The Hacker's Con Artist

Chapter 1

- - - - - - MARCH 10, 2022 - - - - - -

St. Petersburg, Florida 8:37 p.m.

"I'M NOT SURE how I feel about this."

"You heard the director, Ryan. This time it could be different," crackled the voice on the other end of the phone.

Ryan rubbed his forehead, the cool touch of his fingers only temporarily easing the pain behind his eyes. "You're not the one who has to keep the kids in line, Lucy. I'm not only a professor here, I run a secret high-tech time travel fight club. And just in case you forgot, your son almost died because of me."

"We know you hold yourself accountable for a lot, but Knight didn't risk his life because of you. He risked it for her."

"I know that," said Ryan with a sigh. "But how are we so sure that conducting another experiment is the smartest decision?"

"Corinna's experiment was a failure from the moment Knight and Ivan grabbed the wrong Báthory sister, but we were bound to try again at some point. It's been almost two years. We have a better strategy now," persuaded Lucy.

"Ah, yes, and what exactly is this fantastic strategy again? I was listening, but then it started to sound so absurd I just kind of stopped."

Lucy didn't even try to hide her sigh of exasperation. "You sound exactly like Ivan, you know."

"Oh dear," reflected Ryan. "It was only a matter of time."

"I don't understand why you're so worried," said Lucy. "Elizabeth Báthory was one of the most notorious female serial killers of all time and we did manage to stop her, just not using the... traditional methods."

"If by non-traditional you mean a giant time machine and an exhaustingly long and violent game of tag, you're damn right."

Lucy was silent for several moments, long enough for Ryan to wonder if she'd finally gotten tired of his childish antics. If they hadn't grown up attending AIMA together, perhaps that was actually a likely scenario. Unfortunately, they'd known each other too long to ever be permanently rid of the other.

"What I'm saying, Ry, is that this new tactic could work. We've scaled it down significantly by targeting someone with a significantly smaller number of murders under their belt."

"Ah, yes, because kidnapping a future con-artist just fills me with so much comfort."

"Can you be serious for one second? We have new students in the program, we have a better understanding of what we're dealing with, and we're attempting to alter a murderer's judgment months before the thought even crosses their mind—"

"We're disrupting the timeline by preventing Bonnie Parker from ever meeting Clyde. I mean, come on, it's Bonnie and Clyde. They're one of the most infamous couples in all of American history, and we're not concerned about what happens when she starts asking questions? How can we be certain that she will still never lay eyes on him? Who's to say she wasn't thinking of murder far before he came along? She doesn't exactly come from the best family," argued Ryan.

A beat of silence. "We don't. We can't say any of that. But maybe it's better that way. Look how things turned out with Corinna."

"That wasn't even supposed to happen."

"Wasn't it? You can't honestly believe that we would be better off without her."

Ryan blew out an exasperated breath, collecting his thoughts. He hated when he knew Lucy was right, especially when she also knew she was right. "I'll admit that Corinna came at a remarkably good time, but she wasn't even the one we really had to worry about—her sister was. Considering we don't make the same mistake as last time, we're not only inviting the criminal into our school, but putting all of our faith in the kids to reform her."