10
It seemed too intrusive to listen to Katherine’s personal journal while she was right there in the room, so I headed downstairs, grabbed a diet soda out of the fridge, and plopped down on the cushions in the big bay window. This wasn’t exactly the type of reading I had been thinking of when I saw the spot on my first visit to the house with my dad, but it was, as I had suspected, a very nice place to curl up with a book.
Figuring out how to use the controls took a few minutes. Once I had worked out the navigation, I visually scanned several of the early entries for the year. Most of them were fairly basic. The book seemed to be a cross between a journal and a reminder calendar—a note about a New Year’s Eve party Katherine had attended with Saul; a lover’s spat with Saul, who wanted to request larger quarters now that they were living together; a brief but embarrassingly vivid description of their Valentine’s Day celebration—the type of notes that someone might jot in a diary if she were too busy and too happy for a lot of introspection. Other than a rant about a coworker who had too little respect for personal boundaries, the entries made almost no mention of CHRONOS or Katherine’s day-to-day work with the organization.
I noticed a gradual shift in the entries by early spring. Tapping the page three times, as Katherine had done, I pulled up the icons again. Once I had adjusted the volume, I pushed the play button on an entry registered as 04202305_19:26. The hum began again and then the words on the page shifted downward, making way for a small video window, like a three-dimensional pop-up ad. I could see a small, clear image of a young woman—pretty, with delicate features—seated at a desk, with a hairbrush in her hand. She was wearing a red silk robe. There was a bed in the background, piled with clothing that appeared to have been dumped from a large brown traveling bag.
The woman’s long hair, which was still damp, was a honey-colored blonde. The blue eyes were familiar, as was the voice when she spoke, and I realized that I was looking at a much younger and very annoyed version of my grandmother.
We’re back from the meetings in Boston. It was very nice to be able to take a decent shower and wash my hair after over a week of nothing but sponge bathing. Saul…
The younger Katherine looked over her shoulder at a door, and then continued.
Saul is at the club again. God, how I hate that place. He always wants to see Campbell and his other Objectivist Club buddies first thing after a jump these days. He didn’t even bother to come home first.
We had an awful fight in Boston and I don’t know what in hell he thinks he’s up to. He’s likely to get both of us kicked out of CHRONOS, but of course he doesn’t think that anything he’s doing is any of my business.
He was actually at the podium—at the damned podium!—when I entered the auditorium. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be at a meeting of the New England Woman’s Club where Julia Ward Howe was going to be honored, but they rescheduled the meeting because Howe was ill—and wouldn’t it have been nice if they had mentioned that little fact in the newspaper accounts CHRONOS gave me?
So… I walked back to the church where Saul was supposed to be attending an annual meeting of Congregationalist ministers. He should have been observing—blending, for God’s sake—but no. He’s at the front, leading a discussion about prophecy and miracles. Several of the more practical ministers in the audience were looking at him as though he were mad—and maybe he is. The others were hanging on his every word, like sheep, so I think maybe he did something—something against CHRONOS rules, no doubt—to get their attention.
She stalked away from the camera at that point, and I could see her back as she dug through a pocket in the traveling bag and pulled out a small opaque bottle with a label that I couldn’t make out. Katherine shook the bottle at the camera.
And this… I was looking for his tooth powder, since I forgot to pack mine and this was in his bag. Cerazine. Of all things. He knows we are absolutely forbidden from taking any out-of-timeline articles—including pharmaceuticals—on a mission. He knows better.
When I confronted him, he said that it was also prescribed for his headaches. How stupid does he think I am? Cerazine for headaches? That’s total bullshit. I looked it up just now and exactly as I thought—its only purpose is as an anti-cancer agent. That’s it.
Maybe his intentions were good. He mentioned before that he was pretty sure one of the ministers he’d met had skin cancer—I’m sure he was just trying to help. But he has to understand the risks… he can’t just…
And yes. I know, I know—I should write this up in my mission report anyway, regardless of his good intentions, or I should at least talk to Angelo about it. I know that.
The anger seemed to be draining away, and Katherine sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes closed. She didn’t speak for about twenty seconds, and then continued.
He swears it won’t happen again—he apologized for putting both of us at risk. He picked me the prettiest spring bouquet afterward. He just stood there, face like a sad puppy, with the flowers in his hand, saying how he’d been incredibly stupid and how he loves me so much.
