- Title

- License

- PART ONE: Homelessness

- PART TWO: Nuclear Reduction

- PART THREE: Tools of the Trade

- PART FOUR: Legwork

- PART FIVE: Security

- PART SIX: Follow the Money

- PART SEVEN: Legacy

THE EPOCH INDEX

by Christian Cantrell

This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.

PART ONE: Homelessness

Ranveer is the richest homeless man in the world. He is homeless because the tools of his trade are nicely portable, and his work encourages him to be mobile. He is rich because he gets paid to solve the kinds of problems that manifest themselves as people.

He is a tall, slender, sinewy man who has never eaten a piece of meat in his life, and although you would never use the word muscular to describe him, you somehow know he could rip a New York City telephone book in half given the proper motivation. He wears his receding hairline with grace and elegance, and his heavy chevron mustache curls so naturally and impeccably down over his upper lip that it's hard to believe he wasn't born with it. His black eyes somehow portray both congeniality and malice simultaneously, and they can regard or ignore you with equally unsettling significance.

This evening, Ranveer is traveling from L.A. to Oman. From the time he leaves his room on one end and starts unpacking on the other, he will not touch his cases, open a door, or wait in a single line. The hotel and the airline have arranged everything, and even in this increasingly complex, chaotic, and undependable world, he knows there will be no mistakes.

He only flies United Emirates Airlines. If UEA doesn't go where he needs to be, he doesn't need to be there. He only stays in properties owned and operated by Crystal Collective Worldwide. If CCW doesn't have a resort, hotel, or a timeshare within half a fuel cell charge of a job, that job is someone else's problem. Ranveer understands the meaning of brand loyalty, and he expects for that loyalty to go both ways.

CCW has a room in every location designated just for him. If the property is entirely full and you're willing to cough up three times the posted rate to stay in Ranveer's private quarters, you do so with the understanding that you may be thrown out onto the street at absolutely any moment whether you happen to be sleeping, showering, or shagging. There won't even be so much as a knock or the beep of a key card. The door will simply be thrown open, and then you and your things will be on your way out by the shortest possible route. This is solemnly explained to you by the manager on duty before you sign. Once you're gone, the room will be reset and sterilized, Ranveer's cases will be brought in, and the most beautiful woman currently on staff will either lounge on a divan or sit primly on the end of the bed with her very best smile and a few extra buttons undone.

But it isn't the service at CCW that Ranveer values most; it's the fact that the staff is trained not to ask questions, and more importantly, not to answer them when the wrong people are asking.

At the airport, Ranveer is personally escorted to his GoldCoach suite by a nervous airline executive who is less familiar with the luxuries of the 797 than Ranveer is, and consequently bumps his head both coming and going. The suite and its private lavatory contain separate plasma glass displays on which someone from Boeing is taking the opportunity to personally thank him, presumably for contributing to the demand for such expensive new jets, and for subsidizing the seats in the cattle car. While in the air, Ranveer enjoys a spicy egg curry with two bottles of mineral water while he scours three different news networks in an attempt to synthesize something approaching objective truth, then he dials down his glasses, converts his seat into a bed, and sleeps soundly for the rest of the flight.

When they land, Ranveer raises the shades and watches the ground crew drive alongside, hands frantically grasping at the GoldCoach luggage carriage before the plane has even stopped at the gate. Ranveer's cases will be halfway to his hotel by the time the first coach passenger can dislodge himself from his seat, yank his garment bag from the overhead bin, and thank the flight attendants and pilots for a miserable sixteen hours. Occasionally, Ranveer's cases will even take an earlier flight just to give the airline a cushion. He was once told that they bumped a first class traveler when the climate control system in the underbelly malfunctioned.

He is met at the entrance to his suite by another executive (this one short enough to disregard the bulkheads altogether) who escorts him through the red-carpeted and air conditioned jetway to the mouth of the Platinum Passenger walkway. With some formality, he is handed off to a woman whose long wavy black hair looks like it was twisted into some form of tight, conservative restraint only moments prior. As they move toward the exit, she solicits feedback on what they can do to make his next flight even more relaxing and rejuvenating, and then inquires as to whether he is in need of a tailor, barber, or a masseuse (or masseur, she adds). He assures her that he is in need of nothing, and she is outwardly relieved when he conveys that the flight was well within his levels of tolerance. Pleasant, he might even say. She finds various ways to flatter him until he is tucked safely into the back of his limousine.

The driver doesn't need instructions. He knows where Ranveer needs to go, and that he prefers to get there in silence. He encourages Ranveer to let him know at once if there is anything or anyone he requires, and then he dials down the glass partition between them. Ranveer removes his glasses from an inside pocket of his jacket, unfolds them, then fits the wide, amber, sapphire-plated liquid crystal lenses in place. From the opposite pocket, he plucks his handset which automatically unlocks in his palm, then detects the presence of his glasses and redirects its output accordingly. Ranveer checks the most recent information and confirms that his plans have not changed. He is on schedule, and the job is still a go.

The driver brings the car to a smooth stop, then races the hotel manager for dibs on opening Ranveer's door. He loses by half the length of the car, and has to settle for wiping away water droplets from around the exhaust to busy himself. As Ranveer steps out onto the curb, he discovers that the hotel's open entrance is not air conditioned today, even in anticipation of his arrival. It's the little things that foretell shifts in the balance of power and money throughout the world. Although he would certainly rather not sweat on his way into the hotel lobby, he knows that it is precisely these dynamics which will always ensure a need for people like him.

Ranveer is escorted directly to his room by a plump, curly-haired man whose dark skin manages to redden in the presence of what is likely his very first Executive Guest. Although he exudes inexperience, he knows enough not to offer to handle Ranveer's attaché; everyone in the hospitality business learns that one of the keys to successfully accompanying a powerful man to his room without losing your job in the process is knowing which bags he wishes to never see, and which he will not let out of his sight.

The elevator correctly deduces from the room number programmed into the keycard in the manager's breast pocket that the correct direction is up. When the doors open, Ranveer is reminded that the lifts here are currently the world's tallest aquariums. As he steps in, he finds he is surrounded on three sides by an almost garish tropical marine tableau which casts an undulating glow on everything within. Not the kind of place conducive to shoot-outs, Ranveer notes, or even spirited quickies on the way up after an evening at the hotel bar. The longest topmost button automatically illuminates as the doors close without anyone having to defile his fingertips.

After a smooth ascent full of awkward smiles, nods, and throat clearing, the doors open directly into the foyer of Ranveer's suite where he is handed off yet again. The woman standing by the vase of fresh-cut flowers atop the marble pedestal surprises him with her crimson and gold-embroidered traditional Omani robe and headdress. She has decided to take things in a different direction by leaving everything but her curly black hair, glossy red lips, and matching cherry-red toenails to the imagination. It works, Ranveer decides, and he allows himself to be given a tour of what is to be his home until such time as his work here is concluded.

When all amenities have been identified and, where necessary, demonstrated, it is Ranveer's turn to do the escorting as he sees his attendant to the elevator. She maintains her composure as he express his desire for their paths to cross again during his brief residency, though she does grace him with the subtle but coquettish flutter of long lashes. Exceptionally well done, Ranveer notes. How he appreciates the work of a true professional.

