“Boys and girls,” a voice crackled over the ship’s intercoms. “Are we still doing this today or what?”
I thumbed the radio transceiver on my shoulder. “We’re waiting for the welcome wagon.”
“Roger that. I don’t enjoy sitting around so close to that thing, is all. They could practically granny toss a couple missiles up t—”
“Hold that thought, Colby,” I said as three soldiers clad in battle armor tromped onto Haven’s roof. I gestured to Maddix and Zoe, “Right ther—”
My words were drowned out by the crack and boom of controlled rifle fire. With the benefit of high ground, Maddix and Zoe made quick work of the trio below.
“They weren’t very good,” Maddix said, sounding disappointed. “You sure one of them shot me?”
Zoe ignored him and said, “Let’s get down there before any more show up.”
I nodded and grabbed my rifle off the rack. The rush of blood in my ears was nearly as deafening as the guns had been. With sweat-slicked palms I edged towards the open door.
“Last one down there’s a time-locked bum,” Maddix said before hurling himself out of the jet, his body spinning like a gyroscope.
“And he wonders why he always gets shot first,” Zoe said, grinning. She glanced over and must’ve noticed my apprehension. “Don’t think about the heights.”
“It’s not the heights that bother me,” I said as the caterpillars in my gut hatched into full-fledged butterflies. “It’s the falling.”
Zoe nodded as though she sympathized, but I doubted the pint-sized warrior had ever felt anything closely resembling the anxiety rooting me to the floor. “Just remember you’re doing it for Abi.”
I nodded, steeling my resolve. I took deep calming breaths through my nose and counted down from ten in my head. I made it to six before Zoe gave me a hard shove. And then I was falling.
Chapter Two
THEN
“Here’s the thing you need to know about time travel: none of this is permanent.” I gestured to the cavernous auditorium for the benefit of my audience of one. “Nothing is set in stone. Not yet, at least.”
The wispy girl sitting in the third row stared at me through Medusa curls of brown hair, looking too excited to blink. Not a terribly impressive recruiting class, all things considered.
“It takes roughly thirty-two seconds for reality to solidify. Until then, everything’s malleable, like paint drying on the wall. With enough training, Abigail, you can change it. Repaint reality, correcting for all the little mistakes you make along the way.” Feeling strangely exposed, I paced the stage in search of a good place to put my hands. “But that’s not always an easy thing to remember, especially when you’ve done something real stupid like getting shot or stabbed. Watching liters of blood leak out of your body certainly feels permanent.” I did a pretty good pantomime of blood spilling out of my stomach. “Well, actually, the psychic pain is real. You’ll carry that no matter how far back you blink.”
Abigail’s mask of enthusiasm temporarily faltered; the prospect of getting maimed will do that to even the best of us.
Why am I telling her this? She doesn’t want to hear about getting shot on her first day! You’re freaking her out!
I sighed and closed my eyes; seven seconds should be far enough back. An invisible pressure compressed my thoughts, enveloping them in a bubble of tachyons that shifted me seven seconds into the past.
BLINK
“—cially when you’ve done something real stupid like—” I opened my eyes and bit my lip before the next words slipped out. A long pause followed, during which I tried to think of something new and not absolutely terrifying to say to the new recruit.
I looked to the blank dry erase board beside me for answers. The black and blue marker smudges left over from the previous class were giving me nothing. I wasn’t cut out for mentoring; that really should go into my personnel file somewhere.
Screw this, I resolved and hopped off the stage. “Let’s go see the campus.”
Abigail did not need to be told twice. She bolted from her chair and scrambled over the three rows of bench-style seating separating her from me.
“You could’ve walked around,” I said. “I would’ve waited.”
“Sorry. I’m pretty amped to be here,” she said, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “Joining Central is sort of a dream come true.”
“Really?”
