Timewise

by P. K. Gardner

  TIMEWISE

  By P.K. Gardner

  Copyright 2011 P.K. Gardner

  Copyright © 2011 P.K. Gardner

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from P.K. Gardner.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One: Future

  Part Two: Past

  Part Three: Present

  Epilogue

  (Prologue)

  To Tyler Smith, there is no difference between five and ten minutes late.

  Eventually, he'll think that has been his problem all along.

  Unlike students who break into a sprint the second the tardy bell rings at Lewis Baker Secondary School, Tyler slows down, savoring the swirl of papers left in the empty halls.

  He is still Tyler then, but five minutes change that.

  Had the incident happened five minutes earlier, he would have been sitting in class. Five minutes later, he would have missed the entire thing. He'd never have become Ty, the Timewise operative who exists everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  But this is how it goes:

  At four minutes late for his eighth-grade algebra class, he's rounding the corner of the hallway and for the first time feels a cold vise grip curling around his lungs.

  Then he sees a creature standing in the hallway. It's pale blue with huge black eyes, long spindly limbs and a single vertical slit where a mouth should be. Tyler blinks – once, twice – but the apparition doesn't fade. It just hovers there in his vision, a child's nightmare made flesh.

  Slowly, the thing extends its hand toward him, long, thin fingers unfurling without apparent malice. The cold that has found its way into Tyler's chest intensifies. It builds up in his stomach and seeps into his veins, his lungs and his limbs until he can't move, let alone breathe. He watches, entranced, as the pale blue fingertips start to glow with a vaguely electric light.

  (he is now exactly five minutes late to class and knows this is somehow significant)

  "Crissakes!" a voice bellows from somewhere behind him. "Get down!"

  Tyler spins around, just in time to see someone moving toward him. The blur catches him in the shoulder with a tackle worthy of a linebacker. Tyler hits the floor hard, air whooshing out of his frozen lungs.

  Blue lightning crackles above him, charring the brick wall. The heat from the blast does nothing to thaw the ice in his chest.

  "Move on!" the guy who knocked him down roars, dragging Tyler to his feet. "Go, go!"

  He steers Tyler into an empty classroom, shoves him inside, pulls the door shut and locks it behind them. He peers out the single glass pane in the window while Tyler tries to get his breathing under control.

  "What was–" Tyler starts to ask.

  "Quiet! Last thing I need is some civilian mucking this up." He turns from the window and slides slowly to the floor, burying his face in his arms. "I'm sunk as it is."

  To Tyler's surprise, he recognizes the other guy. He's maybe four years older than Tyler, skinny and gaunt with hollowed-out features and dark brown eyes. Tyler had seen him a few weeks ago, before his life had taken this turn toward the fantastic.

  "You're Kevin Jones," Tyler says.

  The guy stiffens. "What? No." Then he shrugs, his panic fading into composure. "Well actually, sure, but only sometimes. Never could get used to all the aliases."

  Tyler can't place the accent. There's something foreign in the dialect that he can't identify; familiar words twisted with unfamiliar slurs.

  "I'm Zane Tucker," the guy says, pulling a black disk from his pocket.

  That name strikes a chord with Tyler too, like something resonating from a distant dream.

  "Zane Tucker," Tyler repeats.

  (it is either the second or third time he has met Zane Tucker, maybe both)

  "Sure. Zane Tucker. Practically my whole life." Zane flips the disk over in his hands, raising his gaze to meet Tyler's own. Recognition flashes in his eyes. "Ty? Blast me hellside. Ty Smith?"

  "How the hell do you know that?" Tyler asks, stepping backward. There is a tremor in his voice. "I never told you my name."

  "Someone on high hates me," Zane moans.

  "How do you know—"

  "You're not supposed to be here!" Zane bellows, scrambling to his feet. "You can't be here! It'll muck everything up! Tank it straight down under." He cuts himself short and takes a deep, calming breath. "Skorry, skorry. Wait." He laughs. It's a hollow sound with a manic edge. "Wait, no, 21st century. Sorry, sorry. It's been years this week."

