BACKTRACKER by Milo Fowler (e book reader txt) 📕

I can fight this.

He turned his attention to a gift shop six meters away. Perhaps hewould find a suitable blade there. His body navigated its way through thepassing commuters, slipping through them like a silk sheet without making contact.

One patron stood inside, talking to the synthetic behind thecounter without really looking at her. The quiet noise level was a stunningcontrast to the storm outside.

"Hobby...or something else?" the SYN asked with astunning smile, her eyes flashing with delight at the broad-shouldered patron.

He nodded. "I'm a collector."

Cade stepped behind him, aware of his presence but not focused,his eyes scanning the walls of gleaming Eurasian memorabilia for his weapon ofchoice.

"They fascinate me—these swords and daggers from ages past,"the man mused aloud.

I know that voice.

The realization came hard and fast, but Cade did not react. Heinstantly recalled the man in the alley outside The Pit. The owner, GavinLennox. Only this was many years earlier. Twenty years ago.

"It was a very personal way to end one's enemy," Lennoxsaid.

The synthetic girl released a tinkling little laugh. "Isuppose so. No Plague in those days."

"They had their plagues," the man's retort came sharply.Then his tone softened. "We always have, I'm afraid. Powerful people tendto seek absolute power."

"That may be so," the SYN conceded. Then she was backon-topic: "A gift, perhaps?" She swept her hand in agesture that offered everything behind the counter, mounted with obsessivesymmetry along the wall. "Wrapped to go?"

"You read my mind." He exhaled, weary from the trialsof the day. "I'm meeting with a few of my investors this evening. Perhapsa double-edged gift would help them see things my way."

She arched her brow in a well-designed expression of sympathy."Are they giving you trouble?"

She does not care. She only wants to make herlast big sale of the night.Cade surprised himself. He was actually listening totheir conversation. But the thought that came next was the real shocker: Iam no different from her. It. We are not human.

His eyes found what he was looking for, even as he gave noconscious thought to the hunt. A gleaming kodachi sat mounted on thewall, a meter to the SYN's left.

Lennox chuckled. "I'm sure they'll come around—or I'll cavein. One or the other."

"A traditional dagger would be an excellent gesture on yourpart. I'm sure it would garner their support, whatever the cause." Shebeamed at him, waiting expectantly.

He nodded, thinking it over. "Perhaps."

Cade tuned them out, turning away as the man left the shop withouta weapon of any kind, neither for his collection nor for his finicky investors.Cade kept his face hidden. For the first time since he had been sent back intime, his thoughts and actions were working in conjunction: somehow both hismind and body knew that he should not meet Gavin Lennox this evening, notlike this. Even so, he risked a quick glance up at the man who would become therenowned owner of the city's greatest den of debauchery.

This was not the same Lennox. There was no unkempt hair, no trenchcoat or chain tunic or jackboots. This man wore a simple suit, carried abriefcase, stood at ease, yet with a strong, athletic posture, his solid jawclean-shaven, his black hair slick beneath a smoke-colored fedora. This was notthe same man at all. He stepped outside and joined the mass exodus without abackward glance.

Twenty years changed him.

Cade could not believe that he was truly standing there in theshop, breathing air from another time. The past? How was it possible?

Without realizing it, as if his body were again acting of its ownaccord, he threw the synthetic girl senseless to the floor and took the bladefrom the wall. Tucking it into the sleeve of his white robe, he exited theshop. He swiped the SYN's keycard to bring down the electric fence behind him. Theshop was closing early tonight, and no one seemed to notice.

His eyes rotated up toward the surveillance center on the thirdfloor—his next stop, once these multitudes cleared out of the plaza, and theshopkeepers and support staff left for the night. He would do what he had beensent to do.

I will NOT kill Harold Muldoon.

"There is little you can do to stop me," he breathed,slipping his hands into the generous sleeves of his robe, across his middle.Silently he navigated his course through the ebbing tide to the stairs and thesecurity guards he would find soon enough.

EIGHT

Not again.

People were vanishing right and left. Just as they had before, solong ago, when the BackTracker and his crusade through time was in its heyday.Collateral damage. Souls who never saw the light of day, thanks to his meddlingin matters that were none of his business.

No, that wasn't right. It was his business. Muldoon hadmade it his business.

Everything was connected. How could he not have realized? Maybe hehad. It was an acceptable risk, for the good of the many. Go back, save a life.Return—and find out your next-door neighbor had never been born. Because ofwhat you did then. Now would never be the same.

No more.

He rose from the couch littered with laundry, squeezed histemples, fought the thoughts that raged against each other behind the confinesof his skull. This room, silent now, was haunted by the lingering presence of aboy who had never lived.

Or if he had, he was no longer here, sharing this temporal strandof reality. Someone had altered the past, and now the kid was gone. Forever.

The father? He had to be responsible.Somehow. But he too had vanished into the air.

Another BackTracker? There was only one device in that package,the one with a dog-eared copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

A lifetime ago. Yethe remembered it clearly, as he did with so manyimages and sounds from pasts that were his and were not, those which hadhappened and those which never would exist. He alone remembered them all, as healone had unraveled the temporal string and sent its strands into a myriad ofdirections. Now he was doomed to travel alonga single strand of time where most of his memories no longer held any meaning.

The wristwatch. The