Team Building with Jack Landors (SPD, A Squad, #17, T)
characters: SPD’s A Squad (Jack, Kat)
prompt #17: queen
word count: 5200
rating: T
summary: Kat and Jack visit their past selves. In the future.
Team Building with Jack Landors (queen)
by *Andrea
“Everything in my life is about to fall apart,” Kat told him. “I think it already has, so I’m going to be... angry. Don’t take anything I say personally, okay?”
Jack frowned. “You mean you, or younger you?”
“Younger me,” she said with a sigh. “I was pretty mean to you, and I never had the chance to apologize. Until now. So... I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, eyeing her skeptically. “You’re sorry that Kat Jr. is going to be mean to me when I go see her in the future. Because she thinks her life has fallen apart, even though it hasn’t. But it’s about to.”
“Yes,” Kat agreed. “I’m going to sabotage the power grid. You stay with me, keep me from running, and convince me to erase the data hack before Jen comes. Smile.”
“Okay, I have no idea who you’re talking about when you call you ‘I’ and the other you ‘I’ too,” Jack informed her. “I also don’t know who Jen is--and is that the picture you’re using?”
“That’s the picture I just took,” she said. “I told you to smile.”
“My eyes are half-closed,” he argued. “Take it again.”
Jack reached up and tugged his collar open, settling himself more comfortably in his seat, and Kat just shook her head. “There,” she said, putting the new picture up in front of a stock background. “You look rakish; are you happy?”
“Better,” he declared. “Who’s Jen?”
“My sister,” Kat replied, tweaking the brand new “Jonathan Drew” file. “She goes by Jaycee now; it’s a historical nickname. Makes it easier for Time Force to deny any connection with her.”
“She’s coming with us?” Jack asked, glancing around the quiet room. Since Kat could apparently teleport--through time, no less--he wasn’t going to rule out her sister’s sudden appearance in the lab just because it had been locked down while they hacked into the SPD mainframe.
“She’s already there,” Kat said. “She’s going to break me out. Again.”
“Wait,” Jack said suspiciously. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you. Is this the Commander Collins I met yesterday, or Jen Jr., from the time you’re about to send us to?”
“Technically, you won’t meet her until tomorrow,” Kat told him.
“I hate you,” Jack muttered.
“Noted.” Kat’s fingers were flying now, and somehow she still managed to carry on a conversation. “Look, your file’s been changed. I disabled all of the oversight protocols except the double-shadow program, which should warn me tomorrow that we were here today. Jaycee will show up in time to get us both out before the agency sends someone back, and we can use our vacation to go rescue ourselves.”
“Our past selves,” Jack guessed.
“From the future,” Kat said.
“No, seriously,” he complained. “I really hate you.”
“You should have taken that intro to temporal mechanics,” she said, standing up while some kind of re-encryption process ran on her screen. “Get up. We have exactly four minutes and thirty-two seconds before security walks by and sees that closed door.”
“Don’t you ever close the lab door?” Jack demanded, but he did as he was told.
“Yes,” she said. “And security knocks, every time.
“There,” Kat added. “Your file’s done. Put your chair back. And pick up that stylus; I don’t leave things lying on the floor.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, then froze as he heard a blaster arm.
Not an SPD-issue weapon. He knew that sound, heard it sometimes at night when the practice range was still ringing in his ears. This was a quiet thing, audible only with proximity and silence, and they had both here.
Jack looked up into the gaze of a Yellow Ranger every bit as enigmatic as her one hundred forty-eight years. “I’m always armed,” she told him. “And if you call me that, twenty years ago, I will shoot you. I really don’t want to have to explain that to Sky when I come back.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she drew the weapon back, flipping it over her fingers and handing it to him. “You might need that, actually. I don’t suppose you’re carrying one.”
“Do I know how to use this?” he asked carefully. He took it, registering the lighter weight and the smaller design-- “Is this custom?” Jack demanded. Who knew Kat had a custom blaster?
“You could say that.” She was closing things down, rearranging her space in a weirdly precise way, and she gestured for him to step back from the desk. “Ready?”
He tucked the weapon under his jacket and didn’t ask any more questions. “Ready.”
The door was sliding open again as the lab disappeared around them.
That was a weird feeling, but he supposed teleporting always was. What wasn’t weird was the hum of the hallway that reformed around them--a low-pitched generator-style hum that put him more at ease than anything SPD ever had. He glanced at Kat, but she was already reaching up to plant something on what looked like an arbitrary juncture of wall and ceiling.
“Cameras are down,” she whispered, ghosting toward him, past him, staring down the hall like she could see through it on both sides. “Just this hallway, none of the rooms, so don’t phase through any walls unless you want someone to see you.
“I’m the second door on your right,” she added, very softly, as she drifted back past him in the other direction. He checked to make sure her feet were actually touching the ground. “Jen should have already killed the cameras in there. Give me two minutes to get the primary grid: the lights will flicker, and I’ll try to run. Keep me there until Jen comes, all right?”
“Keep Kat Jr. in her cell until Collins gets there,” Jack whispered. “Get her to erase the personnel hack. Wait for you. Check.”
“Explain the hack as best you can,” Kat murmured. “She’ll know what you’re talking about once you tell her who you are. Jen will be there momentarily with an anti-trace, and I’ll be right behind her.”
“Don’t get caught,” Jack told her, already backing down the hall in the direction she’d indicated. “I’d hate to have to steal a timeship to get home.”
Kat flashed him a smile, which he hadn’t expected, and a quick nod, which he had. Despite all her secrets, she did know how to work as part of a team. He wondered where she’d learned that. He didn’t think it was SPD.
She disappeared. The little glowing ball of light that took her place came back to circle him, briefly, and he heard the words, “Be careful, Jack,” before it zipped off down the hallway. Interesting. Very Sam-like.
He shook his head, turning around and striding off in search of her “second door on the right.” No cameras out here, no cameras in there, so he should be able to walk right in. Except for the fact that Kat Jr. was in there, and he’d seen Kat Sr. fight. Surprising her? Probably not the best idea.
He looked through the door cautiously, but the room was empty. It also wasn’t a cell, which made him nervous, because if Kat had gotten the room wrong then this plan was about to fail spectacularly. He had no way to get in touch with her while she was being a little sparkly ball of light.
“Wrong. Room.” The voice was quiet and deadly and very familiar.
