Out of Time

By Jane Thompson

Time’s a funny thing. In some ways it’s like us. Resilient, but fragile. One little stumble in the flow of events and time catches itself, keeps moving. But something big enough, violent enough, gets in the way and the only result is utter collapse. It’s easy to look back and see where things flow from. Where they flow to is another matter entirely…

The hair on the back of my neck stands up and, with a jolt, I sense someone standing across the parking lot, looking at me. I snap to attention, but turn to find no one. 

Foolish to let my thoughts wander.Still, I can’t shake the feeling of something–someone?–at the back of my mind. 

I’ve been here too long already. 

The driver’s seat in the The Uptown Chinese Take-Out car is way too small for this body, so I get out and make my way across the parking lot to the apartments. 

I’m just about to knock on the first door when the phone in the pocket of my neon-orange delivery jacket buzzes with a text. It’s Phil. Of course.

Hey, can you get some milk while you’re out? 

Almost immediately, another text. 

Nvm, I found some. 

Another buzz. 

Could you grab some cereal tho? I’ll pay you back. 

Two excruciating days in this body dealing with Phil and I’m about to blow protocol and my cover to take him out. Why the hell would Command pick a Host with a roommate? 

I swipe away from the messages and glance at the home screen.

9:32pm. February 15, 2018. 

Only three days until Mom’s birthday. I wonder if we’re going to go out for dinner or something. I should ask Laura. 

Wait…I blink. Did I just think “mom?” Who the hell is Laura? 

Shit.

I squeeze my eyes closed and images of a smiling mother accost my mind. Birthdays, little league baseball games, a high school graduation. She’s in all of them, a standard-order supportive mother… just not mine. This is his mother. 

The pain overwhelms me as I feel a consciousness grabbing on, drowning me to claw its way to the surface. My head is being split apart with an axe. I was so close. I just need a few more– 

***  

“Agent. Agent!” 

My eyes fly open to a blinding light and sterilized white room. 

“Wake up,” the Commander barks, his towering figure above me. I’m still strapped to the chair. “What the hell took so long? We barely had time to pull you out before the Host overtook you.” 

I shake my head. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t have a lot to go on. All we knew going in was a neighborhood–” 

“No excuses, agent!” The Commander bellows, his heavy features set in a scowl. “There is something wrong with that timeline and we are risking a major rift if we don’t figure out what it is. Do you understand the stakes here?”

“I do! I was close–I have it narrowed down to an apartment building. The person we’re looking for is there on February 15, 2018, then the model falls apart on the 16th. So whatever it is, I’m close to finding it. I just need a little more time to find the right apartment and locate what disrupted the path. Send me back.” 

The Commander glares, considering. 

“No. You were in that body for two days, and the Host is fighting back. If that Host breaks loose there is no coming back for you, and God knows what the consequences would be here. You should know that by now.” 

“I do. Please. Just let me try again.” I force my voice to remain steady, stifling my growing panic.

“You sure you can handle this?” His question sounds concerned, but there’s no warmth in his hardened eyes as he assesses me. “You might have the experience, but I’m starting to wonder if keeping you in was a good idea,” he says.

I pinch the palm of my hand and exhale slowly. 

“If I get this mission done, you’ll let her go?” I ask, not for the first time. 

“You know the terms of the deal,” he replies stone-faced. 

“Then I can handle it. Send me back.”

*** 

Fire rips through my veins, and I feel like I’m falling through an unending darkness until I wake with a start. A wave of nausea barrels into my soul, my senses revolting at the wrongness of a body that is not my own. 

And there it is again–that nagging sense at the back of my mind, as though I’m being watched. 

I take slow breaths, trying to acclimate. Inhabiting a Host body has many horrifying side-effects, but this heightened anxiety is worse than usual. Like the moment I turn my back I’ll find a rope wrapped around my neck.

I force the panic away and open my eyes to find I’m on the Host’s living-room couch. Greasy fast-food wrappers litter the floor and I can smell the kitchen’s overflowing trash from here. 

Fucking Phil, I think to myself with a disdain that I’m not sure belongs to me. 

