#these days i mostly just talk to her to get updates on her sordid life bc against my better judgement i do still care about her

[qqueenofhades]

the tangled web of fate we weave: xv

HAPPY GARCY DEATHDAY, REDUX! Anyway, sorry for the slight delay in updating, as I had to get the plot bunnies in order, but we are back and I am Very Excited. A little something to tide us over until we perish tonight.

part xiv/AO3.

It says something about the succeeding insanity of the situations that Lucy Preston has found herself in that her first reaction to this – to Flynn apparently letting slip that he knows all this because some future version of herself told him, and in fact did a lot more than talking to judge from that hickey – is muted and unsettled shock, but not outright denial or disbelief. It almost makes a sordid sense, so far as that word can be applied to anything that involves time travel and multiple selves and the other stuff that she has accepted in an academic way as in fact being involved with this, but has not yet had to actually wrap her head around. She knows at once he’s not lying, or at least if he is, it’s because he himself believes it’s the truth. They stare at each other for a succeeding excruciating moment. Then Lucy finally says, “I told you. I told you. As in, my future self, who you met just before that trip to Pennsylvania. I somehow turned up from some unspecified moment in – in what? The Tardis? The DeLorean? What? – to tell you that Rittenhouse had a time machine. Is that it?”

Flynn blows out a breath. “Do you remember the conversation we had at the hotel in Philadelphia that night?”

“I… yes.” Lucy’s cheeks go somewhat warm, as she recalls that it mostly involved her shouting at him for being a stubborn, elusive jackass. Which, strictly speaking, is all true, but she should try to remember specifics. “You said that you’d had second thoughts about coming to see me at Stanford that day, decided to walk away, and – and give it up, or do it yourself. But that you changed your mind. That was why you came back, and went through with the original plan.”

“Essentially. Yes.” Flynn is clearly still not comfortable talking about this, but he glances at her with a certain raw, tender urgency. “But I didn’t change my mind. You did. You – came, you wouldn’t tell me from when or how, you didn’t tell me much. You said I couldn’t give up the hunt, and that you – meaning your younger self, I assume – would understand one day. That was why I went back. To you.”

“Jesus.” Lucy scrubs both hands over her face. She remembers being baffled and exasperated by Flynn’s bizarre behavior, the way he kept staring at her and/or would barely look at her, insisted on sleeping on the floor, gave only evasive or partial answers. Well, she supposes that meeting a future version of her and learning that time travel is real is a pretty good excuse, as excuses go. She feels obliquely bad for being so frustrated at him, though obviously this is not an explanation that ever would have occurred to her (or most people outside of padded cells). “So that’s why you’ve kept at it? This – this whole time?”

“More or less.” Flynn returns his attention to the ceiling. “Yes. I knew what the consequences would be if I stopped, if I just sat back and let them win, and I. . . I wasn’t going to do that. What would you do, if the fate of the entire world might be in your hands, and you were the only person who knew? What, just give up? With what I’ve learned about these bastards, about what they want to do and what they’ve already done? I don’t know if I’ve done anything, but I know even less that I can afford to stop.”

Lucy is at a complete loss for how to answer that. She’s not sure she should even try. This man, who goes in and out of her life at highly significant intervals and never leaves things exactly the same as when he came, has been single-handedly fighting a shadowy evil organization for at least two years. As he says, he’s been the only soldier in the war, and he’s doing it in some part because he trusted her – some version of her, some mysterious older self that she may or may not grow up into – absolutely when she apparently told him that it was one they couldn’t afford to lose. Does this mean she starts fighting it as well, Lucy wonders? And does she do it because this happened, this circularity of causation that will give you a headache trying to figure it out – in other words, if you do something because your future self told you to do it, where does the idea originate from? Does it matter? Theoretically, perhaps, she could choose to ignore this information and carry on as normal. But she’s also not sure that, in a way altogether separate from the extraordinary and impossible elements of the whole thing, that she could.

“So you believed this?” she asks at last. “When I – when I told you?”

“Not at first,” Flynn says, entirely reasonably. “You… convinced me.”

Lucy wants to ask again what kind of convincing took place, even if she can, frankly, guess. It is a weird and obnoxious feeling to be jealous of yourself, that’s for sure. “And that was enough for you?”

Flynn shrugs, not quite meeting her eyes. “Looks like it, wouldn’t you say?”

Lucy opens her mouth again, then shuts it hard enough to hear her teeth click. This man. This utterly idiot, frustrating, dense, dysfunctional, dedicated, ridiculous man has been fighting all of time and space for two years, never thought it was worth telling her, and might have carried on to God knows what end, on her word? Sure, future-self and all that, but still her, in some impossible, unquantifiable way. That is a singular, and almost terrifying, level of trust and adoration and devotion. She does, then. She owns his soul, and always has. All she has to decide is what to do with it now.

There is another fraught, catching moment as they look at each other, the heat sparking again despite what they have (finally) just done, at least in part. Lucy knows all the conventional-wisdom, smart-girl things about not jumping into a new relationship on the night you literally broke up your last one, with a guy who might have been about to propose again if things were different. But honestly, Noah (at least the second time around) was never a real relationship. She always found some reason to hold him at arm’s length, not wanting to let him go and not wanting to be alone but also not really wanting him any closer. She and Flynn have spent years – almost ten, at this point – missing each other, whether by their own volition or someone else’s. Come and gone, ships passing in the night, stars just missing the other’s orbits. So much time may remain, if what Flynn is saying is true (and as impossible as it sounds, she knows it is), but that doesn’t mean Lucy can take it for granted. And at last, well. She doesn’t want to do a damn thing besides this.

