The Bureau of Time (22 page)

Shaun felt a tug somewhere in his navel, and the world reformed around him. The soldiers were gone, and the lamps vanished, plunging the safe house back into darkness. He staggered forward, a rush of energy storming through his body, making his nerves twitch.

“What –
was –
that?” Cassie gasped, clutching the rickety dining table as though it could anchor her to reality. Tallon and Ryan had already gone ahead to explore the facility – they hadn’t even noticed the two Timewalkers were missing.

“I have no idea,” Shaun murmured. He panned his tactical light over the walls – they were perfectly intact.

No lamps, no sledgehammers, no soldiers.

He was short of breath, the stale air depriving him of oxygen. “We can’t stay down here for too long.” He painted the ceiling with his light. “There are ventilation shafts, but they’re not working – must have been covered over by the farm.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “You saw that, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, his breath coming out in puffy white clouds. He angled his gun toward the floor again. “Same thing that happened up above. It’s almost like…”

“Like what?”

He swallowed thickly. “Like we’re teleporting somewhere.”

He couldn’t see Cassie’s expression in the dim light, but her silence was enough. Finally, she said, “That’s impossible.”

“I don’t think so, not if there’s enough Temporal Energy. Adjusters do it all the time. The real question is: where are we teleporting to?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Briars!”

Shaun jumped, swinging his gun around to face Ryan.

“Whoa, whoa, easy there!” Ryan said, holding his hands up. He squinted into Shaun’s tactical light. “We thought you might want to see this. We found a comms room, and what looks like an exit.”

“Sorry.” Shaun lowered his gun. “Just a little on-edge.”

“You two all right?” Ryan asked. “Captain thinks that—”

Whatever he had been about to say was cut off abruptly when the universe dissolved for a third time. This time Shaun felt his body being ripped away, and Cassie screamed; he reached out for her, suddenly surrounded by inky blackness. His hand groped along her shoulders and he seized her arm, pulling her toward himself. He wrapped her in a protective embrace, holding her tightly—

It was over in a heartbeat.

They stood outside, looking back at the wreckage of the fighter jet. They were submerged in three feet of freezing snow, the air cold and hard to breathe; they were four or five hundred feet from the buried White Tower facility, and the wind carried with it raised voices and arguments.

“We need to—”

“I know what I saw, Pritchard, I saw—”

“—if
she
finds out—”

“If she finds out
what?
” A harsh female voice cut above the men’s voices, her accent distinctly Russian. The people were nothing but black dots milling around the fighter jet, but the ground was bare between the Timewalkers and those people – if they turned around and saw them…

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Shaun let out a startled shout. Cassie broke away from him, still holding onto his spare arm; he dropped his carbine and brought up his handgun. A man stood a few paces away, unfazed by the weather. He was somewhere in his late-twenties, his hair oiled and black; thin-framed glasses sat high on his nose. His suit was jet-black, and his complexion vaguely Italian or perhaps Greek.

The man gestured toward the fighter jet, as if to clarify his point. “They’re like little ants, swarming over the dead body of a creature so many times larger than themselves that they couldn’t possibly fathom
what
it is that they’ve found, merely that it’s dead and that they want it.”

Shaun found his voice. He instinctively moved in front of Cassie, protecting her without consciously realizing it. “Who are you?
Where are we?
”

“A more pertinent question, I agree,” the newcomer said, nodding. The shouting grew louder and he clucked his tongue. “I think
I
should be asking the questions, though. Why are you investigating White Tower facilities?”

“My question first,” Shaun snarled, glaring at the stranger. The man glanced at the gun as though it were a toy. He carried himself with an irritating arrogance, and his body radiated raw power – some heady mixture of T.E. and an almost undefinable
otherness
that unnerved Shaun.

“Dear me,” the man said, smirking. “How quick we are to forget. If not for me, you’d have died of frostbite or been taken by the Resistance, chopped up into little bits for their science program.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Shaun spat.
People talking in riddles all the damned time. I’m getting sick of it.

