The Bureau of Time (19 page)

Cassie and Shaun shared an anxious look.

“He seemed to know us somehow,” Shaun replied, as they headed toward the mysterious Sector 9 – Security and Holding. “He wanted to kill me. He talked about making me ‘atone’ for ‘sins.’”

Anderson shook his head, slowing as they approached the blastdoor to the Holding Cells. He turned back to the Timewalkers, his face tight.

“Before you go in, I want to say something.” His voice was suddenly graver than his eulogy speech just minutes earlier. His dark eyes flicked between the teenagers. “I’m convinced that the Adjusters are – are not
human
. We know very little about them. We call them time-travelers, and that might be true. They speak of the future, and it’s quite possible they know about things that are going to happen.”

“Hold on,” Shaun frowned, holding up a hand. “Have you actually
talked
to these things before?”

Director Anderson sucked in a deep breath. He lowered his voice despite the quiet of the corridor. “A long time ago, the Bureau had the opportunity – very briefly – to interrogate an Adjuster. Most of our information about Adjusters came from that individual, a vile monster that spoke in riddles and lies.”

“What information did you get?” Shaun asked, his voice dangerously steady. Cassie recognized that deadly calm – it was far worse than his angry outbursts.

“That is
classified information
, well above your paygrade. The simple fact remains that the Adjusters know about the future – not the exact details of what happens in the next few seconds or minutes, but they definitely know about the world twenty years from now. They know how fascinated people are with the future, and they’ll use that to their advantage. So I want you, both of you, to promise me that you’ll keep a level head – that you will remember
why
we are doing this: to gain as much information as we can about the Adjusters and their movements, so we can
end this
once and for all. Promise me that.”

“I promise,” Shaun said, without meeting the Director’s eyes. Cassie agreed in turn.

Anderson nodded, apparently satisfied. He signaled to a camera watching them, and the blastdoor split apart with a dull rumble, metal teeth disappearing into the ceiling and floor. They walked past armed guards and down a short corridor, their footsteps echoing.

The hallway ended in a single door, with one soldier on either side of a submarine-style wheel.

As the Director approached, the soldiers snapped to attention.

“Open it,” Anderson commanded. The soldiers used the wheel to crank the heavy door open. Metal pylons retracted with a ponderous groan, the door swinging back on greased hinges.

The cell beyond was bright, almost completely white.

The room was hexagonal, with a soldier at each of the five spare points. In the center of the room was a glass box, also hexagonal, just large enough to contain a small stool – no bed, no toilet, nothing aside from that simple three-legged chair.

Perched on the stool, his legs folded beneath him like an ancient sage, was the Adjuster called Zero.

The anti-Temporal handcuffs on his wrists pulsed with blue light, generating an electromagnetic field that blocked his abilities. The crimson sash on his arm had come undone and lay gathered on the floor.

A wicked grin split Zero’s face. He slowly put one foot on the ground, crossing his other leg over.

“Now,” he said, his voice wet and cruel. “Now, we can begin.”

Director Anderson cleared his throat and brushed past Cassie.

“You said you would only talk if the Timewalkers were here,” Anderson said, his voice booming around the cell. “They’re here. Now
talk.
”

Zero’s head snapped up, his mouth a thin line. In an instant, he was on his feet, his waxy face pressed up against the glass window. The soldiers tensed, raising their carbines.

“I said I would talk
only
with the Timewalkers!” Zero snarled. “That means
alone.
”

“Absolutely not!” Anderson thundered, taking another step toward the glass cell. “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of me and these guards.” He gestured at the armed soldiers. “You are a detainee here and you
will
answer my questions. Let me make something very clear – you have no rights. There is no law in this world that applies to you. We
will
do whatever it takes to get answers out of you!”

Zero tilted his head again, a smile stretching across his face.