PART TWO: Nuclear Reduction

Quinn Mitchell's job is to prevent nuclear wars. Not military nuclear strikes like the ones in Japan, Pakistan, India, and the Koreas, but small territorial thermonuclear events that can destroy cities block by block.

Her job exists because nuclear weapons aren't supposed to. After centuries-old rivalries finally escalated into full-scale nuclear conflicts, the United Nations drafted and unanimously voted into effect a resolution unequivocally banning any sized nuclear arsenal anywhere on the planet. The U.S. and other early nuclear adopters were happy to back (and help enforce) the new international law, having long ago anticipated the nuclear backlash and invested heavily in Prompt Global Strike systems: networks of launch vehicles and hypersonic cruise missiles designed to deliver warheads filled with scored tungsten rods twice as strong as steel and capable of ripping any structure anywhere on Earth to shreds in less time than it takes to have a pizza delivered. Thermonuclear hydrogen bombs were old news, as far as most world powers were concerned. The only reason to unleash 50 megatons of destruction is if you have very little faith in the accuracy of your delivery mechanisms. Modern weaponry can target down to the square centimeter, and since it uses real time topographical guidance, it can do so even when your entire GPS satellite network is compromised. Besides, what's the point of defeating another nation if your great grandchildren can't even set foot in it, and just about everything worth looting, pillaging, raping, or oppressing is either incinerated or radioactive? Nuclear weapons are clumsy and inelegant. High-tech conventional is the new thermonuclear. Modern militaries say less is more.

But in poorer economies where no materials are wasted and no opportunities squandered, some nuclear arsenals weren't secured and shipped off to France for processing as instructed by the United Nations; rather, they were divided up amongst any organizations capable of paying for or otherwise procuring them. After a decade of dismantling, confiscating, and inspecting — when the world was supposed to be a mere five years away from declaring itself 100% free of any and all forms of nuclear threat — only 63% of the world's enriched nuclear material had officially been accounted for. That left several times the amount required to extinguish every life on the entire planet very much at large.

It wasn't hard to imagine where it went. As the demand for oil continued to decline, and as several nations began legalizing and legislating controlled substances, the global distribution of wealth and power was changing — a dynamic which inevitably breeds extremism. While the superpowers of the world were busy replacing their nuclear arsenals (which they had traditionally been reluctant to use) with incredibly menacing conventional weapons (which they could use in quantities just small enough to not even make the next day's front page), a new class of economic and political underdogs were devoting their lives to converting the dwindling arsenals of their nuclear superpower enemies into the most dangerous and destructive acts of terrorism in history.

Meanwhile, Quinn Mitchell was busy getting a divorce. She and her husband were both Collection Management Officers for the CIA's National Clandestine Service which made them what is frequently referred to inside the beltway as nine-to-five spies. They commuted together from the subdued and affluent suburbs of Northern Virginia where weekend barbecues were staged by insipid men and women who simply "worked for the government," and who were content to redirect most conversations toward either the constant antics of their children, or the latest controversies surrounding whatever sport happened to be in season.

The Mitchells dropped their daughter Molly off at day care in the mornings, ate dinner together most nights, and on weekends, when the yard work was done, went to the pool or attended birthday parties at giant padded indoor playgrounds in nearby industrial parks. Once a year, they vacationed on Disney property or rented a house at Lake Anna, and at least three times a year, they played with the idea of having a second child. Quinn was not catalog-cover beautiful, but she had a shape and perkiness to her that drew and held the attention of underprivileged dads everywhere and succeeded in keeping her husband hopeful most nights. For years, they defied the conventional wisdom that spies couldn't stay married by carving out a successful and predictable domestic existence that was the envy of many of their colleagues.

But when Molly drowned in a neighbor's pool, and when Quinn and her husband found they could not stop blaming both themselves and each other, it was clear that they would finally become the statistic they thought they would never be. There was a sudden and savage hatred between them that neither one had the energy to explore or try to understand, and they knew that the only way to survive and to move forward was to do so alone. They sold the house and Quinn found an apartment in Maryland. Her work became the centerpiece of her life, sustained by the perpetual cycle of grocery shopping, laundry, boxes of wine, and antidepressants. In the evenings, she frequently imagined what the end of her service weapon would taste like, and wondered if the slide would break her teeth as it cycled in a new round and ejected a smoking cartridge out onto the carpet of her empty apartment.

Quinn knew she had to make some kind of a change soon, and when a position opened up for an Operations Officer in the field with a new Counter Nuclear Terrorism Task Force, she applied. She had failed at being a mother and failed at being a wife, and now she was dying very slowly alone in her apartment a little bit each night. She knew she didn't have the power or motivation to save her own life anymore, but she felt like she might still be able to save someone else's. She felt like that might just be enough.

That was almost six years ago, and Quinn still feels like a failure. The entire task force hasn't made a single significant recovery or arrest. Yet, there also hasn't been a single localized nuclear event. So through a course of logic only a government agency is capable of, Quinn's mission has been declared a de facto success. A 3,266 page report that nobody actually bothered to read has concluded that the missing fissile material is most likely the result of nothing more than poor record keeping, and any weapons that were in fact stolen are probably in the hands of amateurs who can't figure out how to detonate or smuggle them anyway, and will almost certainly end up dying slowly and painfully from radiation poisoning inside of a decade. It was the opinion of the Director himself that the resources represented by the Counter Nuclear Terrorism Task Force were now better employed elsewhere. Quinn hasn't been officially reassigned yet since her salary still comes out of the counter-terrorism budget, but she has been asked to start looking into something new. And very different.

The 22 bizarre deaths were initially thought to be the work of a single serial killer, and then several copycat serial killers throughout the world — gruesome and sensational, certainly, but nothing particularly interesting to an international spy. However, they are now starting to look more and more like assassinations, possibly political in nature, and foreign governments are looking to the U.S. for investigative assistance. Although there is no obvious correlation between the victims, there is one element which ties them all together: a number between two and four digits usually either branded or tattooed somewhere on the victims' bodies. The chest, the forehead, across the back, on a cheek, down the thigh. Someplace obvious. The numbers are clearly meant to be tags of some sort. The killer (or killers) are somehow using them to communicate.

Quinn did not ask for this assignment. In fact, she very explicitly asked to be assigned to something else. Anything. Death is as common in most CIA investigations as cavities are in dentistry, but she has always been able to keep her distance from it. It's one thing to factor homicides into an investigation, but actually investigating those homicides is something else entirely. She does not want to scan corpses, compare the details of coroner reports, generate real-time live-action 3D computer models of brutal murders and then watch them over and over again for something someone has missed. And she does not want to interview the parents of the dead. This is a proximity to death that Quinn is not ready for.

But she is an unusually gifted investigator who specializes in uncovering cryptic and almost indiscernible connections through free-form data analysis. And her old task force is winding down at precisely the same time that this new task force is ramping up. And as a Departmental Head once graciously took the time to explain to Quinn, if you want to get rich, or if you want have say over what you do, then you don't want to work for the government.

PART THREE: Tools of the Trade

If Ranveer still intends to get in a swim, a sonic vitamin soak, a Thai massage, both a manicure and a pedicure, a light meal, and a twenty-minute power nap before going to work, he had better stop wondering about the sexual prowess and inhibitions of Omani women, and start thinking about settling in.

