Read Online The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller by Edward W. Robertson - Free Book Online Page A

wizard Korry Haltur had died of a drug overdose.
    "Did we do that?" Vette said, more quiet than I'd ever seen her. "Like, our coming back here, did it change the timeline?"
    "No." Again, I didn't quite believe myself. But there was something else here. I could already sense the dark connections rising from the depths. "But someone else did."
    "That's impossible. I just got out of theory, remember? Once we jumped in here, it became a closed loop for us. It has to play out as it currently stands. If someone else comes back from Primetime to a year before we got here, we won't notice those changes, because they won't actually step into this timestream until after what we're doing now has flowed back to them in the present."
    "I know," I said, although this particular subject was one that always knocked my head sideways. "Someone got here before us."
    "How? We left within thirty minutes of the Pods' alarm."
    "And they got here faster."
    "That makes zero sense." She laughed helplessly. "Why would they come back again? To undo what they just did?"
    I tapped at my tablet. "In a manner of speaking."
    "Well, Haltur's dead. Self-inflicted. Case closed."
    I shook my head. "We have three more days before the Pod snatches us up. Grab your gear."
    Vette was starting to look mad. "Where are we going?"
    "To see the dealer."
    That freshened her expression. "What are you up to?"
    "Finishing your lead."
    I stopped in the faded grandeur of the lobby to get out my pad. Yount was an off-grid ghost. A free radical in an age where everyone else was ensnared in the social net. I didn't even know where he lived. With just three days to track him down before we'd be snapped back to Primetime, I would normally have no chance to find him in the sprawling city.
    Except I'd listened to my gut.
    Last night at the club, the mobicam had injected his shoe with a beacon. The dumbest, simplest, most passive little device I had. On the chance Yount also had access to high-end security sanitation, I hadn't even activated it yet. I did now. My pad showed a grid of the city. A green dot lit up less than half a mile away. The system identified it as an apartment complex.
    Cabs whooshed past, but I wanted a few minutes to think. I started down the damp sidewalk. "Field test. How do we convince a wunderkind-turned-hermit to speak to us?"
    Vette bit her lip. "The Two Classic Means: threats or temptation."
    "Let's start with temptation."
    "I don't know anything about him."
    I gave her the rundown: child prodigy, education sponsored by a major corp, a rising star that suddenly went dark. "So?"
    She shrugged. "Could say we're from WesCo."
    "What if they had a falling out? That's why he went hermit?"
    "He sells drugs. We pose as buyers."
    "Pretty thin," I said. "He'll shrug us off."
    Her glare was as bright as the neon signs. "You've got better?"
    "Nope."
    She smiled, satisfied. A siren yowled, its cry echoing down the city's canyons. As we walked east, the upscale glass and steel structures fled in panic, replaced first by quaint, baroque rises, then apartments too shabby and beige to have any recognizable style whatsoever. Shells to prevent yourself from dying of the cold, that's all. And the dot leading me to Yount was within one.
    People littered the stoops and sidewalks. Few walked; most were just there , staring into the night, curled up under cardboard and three coats, sitting around smoking those sweet-smelling cigarettes, murmuring to each other, eyes glinting from deep hoods. We don't have much of what are known as poor people in Primetime. Seeing them in other worlds is always a nudge to the ribs.
    "Why do they just leave these people lying around?" Vette said, having similar thoughts. "Why would anyone want to come here?"
    "Same reason we do," I said. "Drugs."
    We reached the building indicated by my dot, a grimy walkup. Yount's name wasn't on the buzzers, but my little beacon indicated which apartment was his. I buzzed up.
    Seconds walked past and died. I