The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  He was tired. So tired. He lowered his body to the deck, lying on his back as the sky spun. The sea was below him, then above, the deck of the ship against one shoulder, then against the back of his head.

  No one touched him. No one spoke. But there was still sound, the crack of the thunder, and then finally, at last it came. After so long. So very long. The rain. The drops were huge and warm, hitting his body, his eyelids, his lips and teeth, wetting his tongue. They tasted like dust. Like the thousand tiny particles that made everything, the atoms, the sand, the gumballs, the stars, there was no differentiation between them. They all were the same thing, but names and the idea of separation had made them seem distinct.

  The things he knew felt far away, and the ball of yarn in his mind loosened. First, it was slow, an expansion, like a great lung filling up, and there was space inside the long, tightly wound thread. Then a piece pulled off, and another, and another. They were like strands of noodles cooking in a pot, tangled and inseparable. Like eels writhing together, or blind white worms deep beneath the earth.

  The sky ripped open, and the souls came. The land quaked, the sea tossed, and the wind tore at Skidbladnir’s sail. No monkeys hung in the rigging, for even that existed seven times. Seven times seven a thousand times. And again.

  For a moment, he wondered if his eye implant was malfunctioning. But this sight was different than viewing a recorded image. He felt everything, smelled and tasted it. He was about to order the implant to record, but a wave of sensation overtook him.

  This was unique. And it was also a repetition of something that had happened before. Everything was happening again. His first life. His second one. All one billion people on earth. All seven billion. They pulsed around him like stars, like the lights of an overhead airplane at night, blinking, moving, blinking again. Firefly souls. All of them were alive now, except the dead. Yes, except the dead.

  He knew his cousins. He saw Astrid as a baby, black haired and fair skinned, then as a reptilian thing, or was it feline? Then she was a woman with the yellow eyes of an owl. She was nothing and something at the same time.

  Sister was here and not here. She was a baby. So ill. So small on her hospital ventilator, the tubes snaking from her tiny body. Then she was bigger, a child, beaten and hurt, her hair and tongue cut off, and she was also young and happy, at the beach, talking with friends. Talking.

  Ah, and the others. The golem man, dead and alive again, stone and man. He was not human, no. But Elliot knew now what he was. He was a distillation of humanity, its failings and its curiosity, its passion, its ever-pulsing need to create, to make, to bring into being new things. He existed as a desire for this without its fulfillment and he was also the desire for violence, for freedom, for control, for justice, for strength, for love.

  There was a woman from the Library, the place of his imprisonment. How he remembered it now. The kitchens, his small room, the scholars, the endless labyrinth of rooms. And at the center, a woman. Like most of the star lights that were souls, she did not have two lives, but then, she did. Because one of them included him.

  How beautiful it was, this destruction, and he was the sole witness from its first moments to its terrible, crushing end.

  He saw each universe, so beautiful, like the most intricate of marbles, filled with planets and stars and nebulae and the vast emptiness between them. There were more marbles now, pressed together, like soap bubbles, pushing inward. Then two of them merged. Pop. Now there were six. And pop. Five. The central bubble, his bubble, the one at the center, the hub of the wheel, grew each time, absorbing the others.

  Pop.

  It hurt, he knew. But births always did. This was a new world being born, and the popping should have deafened the world.

  The ship’s deck was still beneath him and the water poured from the sky in such quantities that he wondered if the ship was sinking. He tasted it. Dust, not salt. Then a cold wave slapped him. He stuck out his tongue. Salt and the undefinable murky taste of seawater.

  He felt the whole sea on his tongue, and the sea was twice, sevenfold, as was the earth, the sky, the myriad things that crawled and flew and swam and leapt. It was the final moment, and the first.

  The final soap bubble popped, leaving only one.

  The twirled noodle pot of his mind was floating now, the noodles, the yarn threads, splitting into infinity, swirling and breaking apart, like a new cosmos being born. As the world was, so was he.

  He understood everything now, the infinity of all things.

  Chapter 41

  It happened while Neil was in the pool.

  One moment, he was swimming laps in the hotel pool, the next, he was so drowsy he could barely drag himself up the ladder. He fell to the sun-warmed concrete, overcome by a slipping, crushing sensation. His cheek hit the concrete, and it was the last thing he felt before being pulled into darkness.

  He woke an instant later, at least it felt like only an instant. He pushed himself up, his mind full and reeling. The memories, so many. There were his ordinary ones, the ones he had received from March, and the ones he had lived himself. And there were others. Memories of people, of friends both human and inhuman. And a woman, his wife. Hazel. Her name was like a little bell, clearing the fog in his mind.

  Rain poured from the San Diego sky, the clouds low, heavy, and the air warm. He remembered fleeing March after he chose to withhold the drug that would keep the drake imprisoned. She was free now. He remembered his revolt years ago against March, and he remembered Hazel shooting and killing March. Then March came back in a new body and turned Neil to earth, but Hazel revived him. Death and life for them both, freedom and slavery.