And he does. I know he does. So I forgave him and we spent the rest of the day making up. Saul can make it really easy to forget why you were mad at him in the first place, until he does some other stupid…
I just wish he’d think before acting sometimes. He’s so impetuous, and CHRONOS rules are in place for a reason. He can’t just make an impromptu speech or give a friend a bottle of Cerazine—you never know what difference even a tiny change could make in the timeline.
I just wish he’d think…
The video ended, and I scanned a few more day-to-day entries before clicking on the visual for 04262305_18:22.
Katherine was dressed in what looked like business attire, a form-fitting gray jacket with a light blue scoop-necked shell underneath and a string of small black beads around her neck. Her hair was pulled back and her eyes were pink and a bit puffy around the edges, as though she’d been crying but had tried to hide the damage with another application of makeup.
So much for these damned implants being foolproof. I was really hoping it was just a stomach bug I’d picked up on the mission to Boston last week. One hundred and sixteen days—which would mean it happened after the New Year’s Eve party.
And now—I don’t even know if I want to tell Saul. He lied about the Boston trip. That wasn’t just a whim, and it wasn’t the only time he’s spoken at the meetings. I think he’s using a different name and maybe that’s why the CHRONOS computer checks haven’t caught any anomalies. But I spent this morning in the library—near the bathrooms in case the nausea hit me again—and I found several references that have me worried.
There are some scattered mentions of a traveling minister named Cyrus in the late 1800s and an entire article in something called the American Journal of Prophecy from September 1915 on how, at a small church somewhere between Dayton and Xenia, Ohio, this Cyrus predicted the Dayton Flood of 1913 in vivid detail—nearly forty years before the actual flood. He even pointed to a boy in the congregation and predicted that his home would be destroyed and that they would find a pig floating down the city street in his automobile. In 1877, no one was quite sure what an automobile was, but the comment was documented in an editorial in the local paper, and sure enough Danny Barnes found a pig sitting in his Model T as it floated away down a city street after the 1913 flood.
And the article talks about the rumors of miracles—dozens of healings that Brother Cyrus supposedly performed in the Midwest. Tumors. Pneumonia. Arthritis.
This isn’t my specialty, but you don’t live and travel with a religious historian for nearly three years without picking up the gist of it. I’ve heard Saul mention Sister Aimee, Father Coughlin, and dozens of others—but nothing about this guy Cyrus. And I doubt it is a coincidence that the dates when Brother Cyrus visited these towns sync up perfectly with several of Saul’s jumps.
Brother Cyrus is Saul. I’m positive. This is all wrapped up with that lunatic Campbell and the others at his club.
And I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Cyrus is the name of Campbell’s damned dog—that gassy old Doberman who snarls and snaps at anyone who comes close.
Katherine took a swig of something from a pale blue bottle labeled Vi-Na-Tality. She grimaced as though it was sour and then rubbed her eyes, slightly smearing her makeup, before she looked back at the camera.
I have to tell Angelo. I don’t have any choice. My only question is whether to talk to Saul first—to try to reason with him. Maybe if he knows I’m pregnant—maybe he’ll realize this isn’t a game, that our lives and careers shouldn’t be jeopardized due to some academic wager with Campbell. Saul loves kids—I think he’ll be happy. And then if we go to Angelo together…
She shook her head and sighed.
They are going to kick him out of CHRONOS. I can’t see any way out of that. But maybe if he tells them everything, they’ll let me stay—even if we’re together. And at least one of us will have a decent job—he could stay with the baby or maybe they’d just let him do background research.
She massaged her temples briefly and closed her eyes.
He’ll be home soon. He’s been with Campbell and his other idiot friends all day. I’m scheduled for a solo jump tomorrow morning at nine. I’m going to try to talk to Saul tonight, and then with him or without him, I’m going to talk to Angelo tomorrow.
If it wasn’t for the baby, I’d say to hell with him. But if Saul ends up on a labor farm, this kid isn’t going to see much of his—or her—daddy. And maybe things will go okay… there’s so much good in Saul. I just can’t believe that he’d…
A deep sigh and then Katherine leaned forward to stop the recording.
A gentle rain had begun outside while I watched the April 26th entry, and I heard a light pawing at the screen door. The earpiece brought in the sound from the journal so clearly that almost all background noise was canceled out. Judging from the reproachful look that Daphne gave me, she had been scratching at the door for a while. I was repaid for my negligence with a secondhand shower as Daphne shook vigorously to rid herself of the rain that had collected on her auburn coat.