“Your little girlfriend knows,” the man gestured at Cassie, half-hidden behind Shaun’s back, her breath hot on the back of his neck. “Though I suspect she never mentioned me. Well, in any case, I helped you both. And I helped here, too,” he added, nodding toward the fighter jet and the black-clad soldiers swarming around it. “I have something of a soft spot for you two. We go way back, though you wouldn’t know about that.”

Shaun took a deep breath.
It’s okay,
he told himself,
any minute now, you’ll be back safe and sound in the real world.
He closed his eyes briefly, naively hoping sanity would have been restored when he opened them again.

He was disappointed.

“Listen, I want a straight answer out of you,” Shaun said, trying to take control of the conversation. “One answer, and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know, deal?”

The stranger smirked again, his mouth contorting in a wry grin. “Deal.”

“What is this place?” Shaun enunciated every word. His stomach churned, his Affinity screamed, his mind cowered; he wasn’t sure he
wanted
to know the answer, but he
needed
to know.

“My dear boy,” the stranger said, and perhaps it was a trick of the light – pale and gray – but it looked like the man had suddenly aged thirty years in a heartbeat, his skin wrinkled, his voice suddenly deeper. “You’re on the
other
side. You’re in a parallel universe.”

THE TRUTH

Wind howled across the open expanse, tearing at Cassie’s fatigues with icy fingers. She couldn’t feel her extremities and every breath filled her lungs with sharp crystals, but the numbness on the inside was far worse. The stranger in the black suit stood before her, the same man that she had seen in the ruins of the cement factory. A shimmer passed through his body, and he became younger, then older, then younger again – as though he was drifting through time itself.

“It’s too noisy out here,” the stranger complained, brushing snow from his shoulders. He frowned at the stains left behind on his suit, but didn’t appear bothered by the weather. “We should be going. The wind is shifting.”

Almost on cue, gunshots cracked through the air. Cassie yelped, fumbling for her weapon, spinning to face the fighter jet. The others were too far away to be a real danger – it was a warning shot, nothing more, but then the black-clad figures swarmed toward them, shouting and hollering.

“Let us talk somewhere quieter,” the man drawled. “Come with me.”

The world dissolved around them, melting into a blur of dark shapes and impossibly bright lights. She couldn’t breathe, her body paralyzed and her Affinity screaming.

Then everything was back to normal, and she hit the ground. She stumbled away from Shaun, her nerves firing sharply as though she’d been shocked with electricity. They stood inside a dark room, square on all sides and lined with safety deposit boxes. A cold, fluorescent light was set into the concrete ceiling, and a chest-high metal table was bolted into the floor.

Shaun drew a sharp gasp and rounded on the man in the suit. “What just happened?”

The stranger rolled his eyes, straightening his suit jacket. “I thought we agreed that
my
question would be next. Such an impertinent little child. But first, introductions are in order!”

He clapped his hands together with a resounding
slap
that resonated through the universe. His body flickered, and he became older for a moment, his black hair now gray and wiry, his cheeks sallow. Then the moment passed, and he was young again, without even a flicker of emotion on his face to show that something so inexplicable had just happened.

“You, young lady,” he said, with a slight bow in her direction, like a gentleman of old, “are Cassandra Wright, as beautiful as ever.”

She blushed furiously, but she wasn’t fooled by the man’s performance.
He’s dangerous,
she thought.
I can sense it. The way he carries himself, the way he talks…he’s not a Timewalker, not an Adjuster. He’s something altogether different.

“And of course,” he said, turning back to Shaun. The Timewalker held his handgun across his chest, half-pointed at the stranger. “You, are the legendary Shaun Briars.” He paused, his head cocked to one side. His dark eyes roved all over Shaun’s face, lingering too long to be friendly. At long last, he said stiffly, “It is an honor.”

“And what’s
your
name?” Cassie ventured, shivering. The room was freezing cold, somehow worse than the snowy landscape they’d just left. There was a single, windowless, door behind the man.
We could be anywhere in the world. We teleported, but to where?

