A Chronetic Memory (The Chronography Records Book 1) by Kim K. O'Hara Page A

then stepped into the box and let the sensors integrate with her brain. The rest of this she could almost do with her eyes closed, if she didn’t have to set and check the parameters.
    She placed the first object in the chamber.

13
Disruption
    HUNTER’S OFFICE. 1320, Wednesday, June 7, 2215.
    It was t ime. Hunter stood and moved out from behind his massive desk. Its size was meant to make him less accessible and more intimidating, but he always preferred to stand.
    With a quick gesture of his hand, he pulled the connexion icon over to the center of the sparsely populated viewwall. Another twist and a microphone icon pulsed, awaiting his spoken command. “Dr. Brant,” he spoke into the air. The microphone vanished. He waited only seconds before the scientist’s image appeared on his wall. His own image to her was blank. They expected that. It protected their privacy, he always assured them, should anyone look over their shoulders and see the screen.
    He waited while she stood and closed the door to her office. That was good. What he had to say would not be overheard.
    “You are alone?” he asked her.
    “Yes. They just left. What did you want me to see?”
    “Something has come into my possession that might, shall we say, dredge up old memories. It’s not the sort of thing you’d want out where someone might access it inadvertently—or intentionally.”
    “Someone already has, obviously.”
    “I have gone to the trouble of ensuring that I have the only copy. I just want you to know the enormity of what I’m protecting you from. You have a holographic projector there, as I suggested?
    She tapped the desktop device to her left. “I have it. Here’s the icon.”
    A small rotating image of a hologram appeared on his viewwall. “Will you have privacy long enough to watch it?”
    “Yes, my office door is closed. I won’t be disturbed.”
    He waved again at a corner of the screen and sent the recording to her projector. As he played the recording on his projector, she would be able to view it simultaneously on hers. Another quick glance through the glass door assured him that his executive secretary was busy with a list he had given him earlier, his back to the soundproof office, oblivious for the moment as to anything that occurred within.
    “Watch.” He touched the start button.
     
    A garden bloomed before them, late summer flowers and tree branches nodding gently in the breeze. A fountain gurgled in the background, and birds chirped. The scents of late-blooming lilacs, hybrid tea roses, and honeysuckle mingled with faint smells of city exhaust settling down from the air overhead. On a cobblestone patio to the right of the hologram sat a bistro set, two white wrought-iron chairs and a matching table.
    A distinguished-looking middle-aged man emerged from the left, his hand on the elbow of a young woman in a fluffy pink sweater. His gesture was one of support, not control. His expression was sympathetic, his actions considerate. He pulled out a chair for the woman, who was clearly shaken.
    On the viewwall, he could monitor Dr. Brant’s reactions to what she was seeing and hearing. As he watched, her face hardened, which was not what he’d hoped. He did not want to strengthen the hint of resistance she had been showing. He frowned. She would know this scene well, would remember sitting in that chair some nine years earlier. She would remember Dr. Mitchum Seebak and the conversation they had that day. He could only hope that the memories would stir up the guilt she had buried.
    There it was now: another emotion crossing her features. He saw shame, followed by regret, and those responses, in the principled woman that he knew her to be, would be enough to secure her firmly in his grasp. Ironic that he could use her very principles against her this way.
    In the hologram, the other scientist was speaking. “Please, sit, Marielle. Relax. I’m here to listen, but not until you’re ready.”
    “I’m ready, Mitch.