Fumbling Toward Ecstasy

Chapter 16 - Here I Go Again

"What did you find?" Brynne asked as she rushed into Payton's office, Jeremy right at her heels. Payton stood between his desk and the small table next to his window. Bell was there, too, directly across from Payton on the other side of the table.

"It's the brochure you gave me earlier," Payton said. "I take it you didn't look at it very closely."

"Why do you say that?" Brynne asked.

Payton tossed the open brochure on the table and pointed. "Check out that picture."

Brynne and Jeremy looked at the photo beneath Payton's finger. It was a reprint of an old picture. A small group stood in the foreground with the Gigantic in the background. "Read the caption," Payton instructed.

Brynne's eyes skipped over the tiny type beneath the picture. She gasped when she saw her own name. Her eyes slid up to the picture again. It was no mistake. Her own image stared back at her from the page.

"It's me," she said, stunned. "It's me at the launch of the Gigantic." She tore her eyes away from the brochure. They shifted back and forth between Payton and Bell. "But it's not possible. I was never there. That launch would have been in 1913, I came back way before then."

"It must have something to do with the link virus," Bell surmised. "But I sure as hell can't figure what it is."

Brynne's eyes returned to the photo. There was another familiar face in the picture, but it wasn't part of the group where Brynne's face appeared. The man that Brynne recognized stood apart from the group. "Look at this," she said. "This is the man I ran into on the Titanic. He's the one who was after the notebook. But how can that be? I saw him jump off the Titanic's deck. He should be dead."

Payton nodded slowly. "Carmen briefed me on that little incident," he said. "We think he may be the key to this whole mess with the timeline change."

"You think he caused it?" Brynne asked. She'd suspected as much but had never had any ironclad proof.

"It probably isn't a coincidence that he's in this picture," Bell said. "We believe very strongly that his involvement in your case had something to do with the change and possibly with the link virus. It's very likely that it's all related."

"That woman in the picture could be a double, especially since Brynne has no memory of being in this picture," Payton said. "It's entirely plausible that she and that man have nothing to do with the virus."

"It's also plausible that they have everything to do with it." Bell countered. He wasn't confrontational in his manner of speaking; rather, he seemed to be considering all the possibilities. "We have no way of knowing until we get to the bottom of it."

"How do we go about doing that, though?" Brynne asked. "That's the problem."

"We start by sending you back to the Titanic ASAP," Payton said.

Brynne's brows raised. "You want me to go find these people?"

"The main thing we have to concern ourselves with now is getting the links back up. Fixing the timeline is on the back burner for now. In fact, I wouldn't even worry about it, if I were you." Payton cast a glance in Bell's direction. "Besides, it's looking more and more like the two are related, so finding these two characters might be a way to take care of both. But finding them is the priority."

Brynne nodded. "I understand. With all this talk about going back as soon as possible, I assume the links are back up. Am I going back tonight?"

"Actually, no. The links are still down, and you're not going back tonight." Brynne's brows furrowed deeply. Had she missed something?