Connor had come in around twelve thirty, while I was watching the journal entries. He hadn’t said anything—just grabbed a fork and a plastic container of some sort from the fridge—so I assumed that lunch, like breakfast, would be just me and Daphne.
There were several other plastic containers in the fridge, but I had no idea what they were or how long they’d been there. I poured a glass of milk and began to forage through the pantry, eventually coming up with bread and peanut butter. The peanut butter was smooth, rather than the extra chunky I prefer, and there was no jelly other than mint (yuck), so I sliced a banana on top of the peanut butter and switched the journal back on, watching while I ate.
The last entry in the diary was dated April 27th at 0217 hours. When Katherine reappeared on the screen, I drew in a sharp breath, nearly choking on a bit of sandwich.
She had taken off the jacket and was wearing only the blue sleeveless shell. Her hair, which had been pinned up neatly before, was in disarray. The necklace was gone, and the angry red line around her throat made me suspect that it had been ripped from her neck. Her lower lip was split, and she held a small white pad against her right cheek, which was swollen. When she spoke, her voice was small and flat.
Saul knows—I mean, he knows that I know. I didn’t even get to the part about the baby—I didn’t dare, not when he was screaming at me that way. Maybe I should have started with that part… maybe he wouldn’t have—but, no. I don’t want him to know about the baby. Not now.
I think… I think he’s gone crazy. I’ve never seen him like this… so angry.
Tears were pouring down her face and she stopped to collect herself before continuing. The traveling bag I had seen on the bed in an earlier video was neatly packed, but the rest of the room had been trashed. A large tube-shaped object that might have been some sort of lamp was shattered and the painting that had hung above the bed was now on the floor, with a huge rip in the center of the canvas.
When I told him that we needed to just go to Angelo and tell him before someone else discovered the same violations that I had, he began raving that I didn’t understand the good that CHRONOS could accomplish if we harnessed the tools that we had at our disposal to change history, instead of just studying what century after century of idiots had created through their mistakes and blundering. About how this was his destiny and that Campbell had shown him that people just needed a strong leader to help them create the world that could be and should be. He had a plan, he said—and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of academic fools at CHRONOS determine the fate of humanity.
And all the while, he kept hitting me. Saul never hit me before. Even when he was really angry, he would hit the wall or break something, but never…
I finally lied—I told him that he’d convinced me. That I loved him and we wouldn’t go to Angelo and maybe I could help him change things. Just to make him stop. But he got this cold look in his eyes. He didn’t believe me. And then he left.
I don’t know where he’s gone, but I’ve bolted the door. If he comes back, I’ll call building security. I’m going to try and get a few hours of sleep and then I’m going to CHRONOS Med so that they can… repair this.
She pulled the pad away from her swollen cheek and gently touched the area, wincing at the pressure. There was a small abrasion near the cheekbone.
I’ll tell them… something. I don’t know. Then I’m going to talk to Angelo. He usually gets there by eight when we have jumps scheduled.
But… I’m going to message him first. Tonight. And I’m going to copy Richard on the note. I’m scared of what Saul might do—and if something happens to me, somebody at CHRONOS needs to know why.
I had been so immersed in the journal that I didn’t realize Katherine was sitting across the table from me, a cup of tea and some apple slices in front of her. It was an odd sensation to look up from the younger, battered face in the video and see the older version, calmly sipping her tea.
“I just reached the part where Saul left,” I said. “What happened the next day? Could they really repair your face?”
Katherine laughed softly. “Yes. There were quite a few improvements in medical care, and a minor dermal injury like that was a pretty easy fix. If we were still in that era, I wouldn’t have these wrinkles at such a young age, either. That’s one—of several—medical advances that I’d love to have access to now.”
“Could they cure your cancer?” I asked.
Katherine nodded. “There has been a lot of progress in cancer research in the past few decades, but there will be much more about fifty years from now—assuming we can repair the timeline. If I was a patient in 2070, or even a bit earlier, my treatment would have been a fairly simple course of medication—they’d have caught it much earlier and it would be a bit like curing a difficult bacterial infection today. Instead, my body gets pumped full of much more dangerous chemicals and radiation. And they still miss the target.”