“Kat?” He looked around, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Still, if she was here, this was the right place after all... and when was the last time Kat had been wrong about something? He stepped the rest of the way through the door.
“Who are you.” Her voice was flat and angry. Still disembodied.
“Depends who you ask?” he offered cautiously, scanning the room again. “I came to help, if that counts for anything.”
There was no answer, so he was guessing it didn’t.
“I’m Jack,” he told the apparently empty room. The large, well-lit, lab-like room didn’t have any shadows or corners big enough to hide a person. “I’m gonna meet you twenty years from now, and you’re gonna tell me all about how you got out of here. How a stranger showed up and convinced you to change the past. How Jen came early because of a power failure and brought a baby with her. How you got to stay with your family--”
“Get out!” She appeared with a strangled scream, a snarl on her face that took him aback as she advanced on him. “Get out of my lab! I do everything you ask of me! Just leave me alone!”
“I’m not asking anything,” he said quickly, taking a step back when she hissed at him. “You brought me here. I swear. Or, I mean, you will bring me here. A thousand years ago.”
There was a blaster in his face, and fuck if Sky hadn’t been terrible for his reflexes. There was a time when even the peripheral flicker of a weapon would have sent him scrambling. Now he just stood, unflinching, and slowly held his hands out to the sides.
“Yeah,” he said, as calm as he could pretend to be. “You mentioned you’d have that. You want the one from my belt to compare?”
Kat Jr. stared at him for a long moment, and he took the opportunity to size her up. Skinnier than his Kat, which was saying something, and more darkly alien-looking in the way of anyone under pressure. The way people looked when they weren’t sleeping and couldn’t be bothered to eat. When they weren’t even sure it was worth being alive anymore.
“You so much as twitch,” she told him, in the same creepy monotone she’d used when he first appeared, “and you’re dead.” Like her hysteria had burned fast and hot, extinguishing itself with its very existence. Like she threatened him, not because she was scared, but because she was willing to trade an excuse to shoot for the chance to be shot in return.
He held perfectly still. Not for his own life, but for hers.
She ripped the duplicate blaster away from him and studied it dispassionately. “Where did you get this,” she said, eyes cold and narrow when they met his again. “It’s one of a kind.”
“Guess that explains why you still have it,” Jack said. He was careful not to shrug, since she had warned him not to move. “You gave it to me just before we came here. Said I might need it.”
“This is stupid,” she spat. “Tell me what you want and go away.”
“I just want you to wait for Jen,” he said. “You’re off sabotaging the power or something, and you said that when it went down you would have tried to escape, which probably would have gotten you... reprogrammed?
“I don’t know what that is,” he offered, “but it sounds bad.” The look on her face betrayed nothing, so he went on, “You said a stranger kept you from going anywhere until Jen showed up, so I’m guessing that’s me.
“Oh,” he added. “And if you could hit the old SPD records from the twenty-first century? We kind of messed them up a few minutes ago, and Kat said it’d be noticeable from your time. She said you could fix it.”
The lights flickered.
It was barely perceptible, and he wondered if something had gone wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t Kat at all; how was he supposed to know? Wouldn’t there be more than a tiny flicker if she’d really gotten to the main power station, or wherever she’d been headed?
“You’re not Jack,” the woman in front of him said flatly.
He blinked at her. “I’ve got a badge that says otherwise.”
“Get out of my way.”
He did, and only when she edged around him--toward the door--did he realize what she was doing. “Wait,” he said quickly. He was careful to keep his hands out to his sides, and he didn’t make any movement toward her. “Your sister founded SPD. You work there with her. You’re the head of Base Tech, and you make everyone crazy by working way longer than humans can.
“You like the base commander,” he continued, saying whatever came to mind in an effort to keep her there just a little longer. “He’s this dog named Anubis Cruger, and frankly, I don’t know what you see in him. I wish he’d stop hanging out in your lab, though, ‘cause it’s right under my team’s lounge and he’s got really good hearing.”
“I hate dogs,” she snapped. “I’ve never heard of SPD. And Jack can’t walk through closed doors.”
“This Jack can,” he told her. “And trust me, Cruger’s not too keen on cats either. He makes an exception for you. Although I think he’d appreciate it if you’d stop wearing nail polish... I mean, I realize you do it to piss him off, but I think he hates it more than you know.”
“I don’t wear nail polish,” she informed him.
“Well, you haven’t met Syd Drew yet. She’ll teach you everything there is to know about passive aggression. You like her, actually,” he added. “She’s got that thing, you know, the--” He couldn’t think of the words. “The French thing, where people like you even when you’re really annoying.”
The door slid open without a click, a beep, or any kind of warning, which would later lead him to wonder if it had even been locked. Right now he was busy hoping not to get shot when Kat swung her second blaster around to cover the door. Without taking the first one off of him.
“Miri?” The voice, the face, both were eerily familiar even if the uniform wasn’t. It wasn’t Commander Collins who stood there, in a stark white enforcer uniform with a bundle of clothes clutched to her chest. “I thought you’d be gone; who the hell is this?”
The words tumbled over each other, voice fast and forceful and completely confident in her situation. Jen didn’t react to the weapon pulled on her, nor did she make any move to go for her own when she saw Jack. Sharp eyes, smooth skin, brown hair in a harsh ponytail that bore no hint of grey... this was the Jaycee of twenty plus years past.
The Jen of the future.
“This is Jack,” Kat Jr. told her. “What are you doing with the baby?”
She’d asked a question. Funny that that was what caught his attention, more than the weird look Jen gave him or the weapons that her sister still had trained on both of them. Young Kat had asked a question, and it had actually sounded like a question.
“Jack?” Jen repeated, ignoring it.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Hyanni’s Jack,” Jen said, glancing at her Kat for confirmation.
Kat just shrugged, flicking the blaster in her left hand back, taking the bull’s-eye off of Jen. “Jack from the future,” she said. The weapon she had on him didn’t waver. “Or the past. I’m not really clear.”
“From your future,” he interrupted. He thought that possibly the hardest thing about time travel was talking about it. “You haven’t met me yet, but you will. In the past.”
She didn’t look at him, just kept staring at Jen.
“He can’t stay here,” Jen told her. “You were right. They’ll just keep experimenting, and with Hyanni gone... I’m not sure I’ll be able to take him with me.”