The stranger laughed, but it was humorless.

He spread his arms wide. “Pick a name. I go by many, and each are just as accurate as the last – none tell my true story, but I suppose you
have
to address me by something. The military still calls me the Warden of White Tower, as is my title. They no longer command me, but our relationship is – ah –
mutually beneficial.
”

His lips curled into a sneer at the end. “For our purposes, however, I have another name that you would be far more interested to hear. My birth name was lost long ago, and when I was remade, they had a title for me.
The First Timewalker.
”

The temperature plummeted another few degrees. Cassie held onto the metal table to steady herself as the world started spinning. She wanted to speak, to ask questions; she opened her mouth but found her tongue parched.
It’s not possible – this can’t be right.

“You’ve heard that name before, haven’t you?” the First Timewalker asked, with the ghost of a smile. “I can see it on your faces. Though would I be right in assuming that it wasn’t from the Bureau’s lips?”

Shaun recovered first, his shock replaced with a sudden thirst for answers. “What do you know about the Bureau of Time?”

“What
don’t
I know?” the First remarked, walking across to the long wall. He ran his hands over the metal boxes, flickering into his older form. The grandfatherly man pulled a gold key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the box and removed the drawer. He hobbled back to the bench and placed it down with arthritis-ridden hands.

“There is a great deal that the Bureau has not told you,” the old man croaked, peering at the Timewalkers from beneath bushy white eyebrows. “We do not have the liberty of time to discuss everything.” He laughed at that, low and deep. “Time. They say the likes of us can
control
it, but we are not the masters of time. We are servants—”

The old man shifted back into his younger self, and finished the sentence: “—and we obey its whims.”

“You said we were in a parallel universe,” Cassie said, finding her voice again. “What do you mean?”

The First Timewalker tapped the metal bench, his gaze piercing her. “I meant exactly that. There are more universes than your own, Cassandra. They are the result of branching – of reckless time travel from ill-informed scientists attempting to absolve their guilt. This world, the one of ash and snow, is the
original,
brought low by war. Your world is a copy, trapped
years
behind ours.”

“So we’re in the future,” Shaun breathed. He shared a look with Cassie, a look that asked:
What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

“In a manner of speaking.” The First Timewalker shrugged. “However, it is unimportant for the moment.”

“
Unimportant?
” Shaun growled, taking a menacing step forward. “I think it’s pretty damn important! If this is the future – that means—”

“This is where the Adjusters come from, yes,” the First snapped, irritated. He was an old man again, glowering at the teenagers. “And I say again,
we are running out of time
. My powers are weakening, and I cannot keep you here in this world for much longer. You need to know the truth. I thought you were investigating White Tower facilities because you were like
them,
but now I see that you’ve been led astray, kept in the dark for too long.”

“Kept in the dark about what?” Cassie asked, her teeth chattering.

The First opened the safety deposit box, and Cassie and Shaun leaned forward, expectant. She wasn’t sure what she had thought would be in the box, but she was disappointed when she saw a single folder.

The folder had a seal upon it – a white rook on a silver arrowhead, ringed with a silver seal. In thick, embossed letters, were the words:
WHITE TOWER
; beneath the seal, there were two words that sent ghostly fingers running along Cassie’s spine:

Timewalker Program.

“You know what this is,” the First said. He was middle-aged now, neither young nor old, but halfway in-between – his hair receding but not yet gray. He held the folder up to the light, the seal shimmering brightly. “This is where it all began. The Bureau knows precisely what this is, and they’ve been hiding it from you.”

Cassie swallowed past a thick lump in her throat. Shaun’s eyes stared greedily at the folder, and she knew what he was thinking.
He wants to know. We have to know. Right?

“There is pain in truth,” the First warned them, holding the folder just out of reach. “And freedom too. Release from our chains – chains of ignorance, of fear, of control. This is the last remaining evidence of the most secret government program of all time, a program that
both
of our worlds experienced.”