The Bureau of Time (33 page)

This time, Cassie knew there was no point lying.
They could be my only allies right now. They need to know.

“I’m a Timewalker.”

Alanna gave a surprised gasp that turned into a choked cough. Reese’s forehead creased and he rocked back in the office chair, running a hand through his neon-green hair, breaking some of the spikes apart.

“A Timewalker,” he repeated. He stood and whispered something to Alanna. The Irish girl nodded and hurried out of the room, the glass door swinging shut behind her.

“Okay,” Reese said, with an air of command. “This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to meet someone and he’s going to ask you a few questions – and if you don’t answer truthfully, or if he has any reason to suspect that you’re lying, we’ll take you right back to where we found you.”

Cassie recoiled at Reese’s threat.
I’m not a guest here, not somebody they rescued. I’m a glorified prisoner.
She readied her Affinity, prepared to defend herself – but how would that help her?
I can’t fight my way out of here.

“Get dressed,” Reese told her. “When you’re done, you’re going to see the Commander.”

When Reese had left her alone, Cassie closed her eyes tight, then snapped them open again; but no amount of childish hope could pull her out of this tormented dream. Her hands shook as she pushed the blankets aside and pulled the jeans on – they were too long around the ankles, forcing her to roll them up several times. The tank-top was a little loose, but it was better than nothing.

She paused for a moment, staring at the smoking ruins of Chicago. The glassy surface of Lake Michigan reflected the gray blanket hanging across the sky. Snow drifted down toward the remains of the city below.

I
will
get out of here
, she promised herself.
I will find a way back home, a way back to my parents – and to Ryan. No matter what.

She opened the door, prepared to face whatever would come next.

Alanna had returned, and together with Reese, they led her through the corporate skyscraper, moving so quickly that she could barely take in her surroundings. Conference rooms and office spaces had been converted into triages, with young men and women in scrubs treating patients with minimal medical supplies.

Up several flights of stairs, down more corridors, many lit only by battery-operated lamps.

Soldiers in civilian clothing patrolled the floors, guns slung across their broad chests. They all wore scarlet sashes around their arms, but many of the fighters were fresh-faced and young.
They’re teenagers fighting a war. Just like Timewalkers.

As Cassie passed another large conference room, she saw several older men with their heads hunched over a table, blueprints and paperwork spread before them. Cassie’s gaze lingered too long in the room, and the door was slammed shut by a boy who couldn’t have been much older than twelve, despite the Glock holstered on his waist.

“Don’t slow down,” Reese snapped, tugging her forward.

Up three more flights of stairs, names scrawled in thick marker on the concrete.
Barracks 15. Intel Center. Armory.
They emerged into an area that might have been a private club once, passing a bar with several soldiers in ragged clothes. Then through a restaurant-turned-mess hall, the tables crammed together, the food rustic-looking and beige.

They stopped at the end of another nondescript corridor. Two soldiers guarded a closed door, shotguns slung across their chests.

“This is the girl we found,” Reese said, gesturing at Cassie as though she was a stray dog. “Commander wants to see her.”

The guard on the left knocked twice, and a gruff man yelled out an affirmative, his voice muffled through the timber doors. The soldier nodded and opened the door. Cassie hesitated, sudden terror gripping her.

“It’s okay, Natalie,” Alanna whispered.

Cassie took a deep breath and stepped around the soldier’s outstretched arm, the door shutting behind her a moment later.

The office was square, with a large window opposite her. The window was reinforced with a sheet of metal grating, small holes letting her look out across the ruins of Chicago. A large desk occupied most of the office, laden down with stacks of paperwork and a battery-powered lamp.

The Commander had his back turned, his hair the same gray as his uniform, his hands behind his back. A scarlet armband encircled his left bicep, and silver epaulets adorned his shoulders.

“Take a seat,” the man said, still facing the window. Cassie sat down on a tattered leather armchair. Her heart was racing, and she couldn’t help remembering when she’d sat down in Director Anderson’s office and he’d told her they would be capturing an Adjuster.