  "What was that blue thing?" Tyler asks.

  Zane appears frazzled. His brown hair is sticking up in clumps, his black shirt is faded and his jeans are torn. He looks like he hasn't slept in six months.

  "Can't say," Zane responds. "Still your future."

  He spins the disk again, turns to peer out the door's glass pane and gives another hollow laugh. "Look at me," he mutters. He's not talking to Tyler anymore. "Stays straight in line. Follows the rules. See me now. Never thought, never thought…"

  "Thought what?" Tyler asks.

  Shaking himself from his trance, Zane turns back around. "The thing's keyed onto you," he says. "Which means any tick now, the Timewise Agency will come slipping in."

  "Timewise?"

  Zane graces him with a crooked smile that looks out of place on his gaunt features. "Haven't heard of it yet? That's good." He taps the black disk, once, twice, a third time. "Still, if Timewise shows, everything gets shot hellside. The thing's keyed you as a target and it's going at you hard."

  "What was it trying to do?"

  "Laser flash," Zane says, staring out the glass pane. "It was trying to kill you."

  "What? Trying to kill me? Why would it want to kill me?"

  That draws Zane's full attention. "They're kind of indiscriminate, Ty. But that don't matter. Just shut it and listen. Few ticks here and the hellside breaks lose. I've got a pulse." He shows Tyler the disk in his hand. "It shorts out all things electronic. What I need you to do is pull the fire alarm and get out quick as possible."

  "What happens to you?" Tyler asks, voice shaking. The pervasive cold settles back in his stomach. Zane's face twists until all Tyler can see are eyes, big and black.

  "Crissakes, Ty." Zane cuffs him in the back of his head. "I need your focus. When I tell you, pull the fire alarm and run. I get out. You get out. Everyone wins. Just don't go telling anyone about this. You can't. Not your friends, not your family and not even me. We can't have you mucking everything up."

  "But..." Tyler protests.

  "You still talk too much," Zane says, almost fondly. He's wearing a strange, crooked grin. "I'm gonna stay straight with you, always am. Things are going to turn out all right. I'll be seeing you soon." He frowns. "Hopefully not soon for me, but quick enough for you if I'm guessing. Just remember…" He looks strangled for a moment, half choked on his own thought. He forces a swallow. "Just don't tell anybody and don't look back."

  Tyler nods. There is a crash out in the hall and in the commotion, Tyler thinks he can hear someone giving orders. But the voice is muffled by the walls, distorted past recognition. The cold eats at the pit of his stomach. His head throbs. The world tilts dangerously on its axis, ready to topple him off. There's something in his head screaming that this is wrong. That he shouldn't be here. The classroom spins. He stumbles into a desk.

  Zane seizes him by the shoulders, dragging him up straight, high enough to meet his eyes. "You hear me, Ty? Don't tell anyone and don't look back!"

  "I hear you," Tyler croaks.

  "Good," Zane says. "Let's get to it."

  Zane crouches next to t
he door, one hand poised on the doorknob, the other clutching the disk. "Ready?"

  Tyler nods. He's lying.

  "Down goes nothing," Zane mutters. He flings the door open and sends the disk skittering into the hallway. "Go!" Zane hisses.

  Tyler scrambles out the door, not even glancing down the hall where the unearthly blue creature had stood only minutes before. There's a tinny sound, like a million machines dying all at once.

  The lights cut out. Screams of shock echo from the various classrooms. Behind Tyler, the door flies open again. Tyler hears Zane Tucker's footsteps padding away. In the distance comes an indistinct clamor of voices.

  Tyler stumbles, trips, almost falls. He catches himself in time, groping along the rough brick walls until his fingers latch onto the fire alarm. He pulls the lever and starts running.

  Even as he hears the alarm's pulsing whine, even as he sees the student body pouring into the hall, even as he feels the crashing clamor of a thousand voices, he doesn't stop running. He just keeps going until he reaches the exit, nearly flattening a girl with honey blonde hair,

  "Ty?" she calls after him, but he hardly hears her. He's already out of the school, into the bright sun of the crisp, clear fall day.

