"Yeah, well, take care of yourself." Spense gently pushes his father away. "Don't want to be hearing about you getting lane up." And then he tilts his head sideways and he's gone.
Garrett Smith smiles, shakes his head and turns to move inside. He pauses, fingers on the doorknob.
"I know you're out there," he calls. "And you can tell Timewise the answer is still no."
Ty holds his breath.
"You hear me?" his father shouts from the doorstep, thumping his chest. "I'm called Garret Smith and I moved here in 1986 and this is home now!"
Ty reaches into the cold and slips.
"Ty Smith," says Jones Longwood, crossing his arms over his chest. "Never thought I'd look at you elsemore. You do know they're looking on tacking you down. Timewise enemy number one."
Ty is in Jones' quarters inside Timewise, because he needs information and Jones is only person he thinks won't rat him out on sight. "I need your help," Ty says.
(he has nowhere left to go)
"And how do you know I won't be handing you in?" Jones says, folding his arms over his chest. He's been at Timewise as long as Ty, but he hasn't lost that paranoia that haunts the new agents, the sneaking feeling that everyone's out to get them.
(everyone is out to get them)
"There's not many people I trust," Ty says. "You're one of them."
Jones stares at him for a long moment and then shrugs. "How long you got before they find you?"
Ty shakes his head. "I'm hoping the last place they'll check is right under their nose."
"So between two minutes and two years, yeah?" Jones asks.
Ty rubs at the scraggly beginnings of the beard on his chin. "I just want to keep moving."
"What you need?"
"Scrubbing. I need to know how it works."
Jones flops back onto his unmade bed. "You know I can't tell you that."
"Come off it," Ty snaps. "You got assigned to be a scrubber acause you're a suspicious son of a bitch. Now I am, too. A girl I used to know before Timewise, she remembers. Looks straight at me and calls me Tyler Smith. You've got to tell me why."
That gives Jones pause. "You sure you want to know? Lots of folks don't much like it."
"I need to know," Ty insists.
Jones leans forward on the bed, one hand on each side, clutching the edge. "This here, Ty, this is Timewise's biggest secret."
"Had it with theatrics, Jones," Ty says. "Let's hear it. Nothing can surprise me elsemore."
Jones raises an eyebrow. "How 'bout this? There's no such thing as scrubbing. Never was and never going to be. People can go writing themselves out of history if they misstep, can become their own grandfathers, can go changing who they are, but blank themselves entirely? Impossible. Can't be done if you want to keep the person breathing. Elsewise, they turn out like Run Richards."
The news doesn't hit Ty as hard as it would have a year ago. "But then what do you do?"
"Every day, I go back and make it so no one goes looking for us," he says. "I fake deaths. I plant bodies."
"So my family thinks I'm dead?" He can't deal with this right now. He's got to push it out of his head before the idea breaks him.
"Easier for all that way," Jones says. "Ops don't get sent out until ages after. Even if they get seen, no one and nadie gets an ident."
"Is that what the battle scrubbers do, too?"
"Something worse," Jones says. "They won't talk at me to say what, but they scream while sleeping. How the hell do you think the battle days are always scrubbed clean? No sign of the ones before. I think they go out making folks like Run Richards."
"How can you do that?" Ty asks. "Every day, how can you go out ending lives?"
"You don't get to judge me," Jones says, standing up to grab him by the shoulders. "Don't look at me and think I don't hate it. Got to get done, though. Long as tikkers abound, someone's got to keep us fighting. Tick after this is over, something's going to be done."
"But it will never be over," Ty says.
Jones shakes his head. "Timewise won't get to do this forever long as Jones Longwood has a thing to say about it."
"You don't trust them," Ty says.
"Anyone who puts this much effort into hiding their steps don't deserve trusting," Jones says. "Elsewise, I don't trust anyone. I'm just needing proof."
Somewhere outside, alarm bells blare, a low whining siren that signifies the Timewise facility has been infiltrated.
Ty shoots Jones a wry smile. "That's my cue."
