Time Series: Complete Bundle

by Claire Davon

  She eyed the food and water, separated from the rest of the gear.

  “So, you want me to jump that to the Event?” she asked. She looked at the clock, now resting above the tarp, blinking its slow blink. “How long will that thing last?”

  “A thousand years,” Illiria said without hesitation. “We had someone jump to the edge of their time frame, contact someone who jumped to the edge of theirs, and they contacted someone who got this right at the edge of our time awareness. It doesn’t rely on any tech we have. It will last, Fiona, and it will be our marker.”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “That’s cool. So you want me to flash the supplies to the Event? How do I even know what date to use? We don’t know when it happened.” She was stalling. If she could stop a meteor, she could beam a few measly supplies to the Event.

  “Here we go.” She looked at the clock, and picked a date around the time of the Event. This time she did use her birthday. It was easy to remember, although she would have been long dead by then. She focused, concentrated on the black, and pushed the supplies with her time sense.

  With a poof they vanished. Fiona staggered forward a bit, more in surprise than fatigue. That had been easy. She told them the date she’d used and Sonder smiled.

  “Your birthday. Good girl. Well done, kale mou.”

  She flushed. “How do we know it’s there?”

  “We have to trust you. You know what you’re doing.” Sonder pointed to the rest of the supplies. “You moved that without even shifting the dust. You are ready.”

  “She’d better be,” Illiria interjected. “The whole world is riding on this.”

  It was no comfort to know if she failed nobody but the time travelers would know. She could not fail. She had to do this.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then I guess we should get started.”

  #

  Sonder and Fiona were going to take pictures of the Event while Illiria and Rogald went back to the house. Fiona grinned a little, wondering if the duo was going to take the opportunity to cuddle. Then again, since Sonder and Fiona could jump in at any time it might be…awkward. Time travel had a downside.

  She jumped with Sonder, using the clock to get far enough into the Event that they would be able to get good pictures. She looked around. They were there, in the bunker, and it had held. Sonder looked a little green this far outside of his fade area and she clung to his hand.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  He nodded, straightening his back. “Of course, kale mou. I am glad we mapped this prior to using it. This is a large area.”

  He would never admit to weakness. If-when-they survived this she hoped over time he would let her in on the bad as well as the good. If they were going to share a life he would need to trust her, as she would need to do the same with him.

  It took them several hours to take all the pictures on the tablet. Fiona realized they didn’t duplicate as she thought they might, they overlaid into what was already there, as if creating their own reality. It was so weird.

  The Event howled at them every time they surfaced to take a shot. They moved quickly, pushing up the entrance gates and snapping the pictures while still half inside the bunker. The winds were so fierce they could snatch an unsuspecting person away in seconds. Dirt scoured their unprotected faces and hands, leaving her skin feeling raw. All she wanted to do was get away.

  Sonder looked tired and weak when they finished and Fiona knew she had to get them back. He was far too outside his fade area and even with her he didn’t look like he would hold up much longer. That was one more point to note. Even with her reputed powers she couldn’t take someone this far away without them being the worse for it.

  The aftermath of the Event clung to their faces and bodies in wind and debris. Fiona was grateful for the suits Sonder had brought them from his time zone. They worked like space suits, but in sleek body hugging form. Too body hugging, she decided, feeling her flesh under the strange cloth.

  “Come on, let’s get back.”

  Rather than jump back to the bunker she flashed them, now in their 20th century street clothes, directly to the house, again using a clock to move forward four hours from where they had been. That should give Rogald and Illiria enough time to finish whatever it was they were doing.

  Fiona grinned. She didn’t like Illiria, but the woman had it bad for Rogald.