“So you’re sending him with me?” her Kat demanded. She was remarkably more normal around Jen, Jack thought. She said things like they mattered, she didn’t flip out, and she’d lost that crazy edge that teetered between death by apathy and death by freakout.
“Wes can help you place him,” Jen said, and it occurred to Jack that maybe he should be paying more attention to what they were saying instead of how they were saying it. “I’m not asking you to bring him up, Miri. I just need you to get him out.”
“Wait,” Jack interrupted. “I already have a ride. I’m just supposed to make sure you two find each other, which you did, and that Kat erases our hack so it looks like the Jonathan Drew file’s always been there.”
“The who?” Jen asked, turning her full attention on him. “How did you get here?”
“Kat brought me,” he said. “Twenty years from now. She said she remembered me being here--”
“He calls me ‘Kat,’” Kat Jr. interrupted. “If that helps.”
“I see.” Jen studied him. “Go on.”
“She was supposed to knock out the power while I made sure she--you--didn’t run,” he told the person he’d been thinking of as “young Kat.” Apparently “Kat” wasn’t even her name, so maybe that was less appropriate than he’d realized. “She told me you’d know what to do with the computer once you found out who I am.”
She and Jen exchanged glances, and Jen shifted the clothes in her arms awkwardly. Something about the way she did it made another piece click into place, and his eyes widened. That wasn’t a pile of clothes at all. And Kat had told him... she’d said he would be here. He just wasn’t expecting--
“That’s me, isn’t it.” He stared, torn between trying not to look and wanting to see. Jen had a wrapped-up baby in her arms. And that baby was him.
“This is Hyanni’s baby,” Jen said slowly. He could feel her scrutinizing him, looking for who knew what, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of what she was holding. “She wanted him to be called Jack.”
“It’s better than XCS-302,” Kat muttered.
He felt really weird. “Who’s Hyanni?” he asked, still staring at the unwieldy-looking uniform jacket and the shoes sticking out from underneath. Not just a baby, but a baby in disguise as a change of clothes. His life had been strange from the very beginning.
“Why are you just standing around?” another voice hissed, and things got even more bizarre as a little glowing ball of light flitted into the room. It resolved itself almost immediately into the Kat he knew, glaring around at all of them with no concern for the second blaster Kat Jr. now had trained on her. “Did you fix the computer? We need to get moving; primary power won’t be down for long!”
“Is it down?” Jack asked, tearing his eyes away from Jen and... him.
She scowled at him. “I told you to watching for the lights dimming. That’s the transfer from primary to secondary. Computer hacks made on secondary power are vulnerable to loop erasure when the primaries come back. What have you been doing all this time?”
“Trying not to get shot?” he countered. “It turns out you’re not the most trusting person in the world!”
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” Jen spoke with the assurance of someone used to being obeyed. “You two, tell Miri what she’s looking for in the database. If she can do whatever you want before I finish getting the b--Jack,” she amended. “Getting Jack ready to go, you’re in luck. Otherwise, she’s going, and you’re on your own.”
“Huh.” Jack couldn’t stop himself from muttering, “That sounds familiar.”
“She hasn’t changed much,” his Kat told him. “Obviously.”
“Don’t you have a word for this?” Kat Jr. demanded. “Entrapment? Psychosis? Shall I go on?”
“The word is opportunity,” his Kat said. The fact that she was talking to herself didn’t seem to bother her. “We gave Jack a new identity as Jonathan Drew. No one in our time can prove the records are fake, but someone in yours could. We need you to pre-date them for us.”
“I work for Time Force,” Kat Jr. said, folding her arms. “I don’t even know how to do what you’re asking.” Almost a year with SPD, and Jack still couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or just telling them what she thought a secret agent would want to hear.
“We used to play dinosaurs.” Jen had set her bundle down on the nearest counter, shoes and all, and she was tugging at the jacket. “Tell me about them.”
Kat Jr. looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but his Kat said immediately, “We played on the floor between our beds. We each had those little blue ones, the anklyosauruses. They were my favorite. And the pink turtle--bright pink. It lived in a river? There were big ones with little arms, a purple one and a yellow one, and we used to line them up so that they could march defensively--”
“With the stegosauruses on the outside to protect them,” Jen finished.
“And the triceratops in front,” Kat Jr. snapped. “Fine, she’s me. So what? I work for Time Force. Just being me doesn’t make me trustworthy.”
“You still have Jack,” Jen pointed out. “I’d say that makes you trustworthy. Do whatever they want with the files: Jonathan Drew, did you say?”
It took him a few seconds to realize she was talking to him again, and by that time, his Kat had joined her younger self by a vaguely familiar-seeming interface. “17 December 2025,” she was saying. “Jonathan Drew’s file replaced Jack Landors’ in the database at SPD Earth. I backdated it, of course, but someone in 3004 could find the cracks if they happened to be looking.”
“Jack,” Jen said sharply, and it was a good thing that Kat Jr. had finally lowered her blaster because he jumped.
“Yeah?”
“Come here,” she said. He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but she was already lifting the baby out of his jacket nest and cradling him against her elbow. “He’s been drugged,” she said, catching his expression. “To keep him quiet. I’m sorry.”
“I get it,” he muttered, drifting closer. It wasn’t... it didn’t look like him. It was a baby.
“Better not touch him,” Jen said quickly. “Superstition, maybe, but.” She shook her head once. “No reason to go asking for trouble.”
“It’s weird,” Jack said, staring down at the sleeping baby. “I don’t--I mean--well. It’s not like I have any baby pictures, you know?”
“I wish we could do more for you.” Jen sounded genuinely frustrated. “I won’t even be able to track you once you leave. Time Force is monitoring me; I can’t risk giving either of you away. At least Miri can find me if she needs me, but you--”
“Hey.” Jack cut her off. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but he knew self-recrimination when he heard it. “You’re doing a good thing here, Jen. I mean, for K--for your sister, but for me too. For him,” he amended, nodding at the baby. “And for me.”
She gave him an odd look, and he added, “I grew up with nothing but my name, you know? Nothing about my parents, my family, not even a birthday.” He shrugged, self-conscious. “Now at least I know someone cared, right?”
Jen shifted the baby a little, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Her fingers clamped down hard, a grip that was at once reassuring and disconcerting. “I don’t know how much Miri has told you,” she said, “but you were born the ninth of December, 3003. Your mom’s name is Hyanni. She wanted you--so much--but Time Force wouldn’t let her keep you.
