Fan Fiction ❯ A Kiss In Time ❯ Death in a Tux ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

A Kiss In Time

By Nix Duo Winter AKA Mayonaka

Oh my god! Death's wearing a tux!" The voice belonged to Kristin Stone, the computer programmer for the Seattle office of public security. In truth the Office of Pubic Safety was just a dumping ground for former war 'heroes'.

Tam turned and glared at her. "Shut up, will you?"

She grinned and held a magazine called This Very Moment!, and much to his horror, he was the cover. "You're the single of the month, McOwen! I didn't believe the tux though until I saw you in person!"

"Give me that damn thing," he growled and snatched the magazine from her. There he was on the cover, standing by the window in the Space Needle. The more he looked at the photo, the more he wanted to kick someone's ass. There he was, prefect tux, his braid wrapped over his shoulder. The black pearls braided into it reflected against the glass he was leaning against, his knees drawing up. He looked like a little boy, not one of the five fighters that freed humanity from McOwen Dictatorship. He was brushing the tip of his braid over his fingers, the red hair fanned out over pale fingers like thin strands of silk. The worst thing about the photo was that his violet eyes looked like they were filling with tears, tears that look reflected in the dark glass of the Space Needle. Night time Seattle spread out beyond the glass, a myriad of colors streaking their reflections across glass as the convention center of the new needle turned slowly. The damn party wasn't even over and they already had his face plastered on their damn magazines! The headline read, "Death is lonely?"

"Hey, careful with that magazine! Maybe they're still doing paper in the colonies, but here those things cost a lot and last a long time if crazy, lonely, death gods don't rip the hell out of them!"

Tam forced his fingers to relax. It wasn't the magazine he wanted to strangle it was that damn photo journalist! Quickly he flipped through the pages. They felt like paper to him, even though he knew it was all digital content on very expensive media. Teh by line attributed the photo to Rika Katayama. "I knew it! There ought laws against this! If she published any of my contact information I'm gonna sue her within an inch of her life."

"I already looked it over, Tam," Merrit said, coming out of his office. He was the office's legal council. "You were at a public function. You are a public figure and you look damn cute in that photo."

Tam tossed the magazine back at Kristin. "Cute! I look like a love lorn teenager," he said, sounding calm, not quite murderous.

"You are only 19," Merrit pointed out. Walking next to each other, Tam almost looked like a child. Colony born, he was only five feet tall. Merrit was a half a foot taller than he was, broader in the shoulders than Tam. Tam's body was well proportioned though, the perfect pilot's body, lean, powerful, fast without any extra weight to carry around, not counting his hair. As he walked, the long braid swayed gently, barely brushing against his back. "And you are lonely. Maybe this will be a good thing, Tam. Maybe it'll bring someone into your life."

Tam snorted. "If I wanted some insane girl to come around me like I was actually a deity, I'd run an ad. The last time I dated someone, she ran away crying. Does that tell you something?"

"That you should stay away from the little socialites?" Nicholas LaBauva teased. Labauva had fought with Tam, occasionally, during the war. "She probably just couldn't stand how damn hyper you get at times."

"Or the fucking mess I'm sure your place must be. Still, you look damn fine in that pic, makes me just wanna snuggle you," Violet purred at him. The large Chinese woman gave him a look as he passed that was a little more interested than just teasing. It made Tam just want to grab Merrit and use him as a shield.

"What are all of you doing here," Tam turned on them suddenly, walking backwards with Merrit. Half the office must have been there. Legal, computer, weapons, and public relations were all in the office. Maybe this emergency was really an emergency and not just the rescue he'd made Merrit promise to give him after a couple hours of putting in his appearance. "Didn't any of the rest of you have to put in an appearance at that damn anniversary party?"

"I went," Merrit said. "The rest of them are hiding out here."

"We were having our own celebration," Kristin said, bravely displaying a bourbon glass with the ice all melted into the dark fluid. "You're the only real public figure between us. So you just had to go for the office."