How my Host lives with this guy I can’t begin to understand. But dealing with the finer points of roommate decorum in the archaic corners of the past is a problem for another day and another person. 

I stand and reach for the uniform hanging by the apartment’s front door–the electric-orange Uptown Chinese Take-Out hat and jacket visually screaming with brightness. If I had more time I’d stop to appreciate the irony that something so intensely visible is providing me the perfect cover. Turns out being a delivery driver is the perfect excuse when you need to go door-to-door.

I’m almost out the door when I hear a rustling behind me. 

“Oh, hey man,” Phil says sleepily, apparently only just emerging from his room even though it’s 4:30pm. 

“Hi Phil,” I reply, turning back to the door handle.

“Are you leaving?” he asks, “Could you give me a ride to the convenience store?” 

I exhale and try to mask the swimming in my head. God, I don’t have time for this. 

“Um, I would, but I’ve got deliveries to make in Midtown so…” 

“Oh! Great. There’s a gas station on the way. I’ll just come with you.”

I pause, wondering what would happen if I just ignored him–or worse. But protocol is clear: behave as your Host would. Arouse no suspicion. And definitely don’t do anything–like, oh, say, killing Phil–that could significantly alter events.

“Fine. Sure. You can come.”

He schleps over, donning a ratty pair of slippers. He pulls a jacket over a shirt that reads Don’t Read The Rest of This Shirt, Ha, Made You Look. I hold the door open for him and suppress another wave of nausea.

Damn, this re-entry is rougher than usual. 

“You okay, buddy?” Phil asks. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, feeling the overwhelming sense of somebody standing right behind me. I refuse to turn around.

I have to get moving. 

*** 

Shit. 

I’ve knocked on five doors and there’s still no sign of the man I’m looking for. Tall, brown hair, early thirties. First name’s Martin. I don’t know much beyond that, and he’s supposed to live another forty-six years to maintain timeline stability, according to the models. Whoever he is somehow contributed to the future enough to be a key thread. The specifics are above my pay-grade. 

I shake my head. When humanity created the time technologies we did the existential equivalent of handing a loaded gun to a drunk toddler–we created the means of our own destruction. Although I suppose that itself is innately human.

A ripple of fear pulses through me from an unknown corner of my mind, and clamp down. 

Oh no you don’t, I think to myself, holding the Host’s fear at bay. I move to the sixth door. I knock as I glance down to another text from Phil. 

Hey, what’s taking so long? I have to pee.

I roll my eyes as an elderly woman answers the door.

“Hi ma’am, I’ve got an order here for Martin. Orange chicken.” I hold up the insulated delivery bag trying to look unthreatening. 

She blinks at me, “I didn’t order anything…” 

“Are you sure? No one named Martin here?” 

“Martin? No.” 

“Sorry,” I say, turning away, “I must have the wrong unit.” 

“Oh! Martin!” the woman croaks at my back. “He lives just above me. That must be the confusion.” 

Finally. 

She shakes her head. “He must have his apartment number wrong. You’re the second person who’s asked for him this week!”

Interesting. And potentially problematic. I store the information and smile at the old woman. “Oh, funny. Thanks for the help.” 

I turn and move toward the stairs leading up to the next floor. 

“Strange he would order food at this time, though,” the woman says. “He’s usually not home during the day.”  

“I’ll check. Thank you, ma’am,” I call back as I race toward the stairs. I feel a cold sweat on my temples that I try to ignore as I approach Martin’s door.

No answer. Damn. 

Suddenly my stomach somersaults and panic grips my throat. It’s so palpable my knees buckle. I groan–I can't lose now. Not when there’s so much riding on this. Not when she needs me to make it back– 

I grit my teeth. 

This panic isn’t mine.

I press my forehead to the wall and breathe. I just need to keep this down a bit longer, to hold on for another few hours. I dig into myself, clinging to what is irrefutably me. 

I like dark chocolate. 

I’m forty-two years old.

Spring is my favorite season.

I can picture my childhood home, and I can picture her. 

Jaclyn. 

