Wired (11 page)

I stared at the phone, wondering if he'd stuck any notes under my name and number. I stared a little
closer and realized to my enormous delight that this wasn't so much a phone as it was a . . . gadget. Some sort of crazy, high-tech gadget. And it certainly wasn't my fault if he was dumb enough to leave it out and think I wouldn't start salivating or wanting to play with it.

I looked at Mason's face. The corner of his mouth twitched and he made a sleepy little snorting sound. Adorable, but I had more interesting things to focus on. Very carefully, I crept to the side table and held still for a moment to make sure he didn't wake up. He didn't, so I extended my arm slowly and picked the phone up and stepped away again, turning my back on Mason. I glanced over to see if he'd stirred, but he just lay there with his legs hanging over the side arm of the chaise.

So, I opened the device. It wasn't like any piece of technology I'd seen before. Not really. I mean, it had all of the usual bits and pieces one would expect in a handheld or whatever, but it expanded like a Swiss army knife into something much, much more. I cradled the clamshell design in my hands, staring down at the whisper-thin slices of green-gray opacity representing screens, a snap-out leaf that looked like a built-in microphone and detachable earbud system, and a whole deck of in and out plugs that weren't the usual sizes. Tiny controls on sliders popped up out of nowhere when my finger grazed over bumpy touch-screen fields of various shapes and colors. A red glow emanated from a small glass square: some sort of infrared or wireless technology that probably projected an input device or perhaps the content itself into thin air.

I'd never seen anything like this—because there
wasn't anything like it. Not even in what I'd read. The geek in me just about died from sheer happiness. He must have picked it up in Japan as a concept beta; it was too advanced. Frankly, it was an impossibility, but since I was holding it in my hand and could see for myself, the only thing that came even close to making sense was Japan. Or the military.

I tentatively pressed the pad of my index finger down on one of the screens. The screen saver flickered and the screen brightened. And even though I knew it was the lamest of the lame and lowest of the low, I continued snooping anyway—I wanted to see what kind of listing Mason had entered under my name.

It wasn't set up like a normal address book, but more like a radio bar with presets. The presets included
ROX APT, ROX
7-
ELEVEN
, and
ROX AGENCY
. Kind of strange, but kind of exciting to find that not only did he have me as one of a limited number of presets on the top screen, but he had three of me. Though I couldn't imagine why he'd call Naveed at the 7-Eleven. Just on the off chance that I was making a doughnut run and could pick up?

“Give it to me, Rox.”

I made a ridiculous sound, a kind of horrified squeal, as Mason took the device out of my hands.

“You want me looking in
your
computer?” he asked.

“No.”

“All right, then.” He was so quiet. It was a kind of controlled calm that bespoke more danger and intensity than all his yelling put together. His fingers flew
over the device; I couldn't see what he was doing but the light went out.

“I apologize,” I said. “It's just . . . it's unbelievable, that thing. All those—”

Mason didn't say a word. He frowned down at the device, his lips moving slightly as he read something off the screen that was serious enough to erase every ounce of the old, playful, flirty Mason from his being.

“Mason, I mean it. I'm really sorr—”

My words were arrested as he looked up at me. His face was totally blank, as if he hadn't the faintest idea what I was talking about. Like I was the farthest thing from his mind. He ran his hand over the back of his neck and looked at me impatiently. I pointed at the device and shrugged haplessly in a final apology.

He looked at my finger, then at the device. I think he might have cursed under his breath just before he looked back up at me. He blinked, and I could almost see the wheels in his brain stop and turn in reverse as he tried to find his place in the conversation. “Oh. Yeah. The smartie. The
reader
. Smartie is slang. But most of that stuff doesn't work,” he said quickly. “It's just tricked out, is all.” He stuffed it in his back jeans pocket and looked around, still disoriented, maybe from having just woken up.

“
Mason
.”

He turned, startled by my vehemence, I guess. I was a little startled, too. “It's not just ‘tricked out,' is it?”

“It's—”

“It's not just tricked out.” I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep my cool.

“It's . . .”

I raised an eyebrow.

Mason stood in the middle of my office, his face a study in tension and strain, one hand compulsively curling and uncurling into a fist.

“It's not just tricked out . . . ,” I repeated in a more encouraging tone.

“It's not . . . it's not just tricked out,” he actually admitted.

My jaw dropped. We faced off. It seemed like half a day went by as we thought about how much we wanted to trust each other. That's what I was thinking, anyway.

Finally he nodded. “It's hard to know when the right time is. But you're right. I mean, there are things you're going to need to know, things you deserve to know. I can see . . .” He sighed heavily. “Maybe I waited too long.”

I waited for Mason to really start explaining, afraid to say another word myself for fear I'd derail his decision to tell me the truth. He was going to tell me
the truth
.

“Just . . . don't be scared.”

“Okay. Um, that's not ominous or anything,” I said, throwing in a little laugh to try and keep things light.

“Yeah, sure,” Mason said absently, chewing on his lower lip. Then he snapped his head up and looked me right into my eyes. “I mean, no. The thing is . . . it depends.”

It depends? Fabulous
.

I folded my hands on my lap and waited for the long-overdue explanation. Mason got up. He paced the room. He sat down next to me. He got up. He paced the room.

“Mason!”

“I know, I know.” He looked around the office. “This is not the right space. I'm not feeling it. Let's go downstairs.”

I gave him a look and he rolled his eyes and said, “Humor me. This isn't easy.”

I followed him downstairs, and Mason pulled out a chair for me at the formal dining room table I never used. Then he pulled out a chair for himself. The whole thing was suddenly reminiscent of a board-room meeting. Not to mention he was clearly stalling.

