Future Tense by Carolyn Jewel

CHAPTER 1
    11:25 AM, present day. Lobby of 101 California Street, San Francisco, California Lys blinked once when Telos Khūnbish’s black BMW pulled up to the curb. She wasn’t going to cry. She never did. Not for any reason. Emotion meant you were weak, and if you were weak, people found ways to make you pay. She was done paying. But it was such a relief to see Khūnbish that, for a moment, she teetered on the edge of tears.
    While she waited to make sure it was really Khūnbish in the car, a man in a suit strode past her, heading for the glass doors that faced Front Street. He was thirty-ish, good looking and in shape. Company ID dangled from a lanyard clipped to his belt. He kept walking and came within ten feet of her. Too close. He was too close. Panic rose up again. She needed to get away. Away from all these people and their lives.
    He looks left as he steps off the curb, smiling, on his way to meet the woman he loves. A traffic light reflects green in the lenses of his glasses. He doesn’t see the car that runs the light.
    Pain streaked along the left side of her face from just behind her eye through to back of her head as she fought to keep her insanity at bay. Blocking her connection shouldn’t be this hard, but the last several days had been. . . difficult. Not enough sleep.
    Not enough to eat. Too much caffeine. Far too much stress. Lys was at the limit of her ability to compensate. She succeeded in smothering the contact. Barely. The barrier was Jewel/Future Tense— Chapter 0
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    thin enough that the other lives thrummed in the back of her head like another heartbeat, but out of rhythm and out of control.
    The price of her sanity was a headache that forced her to dig in her purse for her sunglasses. Her skull felt like it was in a vice and about to fracture. Dark glasses or not, her ability to insulate herself from other people continued to erode. A sour taste coated the inside of her mouth. She hadn’t lost control since her college days, but she was close now.
    Around her, office workers streamed out of the elevators, on their way to an early lunch or maybe sent on some errand for their overpaid bosses. More came in to keep appointments, make deliveries or head back to offices or cubicles. A few people stood in the lobby with a cell phone to an ear, talking away without the least privacy.
    The ones with bluetooth enabled devices looked like psych cases, ranting to invisible people. Voices hammered at her, pounding at the barrier. She cut herself off from everything until they might as well be speaking Swahili as English.
    She needed to get out. A place like this wasn’t good for someone like her. Not when she was so close to breaking down. Her heart raced so fast that if she ended up in the hospital again, she’d need a cardiologist instead of an ER doc.
    What was taking him so long?
    That man who just came off the elevator will ignore the first symptoms; the sense of something off, the clammy sweat, the pinch in the left side of his rib cage. Pain crushes his chest, and he can’t get enough air.
    She looked out the glass lobby walls. Maybe it wasn’t him. The driver of the Beemer was waiting for a brown delivery van to pull away. The van bulled its way into traffic, and the sleek black car slid into the vacated space. They had a lunch meeting, calendared two weeks ago by her admin. He expected to talk about his upcoming deposition testimony. On the clock and on her client’s dime. She ought to feel guilty Jewel/Future Tense— Chapter 0
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    about involving Khūnbish in her train wreck of a life.
    It occurred to her that if that was Khūnbish, wouldn’t he park in one of the downtown garages? Her firm would bill his expenses to the client anyway. He was crazy to risk a ticket and a tow. The Beemer’s headlights switched off. The driver got out— yes, it was Khūnbish. Her chest constricted at the same time the tension in her shoulders released. She had a crystal clear view of him pressing his key