“She’s gone,” Jen added. “To the future. The agency thinks she’s dead. I promised her I wouldn’t let them hurt you, and every day it gets harder. I feel like I’m sending you into exile, but Wes always says it’s better to be free than to be comfortable.”
Jack stared at her. She had just told him, in ten seconds, more about himself than he’d known his entire life. And she looked desperately uncertain about all of it.
“Thank you,” he managed. Because it had to be said. How could she think anything else? He lifted his own hand, mirroring her grasp on his shoulder. “Thanks for giving me--” He hesitated, then flashed her as much of a smile as he could. “My life.”
“I hope it’s a good one,” Jen said softly, her eyes searching his.
“It is,” he said, and here he didn’t pause. “You’ll see.”
“Yeah?” The more she talked, the more he thought she sounded like she belonged in his time. The time he was living in now, anyway.
The ninth of December. 3003.
When were you born, Sky had asked him? Now he had an answer.
“I’m sorry your earliest memory of me will be me stuffing you into an equipment bag,” Jen was saying. “But I guess the fact that it won’t be your last makes up for it some.”
She wasn’t kidding, either. He helped her bundle the baby into an equipment bag, and the Kat team had finished agonizing minutes before they were ready. This time the lights surged, brightening momentarily, enough to make him wonder how all the high-tech equipment around them responded to fluctuations like these... and maybe that was what Kat was counting on. She must know exactly what it could handle, what was vulnerable and what wasn’t, and how to take advantage of it.
“Your ticket out,” Jen said, as she handed over the bag.
Kat Jr. reluctantly gave up one of her blasters, and his Kat took it and hid it somewhere while her younger self settled the bag over her head and shoulder. Jen pressed something into her hand, glancing at Kat Sr. “You have an anti-trace?”
His Kat smiled fondly at her. “You just gave it to me,” she said, reaching up to adjust her bright yellow jacket. She pulled out a necklace Jack hadn’t known she was wearing, the tiny disk on it glinting blue and purple as it spun.
Young Kat was holding an identical disk in her open hand.
“Well.” Jen seemed more taken aback by this than anything else that had happened. “I guess it works, then.”
“For thirty-nine years,” Kat agreed, slipping the thing back under her shirt. “Thank you, Jen. I never said it enough.”
“I wish I could have done more,” Jen said. She looked from his Kat to Kat Jr., and if the disk had thrown her off, the almost identical faces didn’t seem to. “It isn’t fair, what they’re doing. I’m sorry I was a part of it for so long.”
“You’re everything to us,” Kat said quietly. “Don’t forget that.”
“You’re my only family,” Jen told her. With a sharp motion that Jack hadn’t expected of her, she stepped in to hug Kat hard. “Be safe.”
Kat, whom Jack rarely saw touch anyone, wrapped her up tight and rubbed her head against Jen’s affectionately. “I know you will,” she said softly. “But do it anyway.”
Then they were pulling away, as if at some pre-arranged signal, and Jen turned to Kat Jr. Putting a hand on top of the bag she carried, Jen gave her a careful one-armed hug that her Kat permitted with surprising patience. “They may try to question Wes,” she whispered. “Don’t tell him any more than you have to.”
“I’ll protect your lover,” Kat Jr. muttered. The disk Jen had given her was clenched awkwardly in her hand as she tried to return the hug without squashing the baby. “Get out of here, Jen. That morpher didn’t save you the last time they tried to rewrite your brain, and it’s only a matter of time before they try again.”
“I’m going,” Jen promised. “As soon as you’re safe.”
She let go, adding, “Good luck. Come find me if you can.”
Young Kat nodded, lifting the disk Jen had given her. It flashed a vivid blue in the colorless room and she vanished, taking the bag with its silent, stolen baby with her. Jack thought her gaze flicked to him before she disappeared.
They were all quiet for a long moment, and then Jen let out a breath. “It worked,” she said, almost as though she was surprised. “No alarms.”
“It’ll be a while before I believe it,” Kat said quietly.
Jen gave her a startled look. “If the anti-trace didn’t hide her Karmanian powers, everyone on this base would know she’s gone.”
“No--” Kat smiled a little. “I know. I meant her: it’ll be a while before she believes it. But she will find you, Jen. She’ll be back, and she’ll find you.”
“Just me, I hope,” Jen said, searching her expression.
“Just you,” Kat confirmed. “And Jack,” she added, nodding to him. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
Jen’s gaze went to him, and the sudden softness in her expression gave him his first glimpse of Jaycee. “Yeah,” she said. “Hyanni would be proud.”
He couldn’t put into words how strange that made him feel.
“We should go,” Kat said quietly. “Listen to her, Jen. You have to get out of here too.”
“I will,” Jen repeated. “Believe me, Wes will never speak to me again if I let them get to me.”
“Worse,” Kat warned. “You may never speak to him.”
Just like that, Jen snapped. “I know! I know, okay? I’m on borrowed time; I get it! But I have a team to think of, I have you, and if I don’t take care of the underground then people like Hyanni and Jack will be stuck in a time that wants to take them apart!”
“And if you lose, we all lose,” Kat replied, refusing to back off. “Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah.” Jen wavered for the first time, but finally she smiled. “Guess I’ll see you in a couple of decades.”
It made Kat smile too. “I’ll be there,” she said.
She looked over at Jack, and Jen followed her gaze. “Plenty of people care, Jack,” Jen told him. “Remember that.”
“Yeah,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. I got that.”
Time’s policewoman nodded at him. “Be safe.”
He was aware of Kat coming closer, and the clock was counting down. He nodded quickly, because he owed her and he didn’t think he even knew how much. “Thanks, Jen.”
She smiled, and the room went faint and fuzzy and far away. He knew they were gone the moment the walls of the “Mexico base” reappeared: it wasn’t what he saw, but what he didn’t hear. The constant, almost unnoticed hum of the thirty-first century was gone. He could feel the sudden silence in a way he couldn’t explain.
I feel like I’m sending you into exile.
He turned to Kat, intending to make a flip remark about how little the intro class would have prepared him for friends like hers. They treated a thousand years like a city block: bye, just going to the corner, see you in a couple decades. His voice caught before he finished the first word, and he swallowed hard.
And Kat... icy Kat, who mouthed off more than he did and didn’t let anyone push her around, who loved SPD but didn’t hesitate to put anyone in it in their place... Kat hugged him like he was family, and she didn’t let go when the tears started to leak out of his eyes.
prompt #17: queen
word count: 5200
rating: T
summary: Kat and Jack visit their past selves. In the future.
