The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1) (4 page)

“Yes, you’re quite the helper, Gaige,” Cyrus replied sarcastically.

“What?” Gaige asked innocently. “I saved her. If not for me, our fair Stassi here would be waiting for her date with the guillotine.”

“Are you really okay?” Cyrus asked, ignoring my partner’s witty commentary to focus on me.

“Yeah, I’m fine. There was—”

The door to the conference room slammed open violently, interrupting my reply. A tall, lean girl stood in the entranceway. Red, blistered hands gripped either side of the doorframe to support her weight. Her beautiful pale skin was about four shades lighter than usual. Cerulean blue eyes blazed angrily from beneath ebony strands of singed hair.

Molly.

“MOLLY!” I SHRIEKED.

Shoving my chair back from the table, I was at my roommate’s side in an instant.

Two medics appeared in the doorway behind Molly, both panting and out of breath.

“Are you okay? Molls, what happened?” I asked, terrified.

I went to hug her, but stopped myself when I noticed the smoldering holes in her Puritan-style dress. The patches of skin peeking through the holes were a mess of red welts. My arms fell to my sides. Staring helplessly at my best friend, I was overwhelmed by a mixture of horror over her condition and relief that she was alive.

Molly swayed unsteadily on her feet. Her knees buckled, but she didn’t fall. One of the medics reached out to steady her. Despite her bedraggled appearance, she warned the man away with a look so hard it was a wonder he didn’t turn to stone.

Even with the appalling circumstances, I couldn’t help but smile. Molly’s spirit was still intact.

She spared me a small, reassuring nod before focusing on our boss. Cyrus suddenly didn’t look quite so fearless under Molly’s penetrating gaze.

“I quit!” Molly practically screeched.

“Molly, why don’t you—”

“I’m serious, Cyrus!” she interrupted him. “I’ve had enough! I’m done with this shant.”

Her words lacked the bite they might normally have carried, but still had the desired effect. The room was stunned silent for several long moments. Every wide-eyed gaze was fixed on Molly, though no one uttered a sound.

“What is that smell?” Gaige asked.

Naturally he’d be the one to shatter the quiet with an asinine question.

“My hair caught on fire!” Molly shrieked. “Thanks for asking, jackass.”

Molly’s legs gave out as the pain suddenly became too much. I caught her in my arms as she pitched forward, eliciting a cry when my hands made contact with her burned skin. Wincing, I helped Molly to an empty chair and eased her gently onto the cushion.

“Help her!” Cyrus commanded the medics. They’d frozen in the doorway as Molly yelled at our boss, dumbfounded by the scene. No one yelled at Cyrus.
Ever.

Spurred into action, both men hurried to kneel down beside my roommate. They had their treatment kits open in record time and were attending to Molly’s injuries before anyone spoke again.

Squatting so we were at eye-level, I gently took Molly’s hand. She was trembling and her skin felt cold to the touch, but she weakly returned my squeeze.

“I’m fine,” she said soothingly, meeting my terrified stare. “I feel like hell, but I’m fine. At least, I eventually will be.”

“She should be at the infirmary,” Cyrus said harshly, directing his statement to the medics as though they were to blame for the breach of protocol.

And yet, everyone in the room knew there was nothing the men could have done to stop Molly from storming in to the meeting once she’d made up her mind to do just that.

“Sorry, sir,” the younger of the two muttered. He didn’t look up, either reluctant to meet Cyrus’s stern gaze or unwilling to look away from the task at hand.

“She insisted,” the other chimed in weakly. “We couldn’t stop her.”

Cyrus turned his gaze back to Molly. “And what was so pressing that it could not wait?”

“Quitting, obviously,” she snapped, not missing a beat. “Seriously, Cyrus, they tried to set me on fire!”

“Tried?” I heard Gaige mutter. When I whipped my head around to shut him up, I was startled to see an intensely concerned expression on his face.

“I had no choice, I had to jump back here from the stake,” Molly continued. “Yes, that’s right: The. Stake. Where they
set me on fire
. Like I was a witch!”

Relief flooded me. As bad as the burns looked, they evidently weren’t to blame for Molly’s deathly pallor. They also weren’t responsible for her dilated pupils or the clammy texture of her skin.

All those side effects Cyrus had just been warning me about? The consequences of time sickness? I was staring them right in the face. As crappy as it was for her to endure, at least the illness was curable with time, rest, and some drugs to ease the way. It was a far better prognosis than some deadly 17
th
century virus.

“You need to lay down,” Cyrus told Molly, his tone gentle but definitive. “I’ll come see you after the meeting and you can yell at me all you want. Just please let the medics do their jobs.”

To everyone’s surprise, Molly nodded weakly in reply. The anger and adrenaline had been bolstering her bravado. With both wearing off, she seemed impossibly frail.

“I’ll come with you,” I said, rising to my feet as the medics gently helped her to stand.

“No, you don’t need to,” she protested, seeming almost embarrassed by my offer. Her response wasn’t unexpected; Molly wasn’t the type to ask for help, or admit when she needed it. “I’m just going lay down, probably sleep for a year. I’ll see you when you get home.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, unsure what I should do.  Though I desperately wanted to be there for her, I also didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by hovering when she wanted to be alone.

Molly knew me well enough to know exactly what debate was going on inside my head.

“I swear,” she said quietly, locking my gaze to show she indeed meant it. “Finish up with the meeting, it will give the medics time to patch me up without an audience.”

“I’ll be home soon, I promise,” I assured Molly, my heart swelling up fiercely. “Send me a message if you want or need me to pick up anything on my way home.  Anything at all.”

