The Operator

They were back behind the oven, and she stood, squeezing off a single shot at the approaching man without pity. He fell back, dead before he hit the floor. She turned to the next, finger twitching an instant before recoil. Sometimes forgetting was a blessing.

Grunts and pained cries sandwiched themselves between the rhythmic pops. Eyes wide open, she took the sting of gunpowder into her nose. She didn’t use darts. She used slugs. Every one of them found their mark, witnessed and remembered from the previous timeline until the two timelines meshed and she forgot.

And then there was silence. The kitchen was empty. For the moment.

Bill is coming.

“We gotta go,” she whispered, turning her weapon upward to fire a rapid circle into the ceiling tiles. Cool air spilled over them behind the chunks of ceiling falling on them.

Allen got up, choking on dust as he wrestled her gun from her and changed the magazine. “Thanks,” he said, feeling his unmarked chest. “What the hell are they using? It went right through the Kevlar.”

“I noticed.” She ducked, shying sideways as a chunk of tile fell. Fear was a thin line icing her motion. She was going to forget. In about thirty seconds, she was going to forget everything past her last contact with Harmony. Bill was an anchor. If he was close enough to her when she snapped out of it, she might forget even more. “We have to get out of here.”

“Reed?” Michael called, his long face hard with anticipation as he stormed into the lunchroom, two men behind him with unslung rifles. His Glock was in his hand, and he clearly wanted to use it. “Ah. There you are.” A smile split his face as he took aim.

Beside her, Allen’s weapon fired, numbing her ears and sending the men with Michael to cover. The recoil of her weapon thumped into her hand as she fired as well, but there were more men coming in, screaming at them to put their weapons up even as they ran for cover.

Face ugly, Michael hesitated, then, with a cry of outrage, pulled his aim from her.

Bill, she thought as she saw him come into the lunchroom, his brow furrowed at the haze and sudden silence. He knew they were in a rewrite—and he wouldn’t forget. Halting, the heavy man smiled when he met Peri’s eyes. “Get Michael out of here,” he said softly, and Michael fell under an avalanche of men. “Sorry, kiddo,” he said as he lifted his dart rifle.

“Move!” Allen shouted, shoving her, and she ducked, willing the draft to end. But she couldn’t make time move faster, and with a puff of compressed air, a dart arrowed to her, the red fletch alive and boiling like lava. It hit her perfectly, thumping into her bicep with the sudden wedging pain of a monstrous bee. Breath held, she yanked it out, furious. He’d timed it perfectly, getting it into her in a draft where she couldn’t rewrite the mistake out.

And then the world flashed red with the energy of twin timelines meshing.

“Peri! Get down!”

She gasped as Allen yanked her into cover. A red-fletched arrow was in her tight grip, and she stared at it, feeling a hard ache in her shoulder where it had hit, but not remembering it. Her head came up, and vertigo rose as she saw the dead men ringing them. More were shouting from cover, and one man screamed, his voice high in pain as Michael broke the man’s wrist to gain his freedom. There was a ragged hole in the ceiling, and the Glock in her hand was warm.

I drafted, she thought, enormously relieved that Allen was with her, his skinned shoulder bleeding slowly as he peeked over the oven and dropped back down.

“Someone shot us and you drafted,” Allen whispered harshly. “Short version is Harmony can’t help us. We have to get out on our own. Bill is here. He—”

“Set a trap for me. Yeah, I got that part,” she finished, dart in her hand. It must have hit her as the draft was ending. It was in the last timeline, not the one she’d rubbed out. It was real and immutable. She couldn’t jump with whatever antidrafting drug he’d hit her with.

“Time to move.” Allen angled his weapon around the edge of the oven and fired off a few blind shots as more men spilled into the lunchroom. “We’ve used up our wishes and have to get out on bullets now.”

Peri looked up at the ragged hole in the ceiling, then threw the dart away. “You first.”

“Nah-uh.” Allen dropped back down from looking over the edge of the counters, dust from the ceiling making his hair gray. “You’re the lightest.”

“Peri?” Jack shouted from the far end of the kitchen. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Shit,” Allen swore, and Peri eased forward, eyes narrowed as she shot at a shadow. It stumbled back, Jack’s voice rising as he fell into a rack of pans. Satisfaction filled her. Not the illusion-Jack, then.

“Pull back. Give her some space,” Bill said, but she didn’t trust the implied cease-fire, and she looked behind her for the men Bill had probably sent to circle them.

Allen squinted at the ceiling. “This is bad,” he said, checking his ammo.

“It’s over, Peri,” Bill called authoritatively, and she sank deeper into the scant cover. “Weapons on the floor. Now! And that knife of yours, too.”

As if.

“You go first,” Allen said, looking at the ceiling.

Peri’s gaze shifted from Allen’s bullet graze to the hole above them. “I can’t pull you up with a bum arm. I’m the better shot, anyway. I’ll cover you.”

“Fine,” he muttered, gathering himself. “You got a new magazine in there?”