After another good five minutes, he finally opened his mouth. “It's a difficult thing, what I have to say. I really need you to keep an open mind. I need you to accept the possibility of the seemingly impossible. I've had to do this many times before, and I know
from experience that it doesn't usually go down easy,” he continued.

I waved impatiently. “Just say what you have to say. Just . . . lay it on me.” He really had me on the edge of my seat now, so I was completely prepared to be underwhelmed. After all, I wasn't involved in any drug cartels, I hadn't been kidnapped, and to the best of my knowledge I hadn't broken any federal laws. There were lots of strange things going on, but it really felt like this explanation was going to be the real one.

Mason leaned in and forced me to meet his eyes. “Have you ever felt a strangeness in the world?”

“Oh, well—”

“A palpable discomfort?”

“I—”

“A sense of wrongness?”

“It's—”

“An inability to remember something you are certain you should know, something that you think must have been so obvious before? The sensation of something on the tip of your tongue but you can't spit it out? A really disturbing case of déjà vu?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Don't answer so quickly. Think about it.”

I did, and this time he didn't interrupt. “Yes. I can honestly say that I've experienced all of those things. And fairly recently, I might add. What's it about?” I wanted to get to the meat of the matter.

“That's realignment, Roxanne. That's the realignment of your reality.”

I looked at him askance. “Um. I, don't remember you being the woo-woo type.”

“It's not woo-woo. You see . . .” He took a deep
breath, a kind of here-it-goes look on his face, and said, “Fate can be altered. In casual terms, it's called wire crossing.”

I pushed back an absurd little blip of dread. “I've never heard of it.”

“That's because it hasn't entered the common language yet.”

“Uh-huh. When does it enter the common language?”

“Later,” he said, looking at me meaningfully.

Unfortunately, I didn't catch his meaning. “What do you mean by that?” I said. He just looked at me. He'd told me to open my mind and try to believe the impossible. “Later?” I repeated weakly.

“Later.” He nodded and said, “In the future.”

I pointed my index finger at him, too light-headed to formulate the question.

“I'm a wire crosser. My job is based in the future. This is usually where I get the drink of water.”

I made no arguments. My mouth had gone completely dry, because either I'd let a lunatic into my house or what he was saying was true. He must be joking. “But we knew each other from before. In the past.”

“That's true.” He got up, and I heard the faucet turn on; he came back with a glass of water and put it down in front of me. I took a gulp.

“The thing about time is that it has no straight edges. It seeps through the cracks and binds things together again. It's a liquid thing, always moving. Seconds aren't like pennies, Roxanne. They can't be put in a jar to be spent at a later time. It's all about the now. It's always about now.”

“That sounds like something Kitty used to say,” I murmured.

The way his eyes held mine, it was almost trance-inducing. I felt calm—calmer right this moment than I had since he'd first reappeared.

“Okay, you're processing. Good. So . . . there's more.” He kept looking at me like he was afraid I would freak out at any moment. “Each case can last years. One can even span a wire crosser's whole lifetime. I've been on your case since sophomore year of college.”

“When you started dating Louise,” I said.

Mason winced. “I couldn't date you,” he said with a grin. “I can't even begin to say how that would have affected your case.”

Which is maybe why you never really talked to me. And why nothing's happened between us now
.

“Besides, you were different then,” he added.

“Weren't you?”

“It's not really the same thing.”

I sighed.

“Let me back up a little. I'm what you might call a restorer. I take on cases that involve restoring fate. Meaning, I work hard to lock in the original outcome of a given situation. Usually, we're called in to restore something only if someone has messed it up, which means that there's always an adversary wire crosser trying to stabilize his mess and there's one of us on the other side trying to right things again.”

“Leonardo Kaysar is trying to mess something up and you're trying to stop him?” I clarified.

Mason nodded slowly, as if he feared I'd suddenly call bullshit. “The key players on a wire are called
Majors. Players who are affected or who could be used to finish a case are called Peripherals. Peripherals usually don't notice when anything happens. The reality splice is too small for them. But it's not so small for Majors, and the splice is not always very clean.”

Bad splice
, he'd said that first night. I'd assumed he was talking about the cut on his forehead.

“The closer things get down to the wire, the harder it is to make the splices clean.”

Down to the wire. Wire crossers
.

Mason peered at me as if I were a small child. “Are you okay with this so far?”

Um . . . no
. “Go on.” I was deathly afraid he'd stop talking, decide I couldn't handle the truth, or regret revealing things.

“You are a Major on a wire I've been following for years. You went on the hot list some time ago, but weren't red-lighted until . . . well, until recently.”

“What's the hot list? What does red-lighted mean?”

He thought about it for a moment, then pulled out his smartie and navigated through the screens with his index finger. He held it up to me.

L. ROXANNE ZABOROVSKY
. Next to a red light. In a list of other random names. Some had red lights; some were grayed out.

I stared at the L. “If it's not just tricked out, you've got to tell me more about how the tech works.”

Mason managed a smile. “You like the shiny toys,” he said.

I nodded, on the edge of my seat, “C'mon, c'mon.”

“Okay. So, you need two major pieces of equipment. The smartie . . .” He held up his turbo-charged
cell phone handheld device. “And a punch.” He pulled a small silver object that I hadn't seen before out of his jacket pocket. It looked like a cross between an egg pricker and something a creepy dentist might get excited about.

“To cross a wire,” Mason explained, “you work with a team to identify a sweet spot, then text in the move you want for execution and hope you hit it just right. But to move yourself between layers of time, you also need the punch. It injects a tiny amount of liquid nanotech into the body that will communicate with the smartie.” He made a punching motion with the object.

“Ew,” I said, flinching at the sight of the needle-head. “You had presets. How do they work?”