Aldona knocks on the door and waits. Winona doesn’t come to answer, but she
doesn’t respond right away either. It takes her a good ten seconds to say
anything at all, and she’s not happy about it. “Uh, yeah, come in.” She
doesn’t sound busy or distracted either, it’s more like it took a really
long time for the sound to traverse the distance.
“Hey, have you heard from Leona lately?”
“We’re not really talking at the moment,” Winona replies.
“She’s still mad at you for the satellite thing?”
“I’m not providing her or her team with anything right now, which is why she
feels comfortable staying mad at me, but knows that she has to tolerate
you.”
“Right. Well, I don’t know what you know...”
“I know that she deployed that satellite anyway, and that you destroyed it.”
“I didn’t send the missile, I tried to stop it.” She sighs, feeling alone.
But she was prepared for it to be like this. In fact, she thought the
mission would be even harder, and she would have no one on her side at all.
She expected a lot of pushback, even after people saw what she could build
for them. It was not an easy decision, leaving everything that she had grown
to love in the Sixth Key. If this works, the timeline will be totally
different when she returns, if she even decides to do so, or has the
opportunity. She’s cognizant of a lot regarding the future, but every choice
she makes here sets her on a more divergent path from the original. Soon,
predicting the outcome of events will be as impossible for her as it is for
normal people. What will she do then?
“Look, I imagine that Leona isn’t responding to your calls for the same
reason she isn’t reaching out to me, because the cons outweigh the pros. If
you’re not helping her find her friends, justified or not, she’s not going
to bother talking to you. If you change your value, she will react
appropriately, and maybe reconnect. So give her something.”
Aldona shakes her head. “No, it isn’t that. The satellite’s fine. I just got
word, she diverted the missile to a Chinese spy satellite that was operating
over Russia. My clients don’t really understand, but based on the data that
only people like us know how to interpret, she teleported the team’s
satellite. I can’t find it, but...I think it’s safe. And she would be aware
of that, so why is she incommunicado?”
“You think that something’s wrong,” Winona realizes.
“I think the jet is still in the Philippines, but I think she and Tarboda
are not. They checked out of their hotel, and never checked in anywhere
else.”
“You know she didn’t go there for vacation, right?”
“Vulcan Point is an important location in the history that is currently the
present. I’m not an idiot, I always knew that she was going to try to go
there, and I knew that she wouldn’t be successful, which is why I made no
attempt to stop her, or even talk her out of it. She’s not on that island,
so where did she go?”
“Okay, I have a contact in Manila. I’ll call her, and see what she can find
out.”
“I think it’s for the best,” Aldona emphasizes as Winona is finding the
contact.
“Kumusta?” the woman on the other end answers through the speakerphone.
“Kumusta, Divina,” Winona returns. “Listen, Leona’s missing. Last we heard,
she was in your country. I was hoping that you could ask a few people a few
questions?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
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