“Director,” the monster purred, “I do not need sleep, nor food, nor water. I am nothing but a weapon with a brain, an empty husk – not a machine, for they require electricity, fuel.” His voice rose, filling the whole room with his fury. “I could survive a dozen apocalypses, I could wait until the scorched earth opened over this pathetic underground hovel you call a
base
, and I could walk out among the mutated creatures of your future, alive and well, while your grandchildren’s grandchildren are nothing but
bones
in the ground!”

Zero lowered his voice all of a sudden, his anger replaced with something far more calculated. “You can lock me up for as long you like. You can torture me, interrogate me, threaten me. The question is, if I won’t break – how long until you do?”

Anderson held Zero’s eyeless gaze for a long moment, monster and Director separated by only an inch of glass. Then Anderson swore and turned away from Zero’s cell.

“We’re done here,” the Director growled, indicating for the Timewalkers to follow him. “This was a waste of time.”

As they stepped back through the open doorway, Cassie looked over her shoulder.

Zero had resumed his sage-like position on the stool.

His grin widened just before the blastdoor slammed shut behind her, pylons ramming into the wall. She could have sworn she heard laughter as she walked away, haunting laughter that penetrated metal and concrete, entering her skull and rattling around her brain, chasing her, pushing images into her mind, images of a horrible wasteland of snow and ash, where the only living things were the monstrous Adjusters.

THE DIFFERENCE

Shaun made his way up the steep path toward the satellite dishes. It was late afternoon, and two days since they had captured Zero. The Adjuster refused to talk, and mess hall rumors had started about an Enhanced Interrogation Techniques being called in from the CIA. Still nothing – except Zero’s repeated demands to talk with the Timewalkers.

Shaun used a low-hanging branch to pull himself higher up the hill, his boots slipping on the thick carpet of pine needles. The air was fresh and warm, driving away his thoughts of Adjusters and hidden secrets. He rounded the final part of the climb, walking away from the satellite dishes and toward a flat, grassy area.

He stopped, his breath caught in his throat.

Cassie sat with her back to him, her red hair loose behind her back. The setting sun bathed her in a fiery light, the horizon turned to a burning orange. The breeze swept across the hills, rippling her hair behind her, and stirring the long grass around her legs. She wore dark gray-and-black camos with a tank-top, and she was peeling grass strands apart, letting each broken half flutter away in the breeze.

Everything about that moment seemed perfect – tranquil and calm, captured in an instance of time. She turned and smiled at him, her eyes sparkling brighter than ever before. He wished that moment could be preserved, a photograph to carry forever.

He sat down beside her and leaned back.

“This is nice,” Cassie whispered, staring out across Brightwood Ranch. Birds chirped and fluttered between the trees. Down at the ground level, the fence shone in the sunlight, protecting the entire facility. There was the low groan of the satellite dishes, and nothing else except them sitting on the hill.

“So peaceful,” Shaun agreed. He let out a long sigh. “I feel so tired.”

He hesitated briefly, then laid his head in Cassie’s lap, staring up at the sky. White clouds drifted lazily overhead, the world reluctantly passing into evening. She ran her hands through his hair, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.

“I could stay like this forever,” he murmured. “No more running, no more fighting.”

It’s impossible though.
The Bureau has no endgame, because the Adjusters don’t have one either. This life never ends.

“We could,” Cassie said, looking down over his face. “We could leave.”

The statement shocked him. He
wanted
to believe that they could walk away, that they could put this madness behind them, but—

“It wouldn’t work. Out there, we’re blind. The Adjusters would find us, one way or another. The Bureau too. If we walked away, they’d find us and bring us back. We signed our life away – our life in service.”

Her hands stilled. Softly, she said, “I know that.”

“We have to stay here. The Bureau is the best place for us.”

The lack of conviction in his own voice scared him – he spoke the words like it was government rhetoric, parroting the company motto without believing the message.

When did this happen? When did I stop trusting the Bureau? When did I stop believing that we were heroes fighting the ultimate evil?

“Hey,” Cassie said, breaking his thoughts. She leaned over him, her eyes twinkling with the spark of life that had driven him to do the impossible that night in Hermitage. “We’re in this together, right? As long as we’re both here, then it’s the right place to be.”