He always does his own unpacking lest the staff stumble upon something they may find objectionable, and since all of his clothing is custom cut and welded wrinkle-free nanofabric (fully compatible with in-room waterless ultraviolet sanitizing machines — in his line of work, one can sustain some pretty stubborn stains), there is no need to iron. Once every scrap of clothing he owns other than what he currently has on is refolded or hung, he stows his garment case in the closet, then turns his attention to his tools.

The first thing he does is check his handset. It is currently detecting and synthesizing sixteen different high-speed data signals, and both the handset and his glasses are constantly jumping bands and regenerating keys to keep their connection secure. The handset is recording the audio and video streams from Ranveer's glasses as well as his geographic location, orientation, altitude, speed, all of his vitals, the current weather, the radar signature of the rooms he's in, and, of course, a timestamp. You never know when you're going to need an objective recreation of something that just went down.

Next is his watch. The custom Chinese-made chronometer is, to the best of Ranveer's knowledge, one of the most sophisticated timepieces ever assembled. The crystal is six-millimeter thick synthetic diamond, and the case is made from a tempered high-carbon steel that the Americans use not for building tanks, but for punching holes in them. The cesium module breaks a single second down into over nine billion individual parts (not nearly as accurate as ytterbium, mercury, or strontium atomic clocks, but easier to miniaturize), and only has to be reset when the International Bureau of Weights and Measures decides to add a second to Universal Coordinated Time in order to compensate for the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to tidal breaking. The instrument's diagnostic systems are reporting no errors, and the time more or less agrees with what he sees in the corner of his glasses.

He notes that all three devices — the watch, the glasses, and the handset — are actually better charged now than when he woke up this morning. Each uses various methods to keep their batteries topped off: photovoltaic and thermoelectric outer shells for converting light and heat into energy; tiny generators housing thousands of magnetic nanocoils which harness the kinetic energy of movement; and antennas which capture nonessential ambient radio waves and reroute them into capacitors where they are converted into electricity and stored. Should any one of his devices require more power, its companions will comply by passing a charge through any magnetic field which happens to bind them — namely the one generated by Ranveer's body.

He lays a thoroughly scarred titanium alloy case on the bed and positions his thumbs on its latches. After a quick biometric sniff, the latches release and the lid gets gingerly lifted. Inside are the components of what Ranveer maintains is the most magnificent and elegant weapon ever conceived.

The gas gun is admittedly complex, but in this case, complexity yields configurability, and configurability enables flexibility. Compare it to a conventional pistol. A 9mm or a 10mm round will always be a 9mm or a 10mm round. Its bore, grain, propellent, jacket, and primer are all determined at the time of its manufacturing, and that's all it will ever be. Put a 10mm cartridge into a 10mm pistol, and you are going to do 10mm worth of damage. No more, no less. How does that saying go? If your only tool is a .50 caliber Desert Eagle, everything looks like it needs a very big hole? Which, of course, everything does not. Sometimes it is desirable to kill a man with a projectile that doesn't even pierce the skin. Something heavy and slow enough can bounce right off the temple and leave a man every bit as dead as if you'd taken his head clean off, but with much less mess and media attention. Other times, in close quarter situations, a big-bore frangible round might very well be in order: tightly packed metal powder bound with wax and designed specifically for breaching things like doors and chest cavities without the risk of penetrating a common wall, or worse, ricocheting back at you. Another classic gas gun configuration is what is known in the business as the micro-meteor: an incredibly tiny, very high velocity, and very hot projectile that pierces the heart or brain so quickly that it's usually mistaken for a headache or indigestion until the triggerman is enjoying an espresso and a scone at least three blocks away. When coroners measure cauterized entrance and exit wounds of less than a millimeter in diameter, nobody even bothers looking for the slug.

This is the kind of flexibility a professional gets with a gas gun. The gas gun separates propulsion, ignition, and payload. The model Ranveer favors accepts six different muzzles of six different bores, each with a sudden expanse in volume in the final third to accommodate a series of ports and channels which do an admirable job of suppressing noisy gas expansion and muzzle flash. The propellent is a cartridge of hydrogen gas which is used to fill a chamber to the desired pressure which is then ignited by a spark produced by a small rechargeable battery. Ammunition can be anything from a rubber pellet to a chunk of depleted uranium to buckshot to a needle laced with something suitably nasty. It all depends on the job.

Ranveer takes the hydrogen cartridge assembly into the master bathroom and begins attaching it to the sink. United Emirates Airlines will allow a disassembled gas gun in the belly of a plane, but only if the hydrogen cartridge is empty. That means one of the first things Ranveer is tasked with upon reaching a new destination is procuring some hydrogen, and the easiest place to find hydrogen is in water. Once the feeder tube is secured, he opens the faucet and, satisfied there are no leaks, plugs the rig into the wall. Over the next two hours, the device will use electrolysis to dissociate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms and fill Ranveer's cartridge with enough gas to get him into and out of just about any conceivable situation.

The next item unpacked and strategically positioned for quick access is what appears to be a simple blade, but is in fact anything but. The knowledge to forge Damascus steel is thought to have been lost in the 18th century, but the truth is that you simply need to know where to look. With the right contacts in India or Sri Lanka, it is possible to purchase a beautifully textured and pattered weapon of between 5 and 180 centimeters in length that converges into an edge of mere nanometers and is strong enough to peel the edge off most other blades like chicken fat. True that in an age of cheap synthetic diamonds and prolific laser technology, it is not the most menacing and effective implement, but Ranveer has a soft spot for tradition.

His leather-bound pocket apothecary goes into the room safe for now as it wouldn't do him any good in close quarters hand-to-hand combat. The capsules, syringes, and lozenges within can produce effects either quick and painless or slow and excruciating. Some leave no trace while others leave a chemical calling card behind designed specifically to speak posthumous volumes. There's even a putty-like substance which some of Ranveer's colleagues are particularly fond of; when mixed with human saliva, it rapidly expands and congeals, simultaneously silencing a victim and obstructing both the nasal and oral airways and usually inducing a state wherein victims become surprisingly receptive to any final admonishments requested by a client — a custom Ranveer suspects was made popular by gangster movies, and serves no real purpose in his practical mind.

But even with all these choices, he is still stumped. Nothing immediately jumps out at him. Nothing in his experience suggests an approach to a target who, according to his information, is only nine months old. He decides to let his subconscious work on the problem during his next few hours of relaxation, and begins to undress.

PART FOUR: Legwork

The first body Quinn was responsible for was in Moscow. The next one was in Caracas, and now she is sitting in a small dingy cubicle in the local L.A. field office investigating the most recent murder. The victim was the 17-year-old spoiled son of a former Bollywood movie producer. Other than his stepmother, he didn't seem to have any enemies. There were no attempts to extort his father, and so far, it seems his family's involvement in politics was limited to elbow rubbing, and a few fund-raisers and photo ops. This one is as seemingly disparate and arbitrary as the rest. The only connection to the other murders is the number 114 carved deep into the kid's cheek with a blade as precise and honed as a scalpel.

Quinn knows her best shot at a lead is hotels and airlines. There's no way local resources are being tapped for all these jobs, and given the rate at which bodies are accumulating, and the fact that they are turning up all over the world, her man is clearly traveling by jet. And given what Quinn knows about the economics of contract killing, he is probably also traveling in style.

