The Eighth Guardian (Annum Guard)

by Meredith McCardle

  “Annum Guard has three rules,” Zeta says as he trudges down the stairs. “Three very important rules. Break even one of them and you’re out, so you’d do best to remember them.”

  I’m still thinking about the state house.

  “Is it really a good idea to mess with the Boston Massacre?” I ask.

  “Rule number one. We do not project in front of anyone who is not an Annum Guard member, meaning we do not project in front of the public. Ever. Rule number two—are you listening?”

  I clomp down the stairs and nod.

  “Rule number two. No second chances. You only get one mission to change the past. If you bungle it, it stays bungled. If you manage to get yourself killed, you stay dead. Got it?”

  I’m stunned into silence. There’s a chance of dying on these missions? I mean, I know I was trained for high-pressure situations at Peel, but I guess I never thought too hard about the risks I’d actually face one day. And why can’t we go back to fix mistakes? That makes no sense.

  “Rule number three,” Zeta says. “Absolutely no personal missions. If you think you can make a quick buck by going back in time and betting on last year’s Super Bowl, think again. That’s part of the reason for the tracker. You go on an unauthorized mission, you’ll find yourself sitting in a jail cell.”

  Zeta opens the door for me, and I step out into the too-bright hallway. “Do you understand these three rules?”

  “Why can’t we go back and fix any mistakes?”

  Zeta looms in front of me. He’s not nearly as tall as Alpha—Zeta only has a few inches on me—but it feels as if he’s towering over me. If he’s trying to make me feel intimidated, it’s kinda working. “Wormhole restrictions.” His tone makes it clear that the questions are over. “Now, do you understand these three rules?”

  I nod.

  “Good,” he says. “Because it’s the only time I’m going to tell them to you.” We walk down the hall to the door I went through yesterday. Zeta points up at the gold-plated plaque that hangs above it.

  “Enhancement, not alteration,” he says. “That is what we do. We enhance the past; we do not alter it.”

  It seems like a funny line to me—where enhancement ends and alteration begins—but before I can say this, Zeta punches in a code, and the door opens. Overwhelming, all-encompassing blackness is waiting on the other side.

  “What is this?” I ask, pointing.

  “A door.”

  Thanks.

  “What’s in there?” I ask.

  “It’s a gravity chamber.” Zeta’s voice is bored, as if it’s obvious. I back away from the door, but Zeta grabs my arm and squeezes, and once again it’s clear to me that I don’t have control over this situation. I look down the hallway, up in the corners and crevices; and, sure enough, there are cameras everywhere, stalking my every move. “This room is a recent addition. Gravity helps ease the physical effects on the body that Chronometric Augmentation can wreak. It slows us down. Less stress on the bones and joints.”

  My mind can’t help flashing to Epsilon, the woman in the wheelchair. Her body has been broken beyond repair. Is it because of Chronometric Augmentation? Is that why the other members of Annum Guard are all dead? Their bodies couldn’t handle the physical trauma?

  Now I’m not so sure I want to do this, even though my options are either climbing the ranks to find out the one thing I’ve always wanted to know or life imprisonment.

  Zeta pushes me toward the door. “You first.” He takes hold of my watch and presses the top button so the lid pops open. Then he hands it back. “Program it. We’re going to March 5, 1770.”

  I hesitate before taking it. But I have to do this. I owe this to my dad. To his memory. And to my mom. I failed her once. I can’t do it again.

  I spin the dial. Year first. We’re going back to before the American Revolution. That’s a lot of spins around the watch. Next is month. It’s October here and March there, so I guess that’s seven spins back. Then the day. Seventeen spins backward. Zeta is standing next to me, staring at me. Like he wants me to hurry up. And now I’ve lost count. Was that seventeen spins or only sixteen?

  “Ready?” he asks.

  I have no idea. Seventeen or sixteen? Why didn’t I focus? I hate myself in this moment. I spin the day dial back one more click and nod my head at Zeta.

  “Go,” he says.