"They'll hear nothing and nada from me," Jones says, an uncharacteristic softness in his eyes. "Promise."
Ty runs into trouble in 2313 when he stumbles out of an elevator car and straight into a tikker. He's dropped his stunner sometime in 1999 and his switchblade in 2167. Everything Timewise could use to trace him is gone and that leaves him alone and defenseless.
It's just one tikker. One stupid, lone tikker in the middle of an empty hallway. The tikker raises its hand, fingers crackling with blue fire. Ty closes his eyes and thinks, This is how it ends. This is how I die.
He's cold, tired and almost three hundred years past his own time. All he can think to do is stand there and wait for the death blow.
He closes his eyes, waiting for the tikker to finish him. At least he'll die upright like a man rather than rotting in jail cell like–
"Ty!" a voice cries.
He opens his eyes. Zane is standing in front of him, the tikker dead at his feet.
"Ty Smith!" Zane quirks a smile. "Not the one looking to arrest me, I appose."
"No," Ty chokes. "Not that one."
Zane takes in his disheveled appearance. "What did you do then? Guessing it was big."
"I changed something." Ty runs a hand through his hair. "I fixed it."
"Dangerous business, that is," Zane says. "Being a hero."
"World's fucked over," Ty says. "Fell to pieces. Someone's got to put it back together."
"Elsewise we'll all go hellside with it," Zane agrees. "Skorry you had to find out."
Ty nods. He's sorry, too. He was happier before he realized just how miserable he was. "Better get out," he slurs, hands shaking. "Elsemore they'll find their pair of outlaws together."
"Can't be having that," Zane says.
Ty's left staring at the empty space where he used to be.
And then it's 2376 and Ty's outside Timewise. A little boy at the gates is staring up at the building as his mother tries to drag him away. He's about six years old with lily-white skin and a shock of blond hair. The brightness of the boy seems foreign, out of place. The sky is dark with the haze of 24th century pollution, and Ty has a hard time picturing the entrance to Timewise as anything other than the gates of Hell.
"Gonna be a Timewise agent when I get growed," the boy tells his mother. "Fighting the tikkers, saving the world."
"That's nice, Spense." The mother finally succeeds in pulling him away. "But you know we can't all work at Timewise. Only a very special kind of person can work there."
"Gonna save the world," says six-year-old Spense Peabody, blue eyes shining out from under blond bangs.
And it's 2172. Ty trips as his feet hit the ground, landing him on the grounds of a familiar college. Annie's college. Callope University where she conned her way into admission under the name Erin Miller.
He shivers. This is what he gets when he slips without aiming. Familiar places and familiar people. Because there's Annie Gallagher not twenty yards from him, sitting on a bench holding a newspaper and shivering despite the summer heat.
This isn't the cold, hardened agent he knows. This Annie, eighteen years old and thirty years out of her own time with no way to get back. She has red-rimmed eyes, like she's been crying. Ty's used to seeing her in a T-shirt, jeans and a baseball cap, but this Annie doesn't have to play down her beauty. She's wearing a tight jean skirt that shows off perfectly toned legs and a v-neck blouse that displays just the right amount of cleavage. Not for the first time, Ty realizes she's
beautiful; absolutely, stunningly beautiful.
Standing amid the masses of students walking to their classes, watching her sob, he also realizes that she's human after all.
Someone bumps into his back. He's so unstable, he slips again.
And then it's 2001 and he's back in suburbia, freezing through the blazing heat of summer.
It's a sunny, cloudless day, so hot that steam seems to rise from the asphalt. Ty shoves his hands in his pockets and starts walking. Kids are everywhere, laughing, screaming, sweating, chasing down the ice-cream man on bikes as others fight to finish cones of soft serve before the sun does it for them. The sticky liquid drips, drips, drips down their chins.
Two kids catch his eyes in particular. A little girl with red hair and sunburned cheeks chasing a tiny slip of a boy with light-brown hair. They're both clutching squirt guns and squealing with laughter. Ty can't take his eyes off them.
"Bang!" Ivy shouts, hitting the younger Tyler with a blast of water straight in the face. "Bang! You're dead now! You're dead!"
