Timewise

by P. K. Gardner

  Ty sits down on the edge of the coffee table. "That's the thing, isn't it? Annie, it's not the past. Not for me, at least. Was born in 1993, not 2406. This may be your past, but it's not mine. Far as I'm concerned, none of it's happened yet."

  "Cute, Ty," Annie snarls. "Incredibly naive, but cute. Tucker teach you that? What happens when the tikkers abound?"

  "Tikkers haven't showed up," Ty says, sipping on his beer. "And if they haven't yet, I doubt they ever will. I just want to have a normal, linear life. I'm not hurting anyone."

  "No," Annie says, setting her bottle down on the coffee table. "No, you're not hurting anyone, but I'm taking you in that way or no. Stand up. Turn 'round."

  Ty obeys, standing up slowly and turning to face the wall.

  "Tyler Smith," Annie says and Ty can hear her pulling out the handcuffs. "You have been charged with a grade one timeline infraction. Under authority of the Timewise Agency, I am authorized to take you into custody."

  He can feel her moving toward him. She grabs him roughly by the wrist and a wild panic seizes him. He jerks his elbow back and up and catches her in the face. Her head snaps backward, giving him enough time to wheel around and snatch the stunner from her hands. She stumbles back, tripping over his coffee table and landing on the beat-up couch, a look of complete bewilderment on her stunning features.

  "Did you really think I'd come quietly?" Ty asks, fingering the trigger.

  Annie smirks through the mess of rapidly swelling flesh. She's wiping the sticky red blood from her face when she says, "Did you really think I'd come solo?"

  Something bashes into the back of Ty's head and his entire world plunges into darkness. He loses his grip on the stunner and it clatters to the floor about a second before he does. He lands roughly, a sharp pain shooting through both knees. It's a miracle he maintains consciousness.

  He spots the stunner under the coffee table only a few feet away and tries to make a grab for it. Annie bends down and picks it up before he can even force his arms into action. She glances up, giving her new partner a nod. "That was perfection, Jax."

  It's Jackson Noddings, the orphan Ty and Zane brought in when the tikker took Zane.

  Annie crouches down on her haunches, regarding Ty with barely contained disdain. He feels a sort of perverse satisfaction at the rapidly bruising mark on Annie's chin. "You went changing the past, Ty," she says. "You near mucked everything up."

  She really believes it, Ty realizes. She's bought into all the Timewise doctrine and all the rules. She believes it with a sort of fevered frenzy that Ty never had.

  "I think time's a hell of a lot more flexible than we give it credit for," Ty says, reciting the words as if from a distant dream.

  "I think," Annie replies, pausing for full effect, "you're shitful. Jax, cuff him."

  "You can't change what I did," Ty snarls. "You know that. It's happened now and that's just as good as saying it always happens and always will be happening."

  "Don't matter."

  Ty sighs as Jax hauls him to his feet. "Can I at least write Ivy a note? Tell her what happened."

  "That's her name, huh?" Annie says. "Ivy Lane. Records say she was apposed to be the first human ever killed by a tikker. Sweet on her, huh, Ty?"

  "Very much."

  "Suppose you think that'll get to me? Touch me deep inside. Make me think it was about love so what you did wasn't criminal." Annie's blue eyes cut through him. "It's not all good. Love's not an excuse. I'm still taking you in. What've you got to say to that?"

  "She's not dead," Ty growls. "And you know what, Annie? That means no matter what you do to me, I've won."

  Annie grabs him roughly by the arm. With her free hand, she reaches into her pocket and turns off the block. They plunge into the ice, slipping forward through time. Ty had forgotten how the ice seeps through his veins and into his heart, had forgotten what it's like to exist with his fingers stiff and his joints numb. Despite it all, he's smiling as they tumble though time and through the cold.

  Because Ivy's alive and there's nothing they can do.

  "You hear me!" he crows, laughing now. "I won!"

  The cell in Timewise is freezing. Ty has to keep flexing his fingers to make sure they don't stiffen irreparably. They've shaved his head, dressed him in an orange prison jumper and shoved him into a holding cell to wait.

  They assign him an attorney and, finally, put him on trial. His attorney won't let him testify. He has to sit there and listen while Timewise presents overwhelming evidence against him. Annie Gallagher, Spense Peabody and Val Teasley testify. Jones Longwood is the only one to say anything in Ty's favor but he can't say much without being branded a traitor himself.

  He's convicted of three counts of grade one timeline infractions, aiding the fugitive Zane Tucker and a couple other misdemeanors that Ty can't bring himself to care about.

  The sentence is the Procedure, twelve months in a cell and then release from Timewise. Release into the current time, 2407, hundreds of years after his life is supposed to be over.