"I was your fucking sacrificial deer, that's what," Tam teased back, feeling in a much better mood now that he knew he wasn't the only one who didn't want to go hob knob.

"But you're such a cute sacrificial animal," Violet said with a smile.

"Yeah, well, we're a team, so next time one of these damn things comes up we all get a tux or I ain't going, no matter how much Gomez tells me I got to."

"You got paid for going. Quit bitching, McOwen," LaBauva said, hitting him upside the head with a wadded up ball of paper.

"But he's so good at it," Merrit complained. "Party or not, we have a live mission now. You're on the clock, get your mission threads taken care of."

Tam let Merrit grab him by the arm and draw him into the secure mission briefing room. "Tam, take a look at the briefing, read through it quick, then we'll talk."

"Why didn't you tell me it was a live mission?" Tam asked as he slipped out of his tux jacket. The room was small, just enough chairs for each of them and possibly one of the most secure rooms in all of Seattle.

"Because this is something you need to see to believe," Merrit said mysteriously, laying his hand over the the scanner imbedded into the table. It scanned, a blue light flickering around his palm. "Hurry up and jack in, Tam."

Jacking in like this was always like watching porn in a classroom, exciting but not a damn thing gonna come of it. It wasn't anything like his dragon. He rubbed his palms together then pressed his palm to the faintly blue glass of the jack. Excitement already began to bubble in him, even before the light started to warm his skin. He knew he'd stay jacked all the time, if he could. Rapidly, the energy connected to his nerves, patching into his central nervous system and then into his mind.

The little conference room was gone now, and they stood in the virtual control center. The room was very simple and looked a lot like control center for Tam's Dragon on The Emerald City, the colony he'd been born on. That the place looked so much like a place that was important to Tam meant that he was the most dominate personality/mind that jacked into this space.

Merrite looked around the place. "I swear, every time you come in here, it gets a little closer to having actual grime in it. Don't you identify with any place that doesn't include engine oil turned to black sludge.

"What?" Tam grinned, actually feeling much more at home with the perceived slightly lighter gravity and the delightfully homey reek of shuttle grease. He grinned, his face really lightening for the first time since he'd gotten in the office, making him look just as young as he had in that photo. "Doesn't every one grow up in the docking bay of a salvage colony."

"Emerald City is not a salvage colony, Tam," Merrit said, uncomfortable with what he knew about Tam's childhood, even a little with what he was about to send this kid off to do. "Tell me what you think about this."

Merrit made a motion with one hand, signaling with his body what his mind had triggered. An oval screen flickered into being in front of them, pixels flickering like black and white confetti until it was solid, then it grew into full color, sound, scent, temperature, the full experience, until it wasn't on the screen anymore, but surrounding them.

They stood in a park, in Mexico maybe. It was hot and smelled like tamales. Tam voted Mexico, maybe some where by **. "Mexico?"

"Very good. This was recorded about four hours ago. Four hundred years ago this was an island. Global warming submerged it, then as we got that under control, land reclamations made it into part of the main landmass of Mexico."

The wave of heat took Tam by surprise. It preceded a burst of light that was really more like the sudden absence of light, and then it's return to eyes that didn't expect it. Deposited on the smoking ground only a few feet from an empty play ground. Tam was glad it was night, that heat wave, the odd lights wouldn't have been good for a bunch of little Earth born kids.

The boy sat on the ground, curled over on himself like he'd had the wind knocked out of him seriously. He was African maybe, or Mexican, dark skin, dark short hair that was too short to seem curly or straight. His clothes were like something from a play or a movie, torn jeans, lace up shoes, a jacket with a zipper. The guy was small enough that he might have been space born, but that didn't feel quite right to Tam. Questions were just on the tip of his tongue when another heat wave hit him and the lights flicked on and off again in the park. This time it was a full grown man, Chinese, also in ancient clothes and looking pissed like he was ready to kill. Blood stains were spreading over his shoulder. Silently, he knelt down and checked for a pulse on the boy before drawing the kid, who compared to the man, might have been maybe 13/14, into his arms.

