The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 2398

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The team sits around the table, prepared to have dinner together, but not yet ready. Ramses is methodically walking around the condo, waving his wand at every wall, every floor, every object; sometimes more than once for good measure. They believe that they’ve been pretty sensitive to his needs, but there is a limit to their capacity to indulge him. “Rambo,” Marie says, but has to stop when her own grumbling stomach interrupts her. “This is the third time you’ve done that today. We’re all here to eat. Come to the table.”

“Yeah, it’s the third time, and I’m not with it yet. You think I’m gonna stop at two and a half? I just need a little more time.”

“You ain’t got more time,” Marie pushes. “Now we’re all here to celebrate Angela’s pending graduation, and you’re going to be a part of it.”

“Just one more room,” Ramses begs.

“No, it’s fine. No one snuck in here in the last three hours, and planted bugs. They would have to contend with our bugs!”

“I’m just trying to protect you in the only way I’m capable. I was once the only engineer, but now that everybody’s constantly studying, where does that leave me?”

“With any luck, at the dinner table,” Marie responds to his question, instead of trying to console him.

“Honey, he’s going through something right now,” Heath says, hoping to help.

“We’re all going through something,” Marie dismisses. “Angela has to steal my identity, Leona was just taken hostage, Mateo was...also just taken hostage, you recently quit your job, and I have to have an abortion.”

Ramses stops scanning for listening devices, and drops his arms depressively.

“You promised never to play that card,” Angela scolds.

“Why is everyone attacking me now?” Marie questions loudly.

“No one’s attacking anybody,” Leona contends. She stands up. “Ship or no, I’m still the captain of this crew. Ramses, come let us eat. Marie, be a little nicer. Mateo?”

“Huh, what?” Mateo wasn’t really paying attention. He’s too hungry.

“Pay attention,” Leona orders. “And Angela?” They hold their breath, not sure what criticism she could possibly have of Angela. “Congratulations,” she finishes.

“I’m not graduating anything,” Angela argues. “I’m just decent enough at my doppelgänger’s job to fake my way through a shift from here on out.”

“Pretty impressive, if you ask me,” Mateo says, hoping it’s enough to make it seem as if he’s been listening this whole time. He knew a kid like that in grade school. He would always answer one question, ask one question, or make one comment, per day. Sometimes it was very small and inconsequential, but that way, the teacher couldn’t claim that he never participated in class. He had some anxiety problems which otherwise made him the furthest anyone could be from the class clown, so that sort of thing was always a struggle for him.

“Well, the real test is tomorrow in the meeting.”

“I thought you had dealt with a meeting by now,” Heath says, digging into his potatoes, now that Ramses has surrendered.

“I’ve been to a meeting, yes,” Angela explains, “but I’m running this one.”

“It’s a big deal,” Marie says, trying to sound supportive, but realizing immediately that it also makes it sound like a lot of pressure. “You’ll do great.” Saved it.

“Thanks, but...”

“But nothing. You’re me, and I rock in those meetings, so you will too.”

“Who was that guy we met in the simulation?” Angela asks. “Somehow, we ended up teaching him how to play horseshoes? You remember?”

“Oh. Uh, Cyrano. What about him?”

“Well, we saw him at that restaurant something like fifty years later. He had won a ghosting mod in a raffle, and was using it to—”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Marie recalls. “He was, like, hypnotizing people to make them say weird things to their dinner dates? I don’t remember how he did that part, or why we were able to see him. But yeah, I remember him. Why?”

“You could basically do that,” Angela suggests. “I could wear an earpiece and video glasses, and you could just tell me what to say, and how to act in the meeting. That way, I wouldn’t be able to screw it up.”

“Oh, right, that’s a great idea!” Marie says, giving Angela some hope. “Oh, but no, there’s a problem with that plan.”

“What?”

“The problem is I’m not going to do that.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 30, 2398

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The internal investigator looks over the file like a cliché. His gaze jumps from the middle of the page to the top, then to the bottom, and then back to the other side. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with what appears to be a dishrag, and pulls the chair out for himself. “State your name for the record.”

