The Fixers #7

The buzzing in her ears began to fade.

It was completely dark. Beside her, she could hear Seb moving. The flick of a switch. An instant later, the room exploded into light.

Blinking, Gretchen looked around. She and Seb were squeezed into a tiny bathroom. There was a sink and a toilet, and the two of them took up the remaining space. The door was closed.

"We're in a bathroom," she said.

"Indeed."

Seb reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it, looked at it for a second, and nodded.

"Ready?" he asked, replacing the paper in his pocket.

Gretchen wasn't sure how to respond. Why did this bathroom suddenly seem so familiar?

"What is it?" Seb was looking at her. She opened her mouth to answer, but she wasn't sure how to explain. Seb nodded anyway. "You don't remember do you?"

"Remember what?"

"We were just here."

"We were?" She tried to think. They arrived in the bathroom. That's right! They had already arrived in the bathroom. Then they walked out and—

"Come on," said Seb. He reached out for the door knob. "We traveled back to a point before we first arrived. A timeline just disappeared, but you were there. Traveling may have mixed it up, but you'll remember."

He pressed up against her and pulled the door open. He had done that the first time, too.

"Let's go," he said looking over his shoulder. Then he turned and walked into the room.

There was someone already here. Someone they had spoken with. Someone who—

"Did you kill somebody?" She followed him out into the room, which was a well-furnished law office. Seb was staring across the room towards the desk.

She considered him. "You did. I remember."

* * *

Time.

Considering that she was now immersed in the concept of time, Gretchen found it slightly ironic that it was so difficult to measure it out.

How long had she been here now, fixing time? How to even count? By the number of Fixes? There had been a few now. By the number of times she went to sleep and woke up?

Gretchen poked her head into the corridor and looked both ways.

This place was slowly becoming home, yet she knew almost nothing about it. She didn't even know where exactly she was. Seb called it the Pod. Len, clarifying a bit for her, called it a Time Pod. Whatever that was. She called it depressing.

There were no windows; all the lights were artificial. They had clocks even though, as Seb had explained, they were outside of time. Hours were still hours, but they seemed empty and dead when they were disconnected from everything else. They piled up onto themselves but they didn't form into days and weeks.

Days meant the Earth rotating, years meant the Earth revolving. How could there be time if there was neither of those things? How could she measure out a week, when she could be in the 21st century one moment, and the 16th century the next. Then, back here in the Pod, where there wasn't any century at all.

She emerged from her room and turned left. Passing several doors which opened up to cells identical to her own except empty, she followed the corridor around a corner.

It made her head spin thinking about it all. Instead, she decided she would start learning more about her new home.

Just ahead, the corridor dead-ended at a pair of shiny metal doors, like elevator doors. There was even a keypad on the wall.

"What is this?" she had asked Seb, upon first seeing it.

"Oh, that's the Lift."

"What is it?"

"It's a lift." He looked blankly at her for a moment. "Oh, right. You Americans call it an elevator."

"I know what a lift is, idiot. What is this one doing here? Where does it go?"

"Don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Nope," he said. "I don't know."

"Isn't that strange?" she asked.

"What? That I don't know?" He waved a hand in the air. "It's not that strange. I don't know lots of things, I suspect."

She ignored him, stepping closer to the doors. "How can there be an elevator here, and nobody knows where it goes? You've never thought to ask?"

"Of course I've thought to ask." He looked up at the ceiling and called out. "Hal! What's the deal with these lift doors, eh? Where does this thing go, anyway?"

He stood looking up at the ceiling, waiting for a response. Then, he had looked back at Gretchen, wearing that stupid grin, and shrugged.

Now, she stood in front of the Lift again. She often came to look at it.

I'm going to find a way in there, she told the closed metal doors. You just wait and see.

"Action required," came the voice of Hal, sounding throughout the Pod. "A Fix has been determined."

* * *

She met Seb and Len in the Lobby. Len, as usual, had the details.

"1979," he said. "This one is a murder. Man by the name of Thomas Burkhart, a well-known defense attorney from the Washington D.C. area."

"Well, that's boring," said Gretchen, crossing her arms.

"What's that?" asked Len.

Seb snorted.

Gretchen shrugged and bit her tongue.

"The guy's a real creep," Len continued after a moment. "But good at his job. Got dismissals and acquittals for some real bad people as an attorney. Then, in the late eighties, he's brought up on multiple charges, himself. Kidnapping. Murder. Sentenced to life in prison in 1993. Dies of cancer, still in prison in 2006."

"So, someone did the guy in a couple of decades early? Good riddance." said Gretchen.

"Look," said Len, "you’ll get no argument from me. But this one is a little special."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

Len cleared his throat and looked back to Seb.

The Englishman leaned forward. "What is it?"

"The killer left a message for us."

"A message?" asked Gretchen. "What message?"

"Fix this."

* * *

The buzzing in her ears began to fade.

It was completely dark. Beside her, she could hear Seb moving. The flick of a switch. An instant later, the room exploded into light.

Blinking, Gretchen looked around. She and Seb were squeezed into a tiny bathroom. There was a sink and a toilet, and the two of them took up the remaining space. The door was closed.

"We're in a bathroom," she said.

"Indeed."

"Ready?" he asked.

He pressed up against her and pulled the door open.

"Let's go," he said looking over his shoulder.

She followed him out into the room, which was Burkhart's well-furnished law office. Daylight spilled in through a sheer curtain over the room's window. Shelves along the far wall were stacked with books from floor to ceiling.

Beside her, she heard Seb inhale a quick breath. She glanced over at him.

"What is it?" she asked.

He was staring past her, across the office. Gretchen turned to look, and stopped.

There was a woman seated there, legs propped up on the desk, watching them. Had she been there the whole time?

Casually, the woman swung her legs onto the floor, pushed the chair back, and stood facing them.

Her hair blazed red, even in the soft light coming through the window.

"Hello, Sebastian."

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Continue to The Fixers #8

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