She leans forward. Still almost timidly, expecting to be pushed away somehow, rejected.  God knows Flynn has a bad track record with handling her other attempts to make moves on him, even though you’d think that getting to third base would change that. But it’s the truth, it’s the truth, it feels like a giant iron band around her chest that has been there for years and years has finally unlocked and let go. It’s this. It is. Her and him.

Flynn’s hand floats up shyly to cup her cheek, as their noses brush, then their foreheads. She can feel his pulse tripping in his fingers, and realizes that he is as scared as she is, if not more. But likewise, he can no longer pretend he wants anything but this, and always has.

They kiss lightly and tenderly as a melting snowflake for half a moment more, and then it turns ferocious. They clutch hold of each other’s heads, fingers twisting in their hair, his hands almost engulfing her ears, as he pulls her toward her and she climbs into his lap, straddling him. His hands leave her face and run down her shoulders, her sides, her hips, settling her on top of him, grinding hard between her legs. Earlier was gentleness and disbelief and care and worship, and that was what they needed then, but this is different. The choice has now been made, the key has been turned, and what’s left is only hunger.

Lucy almost rips the Wonder Woman T-shirt getting it off her head, and Flynn’s hands are shaking almost too hard to stop as he shucks his undershirt. Lucy can still feel the faint tremor in them when they come up to cup her breasts, as she goes to hands and knees atop him and shudders as his callused fingers continue their exploration down her spine, to the waistband of her pajama pants. He pauses. “Lucy, do you want – ”

“Yes.” Lucy finds his insistence on her control and consent very arousing, has only begun to think of the ways she might enjoy that in more intimate fashions, but right now, he is the only thing she wants, and she can’t stand to wait another minute. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

He closes his eyes as if hearing a prayer, or offering an unspoken one of his own. They squirm around to get the pajama pants, and his boxers, off, and he rubs a thumb lightly between her legs, still a bit wet from his earlier attentions. Then he lifts her atop him and nudges at her entrance, as Lucy reaches down to grasp hold of him and guide him. She half wonders if she needs to, since after all, he’s the one who knows what (or rather who) he is doing here. There is something exquisitely delicious about the fact that your partner already knows your body, has been with you before and knows what feels right and what you like, but it’s all new for you. She can relax and know that it’s going to be good, trust him in a way that she never has on the first time with a guy before, and it’s dizzying.

Flynn swears as he slips into her, a few maddening inches, and Lucy wraps her arms around his neck, pressing his face into her shoulder, both of them breathing in raw, open-mouthed gasps. He turns his head, roughing his lips against hers – too harsh and hungry to be a kiss, exactly, but she returns it with the same savage, thorough need. He continues to ease into her, pushing her solidly apart as she whimpers and rolls her hips to adjust the fit and take him deeper, until he settles. Both of them swear this time. She feels almost drunk.

“Lucy,” Flynn whispers hoarsely. Out of all the words he knows, in all the languages, it seems to be the only one he can recall. “Lucy.”

Lucy answers by clenching around him, a few slick quick clutches, and tangling her arms tighter around his neck. He remains where he is beneath her for a moment longer, then comes up like a hurricane and rolls her over, pushing her into the pillows on her back, legs sprawled open. He grips onto her thigh with one hand, tangles his other into hers, and pushes it above her head, bending her up into him for an extremely thorough drag and thrust on every single nerve inside her. He moves like a summer thunderstorm, hot and bright and rattling the heavens as the downpour comes down. Washes everything, everyone, clean.

(She can’t stand it, she can’t stand it, and yet. It is all she needs, and more.)

(They get almost no sleep that night whatsoever.)

Finally, having dozed off in a sated stupor near dawn, tangled in the sweaty sheets with Lucy’s head nuzzled on Flynn’s chest, his arms wrapped around her as she lies nearly atop him (he still barely notices her weight, apparently), they are re-awoken to the inconvenient and burdensome fact of reality. They did it three times last night (three and a half, if you count the opening warmup) and while they are giggly and flushed and flirty and can barely keep their hands off each other, they cannot go on acting like sex-crazed bonobo monkeys forever. (In their defense, Lucy thinks, it’s been a very long dry spell.) There’s still Wyatt, and Flynn’s end of the deal, and whatever else is going to happen with the two of them now. This doesn’t feel like it’s going to end like it usually does, with Flynn abruptly pissing off into oblivion and never even bothering to send a goddamn text, but it also means that hard choices will have to be made. Is he still dedicated to the Rittenhunt? Is she willing to possibly change or sacrifice her entire life to join him?

They wake up slowly, pleasantly sore in unused places, and when Lucy steps into the crappy hotel shower, she thinks it’s lucky that her clothes will cover most of this. She couldn’t look more well-fucked if she tried, and there’s a lingering afterglow that will settle in her chest like an ember and burn for a while. She can’t hope the goofy, giddy smile that keeps flickering to her lips. God, she just – she feels good.

She dries off and gets dressed, goes out, and promptly gets distracted with kissing Flynn good morning, running both hands up his arms and wrapping them around his neck again, unable to get enough of finally being allowed to touch him in the way she wants. This nearly leads to round four on the bed, but he finally groans and tears his mouth away from hers, very unwillingly. “Lucy, we need to get going.”