Abi nodded vigorously. “Nobody back home understands me. They tolerate me as some obscurity of the natural world, but I’ve never had what you might call friends.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over that, we’re only grudgingly accepted by the majority of time-locked people regardless of where you’re from. Though if you wanted to be around other Chronos, you could’ve gone to the Farm. Much safer.”
“I want to use my gift to help others.” She smiled sweetly. “To save lives.”
They come in so young and innocent.
A wave of blistering heat greeted us as we exited the auditorium. I led Abigail off the black asphalt sizzling underfoot and onto the crunchy brown grass, dead from dehydration.
“How ‘bout you?” Abi asked. “Why are you here?”
A memory of my brother blipped across my mind’s eye: Swinging on the front-porch, enjoying the cool breeze and a tranquil afternoon, when a man in uniform brought me a folded flag and the news that my brother had died a hero, as though that somehow made his death mean something.
All my father heard was that a Chrono had murdered his only son. Somehow that made me—and all my kind—guilty by extension. Back then I was dumb enough to believe it, and innocent enough to think that joining Central could somehow atone for sins I’d never committed.
I pushed the memory away and abruptly changed the subject. “So, how far back can you blink?”
“I went back two seconds once,” she said, thankfully following my cue, “but usually it’s less.”
That barely rated above déjà vu. Better than ninety-nine percent of the general population, but still at the bottom of the totem pole at Central. Kids with déjà vu couldn’t blink very far. With some work, Abi might someday manage five or six seconds. Maybe.
“I bet your reflexes are pretty good, huh?” I said, reaching out to flick her in the ear. With preternatural awareness she ducked and I missed.
“Ow,” she growled, rubbing her ear and eying me with absolute betrayal. “I don’t get it, why’s that hurt?”
A squadron of girls clutching armfuls of books and sunbrellas scurried past. I gestured to the building squatting at the heart of Central like a beige wart: Administration. A thorough dousing of chill air greeted us upon entering.
“Didn’t I already tell you about psychic pain?” I asked.
Abigail continued rubbing her ear while sporting a look of utter confusion. Oh yeah, that was the getting-shot-is-a-bad-idea portion of the speech I’d rewound through.
“Blinking is just the transfer of information from your future-self to your past-self,” I said, leading Abi down a wide corridor jammed wall-to-wall with filing cabinets and administrative assistants bustling about with the sort of lackadaisical enthusiasm only mind-numbing paperwork can inspire. “So in one timeline I flicked your ear. Your body didn’t like that and released a burst of tachyons, transporting your mind back before the assault, which is why you ducked the second time. You knew it was coming because you remembered it. Same goes for the pain; you always remember the pain.”
“That’s dumb. What’s the point of blinking if you still get hurt?”
“Time heals all wounds,” I said, navigating the labyrinthine maze of halls and administrative office space. “You ever stubbed a toe?”
Abi grinned. “Nope.”
Oh yeah, déjà vu. Lucky.
“Well, trust me, it hurts worse than childbirth.”
“You have a kid?” she asked with surprise.
“No, that’s hyperbole. I’m trying to make a point.”
“Oh.”
I stopped at a pair of thick, blast-proof steel doors. “Anyways, the memory of pain isn’t quite the same thing as pain itself. It still hurts, but time dulls the edge.”
“Uh huh.” Abi nodded absently, her mind thoroughly absorbed by the imposing doors.
“And that’s blinking in a nutshell,” I said, waving my personnel badge across a security sensor. A red light blinked twice before turning green. The doors slid open and a mechanical voice filled the hall, “Welcome, Agent Kaelyn Kwon.”
Chapter Three
NOW
“Did you ladies see that?” Maddix said, trotting over to where Zoe and I had landed, his rifle clutched in one hand while he gesticulated madly with the other to where his discarded parachute flapped like a plastic bag in the breeze. “I nailed the landing!”
I fumbled at the chest straps tethering me to my own nylon jellyfish with shaky fingers; adrenaline-soaked muscles aren’t ideal for tasks requiring fine motor skills.