She looks around for a recording device. Perhaps it’s hidden under the table. “Leona Matic.”

“What is your position within this organization?”

“My official title is Advisory Head of Special Projects.”

“Advisory Head?” he echoes in the form of a question.

“A little odd, but anything less ambiguous would be too elaborate and long.”

“Very well.” He flips through the file a little more. “How did Mister Bandoni do what he did?

She carefully considers the statement she prepared. “The device he used emits a particular frequency, which researchers have discovered to temporarily interfere with the human brain’s ability to encode recently absorbed long term memory.”

“I understood that,” the investigator says honestly. “But for the record, could you repeat that in English?”

“It makes you forget what you just saw. To compensate, your mind simply skips over the time it missed, and moves on from there, which can make it appear as if objects and people have moved instantly from one point in space to another.”

He closes his eyes and nods, satisfied with this response.

“Do you know what happened to the security footage from the basement lab during the hostile actions on the part of Mr. Bandoni?”

“I imagine he erased them.” He did not. He cut off the live feed so outside observers could not watch remotely, but it was she who wiped the footage after managing to incapacitate him.

He nods again. “He did. Well, not all of it. He looks up and over at his shoulder as he takes a little remote out of his pocket. The mirror behind him renders a video image. “Take note of the timestamp.” It’s showing a bird’s eye view of the lab, presumably from the perspective of a camera mounted on the rocketship, which must not be linked to the network. It clearly shows Holger teleporting across the room as he wrangles the staff without the aid of anyone else. Of course, since he really is teleporting—and not interfering with anyone’s memory—the timestamp shows him to be jumping around instantaneously.

“Touché.”

“Tell me, Magnus Matic, why would you lie to us about this? What does he have on you?”

“Nothing. He’s an idiot.”

“He’s not saying a word.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

The investigator kind of rolls his eyes. “We don’t just have video, but audio. We heard your whole conversation. You know more about this stuff than he does. You weren’t surprised by what he could do, and you took control of the situation at your earliest convenience. I assume the thing you said about the watch exploding was a lie?”

“Maybe.”

“The problem is we can’t find it.” He leans back and skips the video to the point where Leona picks up the watch and transports it to oblivion. It’s not full on molecular teleportation, but a failsafe that rips the device into a thousand pieces, and embeds it in the nearest solid object. In this case, it’s probably in the floor, or maybe a nearby wall.

“Hm. Weird.”

He smiles out of mad respect. “I like your lie. The whole interference with long-term memory thing, that’s pretty cool; we’re gonna use it.”

“Pardon?”

He flips the file closed as he’s standing up. “That’s what we’re gonna say to the rest of the lab scientists, to explain why what they think they saw is not what they really saw, even though you and I both know that that’s exactly what they saw.”

“Okay...”

“You’re free to go,” he says, stepping towards the door, not in a hurry. “Your husband is waiting for you in the parking lot. He’s known something was wrong longer than we have. Please don’t run. We would like to know more, and we promise to be courteous, and...discreet.”

“Who’s we?” she questions.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He leaves the door open, and begins to walk away coolly.

Leona stays seated for a moment, then she jumps up, and hangs her head over the threshold. “Sir!”

He turns around patiently.

“Welcome to the Masquerade.”

He nods politely, and turns the corner.

That should keep them busy for a while. Now it’s time to run.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 29, 2398

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Yesterday, Holger forced all the staff into the interstellar spaceship that was under construction, and locked them in there so he and Leona could be alone. He placed the entire facility on lock down, which even prevented the guard topside from getting down. He surely would have noticed that something was wrong fairly quickly. Even if he never needed to reach out to someone in the hangar, he would have wondered why no one was leaving for lunch, and if not then, why did no one go home at the end of the day? Leona didn’t know what was happening up there either, though. Holger cut off all information, and spent the rest of the day trying to get Leona to prove that she too had a teleportation watch like his. When she tried to claim that she didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, he grew frustrated. But he didn’t want to ruin their special day, so he takes his time setting up a candlelit midnight dinner for the two of them, and that’s when he explains what he’s been up to recently.

