She cut the cucumber into pieces and laughed.

  She had set herself up at a folding table inside the large tent while the prince tried to command the drones into battle using a wooden stick to attempt to hit them in midair. At first he had stood in front of them with a regal air, but as his attempts at leadership were ignored, he soon lost all semblance of composure. The image of an adult running across the green meadows of Cornwall (formerly known as Kernow, and before that, Cernyw) struck her as duly hilarious.

  He believed that she hadn't noticed his evil plan to use the drones to attack his enemies, because he was the kind of idiot who thinks he's smarter than everyone else. But he wasn't very discreet when he shouted at the poor robots to follow him.

  She understood that recruits trying to use AEONALIZE technology to their advantage was incredibly common, which is why the drones were hermetically sealed and programmed to prevent any kind of hacking. Employees sent through time had no access to the code or any control over the robots.

  And well, if adults in the 22nd century couldn't hack the artificial intelligence of those little guardians, what hope did a prince from the 6th century have?

  His attitude made Harper feel nostalgic, but she wasn't sure why, nor did she want to think about it. She had already shed enough tears in the EM department.

  She left the shop carrying a small plate of sliced cucumber and intercepted her new protégé, pretending she wasn't aware of his whimsical ideas.

  ‘It's time to do some tests. In order to live in the future, you have to be able to adapt to the food you'll be eating there. These are hypoallergenic, specially grown by AEONALIZE for suitors like you...’

  The prince grimaced, clearly knowing that nothing could ever beat the first AEONALIZE hypoallergenic chocolate he had ever tasted. She had experienced it firsthand.

  ‘All sophisticated adults eat it, it has only 9 calories per 100 grams...’ She reminded herself of the training Syn had given her in his office. ‘You have to empathise with them, talk the way you think they would talk according to their era.’

  Ailill put the stick under his arm and took a piece of the fruit, examining it. Harper wondered if she should have chosen something else, a product that was native to England, then perhaps she would have had a better chance.

  What she hadn't told the prince yet was that he wasn't authorised to travel to the future yet, unless Harper was sure he could survive. Countless AEONALIZE recruits had dropped dead on their third day in the office due to their inability to digest food containing microorganisms that were hundreds of centuries more advanced than what they were used to. In the end, human resources had to establish a procedure for this, Syn told her: the subjects would be introduced to special foods, little by little, shortly after being injected and revived, and those who couldn't handle it would have to be brought back to the future in pieces for study. It made sense, as it wasn't as if they could leave them in their original time. Once revived, they became the property of the company. Bringing people back from the dead cost money, and that money had to be recouped somehow.

  When Syn said it, it didn't sound so bad, but now that she saw Ailill examining the cucumber against the light, she felt bad for him. At least she came from the 21st century, and like all recruits from that era, she was quite familiar with technology and science. Medieval recruits, especially those from as early as the 6th century, had to face many difficulties.

  Ailill looked her in the eyes and frowned, as if warning her that if the green circle in his hands tasted bad, it would be her fault, but finally he took a bite.

  ‘It has a horrible texture, crunchy and soft at the same time, without much flavour. But refreshing.’ The prince surprised her by acting rationally. He reached out to take another piece, but she stopped him. ‘Let's wait a while before you try another one.’ She had to give his body time to respond.

  He had already eaten a piece of chocolate—keeping the rest in a cooler Harper had given him—and that was risky enough. She didn't want to have to carry the poor useless man around in little bags, even if he was a bit of an idiot.

  If this had been in his own century, she would not have forgiven this guy's attitude, because people in her time had access not only to medicine, but to all the information available on mental health, therapy, psychological trauma, etc. Medieval people did not have those privileges, and from what she knew of poor Ailill's life... it made sense that he would act this way. It was highly likely that he could be rehabilitated with a little help, and if not, AEONALIZE would find something for him to do.

  The prince was silent for a few seconds, glancing sideways at the drones, then at the plate that had been denied him, and then at Harper's bust—he did this quite often. He rolled his eyes and nodded.

  ‘Woman,’ he said, changing the subject. “I understand now that you come from an uncivilised time, where there is no respect for royalty or the laws of decency... or good taste.” He pointed to the AEONALIZE WEAR tracksuit she had lent him while they waited for his clothes to dry.

  Harper nodded at the curiously apt comment. He continued:

  ‘I understand that it is my duty, as your leader, to teach you how to serve your king.’

  There was something about that phrase, ‘serve your king,’ that sounded exactly the same in every era, coming from the mouth of any man. Harper blinked:

  ‘You are neither my king nor my leader. Although, either way, I need that information.’ AEONALIZE's missions to the past were never in vain; one had to return with a certain amount of information and samples to sell to museums, or they would only receive their base salary, which was barely enough to pay the rent in the designated AEONALIZE LIVING apartments.

  Ailill brushed Harper's cheek with a finger while smiling at her with pursed lips. ‘How about we start by reviewing what you already know? Show me how women of your time serve their men.’

