I shook my head, mouth dry.
"I, uh, would've thought you both discussed your uh … outside employment before marriage. My agency assigned him to you on the onset of your travels, first to assess then to protect once we determined the level of technology in your brain. No one has ever mastered what Carter did. The microchips in your head are beyond belief," he explained. "Every agent in our organization knows about this singular success after decades of failure. Carter … interfered, as he is wont to do. I am not privy to the details, but I believe he conscripted Batu somehow - perhaps through force or blackmail - to work for him when you arrived in this era."
"I'm sorry … I'm having some …" Shit. I needed to talk and think and right now, my sense of detachment was yanking me into unconsciousness. I sagged and felt myself hit the cold, solid ground. My eyes closed despite my attempt to fight the darkness.
Stuck in-between places, I was vaguely aware of being lifted and carried somewhere, of the worried voices gathered around me, of the attempts to wake me.
But I stayed where I was, overwhelmed and straining not to plummet into darkness of emotion that was far, far deeper than where I had gone when Taylor passed.
I saw the man who saved me at the well on the Old West in my visions. It wasn't the first time I sensed him, but it was the first time I saw him. He had followed Fighting Badger - or perhaps me, since the Native American was stalking me - almost since I had arrived in the Old West.
But the shadowy figure, the one who saved me, had made only two appearances: once at the well and once in the tent of Ghoajin seventy years ago when he forced me to swallow the pills Carter sent with me.
The Persian was claiming that was Batu.
The man I loved, the man I thought I knew, had been lying to me.
Ask him first. He deserved a chance to refute what The Persian was saying or to deny it all. If The Persian hadn't known what he did, I would dismiss his words, because nothing was coming between Batu and me. Hanging onto the thread of hope that The Persian was wrong, his warning was then able to sink in.
Carter was close. I was being hunted. I wasn't freed or left to history; I had been lost, like a set of car keys, and both Carter and his enemies were searching. One of them, or perhaps both, had found me.