I think perhaps time travel is more intimate when you’re married. Martha and I show each other thoughts and memories like another couple might have a casual conversation. The difference is, we can’t easily hide memories from each other. I again need to build mental walls and misdirect her to keep secrets from her, and I sense she does the same.
I look through her memories to see how I looked when I burst into the house of her kidnappers in Bethany and it’s painful to watch myself. I expect to see my face twisted with rage, as I see myself throw the knife that killed a man, but there’s more. There’s also a clear hint of glee. I was happy to kill him.
There are some memories better off left alone, Cephas.
We can try to ignore them, but He sees them all. Maybe I need to see this part of myself. Maybe seeing it is the first step to purging it.
He does see everything, but you’re only looking at the bad. This is what He will also see.
Martha shows me what flashed through my own mind the second before I kicked in the door. In that instant, I thought about love. In a way, I even set priorities. I set the love of Jesus first, by asking His forgiveness; second was my love for Martha; third, I prayed for the souls of the kidnappers. My own safety was - at best - and afterthought.
You thought of everyone but yourself, and you gave them a chance to let me go in peace. You were even willing to sacrifice yourself for me, if it had come to that.
For you, of course I would-
It’s not just me, Cephas. You essentially sacrificed yourself to tell the world the truth at the press conference; you nearly sacrificed yourself to save Michael at the tomb; and then there’s Jocie.
Jocie doesn’t count.
Oh yes, she does. You’ve tried to hide that memory, but we both know she nearly broke your will. You chanced losing yourself to save her soul. It’s just another hit taken for someone else.
The phrase “another hit taken” causes a momentary lapse in her own mental barriers. It’s like a window opens and gives me a brief view into whatever it is she’s hiding. I see a glimpse of her parents and her brother hugging her goodbye as she leaves on the mission to infiltrate my classroom, followed by a view of me just before the first time she spoke to me outside of class.
She isn’t hiding the memories from me; she’s trying to keep them pushed aside so she doesn’t think about them herself. I realize that I’m doing the same thing.
Martha, when you thought about taking hits, I saw your family. Why?
I get more images, including Austin warning Martha, Cindi and Hope about the consequences of exposing themselves, then of me in my house, when I realized she was a member of Four and burst the information out loud in front of Corps listening devices.
I took your family from you. When I exposed you as a member of Four, you couldn’t go back. They had to erase you from their lives as if you really did die when you were an infant. And it wasn’t just you. Cindi and Hope had to do it, too.
I’d rather not think about it - just like you’re refusing to think about the number eleven thousand three hundred and twenty-three. Can we both just drop it?
But you gave up your families. Talk about taking a hit.
Wait. Cephas, do you hear that?
****
I wake up with Martha slumped against me, like we fell asleep after choosing to cuddle here. My cousin Geoff is trying to lift her off me and out of the arena.
“The whole world knows we’re here now. We’ve got to go,” Geoff says.
Geoff is yelling, but it’s not just to get through the cobwebs in my brain. The area is under an intense thunderstorm, with heavy wind and rain.
“Recharge it,” I say.
“What? Why?” Geoff asks.
Martha is still unconscious, but I lift my bride like she’s a feather and step out of the arena.
“Just prepare for another pull. Lock on one minute after you pulled us.”
“Three crystals fried. We barely got you. What are we pulling?”
“An assassin. Just try.”
“Then stand back.”
I carry Martha out of the relative protection of the cave towards the amphitheater. Just a couple of months ago, this place was the center of the Travelers Initiative and the place already looks like a sports stadium that was abandoned following some now-forgotten victory. There’s a layer of dust, dead plants have been blown in by the wind, and spiders have made their homes where they please. At the far end of the amphitheater, I see the security team that Four tied up and blindfolded when they took control of the area.
The cold rain wakes Martha up.
“Come back,” she murmurs.
“We’re back.”
“I know, and now I can’t hear it anymore. Did you hear it, Cephas?”
Her eyes are still closed, like she’s trying to focus on something.
“Hear what?”
“There was another voice in my head. It was like a whisper.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Martha, you need to wake up. As soon as Michael gets back, we need to get out of here.”
“Almost charged,” Geoff yells over the storm.
Another crystal blows out with a sizzle and a puff of greenish smoke. There are a half a dozen members of Four in the area, and they start looking nervous and back away from the device.
“I think it’s going to fry,” Geoff says.
“Do it!” I yell over the wind and thunder.
There’s a bright flash in the arena, followed by two more crystals burning up, but I see what I want to see, the figure of Michael slumped in the arena. Team members move in to help him up. One of them is Albert.
“Albert. Did you arrange everything as I asked?”
“The team is in place and the explosives are ready. I need ten minutes to get everything we need together.”
“Then do what you do best. Get what you need, then rig the explosives and make this place a crater. Henry messing with the timeline ends here.”
I look at the government team.