  He doesn't even think to look back.

  PART ONE

  (Future)

  "State your name for the record."

  The room is white, almost blindingly so. The solid wooden table in the center is the only real splash of color. On either side of the table stand a pair of chairs. They are metal, straight-backed and too stiff to be comfortable. It is a room generally used for interrogations. Two men sit on opposite sides of the table. More watch, unseen, through one-way glass.

  "Come on, Spense," pleads Ty Smith. "Do we really have to do this? You know who I am."

  Across from him sits Spense Peabody wearing a navy blue blazer, a white T-shirt, dress slacks and a pair of sneakers. This mix of casual and formal had bothered Ty his first few weeks at Timewise but now he doesn't even notice.

  Peabody is clean-cut and clean-shaven. He has neatly parted dark blond hair, pale skin and razor sharp eyes that glitter with intelligence. "Ty," he says haggardly. "It's standard procedure. You know this. You were his partner for two years."

  "So we're talking about Zane?" Ty crosses his arms over his chest and tips his chair back onto two legs, balancing precariously. He doesn't fall. He never falls.

  "State your name for the record," Spense repeats.

  Ty leans forward and the legs of the chair hit the polished tile floor with a satisfying clack. "My name is Tyler Smith. Timewise operative 2007TGS. Scrubbed from my original timeline at thirteen. My mother's name was Joan Bueller, my father was Garrett Smith. Got me a sister called Erica and a pet goldfish named Steve. I used to partner with Zane Tucker. Currently you've stuck me with the mad Anne Gallagher." He glared. "You want me to get my whole life story in order or you going to tell me what happened to Zane Tucker?"

  Spense taps his thumb on the folder in front of him. "I'm afraid Zane Tucker's gone AWOL."

  "Zane's missing?" Ty repeats, incredulous. Something drops in the pit of his stomach. He thinks he sees a flash of blue behind Spense, lurking just out of reach. "Again? But he just got back. He told me he was getting easy stuff. Routine checks and all that. No way tikkers go grabbing him."

  (Zane's too good to get caught twice)

  Spense coughs. Ty's eyes narrow. It's Peabody's most telling habit. Whenever he needs to say something he doesn't like, he tries to smother it with a coughing fit. "Out with it, Spense. Zane run across tikkers again?"

  "It wasn't tikkers," Peabody says. He coughs again. "He's gone rogue."

  Ty lets out a harsh laugh. "No way. Guy's an absolute devotee. Loves this place. Not a soul could get Zane to turn like that."

  Peabody slides a folder across the table. The fact that now, four hundred years into his future, there are still paper printouts and hard copies amazes Ty. He grabs the folder after a pause, cracking it open.

  "He was on an op in 2211 partnering with Val. She said he was acting crooked. Nothing big, just a few nervous ticks. Enough to say he was walking edgebound."

  "Due respect," Ty interrupts, "but it was his first real op after being held by tikkers six months. Even folks like you would be edgebound."

  "Six months gone," Spense says. "Gets back and first op out, goes AWOL. Next thing he's mucking around in the timelines. What are we supposed to think? He slipped out on Val while she was talking at the new recruit. Since then we've tacked him in 1999, 2388, 2149, dozens of different times. We've got a tack on him, but he's moving fast, staying a step ahead of us."

  Flipping through the file, Ty can hardly believe his eyes. "He's changing things?" he asks.

  "He could do irreparable damage should this streak go checkless," Spense confirms. "He's got to be stopped." He gives a long sigh and rubs at his eyes. "I want you and Gallagher primary on this. Agency wide, you're the one knows him best."

  "Zane once told me the only thing he believes in is Timewise. He's not going to suddenly go breaking every rule."

  "But that's just what he's done," Spense says. "You can ask him why once you find him. This is your op, Smith. You're the only one knows him well enough to figure where he'll slip to next. I want Zane Tucker caught."

  Ty stares at him. "Due respect, sir, but Zane's my friend."

  "It's an order, Smith. You and Gallagher primary, got a few others working it separate. Can get you more in a pinch but we got four hundred years needs covering and not near sufficient manpower. Man's guilty of a level-one timeline infraction. We're not laughing here. I need you to bring him in. We clear, Ty?"