Katherine shrugged and then continued. “All of which matters not in the slightest in this timeline, since I’m dead already. The next morning, I visited CHRONOS Med and told them I fell down in the tub. I doubt they believed me. It was surely not the first time a woman had shown up with a similar story. But I didn’t want to do anything that might alert the rest of CHRONOS about Saul until I’d had a chance to discuss the situation with Angelo.”
“Who exactly was Angelo?” I’d given up trying to figure out the correct tense for these people. If he was in Katherine’s past, I was going to refer to him in the past tense, even though he wouldn’t be born for several centuries.
Katherine took another sip of her tea before she answered. “Angelo was our direct supervisor. He trained both me and Saul. He was a good man and I was, in many ways, closer to him than I was to my parents, because he… well, he had the CHRONOS gene, too. There were things I could ask him that would have been incomprehensible to my father or even to my mother. From the time I entered the program when I was ten years old, Angelo was the one who guided my studies. I understood the CHRONOS bureaucracy well enough to know that he would also be in very hot water over Saul’s actions. I wanted his advice, but I also wanted to warn him.
“After I finished at the med unit,” she said, “I went to costuming so that they could get me ready for the jump. It was around eight, and between wardrobe and hairstyling, they usually had me ready for a mid-1800s trip in about half an hour. But that day—I don’t think it had ever taken nearly that long. Several of the costuming staff had arrived late and they were backed up. I sat there in a chemise with my hair half up for nearly twenty minutes. The plan had been to give Angelo a few minutes to check his messages and then we could talk, but it was after nine forty-five when I finally got there. I was just going to stick my head in and say we’d talk after I returned.”
“You couldn’t have delayed the jump?” I asked. “It seems like a pretty important conversation to put off for several days.”
Katherine shook her head. “Not without a major upheaval. The jump schedule is set a year in advance. The crews put a lot of effort into getting things ready, and I’d already gone through costuming. And… you’re thinking linearly again, Kate.”
I was getting a bit tired of hearing that. “Sorry. Like most people, I’m used to moving through time in a single direction—forward.”
“My point is that the trip would, for me, seem to last the four days that it was scheduled,” she explained. “But I didn’t return four days later—that would have been a waste of time for the jump crew. We all left and returned from our jumps in batches. It was more expedient to set destinations for two dozen jumpers once or twice a week than to keep track of a bunch of individual travelers. When I got back to CHRONOS, only an hour would have passed for the crew, Angelo, and even Saul, since he was one of the dozen who wasn’t on the schedule. The first cohort—the day-trippers who didn’t need as much prep—had gone out at nine thirty and were scheduled to return at ten thirty. The twelve in my cohort would depart at ten with a set return for eleven o’clock.
“So it really wasn’t much of a delay for anyone at CHRONOS, and I kind of liked the idea of having a few days to myself, away from Saul, to think about exactly what I wanted to do. The idea of being a single mother and what it might mean for my career scared the hell out of me.”
Katherine shifted her gaze and stared out the window for a moment. “I don’t know what time Angelo got to the office,” she continued, “but when I got there, the door was open and one of his mugs was shattered on the floor. He always drank this really horrid herbal concoction in the mornings and the room smelled awful—there was a large puddle of the stuff on the carpet.
“I opened the closet to get a towel, and there was Angelo, shoved to the back, on the floor. There was a ring of adhesive wrapped around his mouth and his nose—the stuff is sort of like duct tape, but stronger. It’s been over forty years and I can still see his face sometimes—bluish purple and his eyes wide-open.”
“He was dead?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “It was long past the point where the med unit could have resuscitated him. I’ve always wondered, however, if it would have been different if I had gone to see him before I went to costuming.”
I gave her a sympathetic look and shook my head. “More likely, Saul would have killed you as well, right?”
She shrugged and pulled her sweater closer around her shoulders. “Either way, I felt responsible. I knew I needed to call security, but I was fully dressed for 1853, with just my bag packed for travel, and I didn’t have a communicator on me—I couldn’t exactly take it on a jump to the 1850s, so I’d left it back in the locker with my other belongings. I walked down the hall to find another supervisor, but they had either stepped out or weren’t in the office yet. And then I saw Richard, coming out of wardrobe. He had on the most outrageous tie-dyed shirt and bell-bottoms that were nearly as wide as my skirt—and it was clear from his expression that he’d gotten my email. He was as devastated as I was when he saw Angelo.
