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Lately, everything was tied into an Origin Event. We thought, perhaps, that Carrie, my twin, was an Origin Event. There was a chance I was, too, but we weren't one hundred percent sure on that. Origin Events messed with Time, ripped Time's waves apart, and usually created so much havoc that a Surgeon had to remake Time itself. You never could quite catch an Origin Event rip, and stitching it was becoming less and less likely.
"It's a big one," Amanda said.
"Where is it?" I asked, just as the on-call flight crew began to stream into Dispatch.
"That will be all, Novitiate," a sharp feminine voice said.
I turned to face the owner of that voice. At five-thirty in the morning, you'd expect Dr Jessica Harding to have bedhead hair or sleep encrusted eyes, but she was perfectly turned out. Hair coiffed, flight suit cleanly pressed, eyes bright if not a little narrowed right then, and lips coated in Estée Lauder Pure Envy Red.
"You're grounded," she snarled at me, "so get the bloody hell out of here."
I crossed my arms over my chest, making my paper bag of goodies crinkle against my hip, and leaned against a desk, raising my eyebrows at her.Make me, my stance said.I dare you to throw the first punch, my glare pressed.
Harding scoffed at my non-verbal cues and turned her ire on Amanda. "Location and time, Dispatcher!"
Amanda didn't blink at Harding's shrill demand. "September 23rd, 1958. St Petersburg," she said, omitting the good doctor's honorific.
My arms uncrossed and the paper bag of pastries slid to the floor at my bare feet.
The last place my parents had been seen alive was in St Petersburg in the 21st Century. One thing living and working at RATS for the past several months had taught me was that Origin Events needed only one plane of separation to connect a time, any time, to an OE. And if memory served me correctly, the 23rd of September, 1958 was the day Luna E-1 No. 1 was launched. The first Luna module, a spacecraft intended to impact the moon.
So, not only did we have a significant date in the Luna Programme — and we'd established that the Luna Programme contributed to the Orion Program and time travel in general — but we also had a significant location in what we now believed might be a temporal paradox. My parents' death, which in turn created an opening for Ivanov to bring alternate Mum and Dad Wylde into our universe. Time sure as hell hadn't turfed them out yet, so this universe's parents' deaths were all wrapped up in Sergei's plans, and the temporal paradoxes he was making that were tearing Time apart.
I had to get on this flight, I realised. I had to. My parents might not have been around in 1958 in St Petersburg, but I wouldn't put it past Sergei to have them with him in a Lunik module at this rip.
I had to get on this flight.
Harding was snapping out demands to Amanda, ignoring me. Her Novitiate for the flight was off to the side, looking happy to be out of the limelight. Jack, their Surgeon, would be here at any moment. There wasn't much time to muck about.
I crossed the room to stand beside Malcolm, making him glance warily at me and then fearfully at Harding.
"What would it take for you to bow out of this flight, Aloysius?" I whispered.
"I can't bow out of this flight. Jess would kill me."
"Anything you want, it's yours. But I need you to step aside."
"You know I can't, Mimi. Jess would literally beat me to a pulp."
We'd progressed from outright killing, then. Good.
"You name it, I'll get it," I said. "It's yours. But I need you suddenly and unequivocally to be unavailable for this flight."
"Anything?" he tentatively asked. Bingo!
"Anything," I stressed in return. He bit his bottom lip and then slowly nodded his head.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Well, it would have been if Jack hadn't chosen that exact moment to enter the room and draw Harding's attention, which in turn, made her notice how closely Malcolm and I were standing; clearly up to no good.