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Harper glanced sideways at the drones, always on the lookout for any kind of aggression—justified or not—towards employees. Sighing, she closed her eyes. ‘My lord, I fear I am unworthy of your affections, as I suffer from super-syphilis.’

  The prince took a step back, bringing his offending hand to his chest. ‘Super-syphilis?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘It's a disease of the love kind, if you know what I mean. It's contracted through simple contact. It starts as a...’ The prince showed her the palm of his hand. “I understand, I understand, you don't have to describe anything to me.” He exhaled and rearranged his clothes. As far as he knew, there was no real cure for many diseases. Harper was satisfied when he stepped back, avoiding eye contact.

  Although she didn't dislike the prince, the thought of Syn, the nostalgia of seeing Ailill running through the fields like an idiot, and the mental image of his organs in a bag had taken away any semblance of sexual desire for the moment.

  They would have to do it later, as AEONALIZE regulations dictated: employees must fraternise physically as much as possible.

  It was a tactic they had adopted after studying the customs and traditions of ancient Sparta. Getting employees involved carnally motivated them to take better care of each other during Intertemporal excursions, as one is more willing to look after someone with whom one has certain intimate ties. However, this system also created certain conflicts at the base of operations when new recruits were separated from their trainers and assigned to their own missions.

  To address this, they opened the Mental Stability department, an office even more reviled than human resources, where everyone had to report once a month to give an account of their state of mind.

  Harper had experienced some of the most miserable hours of her life in those offices, answering questions she didn't even want to answer herself, and many of those sessions had been because of that idiot Syn, who not only left her in a state where she needed to go to MS, but also reported her to his superiors and signed the necessary documents to enrol her in therapy.

  Looking now at her ward as he chased the drones with his stick, she almost felt sorry for him. The idiots at MS would surely eat him alive. However, to be called in by the department, your superior had to report you, as Syn had done to her, and she refused to stoop to that idiot's level.

  No, Harper would be better than her own mentor. She would take the time to help Ailill adapt as she had not been helped, and she would not lie to him about her feelings for him. That should at least give him the foundation for a second chance at life and become someone of value.

  She set an alarm for half an hour, which was the time indicated in the manual for cucumber digestion. The two hours required for chocolate had already passed.

  She realised she had forgotten to rub some of the food off Ailill's forearm before giving it to him, but although it made her a little anxious, there didn't seem to be much danger of anaphylactic shock.

  She returned to the tent to sort her notes on food consumption, picked up the chainmail that had been thrown on the ground earlier, and stuffed it, muddy, into a bag that she vacuum-sealed so her bosses could sell it to nerds at a museum. She couldn't say she didn't see the charm in it, and in everything medieval. There was a reason she had decided to specialise in this type of mission. If all went well, she would have her own medieval storyteller for a while, until they reassigned him to other people.

  She put the bag with the chain mail next to other samples when the half-hour alarm sounded, destroying her peaceful concentration. She shook off some mud and looked for the small plate of cucumber, but couldn't see it anywhere. ‘It must be outside then,’ she thought, and took a small torch with her before leaving, as the sky was already turning the dozen colours of sunset.

  Then she realised she couldn't hear Ailill shouting in the distance, and she worried that the fool had thrown himself off a cliff. She turned on the torch and decided to take a walk around the camp, combing the area from the inside out, trying to hide her alarm from the drones and their small cameras, always watching, which would later give a full report to HR.

  Luckily for her, Ailill was right behind her tent. He had taken a cooler full of bags of meat, both white and red, and had feasted in silence, like a child stealing cookies from the cupboard. On the ground were at least six empty bags, each originally containing 50 grams of meat.

  ‘Ah, girl, I found your food crate and helped myself to my share. It was a long day, and you only gave me a green circle and a sweet.’

  Harper fell to her knees, her mouth open like a fish, and contemplated the scene in front of her. That suicidal idiot had not only used up two days' worth of protein rations, but had also ingested dangerous amounts of microorganisms that his stupid gut might not be able to handle.

  The image of the organ bags came back to her mind. She had seen them at the base when she was being trained. She had seen how they cut up the bodies. She thought that she would have to cut up Ailill's body.

  Rushing back into the tent, she searched for the emergency kit. On all missions, only two tubular containers of nanobots and stem cells were assigned, which was the same thing she had used to ‘recruit’ the prince. Only one tube remained, and it was for her. If she was mortally wounded or suspected poisoning, only this could save her. That is, if she made it in time, which is why the containers had to be carried everywhere. If she used her dose on Ailill, she would have no guarantee of being able to return home, but if she didn't use it, she would once again have to face seeing someone die.

  She returned to the prince, stood in front of him and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘And the super-syphilis?’ he managed to ask, while Harper pressed her forehead against his. “I lied,” was all she could answer.

  That night she did everything he asked her to do, except convince the drones to rise up against the royal family of Cernyw.