This is it.
Sherri trotted down a few steps, plastering a smile on her face, as the version of Quinn before her – which they’d designated Nexus Quinn – looked up at her with surprise.
“Steph, what are you doing in here? The basement’s off limits!” he reprimanded, his harsh tone causing Sherri to flinch out of pure reflex. She reasserted a confident posture, and descended the final few steps.
“If you want that much privacy, you may want to invest in a lock, Quinn,” she said with a light smirk, hoping that Stephanie would have this kind of relaxed attitude to her husband. She casually leaned against the banister. “Where’d you just come back from?”
His expression softened, giving way to excitement about his adventuring. A broad smile drew across his face.
“Oh man, I can’t even describe to you how cool that place was,” he said, blue eyes shining. “The technology is incredible, and the inhabitants–!”
He rushed across the room to a computer workstation. “I gotta record the coordinates, because I’m not done there by a long shot.”
Sherri had encountered a few people matching Quinn’s bio-genetic signatures during her time in training, and each were different in subtle ways. She just had to suss out this one’s quirks.
She moved her gaze to John, who was looking over Nexus Quinn’s shoulder as he typed.
“Okay, so he has advanced to the point of at least storing coordinates,” John said, typing furiously into his handlink, in a strange parallel to this Quinn’s equally furious typing on his keyboard. “We could be nearing the key date… if only we knew what that actual date was.”
Let’s hope we haven’t missed it, she found herself thinking.
Nexus Quinn spun around on his swivel chair, to face Sherri.
“This could be really lucrative for us,” he said, rubbing his hands together excitedly.
Sherri forced a smile as she studied his appearance. His hair was neatly combed and styled, he wore a smart pinstripe shirt tucked into trousers and a belt, and his shoes, though somewhat covered in dust from his journey, had clearly been recently polished.
She took mental notes. Takes pride in his appearance, quite business-minded. Possessive about his lab, seems to slide alone.
She noticed him looking at his wristwatch, the design of which struck Sherri as a mid-range Audemars Piguet.
Okay, whatever he’s doing on these other worlds is bringing in a decent paycheck.
Although the house here wasn’t a mansion, it couldn’t have been cheap to live so close to the bay. And to have a live-in nanny as well, they must have been doing pretty well. However, she wasn’t familiar with the rules of this world just yet, and the economic situation could have been dramatically different.
Not to mention, she wasn’t aware of the financial positions of Quinn’s or Stephanie’s parents in this world. They could have been funding a lot of this lifestyle, too. She’d have to get John to look into that.
“Well, that sounds great,” she said, finally replying to his comment. “When’s your next slide?”
“Same as usual,” Quinn said, distractedly flipping through a notebook. “Listen, I’ve got some stuff to do… so…”
Sherri took the hint. “Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “I’ll get out of your hair.”
She exchanged a look with John, before turning towards the door and heading up the stairs.
“See you after your shift,” Quinn called out as she passed through the door. She briefly turned back.
“Yeah… my shift,” she said, her eyes panning over the basement, cluttered with electrical gear. John was wandering around, studying everything closely. She closed the door, and leaned her forehead against it, taking a moment to breathe.
She hadn’t felt this nervous in some time, but this was such a big deal that the tense feeling in her chest was threatening to overpower her resolve.
She just needed to calm herself. Anxiety was the biggest enemy of a mission. It caused irrational thinking, paralysis, and worst of all, mistakes. She couldn’t allow it to control her right now, like it had controlled her in her old life.
I feel a wooden panel door and its brass knob. I smell a salty ocean breeze from the bay. I see the polished wooden banister of a staircase. I taste the remnants of a cappuccino in my mouth.
I hear… a screeching toddler.
She winced at the scream that pierced through her attempts to calm herself. She peered towards the living room, hidden as best she could behind the stairs, to see Wade unstrapping Cory from the stroller, and picking him up.
“There there,” Wade said, bouncing him on her hip. “What’s the matter?”
“I want Mommy…” cried the little boy, and Sherri felt her heart breaking.
She’s not here right now. Sorry, kid.
“Mommy’s having a sleep right now,” Wade said, shushing the child. “Why don’t we put on some Barney, huh?”
The crying seemed to calm down at this. As Wade crossed to the television, Sherri used the opportunity to start ascending the stairs. But upon placing her foot on the third step up, a loud creak betrayed her presence.
“Oh, did Cory wake you?” Wade asked, as Sherri attempted to appear like she was just coming down the stairs.
