Chronomancer

by Mackenzie Morris

  It had been two hours, but Xander had not returned.

  Every second that dragged by without word from the present made Jack fall into a deeper and deeper void of grief. He knew. If Niki was alive, it wouldn't have taken that long to get him somewhere for help. But if he hadn't made it, ironing out the details of a lost loved one could take time. Part of him dreaded seeing Xander return because hearing the words would be worse than whatever his imagination was forcing on him. It wasn't real until someone told him or until he saw his friend's lifeless face in a coffin.

  Opal tied her auburn locks up in a messy ponytail and wiped the sheen of sweat from her cheeks that glowed with exertion in the freezing air. She had stripped down to her grey checkered wool pants and long-sleeved jacket while she pulled boxes out of the crate and handed them off to the citizens who took refuge in Pavlov's House. She smiled when a group of Soviet soldiers cheered after driving back a group of Germans. "Do you hear them? Not a step back. There is no land behind the Volga. That's what they're shouting, Jack. It's inspiring, isn't it? Look at them. They would give their lives for their home, for their country."

  Jack barely heard her. His mind was focused on something else entirely. "He's gone."

  "Come help me unload these packages. The soldiers will need their rations. They said we can share with them if we want. At this point, you can probably give them some of your tacos. I don't think the timeline will be too bad off, seeing how much has already been altered."

  "Lilies. Purple lilies were his favorite."

  "Jack, you need to drink some water and rest."

  With his finger, Jack drew a lily into the dust that had gathered on the tiles beside him. "When we were younger, one summer night, we planned our funerals. We told each other what we wanted. Our favorite songs, cake, a soda fountain. We wanted them to be parties so no one would be sad. But Niki wanted purple lilies. He wanted to be buried on a hill with thousands of purple lilies planted all around him."

  "It won't come to that. You can't lose hope."

  "I asked him why he loved them so much. He told me that lilies show that the deceased's soul has found peace and purity after death. But purple meant that he would always be devoted to me, even when he was no longer here. He said it was love. He didn't want white ones because white was like erasing him, leaving nothing behind. He didn't want to be forgotten."

  Opal set the last package to the side then sat down beside him. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. "No one could ever forget Niki. You know I love him. I know you do, too. But we can't be like this right now. We have to stay positive, even if it's so damn hard. He'd want us to be hopeful."

  "I don't want to bury my friend."

  "I know. I know, Jack."

  He snapped at her without even meaning to. "No, you don't. You can't understand. Niki was there for me when I was alone. He was my family when I had none. I've known him all my life. I can't just sit here and let him die. I'm warping."

  "To when? Where? You can't. You're not strong enough."

  He pulled himself up onto his feet. "I'm going back to this morning, to before he was shot. We can stop it from happening."

  "Not here, Jack. This is a base mark. It's controlled by the Syndicate. Warping to this morning will only take you into a memory of that time, like watching it all over again, or right back to this spot. They control how much Chronomancers can do here. They have history the way they want it in this time and nothing you do can change it."

  "I don't understand."

  Opal joined him, taking his left arm to keep him from removing the bandages and trying to warp. "You're not a part of time here, Jack. You're removed from it, you and Xander both. You've already left your footprints in history here. And as long as the Syndicate holds control over this base mark, what you've done is already done."

  "Then we make them change it."

  "It's not that simple. Even if they do unlock it from being a base mark, it's futile. The more times you warp to a time and place, the weaker you get there. You can't just warp to the same moment in time over and over again. You'll create tears that will erase entire parts of history."

  "If it brings Niki back-"

  Opal cut him off. "No. It's not worth it."

  "It is worth it! You don't know what he was to me."

  "Damn it, Jack. Stop talking about him in the past tense. You don't know he's gone."

  Jack's voice cracked. "He is."

  "You can't know that."