Team Building with Jack Landors (queen)
by *Andrea
“Everything in my life is about to fall apart,” Kat told him. “I think it already has, so I’m going to be... angry. Don’t take anything I say personally, okay?”
Jack frowned. “You mean you, or younger you?”
“Younger me,” she said with a sigh. “I was pretty mean to you, and I never had the chance to apologize. Until now. So... I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, eyeing her skeptically. “You’re sorry that Kat Jr. is going to be mean to me when I go see her in the future. Because she thinks her life has fallen apart, even though it hasn’t. But it’s about to.”
“Yes,” Kat agreed. “I’m going to sabotage the power grid. You stay with me, keep me from running, and convince me to erase the data hack before Jen comes. Smile.”
“Okay, I have no idea who you’re talking about when you call you ‘I’ and the other you ‘I’ too,” Jack informed her. “I also don’t know who Jen is--and is that the picture you’re using?”
“That’s the picture I just took,” she said. “I told you to smile.”
“My eyes are half-closed,” he argued. “Take it again.”
Jack reached up and tugged his collar open, settling himself more comfortably in his seat, and Kat just shook her head. “There,” she said, putting the new picture up in front of a stock background. “You look rakish; are you happy?”
“Better,” he declared. “Who’s Jen?”
“My sister,” Kat replied, tweaking the brand new “Jonathan Drew” file. “She goes by Jaycee now; it’s a historical nickname. Makes it easier for Time Force to deny any connection with her.”
“She’s coming with us?” Jack asked, glancing around the quiet room. Since Kat could apparently teleport--through time, no less--he wasn’t going to rule out her sister’s sudden appearance in the lab just because it had been locked down while they hacked into the SPD mainframe.
“She’s already there,” Kat said. “She’s going to break me out. Again.”
“Wait,” Jack said suspiciously. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you. Is this the Commander Collins I met yesterday, or Jen Jr., from the time you’re about to send us to?”
“Technically, you won’t meet her until tomorrow,” Kat told him.
“I hate you,” Jack muttered.
“Noted.” Kat’s fingers were flying now, and somehow she still managed to carry on a conversation. “Look, your file’s been changed. I disabled all of the oversight protocols except the double-shadow program, which should warn me tomorrow that we were here today. Jaycee will show up in time to get us both out before the agency sends someone back, and we can use our vacation to go rescue ourselves.”
“Our past selves,” Jack guessed.
“From the future,” Kat said.
“No, seriously,” he complained. “I really hate you.”
“You should have taken that intro to temporal mechanics,” she said, standing up while some kind of re-encryption process ran on her screen. “Get up. We have exactly four minutes and thirty-two seconds before security walks by and sees that closed door.”
“Don’t you ever close the lab door?” Jack demanded, but he did as he was told.
“Yes,” she said. “And security knocks, every time.
“There,” Kat added. “Your file’s done. Put your chair back. And pick up that stylus; I don’t leave things lying on the floor.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, then froze as he heard a blaster arm.
Not an SPD-issue weapon. He knew that sound, heard it sometimes at night when the practice range was still ringing in his ears. This was a quiet thing, audible only with proximity and silence, and they had both here.
Jack looked up into the gaze of a Yellow Ranger every bit as enigmatic as her one hundred forty-eight years. “I’m always armed,” she told him. “And if you call me that, twenty years ago, I will shoot you. I really don’t want to have to explain that to Sky when I come back.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she drew the weapon back, flipping it over her fingers and handing it to him. “You might need that, actually. I don’t suppose you’re carrying one.”
“Do I know how to use this?” he asked carefully. He took it, registering the lighter weight and the smaller design-- “Is this custom?” Jack demanded. Who knew Kat had a custom blaster?
“You could say that.” She was closing things down, rearranging her space in a weirdly precise way, and she gestured for him to step back from the desk. “Ready?”
He tucked the weapon under his jacket and didn’t ask any more questions. “Ready.”
The door was sliding open again as the lab disappeared around them.
That was a weird feeling, but he supposed teleporting always was. What wasn’t weird was the hum of the hallway that reformed around them--a low-pitched generator-style hum that put him more at ease than anything SPD ever had. He glanced at Kat, but she was already reaching up to plant something on what looked like an arbitrary juncture of wall and ceiling.
“Cameras are down,” she whispered, ghosting toward him, past him, staring down the hall like she could see through it on both sides. “Just this hallway, none of the rooms, so don’t phase through any walls unless you want someone to see you.
“I’m the second door on your right,” she added, very softly, as she drifted back past him in the other direction. He checked to make sure her feet were actually touching the ground. “Jen should have already killed the cameras in there. Give me two minutes to get the primary grid: the lights will flicker, and I’ll try to run. Keep me there until Jen comes, all right?”
“Keep Kat Jr. in her cell until Collins gets there,” Jack whispered. “Get her to erase the personnel hack. Wait for you. Check.”
“Explain the hack as best you can,” Kat murmured. “She’ll know what you’re talking about once you tell her who you are. Jen will be there momentarily with an anti-trace, and I’ll be right behind her.”
“Don’t get caught,” Jack told her, already backing down the hall in the direction she’d indicated. “I’d hate to have to steal a timeship to get home.”
Kat flashed him a smile, which he hadn’t expected, and a quick nod, which he had. Despite all her secrets, she did know how to work as part of a team. He wondered where she’d learned that. He didn’t think it was SPD.
She disappeared. The little glowing ball of light that took her place came back to circle him, briefly, and he heard the words, “Be careful, Jack,” before it zipped off down the hallway. Interesting. Very Sam-like.
He shook his head, turning around and striding off in search of her “second door on the right.” No cameras out here, no cameras in there, so he should be able to walk right in. Except for the fact that Kat Jr. was in there, and he’d seen Kat Sr. fight. Surprising her? Probably not the best idea.
He looked through the door cautiously, but the room was empty. It also wasn’t a cell, which made him nervous, because if Kat had gotten the room wrong then this plan was about to fail spectacularly. He had no way to get in touch with her while she was being a little sparkly ball of light.
“Wrong. Room.” The voice was quiet and deadly and very familiar.
“Kat?” He looked around, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Still, if she was here, this was the right place after all... and when was the last time Kat had been wrong about something? He stepped the rest of the way through the door.