“Later, then?” Lucy sits up and reluctantly buttons her half-undone blouse. She then glances at the clock and has a mild panic attack to shock her out of her present state of acute nymphomania. She needs to get to Stanford for her morning class in under forty minutes, and she can’t roll in looking like – well, you know what she looks like. She jumps up, rushes to do her makeup and throw everything back into her suitcase, and they head out. She remembers just in time that they don’t have a car, since Flynn ditched the stolen laundry truck right before the world’s most ill-advised mugging attempt last night, and her own is still back at Noah’s. God, now there’s a reunion she really does not want to have. Dumps him just last night, then turns up having clearly hit a three-run homer with the guy he’s always known (accurately) was bad news? Noah does not deserve that.

They can get public transit, but it’s clear Lucy is not going to make it in time for class, and she phones the department and asks if they can let her students know that due to unexpected circumstances, she can’t make it today. If she knows undergraduates, they won’t mind in the least, and though this might be the smallest of her professional responsibilities she ends up having to shirk, she still feels a pang of guilt. Flynn, looking at her, smiles wryly. “I promise I’ll get you back for the afternoon.”

It takes a while, but they manage to do this. Lucy double-checks Noah’s schedule on her phone, prays that he has not switched shifts again, and gives Flynn her keys, so he can go retrieve her car while Noah is at work. They kiss again before Flynn leaves to do this, and as Lucy is hurrying into the history building with a hopeless smile on her face, she runs into her friend and department colleague, Eleanor Renshaw, who raises both eyebrows at her. “Someone had a really good night, huh?”

“I…” Lucy coughs, cheeks going pink. “It was all right. Honestly, it started out terrible.”

“Mm-hmm.” Eleanor glances sidelong at her and lowers her voice. “That wasn’t Noah dropping you off, though. It’s none of my business, but… everything okay?”

“It’s…” Yes, Lucy is in fact going to use the word complicated here, however risibly inadequate. “It’s complicated. Noah and I… kind of broke up. The – the other guy, I – we – we’ve known each other for a while. Don’t say anything about this to anyone, all right? It’s not really something I want to be asked about at the water coolers. It’s new. We haven’t exactly figured anything out.”

“Sure.” Eleanor is a good enough friend that she will do as promised, and as she glances at Lucy again, she smiles wryly. “You know, I haven’t seen you looking this happy in – well, the entire time I’ve known you, pretty much. Who is this new – well, old new guy?”

“Later. I’ll fill you in, I promise.” Lucy isn’t sure if she will or not, since this still seems like a delicate soap bubble and poking it or prodding it in any way will cause it to vanish. “I already missed my morning class, I gotta make some of my photocopies.”

Eleanor nods, agrees that she has a totally fascinating book on regional differences in thirteenth-century French Gothic manuscripts to get back to, and waves Lucy down the hall to her office. Once she has shut the door and glanced around, just in case, Lucy boots up her computer and opens the local San Francisco news sites. Sure enough, there’s a story on several of them that Wyatt Logan, U.S. army sergeant, has been arrested for the attempted break-in at Mason Industries, and is also dealing with the tragic disappearance of his wife, Jessica. If the public knows anything, they are certainly urged to come forward. Looks like there are already several crowd-funding campaigns started on Wyatt’s behalf. Figures.

Lucy looks at Wyatt’s booking photo in the article, can hear Flynn asking sarcastically how Wyatt will look in his mugshot, and thinks that she almost can’t stand the sad, empty stare in his eyes. The articles have noted that police are not currently looking for anyone else connected to the break-in, so Wyatt must have held up his end of the deal and lied convincingly that it was all on him, he forced anyone else spotted on the security footage to help him out. That’s a pretty big show of trust, whether in Lucy or just out of desperation to find his wife (funnily enough, Lucy doesn’t get the feeling it was about trusting Flynn). He’ll probably be released with no charges, since as noted, public sympathy is already on his side. But what life does he get to go back to either? All of them are changing, are losing, are getting little (or large) pieces chipped out of them. Can’t Rittenhouse just stop?

Lucy sits back in her chair with a frown and closes the sites. She has wondered why Flynn didn’t just try to blow up the time machine, though even he might have trouble smuggling in enough nitroglycerin and/or industrial fertilizer and/or TNT and/or anything else that goes boom, to totally take out Mason Industries and everything in it. You’d also hope that the prospect of massive property damage and multiple collateral casualties would be enough to give him pause, though she honestly can’t say for sure. There was also what he said, two years ago when he left, that there’s no guarantee he would take out the tech to stop them from just building another one, when they haven’t even invented all of it yet. But is there also a hesitation in that if he destroys the time machine for good, it’s possible that the other one won’t be invented? The other her, the older her, sometime in the future, won’t be able to use it, to find him, to tell him about Rittenhouse and whatever else. He will walk away on that night instead of returning and going to Philadelphia with her, they will never see each other again, and none of this will happen.

A chill goes down Lucy’s spine at the thought. History has always seemed so solid, so immutable, so reassuring. Yes, you can argue yourself blue in the face about the interpretations, but the events themselves aren’t up for grabs. The idea that all of it could change, could blow apart under her feet like an unstable river bank – that this could center around them, around him, around her – is absolutely horrifying in a way that the human mind, obviously, has never been equipped to comprehend. How does she not screw this up? Flynn clearly did not want to unduly influence her choice in any way, pushed her away, kept her at a careful distance so it didn’t look like he was manipulating her or forcing her into being around him if she didn’t want to be. Fate vs. free will – was she always going to be destined to do this, and it didn’t matter if Flynn tried to make it happen or not? Or… or what?

