The Bureau of Time

by Brett Michael Orr

  THE PREPARATION

  A moment stretched into a minute, and neither of the Timewalkers spoke.

  Then they both exploded, arguments overlapping each other while Director Anderson stared at them both, his face an emotionless mask.

  “This is crazy—”

  “—too dangerous, what if they—”

  “—expect the rest of Clockwork to go along with—”

  “—haven’t trained for something like—”

  “—we could die out there!” Shaun bellowed, his voice rising above Cassie’s. He stood, fuming. He paced back and forth around the office, trying to expel his anger – and realized it wasn’t entirely anger, or shock, but mostly fear.

  “Timewalker Briars,” Anderson said, his tone curt. Shaun turned back to look at the Director. Cassie sat between them, her face paler than usual, her knees bouncing up and down.

  “You swore to give your life in service to this agency,” Anderson rumbled. “You took the same oath we all did. In order to protect your country, and your fellow Timewalkers – wherever they may be – we need to outmaneuver the Adjusters. This is how we will do it.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Shaun spat. Cassie gave a startled gasp, and Anderson’s expression turned to stone.

  “Watch your tone, soldier.”

  “That’s bullshit, sir. There has to be other things we can do before we try and capture one of those monsters.”

  “You think we haven’t tried that already?” A new voice said.

  Shaun spun around to see General Lehmann enter. The older man’s presence filled the room, hushing the argument. His hair looked grayer than ever, and he crossed the office slowly, as though all those epaulets weighed him down.

  “General!” Shaun snapped out a salute. Of all the Bureau’s Directors, Shaun respected Lehmann the most. He could feel the years of combat experience rippling off the General’s body. He was a true soldier, a man who had served his country in his youth, and in his older years, was protecting his country against a threat nobody had seen before.

  “At ease, Briars,” Lehmann said, waving his hand. He ambled over to the spare chair and sat down, looking at Shaun from beneath wiry eyebrows. “I understand this must be difficult to accept. You’re right, solider, it’s incredibly risky.”

  Anderson made a disagreeable grunt and opened his mouth to speak – but fell short at a piercing glare from Lehmann. Shaun turned a snort of laughter into a choking cough.

  “My point is,” Lehmann continued, “that we’ve tried everything we can think of. Eaglepoint Station has been monitoring Adjuster activity for over twenty-five years, and we still can’t accurately predict when and where Adjusters will appear. We have no way of tracking or identifying Timewalkers – they don’t show up on our radar until they use their powers, and by then, it’s far too late. Most of the time, we’re just hoping to get there before the enemy does.”

  “How do we even capture something like an Adjuster?” Shaun said, desperately trying to forestall the inevitable.

  Anderson hesitated, sharing a quick look with Lehmann before speaking. “This plan has been discussed before. Down in Sector 9, we already have a cell prepared.”

  A shiver went down Shaun’s spine, and his mouth became dry. “You can’t be serious. I thought Sector 9 was sealed off years ago.”

  “What’s Sector 9?” Cassie asked, her voice small.

  “It’s our Security division,” Lehmann answered. “We haven’t had reason to use it in a long time. Originally, the agency had thought we might need to contain Temporal-capable beings – rogue Timewalkers, even Adjusters.”

  “We’re re-activating that division,” Anderson said, as though he felt obligated to take control of the conversation again. “Our engineers have modified ordinary handcuffs to produce a strong electromagnetic field, the same way that our fence does. Clip those onto an Adjuster, and in theory, they shouldn’t be able to use their powers.”

  “In theory?” Shaun growled. “So, you haven’t tested it?”

  “Do you see an Adjuster around here to test it on?” Lehmann asked, glaring at Shaun. “Listen, Timewalker, there is no argument here, no discussion. Temporal Operations will capture an Adjuster, and you will be tasked on that mission.”

  “As bait? We just – just stand out in the open somewhere, and hope an Adjuster doesn’t teleport behind us and slit our throats?”

  “You’ll be protected at all times. We’ll have an eye in the sky, and snipers too.”