“Don’t worry, Cephas,” Albert says. “They’re outside the blast radius. They’ll all be fine.”
As the rest of us begin to walk into the desert, I look over my shoulder and see Albert packing items that look like large laser pointers into boxes, while James downloads software and packs up some sort of power conversion unit.
****
Ten minutes later, we’ve walked into the desert to the top of a hill where an unregistered transport will pick us up, with no questions asked. We can see the site of the cave from our position, including Albert’s and James’ headlamps as they rig the explosives. A large cargo transport has already landed to pick them up. Geoff figured we’d get at most thirty minutes before a government team shows up to investigate the power drain, so the timing is going to be close.
Our transport lifts off and moves us into a commercial flight path to avoid further suspicion. We watch as a series of bright flashes light up the desert around the arena cave and amphitheater, followed by rising smoke.
“No more time travel,” Martha says.
Her voice has a twinge of sadness.
“I thought time travel gave you a headache.”
I breathe a second sigh of relief when I see the large transport with Albert and his team has gotten away safely, and is now leaving our flight path to return home by another way.
“Are you sure you didn’t hear another voice when we were in transit?” Martha asks. “I just can’t get it out of my head.”
“Quite sure. Tell me what you heard.”
“It wasn’t like when you and I were speaking together through thoughts and memories. It wasn’t anything specific. There were no memories at all - just a presence. I know this’ll sound weird, but the name “Jocie” kept popping into my mind, like it wanted to tell me its name.”
“Could there be something of Jocie left in there? Like an echo?” I ask.
“Or like a ghost?” Martha replies.
“That’s creepy. Maybe she wanted to congratulate you on our marriage.”
“I don’t think so. One other thing kept popping into my mind, like it wanted me to pay attention to a particular memory.”
“What memory is that?”
“It was the night when Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane. As He spoke to the crowd, He kept turning until, at the very end, He was speaking directly to you rather than the crowd. Do you remember that?”
I say nothing.
“You remember what He said,” she concludes from the look on my face. “What did He say to you? I need to know.”
“It’s straight out of the Bible. As He looked at me, He said: ‘But this is your moment, the time when the power of darkness reigns.’”
“Why would He want to say that to you, Cephas? Why would your moment be a moment of darkness?”
“I believe it had a clever double meaning. To the crowd, it sounded like He was admitting they had physical authority over Him. But because we already knew He was going to be crucified and rise from the tomb, I believe He was sending a whole different message to me. Christ came when He did because the timing was perfect. He came in a time of darkness because that’s when a light shines the brightest to pierce the darkness. I think He was telling me that the moment in which I can make the biggest difference is the moment evil appears to be at its most powerful.”
“What do you think you’ll need to do at that moment?” Martha asks.
“Follow Him.”
I say it to give Martha comfort.
Follow Him, by sacrificing myself for the sake of others.
****
To avoid leaving any suspicious electronic footprints, it’s going to take over a week to return to Bethany House. That’s fine by me, because we stop in Paris, London and Miami, and take a few days in each place to rest. Martha, Geoff and Michael enjoy being tourists, but we decide it’s too risky for me to walk around on the streets.
In Paris, I decide to catch up on the news. The power outages caused when first the assassins, and then Martha and I went back in time from the Sphinx were explained as planned maintenance, followed by a human error in reinitializing the grid. The blackouts caused when we returned were closer to the truth: the Bureau claimed a group of Christian cultists tried to steal the time machine, but were thwarted by a government security team.
The story goes on to say that when the Christians found themselves surrounded, they committed suicide with a bomb that also blew up the time machine. From the image on the screen, I see that the dead “Christians” were actually the blindfolded security team. Henry killed them for their failure. Additional articles argue the mass suicide is further proof religion is a form of mental disorder.
Once I’ve caught up on recent events in this century, I start to look at biomedical news. Each article, by itself, is innocent enough, but as always, I see them as puzzle pieces that are coming together to make a picture. One story out of New York is an alarming piece on how there’s been a worldwide decrease in the birthrate, coupled with a sudden spike in infant mortality.
Apparently more and more people want their children off the grid.
Another, written in Tokyo, describes a decrease in enhancement surgeries and an increase in the number of enhancements being removed. A third, written in Oregon, laments the drop in profits at assisted suicide centers.
I smile when I read the last one. Isn’t it ironic that a government-sanctioned “assisted suicide” is sane and sensible, while the “suicide” the government claims happened at the arena cave is labeled a form of insanity?
Then I find the article I’ve been seeking. A man living on a small island in the South Pacific died of an unknown disease that caused unusual pox-like symptoms similar to those seen in the Final Holy War. Scientists are baffled, because all such diseases were thought to be wiped out long ago. Before he died, the man was transported to a medical center in the Solomon Islands, where a local health worker seems to have contracted the disease and is now in isolation. Treatments have not worked, but specialists flown in from around the world vow the cause will be found and a vaccine developed, with a minimal loss of life.