Lucy is a historian, not a quantum physicist or a theologian, and her brain hurts, as well as wanting to explode with anxiety, when she thinks about this. She gathers up her armload of assigned readings and takes them to the photocopier, runs them out, and trucks off to afternoon class. It’s not the most scintillating lecture she’s ever given on nineteenth-century American social reform, perhaps, but whatever.

When it’s finished, she packs her stuff up in her bag, reminds herself that she still needs to send the final cover for the book off to UChicago, and wonders where exactly she’s living now. She goes out to the faculty parking lot and shifts anxiously from foot to foot, scanning the drive for any sight of her car. Is Flynn here? Is he coming back? He is coming back, right? He didn’t leave again, did he? Nothing went wrong with getting said car, right? Did Noah catch him and decide to yell? Not really his style, of course, but –

At last, just as Lucy is on the verge of melting down, she sees her Kia turn in (she got rid of the crap Honda now that she has an adult job) and pull up to the curb, flashing its lights at her. She expels a shuddering breath of relief and goes to open the passenger door, unable to resist glancing in first to make sure it’s actually Flynn and not yet another Rittenhouse kidnapping attempt (two is plenty, thanks). But it is, and she crawls in, throws her bag in the back, and kisses him again, just to be sure. “Everything go okay back at the house?”

Flynn shrugs. “Fine. Noah wasn’t there. And since we’re not going back to the roach motel, I’ve found a short-stay apartment for us until we can work out something a little more permanent. I’ve paid the deposit and the first month’s rent, my name there is Alexander Kovac. It’s not as nice as where you were living with Noah, but – ” He stops, clearly trying to act nonchalant, as if her answer doesn’t matter to him. “I mean, if you don’t want to, of course. As I said, it’s short-term. But for now – ”

If he wasn’t driving, Lucy would have kissed him again. Instead, she takes his hand off the gearshift and squeezes it. “It’s fine,” she says. “I’m sure it’s fine. But you – with Rittenhouse. Are you planning to go back to that?”

“I…” Flynn blows out a breath. “I’m thinking about it. I don’t know that I can let it go permanently. I’ve managed to uproot and expose a few useful parts of their operation, and I don’t think they’ll overlook that. I can’t promise that we’re entirely free of the possibility that they’ll come after us again. But you’ve been living here for two years without me, and you haven’t seen hide or hair of them?”

“No.” Lucy, as ever, wants desperately to believe that they’re gone, but can’t quite go that far. “But if I’m living with you – ”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Flynn changes lanes. “That I’ll be a beacon drawing them down on you, the way I was before. If you don’t want to risk – ”

“I’ve spent enough of my life trying not to risk things,” Lucy says, quietly but very firmly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen either, Garcia. But I want to do this with you.”

Flynn’s hands clench on the wheel. A restrained sigh shudders through him, as if all the toil and danger and uncertainty of these last two years, the two years she still barely knows anything about and likely never will, has been vindicated in that. He glances at her, sharp profile painted half in shadow from the freeway lights. “I,” he says, stops, and starts again. “So do I. So do I.”

Rufus has been tying himself in knots trying to decide if he should report the “robbery.” At least, more or less as Eastern European Enema promised (not one of Rufus’s finer alliterations, perhaps, but that bastard was definitely a pain in the ass), Jiya was horrified and volubly sympathetic to his “ordeal,” so their date actually does not end in complete disaster. As they walk back to the hotel, she’s urging him to file a report and tell Connor and whatever else, all of which makes Rufus’s stomach writhe. He can’t file a report since he didn’t really get robbed, it won’t help anyway, the last thing he wants to do is fess up to Connor that he betrayed his trust like this, and he feels eminently unworthy of Jiya’s sympathy and pity. After all, he’s lying to her too, rather than admitting he just let some mysterious terrorist basically have free rein back at Mason Industries. He can barely look at her as he mumbles that it was fun, maybe again sometime, and bolts back to his own room.

Rufus muddles through the welcome dinner that night in complete distraction, doesn’t sleep a wink, and finally gets up before his alarm at ass o’clock the next morning (he’s a software programmer, his natural circadian rhythm means he goes to bed around three AM and likes to wake up around eleven, though this has had to be adjusted to the demands of a job). Connor will be down in the hotel gym, working out before a busy day of meetings and events, and Rufus doesn’t care if it gets him in trouble. He has to do the right thing and come clean before it snowballs even more than it already has. What’s-his-face probably just raced to the airport and jumped straight on a flight; with the eight-hour time change in reverse, he could have gotten into San Francisco in time to do something at Mason Industries last night. He definitely wouldn’t be lollygagging, that’s for sure. Rufus has spent most of the night neurotically refreshing news apps on his phone, and he can’t live this way.

He takes a deep breath, and tells himself that he could get suspended, but Connor probably – probably – isn’t going to fire him. They have known each other too long, and Connor has sponsored him every step of the way. He’s not gonna be pleased, obviously, but he might understand why Rufus did it. He has to.

Rufus clenches his sweaty palms, goes out of his room, and takes the elevator (lift) down to the gym. Sure enough, Connor is inside, pedaling away on an exercise bike and watching the flat-screen TV with his headphones in, and Rufus looks around for any other six-o’-clock-AM psychotic exercise aficionados that they might be disrupting. Coast clear, for the moment. He swipes his key card to let himself in, and makes a beeline for the bike.

Connor plucks out one earphone, looking bemused. “Well, Rufus. Good morning to you too. I must say, I didn’t expect to see you just yet. Everything all right?”