  He hadn’t seen March since he freed the drake, and he didn’t know if his master was alive or dead. And if March was alive, was he free or not?

  And then there was the safety of his friends and wife. He hurried to his room, dried off, changed into clean clothes and grabbed his phone. March’s number was still in his contact list, but now there were others, numbers for each member of the Time Corps.

  He knew better than to question the reality of what he saw. He had been in the Time Corps long enough to know a time anomaly when he experienced one. But this was different. Never before had his mind been reset. The entire world had been reset. He thought it through. His life had forked into two paths at one critical point, the moment he had met his partner Elliot on a train in the mid-1800s. In one set of memories, he had joined the Time Corps. In the other, he had talked with March and rejoined him.

  Two timelines. Two sets of memories.

  He called Hazel first, but the call went to voice mail. Then he called Elliot.

  “My mud man!” cried Elliot. “The bouillon cube of humanity! You are concentrated mankind, did you know that?”

  Elliot said something about the screaming souls of the dead before Neil heard the sound of the phone being taken from him and carried. That must be Sister. Then Astrid came on the line.

  “You should come quick,” she said. “How fast can you get to LA?”

  “I’m in San Diego now. What’s wrong with Elliot?”

  “Hold on, let me see if I can find you.”

  A few moments later, she stood in his room.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve been collecting everyone.”

  “I thought you couldn’t use your Doors for the living.”

  “Those rules don’t matter anymore. Now hurry.”

  He put on his gun belt and black duster and followed her through the Door and into the Time Corps safe house. Everyone was there, Pangur Ban and her kittens Frieda and Diego, Yukiko, Sister, Julius and his sisters September, June and Red Fawn. Even their brother Augustus had come.

  Seamus and Felicia spoke with the members of the Twelve while a young boy who looked like both of them knelt beside Pangur Ban, discussing somethi
ng. Felicia and Seamus looked like they were in their thirties, which was the age when he had last seen them, before they had become parents. But time travel was odd like that. Next, their son could be older than they were.

  “Where’s Hazel?” Neil asked Astrid.

  “She took Elliot outside. He was upset because you weren’t here yet and he started shouting.”

  Astrid left through a Door, explaining that she had to assist the other psychopomps. Neil went to the backyard and found Elliot and Hazel sheltering from the rain by leaning up against the side of the house. Hazel leaped forward and kissed him, and he knew from her look that she had things to tell him. She too must have experienced a second life. Elliot kicked at the grass, muttering, then gave him a sly look.

  “You said you’d take me to Norway,” he said to Neil. “To find a woman.”

  An earthquake hit, but no one seemed surprised. They waited it out, watching to see if it grew stronger. Once it stopped, Huginn, the raven, flew into the backyard, landed, hopped up to Elliot and began speaking with him. Hazel took Neil aside.

  “Did you have the dreams?” Hazel asked.

  “What dreams?”

  “About me and Elliot and everyone.”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I didn’t know anything was wrong until an hour ago.”

  She looked away, and he remembered how frantic she had been on the sidewalk with Elliot when the worlds were split. He remembered her terror and how she had begged him to find her. It was not through any fault of his own, but that didn’t really matter. He had failed her.

  “It’s just odd, that’s all,” she said in the tone that let him know that she was trying to be strong and reasonable. He knew that her second life had not been a pleasant one. “All the other time travelers had dreams. Only regular people remember only one life.”

  “I would have come for you if I had known. Maybe I had no dreams because I’m not human.”

  “Pangur Ban and Huginn had them. So did Yukiko.”

  “They have souls, presumably. What about the Twelve?”

  “They remember both time lines through both versions of the world. See, the worlds were split because of us. Because we kept tearing holes. It was mainly the Professor causing it, but there were other things. Astrid using his machine to amplify her Door-making ability to get Elliot out of the Library destabilized things badly. But it wasn’t until Luke was conceived that things went very wrong.”

  “The boy?”

  “Yes. Parents from two worlds. He weakened the boundaries very badly and drew the void wyrms. They chased Felicia while she was pregnant, and now the void wyrms are everywhere. The destruction isn’t even related to the child anymore.”

  “Why merge the worlds back? And who did it?”

  “The Twelve keep talking about the Five and the Three and whoever. March worked with them to split the worlds, but merging them back together was their own idea. They were forced to it by us. But they didn’t do a very good job.”

  The air shimmered and a void wyrm appeared in the middle of the backyard. Neil leapt forward to force it back when a man appeared and closed the rip. He turned to Neil.

  “Ah, one of the golems who tried to kill me,” he said. Neil recognized the drake, the one who was friends with Astrid.

  “We were told you were damaging the worlds,” said Neil. “That you wanted to destroy things.”

  “And you can now see that is a lie, correct?” Yelbeghen looked at him too directly and too steadily to be within the boundaries of good manners. He wasn’t even attempting to act like a human any more, though he looked like one. Yelbeghen excused himself and stepped through another Doorway.