Holger was unsurprisingly upset about being fired from the lab. Day by day, his anger ballooned, until he couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t want to grow up and look for a new job. He wanted back in, and he wanted an apology. One might think that he would have gotten over Leona in that time, since she was the reason for his dismissal, but his fixation on her only increased. He wanted her more than ever, and he became convinced that he was entitled to her devotion. This was a game, and she was winning, but all he needed to do was gain an advantage. And the first step in this new mission was to stalk her. He found out where she lived, who she was living with, where she liked to go for breakfast, and everything else about her. He watched her, he watched her husband, and he watched their friends. He had trouble understanding the group dynamic, so he started branching out, and investigating the others in greater depth.

Fortunately, the forger’s forgeries were airtight, so he never discovered that all of their identities were fake, but he did know about Angela. Sure, he wasn’t aware that they were intending to use her to replace Marie as a backup twin, but it was still something they didn’t want out there in the world. He was probably the worst person to know so much information about them. And he wasn’t going to stop here. He kept watching them, eventually following them all the way out to a little town in the middle of Kansas called Lebanon. Here was where things got real interesting.

He watched from a distance as the six of them literally disappeared by the side of the road. Confused but excited, he snuck over to get a better look. No smoke, no mirrors, no hidden passageways. All he found was dirt, grass, and other plants. He situated himself in a foxhole, and kept watching the area, eventually witnessing the group reappear and disappear at will. He didn’t know where they were going, or how they were doing it. It was a puzzle, and Holger Bandoni loves puzzles. He continued to watch them as most of the group left, including Leona. He didn’t stay attached to her, though. He had to remain near the site, because unlocking its secrets was more important at this point.

Mateo and Heath blew a hole in the ground. The former fell in, and the latter fell back. While he was unconscious, Holger ignored him, and made his way down the hole using the emergency ladder. He was shocked by how deep it was, and exhausted by the time he reached the bottom, but it was so worth it. An expanse of living spaces and advanced technology. He had to learn more. While he was alone, he managed to search pretty much every room, ultimately making his way to what he thought might have been a hot tub. It was a beautiful room with blue mosaic tiles, and shimmering light, but the water was cool, and it wasn’t big enough for swimming. But there was something black on the bottom. He dove in and retrieved a box, inside of which was the teleporter watch.

As he was fiddling with it, he suddenly found himself in a different room. He pushed the button again, which transported him to a third room. He kept working with it, learning how to navigate, instead of relying on a random destination. Once he was satisfied with his self-training, he made his way back to the main room, and stood by the debris in the elevator shaft. He pushed the button again, and attempted to jump all the way back to the surface, but could not make it all the way up. As he was falling towards his death, he desperately pressed the button once more, and returned to the floor, but apparently, this form of teleportation preserves momentum, so he still landed hard, breaking his arm in the process. While he still lay there, Heath was making his way down, so Holger crawled into what he believed to be a closet, but was actually a second elevator. He used this to travel back up to the top, ultimately having to use his one good arm to punch through the wall of soil in his way. This finally explains how the McIvers were able to see the alternative means of transport that Heath did not.

Now free, Holger made his way to the nearest hospital, and while he was undergoing treatment, he began to make more plans. He had to wait until Leona returned from her vacation, “and that brings us to today.” He smiles, proud of himself for surviving the harrowing adventure, and pleased to now fully understand who Leona is. “We’re in the same boat now. I have a watch, you have a watch. We can be together.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Uhh, no,” he maintains. “See?” He jumps to the other side of the breakroom.

“No, I mean, you’re delusional about us. “Just because you randomly found a flicker watch, doesn’t mean we’re in love now.”

“Is that what this is called?” He admires the thing.

No, but whatever, haha. She sighs. “What about this are you not getting? I don’t like you. I don’t just not like you in that way. I hate you. I don’t want to ever see you again, or have anything to do with you.”

