The Bureau of Time (20 page)

Cassie hesitated. “I have my training…”

“You have to come right away,” Natalie said, offering Amita a cheerful smile that only made the Doctor scowl. Cassie excused herself, her fingers trembling with a mixture of anticipation and the latent power that had surged through her body. She followed the older agent through the base, her Affinity sensing Shaun’s signature long before she saw him at the blastdoor to Sector 9.

General Lehmann stood off to one side, talking with Captain Tallon.

Cassie had always been good at reading people, but she could never quite work Tallon out. He held himself with an air of arrogance and command, and talking with the General, he appeared completely uninterested.

“Good, you’re here,” Director Anderson said, his eyes dark. “Let’s get started while that
thing
is feeling talkative.”

Shaun stood beside her, his hand brushing against hers deliberately. She blushed furiously, her thoughts suddenly distracted. She forced herself to refocus, to think about what lay beyond the blastdoor – that creature of unfathomable power and treacherous lies.

Natalie cleared her throat, and Cassie realized she’d missed what Anderson had been saying.

“…put this on you,” he finished, holding up a flesh-colored device in the shape of a small circle.

“It’s a microphone,” Natalie explained for Cassie’s benefit. “Zero won’t know you’re wearing it, and he’ll think you’re completely alone.”

“What about the soldiers?” Shaun asked, frowning. “Will he talk with guards in the room?”

“We don’t know
what
Zero will do,” Lehmann growled, approaching the group. “He said he would only talk with you two – alone. This is the closest he’s going to get, and he’ll have to be happy about it.”

“It’s worth trying,” Anderson added. “We’ll be listening in the whole time, and talking to you via your commset – here, put this in.”

Cassie clipped the device into her ear. She turned her back on the other men for some privacy, and Natalie pulled Cassie’s shirt away from her body, pressing the microphone against her chest.

“Remember, we want intelligence information,” Lehmann said, when both Timewalkers were ready. “Keep control of the conversation, and don’t let him distract you. We’ll both be in your ear the entire time,” he said, indicating Anderson. “Captain, you had something to say?”

Tallon nodded stiffly. His dark eyes glanced all over the pair, finally settling a foot above Shaun’s white hair. “It was something I…overheard, at the construction yard,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I want to know how Zero reacts to it – something one of the other Adjusters said.”

“What is it?” Cassie asked.

“Tell Zero that
The Tower has fallen,
and see how he responds.”

“What’s
that
mean?” Shaun questioned.

“Sounds like the Adjusters were talking about taking control of the skyscraper,” Lehmann observed. “Doesn’t sound important to me.”

“I want you to tell him anyway,” Tallon continued, ignoring the General. “It might shake his confidence.”

Anderson signaled to the cameras, and the blastdoor split apart with a pneumatic hiss, revealing Sector 9 itself. There were smaller cells off to each side of the white corridor, locked doors that she hadn’t noticed the first time around. She couldn’t hear anything beyond the doors, nor see into the cells – each door had a single metal slit for delivering food, and nothing else.

She shivered. The air was much colder here, and she realized they must be deep underground now, far beneath the forest and hills.

“Good luck, we’ll be right outside,” Natalie said, squeezing Cassie’s shoulder. The soldiers cranked open Zero’s cell, and the Timewalkers entered the white room beyond.

*     *     *

Zero sat perched on his stool, a wax figurine in the approximation of a human.

Shaun had to stifle a shocked gasp. The rumors were true – Zero had been interrogated, badly. The creature had an ugly bruise on one side of his face, extending from the place where his eyes should have been, down to his abnormally wide mouth. His shoulders were slumped, his black jumpsuit ripped in places. The hexagonal disc on his forehead remained in place, but was crusted with blood as though somebody had tried to remove it by force.

The Adjuster stirred when the cell door slammed shut.

The five guards snapped to attention as the Timewalkers approached the inner cell. Each of the soldiers held their guns at the ready, prepared to intervene.

“I wondered how long it’d take before you came back,” Zero drawled. His voice was wet, filled of moist things growing in dark places, of blood and grease. He stood awkwardly, favoring his left knee. “The prodigal war heroes return.”