  Back at the house they were talking among themselves, sharing the pictures again and Rogald and Illiria were asking Sonder about the Event. They wanted an experienced traveler’s point of view and she felt a moment of pique that they were discounting her. No matter how you sliced it, however, the Event was horrifying. He tended to be more taciturn in explanation, but he was elaborating to Rogald and Illiria in great detail about the horror that was the Event. In a way she was glad. Someone else had shared the experience with her now, and understood firsthand the awfulness that it was. The suits he had given them, or taken from his time frame, helped, but nothing would stand up to the thing for long. They had to stop it.

  It happened so fast she almost didn’t realize it had occurred. One moment Sonder was expansive, detailing something about the landscape, and the next he made a sound. And began to fall.

  Chapter 6

  As if in slow motion, Fiona saw Sonder crumple, slowly slumping down. She made a horrified sound as she saw the blast begin to spread across his chest.

  “Sonder, base, now!”

  His movements sluggish, Sonder reached for his belt and activated the homing device. The last thing she saw was his eyes meeting her and he was mouthing “kale mou” as he spun into the black.

  “Commander!”

  Of course. It had been stupid to use the safe house, especially one in San Francisco. Whether the Commander realized or not that they had figured out about the bunker, he would keep an eye on the Guardian house so near to where his descendant had his device, even if it was two hundred years in the future.

  “I wouldn’t recommend moving. If you so much as shift an eyelash I will start shooting again. None of you. Do not move.”

  She turned and saw the Commander, still jewel toned as if he had jumped in but time had never frozen. She didn’t know how he had done it without them hearing him, but he had and now Sonder was gone. Dead, more than likely, judging by the horrible beam of light engulfing his chest.

  “Hands up, travelers.”

  He grabbed her, waving the weapon at Rogald and Illiria, who raised their hands. They looked at her. He motioned her away from the others, and bound her hands with plastic cord. She used them to stop or slow time and she knew he thought he was rendering her helpless. Her mind was slow from their recent trip to the Event, and the shock of seeing Sonder with blood on him. He had been right, as usual. He was not going to be there at the end to see the Event stopped. He had been killed like he thought he would be. She choked back a sob. She would not let the Commander see her like this.

  “Fiona, your mission,” Illiria said.

  Right. Mission. Sonder was gone but she had a world to save. It was all she had left.

  “We’re going now.”

  The Commander pressed a button and they spun into the black.

  #

  She hadn’t had a chance to do this much, but Fiona pushed against his body that she could not feel, hoping when/if they emerged she would be free of the Commander.

  They staggered out into unfamiliar area. Fiona was a short distance away from the Commander. They had jumped together so his coordinates worked for her.

  The Commander looked around in surprise. He stopped and faced her. Fiona looked at the Commander squarely, not caring about the weapon in his hand – the weapon he had used to kill Sonder. She didn’t have time to mourn him. There would be tears, and lots of them, later, but right now she was facing the man who murdered him and helped to murder the whole world.

  Illiria and Rogald would be following as soon as they calibrated their belts. She hoped.

  They were in some so
rt of park, an above ground oasis that looked weird for a moment until she realized that like Sonder’s modular furniture, it had linear angles not found in nature. Sometime beyond Sonder’s future, she thought. She didn’t know what era the Commander came from. It must be a bit in the future, ahead of Illiria and Rogald, or he wouldn’t be able to jump to this place. There was so much she didn’t know.

  “What is this place?” she asked, hoping he didn’t notice she was stalling. She didn’t know if Illiria and Rogald could follow. Judging by the park, this was in her future, and might be out of range for the two jumpers, at least without her. The Commander looked wavery, a little insubstantial, like Sonder had looked that time when they had jumped to the 1950s. It was dangerous for him to come her, and at the moment Fiona didn’t give a damn. He had fired his weapon at the man she loved and killed him.

  She had a job to do.

  Stay focused, Fiona. We need you.

  The Voice. Fiona tried not to show her surprise. She looked at the Commander, hoping for something, anything, an edge or a cue, some way to work through this. She focused on what he was saying. Maybe if she could convince him his course was wrong she could use him to stop his descendant. Sonder’s death would have to wait. First there was the world.