“No, no. Couldn’t sleep,” she muttered, training her eyes on Cory, who was now staring at her. She smiled at him, hoping her grandmotherly appearance would appease the child. “Hey, little man.”
He stared at her, wide-eyed and silent, as she approached. At least he wasn’t screaming now.
“We were just about to put this on,” Wade said, waving around a VHS tape with a purple dinosaur on it.
Sherri responded with an unconvincing grin, that may have looked more like a grimace than anything. The look made Wade giggle.
“Yeah, I know. I’m sick of it, too.”
She popped open the case, and appeared to struggle to continue one-handed.
Sherri held out a hand. “Here, let me.”
She grabbed the tape and popped it onto the VCR, which sat atop a large television presently showing a screen of static snow.
As the tape fed into the VCR, waking up the machine, its signal replaced the snow, and a well-worn tape began to play, featuring painful children’s music.
Wade sat Cory down on the floor, and his eyes were now glued to the dancing dinosaurs and their child friends.
So far, so good, Sherri thought, relaxing just a little. The child hadn’t raised any red flags yet, but she figured she had just got lucky.
She thought about Quinn’s last comment. ‘See you after your shift.’ She must have a job. But what? And when?
She turned to Wade. “My, uh, shift is soon, right?”
Wade’s eyes widened, startled. “Oh yeah! I gotta get your dinner together!”
She hurried towards the kitchen. “Sorry, I’ll have it ready in twenty minutes, okay?”
She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Sherri concerned for what this job was that she apparently had.
“You’re a nurse at Saint Francis Memorial, and you start at five,” John said, striding through the wall. Sherri gave a sigh of relief.
“Thanks,” she murmured to him. Fortunately, she had medical training that would get her through it. “While I’m gone, I’ll need you to stick around here, keep an eye on Quinn.”
John nodded. “Of course.”
As he spoke, his eyes looked past her, towards the television. He bit his lip. She turned, following his gaze, and saw that Cory was staring at the two of them.
“Oh boy,” John said, as Maggie crossed to the boy.
“Hey, Cory,” she said softly. He looked up at her in confusion.
“Where’s my Mommy?” he said, in a voice that threatened a new round of cries.
“Uh, she’s not here right now,” Sherri said. “Promise she’ll be back soon. But me and my friend here are going to be playing with you for a little while, okay? I want you to pretend I’m Mommy. Can you do that for me?”
Cory furrowed his brow as he stared at her. “You’re not Mommy.”
“I know, sweetie. But I want to play pretend with you. I’m your pretend Mommy, okay?”
Cory frowned. “Pretend Mommy…” he repeated with confusion.
John approached, kneeling on the floor.
“Hey there! My name is Sam,” he said, in as sweet a voice as Sherri had ever heard from him.
Sherri reminded herself that ‘Sam’ was his actual name, as ‘Maggie’ was hers. But she hadn’t used hers in a long time. On the other hand, he was still known as ‘Sam’ to most people, while ‘John’ was more of a nickname to him. Or, perhaps, code name. A remnant of a time when there was a need to differentiate him from her Uncle Sam, that just sort of stuck.
John gestured to the TV. “Who’s that?” he asked Cory.
“Barney,” replied the boy, in an incredulous tone, as though it were unthinkable that someone wouldn’t know.
“Barney,” John repeated, thoughtful. “I didn’t know dinosaurs could sing. Last I heard, they went rawr!”
He raised his hands, forming them into a claw-like shape, and bared his teeth as he roared. Cory laughed at his comical expression.
Sherri smiled, relieved at John’s rapport with the kid. It was always a good idea to endear oneself to small children and animals where possible.
John pulled himself to his feet again, turning to Sherri. “I gotta get back in the basement, see what our friend’s up to.”
As he raised his handlink, he gave a final look towards Cory. “Wanna see something really cool?” he asked, before tapping on the screen, and disappearing.
Cory let out an amazed squeal, and held a hand out to the space that had previously held his holographic form. His wonder turned to confusion, as he looked at Sherri.
“Where that man gone?” the child asked her.
“Sam is magic,” she explained. “He’ll be back soon, okay?”
Cory nodded. “Barney is magic,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, he’s magic, just like Barney,” she replied, patting him on the head, before spotting her reflection in the mirror once more. Stephanie’s green eyes looked back at her, and Sherri gave her a silent apology for the intrusion.
If I’m successful in my mission, then at least there’ll be a Stephanie left to forgive me.