  "I can and I do! I feel it in my heart, Opal. He's gone! He's-" Jack's shouting was abruptly cut off when his vision flashed bright white and his ears filled with angry screeching of twisting metal, crashing cars, and screaming humans. He heard the wind howling, fires blazing, and thunder booming. His ears were overwhelmed with a baby's cry, ocean waves, and emergency sirens blaring.

  When his hearing returned to normal and he could draw a breath, he blinked away the white light to see the new place he was in. As far as he could see, the sky was slate grey, featureless, and speckled with what almost appeared to be static. The ground was just as bleak, but black like slick obsidian. There was no sun, just an ambient light from no noticeable source. There was no vegetation, but there were many humans.

  People of all ages were locked in wooden pens, chained by their ankles to posts in the ground, locked in steel cages, or being driven around in the back of carriages with bars on them that were being pulled by men in dirty shorts with pink welts crisscrossing their backs. A few women were being led onto a wooden stage where a crowd of buyers in modern clothing bid on them. They were then taken away by their owners into the rows of black tents where they vanished.

  Opal rubbed her eyes and held onto Jack as she shook her head. "What just happened?"

  "I think you're both quite done with playing soldiers."

  Jack spun around to face the source of the harsh female voice with the British accent. He backed away from the sharp-featured woman in her thirties with her blonde hair pinned up in a tight bun. A bronze badge glittered on her chest where it was pinned to her purple peplum suit jacket. "Olivia."

  "Did you actually think it was going to be so easy to get rid of me?"

  "Where are we?" Jack asked.

  "In a tear, a time between time. A safe zone."

  He narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't look very safe."

  "It's perfectly safe for us Iskaydrians. Welcome to Alvezenden, The Sacrifice Market."

  Opal scowled, but her eyes reflected her inner fear. "This is bad, Jack. It's a bad place."

  "Tsk tsk." Olivia reapplied her bright red lipstick as she led them into the market. "I didn't bring you here to sell you, Miss Arrington. I brought the two of you here to talk with you in a secure location. There have been some recent developments that we need to discuss. Do you know where your detective friend is now, Opal?"

  "In jail."

  "He wishes he was back in jail, I'm sure. He's currently thawing out in an Inquisition isolation chamber. Take what we did to Jack and make it ten times worse."

  "Why?" Opal asked, digging her nails into Jack's arm through his coat.

  "Because the Inquisition of Purity doesn't like it when anyone interferes with their operations. Oh, the present has become such an interesting place while you've been gone. It's two days until Christmas, currently there, but things are quite the opposite of merry. Half of Asia is gone."

  "What?" Jack drew a quick gasp. "What did you do?"

  "Not us. The Syndicate wants to change history for the better, but the Inquisition keeps undoing all of our hard work and they leave footprints. They killed someone they shouldn't have killed after the point that we saved them and they had already created the atomic bomb early. They forgot to take the notes with them. China is a wasteland. South America is not in much better shape. The ground in a third of the world hasn't tasted sunlight in two days. Everything is in an uproar. There are riots in the streets of major cities. The United States is crumbling from within. Europe is being overwhelmed with
refugees from Asia and the Middle East, so much so that they are shipping people to camps where they are systematically put down like unwanted shelter dogs. Sound familiar?"

  "Why tell us this?" Jack asked.

  "The Inquisition of Purity is changing its game, it seems. Now they want power for themselves and they have created the perfect storm for being able to seize whatever they want. It's beginning to look like their meddling in the past was more strategic than fumbling idiocy."

  Opal gave a sideways glance to Jack before speaking quietly. "They want to destroy the world, make people desperate, then take over and rule whatever is left."

  "Precisely. And I need Jack's help to stop it."

  His help? How could he help? "Why? Why do you need me?"

  "Because you're special, Mr. Carter. Your father was an incredible Chronomancer with abilities that most could only dream about possessing."

  Hatred bubbled inside his chest. "Until you killed him."

  "Until he betrayed us. Once you're in the Syndicate, you're in until death. Samuel Carter was a traitor when he left us to raise his family. We were the only family that should have mattered to him. He was the greatest director the Zurvan Syndicate had ever known, but he threw that all away for you."

