"You talk at me," Spense says, folding his arms over his chest. "Why was what happened with you and Zane complicated?"
"How could it not be?" Ty sputters. "He was my partner. I trusted him and he betrayed me. Betrayed all of us. If Gallagher is any indication, that's not all uncommon in Timewise. I thought we were suppose to be better than this." He takes a deep breath and calms himself. "It's complicated because Tucker's mad and raving. He was justifying and it wasn't working. Slipped before I could get too close."
"And that's it?"
"Yessir, Spense, sir," Ty says, but he's not talking at Spense, but rather at his own reflection in the one-way glass, at the higher-ups working behind the scenes. "That's all there is to it."
This is the first thing Tyler Smith remembers:
He is three years old, toddling down a hallway, the cool plastic of a Lego figure clenched in a chubby fist. The house seems limitless since he figured out how to undo the latch on his crib and can roam around as he pleases. He's wobbling past his parent's room and down the hall with the reckless speed only the very young have when he hears the scream.
It's an utterly raw sound, something ancient and primal. It tears at Tyler, who's never heard anything that real before. He totters backwards on unsteady feet and lands on his bottom, tears welling up in his eyes not because of the pain but because of the scream downstairs. The sound is shrill, continuous, without pause for breath.
Tyler's mother appears behind him, wearing a bathrobe, hair falling out of pink curlers. She scoops him up in her arms. The Lego figure drops to the ground and the bright yellow head with the painted-on smile bounces off and skids down the stairs. Tyler and his mother follow.
In the living room, his seven-year-old sister Erica's mouth is open wide in a scream. Her delicate features are distorted and her face is red. Her hands are balled into fists. A box of cereal has fallen by her side, spilling whole-wheat flakes onto the polished wood floors.
"Erica," his mom says. Her voice is low and rumbling and it resonates through Tyler. "Erica, what's the matter?"
Erica doesn't turn, doesn't even acknowledge Mom's presence, just keeps screaming that high-pitched, unearthly wail. His mom rounds the corner. Clinging to her bathrobe, Tyler gets the barest flash of the scene before her hand clamps over his eyes. It doesn't matter. The scene is etched in his mind for an eternity.
Garrett Smith is on the floor face down. There is a nasty looking red blotch in the back of what's left of his head. His eyes are open. Erica is still screaming.
Later, much later, Ty will wake up with his sister's scream ringing in his ears and a fist shoved in his mouth to stifle a cry of his own. He'll wonder why terrible things happen. Why his house? Why his dad?
In his darkest moments, he'll even contemplate fixing it.
Ty has the summons clenched in his hands. It appeared on his door that morning, a curt note from Spense Peabody demanding Ty and Zane report for their next assignment. Ty spends three full minutes knocking on Zane's door before Val Teasley appears behind him. "You're not going to find him there today."
"What" Ty asks, fist freezing above the door. "We've got an op to run. Spense told me."
"Spense knows better," Val says. "Today's February 15. Zane's never here February 15."
Ty lets his fist drop to the side. "Where is Zane on February 15?"
Val shrugs. "Don't bother asking elsemore. He goes sometime it isn't February 15. That's all I ever got out of him. We mostly just let him be."
"What happened on February 15?"
Val's dark eyes widen. "You don't know? Well, after I think on it, I don't suppose it's something he tells people."
"What does he have to tell?"
"I was there when Zane got picked up," Val says. There's a far-off look in her eyes, like she's swimming in the memories of long ago. "Not a pretty sketch, let me talk at you. There was a big commotion, tikkers everywhere, buildings falling apart. Right in the middle of it, there's Zane, six years old, slipping in and out of different time periods as one of the tikkers starts moving for him. His parents dead in the next room over, lane up, still crackling with the blue stuff. Zane's as temporally unstable as you can get, face purple because he's barely in one place long enough to take a breath. Was partnering with Spense back then; he took out the tikker while I tried to soothe Zane out. He wouldn't let me touch him."
Ty can't imagine the scene. Can't imagine a six-year-old Zane unable to control his ability. The Zane he knows is mature, competent and for the most part, silent.