His heart gave a funny little skip, and he smiled.

Then she kissed him, and nothing else mattered.

*     *     *

Cassie stared at the deck of cards.

Doctor Amita Sharma’s fingers hovered over the top card, her other hand gripping the pen so tightly Cassie thought it might snap it half. The Doctor’s usually neat hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, and there were dark bags under her eyes. She tapped the edge of the table with the pen, irritated.

“Are you ready to begin, Timewalker Wright?”

Cassie nodded eagerly. She had never been excited for one of her Temporal training sessions before. She dreaded them, tried to avoid them; but not this time.
This
time she knew it would be different. She could
feel
it, in the way her Affinity buzzed at the back of her skull, in the way that her blood seemed to hum with hidden power. Her body felt different –
had
felt different since she had saved Shaun’s life at the construction yard.

You can do this,
she told herself.
You know what to do.

Her debrief hadn’t mentioned her powers. She couldn’t say
why
she didn’t tell the Bureau about her powers – they had been spending so long trying to unlock them, they deserved to know, didn’t they? Her stomach churned at the memory of Shaun bleeding out on the ground, Zero’s knife shining with scarlet blood.

They don’t need to know,
she thought.
Nobody needs to know. What happened…what I saw, is for me alone.

“Name the card I’m about to draw,” Amita said, barely containing her boredom. She expected the experiment to go the same way it had dozens of times before. A small part of Cassie feared the same thing too.

Perhaps it was just a fluke. Or maybe –
her heart leaped into her throat –
maybe someone has to die.

She pushed those fears down, and took a deep, calming breath, steadying herself.

“Three of hearts,” she said, picking a card at random. So far, she hadn’t been lucky enough to guess the card on the first try. Sure enough, Amita turned the top card over to reveal the
Two of Clubs.

Amita scratched something down on her clipboard. Without looking up, she said, “Wrong. Try again.”

Cassie glared at the card, focusing all her effort on it. She thought back to the construction yard, to the emotions that had taken control of her. She knew how her powers worked now – they stemmed from her emotions, from her passion, from her fear and her
desperation;
that’s what she had felt, absolutely
desperate,
as though she would do anything in the world to—

A ripple of energy tore from her body, blowing Amita’s clipboard into the wall. The Doctor’s face registered shocked surprise for just a fraction of a second, before a blinding light swept through the examination room, moving everything back into its original place.

Cassie gasped, her pulse thundering. She gripped the table, fighting a sudden spell of nausea. The sensation passed a moment later, leaving her throat parched. The deck of cards was still there on the table – undealt.

“Name the card I’m about to draw,” Amita said, her fingers brushing the top of the deck.

“Two of clubs!” Cassie shouted, startling Amita. “Sorry,” she added, but not much quieter.
I’m right, I know I’m right. I did it, I shifted time!

Amita frowned. She scratched something on the clipboard first, her fingers still resting on the topmost card. With an infuriatingly slow gesture, she lifted the card and turned it over, reading it privately first. Her eyes went wide, her cheeks paling.

Carefully, she revealed the card. Two black clubs shimmered under the fluorescent light, the plastic cover glossy and bright.

“I did it,” Cassie breathed, almost unable to believe it.

“A lucky guess,” Amita declared. “The odds are reasonable, after all. Another card—”

“You don’t understand,” Cassie argued, her voice rising, “I
saw
you deal the card, I—”

A sharp knock on the door cut her off mid-sentence. Amita glared at Cassie, her dark eyes shooting her a silent warning.

“It’s open,” Amita said. The door opened a few inches, and Agent Natalie Hunt stuck her head through the gap, smiling broadly at Cassie. She always had the nicest, friendliest smile out of anyone in the Bureau, as though the pressures and dangers of the world couldn’t squash the optimism from her heart. It was infectious, and Cassie found herself returning the smile, her spirits lifting.

“Cassie,” Natalie said, ignoring Doctor Sharma entirely. “Director Anderson wants to see you and Shaun, down in Sector 9.”