“Richard said everyone was probably already in the jump room, which made sense. We usually gathered around the platform—a large circular area—for ten minutes or so before getting into place, chugging a last cup of decent coffee or whatever. Richard and I were actually late—we only had three or four minutes before the jump.”
“But the crew would cancel a jump in case of a murder, right?” I asked.
“Yes. But they never got the chance to cancel it. Richard and I told the jump coordinator—his name was Aaron—about Angelo. Richard also mentioned that he had seen Saul a little after eight, outside the building with a few of his friends from the Objectivist Club. Two of them were part of CHRONOS—a middle-aged historian who was scheduled to retire in a couple of years and one of the guys in the research section.”
She gave me a little smile. “But I’m getting sidetracked. At any rate, Aaron was calling in this information to security headquarters, which was two buildings over, and we were just about to tell the others, when Saul came into the room—although I don’t think anyone realized it was Saul at first. I know I didn’t. He was dressed in a burqa—you know, the Middle Eastern head-to-toe covering?”
I nodded.
Her face was pale as she continued. “He was holding our colleague, Shaila, right in front of him, with a knife to her neck. And there was something odd strapped to her chest—a small square box.
“Saul ordered Aaron to cut off the call to security and told everyone to get into their places for the jump. And, of course, we all did what he said—I mean, the others didn’t know about Angelo yet, but some crazy person in a burqa was holding a knife to Shaila.” She shuddered. “He was staring straight at me the entire time, Kate, with the same expression I’d seen in his eyes the night before, like he was wishing the knife was at my throat. Richard saw it, too, and I think that’s why he moved into my spot on the platform. I don’t know if Saul noticed we switched or not—he was in Shaila’s space, still keeping the knife to her neck.”
Katherine gave me a rueful smile. “And the burqa was a very smart choice on his part.”
“Because no one could see who he was?” I asked.
“Yes, it definitely kept him from being immediately identified, except for me and Richard, and we might not have recognized him if we weren’t already forewarned—just the eyes through that tiny space? But,” she said, “that’s not the only reason. With all of the rest of us, you could make an educated guess as to when we were headed. Maybe not where, at least not after the mid-1900s when fashions became more global, but you could generally tell the era within a few decades from the way we were dressed. The burqa, however—women have worn that in many countries for thousands of years. It was still worn in a few isolated communities in my era. Shaila studied changes in Islamic culture over time and I knew she’d made jumps that ranged from the mid-1800s to the mid-2100s. So who knows when or where Saul landed? He could have been fully dressed for any era under that wrap.
“And it all happened so fast,” she added. “When Aaron pushed the button to launch the jump, Saul shoved Shaila face-first into the center of the circle. She hit the platform and the very last thing I saw was a flash of white light and a loud whooshing sound, before I landed, hard, in the cabin just north of the field where they were holding the Woodstock festival. A hard landing is not normal—usually you just appear in the new location in whatever position you started. If you were scratching your nose in 2305, you’d still be scratching when you landed in 1853. But I landed flat on my back on the dirt floor, with my hoopskirt quite nearly inside out. The thing Saul strapped to Shaila’s chest must have been an explosive—and I can only assume it was a powerful one since no one, to my knowledge, has been able to connect to CHRONOS since.”
The apple slices were still untouched on Katherine’s plate and I realized that my own sandwich was barely half eaten. I took a few more bites and then asked, “Why did Saul think that destroying headquarters would make him able to jump from one time to the next, if he hadn’t done that before?”
“I wondered that myself,” Katherine said. “We all knew that we couldn’t jump between stable points, without a trip back to CHRONOS. In training, they said this was an institutional check—a way for CHRONOS to keep tabs on our temporal location. The medallion reads the genetic structure of the jumper as you depart and Saul must have believed, with headquarters out of the picture, that he’d be a free agent, so to speak. Without the anchor at headquarters pulling him back, he assumed that he would be able to travel between stable points whenever he wanted. But the medallions were locked to return to CHRONOS—the only thing he did was ensure that we couldn’t use them at all. I wasn’t pleased at being stranded in an earlier century, and I didn’t know when or where Saul landed, but it was at least nice to know that his plan hadn’t worked.”
“Kind of poetic justice,” I said.