“Who are you.” Her voice was flat and angry. Still disembodied.
“Depends who you ask?” he offered cautiously, scanning the room again. “I came to help, if that counts for anything.”
There was no answer, so he was guessing it didn’t.
“I’m Jack,” he told the apparently empty room. The large, well-lit, lab-like room didn’t have any shadows or corners big enough to hide a person. “I’m gonna meet you twenty years from now, and you’re gonna tell me all about how you got out of here. How a stranger showed up and convinced you to change the past. How Jen came early because of a power failure and brought a baby with her. How you got to stay with your family--”
“Get out!” She appeared with a strangled scream, a snarl on her face that took him aback as she advanced on him. “Get out of my lab! I do everything you ask of me! Just leave me alone!”
“I’m not asking anything,” he said quickly, taking a step back when she hissed at him. “You brought me here. I swear. Or, I mean, you will bring me here. A thousand years ago.”
There was a blaster in his face, and fuck if Sky hadn’t been terrible for his reflexes. There was a time when even the peripheral flicker of a weapon would have sent him scrambling. Now he just stood, unflinching, and slowly held his hands out to the sides.
“Yeah,” he said, as calm as he could pretend to be. “You mentioned you’d have that. You want the one from my belt to compare?”
Kat Jr. stared at him for a long moment, and he took the opportunity to size her up. Skinnier than his Kat, which was saying something, and more darkly alien-looking in the way of anyone under pressure. The way people looked when they weren’t sleeping and couldn’t be bothered to eat. When they weren’t even sure it was worth being alive anymore.
“You so much as twitch,” she told him, in the same creepy monotone she’d used when he first appeared, “and you’re dead.” Like her hysteria had burned fast and hot, extinguishing itself with its very existence. Like she threatened him, not because she was scared, but because she was willing to trade an excuse to shoot for the chance to be shot in return.
He held perfectly still. Not for his own life, but for hers.
She ripped the duplicate blaster away from him and studied it dispassionately. “Where did you get this,” she said, eyes cold and narrow when they met his again. “It’s one of a kind.”
“Guess that explains why you still have it,” Jack said. He was careful not to shrug, since she had warned him not to move. “You gave it to me just before we came here. Said I might need it.”
“This is stupid,” she spat. “Tell me what you want and go away.”
“I just want you to wait for Jen,” he said. “You’re off sabotaging the power or something, and you said that when it went down you would have tried to escape, which probably would have gotten you... reprogrammed?
“I don’t know what that is,” he offered, “but it sounds bad.” The look on her face betrayed nothing, so he went on, “You said a stranger kept you from going anywhere until Jen showed up, so I’m guessing that’s me.
“Oh,” he added. “And if you could hit the old SPD records from the twenty-first century? We kind of messed them up a few minutes ago, and Kat said it’d be noticeable from your time. She said you could fix it.”
The lights flickered.
It was barely perceptible, and he wondered if something had gone wrong. Or maybe it wasn’t Kat at all; how was he supposed to know? Wouldn’t there be more than a tiny flicker if she’d really gotten to the main power station, or wherever she’d been headed?
“You’re not Jack,” the woman in front of him said flatly.
He blinked at her. “I’ve got a badge that says otherwise.”
“Get out of my way.”
He did, and only when she edged around him--toward the door--did he realize what she was doing. “Wait,” he said quickly. He was careful to keep his hands out to his sides, and he didn’t make any movement toward her. “Your sister founded SPD. You work there with her. You’re the head of Base Tech, and you make everyone crazy by working way longer than humans can.
“You like the base commander,” he continued, saying whatever came to mind in an effort to keep her there just a little longer. “He’s this dog named Anubis Cruger, and frankly, I don’t know what you see in him. I wish he’d stop hanging out in your lab, though, ‘cause it’s right under my team’s lounge and he’s got really good hearing.”
“I hate dogs,” she snapped. “I’ve never heard of SPD. And Jack can’t walk through closed doors.”
“This Jack can,” he told her. “And trust me, Cruger’s not too keen on cats either. He makes an exception for you. Although I think he’d appreciate it if you’d stop wearing nail polish... I mean, I realize you do it to piss him off, but I think he hates it more than you know.”
“I don’t wear nail polish,” she informed him.
“Well, you haven’t met Syd Drew yet. She’ll teach you everything there is to know about passive aggression. You like her, actually,” he added. “She’s got that thing, you know, the--” He couldn’t think of the words. “The French thing, where people like you even when you’re really annoying.”
The door slid open without a click, a beep, or any kind of warning, which would later lead him to wonder if it had even been locked. Right now he was busy hoping not to get shot when Kat swung her second blaster around to cover the door. Without taking the first one off of him.
“Miri?” The voice, the face, both were eerily familiar even if the uniform wasn’t. It wasn’t Commander Collins who stood there, in a stark white enforcer uniform with a bundle of clothes clutched to her chest. “I thought you’d be gone; who the hell is this?”
The words tumbled over each other, voice fast and forceful and completely confident in her situation. Jen didn’t react to the weapon pulled on her, nor did she make any move to go for her own when she saw Jack. Sharp eyes, smooth skin, brown hair in a harsh ponytail that bore no hint of grey... this was the Jaycee of twenty plus years past.
The Jen of the future.
“This is Jack,” Kat Jr. told her. “What are you doing with the baby?”
She’d asked a question. Funny that that was what caught his attention, more than the weird look Jen gave him or the weapons that her sister still had trained on both of them. Young Kat had asked a question, and it had actually sounded like a question.
“Jack?” Jen repeated, ignoring it.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Hyanni’s Jack,” Jen said, glancing at her Kat for confirmation.
Kat just shrugged, flicking the blaster in her left hand back, taking the bull’s-eye off of Jen. “Jack from the future,” she said. The weapon she had on him didn’t waver. “Or the past. I’m not really clear.”
“From your future,” he interrupted. He thought that possibly the hardest thing about time travel was talking about it. “You haven’t met me yet, but you will. In the past.”
She didn’t look at him, just kept staring at Jen.
“He can’t stay here,” Jen told her. “You were right. They’ll just keep experimenting, and with Hyanni gone... I’m not sure I’ll be able to take him with me.”
“So you’re sending him with me?” her Kat demanded. She was remarkably more normal around Jen, Jack thought. She said things like they mattered, she didn’t flip out, and she’d lost that crazy edge that teetered between death by apathy and death by freakout.