Finding a list of airlines is easy. She simply needs to cross reference cities and dates with flight schedules — or rather, she needs to compose the right search expressions to do it for her. There are several possibilities, but one that stands out: United Emirates Airlines services more cities on her list than any other airline. Refining the query further reveals that UEA services every city where a victim was tagged with the number 114. Quinn is starting to suspect that there actually are multiple killers — each with his own unique tag. And number 114 — by far the most prolific — appears to be very picky about his airline.

This is the one Quinn wants.

Finding the hotel isn't quite as straightforward, but the airline lead gives her an idea. Rather than looking at individual hotels, she makes lists of holding companies — ownership and management organizations whose loyalty programs span multiple brands. A query that cross references luxury hotel properties with the cities on her list reveals that number 114 is almost certainly a high-ranking and devoted customer of Crystal Collective Worldwide.

She spends the rest of the day making calls to other field offices and sending junior agents out to collect passenger and guest lists. After a salad and a cheap glass of wine at a garish local restaurant chain that keeps her just under her daily food allowance, she spends the evening in her room at the Best Western Suites next to the airport writing search algorithms. As encouraged as she felt earlier in the day, she now feels let down; she has not been able to extract a single additional lead from the data. No single name emerges from guest records obtained in cities with 114 bodies. She doesn't even uncover patterns or sets of names which might suggest aliases. Unless her man somehow obtains an entirely new identity for every city he visits, his stays are simply not recorded — perhaps a perk enjoyed by customers with sufficiently elite statuses.

The next morning, it occurs to her almost immediately that you don't become a successful and highly paid professional contract killer by leaving a trail discoverable by anyone savvy enough to compose a few search queries against various knowledge engines. If he were that dumb, any number of law enforcement computing clouds would have probably already fingered him without any human intervention whatsoever. Her man is off the proverbial grid. He is a living, breathing, walking piece of steganography: a code hidden in plain sight. After a free continental breakfast and several cups of weak urn-brewed coffee, she finds her rental car in the parking garage and instructs it to take her to whichever CCW property is closest to the airport. Queries, search expressions, and cross referencing will not solve this case alone — at least not with the data points she currently has. And she knows she can't rely on junior agents who are still far more enamored with their badges and guns than they are with actually solving cases to bring her what she needs. For now, it's time to put the handset and glasses away. It's time to apply some legwork to this case.

Quinn doesn't bother with guest lists this time; it's the surveillance footage she's after. She knows her man is almost certainly captured on dozens of different video feeds every day. And she knows that he knows this, as well. Rather than avoiding surveillance, his game is probably to stay lost in the noise. Instead of a disguise, he relies on anonymity. But Quinn knows that there isn't as much randomness in the universe as most of us perceive. Randomness is usually more the result of our inability to see a pattern than the actual absence of one. And finding patterns is what Quinn does.

The staff isn't exactly uncooperative, but it's clear that nobody wants to be the one to actually hand anything over. She picks up the rules of the game pretty quickly, though; instead of flashing hardware or dropping threats of court orders, she explains to the manager on duty that she completely respects CCW's commitment to maintaining the privacy of their guests, and neither she nor the federal government would ever dream of asking them to betray that trust. She would, of course, do everything in her power to keep the fact that a serial murderer was using CCW properties as a base of operations out of the media. She slides something small across the counter and smiles. Should anyone come across anything that they believe might be of use in quickly and, above all else, quietly solving this case, it would be tremendously helpful if they could forward it to the ID on her card — even if it were more convenient and expedient to do so from an anonymous, untraceable account. The manager solemnly vows to give the matter his full attention, and before Quinn gets to the next hotel, her handset is letting her know that someone has just sent her 72 hours of compressed video.

The technique works equally well at the second and third hotels which gives Quinn enough data to keep her busy for the rest of the day. The rental car takes her back to the field office and she gets herself set up in an empty cubicle with a greasy fast food lunch and a very large and dark coffee.

The first thing she does is so mind-numbing that she would recruit junior agents to do it for her if she thought there was even the slightest chance in hell of them not fucking it up. She arranges all the video feeds from the first hotel in a grid on the plasma glass in the cubical and watches them all simultaneously at 10x speed. Every time she sees someone check in or out, she records the feed's timestamp. She decides to narrow her search down to only two days rather than all three which allows her to get two hotels done before it's dark outside and she is entirely incapable of focusing anymore. She picks up a burrito and a tall bottle of sangria on the way back to the hotel, takes a couple of antacid tablets, and falls asleep fully clothed with the TV still on. The next morning, after three miniature pots of in-room coffee and as much 24-hour news programming as she can stand, she puts on her glasses, links them to her handset, and works through the feed from the third hotel.

The next step is to write a script that parses timestamps out of the guest records, then compares them to the timestamps she recorded from the video feeds. Eventually she should find a mismatch. If her hypothesis is correct, someone should appear on video who doesn't appear on paper.

She finds a few anomalies which she needs to verify manually, but after all the data sets from all three hotels have been analyzed, Quinn doesn't find anything sufficiently inconsistent. In the shower, she considers the possibilities: either she needs to analyze data from longer periods of time, or she has the wrong hotel chain. Or, she realizes as she wraps her curly blond hair in a ragged, over-bleached towel, her man checked in without ever approaching the counter. Maybe high-end hotels were like car rental locations: spend enough money, and you get to smugly walk past all the schmucks in line.

She orders up a grilled cheese and french fries, then opens the elevator surveillance videos from the most expensive of the three hotels. Each elevator has three different cameras, so she picks the feeds with the most direct view of the occupants' faces, then overlays a facial recognition filter. She adjusts parameters until her food arrives, backing down the threshold to prevent false positives caused by reflections in polished metal panels and by dolls in the arms of little girls, and then she makes sure it continues to track correctly at very high speeds. When she has the right settings, she configures all the feeds from all the hotels to play in off-screen buffers simultaneously at 100x their original speed, and to dump everything it finds to a log file. She wants to know many faces are being tracked, how long each face is tracked, and, of course, the exact time.

When the data is ready, she knows her man is in there, and she knows she has everything she needs to find him. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make the data talk. Quinn takes a diet soda from the minibar, checks the price on the card, then puts it back. She'll go out for coffee later.

The first thing she does is divide the data up into individual elevator trips which is relatively easy since all she has to do is find the points where no faces are being tracked. Since she suspects her man stays in the topmost room of the hotel, she initially assumes that whichever elevator trip is longest most likely contains the footage she's after. However, because of intermittent stops, she realizes it isn't going to be that easy. She needs to subtract the time it takes for the elevator to pause, and for occupants to come and go.

It takes her two hours and costs the taxpayers not only that diet soda from the minibar, but a tin of mixed nuts, as well, however she is eventually able to isolate blocks of time when some faces change while other faces remain constant. By subtracting those periods from the total time of each elevator trip, she has calculated what she calls absolute travel time. She compares all the data and finds that there are 18 pieces of footage which, in terms of absolute travel time, run a full seven seconds longer than any of the others. That's way outside her expected margin of error. The data has finally spoken. Or, rather, she has finally learned how to listen.

Each clip shows a different configuration of occupants: a fidgety manager-on-duty; a bellhop wheeling several metal cases accompanied by a fidgety manager-on-duty; a chef fussing over several covered dishes on a cart accompanied by a fidgety manager-on-duty; and several varieties of women, primping on the way up and irritatedly adjusting undergarments on the way down. Only one occupant — tall, slender, and dark — seems entirely unconcerned with the goings-on around him.