“No,” Rufus blurts out. “No. Connor, we need to talk. Right away.”

Mason frowns, letting the whirl of the pedals come to a halt. “Oh? You did seem rather distracted at the dinner last night. I thought your little day out with Jiya went well.”

“She didn’t – she didn’t tell you what happened?”

“No.” Mason cocks his head. “Rufus, what on earth is going on?”

Rufus feels as if he’s standing in a white-hot spotlight of shame, but there’s nothing for it. Stammering and barely able to get the words out at points, he tells Connor what happened yesterday at Covent Garden. And what, thanks to him, is probably happening at home.

Connor is quiet for a moment after Rufus finishes, at a forgivable loss for words. He considers. Then he demands, “Garcia Flynn? Garcia Flynn did this?”

“What?” Rufus swears that name is familiar, though he can’t think why. “He never told me his name, he just looked like your standard-issue Eastern European baddie, but – ”

“Oh no, I’m quite sure it was Flynn.” Mason takes the towel off the handlebars of the bike and mops his face with it. “Your description is quite vivid and unmistakable. Suffice it to say, some of my. . . professional colleagues have been keeping an eye on him for a while, or at least trying. He’s been off the grid and deep undercover for the past several years, and unfortunately, he is very good at it. We’ve had a few brief leads, but nothing solid. So you’re telling me you had a nice coffee with the person of most interest to our entire operation, who could kill this crucial and groundbreaking scientific project dead in the water, and let him into the laboratory?”

Rufus cringes. “I’m – I’m sorry, Connor, I – I just – ” He trails off. Exonerating himself feels cheap, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves it. “He threatened Jiya.”

Connor blows out a jaded-sounding breath, as if this is why workplace romances are, generally speaking, a bad idea. “Yes, well. He would. I don’t suppose it’s entirely your fault, he’s frightened a lot more powerful people than you. But if he got a chance to – bloody hell, what? Oh bugger. One moment, Rufus, please.”

With that, he fishes his buzzing phone out of the bike cupholder, looks at it, and frowns. Answers, paces to the corner of the gym, and has an intense, low-voiced conversation that looks serious. Rufus tries not to eavesdrop, while telling himself that if he does overhear something, he can’t be blamed, but he can’t make out anything anyway. Finally Connor hangs up and comes striding back. “Well. I just got a call from home that someone did in fact break into Mason Industries last night. They have a suspect in custody and are asking questions, but it doesn’t appear as if anything was permanently damaged. We may have miraculously skated this time, but – ”

“What?” Rufus’s heart feels as if it’s about to burst out of his chest. “Flynn?”

“No, actually.” Mason raises an ironic eyebrow. “Wyatt Logan.”

“Him?” Rufus, to say the least, did not see that coming. Is it remotely possible that Flynn went to all that trouble to stick him up, crash his date, and steal his ID badge and keys, possibly ruining his romantic and professional lives, to just. . . not pull off his heist? Is it too much to ask that he got busted by Border Patrol on his way either out of the UK or into the US? But even if it might be a momentary relief that Rufus has not actually been responsible for destroying everything, this is still a very confusing and not necessarily reassuring development. “Why the hell would Wyatt Logan break in? Still bitter that you wouldn’t talk to him from – what, two years ago?”

“I don’t know.” Connor’s tone remains light, but Rufus sees a brief shadow cross his brow. “You don’t suppose they’re working together, do you? Flynn and Logan? I daresay it would be much easier for Logan to get off on these charges than it would for Flynn. If the. . . police get their hands on him, he’s not reappearing any time soon.”

“Wyatt and Flynn in cahoots?” Anything is possible, Rufus supposes, but he still has a hard time picturing that. “So Flynn stole my stuff and gave it to Wyatt to use? I didn’t really get the sense that he was big into delegating.”

“Who knows,” Connor remarks, “but clearly, there remains a great deal to sort out. I don’t really want to cancel this trip, there are a number of high-profile events that I’ve spent a long time setting up, but considering what’s at stake – ”

“I’ll go.” It’s out before Rufus has time to think about it, and he’s likewise been looking forward to the trip, but this is at least partially his fault, even if Connor seems to accept that Garcia Flynn is an absolutely pants-shittingly terrifying dude and has intimidated far more worthy opponents than a shy tech geek. Besides, he wants to curl up and die every time Jiya looks at him sympathetically, since he’s done the exact opposite of earning that, and he needs to make this right somehow. “If you can just move up my return ticket, I’ll leave today, I’ll head back to the Bay Area and handle all of this for you. I understand if you don’t want to trust me, since I messed it up before, but please, Connor. I feel like I should.”

The older man studies him for a long moment, eyes unreadable. Then he says, “That is quite noble of you, Rufus, I’ll give you that. But are you sure you – ”

“I don’t know.” Rufus doesn’t know what exactly Mason was going to say next – sure you can handle it? That you know what to do? That you won’t arrive in the middle of an even bigger mess? – but either way, the answer is the same. “But I have to try.”

After a final pause, Mason nods once. “Very well,” he says, and reaches for his phone. “Do be careful, won’t you?”

Several calls later, making quick arrangements on his behalf, Rufus has been picked up by the car service and is headed right back to Heathrow for another long-ass transatlantic flight. He sits in the back and watches the grey city go by, unable even to text Jiya some kind of apology, because of course Flynn stole his phone. This has not been among a banner few days of his life, that’s for damn sure, and his head chases itself in anxious circles. Nothing about this situation makes any sense. Is Flynn still out there, planning a second break-in while everyone’s distracted with Wyatt? False flag, decoy attempt, and then the jaws actually clap shut? They might not be out of the woods yet. He doesn’t know.

