The Time Travel Chronicles (5 page)

“What’s wrong with her?” Abi finally whispered in my ear after many long minutes of silence.

“She blinked back beyond the reality barrier,” I said, watching the woman with a child’s mind carefully arranging her shells on the table.

“But why is she like this?”

“Nobody really knows.” I shrugged. “You can’t tamper with reality once it’s solid. This—” I gestured to Matilda, lost in her world of Conchology, “—seems to be the universe’s failsafe to prevent paradoxes. Going back thirty-two seconds doesn’t introduce a significant enough change to the time-space continuum because everything is still in flux. But if you go beyond that, the timeline splits—” I gestured with two fingers in opposite directions, “—creating tributaries of time, alternative reality loops that you cycle through indefinitely.”

“That still doesn’t explain what happened to her,” Abigail said.

“There’s something like a temporal black hole beyond the barrier. An inertia that sucks you in. All of you.” I gestured to Matilda. “What’s left behind is just a blank slate.”

“So somewhere out there, Matilda’s mind is still alive and conscious?”

“Possibly, but if so, she’s locked in.” I eyed Matilda sadly, remembering the person she’d once been: my own mentor.

Abigail worried at the hem of her shirt, a question etched itself in the wrinkles of her forehead. “What about the Chosen’s Gift?”

I tried hard not to sigh audibly. The billion dollar publicity stunt Crask had used to create a religion around time travel had more or less been the thorn in my side since joining Central.

“That’s quasi-religious nonsense Lionel Crask uses to prey on vulnerable Chronos,” I said calmly. “Reality does not allow paradoxes. Wherever Matilda is, it’s not because God wanted to give her a second chance. She’s stuck in a loop. A prisoner of time and her own mind.” I reached out and stroked Mati’s head; she barely registered my touch. “This is why you don’t go beyond the reality barrier.”

“Then why’d she do it?” Abigail asked.

I inhaled slowly through my nostrils. “That’s a conversation for another day.”

Chapter Nine

NOW

It took six minutes, twelve blinks, and one bullet to Maddix’s thigh to descend the fourteen floors and find Abigail’s holding cell. My first impression was that it didn’t look much like a holding cell at all.

Her living quarters—though located inside a flying hunk of metal where space was a priceless commodity—were lavishly appointed with glossy wood floors, scarlet curtains cut from a material that looked an awful lot like velour, and an enormous bay window angled out and down to offer a truly spectacular view of the wind-turbine farm above Hong Kong.

Maddix emerged from the kitchen, his rifle pointed at the floor, eating a genetically modified strawberry the size and shape of a banana. “Are we sure she’s Crask’s prisoner?”

“What?” I said with enough annoyance to cover for the lack of confidence I suddenly felt. “Now you think she chose to come here, too?”

Maddix’s eyes pinballed between Zoe and me. “Well, she does have a Jacuzzi,” he said, jerking a thumb at the bedroom.

“So?”

“All I’m saying is they don’t usually give prisoners stuff like that. In my experience, there should be more iron bars, concrete walls, and something should most definitely smell like urine.”

I clenched my jaw and turned without another word. I marched into a room which could have passed for a guest bedroom had it not been for the enormous vertical glass chamber filled with a phosphorescent blue, tachyon-enriched fluid sitting where a bed should have been. I put a hand to the glass wall moist with droplets of condensation and peered at the body floating inside.

Abigail.

“Get her out of there and let’s see what the hell is going on,” I said, but Zoe was already seated at the control panel, her hands blurring over a flickering display with more dials and levers than a spaceship. “I want answers.”

Chapter Ten

THEN

Maddix blitzed into the conference room, swooped the mug of what he thought was hot coffee from my hand, and stole a seat on the opposite side of Zoe.

“Good of you to join us, Maddix,” I called out from the head of the table.

“Sorry.” Maddix held his cup in the air and gave a wink. “Had to grab some cof—” His smirk dropped to the floor with satisfying quickness as he eyed the empty mug. “Damn. You blinked, huh?”

I toasted him with the steaming cup of coffee I’d kept hidden in my other hand.

“Cheater,” he grumbled.

“All right, listen up,” I said, gesturing to the screen on my right projecting satellite imagery of Haiti’s jungle-infested coastline. “Crask set up camp here about six weeks ago.” The view zoomed into the densely packed foliage, revealing a squat concrete bunker beneath. “Since then we’ve been detecting huge fluctuations in the tachyon output for this entire region. We’re going in to figure out why.”

“I really hate the jungle,” Maddix said. “Mosquitoes and hea—”

“Colby,” I interrupted, locking eyes with the fly-boy stuffing his face with pastries at the snack table in the back corner. “Go get our chariot ready. Pack light, standard recon package.” He snapped a salute with donut in hand before ducking out of the room.

I dragged my gaze over the room’s remaining occupants: Maddix was kicked back dangerously far in his chair, boots on the Formica table; Zoe’s gaze was locked on the data-pad in her hand; and Taylor and Abigail were sitting close enough for their shoulders to touch.

Taylor was already suffering from a handful of premature wrinkles and a spattering of silver hairs, but Abigail didn’t seem to mind. She’d married the boy-turned-man-overnight and never looked back, even as Taylor’s blitzing pulled his body ever faster into old age. They had one of those rare relationships that made everybody else in the room simultaneously jealous and nauseous.

That they’d worked the system to get assigned to the same team indicated just how desperate Central was for good Chronos. Fortunately, their relationship had never affected their performance in the field, and I’d never had a reason to get out the hose.

“This is just a sneak-and-peek to confirm what we think we already know about this facility.” I cued up the schematics Administration had dredged up that morning. “Maddix and I will lead the sweep. Twenty second blinks, in and out.”