Her words ring in his ears over and over until it's all he can hear. Bang! Bang! You're dead now!
It's an omen if he's ever heard one.
You're dead!
Ty slips.
And he saves a girl from a mugger in 2210, then breaks up a gang fight in 2229 only to be knifed in the process. He stops a guy from committing suicide in 2340 and yanks a kid back to the curb by his collar before a bus flattens him in 2019.
Ty sees Annie, the current Annie, six times in a span of seven slips and starts keeping the jumps closer together. He is always freezing and he's starting to wonder how Zane made it all those months, how anyone could possibly survive this.
He comes across tikkers in 2311 and loses Annie in the fray, slipping back to 2222 where a younger Jones Longwood greets him with a disarming smile and too much trust.
"Some men will come at you a few years forward," Ty warns the young Jones, his words slurred. He is tired and not thinking clearly but at the same time he is making perfect sense. "You can't trust them acause they're going to take you away and make it look like you're dead."
The young Jones nods, face showing not apprehension but trust. Ty thinks back on history. This is before the government scandals and the economic collapse. Before the world descends into chaos and Jones Longwood's mom gets caught in the crossfire. This is before Jones realizes just how cruel the world can be.
And if you can keep tweaking at the little picture, it'll add up, you know? Tacking on and on until maybe the big stuff starts to twist too.
Ty wishes he could fix what will happen to Jones. He wishes he could fix it all. "You're a good kid," Ty says, ruffling Jones's hair. "You don't deserve any of this."
He smiles sadly at Jones, tilts his head sideways, slips to 2333, and runs straight into Annie Gallagher.
"Ty! Did you get him?" she yells. But when she gets a good look at him, she frowns. "What the hell happened to your face?"
He rubs at his grungy beard self-consciously and watches as the realization hits Annie. Before he even realizes what's happened, she has her stunner trained on him. "You've run your timelines crosswise. What breed of idiot are you?"
Ty raises his hands defensively. "Annie, calm down, calm down. You've got to let me tell it."
"Fine," Annie says, but she doesn't lower her stunner. "Talk at me."
"Well." Ty rubs at the back of his neck. "It's a little like this—"
He slips mid-sentence before she has time to fire.
And he gets tired. The kind of bone-deep tired that comes from months of being constantly on the move, of eating practically nothing and freezing even in the summer heat. Ty can count his ribs and hardly recognizes the sunken eyes staring back at him when he looks in the mirror. One day he realizes he can't do this anymore, realizes another tick of this and there will be nothing left of him.
So he goes back to Ivy.
(after all this time where she is still feels like home)
Ivy Lane's a college sophomore when Ty finally finds her again, attending Callope University only about two hours from where he used to live. Ty takes a page out of Annie's book and cons his way into the school by stealing someone's unused scholarship. It's two weeks of classes before he finally runs across her on campus.
Ivy is coming out of the chemistry building, talking animatedly with a gangly, bespectacled guy who has a pair of lab goggles dangling from his neck. Her hair's grown out a little, framing her face in a layered bob. She looks good – better than good – but Ty isn't exactly unbiased. He smiles at her, so wide his face hurts from the strain of it. "How's it happening, Ivy?"
At first, she walks past him. Ty's disappointed but not surprised. He's not the most noticeable guy around. While that's a blessing when it comes to Timewise, it's not when it concerns Ivy. But then, three steps later, she stops in her tracks and turns around.
"Tyler!" she shouts and launches herself at him, looping her arms around his neck.
He spins her around, loving every second of her delighted laughter, reveling in the closeness.
"Tyler Smith!" she says, finally pulling away from him. "I thought I'd never see you again."
"Actually, it's Marcus Bennington now," Ty says. "So says the paperwork at least."
Ivy shakes her head. "You're still Tyler Smith to me. Always will be." The smile melts from her face, abruptly giving way to suspicion. "Hold on, we're not getting more of those blue things to worry about, are we?"