  "Yessir, Spense, sir."

  "Good," Spense says. "Because Zane Tucker needs to be stopped."

  Ty looks down at the folder. Zane Tucker's face stares back out at him, a traitor of the worst kind.

  "So what you're saying is you can accept aliens, ghosts and teleportation, but you can't buy time travel?" Ivy Lane's voice contains barely controlled laugher. Her smile stretches wider than her face.

  Across from her, twelve-year-old Tyler Smith scowls, crossing his arms over his chest. They do this sort of thing all the time — sit around and discuss the fantastic. Ivy believes none of it. Tyler, on the other hand, believes every urban legend, every conspiracy theory. That is, everything except time travel. "It just doesn't make any sense."

  Ivy snorts. "And aliens do?"

  "Look," says Tyler. "There are an infinite amount of stars and planets in this universe. Life could evolve in any one of billions of ways. There's no reason to think ours is the only possibility. But time travel is completely different."

  It is Tyler's first day of middle school. The cafeteria is bigger and more chaotic than he expected. His elementary school had been the smallest in the county, but Lewis Baker Secondary School, which houses grades seven to twelve, is the largest in the state.

  The size of the school, however, doesn't seem so daunting when he's in the company of a friend.

  "How's it different?" Ivy teases, stealing a fry off his plate. "It's all science fiction to me."

  "Too many variables," Tyler explains, chewing the thought over a fry of his own. "You've got a person, you've got any one of a billion places he can go, in any one of a billion times. What you don't have is a way to get there. You'd have to break down your entire body and recreate it from scratch. No time machine could cut it. It's the same reason teleportation won't work."

  Ivy smirks at him. She's taller than he is, with long, dark red hair, shining green eyes and lily-white skin dotted with brown freckles. Tyler's known her longer than he can remember. The Lane family has lived three houses down from him since he was three years old.

  She isn't the girl next door (the woman next door is a ninety-year-old with a fondness for cats) but she is just as good. Better even, because she is his best friend.

  "Why can't teleportation work?" Ivy persists. "How do you know scientists haven't
already managed to deconstruct the atomic structure of the human body and put it back together?"

  Tyler gives her a look. "Since when do you believe this stuff?"

  "I don't," Ivy says. "I just like watching you fumble for explanations." She takes a long swig from her milk carton. "Also, I may have watched The Fly last night."

  Tyler bursts out laughing, not smart while there is food in his mouth. It's a struggle not to spray flecks of half-chewed fries all over the table.

  "I'm serious here," Ivy protests, but her eyes are laughing. "I don't see how you can pick and choose the sort of weird stuff you believe in."

  "I'm special," Tyler says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  "Yeah," Ivy agrees. "Special. That's what you are."

  Tyler throws a fry at her. It hits Ivy in the face, and drops into her lap. She stares at him for a second, shrugs, plucks the fry from her lap, and pops it into her mouth.

  "You're disgusting," Tyler says.

  She smiles. She has braces. The metal brackets glint in the fluorescent lights. Tyler still thinks she's beautiful. "You love me anyway."

  "What's this girl called again?" Ty asks. It's a warm day at Callope University. Most of the students out on the lawn are wearing shorts and tank tops. He even spots a few girls in bikinis, lounging outside their dorms and bemoaning the fact that the nearest beach is three hundred miles away. It's 2172 and Ty's still freezing from the slip through time, but he's starting to get used to it. He's taken to wearing a thick leather jacket during every slip. The extra layer does a lot to retain warmth.

  Zane wears the same jeans and T-shirt combination everywhere he goes. Practical and nearing timeless, he says. Blending in is important.

  "Anne Gallagher," Zane says, shoving his hands into his pocket and coming back up with a picture.

  Anne is seventeen with dark blonde hair, a disarming smile and sharp green eyes. She's undeniably beautiful, the kind of girl who would turn heads if she ever decided to play up her looks. But at a crowded university, lost in the sea of students, there may be trouble finding her.