I highlighted an area on the map and said, “Taylor and Abigail, you’re running a secondary sweep around the perimeter.” Abigail patted Taylor’s hand, but her expression remained frozen and professional.

“Zoe, you’ll stay on the horse with Colby. We’ll call you if things go sideways, but—” I gave Maddix a pointed look, “—nobody’s getting shot on this one. Understand?”

“Will the bad guys be playing by those same rules?” Maddix asked.

“Let’s try not to find out,” I said.

Chapter Eleven

NOW

Abigail spewed up a mouthful of blue fluid onto the dark wooden floor. It smelled vaguely of vinegar.

I supported her head, stroking slimy black curls of hair from her face. “It’s all right, just breathe.”

Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing pupils that pulsed with unnatural brilliance. Two phosphorescent orbs emitting an impossible blue. Icy dread slithered through my veins, worming its way into my heart.

“Oh my god,” Zoe said, putting to words the shock I myself felt.

“She’s full up on so many tachyons that her eyes are literally glowing blue,” Maddix said, mastering his own shock by dumbly vocalizing the obvious. “Shouldn’t her body have rejected them by now?”

“Kae, this isn’t right,” Zoe confirmed. “We should go.”

“Grab her legs,” I said.

“Actually,” Maddix said, lifting an eyebrow, “I don’t think we should.”

“You’re not here to think.” I shot back. “Grab her legs. Now!”

Zoe put a hand on my shoulder and opened her mouth to say something, but Abigail beat her to it. “Kae? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Abi,” I said, stroking her forehead. “It’s me. Don’t worry, we’re gonna get you out of here.”

Abi’s smooth skin furrowed in concentration as she shook her head. Then all at once, clarity resolved in those unholy blue eyes and she said, “No. You’re not.”

Her fist moved in a blur, fast as any Blitzer. An eruption of pain and flickering fireflies burst in my skull.

On my back, I stared up at the ceiling twirling round and around, wondering how I’d gotten there. Above me, flashes of movement flickered in and out of my vision. Footsteps squeaked on the floor made slippery from Abigail’s blue vomit.

Zoe stood beside me, her lips pulled into a thin grimace of concentration, her eyes white like snow. “She won’t let me pause.”

I didn’t stop to consider how that was even possible; with the wall for support, I struggled to my feet. There was a resounding crack like bone snapping, followed shortly thereafter by a black shape flying out through the open doorway and into the living room, stopping only when its flight path intersected a chestnut liquor cabinet. Maddix appeared in the broken debris.

I stumbled out of the room and dropped to a knee beside him. “Are you okay?”

He grunted and coughed up a small puddle of blood onto a throw rug. “I hope that leaves a stain,” he said, grinning through carmine-stained teeth.

“Don’t bother blinking back, Kae,” Abi called out from behind me.

I turned quickly and my head thanked me for the effort by swimming frantically. Abi stood in the doorway to the tachyon bath chamber with her arm wrapped around Zoe’s throat. Zoe clawed at the young girl’s forearm, teeth bared from exertion; Abi hardly seemed to notice.

“Abi, what are you doing?” I asked, moving toward her slowly, hands out to my side to show her I wasn’t a threat. Which I probably wasn’t considering how quickly she’d neutralized both Maddix and Zoe. “We came to rescue you.”

Abigail rolled her eyes with exasperation. An entirely normal gesture for her, minus the fact she was threatening to pop Zoe’s head like a pimple. “You’re way too late for that.”

“Help me understand what’s going on here, Abigail.”

“How do you do it, Kae? How can you go on after everything you’ve seen?” Abi’s ice blue eyes thrummed. “You said it would get easier. You said “time heals all wounds,” but that was a lie. You never told me the truth.”

Chapter Twelve

THEN

The electrocardiograph beside Abigail’s bed emitted a slow, rhythmic beep in time with her pulse. I lost myself in that electric tone, letting it absorb me so I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the thoughts careening around my skull.

Sometimes nothing goes according to plan. Not
your
plan, at least.

The ICU’s off-white walls had the granulated textures of an egg shell. So bland, so sterile.

Abigail didn’t care. She’d just lain there for hours on end, rolled up in the fetal position, twirling the five multi-colored bands adorning her wrist—one for each year she and Taylor had spent at Central together. Slowly she was coming to terms with the fact that there would be no more new bands.

There’s a long bureaucratic list of paperwork, briefings, hearings, and debriefings following the death of an operative in the field. All to simply figure out what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and more importantly, in Administration’s eyes, who’s to blame.

Abigail wasn’t ready, it had been less than forty-eight hours since Haiti. Not even two days since she’d lost Taylor, but Administration wanted answers. They needed to file their reports, to distill a life lost into a couple hundred words of black ink and paper.

“Abigail,” I said softly, placing my hand on her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, though that might have been preferred to how numbly she just lay there. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to.” Her voice lacked any fluctuation, an eerie monotone drone.

I swallowed hard. If I couldn’t get her talking, Admin would send somebody else. I had to push. “When Maddix got you, you were unconscious, but we couldn’t find any injuries, no trauma. The doctors here can’t find anything wrong either,” I said. “Tell me what happened to you out there.”

She answered me with silence and a slightly elevated heart rate mimicked by the beeping EKG.

Eventually she said, “You never told me why you joined Central.”

It’d been a long time since I’d thought about that. The motivation that drove me to Central had eventually proved itself to be a combination of youthful naivety, wishful thinking, and a misplaced desire for parental approval.

I’d buried those reasons beneath years of routine and tried not to look back.

“I wanted to save lives,” I said.