  I take a cautious step forward, then inhale. Let’s do this.

  “Go,” I repeat. I leap into the room and snap the lid of the watch face shut.

  It’s as if the floor is there one moment, and the next it’s whisked from under me. I fall, and my heart flies into the back of my throat, and I choke on it. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. I fall and fall and fall, as if I’m on an endless roller coaster.

  And then my knees slam into the floor of the broom closet. I gasp and slap my palms to the ground. This is what makes Chronometric Augmentation easier? What the hell was it like before?

  I push up. The closet is completely empty. There’s not a whole lot of room in this closet, so maybe I’m supposed to wait outside. Or maybe I’m supposed to wait right here and Zeta will be pissed if I leave. He doesn’t strike me as a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy.

  Time passes. Several minutes. Too much time. Enough time to make it clear that I’m not supposed to wait here in the closet. I turn the door handle and brace myself to find an angry Zeta waiting for me on the other side, but all I see when I open the door is a field. What the—?

  But then there’s a loud swoooosh! It’s coming from above. I look up, and Zeta appears beside me, out of nowhere. He pulls me back and slams the door shut, trapping us in this little broom closet.

  Zeta turns on me with angry eyes. “Tell me, did you fail second-grade math?”

  My heart skips a beat. “I . . . what?”

  “You’re in March 4, 1770, not March 5. Can you really not handle a simple task like counting backward? Do you need me to program your watch for you like you’re a toddler?”

  I bristle because I’m still tired, so my fuse is short; but I also shrink inside myself at the same time. This is partly my fault for not paying better attention when setting the watch. I hate messing up. Hate hate hate when I do things wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter.

  “I had to project to March 5, realize you weren’t there, then project back to the present, trudge upstairs, activate your tracker, and figure out where you were. You’re wasting my time.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Get it right the first time. Reset your watch. One day forward. Do you think you can handle that?”

  I don’t respond. Instead I pull out my watch, turn the day knob once, and shut it. I brace for the fall, but it doesn’t come. Instead I’m pulled up like someone tosses me in the air, and less than a second later I’m on my knees in the same broom closet. Zeta lands on his feet next to me.

  “Ready now?” He straightens his powdered wig and stomps his buckled shoes. He doesn’t wait for a reply but instead opens the door and walks out.

  I linger behind and try to figure out the sensations of projecting. Why did I feel as if I was being sucked up that time and not falling? It happened before, when I left 1874 to go back to the present and—oh. I get it. You fall into the past. You’re whisked up to the future.

  Zeta clears his throat, and I shake my head and jump out of the closet. And then I stop in my tracks as colonial Boston spreads out before me. And I do mean spreads out. I’m not looking into an alleyway. I’m staring at open land. There are cows where the Public Garden will be one day. There’s no Back Bay. There’s . . . water. It’s an actual bay. I look out over Boston Common. There’s no looming state house with a giant dome. There are no skyscrapers, no downtown shopping district. Instead, in the distance I see the Old State House. That’s where the Bosto
n Massacre took place. It’s right there, unobstructed from view.

  There isn’t a row of brownstones either. Just this one house, set here on what will one day become Beacon Street, one of the most densely populated streets in Boston. I mean, the cheesy Cheers replica will be going in right down the street, a tourist trap for the unwary. The house we’re standing in front of is tall and wide, with brown, stone walls and a balcony off the front.

  “What is this?” I ask. “Where’s the brownstone?”

  Zeta doesn’t blink. “The brownstones are still about a hundred years away. This is Hancock Manor. And that”—he points across the Common to the Old State House—“is our destination. You are to listen to me and do exactly as I tell you, understand?”

  “Do we have some sort of plan?”

  “I do,” Zeta says. He yanks on his sleeves to tighten them and doesn’t look at me. But his implication is clear. I’m on a need-to-know basis, and Zeta doesn’t think I need to know anything at this point.

  Just then church bells ring in the distance.

  “Come on!” he shouts. “It’s starting!”