Rufus gets onto the plane (first class, priority boarding, Connor has paid for all the bells and whistles, since it’s just pocket change for him) and while he thinks he won’t, ends up sleeping for most of the eleven-hour flight, to make up for missing it all last night. He is, however, disoriented as hell when they touch down in San Francisco, since it’s barely past noon, his body isn’t sure whether it’s eight o’clock at night or he’s just woken up in the morning, and whether it wants to run in any useful way or not. Rufus collects his bag, guzzles an industrial quantity of Starbucks, picks up his car from the valet lot, and blearily prepares to drive to Mason Industries and sort out what the white-people hell is going on.

When he gets there and informs the police detectives that he’s been sent as attaché for Connor, they reassure him that the situation is under control, nothing was damaged, and Mr. Logan has thus far been mostly cooperative. He did, however, have a female accomplice, as the receptionist, Tammy Westover, has verified, and while Mr. Logan has given a sworn statement that it was all his idea and he forced the woman to help him, they still want to find her for a few questions. Does Rufus have any surveillance tips or tricks for. . .?

“Wait, what?” A female accomplice? Unless Flynn put on a wig and has a hereto-unguessed and convincing passion for drag shows (Rufus would almost pay to see that), it can’t be him. “So what, you want me to just Big Brother her down for you, without a warrant or convincing proof of a crime? When that’s your job? Besides, isn’t that like, massively illegal?”

The detectives exchange a look, as if they think it’s cute he’s worried about that. (And people wonder why black folks have trust issues with the police.) After a pause, Rufus gets what they’re really after. “You’re trying to see if I had something to do with it,” he says. “I was in London the whole time, I have an alibi, I – ”

“Yes, Mr. Carlin. But we’ve heard you also misplaced your ID badge and keys recently. Lost it in a robbery, was it? That’s unfortunate.”

“I’m Mr. Mason’s representative here,” Rufus says. “I’ve talked it over with him, he knows the full account. I don’t care what time it is in London, but you can call him if you want.” He doesn’t know why this should surprise him – black man turns up trying to help the cops, quickly gets fingered as the suspect instead – but still. “I’ll wait.”

The detectives exchange more looks, but finally one of them goes to call Connor, and whatever he says must help, a bit, because the detective looks slightly more conciliatory when he returns. “Just doing our due diligence, Mr. Carlin. But by your own account, this allowed your sensitive materials to get into the hands of someone else who could have used them to gain access to the property. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Rufus doesn’t see what good it’s going to do him to deny this. “Look, how about you let me talk to Wyatt, all right? We. . . kind of know each other, but it’s complicated. If he’s covering for Garcia Flynn somehow, I could possibly figure that out.”

More looks and low-voiced conversations, but at last the detectives seem to decide that they might as well see if either Rufus or Wyatt slips up. They leave Mason Industries in an unmarked grey Crown Victoria and drive to the jail where Wyatt is currently being held. Rufus is shown into one of the Plexiglas-box things with a telephone, sits down, and waits until the door opens on the far side. Glances up, and winces.

Wyatt Logan looks, to put it nicely, like hell. He’s dressed in prison gray, his eyes are red, his hair tousled, his face pale, and he barely notices the guard marching him along to the chair. He sits down and picks up the other phone reflexively, not even looking at who’s on the other side of the box. Then he does, and blinks. “Rufus? Rufus Carlin?”

“Yeah. Hey.” Rufus gives half a wave, which is incredibly awkward. They’re not friends, and the last time they saw each other was Wyatt leaving after the San Jose parking lot fiasco, the one Rufus secretly recorded and handed over to Connor. But Wyatt still looks like lightly warmed over dog shit, and Rufus feels genuinely bad for him. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but. . .”

Wyatt snorts, without any humor whatsoever. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I just. . .” There’s no way to ask this clandestinely, but he might as well. “Look. About the break-in at Mason Industries. Your accomplice – ”

“I made her do it,” Wyatt says. “I forced her to help. I’ve told them to check my call logs, it’ll show I contacted her first. It was all my fault.”

Rufus is pretty sure he’s lying, even if in a backwardly noble, self-sacrificing way. Why the hell would Wyatt do that, though? After a long pause as they stare at each other, Rufus says, “Did you get any help from Garcia Flynn?”

Wyatt stares back at him without a flicker. If that’s a poker face, it’s a good one. “Nope.”

Rufus hesitates. This isn’t an interrogation, he’s not a cop, and doesn’t want to make the actual cops’ jobs any easier for them, just on principle. He’s not gonna sit here and ask questions that Wyatt, if he’s any kind of soldier and has undergone training on how to resist giving up vital intelligence, has probably prepared his answers for. Instead, Rufus leans forward. As quietly as he can, he says, “I know you didn’t do this, Wyatt.”

Wyatt jerks, but doesn’t immediately respond. There’s another pause. Then he says, “You’re wrong. I definitely did do it. All over the security cameras. So – ”

Whatever Rufus is going to find out, it isn’t going to be like this. He holds up a wait finger, hangs up the phone, and then turns to the detectives. “I want to pay his bail.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Carlin?”

“I want to pay his bail,” Rufus repeats. “That’s still legal, right? I’ve got a well-paying tech job, I can afford it. I’m not under arrest, so. . .?”

