The Bureau of Time (11 page)

“Single-file, Wright and Hunt at the rear,” Tallon said. “Briars, take point.”

Shaun nodded, preparing to use his Timewalking powers at a moment’s notice. He pushed through the front door, the hinges shrieking like tortured ghosts.

Clockwork entered the building.

Boots crunched on pieces of glass. Decaying pieces of paper stuck to the concrete, and a thick layer of dust covered the floor and desks. Grime smeared the few windows that remained in good condition, the shattered panes letting a cold draft through the long hallway. The facility was completely dark and as they moved away from the windows, Shaun flicked his tactical light on, painting the corridor white.

He gripped his gun tighter and edged around a blind corner, finding a closed door at the end of the hallway. He reached out with his Affinity, searching through the shifting energy of the universe. In such close proximity to Cassie, his innate ability to sense T.E. was being disrupted, almost entirely blocked.

“Breaching in three,” Shaun said. Ryan pressed his back against the doorframe, one foot hovering above the ground. Shaun stood in front of Tallon, gun pointed toward the door, with Cassie and Agent Hunt directly behind the Captain.

“Three, two, one,
BREACH!
” Ryan slammed his foot into the door, breaking the hinges. Shaun rushed into the room, hugging the right-hand wall, Tallon coming through on his left. Shaun aimed down the carbine’s iron sights, one finger wrapped around the trigger, the tactical light chasing away the shadows.

“Clear!” he shouted. The room was more than clear – it was completely empty. No windows, no desks, no other doors. A smooth concrete floor and rotting sheetrock on the walls. There must have been a leak somewhere in the ceiling, because water was dripping onto the floor with a maddeningly slow pace, like the ticking of an old grandfather clock.

“Nothing here,” Tallon said. “Intel suggested old tunnels underneath the factory. That might be where the Spike originated.”

Shaun lowered his gun, nerves firing in his body, short zaps in his fingers and down his spine. He was ready for combat, expecting an Adjuster to appear at any moment. Adrenaline flooded his system, his heart pounded in his chest; but there was nothing here, no threat except the decrepit building itself.

“Form up,” Tallon ordered. “Wright, you coming?”

Cassie stood in the middle of the room, focused on the dripping water. She hesitated, then said, “Wait.”

Shaun turned, following her outstretched finger. Water gathered on the floor, drops splashing down from the ceiling.

“It’s a puddle,” Ryan observed.

“No,” Shaun said suddenly. He fell to his knees, swinging his carbine around to his back. “Look at the water.”

The concrete floor ran slightly downhill, water trickling across the rough surface and vanishing into a thin crack in the ground. The rest of Clockwork knelt beside him, inspecting the strange anomaly. Shaun pulled his combat knife from his thigh, digging it into the crack and sliding the blade back-and-forth. The knife hit something solid with a metallic
ping
, and with a gasp of stale air and dust, the trapdoor released.

Shaun seized the hidden cover and threw it back, revealing a ladder down into complete darkness.

“Nice find, Cassie,” Ryan said, flashing her a warm smile. Cassie blushed, muttering something under her breath that sounded like ‘It was nothing’, or maybe ‘Thank you’.

Shaun reached into a pouch on his combat belt, retrieving a chemical glow-stick. He snapped the plastic tube and shook the stick until glowed bright green. He tossed the glow-stick into the hole, watching as the light grew smaller until it hit the tunnel floor below.

“Thirty feet?” Ryan suggested.

“About right,” Shaun grunted. It was too far to drop, so he took the ladder. The rungs were slippery, and copper-colored rust came off on his gloves. The air was stale, and he wondered if his powers could protect him from asphyxiation. Several rungs were missing altogether, forcing him to drop the last five feet, the sound echoing down a long, sloping corridor that led further under the cement factory.

“All good!” he shouted toward the small square of light high above. He took up his carbine again, the tactical light shining down the tunnel. There was nothing but smooth concrete walls, ending in a T-junction at the far end.

A few minutes later, Clockwork Unit had gathered at the base of the ladder.

“These tunnels don’t look like they were built for the factory,” Ryan said, voicing Shaun’s own thought. As they reached the branching corridors, he shone his light at words printed on the wall, the paint faded and peeling.