  Zeta zips down a Beacon Street that looks more like a cow pasture than the crowded road I know. He makes a right, and I have to run to catch up. I can’t breathe in this damned dress! We make a left, where the state house sits in front of us. A crowd has already gathered. I head for the action, but Zeta pulls me back.

  “Uh-uh,” he says. “We watch from afar.” He whips me around so that I’m facing him. His hands are pressed into my forearms so hard I’m going to have bruises. It’s a display of strength. A way of telling me not to bolt for it because he’s stronger and faster than I am. Yeah, I get it. Let’s not forget the fact that I also have a tracker in my arm.

  “What’s our motto?” Zeta asks.

  “Enhancement, not alteration.”

  In the background, dozens of men rush toward the Old State House. They’re cursing and shouting about taxes, and a chill runs down my body. People are going to die. Soon. The crowd is yelling at the soldiers, pelting them with sticks and clubs. The soldiers’ faces are white with terror, a polar contrast to their gleaming red coats. They’re young. So young. They could be me.

  The whole scene is chaos. Frantic chaos. It reminds me of one of my mom’s paintings. Whirls of competing colors racing around on canvas, so frenetic that your eye doesn’t know which way to look. Her paintings display madness, and that’s all I see here. A red coat here, a flash of white there. A woman screams, a baby cries, a man behind me barks an evil laugh as he launches a rock over my head. It misses a soldier by several feet.

  “Tell me how you’d alter the past,” Zeta shouts over the crowd. “Tell me how you’d alter history here, right this second.”

  “What?” I yell.

  I look at the crowd and try to focus. Their numbers are swelling, and the British soldiers have called for backup. Panic screams in all directions from their eyes. This crowd is about to pummel them. One man yells to string them up, and I gasp. This is not at all how I remember the Boston Massacre from my history textbooks. Where are the soldiers firing on helpless, unarmed civilians? These colonists are a mob, and this is mob mentality. There’s no stopping this.

  “I can’t!” I shout to Zeta. “There are too many people!”

  A light-skinned black man bumps into me as he rushes to the front of the crowd. He looks back for a split second, as if he’s sorry, but then turns and runs toward a white man standing in the center shouting the loudest. The white man seems to be a leader of the group. He’s shouting cries, which the crowd echoes.

  “That’s Crispus Attucks,” Zeta says, pointing to the black man. “And that”—he points to the white man leading the crowd—“is the rope maker Samuel Gray. Both of these men are going to die today. Do you want to know who else?”

  My mouth falls open as I watch two of the soldiers shout at the men to back up and keep order. One man throws a stick that hits a soldier straight in the jaw, and the crowd cheers at the crunch.

  Zeta grabs my arm and points to two boys pushing their way to the front of the crowd. “James Caldwell and Samuel Maverick. Victims three and four.”

  One of the boys turns to the other. “Is there a fire?” he shouts. “We have to help!”

  He doesn’t know. Neither of them does. They’re about my age. Sixteen. Seventeen at most. They shouldn’t die like this. I try to break away from Zeta to run to them, to try to pull them back, pull all of them back, but Zeta holds on to me tight.

  “There’s number five.” He points to a man standing on the edge. “Patrick Carr.”

  I stop breathing when I look at Patrick Carr. He knows what’s about to happen. It’s written all over his face. But that’s not what gets me. It’s the young boy standing next to him. Patrick Carr is a father.

  “Go home,” he says to his son.

  “But—” the boy says.

  “Now. You go home now.”

  His son turns and runs away, as fast as his little legs will carry him.

  The crowd throws more sticks. Rocks. Whatever they can find. A big, burly man launches toward a soldier. “You sons of bitches to fire! You can’t kill us all! Fire! Why don’t you fire? You dare not fire!” he shouts. I gasp.

  “And there’s who we’re helping.” Zeta points to a man across the crowd. “Christopher Monk. He is going to be shot today but will not die for nearly ten years, during which time the city of Boston will pay an exorbitant sum to see to his care. We’re going to ensure the money gets put to a better use.”