"We picked him up then. Wasn't much to do elsewise. A kid that instable, doesn't have elsewhere to go. So we took him, brought him into Timewise, let him slide around the classes in the academy. Zane didn't talk for more than a year. Got better acorse. Almost backside normal. He just, you know, likes to be elsewhere on February 15. Don't expect he's had a February 15 to deal with since he's been here. Day comes up and he just gets gone. He'll be back tomorrow. Don't worry. He's got nowhere else. "
"Do not," Ty tells Annie, "under any circumstances drop your guard. Tikkers are attracted to temporal instability and we're only adding at the problem when we slip pastside."
Annie listens as though she doesn't care. She's been assigned as his partner now that Zane's gone and Ty doesn't quite have the hang of command.
"Ty!" A voice calls from behind him.
He ignores his name, leaning in toward Annie. "You hear me talk at you, Gallagher. You've got the stunner, you can't be afraid to use it. Last we need is. . ."
"I've gone past training, Ty," Annie says. "I'm not going to freeze up the first sign of trouble."
"Ty Smith!" the voice calls again.
Something inside Ty snaps, and all the rage and frustration that has been building – at Annie, at tikkers, at the world – comes spilling out all at once. Ty turns, rage blinding him.
"Can't you see I'm busy?" he roars. "Crissakes, I'm getting ready to pull a slip. You might not think it's dangerous, that it's just a milk run, but it's not. There's a risk every time you slip. Always. Tikkers find you. You drop your care down one tick and that's when it'll happen. The one time you're not looking it's going–"
He suddenly notices he's yelling at a kid who's maybe thirteen years old. The same age Ty was when Spense Peabody dragged him into this madness. He's a little thing with pale blue eyes, sunken cheeks and a nervous demeanor.
"Crissakes," Ty whispers. "Skorry. I shouldn't have. Sorry."
Get out, he wants to tell the kid. You don't want to be here. You want to be back with your family, back with your friends. Not somewhere you can lose someone in the blink of an eye.
"They found Zane Tucker," the hapless messenger says. "Val told me to get word to you."
Something catches in Ty's throat. "They what?" His voice sounds distorted and unfamiliar, as though it's not really him speaking. "How? When?"
"Stumbled into Timewise on his own power," the messenger says. "Straight into class. Looked to be mucked up something awful. Almost attacked Spense Peabody. Spense 'round lost when they got the ident saying who it was."
"But it's Zane," Ty says. "Zane here and alive? They're sure?"
"Acorse," the boy says. "Wouldn't have sent me it they weren't sure."
(tikkers had him and Ty's never heard of anyone who survived that)
"Ty!" Annie says behind him. "Don't we have sometime to be?"
Ty barely hears her. "Zane's back? Tikkers nabbed him! How in hellside did he get back?"
"He's not saying," the boy replies. "Spense wants you in the medbay. Thinking Zane'll talk if he gets a familiar face."
Ty laughs his first genuine laugh in months. "Zane's never been one for talking."
"Am I the only one recalling we have a job to do?" Annie asks. "C'mon Ty, gotta slip."
"It can wait," Ty says, beginning to move down the hall, toward the medbay.
"Ty Smith!" Annie bellows.
"It can wait!" Ty yells back.
A big balloon of emotion is wel
ling up in Ty's chest and he realizes that it's hope.
(because Zane's back and that means everything will turn out all right)
Ty spends two long weeks undergoing a psych evaluation: hours of testing and endless questions about his decisions and state of mind. There are so many tests that Ty starts to feel like Timewise knows him better than he knows himself, both inside and out.
And then, on the fifteenth day, Spense calls him into his office. "I wanted to apologize, Ty," he says. "These past few weeks weren't exactly fair to you."
Ty says nothing, just sits in the leather chair of Spense's office, hands folded neatly in his lap. He can feel himself shaking and it takes all his effort to control it.
"I know how much meaning the Tucker case held to you," Spense says.
"Held to me, sir?" Ty asks. He's broken into a sweat. He hasn't had a slip since he was pulled off the case. After being frozen solid for so long, the heat is starting to get to him. "I'm still off the case?"
