The Accidental Time Traveller

6 - Alice

Alice Winter had been going through different stages of emotion from the time she had learned that Sara was dead. There had been a lot of sadness, hopelessness, but under that, bubbling up and taking over everything, there had also been the last one: rage.

Rage was what she barely held in check as she walked to the police station. She was an hour early for her appointment with the detective, but she hadn't wanted to sit around in the apartment any longer. She was too full of restless energy that wanted to burst out of her. As it was, being jostled and bumped by random strangers on the bus, then on the train, hadn't done much to help her mood. She had almost yelled at some little old lady who had almost scraped her hand with that stupid little cart on wheels that all little old ladies seemed to have these days, but she had held it in. If she had yelled, she would have just ended up crying, a sobbing helpless mess on the subway that nobody wanted to deal with. They would have just assumed she was some strung-out junkie, another black girl who wanted to rage at the system. They wouldn't have seen her grief or understood her pain, so she had to hold it in, and keep that ball of pain and rage inside her.

Alice was almost relieved when she was finally in sight of the police station, where she could talk to someone who understood what she was going through. Someplace where she could make sure that Chris paid for what he had done to Sara. For what he had done to her.

BEEEEEEEEP!

The blaring car horn knocked her out of her thoughts, and she turned, scared out of her mind. The stupid little Ford Focus had stopped only inches away from hitting her, the slim model-looking Chinese woman at the wheel looking almost as startled as Alice felt, she with pounding heart and adrenaline heating her face.

"FUCK OFF!' Alice screamed. That surprised both her and the driver, but goddamn, it felt so good to let it out. "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!" Alice continued and slammed her hands down on the hood of the car, earning her a look of barely contained irritation from the driver. It was just a flicker, barely there at all, as if the driver was considering getting out and kicking Alice's ass, but she saw it.

The driver held up her hands in surrender instead and mouthed the words, "I'm so sorry."

"Well you should be!" Alice yelled, feeling that rage wanting to take over, but she somehow forced it down. The last thing she wanted was to get arrested for beating up a pretty Chinese girl in the parking lot of a police station; it didn't matter that the girl had almost run her over.

Alice held eye contact as she stepped out of the crosswalk and onto the sidewalk. The woman shook her head and drove her Ford Focus away into the parking lot; Alice watched her all the way, glaring daggers.

If Alice had known she would be seeing the woman later that day, she might have expressed her rage a little more directly. Instead, she forced herself to shake off the experience and carried her rage up the stairs and inside the station with no knowledge of the future.

***

Angie watched the angry black woman walk inside the police station. She parked the Ford Focus behind an oversized Dodge Ram truck and then purposely stayed inside to let the woman get ahead. Her heart still pounded in her heart from the close encounter. For a second, she had thought the woman had recognized her somehow, and she had actually considered gunning the engine and just running her down before making a break for it. It took just a second for her to realize that the woman was just pissed off at almost being run over.

The facial recognition software in her V.I.S.O.R. finally kicked in, displaying information about the woman: Alice Winter, 5'2", Jamaican-Canadian, Assistant Manager at the PetShop416. Known associates, Sara Park, Chris Allman--