The Bureau of Time (28 page)

“This is no way to act!” the man with the ponytail thundered. “We should be
helping
each other, not fighting! With Zero on the loose, we can’t afford to have a Timewalker unaccounted for. We’ll take the girl – and the soldier – into protective custody.”

The Adjusters moved in unison, surrounding Cassie and Ryan.

She reached for her Temporal powers, but she was a moment too late. Inhumanly strong hands seized her, dragging her away. She twisted around, thrashing and fighting, trying to free herself, but the Adjusters held her too strongly. She dragged her feet but it didn’t make a difference.

She saw Shaun watching her, and something inside her snapped.

She screamed at him, screeched all kinds of horrible things, cursing him, hating him, wishing he was dead, wishing that he had never come into her life. She had
trusted
him, perhaps even loved him; her entire world was tumbling down around her, everything she had believed in now turned to smoke, insubstantial and formless.

Her vision blurred and her voice broke into a strangled gasp. An excruciating spike of T.E. overwhelmed her and she collapsed into the welcome embrace of oblivion.

*     *     *

Shaun watched her disappear into thin air, followed a second later by Ryan Boreman, still struggling and fighting against the Adjusters. His Affinity flared brightly for a moment before dying out with a sharp, whip-like crack.

Something painful swelled in his chest, something that his Regenerative powers could not mend.
She doesn’t know what I know
.
The Adjusters aren’t our enemy. Not all of them. I just wish she could understand.

“That was a little unnecessary,” Miller commented, his tone clipped. “Ryan Boreman is not to be trifled with. We can’t afford to alienate him – he could be a useful ally.”

“He had it coming.” He knew he shouldn’t have punched Ryan, but seeing him standing there with a hand on Cassie’s shoulder – it had been a reflex action, angry and misguided.
He doesn’t know anything about us, about Timewalkers, how we feel, what we know. Standing there like he’s one of us. He’ll never understand.

Miller said, “I don’t care what childish rivalry you have. We are talking about
war.
We can’t let infighting tear us apart.”

He rested his right hand on the stock of a strange-looking handgun. It vaguely resembled a Glock, but with two separate barrels and a cylindrical attachment on the side. “There’s nothing left here. Zero must have captured them all. He probably took them back to the Prime as hostages.”

Hostages.
Shaun clenched his teeth.
They’re not all the same,
he reminded himself.
The Directors were the only ones who knew about the Timewalker Program. The others…they don’t deserve this.

He exhaled the poisonous anger that had dominated his mind and inhaled saner thoughts.

The ruins of Brightwood Ranch groaned, releasing their ghosts. Somewhere beneath the tons of rubble and destruction was the agency’s seal, the eagle in midflight with its hourglass – the emblem of power and protection that he had once believed in.

Perhaps he
still
believed in the Bureau’s morals, if not their methods.

I am a Timewalker. I have a duty to protect my world, and fight those who would try to take our freedom. Nothing can change the promise I made.

“Let’s go and rescue them, then.”

Miller gave a short, bark-like laugh. “It’s not that easy, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?” He felt another headache coming on. There was a limit to how much information his tired mind could absorb – his brain felt like an old sponge, falling apart into sodden, saturated pieces.

“Teleporting within the same universe is trivial,” Miller explained. “But crossing between the Shift and the Prime –
cross-universe travel –
well, that’s a lot harder. Individually, Adjusters can transfer between universes using large amounts of T.E. – that’s why we can detect Temporal Shifts ahead of time. But the more people you try to transport inside one wormhole, the greater the energy cost. To transfer something like a hundred people, you need a special device called a Gateway.”

“So, let’s find a Gateway.”

Miller grimaced. “FOB Chester is still waiting for a resupply from the Prime, and I’m having a hard enough time getting resources as it is. Gateways are difficult to construct, and very expensive. There was only one Gateway constructed here in the Shift, and that was a long time ago – it was purely for research, never used. It was broken apart, the pieces hidden in secure locations.”

“Where are the pieces?” Shaun asked, but he already knew the answer.