And I’m supposed to be getting her the fuck out of prision. I need to get my shit together and finish this mission.

I hold her face in my mind like an anchor. 

I can do this for her.

Consumption by a Host is one terrible way to go–your very essence drawn and quartered, every piece of you shredded apart. I can’t afford to stay here, but I can’t afford to fail this mission more. I put the pieces of myself back together and pry my eyes open. 

Craning my neck toward the parking lot and I spot the delivery car. Phil is still in the passenger seat, playing air-guitar. Unsurprisingly, he’s sent another text. 

Dude? You there? I really have to go.

I need to come back alone. 

*** 

Two hours later and I’m back in the driver’s seat gazing up at apartment 3C, home of Martin Cockrain. My anxious fingers dance on the steering wheel. The neighbor said Martin’s home in the evening, but there’s still no sign of movement in the apartment. No lights on. Nothing. 

The mention of someone asking after Martin lurks at the corners of my mind. The notion preying on my mounting anxiety. But is this uneasiness my own instinct? Or the consciousness of the Host, screaming to get out like a rabbit in a trap?

8:13pm. 

Why are you doing this to me? The thought launches into my brain, in a voice that isn’t mine like a mental jump-scare. 

Okay. Fuck caution. My time is short. 

I stagger from the car, fighting to maintain control of myself as I climb the stairs to Martin’s apartment. I’m so focused on keeping my grip that I almost don’t notice the door to Martin’s dark apartment is open. 

Almost. 

The world around me is at a standstill. I hear nothing–not a peep from neighboring apartments. Suddenly it’s as though the entire complex is vacant.A sense of wrong settles around me and my palms prick with anxiety as I move slowly toward the door. I hear something moving, slowly, inside the apartment. 

Reaching a sweaty hand into my jacket I pull out a small switchblade, and step quietly into the apartment hallway. In the dark I feel the Host breathing down my neck.

Finally I hear a noise slithering from the depths of the apartment, like something being dragged across the floor. 

“Oh good. You finally made it.” A sing-songy voice echoes down the hallway. 

I freeze, my mind ceding an inch to the Host.

“It’s fine, come on in, big guy! We’re having a party!” 

I hold myself with a vice-like grip, straining with each step. The Host is standing at the edges of my vision now.

I just need to hang on.

I move into the apartment’s living room, sliding a hand against the wall until I find a lightswitch and flick it on to reveal a nightmare.

In the middle of the room is Martin–at least what’s left of him. The body is tied to a chair, a growing puddle of red liquid gore spilling at his feet. 

Standing in front of him is a short, unassuming figure, looking at me with red-stained arms and a smile like a jackal. 

Holy shit. 

“Phil?!” 

His smile grows. “Well…” he drawls, “yes and no.” 

I swallow, shock and rage threatening the stability of my grip on the Host. 

“I know! Lots to take in! Do you want to sit down?” Phil says, gesturing toward the couch with a blood-soaked knife.

“You’re it,” I say, stunned. “You’re what doesn’t belong here. You took Martin out of the timeline.” 

His smile widens–he’s Phil, with a voice and mannerisms suddenly belonging to someone else. “Well, technically we took him out of the timeline. I never would have found the target if you hadn’t shown me where he was today!” 

His words echo in my brain, I’ll just come with you. 

Phil laughs. “You’re going to be in so much trouble, agent!” He says in a deep and sturdy voice, and I realize he’s imitating the Commander. 

“You’re…an agent?” I ask, my mind coming apart at the seams. “For who?” 

“Who indeed?” His eyes twinkle. 

“I bet you’re not going to last long enough to find out, given how hard you’re having to fight down your Host. Maybe that was the point all along, huh? Maybe they’re finally ready to get rid of you…” 

He strolls toward me, twirling his knife like some grotesque color-guard. “I certainly bet you’re not strong enough to fight me off, anyway.” 

The Host has me in a chokehold now, and I know Phil’s right–I can’t keep hold in a knife-fight. 

I look at Phil, his smug smile burning into me. 

Fuck it, I think in a voice I know is wholly my own. 

And I charge.