Quinn has found her man.

She takes her time isolating several still images from various frames and enhancing them. She is proud of her work, and she wants him to look his best.

She stops for coffee and a warm chocolate croissant on the way to the airport, then spends some time sharing her new pictures with the folks at the UEA counter. But she also shows them several other images, as well. Random faces she keeps on hand. Some are from advertisements, some are wanted terrorists, and one is her ex-husband. She cycles through them on her handset and asks one particular pretty young girl if any of them are familiar. The girl seems to know to be careful. But what she doesn't know is that the handset is recording her responses: sampling her voice, constantly comparing images of her eyes, monitoring her body temperature and heart rate. When the girl denies ever seeing Quinn's man, the handset vibrates and the girl looks up.

Quinn uses what she has learned from her interactions with hotel managers. She puts her handset away and tells the girl to forget the whole thing. It's not important anyway. She isn't really there to try to stop a brutal serial murder before he can kill his next innocent victim. Really she's there to book a vacation, but the problem is that she just doesn't know where to go. Maybe the girl can help her out. Maybe she can make a suggestion. Someplace exotic, someplace mundane — it's all up to her. The girl is confused at first, then catches on. She cheerfully addresses her screen — taps in some input, brushes away some irrelevant output, makes a few selections — and then she brightly suggests, of all places in the world, Sohar, Oman. Quinn is surprised by the girl's recommendation, but she likes it. She books herself a seat on the next flight out. Will Ms. Mitchell be traveling First or Business Class today? Neither. Today Ms. Mitchell will be traveling coach.

PART FIVE: Security

If you really want to sleep soundly at night, get yourself a dog.

Don't bother with a commercial alarm system. Despite their expense, they are easily disabled or circumvented by almost any professional, and even a few promising amateurs. Window contact sensors are useless when it's faster and quieter to use a portable ion implantation device to transmute the glass into a pile of harmless goo than it is to jimmy open the latch. Pressure plates around a door do you no good when it's faster to cut a hole in the wall next to it with a common keychain laser than it is to pick the lock. Pyroelectric passive infrared motion sensors are nothing but a false sense of security in a world where you can buy heat-shielded clothing right off the bargain rack if you know where to shop. And if you're rich enough to afford a security system that actually works, a simple localized electromagnetic pulse emitted from a hover drone or a privately operated satellite network will keep things quiet for more than enough time to do a job, and tie up loose ends.

Don't think you're any better off with armed guards, either. All guards do is increase the price of job. Rather than a single target, you have to factor in several. And there's no discount for buying in bulk, so a lot of Ranveer's colleagues actually prefer the odd patrol. They feel it's a more efficient use of their time. The key is to take them out before they can trigger a silent alarm or get off a phone call lest you get all the way up to the bedroom only to find that your target has ditched his whore and barricaded himself in a safe room behind his closet. Depending on composition and configuration, a good safe room can add up to three hours to a job. Any plans you had for later that night, you're probably not going to make.

But the biggest downside to bodyguards is not that they are easily dispatched — it's that they are easily corrupted. Security professionals are almost always either stupid or underpaid, and quite often both, which amounts to a dangerous and unfortunate combination when it comes to the safety of you and your family. It often costs less to get a guard to look the other way than to buy a moderately good cigar. Or, for the price of an evening's worth of quality companionship, you can sometimes even get a bodyguard to walk right into his employer's bedroom, conduct business on your behalf, then get on the next plane to Bermuda. In Ranveer's world, there's certainly no shame in outsourcing when a situation calls for it.

Where expensive electronics and cheap minions fail, a dog can succeed. A well-trained canine can't be fooled or bribed, and even if you're cold and callous enough to kill a man's best friend, it's almost impossible to do so before he can manage to get out some pretty unsettling racket. Where jobs involve dogs — even the little yappy kind — your best friend is usually a gas gun configured for sniping, a high vantage point at least 100 yards away, and a tall thermos of coffee.

But at the end of the day, the safety of each and every one of us really comes down to nothing more than the simple goodwill of others. Unless you have the resources of an entire nation dedicated to keeping you alive (and sometimes even then), just about anyone on the street can kill you or your family at any moment for any reason — or for no reason, in particular. Most of us come into contact with anywhere from dozens to thousands of people everyday who could instantly reduce us to human smoothies with nothing more than an almost imperceptible tweak of a steering wheel or the slightest of nudges toward an inbound train. And those are just the careless and the cowards among us. Anyone with any balls and ingenuity can kill almost anyone else in about a dozen different ways with just about any implement within arm's reach: a pencil through the soft tissue of the eye and into the temporal lobe behind; the spine of a book into the throat with enough force to crush the trachea; a coffee cup to the temple where the middle meningeal artery is easily lacerated. And then there are the myriad of actual weapons and poisons and methods of sabotage that can be used against any one of us before our brains can even begin to register the possibility of danger. One minute we're driving, or sitting at an outdoor café, or jogging with headphones on, and the next minute, we're simply not. One Sunday morning, you wake up early to make blueberry pancakes and sausage for everyone, and the next, you can't think of a single reason to get out of bed. The truth is that most of us survive day-to-day not due to any real ability to keep ourselves and our families safe, but simply because there is usually nobody in the immediate proximity who wishes otherwise.

Unfortunately for the Nassar family, however, Ranveer is both in the immediate proximity, and he wishes otherwise. And from the looks of it, it's not going to be a difficult job. One of the advantages of the kinds of contracts Ranveer has been interested in lately is that most of his targets have no idea that anyone would want them dead, which means they almost never plan accordingly. While the car he borrowed from the hotel navigates the suburbs outside of Sohar, Ranveer uses his handset to do a little research. He knows for a fact that there won't be armed guards, so he doesn't even bother looking through financial records for evidence to the contrary, but he does try cross-referencing recurring payments with all known local security companies. Nothing. And thankfully, no payments to any businesses affiliated with pet care as far back as three years. It looks like the Nassar family doesn't have so much as a guinea pig watching over them. With any luck, he will be back at the hotel in time for a nightcap to help ease his jet lag, and maybe even a little late-night companionship should the mood strike him.

The car pulls noiselessly up in front of a two-story white stone structure, and just over seven minutes later, Ranveer is standing in an upstairs bedroom at the side of a nicely finished wooden crib having just bypassed the biometric bolt downstairs by cutting it right out of the steel door it was in with a portable watersaw and placing it gently in a nearby flowerpot. (It's best to choose high-pressure water over a plasma torch where fire alarms could be involved.) He reaches over to the diaper-changing surface beside him and switches off what his glasses are telling him is the transmitting end of a 100 channel, 2.4 gigahertz, water and shock resistant, fully shielded and redundant baby monitor designed to withstand any contingency this cruel and unpredictable world can possibly throw at it except for being intentionally switched off.

The baby at the bottom of the crib is sleeping with his knees drawn in, his butt up in the air, and his head turned toward the wall. Ranveer can hear a tiny whistle coming from his plump pursed lips as he takes quick, shallow breaths. He has never held a baby before and he wonders what it would it be like, seeing as how so many people seem to enjoy it, and he even briefly considers lifting the baby out and rocking him before dismissing the impulse as a stupid and unnecessary risk. Better to get the job done and get out before a paranoid mother subconsciously misses the ambient red rhythm of the LEDs that let her sleep soundly at night.