“Wes can help you place him,” Jen said, and it occurred to Jack that maybe he should be paying more attention to what they were saying instead of how they were saying it. “I’m not asking you to bring him up, Miri. I just need you to get him out.”
“Wait,” Jack interrupted. “I already have a ride. I’m just supposed to make sure you two find each other, which you did, and that Kat erases our hack so it looks like the Jonathan Drew file’s always been there.”
“The who?” Jen asked, turning her full attention on him. “How did you get here?”
“Kat brought me,” he said. “Twenty years from now. She said she remembered me being here--”
“He calls me ‘Kat,’” Kat Jr. interrupted. “If that helps.”
“I see.” Jen studied him. “Go on.”
“She was supposed to knock out the power while I made sure she--you--didn’t run,” he told the person he’d been thinking of as “young Kat.” Apparently “Kat” wasn’t even her name, so maybe that was less appropriate than he’d realized. “She told me you’d know what to do with the computer once you found out who I am.”
She and Jen exchanged glances, and Jen shifted the clothes in her arms awkwardly. Something about the way she did it made another piece click into place, and his eyes widened. That wasn’t a pile of clothes at all. And Kat had told him... she’d said he would be here. He just wasn’t expecting--
“That’s me, isn’t it.” He stared, torn between trying not to look and wanting to see. Jen had a wrapped-up baby in her arms. And that baby was him.
“This is Hyanni’s baby,” Jen said slowly. He could feel her scrutinizing him, looking for who knew what, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of what she was holding. “She wanted him to be called Jack.”
“It’s better than XCS-302,” Kat muttered.
He felt really weird. “Who’s Hyanni?” he asked, still staring at the unwieldy-looking uniform jacket and the shoes sticking out from underneath. Not just a baby, but a baby in disguise as a change of clothes. His life had been strange from the very beginning.
“Why are you just standing around?” another voice hissed, and things got even more bizarre as a little glowing ball of light flitted into the room. It resolved itself almost immediately into the Kat he knew, glaring around at all of them with no concern for the second blaster Kat Jr. now had trained on her. “Did you fix the computer? We need to get moving; primary power won’t be down for long!”
“Is it down?” Jack asked, tearing his eyes away from Jen and... him.
She scowled at him. “I told you to watching for the lights dimming. That’s the transfer from primary to secondary. Computer hacks made on secondary power are vulnerable to loop erasure when the primaries come back. What have you been doing all this time?”
“Trying not to get shot?” he countered. “It turns out you’re not the most trusting person in the world!”
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” Jen spoke with the assurance of someone used to being obeyed. “You two, tell Miri what she’s looking for in the database. If she can do whatever you want before I finish getting the b--Jack,” she amended. “Getting Jack ready to go, you’re in luck. Otherwise, she’s going, and you’re on your own.”
“Huh.” Jack couldn’t stop himself from muttering, “That sounds familiar.”
“She hasn’t changed much,” his Kat told him. “Obviously.”
“Don’t you have a word for this?” Kat Jr. demanded. “Entrapment? Psychosis? Shall I go on?”
“The word is opportunity,” his Kat said. The fact that she was talking to herself didn’t seem to bother her. “We gave Jack a new identity as Jonathan Drew. No one in our time can prove the records are fake, but someone in yours could. We need you to pre-date them for us.”
“I work for Time Force,” Kat Jr. said, folding her arms. “I don’t even know how to do what you’re asking.” Almost a year with SPD, and Jack still couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth or just telling them what she thought a secret agent would want to hear.
“We used to play dinosaurs.” Jen had set her bundle down on the nearest counter, shoes and all, and she was tugging at the jacket. “Tell me about them.”
Kat Jr. looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but his Kat said immediately, “We played on the floor between our beds. We each had those little blue ones, the anklyosauruses. They were my favorite. And the pink turtle--bright pink. It lived in a river? There were big ones with little arms, a purple one and a yellow one, and we used to line them up so that they could march defensively--”
“With the stegosauruses on the outside to protect them,” Jen finished.
“And the triceratops in front,” Kat Jr. snapped. “Fine, she’s me. So what? I work for Time Force. Just being me doesn’t make me trustworthy.”
“You still have Jack,” Jen pointed out. “I’d say that makes you trustworthy. Do whatever they want with the files: Jonathan Drew, did you say?”
It took him a few seconds to realize she was talking to him again, and by that time, his Kat had joined her younger self by a vaguely familiar-seeming interface. “17 December 2025,” she was saying. “Jonathan Drew’s file replaced Jack Landors’ in the database at SPD Earth. I backdated it, of course, but someone in 3004 could find the cracks if they happened to be looking.”
“Jack,” Jen said sharply, and it was a good thing that Kat Jr. had finally lowered her blaster because he jumped.
“Yeah?”
“Come here,” she said. He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but she was already lifting the baby out of his jacket nest and cradling him against her elbow. “He’s been drugged,” she said, catching his expression. “To keep him quiet. I’m sorry.”
“I get it,” he muttered, drifting closer. It wasn’t... it didn’t look like him. It was a baby.
“Better not touch him,” Jen said quickly. “Superstition, maybe, but.” She shook her head once. “No reason to go asking for trouble.”
“It’s weird,” Jack said, staring down at the sleeping baby. “I don’t--I mean--well. It’s not like I have any baby pictures, you know?”
“I wish we could do more for you.” Jen sounded genuinely frustrated. “I won’t even be able to track you once you leave. Time Force is monitoring me; I can’t risk giving either of you away. At least Miri can find me if she needs me, but you--”
“Hey.” Jack cut her off. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but he knew self-recrimination when he heard it. “You’re doing a good thing here, Jen. I mean, for K--for your sister, but for me too. For him,” he amended, nodding at the baby. “And for me.”
She gave him an odd look, and he added, “I grew up with nothing but my name, you know? Nothing about my parents, my family, not even a birthday.” He shrugged, self-conscious. “Now at least I know someone cared, right?”
Jen shifted the baby a little, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Her fingers clamped down hard, a grip that was at once reassuring and disconcerting. “I don’t know how much Miri has told you,” she said, “but you were born the ninth of December, 3003. Your mom’s name is Hyanni. She wanted you--so much--but Time Force wouldn’t let her keep you.