  “I don’t like it,” Shaun said, shaking his head. “Too much could go wrong. Look at what happened at the factory – that level of Temporal Energy, coupled with Adjuster involvement? God knows what could happen.”

  “Timewalker Wright, you’ve been quiet through all of this,” Anderson prompted. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  Cassie looked up from her lap, as though suddenly realizing there were three other people in the room. All eyes turned toward her, and a blush crept from her neck onto her cheeks. She fidgeted nervously, her hands squirming. Despite everything, Shaun couldn’t help but gaze at a lock of fiery hair that had fallen into the crook of her neck.

  “I – I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely above whisper. She cleared her throat and said, slightly louder, “I trust the Bureau.”

  Shaun lowered his eyes, disappointed in her. She’s wrong. The Bureau doesn’t have a clue. They send us in blind, every time, and hope for the best. When does it end? With another Hayden?

  “It’s decided then,” Lehmann said, even though the mission had never been in doubt. He stood, straightening his immaculately pressed fatigues. He glanced at the Timewalkers in turn. “Wright, Briars, there will be a briefing this afternoon. You don’t speak a word of this until then, understand? The operation goes ahead tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. Not even a full day to prepare. Shaun took a closer look at Lehmann, and noticed the shadows hanging under the General’s eyes, the sallow color of his cheeks, the stress lines around his mouth. They know something we don’t, he realized. They’re terrified of the Adjusters, of losing this battle.

  Shaun managed a salute as Lehmann left the room.

  “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” Anderson lied, finally standing from his chair. “Timewalkers, if you’ll excuse me – I have other matters to attend to.”

  Go away now, little children. Shaun repressed another snide comment. He held a hand out for Cassie. “Come on.”

  Her hand was sweaty, but he gripped it tightly anyway. She walked unsteadily, her head down, following him out of the Director’s office and back to the main section of the base. Neither spoke – there was nothing to say. They were both frightened, forced into a life-or-death situation. Shaun saw a few questioning glances sent his way and quickly dropped Cassie’s hand.

  Agent Hunt found them both, somewhere near the firing ranges.

  “There you are!” she huffed. “I heard the Director wanted to see you?”

  Shaun remembered Lehmann’s warning. “It was nothing,” he lied. Cassie wore her emotions more openly, her bottom lip trembling. He felt something come loose inside of him, and all he wanted to do was wrap her in a warm embrace, and tell her everything would be fine. The thought made his stomach churn, but not from the fear he had become accustomed to.

  “Well,” the Agent said slowly, “the General himself ordered me to brief Cassie on non-lethal disarmament techniques.” She hesitated. “That’s not something we would teach a recruit so early on. Is something happening that I should know about?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” Cassie said, her voice a dull echo. Her hand found Shaun’s again and he squeezed it without hesitation.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” she told Shaun. He offered a thin smile that turned into a pained grimace. Her hand slipped from his grasp.

  He watched her walk away with Agent Hunt until they had rounded the corner and vanished from sight.

  * * *

  Operations Roo
m One was crowded to capacity and beyond.

  It seemed like the entire Temporal Operations division had been crammed into the conference room, every available seat taken until agents and operators were forced to line up along the walls. The room was darkened and a low rumble of chatter filled the air – four people in the room knew what was about to be announced, while the rest could only speculate.

  Rumors circled around the room like the cafeteria of a middle-grade school, ranging from the General retiring – “he’s getting old, surely it’s time to move on?” – to a new Timewalker discovered – “so close to the last one?” – and an even more persistent rumor about a new ‘mystery facility’ that Blackforest had discovered up in Wisconsin.

  Shaun ignored the idle conversation, his attention focused on the lectern in front of the projector screen. The Bureau’s seal shone brightly on the screen – an eagle in mid-flight, an hourglass caught in its talons.

  All five of the Bureau’s directors were present, standing just off-stage. Director Anderson outranked them all, but he was conspicuously silent; General Lehmann was the most vocal, arguing intensely with Director Patricia Randall of Intelligence and Monitoring. The elusive Director Leonie Sullivan, who ran the Bureau’s Support and Containment Division, chatted animatedly with Doctor Timothy Pratchett – the director of Science and Research.

