Gladiatrix by Rhonda Roberts

new list popped up. Most of the headings looked too general to tell if they talked about where she was now. Then my eye hit a title.
    And stopped.
    I stared at ‘Death rate in NTA marshals has been rising over past decade’. I opened it and scanned the top page. The site was run by StopWatch. Never heard of it. Under the red, white and blue striped banner heading it said, ‘Formed in 1967 in Houston, Texas, to investigate the effect of time travel on the present and the risks that its use involve.’ Nope, I’d definitely never heard of it.
    Under ‘Newsletter Items’ was a list of stories. I scanned down from the top.
    â€˜StopWatch scientists present brand new evidence that travelling to the past DOES alter the present.’
    â€˜New political lobby initiative announced at StopWatch conference in Portland.’
    â€˜San Francisco mayor calls once again for removal of the NTA portal from Union Square.’
    The last one was ‘Death rate in NTA marshals rising’.
    Hmm, before I wasted any more time, I wanted to know who these people were. If they were arguing against time travel on the grounds that aliens were telling them it was bad for us, then I’d look somewhere else.
    I clicked on ‘Who we are’.
    â€˜Concerned citizens and members of the scientific community who believe that time travel technology has not been proven to be without major risks. Our Institute for Time Travel Risk Assessment conducts its own scientific research into time travel and monitors the portal’s use by the National Time Administration.’
    Below was a list of the Board of Directors. I felt a little queasy. I’d been hoping they were completefruitcakes, but the first name on the list was Sandrine Kaaloa, the Hawaiian physicist who’d won the Nobel prize for her contribution to the development of Unified Field Theory. Hmm? She definitely wasn’t someone to dismiss. I didn’t know the second one, a US Republican senator called Evan Harding. But the third name was Dawkins Ellis, the billionaire designer of the first portable nuclear reactor. I didn’t like the guy. Or his invention, but if even he thought there was a risk involved in time travel, then that was not a good sign. All in all it meant StopWatch had some credibility.
    I clicked back to the first page, and then onto the article on death rates. There was a photo of the author on a sidebar, Dr Jeremy Snelling, a statistician at the Institute for Time Travel Risk Assessment. Goggle-thick glasses, but a youngish face.
    The first words of the article made me sit up. ‘Over the past ten years one out of every three marshals sent through the time portal has died in the field.’
    One out of three? Bloody hell! Those kinds of figures never reached the papers.
    A thousand questions crowded my brain. Why couldn’t they rescue them using time travel? Go back to before the marshal was killed and save them. Why wouldn’t that work? Damn, why hadn’t I taken more physics at school!
    Then I remembered the Linken Fox spot. Mornington, or possibly the Governor, had said this mission was considered very complicated and dangerous. Or something like that.
    I could feel the stress knit my shoulders into a knot around my neck.
    I scanned down further and saw Victoria’s name. Marshal Dupree. Snelling was writing about Victoria’s last mission, the one before this. She’d beensent to investigate the operation of an espionage ring during the Cold War. There was a possibility that a sleeper from that time was still operating inside the US government. Her cover had been blown and she’d been shot. She’d just made it back through the portal.
    One in three didn’t make it home at all!
    Was Victoria back yet? Was she still in violent, treacherous ancient Rome? I had to find out! My chances of getting answers from the NTA weren’t good, but maybe from StopWatch? I checked their contact list.