“Also worth noting,” Zoe said, already free of her chute, “is the fact that you didn’t get shot this time.”
Maddix’s scowl ruined his pretty boy looks. “You wound me.”
“Nope, you can thank the bad guys and their bullets for that,” Zoe said.
“Speaking of the bad guys,” I said, finally splitting on semi-amicable terms with my parachute. “You’re up, Maddix. Shake a leg.”
Maddix sighed and rolled his neck, the corded muscles around his throat bulged as vertebrae popped. “Ya know, charging straight into enemy territory is probably the reason I get shot so often.”
“Somebody’s got to take one for the team,” I said.
“And we love you for it,” Zoe added.
“You’d better.” Maddix smiled and said to me, “Start the timer.” And then he fast-forwarded through time and space, disappearing in a blur of color that kicked up a stiff breeze and tugged me forward half a step.
My guts were kinked into impossibly tight coils. Maddix liked to play it cool, but we all knew how much was at stake. Haven was Crask’s headquarters, home to hundreds of his fanatical chrono-gifted soldiers. Men and women he’d brainwashed into believing they were God’s chosen.
After putting Jiang Jintao atop the Chinese throne four years earlier, Crask had set up his base of operations in the air over Hong Kong, effectively putting him out of Central’s reach while fighting holy wars around the world to the highest bidder.
Crask was the leader of his own religious movement, but he was first and foremost a businessman.
Our presence on Haven could spark a war, but Crask had taken one of our own and, consequences be damned, we were going to get her back.
Eleven seconds after he’d left, Maddix’s voice crackled through my radio-piece. “Oh god, this place is enormous. This is gonna take forever.”
“Quit complaining. It’s not like you’ll remember any of it,” Zoe said, keeping her rifle sighted on the stairs, ready for any soldiers with more bravery than common sense to appear.
“I’m the one down here sprinting my ass off,” Maddix said, “so I’ll complain all I want.”
“How’s it looking?” I asked, watching tendrils of clouds stream by overhead.
“Uh. Nothing on the top floor. Lots of storage and equipment, food and clothes,” Maddix said. “Bunch of engineer types running around, lots of overalls. A couple soldiers stationed at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Leave them for now,” I said. “We’ll deal with them once you’ve located Abi.”
“Roger, roger,” he said. “All right, ready for round two whenever you are.”
I closed my eyes and released a burst of tachyons that sucked me back through time, the sensation not unlike stepping into a whirlpool.
BLINK
When I opened my eyes, Maddix and Zoe were standing in front of me, completely oblivious. “Start the tim—” Maddix was saying.
I held up my left hand to stop him while massaging my temple with my right. The slurry of future memories settled into place and I said, “Top floor’s clear. Soldiers at the bottom of those stairs—” I pointed to where Zoe’s rifle was already aimed. “—leave them for Zoe.”
“Afraid I’ll steal all the fun?” he asked.
Zoe smiled and said, “More afraid you’ll get sho—,” but Maddix blitzed away before she could finish.
Chapter Four
THEN
Abigail sat one row below me on the aluminum bleachers, watching Zoe’s Judo class hip-toss one another like sacks of potatoes. The slap of flesh on padded floor was accompanied by groans and giggles from the onlookers.
“Pop quiz time,” I said, picking at a kernel of corn wedged between my incisors with a wooden toothpick. “Tell me why there’re so many girls down there.”
Abigail let out a slight huff. “Is that the best you can do?”
“Humor me.”
“Tachyons bond to the X-chromosome, so females have access to twice as many time-manipulating molecules than males.” Abigail’s fingers twiddled with the multi-colored bracelet that had mysteriously appeared on her wrist sometime in the last week. I hadn’t asked where it’d come from, or why a certain red-headed boy on the mats kept glancing up at the bleachers in Abi’s general vicinity, but I had some educated guesses. “Which is why all the boys here are Blitzers.”
“Why is that again?” I asked, playing dumb.
