“We did protect you, sir,” he says at last. “The first time.”
Cheng’s mouth is dry, stale from his espresso. “The first time?”
“But it altered who we became, and what we faced. And so we never discovered temporal gates and temporal engineering, and so we never came back. And because we never came back, we never protected you in the first place. And so things reset. We’re not sure how many times it happened, but we think it was several.”
Cheng looks around the office at the other caseworkers hunched over their desks, the other travellers giving interviews in dark suits and flowered dresses. He looks at Tsai, at the familiar face that reminds him of his nephew, at the thin leather tie and the stuffy navy blazer. “This has happened before,” he breathes.
“It’s difficult to know how many ti
