Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23) Read online

  “Yes,” Akiyama said. “Exactly.”

  “You know, the family war in Revelen I just went through is starting to seem simple compared to what you've dropped me into,” I said as he stepped off the curb into the street and someone honked their horn. I waved at them and yelled, “It's fine, I'm fine, don't worry,” as Akiyama hobble-walked me across the street and the car rolled on without another thought to my safety. “That bastard wasn't honking because he was worried about me being hurt, he was honking because we were in his way. Damned inconsiderate Iowans.”

  “In fairness to him, I failed to use a crosswalk,” Akiyama said. “To my shame.”

  “It's called jaywalking and it's not that big a deal in America,” I said, fighting against a dizzy, black feeling pressing in against my consciousness. “How did this paradox happen?”

  “I do not know,” Akiyama said. “It could be a naturally-occurring phenomenon-”

  “How the hell would me being saved as a child by my adult self be in any way 'naturally occurring'?”

  Akiyama didn't miss a step. “I don't know. Time is mysterious in its permutations and flexible in its course – until it is neither.”

  “...The hell does that mean?”

  “You will see,” Akiyama said.

  “Oh, goody.”

  He pulled me into an alleyway, and I managed to catch myself on a wall as he let me loose. It wasn't cruel or sudden, but he definitely communicated by body movement that he wasn't going to hold me up any longer. I thudded against a wall, back first, as I grimaced against the pain. “You will heal in hours. Once you have, you need to track down your mother.”

  I squinted at him, trying to manage the pain. Seething didn't help much, but it was better than nothing. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You know her,” he said, and a strange buzz of invisibility ran across his midsection as he seemed to dip out of existence. “With that knowledge, you should be able to find her.”

  “That makes no sense,” I said, clutching at my arm. The shoulder wasn't squirting blood, but only because I was creating an impromptu butterfly bandage just by the application of my own pressure. If I moved before it healed, it would rip open and I'd start bleeding all over again. “I'm in Iowa, in 1999, and you're asking me to find my mother. I just told you I don't ever remember living in Iowa. How the hell am I supposed to find her on unfamiliar ground, in an unfamiliar time?”

  “Because regardless of time,” he said, all serious and grave, another patch of invisibility running over his lower body as it seemed to phase out of sight, “she is still your mother.”

  And then he was gone.

  I thudded my head against the brick wall. “Clearly...” I said, gritting my teeth against the pain as it swelled, again, to a crescendo, and I toppled over into a trash can, “...you know nothing about me...or my mother...”

  Then I was out again.

  I woke to a click, the sound of something mechanical, something familiar...

  Something...

  Serious.

  A gun safety being flicked off.

  I opened my eyes to find myself staring down a long barrel, one that swept back to a shotgun, pool of circular darkness right in the center where the shot would come flying out and blow my brains out the back of my head.

  Looking past the gun, I saw pale hands gripping it steadily, and a blue eye staring at me over the open sights, a single overhead bulb granting me sight in the dark of the alley.

  “This keeps getting better and better,” I mumbled, testing my shoulder. Still hurt, but not as bad. I looked at the woman who held her shotgun on me, steadily, finger on the trigger. “Hi, mom.”

  6.

  “I already have a round in the chamber,” my mother said, keeping the shotgun steady at my face, “so I have no need to threaten you by racking one just for the scary sound it makes-”

  “Yep, never go without a round ready to fire, that's just amateur hour,” I said, looking at her through partially squinted eyes. “And don't even get me started on the kind of idiot that would eject a precious shell just to threaten. Losers.”

  “Make no mistake, I am threatening you,” she said, and she brought the barrel a little closer. Not close enough I could snatch it and knock it away, but enough to menace. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sienna Catherine Nealon,” I said, and watched my mother's jaw tighten. “The grown-up version, anyway. You should know. You hauled the miniature version of me away from the playground earlier.”

  “You could at least pick a more plausible lie,” she said, keeping the gun leveled on me. “Rather than one that's transparently, stupidly obvious.”