“Right. All of that changed, however, when Prudence disappeared—or, I suspect, when Prudence found Saul, whenever or wherever he was. Once he realized that the CHRONOS gene could be inherited, then it was only a matter of time before he found a way to manipulate that knowledge to breed people who could go where he could not.”
“Just as you did…,” I reminded her in a soft voice.
“No, Kate,” said Katherine. She got up from her chair and walked over to the window, putting her empty cup and barely touched plate on the counter. “I introduced two lonely people who had something in common—sadly not enough to make their relationship last, but they were in love at one time. I think you know that, if you’re honest with yourself. I never forced anything, but just hoped for the best. And I got incredibly, unbelievably lucky.”
She paced back toward me, a touch of anger in her voice. “Saul, on the other hand, left nothing to chance. Did you know that Cyrist clergy are required to marry only people approved by the Temple hierarchy? That leadership of a temple is hereditary—and always subject to approval by the International Temple? Did you know that?”
Yes, I had known that—although the reasons hadn’t really clicked until Katherine spelled it out directly. “So all Cyrist Templars carry the CHRONOS gene?”
Connor, who had appeared at the doorway, answered my question. “We can only speculate at this point. But it seems likely. We’d know a lot more if we had a copy of their Book of Prophecy—assuming, of course, that the damned thing actually exists. The Cyrists use smoke and mirrors so often to fool their believers that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s a lie.”
I gave him a long, hard look and then turned to Katherine. “And the two of you really think that I can change all of this? That I can what? Alter the timeline so that the Cyrists never emerge?”
Katherine shook her head, then stopped and threw her hands up in frustration. “To be honest, Kate, I don’t know. When you were a baby, I just hoped that someday you could help locate Prudence—if only to give her a message for me. To try and get her to come back to this time and let me explain. But then I began to see subtle changes in the timeline. And last May—everything became clear. Saul was putting his plans into action. I wanted to come back here, to see if you would help, to train you—but the cancer hit and I basically had the choice of fighting cancer or fighting Saul. I’m still not sure I made the right choice…”
“You did,” said Connor, who had appropriated Katherine’s apple slices and was munching as he spoke. “Your treatment bought us some time, and we have a much better chance of succeeding if Kate is trained by someone with actual experience.”
“It also cost us a considerable amount of time, and we have a more powerful enemy as a result,” Katherine countered with a sigh. “But either way, it’s done and we’ll have to play with the cards we’ve been dealt.”
I was still mulling over the point I’d made to Trey in the car. Would I be happy in a timeline where I was a museum piece who couldn’t leave the protection of a CHRONOS key without ceasing to exist? No, but…
“What makes you sure that the timeline you want me to help you ‘fix’ is the correct one?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be more in keeping with your training for me to go back and tell you what Saul is planning and have him arrested? After all, he kills at least two of your colleagues in the process. And how many changes happened because of his actions? Even if all of those historians stranded at various points in time did their best to avoid changing things, they must have made some alterations to the timeline. And like you said, if you hadn’t been stuck here, you wouldn’t be dealing with cancer right now.”
Katherine flushed and looked down at her plate, a bit of guilt in her eyes. “You’re right, Kate. That’s what I should have you do. There were some minor changes to history—I’ll admit that. A few instances where someone made a discovery that was a bit too advanced for their time, if you know what I mean.
“But,” she continued, “those changes were miniscule compared to what Saul is planning. And I haven’t been a CHRONOS historian for many years now. I’ve got a personal motive here. So do you. So does Connor. The timeline I knew for over forty years is the correct timeline for the three of us, as long as we can stop Saul. Being cured of the cancer would be nice, but I’ve lived a long time. I’m not willing to trade your life and the lives of my daughters, not to mention Connor and his kids, for an extra decade or so added on to my own life. Angelo and Shaila didn’t deserve to die that way, but from my perspective, they’ve been gone a very long time, and from your perspective, they never existed at all.”
Connor nodded. “Katherine and I have debated this over and over, Kate. I’m not sure there is a correct timeline here. I’m in this to get my kids back and hopefully to give them a nice, Cyrist-free future. I don’t know exactly what the Cyrists are planning, but based on what Katherine has told me, I don’t think a future with Saul in control is one that is good for anyone. It’s tougher for Katherine because she lost friends, but it’s pretty simple for me. I couldn’t care less which timeline is correct, because I know which one is right.”