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SOMEWHERE IN LIBOLI
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
“Is Banks hot? She can’t actually be hot, right?”
To his credit, Zan doesn’t laugh. Right away, at least. Jen can see him bite back a smile under that scruffy tumbleweed of a beard from where she’s curled in her comma of misery on the motel bed, and he carefully sets aside the little train model he’s been fiddling with as he turns to face her.
“Who are you asking?”
“You. God. The universe. Anyone but Darrell, he’s not helping.”
The traitor in question mrrps sleepily, flicking an ear at her before curling back up to drool all over the pages of one of her open tomes.
Zan reaches over to give the cat a scritch behind his pointy ears, chuckling softly at the thunderous purr he receives. “Can’t imagine why he wouldn’t be helpful. He is a lawyer.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not inclined to take my case.”
Jen huffs, with maybe just a touch of intentional drama, and uncurls from her misery-coil to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.
“She pulls her gloves off with her teeth. With her teeth, Zan. When they’re all bloody and covered in flesh-goop.”
“She does.”
“She smells like menthol and antiseptic and dead people ashes.”
“It’s a very unique combination.”
“She’s condescending and rude and honestly kinda scary even when she’s not waving the gun she used to kill my client.”
Jen pauses. Takes a breath. Feels the lingering, freezing chill where a bullet kissed her skin and long, thin gloved fingers wrapped around her soul and pulled. “And also us. She very much did kill us.”
“Her bedside manner could definitely use some work, but you can’t fault her results.”
“And when we’re all crammed outside a doorway she spins the chamber of her gun and counts her bullets in that stupid sexy smoker’s rasp and - ugh.”
Zan wordlessly raises an eyebrow.
Shit.
Pack it in, Kellen.
“I mean - not sexy. Definitely not sexy. Obnoxious. Is what I meant to say.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
Jen sits up to squint at him, the shitty lamplight hopefully masking the undoubtedly-there flash of nerves on her face. “I literally cannot do that.”
He hums thoughtfully. “You can. There’s a good handful of futures where you do.”
Oh, dammit, now she’s interested.
He can’t tell her how a particular time-thread unfolds outside of a one-second snapshot. She knows he can’t. They went through the whole “what do your special eyes see” chat the first day she was stationed in Liboli, somewhere between “this is Special Agent Vesker” and “sorry about my cat, he’s like that with everyone.”
The stream of time flows past him and he can skip a couple rocks across its surface and watch the ripples, that’s how he always used to put it. And if one of those ripples, say, happens to include her getting it together long enough to kiss talk to Scary, Unfortunately Definitely Hot Dessa Banks before hurling herself out a window in embarrassment, then, well, that’s really no one’s business but the almighty time-stream’s, is it?
Maybe if you weren’t so nosy all the time, she’d have more of a reason to like you, a nasty little voice that sounds suspiciously like Steve Clark whispers in the back of her mind.
Fuck it.
Fuck Mind-Steve.
Clear mind, full heart, nosiness is a-go.
“What happens?”
There’s a flash of that wry, knowing smile again, but Zan obligingly closes his eyes.
He straightens up. Breathes deeply. Fiddles with the brim of his hat, the hem of his fatigues-coat (that he’s still wearing even though they’ve been out of the field for hours, c’mon, Zan).
A flash of eerie, pale blue light dances across his face as he peers forward. A static prickle races down her spine as the light blooms outward, the peculiar taste of blueberry and metal that accompanies his craft settling across her tongue.
The light flares. Ebbs. Fades.
There’s a beat.
Then two.
The portentous silence hovers thick and heavy and Jen’s about to jump out of her skin when she blurts out “Well?”
The old fogey grins.
“I can’t tell you. Go talk to her.”
“Oh, goddammit -”