Holger pouts and mumbles. “Ugh. Harumph. Gaaaah! You obviously wanna stay here with me! You haven’t tried to escape!”

“You locked the exit!” she argues. “I can’t get out!”

“Why don’t you just flicker out! How do you think I got in!”

“I can’t!” Leona pulls down her sleeves, and rolls up her pant legs just for good measure. “They run out of juice!” she lies, sort of. They will eventually run out of power, but they likely last a good few years. “When it’s out, it’s out, and you throw it away.”

“Oh.” He seems to be believing her. “Well, how long do I have?”

“How many times have you used it?” she asks.

“I dunno, maybe a hundred? I hate walking all the way over to my bathroom.”

“Ooo,” she begins. “In this short of time?” She decides to repeat a lie Mateo once told someone. “You’re severely overtaxing it. That thing’s about to blow your wrist off.”

He desperately removes it, drops it on the floor, and hops away with a yelp, so that’s when Leona punches him in the neck.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 28, 2398

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Leona’s supervisor is not happy. She suddenly took vacation time, but promised to return soon. Then she extended it. Then she extended it again. She didn’t deliver any new data that whole time, so Petra is starting to think that there’s something fishy going on. She’s not rageful, or anything, and she hasn’t already made the decision to fire Leona, but she’s getting there. “You’re back.”

“Yes,” Leona confirms.

“I was beginning to think that you defected to a competitor. I’m still not sure that you haven’t.”

“I haven’t,” Leona says simply.

“Did you have fun on your vacation?”

“It wasn’t a vacation,” Leona reveals. This statement is true in the end, but where the lie begins is the explanation of what she was doing while she was claiming to be on vacation. She drops a tablet on Petra’s desk. “Plans for a tritium extraction facility. This is decades beyond what anyone already has, and once I’m done designing the reactor, we’ll actually be able to do something with all those isotopes you create.”

Skeptical, Petra lifts the tablet, and starts to tour the 3D model. She narrows her eyes in some places, and widens them in others. She then swipes over to the next page, which details specifications and production objectives. This is where she gasps. “Are these efficiency numbers accurate?”

“Completely,” Leona claims. “I’ve been working, I just haven’t been in the office.”

“Why would you keep that a secret? Did you go somewhere?”

Leona doesn’t respond, instead looking like she doesn’t know if she can say anything at all.

“What did you do?” Petra questions, becoming nervous as well.

“I think it’s best if you don’t know. Plausible deniability.”

Petra stands up straighter, and exhales through her nose. “Nothing illegal, I trust.”

Leona bobs her head. “More like...internationally complicated and delicate.”

Petra clears her throat. “You’re right, I don’t wanna know.”

“I’ll probably have to take more trips. I’m not just some genius who randomly came up with this stuff on my own. It’s borne from my experiences, and contacts. Sometimes I might have to reach out to these contacts, or conduct field research.”

“Very well. If you ever need to take time off,” Petra says with airquotes, “then let me know, and now I know that I shouldn’t ask any more questions.”

“You won’t be disappointed,” Leona assures her. She leaves the office, and begins to walk down the stairs when she notices someone she never thought she would ever have to see again, standing on the bottom step, looking up at her. Leona’s former observer—and prolific sexual harasser—who Petra agreed to dismiss three weeks ago, is staring at her menacingly. “How did you get in here?” she asks him impolitely.

Holger Bandoni shows his most evilest grin. Suddenly, he’s standing right in front of her, having somehow teleported up the steps, despite that being unheard of in this reality. He takes her by the shoulders, and tosses her over the edge, only to teleport down just in time to catch her. “Love knows no boundaries. Love walks through walls.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 27, 2398

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Ramses is responsible for taking readings in the Bermuda Triangle while Leona holes up in her little cubby to work on her fusion solution. He offered to help her with it, but she wants to do this herself. Obviously, he would never try to take credit for the accomplishment at her work—she doesn’t even care about that herself—but it still seems wrong. She’s already being dishonest with her employer regarding her background and experiences. She had to iron out a well-considered legal document that expressly barred the University from publishing her name, or other identifying information, anywhere for public consumption. In exchange, she agreed to not share the technology with any other entity. That goes against her instinct to make knowledge free and accessible, but that wouldn’t be good for her either, because it would shine a spotlight right on her face.