Spense brushes blond bangs from his eyes. "We've got Gallagher working the case primary. Feel that, due to circumstances abounding in recent times, it would be best for you to work on separate assignments."
Ty's on his feet before he registers the act of standing. His chair topples over behind him, clattering to the floor. "Due respect, sir, but this was my case first. I've been working it primary since we started. I need to find him."
He needs to find Zane not only to finish the job he's so hopelessly messed up but because he needs answers, needs to know why and what changed to make Zane go from loyal agent to Timewise's Most Wanted.
"Despite your differences, Gallagher is an intensely competent agent. Higher-ups in the agency feel comfortable with her heading up the investigation." Spense puts a hand in the air, effectively silencing Ty's protest. "Besides, Zane knows you well as you know him. Gallagher will be an unknown quantity for him. We have a separate assignment for you. A solo operation. So please, Ty, sit down and go light on dramatics."
Sheepishly, Ty grabs the upturned chair and rights it, settling back down across from Spense's desk. "Skorry, sir. It's been a stressful week."
"I can picture so," Spense says. "Rather be shot hellside myself than go the route through psych evals. Rest easy. You're not the only one to have braved the eval. They become more routine as you move through rankings." He slides a file toward Ty. "You've been found sound for service. We'd like to investigate a minor temporal disturbance found on May 15, 2013."
"Investigating a temporal disturbance?" Ty asks skeptically. "That's a milk run. A demotion. Going to get me policing busted time machines next?"
Spense sighs, twirling a pen around in his fingers. "It's not a milk run considering the time. There's a tikker battle three days later. Temporal disturbances that close to a conflict are not lightly considered. Worst case, we're looking ways of a failure of containment. A battle spilling into surrounding days. Results would be cataclysmic to the stability of time itself."
"Never knew there was a battle May 18, 2013," Ty says, eyeing the file.
"It was abandoned," Spense says, placing his pen carefully on his desk. "Timewise opted to abort five-eighteen-oh-one-three needing focus on other more pressing conflicts. Tikkers for the most part have followed. But if there are tikkers abounding in that week, maybe we were wrong to drop the battle."
Ty picks up the file and reads the assignment. His throat feels thick when he sees the place. "I was apposed to go to a Lewis Baker Secondary School pastside. Would have graduated 2013."
"The slip would require someone able to pose as a student. Believing me, the disturbance was registered at the time of a graduation rehearsal." Spense folds his hands together, placing them both on the desk. "You, acorse, were the obvious choice. All the information you need – alias, cover, etc. – it's all filed. Ty, I know it's not the Tucker case, but we need someone worth trusting on this job."
Shutting the file with a snap, Ty looks up to meet Spense's milky-blue eyes. "Acorse, sir. I'm one to be counted on."
Spense nods. "I expect a full report the tick you slip back. If tikkers are gathering again, we'll need to mobilize ASAP."
Ty stands up. Spense follows suit, extending a hand. Ty grasps it in his own. Spense's fingers are cool to the touch, almost icy. "You're a good op." Spense says. "Didn't deserve the psych evals."
"Thank you, sir, Spense, sir," Ty says.
He is clutching the edge of the file so hard his knuckles have turned white and the paper is starting to crumble around the edges.
Ty's sitting at his desk one day, picking through a pile of paperwork when Zane walks up to him and plops a stunner on his desk with a clatter. Ty looks up from the gun to Zane's face. "What's this supposed to be for?"
"Tikkers," Zane says. "Remember how to use it?"
"When have we got tikkers?" Ty asks, grabbing the stunner from the table. It feels thick and clumsy in his hands.
"Same time we always have tikkers."
That's the thing about time travel. Any wars between the two factions get lodged in a single time, both sides periodically pouring in reinforcements and bringing out their dead. The battles never change. They just keep going on that single day – on and on forever. It's not like a normal military venture where there can be a retreat. No, they keep going until neither side has anyone left and then come the reinforcements.
