Repeat Rewind: Tales of Time Travel

Mirror, Mirror: Part 2

The time was 3:33 AM, and the interrogation room was silent for a moment, nothing but the soft breathing of the two women inside countering the lull in their conversation. The hallway separating the Inspection unit's rooms from the rest of HQ was all but deserted, with only the watchful eyes of the security cameras to see anyone who happened to walk inside at such a late hour.

In the small, stuffy surveillance booth behind the two-way mirror, Inspector Nina Kristoff scowled. "Craig's not controlling this conversation like she should," she murmured, more to herself than to the other Inspector standing behind her.

The dark-haired, tall man was in his late thirties and in his shirtsleeves; the heat inside the booth showed more on his tanned face than it did on Kristoff's. His voice was firm, though, when he spoke. "She's a field agent, boss, she's not used to this kind of work. Give her some time. Cortez seems pretty eager to tell her what we need to know."

Kristoff sighed. "Yeah, I see that. I just wish she'd get to the point. Those corpses need names to bury them with."

Inside the room, Agent Angelica Cortez spoke again, as if on cue.

***

Like I said, I could tell that something was wrong the second I moved forward into the time beam. I flailed and tried to step back, to get away from that sensation of something falling apart inside me, but it was too late. I was already disintegrating.

When my body reformed in the arrival chamber that Mission Control had assigned to me, I still felt wrong. Off-kilter, and sort of... disjointed. Like someone had broken my entire self into tiny pieces and put them back together in the wrong order. At least I wasn't wearing my insides on the outside, but parts of me felt like they'd been touched for the first time, moved just a little out of place. I bent over and threw up.

I could tell the lab tech who handled my portal was used to seeing agents puking on the chamber floor, because she came inside with a mop and a bucket before I was done saying hello to my dinner. She told me in a resigned voice to please go to Medical, and I didn't bother with trying to say something witty back. I just turned around and left for the next room down the hall to get a checkup. If ever in my life I needed a doctor to fix me somehow, it was that night.

They didn't find anything wrong with me.

Not that they tried very hard, but I guess I can't blame them. Rocky returns from a standard mission like this usually don't need a full examination. They'd never get anything else done if they tried to X-ray every agent who came back a little green in the face. I tried to tell them that this had never happened to me before, but with future travel, something could have shifted in any number of ways to make me feel so sick. The doctor poked and prodded and looked at me all over, then gave me a pill for the nausea and told me to get some rest before my next assignment.

I live only a few blocks from HQ, so I decided to walk back home instead of taking a bus or a cab. It was a clear night, that nice kind of cold which is perfect when you need some fresh air, but it did nothing for the way my guts were still churning like a washing machine. I was barely two streets away when I felt another wave of nausea rolling over me, and an awful, sharp pain inside my chest... like I was a voodoo doll someone was stabbing with a huge needle. I'd never felt anything like that before. I ducked behind a grocery store and got ready for my stomach to crawl up my throat again, but instead of me vomiting some more, it was the pain that got worse and worse, until I could only wheeze. And I started seeing four of everything. Remember that. In the end, I passed out.

I'll spare you the details of how I came to with a bitch of a headache and my cheek sticking to the grime on the asphalt, or how I staggered home and made up my mind to call in sick as soon as I was within reaching distance from a phone. The pain in my chest and the nausea had cleared up while I was out, but I was still feeling weak and wobbly all over. Like a bowl of Jell-O.