Before he quit his job at the electronics store, Ramses managed to steal just enough parts and equipment to build the instruments that they’re now using to conduct this research. One thing they’ve gathered is that the closer they are to the exact center, the stronger their time powers are, and the easier it is to teleport. Range appears to be stretched too, though that’s hard to test, because they’re in the middle of nowhere. They’re getting wet a lot, trying to test this out. They’re regretting the limited time they spent trying to figure out what was maintaining The Constant’s temporal energy, because it would have been a lot easier to walk around an underground bunker. This is worse since they can’t even travel all the way to the bottom of the ocean because the pressure is too high for The Olimpia to withstand. Fortunately, they’ve recently become confident in their assessment that depth is not an advantage. The energy appears to be sourced at the surface, rather than from something deep down in the abyss. The problem is, they still can’t actually find it.

This close to the center, higher concentrations of temporal energy seem to be more sporadic and—to put it in fitting terms—more fluid. It’s almost as if bursts of energy spontaneously emerge inside the water molecules, which float around until used up. They’re also pretty sure that these levels have been declining since they arrived, which makes sense, what with them being there to spend this energy. They have scooped up samples to be stored in the vehicle’s drinking water tanks, and will later study whether levels change after being removed from the area, and possibly even figure out how to compound or synthesize more energy. So far, even all this is not enough.

After the upteenth time testing to see if something changes about the water when heat is applied, Ramses trills his lips.

“Nothing interesting?” Mateo asks, knowing the answer.

“I think we should leave,” Ramses answers.

“Yeah,” Mateo agrees. “No land masses, no special shipwrecks. “It’s just a bunch of water, which somehow, for some reason, stores temporal energy. I don’t see any reason to stick around. I think it would be more beneficial to check out the other known locations, like Easter Island, Giza, and Stonehenge.”

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” Heath says, having seen it on Mateo’s list. “What is Stonehenge?”

The cubbies offer some privacy, but they aren’t exactly soundproof. Leona slides open the door. “You don’t have Stonehenge? In England?”

“What’s an England?” Heath questions, avoiding making the usual joke about thinking it sounds like the name of a band again.

Leona steps out, and walks over to the control room to initiate a map on the heads-up-display. She zooms into where the United Kingdom should be, but tilts her head in bafflement. She zooms out again, and drags it over, and back in. She keeps trying to find it, but can’t. “How have I not noticed this before?”

“Noticed what?” Ramses slides into the room, and looks at the map too. “Oh my God. Where is it? It’s just more water.”

“It doesn’t exist,” Leona utters, fascinated. “The North Atlantic Isles don’t exist.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 26, 2398

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This was originally planned as a six-man operation. Well, actually, it was only going to be five men, but they lucked into finding Mateo, and decided that he would be a good sacrifice. It’s going to be a dangerous mission, but if Mateo doesn’t help, the rogue veterans say that they’ll out him as a fake Dominus. So Leona, Ramses, and Heath agreed to participate as well, so he wouldn’t have to do it alone. The military guys were hesitant, because they don’t understand that this is not at all the first mission they’ve been on. It’s just the first one they can talk about with these people. Heath is the least experienced, though, so he was assigned to stay with The Olimpia to provide air support, along with Captain Tarboda Hobson. They have lucked into having a fancy flying carboat submarine too. Perhaps it is the once-immortal time travelers who should be leading this superhero team-up adventure. Ah, yes, that’s the new plan.

Here’s the mission. A cargo ship is headed for the states, carrying perfectly normal goods, and also a bunch of innocent women and children to be sold into sex slavery. This is the consequence the country faces when it comes to religious freedoms. Slavery is not legal, but there are ways around getting caught by declaring privacy, exploiting loopholes, and executing well-coordinated timing. If they travel from the right port, and arrive at the right port, at the right time, they’ll be able to unload the trafficked people, and erase all evidence that they were there. The rogue vets intend to intercept this ship in international waters. This will be illegal, because it’s considered a form of privacy, and there’s no explaining that away. It’s this whole thing. That’s why they’re doing it, because if teams like them don’t, no one will.