The detectives confer and mutter and glare, but since if Mason Industries’ own consigliere doesn’t want to press charges, and is willing to charitably extend the olive branch to the perpetrator of the crime, they can’t really get around that. It takes a while, Rufus pulls out his credit card and calls his bank to expect a sizeable charge, but finally, Wyatt appears, still in handcuffs but having been allowed to change back into his own clothes. The corrections officer undoes them, there’s some stuff for them both to sign, and Wyatt is finally released on recognizance. This does not necessarily mean it’s over, but for now, he’s free to go.

They walk into the parking lot without looking at each other, and get into Rufus’s car. Rufus turns on the engine and yawns fit to crack his jaw. “Where should I take you?”

“I don’t know.” Wyatt leans back in his seat, eyes bleak. “I’m not sure it matters. I just. . . thank you. I didn’t deserve that. It was a lot of money. I’ll pay you back whatever I can afford right now, and I’ll keep it up until – ”

Rufus raises a hand. “I don’t want you to thank me,” he says. “I don’t want any of that. I’m just tired of being used by people – you and Garcia Flynn, among others – and I was making the decision on my terms. Besides, there’s things you don’t know about me, either. How about we just call it square?”

Wyatt looks at him, wary and weary and wan, then nods once. He holds out his hand, and they shake. “Just take me to a hotel,” Wyatt says. “That’d be best.”

“You know,” Rufus says. “I have a spare room, and Halo. Frankly, dude, you’re a mess. How about you stay? Just for a night, at least. We can order a pizza.”

Wyatt looks at him again, touched and startled and clearly at the end of his rope, unable to reject a simple, ordinary kindness, when the rest of his world has gone so comprehensively to hell. He starts to speak, clears his throat, and stops. Then he says only, “Okay.”

Connor Mason is working late.

Connor Mason usually is – don’t make billions of omelets without breaking an equal number of eggs, after all – but this is different. He’s been receiving sporadic updates on the situation back in San Francisco, has had to remind the bloody police not to arrest Rufus, and has a great deal more reservations than he has publicly let on. He’s been waiting for something like this to happen, even as he managed to convince himself that it wouldn’t. Told himself that Garcia Flynn was gone, the threat was over, and the time machine would be ready on schedule as Rittenhouse has made it very clear that it will be, or else. In the back of his head, Mason wonders if this is entirely a good idea, but the point is moot. He has no choice.

It’s past midnight in London, and he aimlessly turns over pieces of paper on his desk, staring at the glittering skyline. He was born and raised here, this is still home in a way. His parents immigrated to Britain from the Caribbean during the Windrush, and his mother cleaned the houses of rich Londoners for a living. It was watching her struggle with the vacuum that made young Connor want to simplify her life, to invent better ways to do all this, and he has. His success is beyond any doubt, as is his bank account. His mother (his father died some years ago) lives in plush retirement and wants for nothing at all. Now her son could buy all the houses that she cleaned, several times over. If a great deal of that has come through Rittenhouse. . . well. Omelets. Eggs.

Nonetheless, Mason is feeling anything but sleepy as he sits in the office. He might stay here all night, he’s done it before. If there’s any way to know that this is going to be over, that it was a nearly catastrophic but recoverable slip, and that he can just –

There’s a knock on the door. Once, sharp, and short. It’s not a knock that expects to have to repeat itself, or thinks it would be a wise idea if it did.

Connor looks up with a jerk. He can’t say he’s not been expecting this, but his stomach still sinks. He presses a button on the underside of his desk. “Yes?”

“Hello, Connor,” a woman’s voice says. “Burning the midnight oil?”

Mason grimaces. This is not, indeed, a visit he’s going to get away with refusing. He hesitates as long as he dares, then presses another button. The door swishes open, and Emma Whitmore strides into his office.

It’s been a while since Connor has seen her, since Emma transferred out for whatever shady reasons, and he was almost hoping he wouldn’t. Emma is a very capable pilot and a genuinely impressive woman, but she’s also terrifying, and the knowledge that she is in his organization expressly on the orders of Rittenhouse higher-ups to keep an eye on him while he builds the time machine isn’t exactly comforting. As usual, she looks as if she’s fresh off killing a man, probably literally: immaculately cut and belted grey peacoat, skintight brushed-suede trousers, and black platform heels, ginger hair in elegant curls around her face and blood-red lipstick expertly crisp despite the late hour. She’s carrying a file under her arm, and she takes a moment to good and appreciate his freezing in his chair. “Long time no see.”

“Hello, Emma.” Connor offers a weak attempt at his usual smarmy smile. “Lovely that we’re finally in the same town again, isn’t it?”

Emma shrugs. “I’ve had this on my calendar for a while, sure. Though I’ve heard you’re having a fascinating time even without me. Or was that Rufus?”

“Rufus isn’t here,” Connor says, feeling rather grateful for it. “He’s gone, he – ”

“Yes, I heard.” Emma brushes that off. “I didn’t come to talk about him, anyway. Or only indirectly. I heard that he resurfaced. Is that true?”

Where Rittenhouse is concerned these days, he can only be one person. Connor nods. “Rufus says he spoke to Garcia Flynn, yes.”

“Finally,” Emma says. “There’s been a lot of circle-jerking incompetence at finding him, while they’ve only given me totally shit jobs. Playing the damsel in distress with Wyatt Logan, now desk duty for two years while these knob-slobbing chucklefucks can’t manage something as basic as tracking down the one man who could be a real threat to us. Does nobody remember that I caught him in about five minutes the last time they let me out?”