Abigail shrugged, her bony shoulders rising up to her ears. A subconscious gesture she often used despite knowing full well the answer to whatever question I’d asked. She had a sharp mind, but that intelligence had never received due credit in her life before Central. To the time-locked, Chronos were cheaters, gaming the system to get ahead.
People couldn’t look past Abigail’s chrono-gifts to see all the other ways she was exceptional.
“Of the three types of Chronos, Blitzers use the least amount of energy because they're traveling with the flow of time, so the current is doing most of the hard work for them,” Abi said, locking eyes with the boy on the mat who, now distracted, never saw his Chinese training partner with pigtails—or her foot—flying towards his skull. Abigail winced and gripped her bracelet between white knuckles as the boy went down. “The…uh…the tachyons just give Blitzers that extra nudge.”
“And who uses the most energy?”
“Pausers.”
“Not Blinkers?”
She smirked and said, “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause…” her words trailed away as she watched the boy dust himself off and limp towards the locker room with the rest of his cohort.
After a couple seconds of silence I said, “That’s a well-thought-out argument. Keen insight. Beautifully articulated.” I tossed my toothpick at her head. She scooted sideways and snatched it out of the air. Her déjà vu was getting pretty impressive.
“Huh?” she grunted, ripped from her daydream. She studied the object in her hand before recognition dawned. “Ew, gross!” She dropped the toothpick and wiped her palm on a denim-covered thigh.
“It’s just a little spit.”
“I thought you were supposed to be mentoring me, not traumatizing me!”
“Toughening you up. It’s a big bad world out there,” I said. “Now, Miss Dazed and Confused, you never answered the question: why do Pausers use more energy than Blinkers?”
Abi shook her head with mock disgust before answering. “Blinkers go backwards, working against the current, but pausing stops the whole stream. The best Pausers can stop time for forty-five seconds at a time, but it completely depletes their tachyon reserves.”
“What about the best Blinkers?” I asked. “How far back can they go?”
“Um…” She frowned. “Well, it takes thirty-two seconds for reality to solidify,” she said, reasoning her way towards an answer. “So once it’s set, you can’t go back any further.” Abi glanced up, her face contorted in a show of dubious triumph. “Right?”
“Oh no, you can go back
further,” I said, noting the red-headed boy emerging from the locker room. “You just shouldn’t. But we’ll cover that tomorrow.”
Abigail’s head snapped to attention. “We’re done?”
“For now.”
Abigail followed my gaze to the boy, then back to me, then back once more to the boy. She nodded sharply, making her decision in an instant, said “See ya,” and then, suppressing what appeared to be the urge to skip, walked in the boy's general direction with all the nonchalance her teenage-self could muster.
Chapter Five
NOW
Barely four seconds after Maddix had disappeared for his fourth round of hyper-speed hide-and-seek, his voice crackled over the radio, “Crap. Gimme a mulligan.”
“Already?” Zoe asked, sharing in my surprise.
“Yeah, I uh…” his voice trailed off, leaving only hissing static, “the door shut behind me. It’s locked. I’m stuck. Tell my past-self not to run into room 3013B.”
“Better than getting shot again,” Zoe said, her wide smile parting to show teeth.
I tried not to laugh. I failed, but I did try. “How far back you want to go?”
“Ten seconds should be good,” Maddix said. “Nothing terribly interesting on this floor anyhow.”
So far there hadn’t been anything of interest on Haven’s top floors. Housing and supplies to keep Crask’s personal army happy and productive.
The idea of living on a hover-compound gave me chills. No different than a boat, except there’s no chance a boat’s engines will fail and send the whole damn thing plummeting into Hong Kong.
I was pessimistic when it came to a hundred thousand tons of metal breaking the laws of gravity.
A hand on my shoulder interrupted those thoughts. I looked over at Zoe’s milky white eyes as the world slowed, coming to a gradual grinding halt. An unnatural stillness settled. The wind calmed, and the thrum of a world in constant motion dribbled to a stop.
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 2