Don’t let him distract you,
Shaun thought, gritting his teeth.
Anderson said they know about the future. I can’t let him sidetrack me.

“We’re not here to chat,” he said, his voice echoing around the outer cell. “We need information about the Adjusters, why you’re here.
What
do you want?
”

Zero laughed, his mouth opening wide to reveal bloodied gums, black ichor smeared over his teeth.

“I thought I had made my goal clear. I want to kill you, Shaun Briars.”

His blood turned cold. He exchanged a nervous glance with Cassie, who sidled closer to him. Despite his lack of eyes, the move didn’t go unnoticed by Zero.

“How
sweet,
” the monster cackled, his mouth twitching higher on one side. “Star-crossed lovers, how
original.
Of course, I have the benefit of knowing how the future plays out – a great love story, or a tragedy waiting to happen..?”

He trailed off into an enticing question.
The future.
So many possibilities, so many eventualities that might never form into reality.

“You
want
to know your future,” Zero hissed, stepping closer to the glass wall. His anti-Temporal handcuffs glowed bright blue, restricting his powers. “You’d
like that,
wouldn’t you, boy? Do you want me to tell you about the man you become? About the
great
Major Shaun Briars? The man who condemned a world to ash and
ruin!
”

He roared the last word, slamming his fists against the glass. The soldiers twitched, their carbines aimed straight at the glass walls. Cassie jumped, taking half a step back, clutching Shaun’s arm so tightly her fingernails dug into his skin.

“He’s getting angry,”
Anderson said over the comm.
“Control the interrogation.”

“We don’t care what he knows – or claims to know – about the future,”
Lehmann added.
“We need hard intel about Adjuster movements and activities.”

Cassie spoke, her voice wavering at first then hardening with forced determination. “We’re not here to ask about the future. We want to know what the Adjusters are doing
now.
Why are they killing Timewalkers?”

Zero stepped back from the glass wall. “Why else? Timewalkers are a threat to human society. We are eliminating them. We are
saving
your world from a terrible future.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Cassie said, releasing Shaun’s arm. She took a step toward the inner cell. Her voice shook with fear and anger. “Killing innocent children? They’re not a threat to
anybody.
”

Shaun’s gut churned, and he thought of Hayden Miller hanging from a ceiling fan.
How many other children has Zero killed? They tried to kill me, and Cassie too; there must be dozens more that the Bureau never reached in time.

“You are so
naïve,
” Zero growled, but there was no aggression in his voice, only calculated calm – he was enjoying himself. “It’s not what Timewalkers can do
now,
it’s what they will do in the
future!
I know you have seen it, you have seen our world – a world consumed by fire and snow, the byproducts of a nuclear winter that Timewalkers helped cause!”

Cassie glanced at Shaun, and he knew what she was thinking.
The other world. Was that the future?

“Yes,” Zero drawled, elongating the word. “Yes, I am right, am I not? I am generously performing a great service for your world; I am preventing that disaster. You should be
thanking
me, not keeping me chained up like some petty murderer.”

“You
are
a murderer,” Shaun countered. “You and all the other Adjusters. You killed children, you stalked and tried to murder me and Cassie; you killed those soldiers – they weren’t Timewalkers, what did they do wrong?”

“They chose the wrong side!” Zero snarled, pacing back and forth, a caged animal. “The Bureau of Time is the same as White Tower, an infectious disease, a cancerous cell! They must be quarantined—”

“Wait,” Cassie shouted, cutting him off. “You said White Tower. What
is
White Tower?”

Zero stopped his pacing and turned his eyeless gaze toward her.

“Start wrapping it up, this is going nowhere,”
Anderson said over the comm.

“My, my,” Zero said, shaking his head. “The Bureau really
has
kept you in the dark. You don’t even know what White Tower is? They started this war. They’re the reason I came to your timeline to begin with. The reason everything went to hell.”

“This is useless,”
Lehmann agreed.
“We can’t confirm anything he’s talking about. Ask him where the Adjusters will strike next.”

Shaun gritted his teeth, biting his tongue until warm blood spilled into his mouth. He Timewalked the cut without a second thought, enjoying the familiar rush of power through his veins. He wanted to ask Zero so many questions, but he knew the General was right. They had to know what the Adjusters were planning.

