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22
Time, Gentlemen
Mimi
Atleasttheyremovedthe gag. For a while there, I thought Agent Dawson was going to leave it in place. He took a perverse pleasure in watching me trying to speak around it. Eventually, they got sick of the half-spoken words, though; not to mention the crying.
My shoulder hurt like buggery, but as yet, they hadn't got me any medical attention. The cuffs — out of time cuffs, it must be said — had been removed, but then they'd gone and cuffed me by my good arm to the desk leg in the interrogation room they'd brought me to. I wasn't going anywhere, nor was I swinging a baseball bat anytime soon, but at least I could cradle my sore arm across my chest to alleviate some of the pain.
I knew I was in a rough position; I knew it. Injured, exhausted, heartbroken, alone. But that didn't mean they had to be rude about it.
"If you know what's good for you," Dawson said, sneering down his surprisingly straight nose at me — you'd think someone would have punched him in the face a time or two by now — "you'll tell us the truth." His suit was impeccable. His military-cut hairstyle was just this side of too short. His steely blue eyes held not an ounce of compassion in them.
I was pretty sure Special Agent Dawson of the NSA had had just about enough of my shenanigans by now.
For them, of course, it was still the same day.Thatday, the one that felt so long ago to me now. The day Carrie and I had trespassed on Launch Pad 39A, to walk where the greats had walked; Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin. It wasn't our fault that Sergei Ivanov had skipped across our time, did some temporal sleight of hand, killed my twin sister, jumped tracks into an alternate universe and picked up her doppelgänger, and then barrelled back into my universe and took out a good portion of the Vehicle Assembly Building. In the process, he just happened to also kill a couple of NASA's people, thereby invoking the wrath of Dawson and Carter, and landing me with the bill to pay for their deaths.
Cue the tag-team duo interrogating me without providing medical attention first.
Somehow, though, despite the injustice of it all, I still felt guilty about those deaths. And like a bloodhound scenting its prey, Dawson was determined to get me to admit to it. How exactly he thought I could have organised all of that was beyond me, but I didn't think Agent Dawson had any idea how it had been accomplished, either. Hence, the third degree and steely eyed glare.
"It'll go a whole lot easier for you," Agent Carter said, "if you just come clean, Miss Wylde." Carter, in comparison to Dawson, was the poor cousin. I'm not sure if the FBI cultivated that look on purpose or not, but it seemed to me that Agent Carter enjoyed looking downtrodden and unkempt as if he was too busy and too dedicated at being the good cop that he couldn't possibly find the time to get a haircut or iron his suit.
I said nothing. So far, saying nothing hadn't been going that well for me.
"You help us out," Carter went on, "and we might be able to get you some painkillers for that shoulder."
"No painkillers," I said, automatically. Painkillers were a time traveller's kryptonite. They made us a little loopy in La La Land. Our dreams became more surreal, almost to the point of making us crazy. Despite that craziness, though, they still had to be realised.
You try realising a crazy dream and then get back to me about taking an analgesic.
"Okay," Carter said, still playing the good cop. "No painkillers. But maybe we can get your shoulder put back in for you if you cooperate."
"Isn't it against the Geneva Convention to leave a prisoner in this kind of state?" I asked.
"That's for prisoners of war," Dawson offered. "We don't have those kinds of restrictions."
"Good to know," I muttered, shifting my arm with a grimace to make it more comfortable. "Carry on," I said, once I was done.
"This isn't a joking matter," Dawson snapped.
"People died," Carter added, solemnly.
"I'm sorry for that," I told them. And honestly, I was.
"Then you admit you did do it?" Dawson demanded.
"I can be sorry for something I didn't do, Agent Dawson. It's called empathy, you should try it sometime."
"Being a smartass won't help you, Wylde."
I had to agree with him there, but although it was the same day for them and they hadn't aged at all, I'd been gone from this time for months now. I'd seen and done things that had changed me. Learned things that had expanded my mind, changed my understanding of the universe. I was a different person. Not so much the mousey Miss Wylde they first arrested. Hyde wasn't always forefront, but she also wasn't afraid to come out when needed.
I wasn't sure I could take maltreatment without snapping back anymore.
RATS had done that to me. RATS and Sergei Ivanov.
"He's dead," I said, suddenly. Silence hadn't worked for me. I might as well try talking for a bit. "The man who did this. He's dead now, so there's no one to take to Guantanamo Bay or wherever you take the terrorists. He's dead and he won't be back again. You're safe now, Agents. I took care of it for you."