  The Commander shrugged. “A park. Some park. I don’t know. Somewhere in San Francisco.” Fiona knew that they were in the future because she could see parts of the city were now under the water. There was a seawall she thought had been built to hold back the tide, but it had failed because all they saw was its top. “It’s on the edge of my range, as it is on the edge of my many times great grandson’s range. He has messages left for me here. He’s not very good at jumping. He hasn’t figured out the tech.”

  She saw the Golden Gate in the distance and knew it couldn’t be far from the bunker. Fiona wondered why they would choose a park so near to the bunker when they had the choice of anywhere in the world to meet, but she decided with them already strained at the edge of their resources the two didn’t want to take any chances.

  “I’m not going to ask you why,” Fiona said, trying to maintain her composure. Sonder’s sacrifice would be for nothing if she lost her cool now, and failed to complete their mission. For the Guardian and the man she loved, she would put his memory aside until the proper time. “I don’t care why you’re helping your descendant. But you kill the world, Commander. You let his machine destroy everything. Why? Why would you help that?”

  The Commander smiled, a bitter, unpleasant smile.

  “Traveler, you are blind.”

  She tried to stop her cheeks from flushing, but stain crawled up them. “I’m not the best with hyperbole,” she said. Stalling him gave them time to calibrate their position. That would not be lost on the Commander.

  “Don’t you see, Traveler? He doesn’t destroy the world.”

  She blinked. The evidence lay in their future, a howling wilderness that nothing survived. The sentence was ridiculous.

  “You’ve seen the Event, Commander.” Where were Illiria and Rogald? Or someone else, someone from this time stream? What if a younger Sonder arrived? Would that be a paradox? It would be unbearable.

  “Of course he does,” she said, shaking her head. “I have been there. I took pictures. It’s a monstrous place. All life is wiped out. How could you let it happen? How could you participate in it?”

  He smirked, and it was very unpleasant.

  “My boy is trying to save the world,” he said. “You see, Traveler,” and his tone made the word an insult. “He doesn’t destroy the world.”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t destroy the world. You do.”

  #

  Illiria had told her the Commander thought that way, but hearing the words still didn’t make the concept any easier to grasp.

  “That’s impossible,” she said. “Commander, the things I’ve seen, the Voices I’ve heard.” She realized hearing voices would be proof to him of her insanity. “I’m here to save the world. Your descendant causes time anomalies that have rippled throughout history. It’s monstrous. You are or were a Guardian, you should be saving the world, not helping destroy it.”

  His grip didn’t waver. “You have grown since your early beginning,” he admitted. “You were naïve, untried with amazing talent. If I could have used you I would have but my boy got me a message a long time ago that said you were responsible for destroying the world and I needed to watch for you. He’s brilliant, and he will change things.”

  “He’s crazy and he will destroy the world.” She couldn’t believe it, because of the Voice. They wanted her to help. Then again, maybe there was no Voice and she was crazy.

  “You will try and stop him and it causes the Event. If you don’t stop him everything is okay. That is what he said in the messages he got to me.”

  She cocked an eyebrow on him. “Really? And you believed him? With the evidence of the Event in front of you, you believed him? You can’t go to his time line, so you have no way of knowing whether he is telling the truth or not. He’s lying to you, Commander. Why, I don’t know, but he is.”

  She saw the Commander flinch, and his hand twitched on the weapon. It wouldn’t be long now. She was surprised no Guardians or Liberators were coming, a puzzle she would have to figure out later, if she survived beyond the next few moments.

  The Commander paused. “He said people from the future gave them the technology, and you screw it up. He knew all about you, Fiona Jensen, so yes, I believe him. You are the cause of the Event, not him. Without you, it will succeed.”

  ACT, Fiona. Act now.

