#renea

“I don’t know what to say,” Gerard says, staring. According to the display that appears when he blinks twice, it’s early enough in the morning that very few people will be up to see his trainee break sixteen time travel codes. She’s not wearing a wearing a harness and he feels the nanites in his bloodstream heat. “I don’t know what to say first.”

“You weren’t answering your phone,” Kari says. She blows a lock of wild, brown hair out of her face, showing off that she’s once again forgotten to put on her dermal covering. The circuits across her forehead blink merrily at him. “Or your door.”

Gerard blinks. He always answers his phone. He looks down at his right forearm and nearly smacks himself when he sees he’d left his dermal cover on, too tired to perform his normal nightly routine. He swipes his left thumb across the seam and nearly throws the cover across the room when it pops off. Underneath, there are four blinking lights, two red, two blue. He’s not only missed calls from Kari, but also from his supervisor. “Nitweeds.”

Kari nods and adjusts her grip on her board. The Stick wasn’t a popular model when it came out in 3201, but it was cheaper than any other hover-device on the market. “I know, I kind of thought you were dead, but then I realized no one could kill you in this era.”

“Anyone can kill us in this era,” Gerard corrects automatically. He narrows his eyes, activating the scope-feature so he can scan the buildings across the way for primitive snipers. “Anyone.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Kari says. She adjusts her grip again and grimaces. “Can I come in, boss? I’m not wearing my riding gloves.”

Gerard steps aside, still eyeing the street outside warily. His first trainer died because of a poisoned, Chinese arrow. He’s not going to make the same mistake of underestimating Earth ancestors. “So report, Kari. Why are you waking me up three hours before we’re supposed to meet?”

Kari snaps to attention, both hands sticking to her sides in a salute. “Sir! There’s a criminal in the hotel.”

Gerard stares at her. “Yes, that’s why we’re here. There’s a lot of criminals in this hotel and it’s our responsibility to make sure they all make it out alive.” 2019 is an extraordinarily tumultuous time in American politics and it’s their job to protect to keep it that way for just one more year.

“No, I know the mission, I mean that there’s a criminal” Kari stresses. She leans forward, modulating her voice to a whisper. “Like one of ours.”

Gerard’s heavy brows snap down. That’s outside of mission expectations. 2019 is a sealed year for a reason and even illegal Time watches are programmed to skip over it. They’d had to get special permission from six intergalactic federations to come here for just one week. “What? That’s impossible, there’s--Who?”

“Renea.”

Gerard shorts out. Or, maybe, he blacks out. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between his biological failures and his technological ones. When he comes to, he’s ripping down the hall of the hotel in his underwear, cybernetics on full display and not caring a bit. He stumbles for a moment and then regains his footing, bursting into the hotel stairwell. “Where?”

Kari nearly crashes into him. “The--the first floor. Sir, is she hostile? I know she’s marked as Cataclysmic class--”

“It’d be easy if she was hostile,” Gerard snarls. They’re on the seventh floor. He charges downwards. “She’s not here for us.”

Renea No-Last-Name is one of the most prolific Time Criminals they have in their registry. No one’s sure how she as access to so many Time streams and there’s no clear motivation for what year she hits and what she takes. In any other case, they could mark her down as a petty crook or, at best, an art thief. Her ability to travel through Time makes her Gerard’s problem and her lack of hostility means that she can be anywhere doing anything.

“She nearly prevented Mount St. Helen’s from erupting,” Gerard tells Kari as they hit the third floor. “When I came across her in Rome, she’d nearly convinced Brutus to not stab Caesar.”

The implications of that aren’t lost on Kari. She pales significantly and leaps down the last two steps to the second floor. “Nitweeds.”

“Nitweeds,” Gerard agrees grimly. He slams his way out of the stairwell and into the lobby, nearly bowling over a display of doughnuts in his haste. The business people grazing around the table gasp and he hears a few of them demand the hotel staff call the police. “Where was she heading?!”

“To the pool,” Kari gasps. She staggers a bit more than he thinks necessary when a woman in a power suit dives out in front of her. He makes a mental note to have Kari do more sprints. She’s falling behind. 

He bounds past six more mortified politicians before he gets to the pool. It’s far too early in the morning for it to be open, but he can see a woman standing beside the water, her back to them, talking on a very primitive phone.

Gerard lunges for the gate. He doesn’t expect it when it remains locked and bangs his head against the wrought iron bars hard enough that his reinforced skeleton sings. Kari, a beat behind him, fails to stop in time and slams him into the gate again.

The woman by the pull turns, still talking. “--going to have to call you back. Just remember that I’m very disappointed and I expect to be reimbursed. In full.” She presses a button (a button!) on the phone and slips it into her jean’s pockets. “Gerard, right?”

Gerard yanks on the bars, forgetting that he didn’t charge his strength-enhancing cybernetics the night before. He’d forgotten. Careless. “Kari, open this gate!”

Kari flutters beside him. “It needs a key, boss!”

“Relax, agents,” Renea says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not here to mess up your mission, or whatever.”

“I know,” Gerard says. He shoves Kari behind him. “Go get the key!”

“Oooh,” Kari says, hands flying around. “But--but if she’s dangerous--”

“I’m super dangerous,” Renea assures the younger woman with a wink. Kari whimpers.

“Go,” Gerard commands. He waits until Kari sprints away to finally address Renea. “You’re in a Dead Zone, Renea. That’s another life sentence to your time.” He bares his teeth. “You’ve got 46 lives, right?”

“It’s actually up to 52,” Renea says. She doesn’t sound concerned. “You missed a bunch of stuff when Elizabeth Bathory kidnapped a Time Agent.”

“What?” Gerard can’t imagine that. Elizabeth Bathory’s lifetime is closed. She wouldn’t have the resources to kidnap a Time Agent. And if she did--no. No, it didn’t happen. “You’re stalling for time.”

Renea looks impressed. “Yeah,  I am. Chin misses having you as a partner Gerard. He always said you were very talented.”

Gerard feels his face drain of color. ‘What did you do to Chin?” His old partner had taken a desk job for a few turns after a particularly bad run in with a thief they never caught. He bangs on the gate. “If you hurt him, I swear I--”

“Hurt him?” Renea interrupts. She seems terribly amused. “Oh, I did worse than that.”

“What did you do?” Gerard demands. Maybe it’s not too late to save Chin. Maybe she hasn’t done anything to him yet.

Renea swaggers up to the bars, leaning in so that Gerard can see every freckle smattered across the bridge of her nose. “I married him.”

Gerard blinks. “What?”