  The room fell quiet when Anderson stepped behind the lectern. He tapped the microphone twice, then cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Agents and operators of the Bureau,” he began, his voice booming around the room, “I have gathered you here today to announce the largest and most important mission in this agency’s history.”

  Shaun sat in the front row like a guest of honor. On his right was Ryan, and after him, Captain Tallon; they both watched the stage with rapt attention. Tallon leaned forward slightly as though determined to absorb every word of Anderson’s speech.

  Cassie sat on Shaun’s left. She hadn’t talked about her training with Agent Hunt, or said more than a few words to him all afternoon.

  I don’t blame her, he thought, glancing at her. The Bureau has done things like this before – but this is a new low, even for them.

  Cassie held herself with far more confidence than he’d expected. Her red hair was in a bun, and he found himself staring, Anderson’s speech washing over him without making an impact. The room rumbled with disgruntled conversation, but he ignored it like static noise.

  Cassie caught his stare, and he snapped his head around, his pulse quickening.

  “General Lehmann will explain the details of the mission,” Anderson was saying. From the intense whispering around the Ops Room, Shaun realized that they’d all just been told about the operation.

  Ryan leaned in close to Shaun and muttered, “You two knew about this already, didn’t you?”

  Shaun answered with silence. Ryan hesitated, then added, “We’ve faced worse odds before. It’ll be fine, I know it.”

  Ryan leaned to the opposite side and whispered something to Tallon. General Lehmann clicked a projector remote and images flashed up on screen.

  “We’ve chosen this location for the ambush,” Lehmann said. Red circles appeared on the screen as he talked. “A construction yard out in West Virginia. We know that Adjusters are drawn to Timewalkers, so we’re arranging sniper nests in positions Alpha and Delta, looking down on the Timewalker location, Charlie.”

  Shaun pulled back the collar of his shirt, sweat beading along his neck. Ryan was wrong – they’d never faced anything like this before. He’d always had Clockwork beside him, always had Eaglepoint telling him in advance when the Temporal Spikes would occur.

  This was uncharted territory.

  “The operation will commence tomorrow at 0900 hours,” Lehmann finished. “Units Clockwork, Blackforest, and Whirlwind will be deployed to the combat area. Codename for base is ‘Little Hill.’ Your Captains will brief you further. Any questions?”

  Shaun had a million questions. What if this doesn’t work? What if the Adjusters don’t come? What if they do come, and there are more than we expected?

  The questions fell dead on his lips.

  The agents and operators stood, honoring the Generals and Directors who would sit safely in the base, watching the mission from a satellite in the sky. As the crowd filtered out of the Ops Room, Shaun caught wayward glances in his direction, and several people clapped him on the back, offering hollow words of support that did little to ease the knot of fear in his gut.

  The afternoon passed in a flurry of activity as Clockwork Unit prepared for the mission at hand, going over the details time and time again. There seemed to be little point though. Stand in the open. Wait for the Adjusters. Pray everything goes according to plan.

  There was advice given, but Shaun heard only parts of it.

  “We can’t afford to kill the Adjuster. Lower your shots, aim to wound. If something goes wrong, we’ll have snipers ready to provide cover fire. Don’t get cornered. Keep in the open, where we can see you.”

  Afternoon slipped into the evening too quickly.

  Brightwood Ranch was charged with energy, everyone alive with conversation – except the two Timewalkers who would soon face the very worst kind of danger. Shaun went to bed well before curfew and stared at the ceiling of his dormitory. He pretended to be asleep when the other soldiers entered the dorm, and hours after the lights were turned off, he slipped into unconsciousness.

  His nightmare returned in the early hours of the morning – but instead of reliving Hayden Miller’s death, this time he opened that dreaded bedroom door to see two bodies hanging there. First, he saw Cassie, a knife buried hilt-deep in her chest, her hair ragged and matted with blood. Her face was contorted in a silent scream, her eyes open and staring at him, accusing him of letting her die.