  “If I was interested in lying, yes, I could have,” I said, putting on a kind of hammy rural accent. “I could have come up with something like, 'I'm Jane, from Des Moines, and my meta powers are wrasslin' pigs'. Something like that.” I locked eyes with her. “But I'm Sienna, from Minneapolis, and I'm a succubus. And I am in the very, very wrong year.”

  “Why would I believe you?” she asked, almost whispering.

  “Because you raised me, nimrod,” I said, feeling a nice ache along my flank where I'd collapsed on the trash can. “Because I just took a bullet for you – and me, technically. Because in your time at the agency, you had to have seen some weird shit. I don't think I've been active in the meta world as long as you have and the shit I have seen? Would frizz – well, actually straighten – even your hair.”

  Her hair was totally straight, but most people probably didn't realize that was the work of a flat iron, because my mother, like me, had some serious natural frizz. “I'll grant you there's some weird stuff out there,” she said, not lowering the shotgun at all. “But you want to sell me on this bullroar about you being Sienna? Sell me. For real. Tell me something only the two of us would know, not stupid details about my hair that anyone could have figured out from following me.”

  “Listen, mom, your hair's natural curl was a closely guarded secret from the outside world when I was growing up,” I said. “Explain to me why you spent all that damned time flat-ironing it – we're talking hours a week out of your life – if you didn't want to keep it quiet?” I shook my head. “All right, fine. You want the inside dirt only someone who grew up in your house would know? Here goes: you shed like a dog-”

  “So do a lot of women. That's hardly convincing evidence.”

  “I mean it's everywhere. You don't even bother to clean it, you made me do it, so I was forever running a wet piece of toilet paper against the baseboards and coming away with a full fur-baby, like we had one of those long-haired dogs-”

  “That's not specific enough.”

  “Fine,” I said, seething. “You trim your nails with scissors and no damns given for where the clippings fall. Which is really gross, by the way. Walking out to watch TV in the morning and getting a big toe's splinter stuck in my foot? I'd dance the heebie jeebies out, wake you up, and you'd get so mad-”

  She lowered the barrel an inch. “That's...possible.”

  “You believe me now?” I asked. “Because of toenails? Good to know.” I gestured to my shoulder. “Mind helping me up? Gently? I don't want to tear this scab-stitch before it has a chance to fully heal.”

  “Hold it right there, missy,” she said. “I need some questions answered first. The basics, at least – let's assume I go along with who you say you are-”

  “Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. I took a bullet for you – and me – so that's really touching, ma.”

  “-but I still want to know the answers to the other questions – what, when, where, why and how.”

  I blinked. “Well, 'where' and 'when' are kinda obvious, aren't they? Clearly Des Moines, 1999. Actually, I should be asking you why the hell Iowa-”

  “Fine,” she waved the barrel just slightly, an inch or so. “'What, why, how'. Answer them.”

  “Uhm...I don't fully know?” I shrugged, it hurt my shoulder, I did a little cringe. “Okay, try this –
I got dragged out of my life by this guy I know who messes with time. Told there's a problem with...well, time.”

  Her eyes narrowed in the shadows of the alley. “What's the name of your Doc Brown figure in this?”

  “Oh, cool, we can use Back to the Future as a point of reference,” I said. “That'll make things easier. His name's Akiyama.”

  She bristled, brought the gun back on target. “Akiyama has been on an isolated island in Japan for decades. No one sees him.”

  “Not in 1999, obviously,” I said, “but in the future – your future, my past – I helped him solve his...issues. Anyway, he's out and about doing stuff again. Including messing with my life and ripping me out of time, apparently.”

  “Okay, that's 'how'. Why?” she asked. “And what's happening?”

  “If you can get him to tell you, you'll be having better luck than I am,” I said. “Speaking of, how are those bullet wounds treating you?”

  “Superficial,” she said. “Yours hit an artery?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But it was a through and through, so at least I didn't have to extract the bullet in a dirty alley with my fingers.”

