibly utter.

His silent, deathly stare drilled into Ruiz, then swept back to Grant.

“The important part is that we are on the same page. I am from the future, and there is a disaster that I am trying to prevent, but have not yet found out how to. Celava and its lackeys are the engineers of humanity’s destruction, and you just had a taste of that with the Apex Predator ending Carter’s life in Containment.”

Grant’s nostrils flared again, as she held back her sigh, hot air escaping through her nose.

She jutted her chin out, feeling defiant, and shook her head.

“You gotta give us more than that. I am about one push away from walkin’ away from this job.”

A lie.

More than ever before, Chloe Grant felt a sense of responsibility. A deep-rooted sense of duty. She wasn’t even sure towards what, or whom, but she felt responsible for everything that would follow from here on out.

Despite everything she had just told Ruiz about not feeling guilty over Carter’s death, she wondered how many deaths she would cause if she simply walked away from everything now.

How many lives were hanging in the balance.

But she wanted the truth. She wanted to hear it from Spencer’s mouth.

“Very well. Everything eventually points to Malcolm Wright, owner and CEO of Celava, building a colony out of time, deep in the past. He wants to control Earth’s timeline by altering events, natural resources, and even the genetic makeup of biological organisms. Worse, he is using tech that he steals from governments and organizations like our own, hoping to master the Anomalies. He is inviting disaster, more than I could ever threaten by wiping out a single rat in our organization. I’ve seen all the evidence I need, and the underhanded attack of the Apex Predator in our headquarters was the final piece of the puzzle.”

The mug was still lukewarm.

Grant chucked the teabag into the sink and took a long sip of tea.

Needed to gulp it down. Needed more time to process.

Time. Oh, what a joke.

Of course, there would be no way she could easily digest everything Spencer was dropping on them now. She’d have to slowly piece it together… and hope he was telling the truth. The whole truth.

“There’s more I will share, but for now, I want you to prepare for my next task for you. The two of you will be flying to Rome, using false identities. I need you to invade Celava’s offices there, and dig up any dirt you can. Your plane is leaving tonight. Expect a generous raise for your efforts, and all expenses are paid for.”

Ruiz squinted again. The sharpshooter’s eyes sought out contact with Grant’s again, like he was looking for someone to tell him what to do next.

Then he just grinned, like he had been told a really stupid joke.

Grant chewed on her lip.

Not because she was unsure, but because she knew exactly what she was going to do.