From a compartment in his pouch, Ranveer removes a small glass vial of hebenon solution and shakes it gently. It's three primary constituents are oxybuprocaine, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen cyanide. Hebenon is best used in circumstances where the target is in a very deep sleep or a coma. A small drop is placed in the ear where the oxybuprocaine immediately begins to numb any surface it comes into contact with. When the solution is stopped by the eardrum, the sulfuric acid rapidly dispatches with the thin membrane, allowing the solution to continue down into the middle ear via the eustachian tube, and then eventually into the throat where it triggers the reflex to swallow. The hydrogen cyanide then gets busy halting cellular respiration which kills the victim in roughly one minute.

All in all, not a bad way to go.

There is enough greenish light in the room from electroluminescent nightlights that Ranveer is easily able to guide the dropper over the infant's ear without dialing his glasses into the infrared range. He pauses for a moment and listens, but all he can hear is the whistle and tiny rattle of the infant's breathing. He can feel the warmth radiating up from the baby's cheek, and he can somehow smell the sweet milk of his mother.

It is easier to kill, Ranveer has found, when you understand why it is so hard. The innate social structure that keeps humankind intact demands that murder be abhorrent. Although we feel little remorse for slaughtering just about any other living creature — eating its flesh, wrapping ourselves in its skin, boiling the gelatin out of its bones for cheap cosmetics and children's novelties — the sight of a severed human head or a bloated rotting corpse must necessarily evoke in us the most profound horror if the species is to avoid self-destruction. Yet somehow murder has existed for as long as life has been available to extinguish, and will always exist despite any and all efforts to prevent or punish it. Murder is as necessary as our revulsion to it. The two forces balance each other out in a mysterious societal equilibrium which both rattles and intrigues us. The ability to murder is, frankly, what sets some men apart. Power belongs to those with the strength to overcome their fears and weaknesses and instincts — those who are capable of overriding the more primitive regions of the brain with the more highly evolved. Ranveer knows that no matter how many people he kills, in the end he will be judged not by his morals or his actions, but by the only criteria that has ever truly counted for anything in the entire history of life on Earth: his own ability to survive and prosper.

A single drop of the solution is released as he squeezes the plastic bulb, and when the fluid is funneled down through the outer ear, the infant's expression briefly changes, then becomes peaceful again. At 46 seconds, the short shallow breaths stop, and the child's little back ceases to rise and fall.

Usually Ranveer marks his victims with a hot brand or a tattoo pen or his blade of ribbed Damascus steel. But tonight, he uses a thick permanent marker instead. After all, he is not a monster.

PART SIX: Follow the Money

Quinn's man seems to have an uncommonly forgettable face. Although she sees little else when she closes her eyes — and feels that, even disguised, she could easily pick him out of a crowd at 100 meters — nobody else can remember seeing anyone even faintly reminiscent of the gentleman on her handset. Miraculously, most don't even have to look down at her images before they are certain they can be of no assistance whatsoever. She also discovers that her badge makes much less of an impression on the Omani people than on Americans and Europeans. After a full day of curt but polite interviews at the United Emirates Airlines counter at the Sohar Airport, and in the cool dim lobbies of every Crystal Collective Worldwide hotel in the city, the only thing she has learned is that by the time she gets the necessary paperwork in place and manages to orchestrate the cooperation of both the Omani Kingdom and various local authorities, all surveillance footage will have been destroyed, and her man will be three cities away with at least as many new bodies to his credit.

There are no CIA field offices nearby, so although she feels she is not all that welcome at the Al Hujra Hotel, she gets herself set up at a table in a quiet corner of the lobby, orders a coffee and two bottles of water, unclips her handset from her belt, and starts going through her messages. One is marked urgent, and as soon as she begins reading it, she reflexively makes a noise which turns the heads of the people around her.

Quinn remembers the innocent voice of the little girl in the kitchen casually telling her that Molly is sleeping in the pool. She sees the dark still shape through the window gently rising and falling on the surface of the calm sparkling water. She feels the weight of the limp body and of her own wet clothes as she climbs the pool stairs, and remembers the purple of her daughter's lips as she lays her out on a lounge chair in the sun. In an instant, she relives the 15 exhausting and dizzying minutes of CPR, then feels herself being pulled away at the waste and watches herself vomit violently on the deck of the pool.

Her glasses are dialed down now and her forehead is pressed against two fingers. She is focusing on her breathing as she tastes the salt of tears on the corners of her lips. It is 20 minutes before she opens her eyes again. The other people in the lobby are conspicuously ignoring her. She wipes her nose and cheeks, and goes back to the report.

The nine-month-old child was found by his mother when she began to wonder why he was sleeping so late. His pajamas were split open down the back where the number 114 was neatly printed in black indelible ink. The toxicity report shows hydrogen cyanide. Burns in the aural canal and throat indicate that the solution was administered through the ear.

In Quinn's mind, her man has just gone from an assassin to a psychopath. She knows now that she can't keep living 12 hours in his past — can't keep being shaken and thrown by the wake he leaves behind him. She is not right for this kind of work. Intelligence gathering and data analysis is one thing, but death this close up is far too personal for her. These murders are no longer data points and statistics to be factored into queries and equations. They are more than just locations and timestamps and parameters. The only way to put this behind her is to figure out how to get out in front of this endless stream of death.

She adds the new case information to her database and triggers a set of routines which search for commonalities across victims. The results are instantaneous and not significantly different from before: 90.9% are male; 81.8% are under the age of 24; 54.5% are of Middle Eastern descent; and 40.9% have ties, either directly or indirectly, to the energy industry.

She extracts all the victims' names into a separate list and runs a search against all the most common indexes. The results are nothing she hasn't already seen: most are related to news articles and law enforcement reports covering the murders, and about half appear to be false positives. She finds some potentially interesting results pertaining to individual victims, but most have already been doled out to junior agents to run down. There is nothing that neatly ties all the victims together. Nothing that anticipates the killer's next move.

The CIA has access to thousands of indexes compiled and derived from every imaginable source of data which, when combined, encompass what is for all intents and purposes the entire sum of human knowledge with the exception of trade secrets yet to be reverse engineered, and some foreign intelligence yet to be stolen. She has access to so much information, in fact, that by default, she typically only searches about a dozen indexes — those primarily related to field reports, news sources, aggregated evidence, and various types of incoming intelligence. The key to finding the common threads that wrap investigations up into nice neat packages is usually not so much about finding the connections themselves as it is about quieting the noise that conceals them.

But in this case, at the risk of being mislead by more false positives and red herrings, Quinn decides to broaden her search. She starts looking at books the victims or the victims' families were known to have read, personal preferences they might have in common which were extrapolated from purchases, foods they were likely to have eaten based on autopsies and cellular analysis, links in social graphs compiled from every form of communication the CIA has access to, and even possible patterns in genetic material.

Some additional sporadic leads are produced, but Quinn's instincts are telling her that this case is all or nothing. She either finds the connection between all the victims, or she has found nothing at all. She writes a search expression which includes every index she has access to at her pay grade, then filters out all the results she has already seen along with everything that doesn't have a 100% relevancy rating for every single name on the list. By modern consumer technology standards, the results should appear instantaneously, but with government hardware doing the crunching and spinning in concrete bunkers buried somewhere outside of Washington, D.C., there is a pause that somehow perfectly convey's the strain Quinn knows she has just put the machines under.