  Hazel continued. “Yelbeghen has been closing Doors as fast as he can. Astrid and the psychopomps are working hard at getting the dead souls back where they belong and are closing the Doors through which they come. But there are a lot of souls. The Professor is working on modifying a machine to seal up rips as well. The holes are tearing everywhere. November and Janeiro are the two of the Twelve who can close Doors, and they’re out working too.”

  “March can close Doors.”

  “Well, I’m not going to be the one to ask him to help. His brothers and sisters can manage him.”

  “Perhaps if we understood how this happened, maybe we could put it back how it was with multiple stable worlds with stable paths between.”

  “The paths were never stable. That’s the thing. We’ve been using our own pathways that the Professor calculated, but we’ve also unknowingly been using those made by void wyrms. The wyrm holes were the most reliable ways to travel between worlds and through time, so we’ve used them often without knowing it. The wyrms never needed synchronicities like we did with the first version of the time machines. The wyrm holes also place us correctly within time so we don’t end up in empty space. With the earth constantly in motion through space, any time travel should have required us to move not only through time, but through space to catch up with the earth. By using the wyrm holes, we’ve traveled safely. But we’ve damaged them and torn new holes too. It was all too much.”

  “Is Santiago doing anything? Does he know anyone who can close the rips?”

  “Santiago left town a few days ago, according to Julius. He’s not in any of his usual haunts in Vegas or LA or anywhere. He’s just gone.”

  That was just like the Coyote to clear out when there was trouble. Neil’s phone dinged and he checked it. One of his brother golems had texted him.

  “March is dead, killed by a drake. She fled when we found her.”

  He told Hazel and explained how he had freed the drake.

  “Good riddance to March, I say,” she said. “I’ll buy the drake a drink for killing him. We’ll form a club for people who killed him.”

  “But seriously, the drake could do anything. She can make rips just as Yelbeghen does, and it’s my fault she’s free.”

  “It’s all our fault. All of us.”

  She coaxed Elliot up off the ground and led him back into the house where she checked on the Professor’s progress. They were almost ready.

  Hazel explained to Neil how she and the Professor had opened a rip from their home world to Purgatory, and from there to Luna Park in the hub world. Astrid had torn a similar Door into and out of death from the hub world. Felicia had forced Janeiro to take her to Purgatory to get her son, and by doing so prevented Janeiro from immediately closing the rip at Luna Park that Astrid had made when she came with Yelbeghen from Purgatory.

  “We all did it,” she said. “Either out of love or curiosity, we all caused this. We ruined the separation between the worlds.”

  Neil’s phone rang. It was the brother who had texted him.

  “There’s another drake,” he said. Neil wondered if he meant Yelbeghen when his brother said, “Before he died, March ordered us to kill her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “All over. She seems to be constantly making new rips and traveling. She looks human, and one of us shot a tracker and it attached to her shoe.”

  “Is she endangering anyone?”

  “March told us to eliminate all of the drakes.”

  He noted that his brother had not answered his question. Even after March’s death, the other golems would obey their master whether it made sense or not.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Something happened today. March explained it to us earlier. He said you would remember things we don’t. That can work to our advantage. The drake is the girl who was on the Mediterranean island with the male drake. I’m sending you her tracker coordinates so you can see where she is. Help us kill her.”

  Neil didn’t need to see the coordinates. He called Astrid on the phone, and she made a Door to the
living room.

  “They’re coming,” he said. “Golems are coming to kill you. They think you’re some kind of drake. There’s a tracker attached to your shoe.”

  “How many?” She kicked off her shoes and Neil took them.

  “Six in total. You can run. Without the tracker, you’re harder to find.”

  “How long have they been tracking me?”

  “I don’t know, but they said you’re moving around a lot.”

  “I’ve been here at the safe house over and over. What’s to say they won’t come here?”

  “Time to go!” cried the Professor, shoving his equipment into a bag. Hazel leapt up the stairs to retrieve one of the time machines. Neil heard something outside and pulled back the curtains.

  “They’re here!” he shouted. “Go!”

  Four golems appeared on the front lawn, standing in the pouring rain. They had traveled through Doors, that much was clear, but if March was still alive, he was nowhere to be seen. Then Neil spotted the things on their wrists. Slim and black, he would have thought they were simple wristwatches. But none of them had worn them before. Each of them checked their watches and pressed something on the face and the Doors behind them closed. Now that was interesting.

  He thought he understood. If March knew he would be killed by the drake, then he might have equipped his golems with these devices, allowing them to travel without him. But he hadn’t given one to Neil. Did the other golems know this or understand why?

  Neil counted heads as everyone went through Astrid’s Door. Sister pulled Elliot by the hand, Pangur Ban and Huginn went through together. Pangur Ban’s kittens were adults now and might be upstairs or somewhere else in the neighborhood, but they would keep themselves safe. Yukiko stepped through alone, followed by Red Fawn, Julius, Augustus, June and September. Last came Seamus, Felicia and Luke.

  Hazel stood on the bottom step and met Neil’s eyes, and he motioned her to go. He knew she would stand beside him, firing at the golems, relentless and ferocious. But they both knew she was no match for even one golem, let alone six.