You don’t have anything to fear,
she told herself.
You are a Timewalker. That makes you valuable to these people.

I hope.

“My men said they found you at the edge of the radiation zone. What were you doing out there? Why have you entered Resistance territory?”

The man turned around, and Cassie gasped.

Resistance.
The word itself didn’t mean anything to her, even though she
knew
she’d heard the name before – but that wasn’t why she gasped.

She
knew
the man standing before her.

The Commander of the Resistance was Ryan Boreman.

He looked at least twenty years older than she remembered him. There were deep lines in his face, and his hair was grayer than she’d expected. Dark shadows hung under his eyes, and there was a distinctive scar running from his left eye down his cheek. His shoulder was clearly bandaged beneath his uniform.

Commander Boreman gave a low chuckle and sat down in his chair.

“Don’t worry,” he told her, “I’ve had worse reactions to that scar – taught me to make sure my enemy is properly dead.”

“It’s not that,” she breathed, “I just—”

She hesitated, unwilling to continue. The idea sounded crazy, even in her own mind.

“What?” Boreman asked, wiry eyebrows narrowing. His face was so familiar – there was no denying it. This was definitely an older version of
her
Ryan.

“I
know you,
” she said, the words spilling out. “You were right there with me. You were trying to save my dad, and then Marissa and I were fighting—”

“Marissa?” the Commander interrupted her, leaning forward in his chair. “You mean Marissa Sodovskaya? The renegade Timewalker?”

Cassie hesitated. “I don’t know. But she was working for Zero.”

“You’re not from
here
, are you?” Boreman asked, his voice firm but not unkind. “You’re not from the Prime world, I can feel it. You’ve come from the Shift – but if
you’re
back here, then where’s Marissa?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated, her voice hollow.

The Commander must have taken pity on her because he sighed, relenting his piercing gaze. He stood and walked over to a small cabinet that had several mugs hanging on metal hooks above a sink.

“There’s a lot you probably don’t understand about our universes,” Boreman said. “Tea?”

Cassie nodded, watching as older-Ryan took two teabags from a metal tin, placing one in each mug. He filled the mugs with cold water from the faucet. Something activated in the teabag and she heard the water heating vigorously in the cup. The Commander handed her one of the mugs, steam curling up from the water, the green tea smelling sweet and fresh.

“There’s no
right
way to explain it,” he said, sitting opposite. He placed his mug on the desk. “There are two worlds, or universes, out there. Ours, the original, which we call the Prime – and yours, the one we call the Shift. And because of that, there is more than one of everything. There are two of me, two of you, two of almost everything you can think of. Our universes are currently separated by almost twenty years, each traveling along their own path, parallel to each other.”

Ryan folded his hands in his lap, and for a moment, she saw his younger self again – calm, confident, unshakeable; perhaps the young Ryan had been born with an old soul that he had been waiting to grow into.

“You probably
did
know me. In this world, I worked for White Tower. I was Director of Temporal Adjustment before I joined the Resistance. In your world, White Tower was attacked in its infancy, when it was just an experimental weapons branch of the CIA; after that, their research and funding was taken over by the Bureau of Time. It’s likely I worked there as an operator.”

“That’s right,” Cassie murmured, grateful for the mug – it gave her something solid to hold onto, a physical anchor in this strange world. She added, “You were one of the best.”

Ryan laughed, a warm smile breaking through his military mask. Then his expression turned serious again. “You need to understand – our worlds are very different. The Prime, this world, suffered a great nuclear war that left most of the Earth in ruins.”

He gestured toward the window and the smoking husk of Chicago. “What’s left is tightly controlled by White Tower, an agency that has grown into an evil parasite, an authoritarian government that rations food, lets millions starve and freeze, while their elite live in luxury. And then there’s us, the Resistance, fighting to liberate our people and combat the propaganda that White Tower is shoving down their own people’s throats.”

Cassie took a sip of tea, the hot liquid burning her mouth and thawing her from the inside out. Her hands trembled, though from far more than just the chills alone.