And then somehow both anti-climatically, but still wonderfully elegantly, one single result is produced: the Epoch Index.

This is both good and bad news. The good news is that there is a match which is almost certainly not a false positive. The bad news is that the Epoch Index is not something she is sure she can work with. In fact, it has been the policy of most law enforcement and three-letter federal agencies to essentially pretend that the Epoch Index doesn't exist. The briefing she and her colleagues received several years ago described, at a very high level, how the index is compiled and maintained, then concluded with an abrupt and ominous warning to leave it the hell alone. In truth, very few people actually understand what the Epoch Index actually is, and absolutely nobody understands the repercussions of messing with it.

The Epoch Index exists because of the Large Hadron Collider which, in its day, was the largest and most complex scientific experiment undertaken in human history (other than humanity itself, as some scientists smugly point out). The LHC is a high-energy particle accelerator — a 27-kilometer long tunnel buried up to 500 feet deep beneath both France and Switzerland — designed for the express purpose of accelerating subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light, smashing as many of them together as possible amid some of the most sensitive electronic sensors ever built, and then seeing what happens. The ultimate goal was to increase our understanding of the fundamental nature of physics, and hopefully even uncover a few clues about the origins of the universe.

But the LHC ended up finding something which most people consider to be far more interesting. As the data analysis algorithms parsed through the petabytes of recorded data, they began to uncover very regular patterns in the spins of newly discovered particles. While the direction of the particles' spins initially appeared random, the analysis began detecting a repetition which looked increasingly like sequences of bytes, and which were eventually decoded into various forms of digital data: text, images, audio, and even simple video. When it was determined beyond a doubt that the encoded information referenced people, events, and dates that did not yet exist, the site was immediately secured and the project promptly put under the control of a small team from the UN. The name of the mysterious particles whose spins had turned out to be tiny windows into the future was changed from "saxions" to "tachyons" — a term derived from the greek word takhus meaning "swift." The LHC had proven for the first time and beyond any doubt that it was possible for matter to travel faster than the speed of light. At least at the particle level, time travel was possible.

China, Russia, India, Germany, France, and the U.S. immediately began constructing what the media labeled "time antennas" — machines designed specifically to detect and record the spins of tachyons. However, after months of unsettling testimony and warnings from the international scientific community introducing things like chaos theory and the grandfather paradox to the general public, most of the projects were shut down, and all the data gathered by the remaining projects which were already online was designated highly classified. The CIA was one of the few organizations that had access to what became known as the Epoch Index, but field agents could only run boolean queries against it. Quinn could see whether something was contained inside the Epoch Index, but it was impossible for her to access the data itself.

This is certainly not the lead she was hoping for. All the information she needs to break this case wide open may be in the one place on the planet where she cannot look. She wonders briefly how many other clues and answers and key pieces of evidence lay buried somewhere in the future where it cannot be touched for fear of inadvertently ending the world.

She repeats the search, but this time supplies all the numbers used to tag the victims. The Epoch Index is a hit again, but so is one other: the Worldwide Index of Asset and Data Protection. This one, she can access. This one finally yields a real lead. Every number written, tattooed, burned, or carved into the flesh of victims corresponds to a safe deposit box number, all of which are located in a single highly secured data center somewhere in the Swiss Alps.

This is how she will escape the endless wake of murder from the future which keeps pulling her back into her past. This is how the killers get paid.

PART SEVEN: Legacy

Quinn has been commuting to Swiss Fort Knox Site VII via helicopter for five days now. On her first trip, she didn't even make it off the landing pad. She was intercepted by security guards in white tactical gear carrying automatic weapons and crouching in the cold alpine chopper wash. They were respectful when she offered them her badge, but not remotely intimidated. She was sent away with the name and phone number of a Mr. Eberlein with whom she arranged to meet early the next morning.

Eberlein was polite but firm in his conviction that she would not be given access to anyone's safety deposit box for any reason or under any circumstances, with or without a court order from the United States or Switzerland or anyone else, nor would she be making any arrests on SFK property. By the third day, after her superiors had contacted his superiors, and after Eberlein's aggression had started to become decidedly less passive, he begrudgingly extended what he insisted was the best offer she was going to get.

Each morning, Quinn was to be escorted to a vacant privacy room where she was free to spend her day as she wished. In the event that the gentleman associated with safe deposit box number 114 should happen to pay SFK Site VII a visit, he would be informed by Eberlein himself that a Ms. Mitchell wished to make his distinguished acquaintance. Should he find consultation with Ms. Mitchell desirable, he would — under his own volition and free of any and all forms of coercion including but not limited to the express or implied threat of legal action — be escorted to Ms. Mitchell's privacy room where he may remain for as long as he found an audience with Ms. Mitchell both to his liking, and in his best interests. Ms. Mitchell would not be permitted to detain or pursue the gentleman for any reason whatsoever, and positively no accusations or any form of intimidation would be tolerated. Quinn believed that one more day of the U.S. threatening to take an overall keener interest in the Swiss banking system might have gotten her a somewhat better deal, but she didn't want to risk her man getting away. With a smile as patronizing as she could muster, she briefly grasped Mr. Eberlein's effeminate fingers and shook.

Quinn spent her first full day in the stark concrete privacy room catching up on administrative tasks. Since she was alone, she took off her glasses and used her handset to project her workspace onto a stark white concrete wall. She read through all her back messages, filed several reports, reviewed and incorporated the results of the data mining errands she had sent junior agents on, caught up on dispatches, and entered some expenses. That was yesterday. It is now her second day on-site, and she is starting to wonder if she's going to need a contingency plan. She suspects she can only spend one or two additional days in a Swiss Fort Knox privacy room before her boss insists she find a cheaper way to set a trap. Quinn is staying in the nearby town of Valais, and the costs of lodging, helicopter rides, and the fruit cognacs she uses to get to sleep at night are mounting. As she begins to consider her options, there are two quick raps on the thick steel door, and then it is pushed inward with some obvious effort. Quinn taps a code into her handset, kills the projector, and pushes her chair back as she stands. There are four men outside the room: a clearly perturbed Eberlein, two chiseled armed guards, and the man Quinn has been chasing all over the world.

"Ms. Mitchell," Eberlein announces with poorly disguised disgust, "allow me to introduce Mr. Ranveer."

Ranveer enters the small room and scans it in its entirety. He is gripping a small steel case which she can tell clearly has some serious weight to it. She knows that he is looking for other doors, one-way mirrors, cameras, incongruous dark holes in the tall white walls. She can tell that he is considering the furniture, appraising its value as either a weapon or a shield. His sharp gaze finally lands on her, and he begins a new threat assessment. Quinn wonders whether he realizes that he is probably far safer at the moment than she is. He is, after all, the one with the money.

He eventually nods to her without expression. "Ms. Mitchell."

"Mr. Ranveer," Eberlein interjects, "I wish to reiterate that you—"

"It's ok," Ranveer says. "I understand. Your services have been impeccable. You may leave us."

Ranveer's accent is a combination of British and Hindi which Quinn is trying very hard not to find exotic and charming. Eberlein is clearly relieved by his client's graciousness. Ranveer passes his case to his left hand and offers his right to Eberlein. Eberlein takes it and performs a pitifully obsequious bow.