“I could probably use some new skin,” Molly answered weakly, a glimmer of humor peeking through. “I’m not sure if the canteen stocks it, but you could ask.”

With that, the medics practically carried her out of the room and I reluctantly returned to my seat. The room remained silent for several long moments; the elders processed the event while us rookie runners nervously weighed Molly’s condition. She was the first in our class to suffer time sickness, and it was a terrifying sight to behold.  The mood of the meeting had become decidedly more somber.

After pausing to collect himself, Cyrus took a deep breath and quietly returning to business. Instantly, my mind was wandering once again.

For several minutes, I focused on making a list of things I could pick up for Molly on the way home. I was contemplating items to distract her when Gaige’s voice broke through my thoughts.

“You want this one?” he asked me softly, placing his hand on my forearm and giving it a squeeze.

“Huh?” I asked distractedly.

“Cyrus just said he has an assignment in Paris, year 1925. You want it, right?”

Did arctic explorers want hot showers?

“We’ll take it!” I exclaimed.

For the umpteenth time since my arrival, the attention of everyone in the room was on me. I’d been so zoned out before Gaige’s question that I didn’t realize Cyrus was still explaining the mission. My excited utterance interrupted him mid-sentence. The disapproval in the eyes of the councilmembers around the table—those who’d been with Cyrus since he’d founded the syndicate system—was unmistakable.

“Though the enthusiasm is appreciated, may I finish?” my boss asked wryly, not nearly as irritated as I’d have expected.

“Sorry,” I muttered, wanting to melt into my chair.

While I wasn’t concerned about the glares from the old guys, I never wanted Cyrus to view me as anything less than professional. Not because I feared that he might send me back to the harsh world outside of Branson—which he absolutely could, with or without a reason—but because I owed him immensely for bringing me to the island from the work camp in the first place. Disrespect was the last thing I wanted to give him in return.

“As I was saying,” Cyrus continued pointedly, “our client has requested an unpublished manuscript—
Blue’s Canyon
by Andre Rosenthal. The historians located what appears to be the only definitive mention of the work in an interview with the author, published in
Le Petit Journal
in early March of 1925. When asked about his recent projects, Rosenthal replied that he had just completed his initial round of revisions on
Blue’s Canyon
. Because the manuscript was never published and no further mention of it was ever made, the historians believe something may have happened to it not long after the interview. Working off of that assumption, they have pinpointed a window of time in which they believe the chances of recovery are highest.

“The author had a reputation for being quite private about his writing after the alleged plagiarizing of a work-in-progress in 1918. This event also made him quite distrustful of outsiders. Luckily, he was part of the expatriate set that lived and worked in Paris during the 1920s. Since many of those individuals are known for being friendly, becoming ingratiated with them will be the best avenue to Rosenthal. Even still, it is going to take both time and finesse to get close enough to him to find out where he is keeping the book. Rumor has it, he became so paranoid after the plagiarism affair that he never kept what he was working on in a single place. Instead, he would divvy up the sections between several hiding spots throughout the city.

“Considering these factors, we are estimating that this mission will take anywhere from three to six weeks. The range is large because Rosenthal’s erratic behavior leaves a lot up to chance. Also, because his most popular work,
Sparrows of Summer
, was not completed until 1928, it will be imperative to not actually steal
Blue’s Canyon
. After the previous pilfering of ideas, an outright theft of this book could discourage him from writing anything else. Instead, a reproduction must be swapped with the original pages.

“Any questions? Any interest?” Cyrus concluded in the same way as he always did.

Unsurprisingly, no one else pounced on the intricate mission. Dealing with a paranoid owner was not appealing, not to mention the complexities of finding multiple locations and performing a switcheroo. But I’d been waiting to visit Paris in that decade since becoming a runner. I might’ve felt bad about roping Gaige in to something so complicated, except for the fact I still smelled like human waste.

“I guess we could take it,” I said meekly, as if I wasn’t prepared to throw down for the run.

Cyrus’s emerald eyes sparkled with amusement. He wasn’t fooled by my nonchalance.

“Six weeks is a long time,” he hedged. “Are you sure you want this one? Are you sure you’re up for it? You just got back.”

Though he hadn’t actually said it, I got the impression Cyrus was really asking if I was ready for the level of subterfuge this assignment required.

Whether or not I was capable, I honestly wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, the time period and city might hold a clue to the identity of my parents. And that was all I needed to know.

“Positive,” I answered, with more confidence than I felt.

“We’ve got this,” Gaige added helpfully, putting his arm around my neck and squeezing me in a crushing side-hug. “I’m even willing to bet that we can get it done in three weeks, tops. Any takers?”

“You’ve got yourself a bet,” Arin, a runner who was a year or two older than us, said. “No way you can steal it, copy it, and replace the duplicate in three weeks. Are you forgetting that there are no photo-replicators in the 1920s?”

She smiled brilliantly at Gaige and gave him a long, lingering look. It seemed as though she’d happily offer herself up as the prize, no matter who won their bet.

My thoughts of Gaige’s love life—
gross
—swooped right out the window when the full extent of her words hit me.
Steal it, copy it, and replace the duplicate
. In a time when the technology to perfectly replicate items didn’t exist. That meant an alchemist would need time to recreate the manuscript by hand.

Clearing my throat, I threw Gaige’s arm off of me and gave Cyrus the most competent expression I could muster.

“I’m not willing to bet on three weeks. But I am positive that we can do it in your time frame,” I said. “When do we leave?”

Cyrus’s gaze held mine for a heartbeat past comfortable.