  I barely notice the guy Zeta’s pointing at, a guy about my age holding something that looks like a small baseball bat and shouting at the soldiers. I’m still staring at Patrick Carr. The crowd swells forward toward the soldiers.

  “When I give you the signal, you are to run to Monk and pull him to the ground,” Zeta yells over the roar of the crowd.

  A shot rings out, and I duck my head, then look toward the soldiers. One of them has his rifle raised in the air.

  “What?” I yell to Zeta.

  “No!” Samuel Gray shouts in the middle of the crowd. “God damn you, don’t fire!”

  But it’s too late. Shots ring out, and the crowd screams as Samuel Gray falls. I squat down, but Zeta jerks me back up. “Hang on! Almost!”

  I can’t think. Men zip this way and that, ducking their heads and screaming. Soldiers are still firing. Patrick Carr waves to someone across the street and motions the person away, then steps out to cross.

  No! He can’t! His little boy is going to have to grow up without a father. I know what that’s like. And I can’t let him feel that pain. I twist away from Zeta and run just as the crowd reaches us.

  “Iris!” Zeta shouts. “Don’t do anything!”

  I block him out. I head right toward Patrick Carr. I’ll take him down. I’ll tackle him to the ground, and then he’ll miss the bullet that was meant for him. He’s close. And my eye flashes to a glint of red a few feet away. A soldier takes aim at Carr. I scream and rear back to launch myself forward.

  But then I’m on the ground as a shot rings out. A few feet away, Patrick Carr goes down, and only then does he make a sound. His mouth opens, and an anguished moan bursts from his lips. I scream, too, as Zeta pins my arms to the ground, not letting me move. Blood seeps out of Carr’s hip, and I cry. I don’t care who sees me. I cry. I think of my dad, dying somewhere, and now I will forever have the image of a fatal rifle shot to the side entrenched in my mind. This will be how my dad dies in my dreams.

  Zeta yanks me up. Carr writhes on the ground, and I kick at Zeta. I have to help Carr. Maybe if I can stop the bleeding, he’ll live. But Zeta pulls me away, down the street. We step over a bloody, still Christopher Monk on the ground and round a corner, away from the crowd. It’s only then that Zeta drops his hands and pushes me backward. I trip over my feet.

&nb
sp; “Godammit, what the hell is the matter with you?” he roars. “What were you thinking?”

  The tears are still falling down my face. “I was saving him! I was enhancing the past to save him.”

  Zeta’s eyebrows shoot up. “Enhancing? You think that’s what I mean when I say enhancing? Do you have any idea what you could have done? Patrick Carr was not the mission.”

  “I could have given his little boy a father to watch him grow up!”

  Zeta’s bright-blue eyes grow wide as the moon and fire erupt behind them. “Whatever happened to you in the past is in the past. This is your job now, and you do not let emotion take over. Let me tell you a little something about Patrick Carr. He’s going to die nine days from now—a slow, painful, agonizing death—but he single-handedly is going to change the course of American history. What did you see back there?”

  “I saw a bunch of people die,” I say as the realization sinks in. I saw people die. Die. In front of me. It’s a first. I’ve seen photos of dead bodies and have watched plenty of violent movies, but I’ve never seen the real thing. It’s awful. This whole scene is awful. No amount of training could’ve prepared me for the screams of anguish, the fallen bodies, the finality of death lingering in their open eyes.

  “Why did they die?” he asks me.

  Do I tell the truth? What I really think? I have to.

  “Because they provoked the British soldiers, and the soldiers shot at them in self-defense.”

  Zeta nods. “A little different from the history they taught you in school, right? And the truth could be buried forever if not for the heroics of Patrick Carr. He’s going to out the truth on his deathbed. He’s going to tell his doctor that the soldiers were greatly abused by the crowd, that the soldiers would have been hurt or killed had they not fired. He’s going to confirm that it was self-defense. And because of the bravery and honesty of Patrick Carr, those soldiers are going to be acquitted at trial.