  "No. He left you after he found out how bad you people are. You can't keep hurting people."

  "We save people." Olivia tucked a stray lock of hair back into her bun. "I know you had a sour experience at Base Mark 16. We admittedly made a mistake by locking you in isolation and starving you. I didn't give the orders and Director Mason sends his apologies. That is also a reason we are here. Look around you, Jack. Take it all in. Don't you see what is going on here? It's a marvelous place for Chronomancers to buy Avelayans."

  Jack did look around, and he felt sick. People were suffering, reduced to objects. A naked woman was bolted into a pillory where men took turns lashing into her skin with leather belts, causing her to cry out. Jack looked on in horror at the barbaric display and at the realization of who those men were. The hourglass tattoos on their hands and forearms marked them as his fellow Chronomancers. Were they all like that?

  Opal whimpered. "I don't want to be here. Jack, I don't want to be here."

  "I don't either, but I don't think we have much of a choice."

  An elderly man with scraggly grey hair that stood up on his oddly pear-shaped head wandered up to them. His blue robes trailed on the black ground until he stopped inches away from Opal. He held up a gnarled wooden staff with a three-inch-long blade embedded in the end. The man raised his staff until the razor edge tapped against Opal's cheek. "What a lovely Avelayan blossom you have here. Is she for sale?"

  Jack held his arm in front of her to keep the stranger from touching her more. "What? No!"

  Olivia grinned. "She's been claimed already. She's just along for the ride."

  The man lowered his staff and smirked, showing his solid gold teeth. "Ah, I see. Welcome to Alvezenden. Have you come to browse our goods or to use our punishment equipment?"

  "We're just looking for now, thank you."

  "Let me know if you need anything, anything at all."

  A young red-haired man in his twenties crawled on his hands and knees over to them and stopped in front of Jack. A silver tray with thin flutes of champagne sat balanced there on the Avelayan's welt-striped back. Dirt and dried blood were streaked on his skin-tight shorts and knee-high white boots. He remained there, silent, and waiting.

  Olivia held out her hand towards the man. "Have a refreshment, Jack."

  Was she serious? "Uh, no. I'm good."

  "Are you sure? It was terribly frigid in Stalingrad. Don't let the servants scare you. They are only punished when they step out of line. I know a kind-hearted boy like you dislikes physical punishments, but sometimes they are necessary to keep Avelayans compliant."

  "I don't want anything."

  Olivia slapped the man on his buttocks. "Shoo. Get away from us and go bother someone else."

  Jack watched with overwhelming pity in his chest as the slave crawled away, carefully balancing the glasses of champagne on his spine. "Why do they treat people this way?"

  "They treat Avelayans this way when they dare to step out of line." Olivia raked her fake nails through Opal's hair. "Take a good look around, Opal. This could be you one day."

  Jack stepped up to a pen with metal shelves where tiny babies, even as young as newborns, were swaddled in plastic bins that were labeled with their information and prices reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  "The infants are highly prized because they can be trained perfectly by their owners to be however they need them to be. The younger they are, the more they cost."

  "Why bring us here?" Jack asked, scanning over the humans on display like produce in a grocery store. "Why show this to us?"

  "If you join us, you will be able to come here and purchase any Avelayan you wish. You can then train them to be anything you want for you. A bodyguard, a fighter, a servant, a lover."

  Opal covered her mouth as her cheeks turned red. "Lover? You mean sex slave. There's no love here. Jack, what are you doing?"

  Jack walked over to another pen where male toddlers of all ethnicities were crawling, sleeping on towels, or playing with wooden blocks. He knelt down to watch the tiny Avelayans who had already been pierced with tags in their ears. The engraved metal told their country of origin, birthday, blood type, and percentage of Avelayan they were. The boys were all moving around or curled upon the ratted towels except for one older boy who appeared to be around six or seven.