Without any warning, his body seized on him, and his eyes rolled back in his head before he collapsed next to the boy on the grass. The replay backed up, only the slightest down pull of Tam's eyebrows betraying it as his action. Then it paused with the Chinese man standing there, a glow around him where the black void had given way to normal light again. He had a strong face, cunning, beautifully proportioned.

Tam walked closer in the replay until he could look right in the man's face. It was amazing the kind of details a satellite could pick up. There was violence written in the man's face, in the blood on his shirt which was weeping from a bullet wound. Tam reached out and touched the virtual recreation of the man, running his fingers over full lips. "Who is he?"

"McOwen," Merritt said disapprovingly. "He's the target in your new mission. I can't believe you're getting a hard on over some guy you don't even know anything about."

"I know a lot about him," Tam said, running fingers across the man's eyelashes, studying his dark brown eyes. "And you're going to tell me lots I don't know. Spill it, Merry."

"You can see the figures later, for now, just take what I say as is, okay?"

Tam nodded. "Is he Chinese?"

"French national, born in Paris. His name is Bao-Sheng Chang. Born November 13, 1973, age 29 at death," Merritt rattled off the statistics.

"He's not dead," Tam said firmly. "What's he doing in our time? Who found a way to cross time?"

"We're still working on that," Merritt said, studying Tam's face, perhaps for any sign of disbelief. "The boy is his adopted son, Marc. They are both well documented talents, some of the first from the early 21st century. The boy is a telekinteic and a genius. Chang is a pre-cog. They're natural, not enhanced and from what records we could find, they're as powerful, or even more so than what we can enhance in a person now."

"So? You're saying they brought themselves forward in time?" Tam walked around the man. "He's hurt. Where is he now?"

"Reformation has them, we think. We would have picked them up sooner, but they evaded us."

Tam grimaced. "They're both passed out, one of them is bleeding, and they evaded Confederacy security forces. Why am I not surpised? What makes you think Reformation did any better? What evidence do you have that those Reformation beans have them?"

Merritt frowned. "Angelic made an assumption and I didn't question it. Where else can they be if Refromation doesn't have them?"

"The dude is a pre-cog, right? He probably just saw you coming. Not you personally, but the team that was sent. Who got sent?" Tam ran the play back a little back to where Chang first appeared, and let it move forward, slowly, studying all the details. "He was secruity forces?"

Merritt shook his head. "He was an assasin and personal security for some of the early founders of Reformation. That was another reason to think that he's with them. It is possible that they thrust him through time to protect him and the boy from dying. Their dates of death were assumed, as obviously no bodies were recovered. The complex they were in imploded, only a month after it was built. The total loss of life was estimated at 335, with them included. If Reformation did protect them, then they very likely did seek out the group they are a part of."

"No," Tam said, shanking head. "He was on the run, probably following the boy. He's not part of Reformation."

"And you base this on what? Your gut feeling? Just because you have a hard on for him does not make him a good guy."

"My gut instinct has worked good so far, not gonna start doubting it now, just cuz the guy give me a hard on," Tam said, throwing the rude comment back with a grin. "Do we have a genetic sample from him?"

"No. He was never arrested, neither him nor the boy. He was finger printed, but only digital copies remain, nothing for even a partial strand. Do you think you can find him? We really have to know how he crossed four hundred years. That techonology or talent can not be allowed into Reformation's option pool."

"You get so melodramatic, Merry, really." Tam stood up and studied the Chang's face again. "Get me permission to take the mini-dragon."

"Done already. You can leave as soon as you're suited up." Merritt motioned with his hand and unjacked both of them. Back in the room, business suit and tux, Merritt stared at him until Tam started to fidget. "You be careful out there, hotshot."

Tam took hold of the end his braid and swung it around. "I'm always careful, Merry."

"You're too young," Merritt decreed as he walked away. "Hurry up and go find your heart throb, get him back here. Don't get killed by him!"

Tam turned and grinned. "Can't kill Death!"