"Thank you, Mr. Ranveer. We will be right outside should you require anything."

Eberlein tugs at the door and the guards give Quinn one last look through the narrowing gap. It closes with a surprising report which settles nicely over the layer of tension already spreading throughout the room. Quinn has considered this conversation dozens of times, but now that this man is actually standing before her, all of her rehearsed approaches seem wrong. She steels herself and clears her mind. She can see now that the situation is going to be fluid.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me," Quinn says, then immediately regrets starting things out on the defensive. She knows she doesn't have much leverage at the moment, but that's not what she wants to project.

"Of course," Ranveer says.

"Please, have a seat."

Ranveer sits in the chair opposite Quinn's and sets the heavy case down at his feet. She notices that he grips the table with both hands and confirms that it is indeed bolted down. Quinn moves around to Ranveer's side of the table, and then continues on past him. Although she is certain he can't be comfortable with losing sight of her, he does not react. She backs into the steel door and throws the bolt. Privacy rooms lock from the inside.

She half expects Eberlein and the guards to pound on the door in protest, but when the echo of the bolt fades, the room is quiet and still again. Quinn deliberately strikes the heels of her boots against the concrete floor as she saunters back around to her chair. She hopes she has now gained the upper hand.

"My name is Agent Quinn Mitchell. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency."

She waits for a reaction which eventually comes in the form of a shallow nod.

"I'm investigating a series of murders that I think you might know something about."

"I understand," Ranveer says.

She watches him for a moment, expecting him to continue, but he doesn't.

"Mr. Ranveer, can you account for your whereabouts over the last ten days."

"I think you already know the answer to that."

This is not at all what she was expecting, and she's not sure how to continue. "Yes," she finally says, a tad suspiciously. "I'm pretty sure I do. But I want to hear it from you."

"Ms. Mitchell," Ranveer says shaking his head, "these are not the right questions."

Quinn tries to stifle her look of surprise, but she is too late. "Why do you say that?"

"There's no point in discussing what we both already know. Your time with me is better spent asking about things you haven't figured out yet."

Quinn tries to appear unperturbed. "Ok," she says. She regards him steadily, and cycles a full and deep breath in and out. "Then tell me who in the future wants these people dead."

"That is not the right question, either," Ranveer tells her. "Not yet."

She studies him from across the table trying to decide whether she will get further by playing his game, or by trying to derail him. It's a classic interrogation conundrum. Her training suggests that now is the time to come down on him with everything she has — to go from good cop to bad — but her instincts are telling her otherwise.

"What's in your case, Mr. Ranveer," she says suddenly.

Ranveer nods. Apparently this is a line of questioning he approves of. "Gold bullion."

"Payment?"

"Yes."

"Who is it from?"

"Financiers. That's all I know."

"Explain to me how all this works, Mr. Ranveer. How do clients from the future manage to get money to you?"

"The money isn't from the future," Ranveer explains. "It's from the present."

"Someone leaves it here for you?"

"Yes."

"So you're hired by someone in the future, but paid by someone in the present."

"That's correct."

"You somehow gain access to the Epoch Index to get the names of people that someone in the future wants dead. You tag your victims with a safe deposit box number which makes it into the media so there's a good record of it. Then that number gets sent back into our present to someone who leaves the money here for you."

"More or less, yes. Very good."

"That looks like a very heavy case, Mr. Ranveer. Who has that kind of money?"

"Money isn't a problem. My safe deposit box number isn't the only information that gets sent back."

"What else?"

"Stock tips, sports scores, intellectual property. Whatever has value by virtue of being unknowable. My assumption is that my cut is actually relatively modest."

Even though Quinn is the one putting most of the pieces together, and even though they appear to be fitting, she's just not sure she's buying it.

"How are you getting access to the Epoch Index?"

"That is not important."

"Why are these people being targeted?"

"Ah, now that is the right question, Ms. Mitchell," Ranveer says. Quinn is surprised to see him brighten, and to see that, for the first time, he seems to be taking a genuine interest in the conversation. "That is what I came here to discuss. They are being targeted because they are the most deadly and dangerous terrorists the world has ever seen."

"Terrorists?" Quinn says. She begins unconsciously reviewing profiles. A Russian computer hacker. A young executive rising through the ranks of Petróleos de Venezuela. A rich California kid who couldn't be bothered to finish college. The nine-month-old son of an Omani investor. "What kind of terrorists?"

"The kind that you hunt, Ms. Mitchell. The nuclear kind."

Quinn shakes her head. "That's not possible. There aren't any nuclear terrorists."

Ranveer smiles. "Exactly."

"Who's feeding you the names?"

Ranveer leans forward and places his arms on the steel surface between them. He watches her with his perfectly black eyes, and she perceives in him a tranquility that is simultaneously comforting and unsettling.

"You are, Ms. Mitchell."

Quinn's expression instantly changes. She takes in a breath and starts to say something, but stops. Ranveer waits for the impact of his words to begin to dispel, then continues.

"You are the one who will save thousands of lives in the future. You are the one who will figure out how to adapt to a world that is already changing faster than anyone can possibly imagine. I came here to tell you that Molly did not die in vain, Ms. Mitchell, and that your life has not been wasted. I came here to tell you that you will become a hero."

Quinn's hands are pressed into the metal surface in front of her and her eyes are one blink away from spilling tears. They watch each other from across the table until the stillness in the room is shattered by sudden commotion outside. The yelling and barking of orders is loud enough to penetrate the thick metal door and concrete walls. They both reflexively stand, and Ranveer lunges for his case. Quinn wipes her face and places a hand over the weapon on her hip.

There is scratching against the door, then the sound of the bolt being thrown. The heavy metal slab is swung open with surprising ease, and before it slams against the wall, the entire room is full of masked figures in dark body armor behind blinding strobe flashes. The LEDs on the ends of the submachine guns are meant to stun and blind anyone inside without the concussion and violence of a flashbang grenade. Three men are on top of Ranveer before anyone can speak, and then the flashes stop. The heavy case drops, and he is cuffed and bent roughly over the table.

Eberlein is screaming somewhere down the hall. For a moment, his voice gets louder, then it fades rapidly into the distance. When everyone has declared the room clear, Quinn's boss steps inside, surveying the situation while holstering his pistol. He is a short, older man with wiry gray hair and baggy but bright eyes who looks as addicted to the action today as the day he became a recruit. He nods at Quinn and gives her the smile he reserves for successful operations.

"Well done, Mitchell."

"Thank you."

"You ok?"

"Yes, sir."

He moves around the room until he can get a good look at Ranveer's face, then he looks back at Quinn. "So what's the good word, Agent? Is this our man or not?"

Ranveer's neck is bent and his face is pressed into the cold brushed steel, but he can still twist around and look up. His expression is not one of pleading. It is strained by the physical position he is in, but not by emotion. Quinn can see that he is not afraid, and he is not trying to convey a threat. There is nothing he wants or needs from her. He has already created his legacy and accepted his fate, and he is now simply waiting for Quinn to choose her's.

Table of Contents

Title

License

PART ONE: Homelessness

PART TWO: Nuclear Reduction

PART THREE: Tools of the Trade

PART FOUR: Legwork

PART FIVE: Security

PART SIX: Follow the Money

PART SEVEN: Legacy