  The pale-skinned boy with the mop of stringy brown hair and eyes that were whiter than his almost colorless skin was sitting in the corner with his bony knees drawn up to his chest and a heavy-looking metal collar locked around his neck. He was trembling as if he was constantly shivering in his thin white cotton tunic and pants that stopped at the knees.

  Olivia stepped up behind Jack. "Ah. That is a special one. See his eyes? White eyes make the special ones stand out. Where as most Avelayans are a mix of races, that one is pure, bred to be what some call perfect. His hair color, skin color, and facial features were designed by years of careful breeding. They are called sages. There are sages of every color, with traits from every ethnicity, but they are works of art. Each one is unique and some scientist's idea of perfection. The place where these sages are created is like a laboratory. It can take decades of tweaking the mating pairs to produce a sage that meets the standards of the genetic council's guidelines. It's a project that is worked on by a special group of scientists. Look at him. The image of perfection. All sages have those unique eyes. They make the best Time Knights, hands-down."

  Special? Works of art? "What makes them so valuable?"

  "Other than aesthetics? Their pure Avelayan bloodline. They will never grow sick from being away from their Chronomancer, they can warp with their Chronomancer without needing to share blood, and they can sense other Avelayans or Iskaydrians without having to test any blood."

  Jack reached his hand through the wooden bars and touched the boy's arm, but he didn't move. The boy kept staring at the ground. "What's your name? Are you cold?"

  The boy didn't respond.

  Olivia picked at her nails. "He has no name, yet. His owner will give him one."

  "Can he speak English?"

  "I doubt he can speak at all. They are kept silent in case their prospective masters prefer complete submission. To find a sage this young and not already sold is a rarity. You fancy him, don't you, Jack? I can purchase him for you, if you'd like. It's beyond the budget I was given for this assignment, but if it gets you to open up and talk to us, I'm sure the Director won't mind."

  For a second, he contemplated his next words. But when he spoke, even he could not believe what he said. "If you buy him for me, what do I have to do?"

  "You have to agree to join us after you return to the present. It will be simple, really. Once you are home again in Mana Glen, one of ou
r agents will be in touch with you. Then, he will take you and your new tiny slave to our actual headquarters where you will go through the process of induction."

  "What's the catch? What happens if I decide to not join you?"

  "Then we take away something even more valuable than that sage boy. A hybrid."

  He knew exactly who she was referring to. "Ellie."

  "You aren't as dumb as Mr. Dawson led us to believe. We will hold Ellie hostage until you join us. The Zurvan Syndicate is willing to gift you this boy as an apology for the way you were treated back at Base Mark 16. We ask that you give us another chance. If you accept this gift and join us, you will have power, support, and all the things you could ever need. We can even save your friend. He's dying. You know that, right? He's probably dead by now, but we can change what happened. We can cause those bullets to miss him. All you have to do is join us."

  "What happens to Ellie if I don't join?" Jack asked, watching the boy shivering.

  "We have many scientists who are placing bids on her body parts for studying. That is, after she has been bred with suitable matches to produce more hybrids."

  "If I agree to join you, I can take this boy with me back to Stalingrad and to the present?"

  "Of course. He will be your property. He can become your Time knight once he is old enough to fully protect you."

  He closed his eyes and made a decision. "I'll do it. I want the sage boy."

  "Jack, what are you doing?" Opal asked, the disgust ringing in her voice. "Are you crazy?"

  Olivia waved to the old man with the staff, beckoning him to her. Once he approached, she placed her hand approvingly on Jack's shoulder. "Chronomancer Carter has decided on the sage boy."

  "A splendid choice, sir." The old man opened the gate to the pen then stepped inside. He bent over and unhooked the chain from the post that bound the boy by his neck. "You should know that despite being in the toddler pen and appearing so small, this sage is eight years old. He has not been sold until now due to the recent change in trends. Most want Hispanic or Asian-looking sages these past few years. I can assure you that this sage is of the highest quality, despite being unfortunately pale. Is he still acceptable? Stand up and turn for the Chronomancer, you ungrateful brat."