Miller arched an eyebrow. “Why do you think Zero was so interested in the White Tower facilities?”

“So we can’t cross over until we get another Gateway?”

“We could cross over individually if we wanted, but we need to bring an army with us if we want to stand a chance.” He gestured at the faceless Adjusters behind him, the soldiers observing the ruins like stone sentinels. “White Tower in the future – in the Prime – will detect the hostages, but they haven’t the resources to mount a rescue mission. Our position is here, defending this world against Zero.”

“What could that
thing
possibly have left to destroy?” The monster had already caused so much pain and destruction here at Brightwood – he had ripped out the heart of the Bureau of Time.

Now he just has to rip out the eyes.

“Eaglepoint!” Shaun gasped. “Eaglepoint Station! Out on Block Island, it’s an intelligence outpost that monitors Temporal activity. It’s the last remaining Bureau facility.”

“That’s where Zero will go,” Miller nodded, his eyes widening. The Adjusters snapped their heads around, the hexagonal devices on their temples pulsing. “We’re moving out!” he told Shaun. “Back to base; we need to gear up.”

Shaun turned to look at Brightwood Ranch one last time.

For over a year, he had called the agency home. He had slept in the barracks, eaten in the mess hall, trained in the mud and rain, pushed himself up and around the trails through the hills. He had snuck out of base late at night to sit on the metal railing around the satellite dishes and look up at the stars, contemplating his place in the universe that he’d once thought was completely unique and solitary.

Unique. There’s nothing unique about me, truly. I’m the younger copy of a man I’ve never known. A man that people like Miller look up to.

He swallowed past a lump in his throat, burying the thought.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the Bureau of Time anymore. There were too many conflicting sides to the story.
No black and white, only gray.
He couldn’t rely on logic or reason, only his gut instinct. And that instinct was urging him to follow the future version of Hayden Miller and help protect Eaglepoint Station, to stop a madman from wiping out the rest of the agency.

“Shaun, come on, we don’t have much time!” Miller called out.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

There was nothing left of Brightwood but rubble, a partly-destroyed tarmac and a hangar with three helicopters and a dozen black SUVs. He thought of the hundreds of people who had lived on the base alongside him, dedicating their existence to protecting their country.

They were gone now, but Shaun was still alive, still able to honor their memory. He wouldn’t take back his title as Operator – not because of the Bureau’s lies, but because he wasn’t truly an Operator.

He was more than that.

I am a Timewalker. In every sense of the word.

“Let’s go,” Shaun agreed, turning his back on the base. He moved into the ranks of the Adjusters and stood beside Captain Miller. There was a rush of Temporal Energy around him, then a lurch in his gut, and he blinked out of existence.

THE WARDEN

Cassie knew something had gone wrong when she opened her eyes.

She was standing in the middle of the Archives, the room around her torn apart with furious intensity. The safety deposit boxes had been ripped from the walls, the locks broken, the boxes opened and discarded on the floor. Their contents had been rifled through, but whatever the robbers had been looking for, it wasn’t White Tower’s documents. A much larger deposit box – almost a safe – had been broken into with some kind of heavy machinery, and was now conspicuously empty.

Her breath clouded in the frigid air. The vault door hung off its hinges, but beyond the light from the room itself, there was nothing but complete darkness – no floors or walls, just an endless black void that made her stomach churn.

Her knees shook dangerously and she sank down onto the concrete floor. She pushed aside bullet shells and deposit boxes, drawing her knees up under her chin. Tears poured down her cheeks, carving a track through the grease on her cheeks.

She let out a pained scream, low and raw. She tore at her own hair, pain searing across her scalp; loose strands came out, sticking to the blood and filth on her hands. She sobbed harder, letting her anger and grief consume her; she lashed out, grabbed discarded deposit boxes and hurled them against the wall. Documents and folders went flying in her rage, and she was screaming, sharp metal scraping her arms. Rivers of blood coursed along her arms, but she didn’t care, it didn’t matter –
he betrayed me, betrayed us,
HOW COULD HE DO THAT?