There is a smart remark on the tip of Connor’s tongue that apparently misogyny is also a workplace problem in secret supervillain societies, but he thinks better of it – as well as pointing out that from what he’s heard, Emma also lost Flynn and his little girlfriend rather spectacularly that time as well. Instead, he manages an airy shrug. “We’re all undervalued for our real talents, aren’t we?”

“Maybe.” Emma’s green eyes gleam with catlike amusement. “Anyway, I always figured that we might end up having to wait for Flynn to show himself. Now he has, and believe me, a lot of the brass wants to just try shooting him on the spot again. But we already tried that, and it didn’t work. Besides, he’s caused us enough problems by now that just killing him isn’t going to fix that. I’ll admit he’s good at his job, but still, with the resources we have, we should have been able to stop him. But. We haven’t.”

“So what?” Mason is beginning to feel decidedly peripheral in this conversation, as well as annoyed. “What do you expect me to do? I have been assured over and over that Rittenhouse would prevent that man from interfering while I finished the work, and now I find that a cut-rate, rent-a-thug private security firm could have done a better job at keeping out this gang of cretins that insist upon sticking their noses where they don’t – ”

“Exactly,” Emma says. “They’ve failed miserably, doing it their way. Honestly, I swear I’m the only person who has the right idea of this, of what’s actually possible, how to honestly fulfill David Rittenhouse and Nicholas Keynes’ real vision.” Her face glows with a fanatic’s fervor at speaking the names. “As I said, Flynn’s resurfaced. But we don’t want him dead.”

“You. . . you don’t?” Mason is even more confused. “Rittenhouse is in the business of forgiving and forgetting now? I did not see that coming. What’s next, helping old ladies cross the street and running charity drives for disadvantaged youth?”

“You glib little prick.” Emma still seems amused. “Still the same as ever, Connor. But no. Listen carefully. We don’t want Flynn dead. We want him stalled, and we want him visible. If he goes off the grid again, that’s another two years those morons won’t be able to find him. Another solid two years of him fucking up our operations and our satellite organizations and our funding. He’s managed to do some real damage, and I am not going to sit by and let that continue. So here’s what you need to do. Pull your strings, work your magic, put the order out through all your spiderwebs and your connections and your high-tech world. Cut off all the standing orders on him. Wipe everything clean. Hack whatever you need to. Give him a clean rap sheet and a new lease on life. Make it all go away.”

“You want me to. . . solve Garcia Flynn’s difficulties with the law for him?” Mason cannot have heard right. “All this time with orders to essentially spare no extreme in taking him down for his crimes, and now you want me to just. . . erase them?”

“You heard me.” Emma smiles. “As I said. We want him to stay right where he is and to drop the hunt and to let his guard down. I have reason to think he might. I want to see him in goddamn Whole Foods shopping for olives, or out at the farmer’s market, or whatever else he might be doing if he stays in the Bay Area for a while. That keeps him away from continuing to sabotage us, and it allows us some time to fix parts of what he’s fucked up. Not everything, but that’s the beauty of it.”

A chill goes down Mason’s back. He isn’t scared of many people, but he’s very, very scared of Emma, and worse, he suspects that she has always known it. The people she works for as well, but definitely her. “Dare I ask?”

“Sure.” Emma hefts the folder onto his desk with a careless slap. “Take a look.”

Mason opens it. It appears to be newspaper articles, police reports, cell phone records, and other such material, all relating to a car crash on the Bayshore Freeway on the night of March 21, 2003. Why this would be remotely important, he can’t fathom. “What’s this?”

“Everything I could find on the accident,” Emma says. “But you need to keep digging. I want to know absolutely everything you can uncover. Legal or not, I don’t care. I want to know who so much as sneezed in a five-mile radius. You’re going to do that, and in turn, I don’t make things very difficult for you. You know all the stuff that could appear in the papers, Connor. True or false. We could throw in some illegitimate love children, corporate supply-chain scandals, laundered money – just about anything.”

Connor opens and shuts his mouth. He knows he is, to say the least, far from squeaky clean, and Rittenhouse has never been an easy bedfellow before, but that makes it starkly apparent that the gloves have not even started to come off. “I – ” he says, stops, and starts again. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“Good,” Emma says. “Make sure it isn’t. For you or for Rufus, because frankly, you can’t protect him forever.”

“Rufus doesn’t know anything about Rittenhouse.”

“Make sure it stays that way.” Emma gets to her feet. “I’ll be coming back to work in San Francisco soon, by the way. Now that we’re really getting somewhere on the machine, I want to run the new tests in person. You’ll also ensure there’s nothing. . . awkward that I might have to deal with?”

“Yes,” Mason says, rather numbly. “Of course.”

Emma smirks at him, then gets to her feet. As she starts to go, Connor finally finds his voice. “Ah – ” It sounds weak, and he has to try again. Reaches for the obsequiousness and charm, and the reflex of a man who has gotten used to solving all his problems with money. “Emma. If this is about your salary – you know I could pay you even more, don’t you? If it might, well, induce you to take a softer line or two?”

“What?” Emma scoffs. “Are you actually asking if you can buy me away from Rittenhouse with another raise? Let’s be honest, Connor. You pay me plenty. Though I’ve heard that San Francisco real estate is getting even more ludicrous, so we can talk shop when I get back. Don’t forget. March 21, 2003. Bayshore Freeway. Find it all. But you’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?” Connor doesn’t think he wants to know. “And that is?”

Emma shrugs. Standing in the doorway, she is almost entirely shrouded in shadow, except for her teeth, which flash shark-white. “I just really like this job.”

And with that, she goes.