  She felt a flicker of doubt, an uncertainty that perhaps he was right. As if in slow motion she saw the Commander tightening his grip. There was still no sign of anyone else. And there was no more time to waste.

  Time slowed down and then, almost with a snap, stopped. Fiona had practiced it so much she didn’t need to move her arms and knew she had given away nothing in her expression to show what she was about to do. She had taken him by surprise. The Commander’s face was contorted on a snarl. There was a ray emerging from the weapon. Fiona sidestepped it and closed on him. Using the energy blast, she freed her hands from the plastic tie. Shaking them, she looked at the Commander. He was going into a crouch, his stance battle ready. Fiona tugged at the weapon, which didn’t want to give. One it released she tucked it into the small of her back. The flash hung in the air, a ray without a target. She pushed on the Commander. He was like a statue, but a living one. She knew from past experience he was not completely frozen. Over time he would blink and move and finish the action he was in the process of taking. Everything was slowed down to fractions of seconds.

  She didn’t know what to do with him. Then, with a burst of inspiration, she knew.

  Fiona focused. This was the moment of truth. The light displayed in her mind. She took a deep breath. A few years in the future was the time no other person had passed, a breach or bubble around the Event none of the Guardians or Liberators had ever been able to penetrate. She didn’t know of any other travelers coming out of that time era, the only Guardians and Liberators she knew about were ones whose abilities stopped or began at the fifty year mark. Under different circumstances Fiona would have liked to talk to his descendant. Right now she wanted him dead.

  Fiona unfroze time. The Commander lurched forward, as if he had been straining against the time freeze. She looked at him.

  “Let’s go visit the Event, shall we, Commander?” Before he could move, she grabbed his collar.

  And jumped into the black.

  #

  They were in the bunker. Fiona looked at the clock and nodded at the date she saw there. She looked around. The clock still worked, but the light had long ago failed and the only illumination was from the future tech clock. Fiona grabbed one of the helmets and saw what they had left there had been replaced by something sleeker. Someone had been there. She donned it and switched it on.

&n
bsp; The Commander was looking around, disoriented. He was past the time bubble and looked off balance. He was still bigger than her, even without the weapon, which she trained on him.

  “You’re so eager to see the Event, Commander, so let’s go see. Now.” She gestured with the firearm. She had an idea how to use it – Sonder had trained her in the rudimentary skills of this scary thing – but she was no expert. She knew enough, though. She knew how to pull the trigger. She would have no qualms about using this gun on the man who had killed Sonder. Part of her wanted to do it right now.

  “What?” He looked around at the small space and his eyes narrowed. “Clever, Traveler. When I take you apart I will come back and dismantle this room. Now I know it’s here, I’ll find it. I didn’t give you enough credit. The smarts probably come from Illiria, though, that woman was always the shrewdest of us.”

  “Shut up and let’s go,” she said, gesturing with the weapon.

  “Where are we going?” He looked at the clock. “2312? That far?” He chuckled. “Oh, I knew it.”

  She smiled. “I want to show you what your boy caused,” she said.

  “There is no Event,” he said with confidence. “That we are here is all the proof I need.”

  “We’ll see.”

  They made their way up to the long air shaft leading up. After three centuries she hoped the metal of the rusting staircase held. Any tracks of her and Sonder’s trip to the Event were wiped out; the dust was much worse. Some of the sand and grit must filter down even to here. She didn’t think the air would be breathable forever. Sooner or later this bunker would stand, as uninhabitable as the rest of the planet. Fiona thought about taking a suit, but didn’t want to alert the Commander to more than she had to. They wouldn’t be here long.

  They went up and up, the air shaft as long as she remembered. Outside she could hear howling wind and wondered if the Commander heard it. If he did, he gave no sign. He walked with a bounce to his step, his look confident. She made sure to keep to the side in case he tried to use his body to force her off the air shaft. She would shift if he did that, to her safe place in Australia. She didn’t know or care what would happen to him here if she shifted without him.