  Ty listens to the ruling, staring down at his hands folded neatly in his lap. He forces himself to think of Ivy, smiling and alive back in his own time. She'll be upset for a while, but he's warned her this might happen — would happen. He just wishes they'd had more time together.

  Back in the cell again, Ty thinks the layout could be a duplicate of the prison cells he used to see while watching old movies on the couch with Ivy.

  A single cot with scratchy sheets and bedsprings that creak is pushed over to the side of the room. A small toilet is in another corner. Shining chrome bars keep him inside the cell, a crackling force field that taunts him with the impossibility of escape. The walls so white that is seems like daylight even in the darkness.

  Soon Ty loses track of the days. A prison guard stops by at breakfast and dinner and leaves him protein bars that taste like sawdust in his mouth. He eats anyway. He scratches at the cuff on his wrist, trying to find some loophole, some way to get it off, but only succeeds in rubbing his skin raw. The blood slicks his hand and stings painfully, but no one is willing to take off the cuff to dress the wound properly his hand stays red and puffy for weeks on end.

  He takes to sleeping as long as he can. His dreams are distressing more often then a comfort. He dreams of Zane, finally caught after years of running, going in for the Procedure. He dreams of his father with a bullet in his brain, sprawled across the living room for his seven-year-old daughter to find. He dreams of Ivy, body convulsing after the blue lightning from a tikker strike. He wakes up and has to shove his fist in his mouth to keep from screaming. He won't let them have the satisfaction of hearing him suffer.

  Nothing changes for weeks — or maybe it's months or even years. And then one night, everything changes. There's a small disturbance in his cell, a change in the atmosphere, a shift. It's almost imperceptible, but it wakes him up. He groggily turns over in his cot and forces his eyes open.

  A little boy is inside his cell, hardly more than ten years old. He has a wild mess of dark brown hair and wide, frightened eyes. He's wearing pajamas, his feet bare against the floor.

  "Where am I?" the boy manages to ask. "Who are you?"

  His voice is soft, as light as the air. It's been a long time since Ty heard something that sounded so innocent.

  "Prison cell 67B," Ty answers, sitting up in bed. "Welcome hellside, kid."

  The poor boy's eyes go even wider and he's wraps his hands across his chest for warmth. Ty recognizes the pose instantly. This kid's out of time. All the telltale symptoms of an unplanned slip are there, from the too-short pajama pants to the fear dripping from him.

  "We're in prison," the kid stammers, shrinking back against the wall.

  And that's when the haze clears and Ty realizes he knows this kid. It's him. It's Tyler Smith before this mess started.

  "Yessir," Ty tells his younger self. "Name's Zane Tucker. You're in my cell. 67B."

  "You're a killer, aren't you?" Tyler stammer
s, his entire body quaking. "That's why they locked you up. Ivy says the criminal mind works in all sorts of twisted ways. They try and gain your trust an' the next thing you know, they're shoving a knife in your stomach and slicing out your entrails. I heard—"

  "I haven't got a knife," Ty says. "And I always preferred eyeballs to entrails."

  He feels distressingly calm. The distant voice from a lecture long forgotten rings in his ears. The same matter cannot exist in the same place at the same time. But even though he's inches away from his younger self, he's not the least bit worried.

  Tyler makes a sound like he's choking back a laugh. Ty gives the kid a small smile. "Not a killer. Just made enemies of some of the higher-ups. Broke some rules needed breaking."

  When his ten-year-old self finally speaks, his words are unusually serious for someone so young. "Was it worth it?"

  The question catches Ty off guard. It hangs in the still air and gains weight with each second that passes. He opens his mouth, about to tell himself what's coming. To explain about the tikkers and the chaos and the destruction in his future. About to warn himself not to follow Spense Peabody into Timewise that fateful afternoon.

  And then he thinks of Ivy. She'd be dead if Ty hadn't come to Timewise, gone rogue and broken all the rules. He realizes if he had a chance to do it all over, he'd do it exactly the same way.

  A smile spreads across his face. It's the first time he's smiled since 2015, when he last saw Ivy. Every stolen second was paradise.

  Was it worth it?

  "Most definitely," Ty says.

  And he means it.

  (Epilogue)

  After four months of waiting, the day Ty is scheduled for the Procedure arrives. Spense is in his cell when he wakes up, blinking against the bright whiteness of the room. Spense looks paler somehow, his skin so white it nearly blends in with the walls.

  Ty pushes himself into a sitting position. "Is it time?" he asks. Even to his own ears, his voice sounds wrong: rusty, grating, unused.

  Spense nods. Ty meets blue eyes filled with something that looks like pain, but Spense doesn't maintain eye contact for more than a second.

