Raymond Reyes falls for the wife of the man he traveled back in time to replace. He's planned his mission to the minute, yet he finds himself unprepared to meet the woman all his files are wrong about. History wants to repeat itself -- Raymond is ju...
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Raymond
Faced with Claire's wide smile, Raymond doubted their situation warranted it.
The Superior agreed with him, "You do realize we can't reward this kind of behavior?"
Claire just stared back, unafraid.
"All you have to do," she consoled Raymond as if they were still in 2019 and she was the authority on what was possible, "Is say you don't consent!"
D36CFB2C side-eyed him, "We were unable to explain to her the bigger consequences of her decisions. We think you might put it into words she'd understand." He added, "We don't think she understands how important it is that she consents."
"All you have to say is you don't want to," Claire ignored the warning directed at her, talking to Raymond as if she was his lawyer. She waved when she saw him worried, reminding him she was really there. He forced himself straight.
"Do you know the type of alarm that goes off when a suburban housewife leaves her home -- her city -- without it ever being mentioned in the history logs?" The Superior moved to the sentencing phase. "An agent gets a message he can easily ignore. No need to get out of his pod. Maybe a bad configuration. They can verify the logs later. A Leaf, to boot? Harmless."
Claire took a step forward, bringing herself in Raymond's reach, which made him take her hand, The Superior had already taken his decision. She felt different, colder, but she pulsed the same, her fingers tight around his.
"When said suburban housewife goes to the capital to attack the President of the Continental Forum?" The Superior interrupted them, while also pushing on Raymond's drive the warning to "let go of the prisoner", which he immediately did.
Claire understood, she crossed her arms over her chest in protest. A new file had also been placed on Raymond's drive: a new mission. He didn't open it.
"And she brings a kitchen knife?! There hadn't been an assassination attempt on any president in over three hundred years -- weapons of any kind, illegal -- there was no real security detail. She would have made it into his office!" The Superior continued, "No prior motivation, nothing to indicate ill will. Out of the blue she develops and implements the idea and our system just... throws an exception so bad that it got swallowed early in the stack. So deep that we were alerted only when she was on the Continental Forum's doorstep, on verge of causing an intercontinental crisis. No one understood what was happening. Everything froze, we had to emergency-evacuate her! I was summoned to personally handle the situation."
"We're friends now," Claire winked.
"We've outlined some options--"
"They said we can't be together," Claire said, for the first time hesitant, she covered it well, grinning, "So I just refused."
As usual, when she got scared, Claire bluffed, Raymond thought. Standing in front of adversity, challenging it. He got closer to her, it took him one step, she just watched him, unsure what to do.