The superempathy that Ramses built into their new bodies—which is still, for whatever reason, strongest in Mateo—allows them to sense each other’s feelings. That’s what it was designed to do, so they can at least communicate as much amongst the team members without anyone else noticing or knowing about it. To a certain degree, this also gives them a heightened sense of general empathy, which works on anyone they meet who happens to have a soul. It’s not perfect, but it gives them a pretty good idea when someone is lying. According to Mateo’s readings, the rogues are telling the truth about the mission, and their convictions. They’re not saints, but they believe that what they’re doing is right, and Mateo does not believe that the people running the ship don’t deserve what’s coming to them. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

Here’s the plan as they drew it up after three more people signed on. Seven of the nine members of the taskforce are meant to sneak onto the ship from below, and break off into two teams. Technically, three of the soldiers are on one team, and two of the travelers are on another, but they’ll be moving throughout the vessel together. While Mateo and Ebraim go up to commandeer the bridge, the rescue team will head for the shipping containers of abductees. The strike team, lead by Goran, will protect both the rescuers, and the refugees that they find. Any help they might need from the outside will be provided by Heath and Tarboda on the fourth team.

It’s not safe, and it’s not guaranteed they’ll win, but the biggest issue with this plan is that people will most likely die. It might not be any of them, or even any of the refugees, but Team Matic is not fully okay with that. For various reasons, they’ve had to kill occasionally, but it’s never been something they’ve planned. Well, there was that one time Leona conscripted an alternate version of Reaver to stab Ulinthra with a dagger that erases her from time. And when she murdered Erlendr Preston in the afterlife simulation, it was pretty premeditated. But other than that, killing has been a last resort. This is so calculated, so intentional, and therefore so...wrong. So that’s not what they’re going to do. Instead, the time travelers manage to lock all of the soldiers in the galley, and steer their boat as far away from the intercept point as possible. They get free, but Ramses teleports away at the last second. When he arrives back on the Olimpia, the real mission begins.

They do sneak onto the cargo ship, and they do rescue the refugees, but they don’t kill anyone, and they don’t make a mess of things. They escort them all onto a lifeboat, drop it into the water, and distract all the guards and whatnot with a small explosion in the engine room, using explosives they stole from the rogues. The secret plan goes off without a hitch, and no one is the wiser.

The rogues are pissed when they break down the door, and make it back to the location of The Olimpia, having missed out on all the action. But they’ll get over it, and besides, it’s not like there’s no more work for them to do. It will be their responsibility to tow the lifeboat to safety. Do they have to go back to Santo Domingo? Will the U.S. take them in for asylum? Will another country? These are questions that Team Matic can’t answer, but there is one question that they can respond to quite swiftly.

“You will get those people to safety, wherever that might be. You will not return to the cargo ship to kill all those criminals, or harm them in any way. They are dead in the water, so you will contact the authorities anonymously, and let them do whatever it is they do. You will not tell anyone about what you know of Mateo’s situation, or even that you met any of us at all. If this is not clear, then I will kindly point out that we managed to achieve everything you wanted on our own, without any of them seeing our faces, or being able to tell you how we did it. I don’t know what you’ll take from that, but if I were you, I would start to think that I underestimated us at first. There is no telling what else we can do when properly motivated. Is any of this not making sense?” Leona Matic understands astrophysics and technology. She knows main sequence film history through the year 2028. But goddammit if delivering threats isn’t her best feature. The men all nod silently, now sufficiently afraid to do anything to anger her. This is where they leave it.