  Then, he saw his own body hanging from the ceiling fan, disfigured and almost unrecognizable, except for the shock of white hair and the scars across his exposed arms. A message was scrawled in blood on the wall, each crimson letter three feet high:

  You Cannot Escape Your Fate.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE GOD

  The helicopters touched down outside the abandoned construction site, blowing up a thick plume of dust that engulfed the skeleton of a half-completed skyscraper and a dozen temporary buildings. The rusted corpses of several trucks groaned against the buffeting sheets of wind, and a towering crane rocked dangerously, the metal hook swinging like a pendulum.

  “This was all supposed to be a commercial hub,” Tallon explained, shouting over the roar of the helicopters’ engines. “A few buildings and an entire suburb all around here, but ever since the ’08 crisis, it’s been a ghost town.”

  “Why do we always get the spooky-ass abandoned places?” Ryan complained, hopping down onto the dry grass. “I always get the feeling that something’s watching me.”

  Cassie ignored their conversation. She checked her equipment for the umpteenth time, as though hoping to find hidden courage in her weaponry. She was lightly armed – just a concealed knife and her Glock 17C, with two magazines of spare ammunition strapped to her thighs.

  Shaun stood from beside her, his jaw tight. He dropped to the ground and helped her down alongside him.

  Temporal Operations’ snipers were already taking up positions in the skyscraper, the scaffolding creaking loudly as the soldiers hid themselves in hard-to-reach places, their sights trained on a large clearing in the center of the construction yard. The crane came to a gentle stop, looming over the whole area, somehow standing despite years of neglect. Nature had started reclaiming the forgotten equipment – spades, wheelbarrows, even the tow-bar of a truck, now rusted and buried in wild grass.

  “Remember the plan,” Tallon said, facing the two Timewalkers. “We’ll have you covered at all times, but we need at least one Adjuster alive. So when they come, let the snipers do the work, and if you have to shoot, aim to incapacitate – we can’t afford a fatal shot. We have
the anti-Temporal handcuffs with us; the moment the Adjusters appear, we’ll make a move to injure and capture one of them, okay?”

  Cassie managed to nod, not trusting herself to speak.

  The walk seemed to take forever, every step harder than the last. She wanted nothing more than to run back to the safety of the helicopters but she forced herself to continue, to put one foot in front of the other. You can do this. Trust in the Bureau. They’re going to protect you, they’ll make sure nothing bad happens.

  She wasn’t sure she believed herself.

  Then they were there, in the center of the abandoned construction yard. The skeletal skyscraper was on their right; the site office was away to their left; the crane overhead. Ryan and Tallon took up defensive positions, supported by Whirlwind and Blackforest.

  “Back to back,” Shaun commanded, standing against Cassie. There was something secure in his presence against her, something that made her heart ache and shone a tiny ray of light against the darkness gathering in her mind.

  Her hand drifted toward her holstered Glock, and she reached for her Affinity, trying to detect the telltale signs of an Adjuster attack. The harsh July sun beat down on her shoulders and she started sweating beneath her black combat gear. She blinked salty sweat from her eyes, struggling to see past the haze rising from the ground.

  Minutes dragged on in silence, and still nothing. She stirred, her legs aching.

  A voice spoke in her ear, startling her.

  “Clockwork, this is Eaglepoint,” a female voice said over the comm. “Please be advised, a large Temporal Spike has been registered over your immediate location. Standby for impending extratemporal arrival.”

  Fear and adrenaline dumped into Cassie’s body, an uneasy cocktail of emotions running riot through her mind. Her Affinity twitched as the universe moved around her. She could feel Temporal Energy shifting, rippling like a stone tossed into a calm river.

  “You heard that?” Tallon said. “Sounds like we’ve got company, over.”

  “Copy that,” Shaun replied. His body was tense and rigid against hers, his eyes darting all over the construction yard. He dropped his hand and looked at her. “Are you ready?”