“I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “The Resistance – why did you destroy the Bureau of Time in our world? Why did Zero come and kill so many people?”

“That wasn’t us,” the Commander assured her, his voice urgent and sincere. “It’s true, the Resistance was founded by Zero and his Adjusters, but we no longer work together.
I
am the true leader of the Resistance, not Zero. That vile, disgusting creature is psychotic and dangerous. In his own warped mind, he thinks he’s in control of the Resistance, and he kills in our name with his legion of brainwashed Adjusters.”

Boreman’s voice had risen angrily. He took a deep breath, calming himself, and sank back into his chair. “But that still doesn’t help you, does it?”

“I just want to go home.” She looked down into her tea, her own tired and bruised face staring up at her.

“That might be difficult. We’re in the middle of a war against White Tower. We sustained heavy casualties taking Chicago. We need to regroup, restore power to the city and prepare to push further westward so we can rendezvous with the Californian branch.”

“So I’m stuck here?” she asked, her voice threatening to break. The tea suddenly felt cold, and she placed it on the desk, shivering.

“In a manner of speaking.” He offered a nonchalant shrug. “I understand this may be difficult for you—”

“
Difficult?
” she exclaimed. “
Difficult
is something kids say about – about
exams!
No, this whole thing, the Bureau, Adjusters, this – whatever the
hell
White Tower and Resistance is – this is not
difficult
, this is—”

She cut off in mid-sentence, unable to find the right combination of cusses to express herself; but she was afraid that if she bottled it all up, she would explode. Commander Boreman observed her with an irritating calmness, waiting her out.

“It hasn’t been easy for us either,” Boreman said, choosing his words carefully. “The Final War destroyed us, ripped our loved ones away. It broke us. We tried to erase our mistakes, but instead we created your world. A world filled with people who look
exactly like us;
only, our duplicates are twenty years younger than us – versions of ourselves that haven’t experienced the horror of a nuclear war, versions of ourselves that still have their families, still have green pastures and vibrant cities buzzing with life. But that world, it isn’t ours.”

Commander Boreman leaned forward. “White Tower plans to seize control of your world, occupy and take our people over there, against their will.
This is our home
. Right here. It might not be a good one, but it’s ours. We have to live with our decisions. We have to fix what we broke. And out of the ashes, a new civilization will rise, one built on the principles of hard work, sacrifice, and genuine care for our brothers and sisters. The nuclear fires have washed away the old governments; and once White Tower has been removed, when they no longer stand in our way, then we can rebuild our world, piece by piece, making it better than it ever was before!”

Cassie saw her own world dancing before her eyes, the busy metropolis of New York City where she had lived with her mother in the apartment on the Upper West Side; she thought of the rolling countryside of Pennsylvania, of the pink bedroom in her family home. She saw Brightwood Ranch, the forested hills, and the gentle countryside of Virginia.

Then she thought of the ruined city outside, the snow and ash, and the visions disappeared, replaced by darkness and despair.

“The Resistance fights against White Tower to build a better world for us all,” the Commander told her. “We need all the help we can get. I know you’re a Timewalker – and I know you worked for the Bureau of Time. That much is clear from what you’ve told me already. Otherwise, why would Zero have targeted you and your family?”

Cassie looked down at her hands, her fingernails caked with dried blood.

He looks like Ryan,
she thought,
but he’s different. He’s a Ryan who’s seen terrible things. He’s a Ryan who broke away from the agency he’d sworn to serve. The Ryan I knew believed in his government more than anything else in the world.

“What are you saying?” she asked, her voice thick with emotion.

“I’m asking for your help. We could use a Timewalker here – help tip the scales in our favor. Zero is a splinter cell, a thorn in our sides. We know that he abducted people from your world, but we don’t know where he’s taken them. I promise you this, though: We will find your people. White Tower might be our enemy in this world, but we have nothing against the Bureau of Time. They were innocent bystanders in a war they knew nothing about, the target of Zero’s misguided crusade of personal vengeance against your world. We will find those hostages, and take them home. And when we’ve done that, we will close the connection between our worlds.”