“
Shipments
, left,” Shaun read, straining to make out the words. “
Holding Cells
, right. What the hell is this place?”

“Damned if I know,” Tallon muttered under his breath. He pressed a finger in his ear. “Brightwood, this is Clockwork Lead—” he swore and yanked the flesh-colored device out, static squealing from the speaker. “Shit. The comms won’t work underground. We’re going in blind.”

Shaun looked each way, weighing their options. The branching corridors both ended in a sharp turn, disappearing into the darkness. There were lights in the ceilings, but no way of turning them on.

“What could the Adjusters want down here?” Ryan asked.

Nobody answered him.

“We have to split up,” Tallon said, taking command again. “Briars, with Boreman; Wright and Hunt with me.”

“No!” Shaun said sharply, surprising even himself. “I want to go with Cassie.”

He expected Tallon to argue, maybe pull rank and overrule him. Instead, the Captain only nodded, his expression hidden in the contrasting light and shadow. Cassie glowered at Shaun with something just shy of disgust, and his stomach sank.

“Okay,” Tallon said. “Boreman with me, we go left. Briars, Wright, Hunt, take the right-hand corridor. If you find anything, yell out. If you a reach a dead end, circle back and wait for everyone else here. Understood?”

A unanimous ‘
yes sir
’ echoed down the long hallway. As the last shout rang out, Shaun felt something stir through the Temporal Energy of the universe. Cassie must have noticed it too, because her eyes went wide, and she gripped her handgun tighter.

Just an anomaly,
he told himself.
Two Timewalkers close together, we’re bound to stir something up.

Aloud he said, “Let’s keep moving.”

Clockwork split apart, Shaun leading the way down the right-hand tunnel toward the ‘Holding Cells’. They rounded the corner and started sloping down again, then took another right, followed by a left, before the tunnel opened into a much wider corridor, with various doorways and corridors on either side.

“This is
definitely
not part of the factory,” Hunt said, holding her Glock down low. “Looks like it was used a lot at some point.”

Shaun panned his tactical light across the room, casting long shadows against the walls. Loose sheets of paper were scattered across the floor, the concrete stained with brown marks that reminded him of dried blood. A heavy miasma of stale air and decay clung to everything around them. Agent Hunt and Cassie turned their own flashlights on, illuminating the room fully.

Hunt retched and twisted away, coughing violently. Shaun grimaced, his stomach churning.

He had been right – it
was
dried blood.

The brown stains covered the floor and walls, dried flat as though someone had sandblasted the blood into the concrete. There were no bodies, though he saw several abandoned pens and nametags, and scrunched in the corner, what looked like a white doctor’s coat. Shaun took several tentative steps forward, his Affinity searching through the cloud of T.E. to find something, anything, to indicate why there had been a Spike here.

Cassie picked up a metal nametag, reading the name aloud.

“
Doctor Walter Sharp
. Doesn’t say what kind of doctor he was.” She tossed the nametag away, and rubbed her arms. “It’s freezing down here.”

Shaun hadn’t noticed the temperature, but both Cassie and Hunt were shivering. They were at least fifty feet underground now. He flicked his tactical light onto the ceiling, revealing air ducts. That explained how the people – whoever they were – had survived down here. He turned his light onto another wall and froze.

“Adjusters,” he said, the word sounding like a gunshot.

“Where?” Cassie exclaimed, whipping her gun around, as though expecting them to come barging out of a doorway.

“Not
here,
” Shaun said. “And put that gun down, you’ll take my eye out.”

Cassie lowered the weapon, but not before giving him another scathing look. He ignored her, and pointed at the wall. “This blood, it’s black. There were Adjusters here, and I’m willing to bet they killed these people.”

The walls were smeared with a substance like ink, running in long fingers down to the floor. Now that he looked around, several of the stains he had originally taken as brown were actually closer to black.

“This place must be older than the factory itself,” Agent Hunt said, speaking for the first time, her tone wavering. “Was the factory built on top of these tunnels?”

“Don’t know,” Shaun muttered. Then louder, “We have to choose a direction. Hunt, scout out what you can through there.” He pointed to what looked like offices. “Cassie, with me, down here.”