“She’s gone,” Jen added. “To the future. The agency thinks she’s dead. I promised her I wouldn’t let them hurt you, and every day it gets harder. I feel like I’m sending you into exile, but Wes always says it’s better to be free than to be comfortable.”
Jack stared at her. She had just told him, in ten seconds, more about himself than he’d known his entire life. And she looked desperately uncertain about all of it.
“Thank you,” he managed. Because it had to be said. How could she think anything else? He lifted his own hand, mirroring her grasp on his shoulder. “Thanks for giving me--” He hesitated, then flashed her as much of a smile as he could. “My life.”
“I hope it’s a good one,” Jen said softly, her eyes searching his.
“It is,” he said, and here he didn’t pause. “You’ll see.”
“Yeah?” The more she talked, the more he thought she sounded like she belonged in his time. The time he was living in now, anyway.
The ninth of December. 3003.
When were you born, Sky had asked him? Now he had an answer.
“I’m sorry your earliest memory of me will be me stuffing you into an equipment bag,” Jen was saying. “But I guess the fact that it won’t be your last makes up for it some.”
She wasn’t kidding, either. He helped her bundle the baby into an equipment bag, and the Kat team had finished agonizing minutes before they were ready. This time the lights surged, brightening momentarily, enough to make him wonder how all the high-tech equipment around them responded to fluctuations like these... and maybe that was what Kat was counting on. She must know exactly what it could handle, what was vulnerable and what wasn’t, and how to take advantage of it.
“Your ticket out,” Jen said, as she handed over the bag.
Kat Jr. reluctantly gave up one of her blasters, and his Kat took it and hid it somewhere while her younger self settled the bag over her head and shoulder. Jen pressed something into her hand, glancing at Kat Sr. “You have an anti-trace?”
His Kat smiled fondly at her. “You just gave it to me,” she said, reaching up to adjust her bright yellow jacket. She pulled out a necklace Jack hadn’t known she was wearing, the tiny disk on it glinting blue and purple as it spun.
Young Kat was holding an identical disk in her open hand.
“Well.” Jen seemed more taken aback by this than anything else that had happened. “I guess it works, then.”
“For thirty-nine years,” Kat agreed, slipping the thing back under her shirt. “Thank you, Jen. I never said it enough.”
“I wish I could have done more,” Jen said. She looked from his Kat to Kat Jr., and if the disk had thrown her off, the almost identical faces didn’t seem to. “It isn’t fair, what they’re doing. I’m sorry I was a part of it for so long.”
“You’re everything to us,” Kat said quietly. “Don’t forget that.”
“You’re my only family,” Jen told her. With a sharp motion that Jack hadn’t expected of her, she stepped in to hug Kat hard. “Be safe.”
Kat, whom Jack rarely saw touch anyone, wrapped her up tight and rubbed her head against Jen’s affectionately. “I know you will,” she said softly. “But do it anyway.”
Then they were pulling away, as if at some pre-arranged signal, and Jen turned to Kat Jr. Putting a hand on top of the bag she carried, Jen gave her a careful one-armed hug that her Kat permitted with surprising patience. “They may try to question Wes,” she whispered. “Don’t tell him any more than you have to.”
“I’ll protect your lover,” Kat Jr. muttered. The disk Jen had given her was clenched awkwardly in her hand as she tried to return the hug without squashing the baby. “Get out of here, Jen. That morpher didn’t save you the last time they tried to rewrite your brain, and it’s only a matter of time before they try again.”
“I’m going,” Jen promised. “As soon as you’re safe.”
She let go, adding, “Good luck. Come find me if you can.”
Young Kat nodded, lifting the disk Jen had given her. It flashed a vivid blue in the colorless room and she vanished, taking the bag with its silent, stolen baby with her. Jack thought her gaze flicked to him before she disappeared.
They were all quiet for a long moment, and then Jen let out a breath. “It worked,” she said, almost as though she was surprised. “No alarms.”
“It’ll be a while before I believe it,” Kat said quietly.
Jen gave her a startled look. “If the anti-trace didn’t hide her Karmanian powers, everyone on this base would know she’s gone.”
“No--” Kat smiled a little. “I know. I meant her: it’ll be a while before she believes it. But she will find you, Jen. She’ll be back, and she’ll find you.”
“Just me, I hope,” Jen said, searching her expression.
“Just you,” Kat confirmed. “And Jack,” she added, nodding to him. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
Jen’s gaze went to him, and the sudden softness in her expression gave him his first glimpse of Jaycee. “Yeah,” she said. “Hyanni would be proud.”
He couldn’t put into words how strange that made him feel.
“We should go,” Kat said quietly. “Listen to her, Jen. You have to get out of here too.”
“I will,” Jen repeated. “Believe me, Wes will never speak to me again if I let them get to me.”
“Worse,” Kat warned. “You may never speak to him.”
Just like that, Jen snapped. “I know! I know, okay? I’m on borrowed time; I get it! But I have a team to think of, I have you, and if I don’t take care of the underground then people like Hyanni and Jack will be stuck in a time that wants to take them apart!”
“And if you lose, we all lose,” Kat replied, refusing to back off. “Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah.” Jen wavered for the first time, but finally she smiled. “Guess I’ll see you in a couple of decades.”
It made Kat smile too. “I’ll be there,” she said.
She looked over at Jack, and Jen followed her gaze. “Plenty of people care, Jack,” Jen told him. “Remember that.”
“Yeah,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. I got that.”
Time’s policewoman nodded at him. “Be safe.”
He was aware of Kat coming closer, and the clock was counting down. He nodded quickly, because he owed her and he didn’t think he even knew how much. “Thanks, Jen.”
She smiled, and the room went faint and fuzzy and far away. He knew they were gone the moment the walls of the “Mexico base” reappeared: it wasn’t what he saw, but what he didn’t hear. The constant, almost unnoticed hum of the thirty-first century was gone. He could feel the sudden silence in a way he couldn’t explain.
I feel like I’m sending you into exile.
He turned to Kat, intending to make a flip remark about how little the intro class would have prepared him for friends like hers. They treated a thousand years like a city block: bye, just going to the corner, see you in a couple decades. His voice caught before he finished the first word, and he swallowed hard.
And Kat... icy Kat, who mouthed off more than he did and didn’t let anyone push her around, who loved SPD but didn’t hesitate to put anyone in it in their place... Kat hugged him like he was family, and she didn’t let go when the tears started to leak out of his eyes.