  She lifted up the shotgun barrel, finally taking it off me. She watched me carefully, but there was inch of relaxation in her features. “You really are Sienna, aren't you? You said it exactly like I would have.”

  “Well, I learned from the best,” I said, offering a hand. She took it and carefully pulled me up, and I tugged loose of her before my powers could start to work. “Careful. You don't want to end up in my head.”

  She blinked, trying to keep her composure. “So... you're a succubus, too?”

  “Well, I'm not a windkeeper like dad,” I said, and she flinched slightly. “Yeah. I'm a succubus. Like my mother and grandmother before me.” That sent off a little chill down the back of my neck. If this was 1999, my mom had no idea her mother was alive. If there was any lesson I'd learned from Back to the Future, it was that telling people too much about the future and exposing them to knowledge they shouldn't know was only a good idea if they were going to be gunned down by Libyan terrorists.

  “You know about your grandmother?” she asked, muted.

  “I've been through...a hell of a lot,” I said. “Almost all of which I can't even tell you about, because...”

  “Timeline,” she said, nodding slowly. “That'd be a convenient lie, if audaciously big. Making some nice gaps in your back story that you don't have to answer because it'd 'ruin my future'.” She did not raise the shotgun, though.

  “And yet,” I said, “here we are. There are just things I flat-out can't tell you.”

  “You became like me?” she asked, looking me over. “Your job, you...?”

  “I hunt criminal metas, yeah,” I said, “though it's more of a calling than a job at this point, strictly speaking.” How much did I want to explain to my mother that I'd spent the last two years on the run? Kinda like she was now?

  Not at all. That was how much I wanted to share with my mother that little nugget.

  And how had I not connected those dots before now? That yet again I'd followed in the footsteps of Sierra Nealon, hiding from the powers that be?

  “That's...really something,” she said, but didn't look me in the eye. “Are you any good at it?”

  “I do all right,” I said. “Saved the world a time or two.”

  She inclined her head, a very slight show of respect. “Not bad.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Uhm...where am I?”

  She blinked. “Right here.”

  “No, I mean – where am I?”

  “Des Moines, Iowa-” she said, a little slowly, about a second from taking a step back.

  “Not me, here in the alley,” I said, coming off the wall to a burst of pain in the shoulder. “Argh, ow. Not big me – little me, from earlier. The one the guys with guns were after. Where's she?”

  “Sleeping,” mom said, a little more guarded. “I had to leave her behind to...hunt you down. It's not like I could leave her in the car parked on the street. She's safe, though.”

  “You left me alone in a house? How could you – oh, never mind, this totally makes sense,” I said. “It's like a preview of my future. Of course you left me alone. How'd you find me?”

  She frowned, thinking it through. “Oh. Big you this time?”

  “Let's go with 'adult me', to spare my feelings. Also, I'm down quite a bit over where I was a couple years ago, so let's not send me into a shame spiral.”

  Her frown deepened. “You left a blood trail from the scene. Picked it up outside the police perimeter, followed you right to it. You're lucky they didn't pick it up. They'd have found you before I did.”

  “Who are the bad guys?” I asked, steadying myself.

  She seemed to make a decision, of sorts. “Come on,” she said, and beckoned me forward, putting the shotgun aside, letting the barrel droop to mid-calf. “Let's get you out of here. Your wound may have scabbed up, but we should bandage it until it fully heals. Can you walk on your own?”

  “I doubt it,” I said, still huddled against the wall, leaning on it.

  A moment of indecision flickered across her features, and she reached a hand out. “Well...let's go. Before I change my mind about this insanity.”

  “Yes, helping your adult daughter walk after a GSW is definitely insanity,” I said, pushing off the wall slowly and letting her snug an arm around my waist as we limped down the alley together. She slipped the shotgun beneath her coat. “Actually it's more like a family teambuilding exercise. Ow. Ow. Let's not turn it into a trust fall, though. Because that would probably re-open my arterial bleed.” With every step, a little jarring movement of pain scorched down my shoulder where I'd taken the bullet.