While the soldiers drive off to finish the mission without further supervision, the Olimpia heads farther out, to the exact center of the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. They were dubious that they would find anything out here, which is why Mateo and Leona chose to check it off the list of special temporal locations while getting a short vacation out of it. The fact that they can teleport in this region, just as they could near the site of The Constant, is interesting to say the least.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 25, 2398

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It wasn’t easy, getting on a commercial flight to Bermuda at such short notice. It’s a popular destination, so lots of flights go out there, but this is the beginning of vacation season, so most of them were pretty full. Heath and Ramses deplane, and head for the exit. Ramses gets on the phone. “We’re here, where are you?”

“I’m about an hour and forty-five minutes away,” Leona replies.

“What?” Ramses questions. “You were meant to wait for us.”

“I was worried I would lose the signal. I’m still worried. I need to come back and scoop you up, but what if he gets out of range. I already feel our psychic connection wearing off.”

Heath takes the phone. “Leona, have you been going in the same direction the whole time?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Then we have a good idea where they’re headed by now,” Heath reasons. “Come back and get us. “You probably need to refuel anyway. We’ll leave as soon as we can, and get back on the trail.”

“Okay,” Leona concedes. “I’m coming back.”

Mateo is about 600 kilometers from Bermuda right now, traveling on the same bearing since departure. There’s nothing on the map out here, so either the men who took him are trying to get to Cuba, or they’re going to rendezvous with some other ocean vessel. All she knows is that they’re on a boat, and she’s on a plane. She can catch back up to him, even after flying all the way back to the island, but it’s going to break her heart if it turns out she can’t find that trail again.

Heath may be wrong. Mateo’s abductors could turn to a different direction at any moment. One thing that gives her comfort is that her husband feels okay right now. He was not doing well yesterday, but he seems to have recovered. He’s not happy, per se, but he’s not scared or sick anymore, so at least there’s that. Like she was saying, though, they might lose their empathic connection, either by moving too far away from each other, or just because the temporal energy that they’re working off of is used up. One good choice Leona made is to call up some help. She doesn’t know who they’re going to be up against, and she shouldn’t try to fight them on her own. Angela and Marie are still in Kansas City, moving forward with Operation Backup Twin, as one of them decided to start calling it.

As calculated, Leona lands back on the road within two hours. They take a little bit of time to replace the fuel cells, so they can be at optimal operational capacity. Leona never does lose the psychic link, but she can still feel Mateo getting farther away from her until the three rescuers get back in the air. Before they get too close to the enemy, they drop out of the sky, and transform into a boat. This is when they start putting on their tactical gear, and checking their weapons. “So, the reason we stopped flying is to be stealthy, correct?” Heath asks the group.

“Right,” Leona agrees.

“Why don’t we just go sub?”

Leona stops adjusting her thigh holster. “What? This is a sub?”

“Yeah, did I not tell you that?”

“Uhh, no.”

“Oh, yeah. This is a sub.”

“Put us down,” Leona demands.

Heath stops what he was doing, and engages the controls. They dive deeper until The Olimpia is fully submerged. Blast shutters slide down over the windows automatically, but Heath reverses them, under the assumption that they won’t be going very deep.

“No, put them back down,” Leona says. “I wanna kiss the bottom of the ocean. The closer we are, the more difficult it will be for the enemies to detect us, if they’re expecting anyone at all.”

“Very well,” Heath agrees. He does as he’s told, and sinks deeper and deeper and deeper, but then he stops.

“What’s going on?”

“This is as deep as we can go,” he warns. “It can only handle a couple hundred meters. That’s pretty good for a vessel this size in the 24th century.”

Leona sighs heavily. “Fine. Keep going.” She points towards the front. “That way.”

They maintain their pursuit, hoping that the boat doesn’t see them coming. Even if they do, though, what are they going to do about it? They probably don’t have torpedoes, or anything. The element of surprise would be great, but just being able to rise up to the bilge would be helpful on its own, as Ramses suggests. They don’t get that chance, which disappoints him a little.

Mateo gets on the radio, and makes contact. “Olimpia, Olimpia, come in.”

“This is the Olimpia. Go ahead,” Leona prompts.

“I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Okay...”