  The lock on the cell opens and Spense starts walking toward the end of the hallway, obviously expecting Ty to follow. For a split second, Ty contemplates sitting in his cell, refusing to move. What would happen then?

  He can imagine Timewise bringing in people to coax him out of the cell, down the hall and into the lab. He'd lash out at Annie Gallagher, try to explain his reasoning for not budging to Val Teasley and say goodbye to Jones Longwood. In the end, he'd go to the lab, either willingly or by force. No matter what, Timewise will always win this battle.

  So he leaves the cell of his own volition, standing up on leaden legs and forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other. Spense is ahead of him, moving down the whitewashed hallway with a brisk sense of purpose. Ty follows.

  He is not the only prisoner. Others peer out through the chrome bars on their cells, eager for one last look at Ty Smith before he heads in for the Procedure.

  Ty forces himself to smile, but the grin feels all wrong on his face, like it's so lopsided it will slide off at any minute. He sees his shadow on one of the white walls. He's always been slim, but he's skin and bones now, swimming in a shirt that used to fit him well. He feels old, hunched over like a man forty years his elder. It takes a conscious effort to straighten his back.

  If Ty has to go down, it won't be while he's looking like a beaten man.

  "In here," Spense says at the end of the hallway, pulling the door open.

  Ty walks past him and into a room that resembles a morgue more than an operating room. Everything's gray: the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Instead of being shiny and metallic, even the operating table is dull.

  Ty can imagine tikkers being dissected here, sliced up on the table with visceral yellow fluid seeping from every incision.

  "Skorry it has to go along this way," Spense says quietly. "But Ty, you—"

  "I know," Ty interrupts. Absolution. That's what Spense wants, so Ty gives it to him. "I broke the law. I get it. The Procedure is just procedure. It's not your fault."

  Spense is tasked with sentencing people to their deaths and sending agents to hunt down their own. Ty gets that it's a hard job that someone has to do. It's not Spense's fault that he's good at it.

  "They'll be preparing for the Procedure in the next room," Spense says, staring down at the floor. "I've got some paperwork." His eyes flicker up to Ty. His hand is on the door handle. "Goodbye, Ty," he says in a voice coated with thickness.

  Spense is out the door before Ty finds his voice and whispers, "So long, Spense."

  Ty tests the handle when the door is shut. The room is locked. He claws at the cuff on his wrist. If he shorts it out, he might be able to get away, to slip back home to Ivy. But the skin surrounding the cuff is already rubbed raw. It chafes at the new skin and sends racks of pain shooting through Ty's frail body.

  The cuff won't come off. He knows this already, but the realization still sends a new wave of panic through him.

  It's actually going to happen.

  They're about to give him the Procedure. Once they cut the gene for time travel out of his body, what's left of him will be free to wander the barren streets of 2407 alone and without purpose.

  He sits down on the operating table and buries his face in his hands. He thinks of Ivy, who would be long dead by now. He wonders how she coped when he was taken, hopes she had a good life.

  And then he uncovers his face and raises his head because he realizes he's wrong. Ivy isn't dead. There's a point somewhere back in time where Ivy Lane is just fine, smiling and laughing and living her life completely unaware of Ty's struggle.

  A smile works its way to Ty's face. Because it's okay. Right here, right now, Ty is close to the end, but somewhere back in time, there's another Tyler Smith, holding hands with Ivy at the seventh grade dance.

  Somewhere in time, Garrett Smith cradles his infant son while he whispers soft secrets in the wee hours of the night. Jones Longwood clings to his mother in the wake of destruction. Tyler Smith survives a tikker attack thanks to the rogue Zane Tucker. Annie Gallagher cons her way into university, making the best of what life hands her. Spense Peabody, still bright-eyed and excited, dreams of saving the world.

  And somewhere in time, a girl is walking around who would have been dead if it weren't for him. Somewhere he is kissing Ivy, pouring everything he has into that one act of desperation. Somewhere else, Zane is still running, slipping through the hands of Timewise again and again and making a difference.

  And it's all happening right now. In the past, sure, but it's all happening and will always be happening and that's what matters.

  The door creaks open and a doctor enters. He's wearing a lab coat, a green sterile mask and a cap covering his hair. Nothing about him is identifiable if Ty were able to make it out of here whole. That's Timewise, anonymous and impersonal until the very end.

  "Are you prepared, Mr. Smith?" the doctor asks.

  The needle in his left hand is filled with an amber liquid that Ty knows is a sedative. Ty shrugs and rolls up his sleeve. He flashes a smile at the doctor who looks unnerved by his cheer.

  "Down goes nothing, right?"