He gestured to a corridor marked ‘Holding Cells’ again. Reluctantly, the agent followed his orders, the sounds of her footsteps retreating as she explored the offices. Cassie said nothing as they moved down the hallway, following another twist back to the right.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, though down here, his voice was amplified much louder. “I’m sorry that I called you a liability. I – I was just…” He drifted off, unable to find the right words.
I was worried about you. Worried that something bad might happen, and that I’d lose you. That I’d lose another Timewalker. Because this time it would be worse than losing Hayden. I didn’t know him. But I know you.

He couldn’t translate his thoughts into words, so they kept moving, the silent gap between them widening further.

They entered another open room – the Holding Cells. Six doors surrounded them, each made of solid steel, windowless with only a small slot. One of the doors teetered on a single hinge, and as Shaun swept his light over the ground, he saw more loose paperwork, as though somebody had knocked over an entire filing cabinet.

He knelt to pick up a piece of paper, detaching the tactical light to use it as a regular flashlight. Cassie squatted down beside him, her eyes darting over the lines. The text had clearly been printed from an old typewriter, one of the keys – a
y –
slightly elevated from the rest.

“White Tower Subject Manifest,”
Shaun read. “What the hell is ‘White Tower’? I’ve never heard of it. Look at the date:
October
17
^th
, 1989.
”

He frowned, and continued,
“Subject 16 shows increased paranormal activity, including ability to correctly predict the order of a shuffled deck of cards…
I can’t read what that says, it’s too faded. Here –
no other notes, save for Subject 23. Great improvement in cellular regeneration. Subject is capable of—”

Shaun stopped dead. He re-read the same line again, just in case he had missed something the first time. A sour taste spilled into his mouth, burning its way down his throat. His mind was sent spinning like a top and he had to place one hand on the ground to steady himself.

“What is it?” Cassie shot him a concerned look, trying to read over his shoulder. “What does it say?”

Shaun swallowed past a thick lump in his throat and read the paragraph aloud, each word echoing in the cramped room hidden beneath the crumbling ruins of a cement factory.

“
Great improvement in cellular regeneration. Subject is capable of healing most non-life-threatening wounds. I consider Subject 23 to be the first successful Timewalker.
”

THE ARRIVAL

The first Timewalker.

The words sent an icy chill down Cassie’s spine.

She rocked back on her heels, her mouth opening and closing without sound. Her tactical light shone across the floor, illuminating dozens of abandoned documents, some handwritten, others printed with an old typewriter. Most of the text was faded beyond recognition, but a few pages had managed to survive the twenty-six years below ground intact.

She picked up another discarded piece of paper, her eyes darting over the page.

Again, the same words jumped out at her.
White Tower. Timewalker. Cronium. LCS. White Tower.
What was this place, and why were all the dates in the mid-to-late ’80s? She searched frantically, seizing the papers with a manic frenzy, stirring the layer of dust.

“Cassie.
Cassie.
” Shaun’s voice – urgent and low – snapped her out of her daze. She spun around to face him, loose sheets scattering around her.

“What?” she asked, but his expression told her everything she needed to know. He put a finger to his lips –
quiet
 – and mouthed the word:
Adjusters.
Her stomach lurched, and fear stormed through her body, her heart thumping.

Shaun jumped to his feet and aimed his gun at the doorway. Cassie fumbled with her Glock, desperately trying to remember her training – the hours at the firing range seemed far too short now, and she realized just how underprepared she really was.

She mentally raced through everything that Ryan and the range master had drilled into her. She gripped the tactical light in her spare hand, the beam jittering all over the wall. She yanked the slide back, racking a bullet with a powerful
click.
Her palms were sweaty and the gun threatened to slip out of her grasp.

A ripple of energy tore through the tunnels and cement dust shook from the ceiling, a thin layer of gray accumulating in her hair. The world shuddered and groaned, colors distorting into a kaleidoscopic painting. A warm, moist wind that smelled distinctly of the ocean caught Cassie in the face; there was an explosion of light as the wormhole opened, and three Adjusters stepped out of nothingness.