  “My daughter is not currently an adult,” mom said, terse, “so forgive me if this is a little outside my present realm of experience.”

  “You're forgiven,” I said as we approached the mouth of the alley. There were street lights glowing a white-yellow, shining down on the quiet avenue. Red and blue police lights were still flashing in the distance on the other side of the park, where they were maintaining a perimeter or vigil. “But the question remains – who were those guys? Who were they with? And what did they want with me? Little me?”

  My mother's jaw worked into a tight joint as we moved along the street, her helping me with every step. “I don't know,” she said, as we hobbled on into the night. “And not knowing...well, it scares the hell out of me.”

  7.

  “Seriously, why Iowa?” I asked, leaning my head against the cool, passenger-side glass pane of my mother's car. “You raised me better than Iowa. Hell, you raised me to rag on Iowa every chance I got.”

  My mother was at the wheel, the street lights shining in through the windshield, shadows playing across her face as we would pass one, the instrument illumination from the car a pittance of light comparatively. “So what you're saying is, we go back to Minneapolis for the majority of your upbringing?”

  “Sorry to spoil the future for you – nah, I'm just kidding. Spoiling it would be telling you we stay in Iowa. And by spoil, I do mean 'utterly ruin, forever, desecrating any and all hope'. Because, Iowa.”

  “It's a nice place,” she said, ghost of a smile disappearing as the shadows returned after we passed another street light. “Quiet, until now.”

  “So you have no idea who those guys with guns were?” I asked, pulling my head off the window. How many times had I ended up injured in cars, letting someone else drive me somewhere while I tried to heal and use the car window's coolness to soothe me from the pain? It felt like a lot. Hadn't I done that with Angel a week ago? Or...twenty years hence? Whatever it was. Time was so confusing.

  “They could be...I don't know,” my mother said. “I had no shortage of enemies when I left the biz. It could be that guy...that guy that just...that killed-”

  “Dad?” I asked, flicking a gaze toward her. She registered a little surprise, then nodded,
once. “Yeah. I know all about dad and how he came to his end.”

  “Do you know who that man was?” mom asked. “The one who killed him? The one who-”

  “I know him,” I said. Sovereign. That bastard. I knew him and I'd killed him. Story of my life. Meet bad guy, kill bad guy. That's the Sienna Nealon way.

  “It could be him,” she said. “But he's hardly the only person I've pissed off in my life.”

  “I can sympathize with that,” I said, nodding along. “Like for example, I put all these people in meta jail. Took years. And then a Supreme Court decision set them all free-”

  “Why was the Supreme Court ruling on a metahuman case...?”

  “Doesn't matter,” I said, trying to gloss over that. Metas had been outed en masse when I was eighteen; I'd forgotten that right now we were in a world where people having superpowers was a closely held secret. “Anyway, they all got released and, big surprise, decided to come after me.” I chuckled, mostly to keep from crying, since that sequence of events had resulted in my entire life going down in flames and fugitivity. Which is a word I just made up. “Good times.”

  “Looks like you made it through okay,” she said, a little cautiously, looking over at me.

  “I did,” I said. “They didn't do so well, though.”

  She only gave me another moment's consideration before nodding, curtly. “Good.”

  “So... how long have you been living in hell?” I asked, indicating the window and the greater Des Moines metropolitan area with a nod of my head.

  “Not long,” she said with an under-the-breath chuckle. “We just got here.” Her smile disappeared. “Already feels like forever, though.”

  “Iowa will do that to you. It's 1999, and summer, so...I'm five,” I said, working it through in my head.

  “Do you remember any of this?” she asked, nodding at the buildings passing outside the car.

  “No,” I said, frowning.

  “Most people don't remember much before they're five or six,” she said, shrugging lightly as she guided the car into a turn down a residential street. “I guess it's not that uncommon, what you're experiencing.” A little veil of suspicion remained on her face that she couldn't hide, though.