Every so often, Timewise will send another hundred agents through. Only about a tenth of them make it into the actual battle. The tikkers have a way of setting up a barricade to keep them from pouring in full force.
"Set?" Zane asks.
Tyler stands up, grabbing the stunner from the table. "As I'll ever be."
Spenser Peabody is giving the instructions. Forty members of the scrubbing team are present, set to eradicate the bodies. Sixty or so agents, in various states of nervousness, each clutch a stunner. "Time is 2099, October 29. Noon. The exact coordinates are following."
Behind him on the view screen, the coordinates flash. Ty memorizes them almost immediately, muttering the numbers under his breath.
"Good luck," says Spense.
"Down goes nothing," Zane mutters beside him.
Ty closes his eyes and lets the cold seep through his veins.
"Ty!" Jones Longwood calls from behind him. "Ty, hold on!"
It's Tyler Smith's second week at Timewise and he's not quite sure what to think about the place. He misses his mom. He misses his sister. He misses Ivy. The halls housing the Timewise bunks are cold, impersonal; eggshell-white walls with a thick brown carpet. The academy is even worse, adding a blinding white tile floor to the mix. Tyler has a headache from the first minute he sets foot on the grounds.
"Ty!" Jones calls again.
Tyler stops cold, fists reflexively opening and closing. He doesn't know Jones Longwood, doesn't particularly want to know him. Jones is hard, cold and paranoid but he seems to have decided that Tyler isn't one of them.
"My name is not Ty," Tyler says without turning around. "It's Tyler. Tyler Smith. Not Ty."
Jones claps him on the back. Tyler jumps at the weight of his hand. "You do know you just cemented the nickname, right? Nothing sticks unless you hate it."
As it turns out, Jones is right and Ty catches on, especially in an era when time is everything. No one wants to waste it on names longer than a syllable. Tyler stops fighting the nickname. After all, Tyler Smith is short and skinny with a wide smile and bright eyes. Ty barely even looks like him. He's sprouted up a foot in a little over two years. He's always been painfully thin, but there's a definition to his leanness now, something that tells the world Ty is a force to be reckoned with. His face has matured, losing its baby fat to sharp cheekbones and a crooked nose. His hair is cropped military short and it's started to darken, no longer the sun-tipped dark blond of his youth, but something duller.
People don't notice Ty.
He has a tendency to look like he's going to slip away, melting from grasping fingers if someone tries to to
uch him. He walks the lines between worlds, a foot in the present and the other in the past.
Timewise assigns him the alias Timothy Langerhanz. Ty's not crazy about the name, but it's too late to change it by the time he gets the notice. Then again, it's not like he can go into this time, this place, as Tyler Smith. No, it's far too close to his scrubbing for that.
It is not unheard of for Timewise operatives to be sent back to the period of their own scrubbing for a mission. After all, no one is qualified for a particular era like a native. Ty just wishes it wasn't here.
Lewis Baker Secondary School. He would have finished high school there if it hadn't been for Timewise. He could have stayed with Ivy, Sydney and Bryce, living out a normal, linear life with normal, linear problems.
But instead of homework and graduation, he has to worry about his ex-partner running him through temporal paradoxes and tikkers everywhere he turns.
It's surreal to be back in this older, simpler world. He doesn't fit anymore. He's not Tyler Smith.
The disturbance is located in a graduation rehearsal for the class of 2013. All around him, talk of summer and college echo through the large gym. Ty slides slowly through the crowd. He looks out of place in this den of students. They are in tank tops and flip flops, ready for summer. Ty is still freezing from his last slip, wearing his black leather jacket to conceal his stunner. He's here for work. They're here because the work's over.
He wishes he were anywhere else.
He finds the seat labeled Timothy Langerhanz and pulls the label off the chair before sitting down. Apparently he has no outstanding fines, no missing textbooks. Not a hard feat considering he'd never had any to begin with. A girl two rows up and six seats left is freaking out about a stiff library fine. Ty smiles at the absurdity of it all.
"Never seen you before," a voice says somewhere to his right. "Beauty of going to an overcrowded school. Don't even know the guy next to you at graduation."
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