It’s Henry’s first test of the new toxin.
“I must admit, it’s a good plan,” I say aloud to myself.
Henry knows that once or twice per generation there’s some sort of a scare about a new disease, or a new form of an old one, and everyone lines up to be vaccinated.
The last time it happened I was eight years old, not long before my parents died. For some reason, I didn’t go to my regular school doctor and I had to line up with a bunch of kids I didn’t know in some weird old warehouse on the first day of a school vacation. The vaccine was just a clear, tasteless liquid and I was given a piece of candy afterwards. It was good candy, but it didn’t make it worth missing a half-day of vacation. The worst part was the vaccine had a side effect of making one in one hundred thousand people who took it sick, and I was lucky number one hundred thousand. I had a high fever for several days and ended up missing the entire vacation.
If Henry creates such a scare, everyone on the grid will be vaccinated, while those living off the grid will either need to reveal themselves or die when he releases the toxin worldwide, like it was during the Final Holy War.
****
When Martha returns from sightseeing, she’s bubbling over to tell me where she’s been and what she’s seen in Paris.
“We need to find you a disguise so you can come out, too. It’s subtle, but I didn’t need your observation skills to see it. I saw one woman with crosses painted on her fingernails. At a café, I saw a man bow his head before eating. I even saw a group silently breaking bread and sharing wine. They’re doing it quietly, but people are starting to pray again.”
“I read there’s a huge black market for private data storage that isn’t connected to the net. I bet people are accessing the Bible and storing it where the government doesn’t have control,” I reply.
“I also saw the number Four painted all over the city. I even heard somebody hacked and reprogrammed the robots that go around covering graffiti to ignore any form of the number,” Martha says, “but that’s not even my favorite. Look at this.”
She instructs her com to interface with the room computer and display an image she took when she was out. It’s a graffiti-rendering of me painted onto an old wall, with my arms spread wide into a cross. There are flowers on the sidewalk below it.
“It’s not a bad likeness of me,” I say. “But it looks a little too much like a shrine for my taste.”
“Maybe so, but what it says to me is you need to get back to lecturing. People want to see you and hear you. We have friends in London. We’ll hack your old lectures again when we get there.”
****
Many kilometers outside London, on the edge of a centuries-old estate surrounded by rolling green hills, sits a little stone house whose original foundation is estimated to be eight hundred years old. On the rocks, there are mosses and lichens that look to be almost as old as the house, and there’s a layer of ivy so thick you wonder if it’s the only thing holding everything together. Underneath is Joppa House, Four’s local high tech bunker.
Geoff stays in London, but Michael comes to Joppa house with us. It’s nearing dusk when we follow instructions to enter through a hidden entrance in the woods and are greeted by a face I’ve wanted to see again since I first found out who she really is.
All I do is open my arms, and my cousin Cindi runs to me with tears in her eyes and melts in my embrace. Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t know I had cousins and now I can’t help but cry whenever I meet a new one. When we traveled through time, Martha’s memories showed me how much these strangers longed to meet me and love me. Even when I was working for the Bureau and hunting down Christians, they were ready to forgive me and take me into their home as one of them.
Martha stands behind us, crying too.
“Hello, cuz,” I whisper in Cindi’s ear. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Let me in on the hug!” Martha says.
We grab her and hug her too.
“Enough crying,” Martha says to Cindi after a minute. “Are you ready to jump up and down instead?”
Martha holds up her hand, showing Cindi the engagement ring and wedding band. I follow her lead and do the same. Cindi’s jaw drops for a second, then she squeals.
“No way! How? Where? Wait a second - maybe I should ask when?”
She’s jumping up and down, just like Martha predicted.
“Simon Peter; at the Sea of Galilee; about twenty-two hundred years ago,” Martha replies. “Hey, I didn’t think of that. We’ve only been married a few days, but technically it’s already the longest marriage in history.”
“I’ve got to tell Mom. Please let me be the one who tells Mom,” Cindi says.
“Only if she can keep a secret,” I say. “Martha and I should be the ones to tell her parents.”
“Rats!” Cindi says. “Mom is as good as any Christian at keeping secrets, but not from Aunt Susan.”
“Aunt Susan?” I ask.
“That’s what we call her. She’s like an aunt, just like Martha’s like a sister.”
Cindi notices Michael, who has been standing quietly through the family reunion.
“You’re Michael the assassin,” Cindi says. “I’ve done a lot of research on you over the last few days.”
“That’s an old title I’d prefer to leave behind,” Michael replies. “I’ve been reading about the Apostle Paul. I know it’s possible to put the past behind me, through Christ.”
How did such a gentle spirit ever become an assassin?
“I’m sorry,” Cindi says. “I didn’t think about how it sounded before I said it.”
“It’s okay. Paul had to work hard to overcome his past, and I’m ready to face mine.