“What more do you want from us – what’s next? Killing more Timewalkers? Attacking the Bureau?”

“What’s next?” Zero repeated, his mad cackle filling the cell. The soldiers flinched, but they held their ground, their guns trained on the Adjuster. He didn’t even acknowledge the men, as though they were nothing but a piece of furniture to be observed and ignored.

“I’ll tell you what’s next,” Zero spat, inching closer to the glass wall. He lowered his voice, filling every word with boundless malice. Perhaps it was an illusion, a trick of the light, but Shaun could have sworn that Zero’s eyeless sockets blazed with a fiery light. “My men will come and destroy you, they will wipe the Bureau from the face of the earth. We will be victorious, we will have our justice, we will avenge our loved ones’ deaths—”

“We’re pulling you out,”
Lehmann announced.

“—we will RISE against those who would enslave us—”

“No! Tell him what I heard!”
Tallon shouted over the comm. Shaun had to hold a finger in his ear to drown out Zero’s enraged screaming.

“—and we shall deliver your people, we shall free them—”

“Let’s go, this is over,”
Anderson said. From behind them, the cell door cranked open, but Zero was still yelling, spittle flying onto the glass wall.

“—you will pay for what you’ve done!” he finished, black blood spilling over his lips. Cassie’s face had gone sheet-white, and Shaun was lost for words, stunned by the ferocity of Zero’s outburst. At the very last moment, he remembered Tallon’s sentence, and blurted out:

“The tower has fallen.”

Zero draw up short, his aggression vanishing like a candle flame in a storm. His head cocked back to the other side; the reinforced door was fully open now, and guards were stepping through to guide the Timewalkers out.

“Is that so?” Zero said. For a moment, he said nothing. Cassie was already halfway out of the room, but Shaun lingered, unwilling to leave.

“Timewalker Briars,” one of the guards shouted, tapping Shaun on the shoulder. “Timewalker, I have orders to pull you out of here.”

Zero sat back on his stool and crossed his legs.

He stared straight at Shaun, and grinned wickedly. “If I were you, Major Briars, I’d get a good nights’ sleep. One of us ought to.”

The guard dragged Shaun out of the cell, ignoring the boy’s protests. The steel door slammed shut with a resounding
boom
that shook the walls and rattled his teeth. The Bureau’s personnel had gathered just around the corner, various expressions of disdain, shock, and confusion spread across their faces.

“That was a waste of time,” General Lehmann said, shaking his head. “We lost good men to capture that piece of shit, and he won’t tell us anything useful. The mission was a disaster. It’s over.”

“No,” Shaun said, so quietly that his words were lost in the ensuing conversation. Only Cassie, standing right beside him, heard him speak. “No, it’s only just begun.”

THE OTHER

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

Ryan hung out of the cabin as the gunship touched down at the edge of the cornfield.

An ocean of green stalks stretched for miles, swaying back and forth in the hot summer’s breeze. From a brilliant blue sky the sun beat down on the field. The ground was dry and hard beneath Cassie’s feet as she jumped out of the helicopter. Rising above the emerald sea, an old wooden barn stuck up on the horizon, and further away, a dilapidated shack that might have once passed for a house.

“What could the Adjusters want out here?” Cassie wondered aloud, squinting into the bright sunlight.

“Rural Indiana doesn’t seem like their usual criteria,” Shaun agreed, standing beside her. Sweat beaded along his brow, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “There’s not even a decent-sized town for a hundred miles.”

“We were all at the same briefing,” Tallon commented, dropping down beside the Timewalkers. “Eaglepoint’s been seeing Temporal spikes from coast-to-coast. Whatever the Adjusters are after, they’re becoming unpredictable.”

“So we’re the ones chasing every shadow?” Ryan complained, not bothering to keep the disdain from his voice. “The Bureau’s stretched too thin – we shouldn’t be out
here
. We should be back at Brightwood, defending the base.”

“Defending against the ramblings of a psychopath?” Tallon argued, shaking his head. “If the Director of Time says we should be out in the field, then we’re out in the field. Now enough chatter. There was a Spike somewhere around here, and we have to find it. Clockwork, move out.”