She grabbed another box and held it high over her head, her vision blurry and wet.

A strong hand wrapped around her wrist, freezing her in place.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t destroy government property.”

Cassie dropped the box and whirled around to see The First Timewalker, Warden of the Archives. Her mouth opened in shock. The Warden’s clothes were torn, his impeccable suit slashed apart. A bandage had been wrapped around his chest, the white cloth soaked through with red.

“Although,” he said, “I doubt you could manage to make things any worse.”

“You’re injured,” she said finally, her voice hoarse and broken.

The Warden glanced down at his chest. He had taken on the form of his younger self, just in his late twenties. He grimaced, and pressed one hand against the wound, turning the bandage a darker shade of crimson.

“We haven’t much time,” he said, his face contorting in a grimace. His words didn’t echo – they simply faded away into nothingness. She cast an uneasy glance toward the black expanse, her Affinity sparking as Temporal Energy formed and dissolved around her.

She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere, in the middle of nowhere.” The Warden smiled, revealing a chipped tooth. He sat down on a chair that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “A space between spaces – a little pocket of the universe I can still control. This place can take any form you like. Perhaps this will be more comforting?”

The Warden waved his hand and the mysterious vault dissolved, reforming into the living room of Cassie’s family home in Pennsylvania. She was sitting on a sunshine-yellow couch, and the Warden was perched on a bone-colored stool; the entire room was exactly as she remembered it, down to the paisley curtains and gray carpet. Emotion swelled inside her chest, threatening to burst out, hundreds of memories flooding back – her parents, her childhood, her father’s warm embrace and her mother’s gentle touch.

That was all
before.
Before the Adjusters had entered her life, before the Bureau.

This was a moment in time, a snapshot of peace and serenity, never to be recaptured.

She leaned forward to touch the coffee table, but rather than solid timber, she felt cold metal.

It’s all an illusion.

“Why am I here?” she asked, fighting to control the tremor in her voice.

The First Timewalker observed her. “You have an important decision to make. A war is coming, Cassie. A war between two universes – and only one can survive. A war between an agency that claims to be protecting its citizens, and a rebel force that claims to be liberating its people. They cannot survive together.”

“I don’t want to fight,” she said, lowering her eyes. Her hair fell down over her face and she brushed it aside, her scalp still aching.

The Warden gave a choked cough. “You don’t have a choice. You
must
choose a side. I fear, however, that your decision has already been made for you.”

The house flickered, momentarily replaced with utter darkness. The house reformed again, this time missing its curtains. Through the window, there was nothing but the black void. The Warden pulled his hand away from the bandages, the material bloodied.

“The pocket is collapsing,” the Warden said, his hard eyes returning to Cassie. “You must listen to me, very closely. The Resistance and Zero no longer see eye-to-eye, and the resulting schism will add a third element to this struggle. My world, the world of ash and snow, is endangered, and your world will be caught in the crossfire, a new battleground. This conflict is inevitable, brokered by a vile creature who trades in nothing but death.”

“I don’t understand,” she gasped, shaking her head. “Resistance? What are you talking about?”

The First Timewalker leaned forward, his face turning white.

“You will understand in time,” he answered, his words hurried. “The future is divided between White Tower and the Resistance. The rebels once championed Zero, used him as their figurehead, but no longer. Zero has his own agenda, cloaked in robes of deceit and empty promises of power, guided by a corrupt image of his own making. He is dangerous, Cassie, and he must be stopped at any cost.”

The future.
It seemed so impossible.
The Adjusters are time-travelers. They had to come from somewhere – they came from the future. A world of ruin.

“Why are you telling me this?”

The Warden’s eyes softened, apologetic. “I believe he will use your family as leverage.”

Cassie jolted forward, her heart racing. “My family? What about my family?”

No, please no. Not my parents. Anyone but them.

“Your father is in danger,” the Warden said, and her heart broke. “Since your disappearance, he has been causing quite a stir in your hometown, asking questions that nobody is willing to answer.”