Free The Curiosity Killers by K W Taylor

would like to speak with you if you’re not up to a formal interview.”
    Fallon nodded. “I’ll talk with him a bit.”
    Doctor Vere looked to be in his early sixties. His hair was tightly curled, his complexion tan but his features Caucasian. Fallon herself might have thought him handsome in a shabby way under different circumstances—that is, if she could be sure he was white, which was hard to tell—but his gruff demeanor was tough to get past. He spoke in the affected tone of a Mid-Atlantic accent, despite its having gone back out of favor at least twenty years earlier.
    “Did you go to one of those ‘new etiquette’ schools?” Fallon asked after he’d seated himself.
    Vere smirked. “You’re not nearly as backward as you seem, Ms. Fallon. Very perceptive of you.”
    Fallon gaped. “Backward? What do you—”
    “Let’s cut through these miles of bullshit,” Vere interrupted. “Look, I’ve met others like you before, Empire citizens wishing they lived in the RAA, who use history as an excuse to proliferate racism.” He glared at her. “I’ll not have good people like Miss Moto and Mr. Jonson exposed to your twisted ideologies.” Vere leaned forward. “They’re naïve, you see. But I’m not. It may not exist anymore as an organization, but people who want to see Virginia Dare, the first white person born in this fractured country, just because she symbolizes some horrible racial purity ideal to you…my God, woman, you make me sick.
    “And so,” Vere went on, sitting up straighter, “when we finish procedures today, you’ll not pursue this line any further lest you get an unwelcome visit from me that perhaps involves something metal placed in an uncomfortable spot in your person.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are we clear?”
    “You don’t want me trying this again,” Fallon clarified, “because you dislike my politics? Or are you just embarrassed I made it through your screening?”
    Vere pounded the table. “It’s not politics if it’s sheer hate, madam, and we are within our rights to refuse service to anyone.” He pointed to the closed kitchen door. “That young man out there, our Mr. Jonson…he didn’t start this agency in order to help people destroy others. Do you understand?”
    This was all getting a trifle overdramatic for Fallon’s tastes. “Look, I’ve been through a lot today,” she said. “Do you want to hear about what happened or not?”
    Vere folded his arms in front of his chest. “Sinéad Fallon, did you discover what became of the lost colony of Roanoke? Or were you somehow stymied in these efforts?”
    Fallon was startled at the way the question was phrased. “Stymied,” she blurted out. Shit. “I…I mean…oh, hell, fine. Yes, yes, I was stymied. I couldn’t get where I needed to go in time, and they thought I was a witch or something.”
    Vere nodded. “It’s funny. Some research Mister Jonson hadn’t found a few days ago sprang up just this morning.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket of his jacket.
    Fallon stared at it, a feeling of dread settling over her. “What is that?”
    Vere unfolded the paper with agonizing slowness and passed it to her. Fallon scanned the blurry photocopy, feeling the first stirrings of panic.
    Before the trip, before contracts were even signed, Jonson and Vere went over everything with grave seriousness. “Client shall in no way impact historical events,” the stipulation went. The younger one, Ben, read that one and smiled at her. “But that’s super unlikely,” he’d assured her. “You’d have to really screw up to do that. ”
    And yet here was a page out of a history book showing a woodcut of a woman with short hair who looked all too familiar.
    “Is that me?” she murmured. Her stomach felt heavy and yet empty at the same time, as if she’d been filled with air. “Oh, my God, that’s supposed to be me.”
    Vere snatched the paper away. “It isn’t you, Ms. Fallon. Of