Free Nomad by JL Bryan Page B

possible."
    "What do you need from me?"
    He sighed and paused for a long moment, looking troubled.
    "We have the assassin," Taggart told her. "Another group will distract the facility's aerial defenses. What I need from you are foot soldiers, individuals who can be absolutely trusted, to break down the doors, insert Pascal into the time-travel lab, and ensure he makes his trip into the past. It hurts me to ask you to risk your life, but there remain so few we can trust..."
    "I'll do it," Raven told him. "I know good, loyal fighters."
    "Understand that none of your team will likely survive this mission," he said. Pain was visible in his eyes.
    "I've risked my life for less," Raven said. "I've killed for less. If there's a chance this can take down the regime..."
    "The regime will not only be taken down, it will be erased from history."
    "What happens then, if we succeed?" Raven asked. "Won't all our lives change?"
    "Your parents could be alive again," he said. "You may find that you grew up in the safe and happy environment your parents intended. We can spin many possibilities, but the reality is this: nobody knows, because nobody has ever traveled back and changed history. This is, however, our only opportunity to not only defeat the Secretary-General, but to undo his evil. Whatever the consequences, we must try."
    Raven nodded slowly, still trying to grasp the scope of what the old man had told her.
    "We don't have a choice," Raven said. "I can provide your foot soldiers, and I'll be part of the team myself. Just tell me what you need us to do."
    In her smelly hotel room in 2013, Raven waved her hand and told the data cube to make all the files and images vanish. She didn't feel like reviewing the horrors of the future any longer.
    Her head pounded at the resurgence of memories. The old man's visit had filled her with a profound sadness. Taggart had been her father's friend, and he had also somehow been involved in the death of her parents....she knew that, though she did not have specific memories of her parents yet. Perhaps that was for the best. She could sense terrible pain and loss there.
    She did remember the attack on the time-travel lab. After Kari had blasted open the face of the building, the team had rushed inside and come under heavy fire from the guards. Dressed in light armor to stay fast on their feet, they died one by one as they made their way inside, screaming as the heavily armored guards struck them down with a merciless barrage of glowing plasma rounds.
    Raven, Kari, and the quiet, dark-eyed assassin Pascal survived all the way to the inner sanctum of the lab. Pascal seized the prototypical time-travel device, designed for humans but not yet tested, and strapped it to his wrist. He'd been studying the information leaked from Taggart's physicist friend for weeks, so he knew how to operate it.
    While he activated the device, a squad of guards arrived and fired high-powered cutting lasers into the lab. Kari screamed as two glowing, wire-thin beams passed across her. The first destroyed her flexible armored jacket, and the second slashed across her torso, sweeping towards her heart.
    Raven pulled her friend to the floor, away from the lasers, and flung her single emergency phosphorus grenade at the squad of Providence Security guards. White fire and a blinding cloud of smoke engulfed them.
    "Kari!" Raven held her closest friend in her arms, but there was nothing she could do. The laser had sliced the girl open, and she was losing enormous quantities of blood through her gaping torso, while coughing up more through her nose and mouth. The laser had pierced her lungs. Kari's eyes turned cold and empty.
    A hand grabbed Raven, and she raised her plasma pistol, ready to kill another guard, ready to kill everyone in the facility. It wasn't a guard, though, but Pascal, crawling forward through the smoke. His legs dragged limply behind him, and he left a smear of blood--he'd been shot through the stomach, and it