"Nothing to worry on," Ty says. He motions to his backpack, grinning sheepishly. "Not unless you count a physics test. How do they expect me to do well on this test when their stuff is so obviously wrong? Hopelessly outdated."
"You're going to school here?" Ivy says with surprise. A second later, an expression of absolute delight crosses her features. "What happened to the super secret alien-fighting organization?"
Ty shrugs. "I got bored."
"You do realize you're giving me the whole story," Ivy says. "No more lies."
"My heart crosswise," Ty says. "Everything. Promise."
"Then we're meeting up for lunch. Noon at the Grill?"
"Sure thing," Ty says.
Ivy's face splits into a wide smile. The light catches her eyes, making them appear to dance. Her freckles are dark against her cheek and Ty can't imagine a world where she's dead.
Sitting in a secluded corner of the dining hall known as the Grill at a college called Callope University in the year 2014, Ty tells Ivy everything. About Timewise and tikkers, scrubbing and battles. About Annie Gallagher and Spense Peabody and Jones Longwood. About Zane Tucker gone rogue and the four months Ty has spent on the run.
Ivy, to her credit, listens to the fantastic tale with a straight face and an open mind. She munches on fries smothered in ketchup and picks at the remnants of an overcooked cheeseburger.
When Ty finally trails off, his voice is hoarse. The lunch rush has long since passed and the two of them are the only people left in the dining hall.
"So," Ivy says after a long pause. "Aliens and time travel, huh?"
Ty nods. His throat has clammed up and stopped working as he waits for her response.
Ivy grabs another fry from her plate and pops it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "I thought you said time travel was bullshit. Now, aliens I can buy. After all, there's what? Thousands of different ways life could evolve, but time travel, Ty? Honestly." A mischievous twinkle is in her eyes. "Impossible. Too many variables."
Ty laughs so hard he almost chokes. "That's what I kept thinking. Six years gone and I'd never believe it if it hadn't happened to me."
"Now genetic mutation's a nice touch," Ivy continues. "Haven't heard that before about time travelers. It's crazy. Madness if it works."
Ty can't stop laughing. Ivy keeps talking, smirking and Ty laughs until the tears stream down his cheeks.
It takes two years for Timewise to catch up with him. Ty's a junior at Callope, working through a double major of
physics and history. He decides to skip out on clubbing with Ivy in favor of pulling an all-nighter to finish a term paper due the next day.
It's five a.m. and still dark outside when he walks into the apartment he shares with Ivy and flips on the light switch to find Annie Gallagher sprawled on his couch. Her feet are propped up on the coffee table and her hand is poised on the stunner at her side.
"Come on, Ty," she says, smirking like she owns the place. "Did you really think we wouldn't find you?"
Whether he realized it or not, Ty has been expecting this day for two years. Now that it's finally here, he doesn't know how to deal with it.
"Annie," he says cordially, hanging his jacket on a hook next to the door. "It's been a while. You want anything to drink? I think we've got beer in the fridge."
"Are you even legal yet?" Annie asks.
"You know I lost track a while back. Figure me close enough." Ty moves to the kitchen and grabs a couple of beers from the refrigerator. He returns to Annie and tosses her one of the bottles. She catches it easily.
"You haven't stunned me yet," Ty says, "so I'm guessing you got over the phobia of tikker tech and you're carrying a block."
Annie pops the cap off her beer. "Acorse," she says. "What? Think I'd have a sit-down with Timewise enemy number two knowing he could slip away?"
"Number two?" Ty asks.
"Disappointed?" Annie shoots back, taking a long swig from her beer.
"Surprised," Ty confesses. "What happened to number one."
"You were until a month pastside."
"What happened then?"
Annie shifts uncomfortably on the couch. "Took Zane Tucker in for the Procedure. He gave me the slip before they had him sedated."
Ty feels a smile sweep across his face.
"Won't be making that same mistake twice." Annie says, looking at him strangely. She's exhausted, Ty realizes. She's got deep, dark circles under her eyes and a dreadful thinness to her face. "Why'd you do it, Ty? Why'd you go and change the past?"
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