“I’ll be with you in a second. I just need to get something from my cabin.” A minute later, Mateo teleports himself into the Olimpia. “I don’t have much time. I obviously didn’t tell them what I can do, so they can’t walk in to find me missing. Surface so we can talk in person. And put away those guns. I’ll explain everything.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 24, 2398

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Mateo wakes up woozy, tied up and rocking on the metal floor. It was the heat that woke him, frying him from above, and scorching him from below. It’s probably the hottest part of the day, and he can’t move to find shelter. He immediately finds that he’s tied up, his hands together, and tightly bound to a railing of some kind. A salty breeze slips in between the bars, enough to burn his eyes, but not enough to cool him down. He’s on a boat. He pulls himself into a sitting position, but he can’t hold it for long. Whoever did this didn’t care how hard it would be for him to get comfortable, didn’t realize, or did it on purpose.

Two feet approach him, which are presumably attached to a body, but he can barely see above the ankle. He just can’t turn his head enough to get a good look, and even so, the sun would probably blind him. He hears two claps, and then the feet walk away, only to be replaced with two new feet. A voice he recognizes says, “afternoon, soldier.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo groans back. It’s hard to talk, he’s so thirsty.

“Oh, we know,” Ebraim replies.

“Are you gonna kill me?” Mateo asks him. “It’s okay if you are. It wouldn’t be the first time I died. I always manage to come back, I’m sure I’ll figure it out again.”

Ebraim gets on his hands and knees to cut the zip ties. He clears his throat authoritatively as he’s pulling Mateo up and over into a more tenable sitting position. “The way you say that, you almost sound like one of us.” He nods and breathes loudly through his nose, looking over toward the other side of the boat. “Every man here has died at least once.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo begins, “but I am a fighter.”

He coughs involuntarily. “I believe you. That’s why you’re here.”

Mateo looks around. “It’s why I’m where, and doing what?”

“We’re presently in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, traveling at eleven knots, bearing Southeast deeper into the middle of nowhere, and you’re with us, because our mission happens to be a six man operation, and until you came along, we only numbered five.”

“But you know that I’m not one of you.” Mateo is still struggling to enunciate.

“We don’t need you to have any experience,” Ebraim explains. “We just need another warm body.”

“You mean you need a human sacrifice,” Mateo guesses.

Ebraim chuckles. “You’re so smart, why are you lying about who you are?”

He adjusts his position a little, and smacks his lips. “Water.”

Ebraim doesn’t break eye contact as he lifts his left hand, and snaps his fingers twice. A man Mateo doesn’t know yet places a bottle in it, which he transfers to Mateo.

“I just needed a new life.” When in doubt, be honest, but maybe not too honest. He does not intend to throw the forger under the bus, or say one word about his own team. It just needs to be believable, and only moderately close to the truth. He also shouldn’t add too many details. “I needed a new identity. The forger asked me if I wanted military credentials. I was in a pretty bad way at the time, and it seemed like an all right idea. I didn’t really think through the consequences. He gave me this little card that said I’m blah, blah, blah. I tucked it away, and didn’t worry about it. I didn’t think it would actually come up, because what I didn’t realize is that he also put my name in the system. It actually looks like I bear rank, and have a record. It’s only recently come back to bite me in the ass, I’m really sorry.”

Ebraim laughs again. “Ah, hell, we don’t give a shit about that. Way I see it, if the military doesn’t kill you, it screws up your life. The only way out is to lie, steal, and cheat. I’d be a hypocrite if I thought only people like me deserved to break the rules. I’m not a good man, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

“This isn’t a sanctioned mission?”

He helps Mateo to his feat, and starts to lead him into the inside part of the boat, whatever it’s called. “It’s sanctioned by the five of us. I suppose that’ll hafta be good enough. You don’t mind, do ya?”

“Why are you talking differently now?”

“My mama’s southern side comes out every now and then,” Ebraim replies. “I don’t work as hard to suppress it among friends.”

Now Mateo laughs. “I reckon we ain’t friends.”

Ebraim smiles. “Well, we’ll see. Let’s start small. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of the team.”