The Bureau of Time Read online

  When Cassie finally awoke, all she could see was a blinding light.

  She blinked rapidly, her vision returning to her. She was laying on a hospital bed, inclined in a semi-sitting position. The I.V. line was still attached to her left arm, a clear liquid dripping from a bag. Sticky electrodes had been placed on her chest, with small cables leading back to an ECG machine. Her heart rate beeped steadily, the only noise in the small room.

  She moved under the sheet and realized she was wearing nothing but a thin gown – she instinctively crossed her legs together, pulling the sheet closer to her body.

  The ECG beeped quicker. Confused images and half-formed memories flashed before her eyes – the faceless monster, the young man dying in her arms, the knife twisting into her ribcage. She brought a hand to her chest, but there was no knife there, only the ghostly reminder of the attack.

  How am I alive? She glanced around the small room, her eyes passing over the closed door. There was only her bed, an empty chair, and a table with a glass of water. She pulled the gown away from her chest and looked for the wound, but there was nothing there – just a thin, almost invisible, scar. Impossible.

  Cassie tried to push herself upright, but only succeeded in sinking deeper into the uncomfortable bed. The cannula tugged in her arm, the buried needle stabbing her. The ECG machine beeped even louder and on the screen, a computer-generated line spiked angrily as fear flooded her body. Where am I? What happened to those creatures? Where are the soldiers?

  The door opened and a short lady wearing a white doctor’s coat entered the room. She had caramel-colored skin and black hair tied in a tight bun. As the door swung shut, Cassie glimpsed a nurse’s station with young women in green scrubs, and standing just outside the room itself, two men in black combat gear.

  “Who are you?” Cassie croaked, her throat dry.

  “My name is Doctor Sharma.” The newcomer approached the bed. Her face was kind and motherly, heavily lined far beyond her middle-age years. “You can call me Amita,” she added, with a quick smile. “How are you feeling?”

  Cassie swallowed, one hand instinctively touching her chest, where the knife should have been. She eyed the doctor cautiously, dozens of questions tumbling through her mind.

  “Where am I?” She coughed on the final word. Amita passed her the glass of water, and she drank greedily, the cool liquid rushing down her throat.

  “You’re somewhere safe,” Amita said, taking the empty glass. “Those monsters can’t find you here.”

  Monsters. So I didn’t dream it all? “There were all these men – soldiers,” she said, quietly, not trusting her own voice. “And there was one—” she couldn’t bring herself to complete the sentence. I saw a man die, and I brought him back to life.

  Amita ignored the question, preoccupied in snapping on a pair of latex gloves. Cassie flinched when the doctor touched her – her hands were icy cold. She squinted as the doctor shone a bright light into her eyes, dots fluttering across her vision when the flashlight was taken away.

  “You look perfectly healthy to me,” Amita announced.

  “How? I – I remember being attacked, I was bleeding—”

  “And then,” a new voice announced, startling Cassie, “then you were healed by one of our soldiers.”

  An older man, somewhere in his late fifties, had entered the room unannounced. He wore a black suit, perfectly square on his large frame. Despite his age, it was obvious he had once been a strong youth, perhaps a soldier. He carried himself with an air of command, his face perfectly serene as though he was in control of everything and everyone.

  He approached the foot of Cassie’s bed, folding his arms across his chest. He carried a folder in his left hand, and partly hidden by one broad hand, she glimpsed an ornate governmental seal.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, as though she was a little girl again, and her doctor was treating her for the flu.

  “I want to know where I am,” she repeated, her voice still dry. She tried to get up again, but Amita put a hand on her shoulder, gently pushing her down. “Where’s my dad? Does he know I’m alright?”

  “Your family knows you have been taken away for your own protection,” the man said, his voice booming around the tiny room. “This is a safe place, Cassandra. My name is Director Anderson. I’m in charge of a government agency that hunts Adjusters – those monsters you saw.”

  Acidic bile rose in her throat and she fought the urge to be sick. After all those years of doctors telling her she was hallucinating, all the medication she had been forced to flush down the sink while lying to her parents – a small part of her mind had started to believe that she had made it all up.

  She looked down at her own shaking hands, imagined them stained with the stranger’s blood. She saw the soldier lying on the grass, his life bleeding away. But he didn’t die. I didn’t either.

  “What am I?” she asked, her voice quiet. The rough blanket slipped down into her lap.

  “You are a Timewalker,” Director Anderson explained. His voice was perfectly neutral, almost bored. “You have a genetic anomaly in your DNA that allows you to control time. We took a sample of your blood for analysis, to determine your specialty. Cassandra, you can reverse time.”

  She accepted the information as fact – she knew she should have been shocked, but instead, she accepted it like another boring, mundane fact from her high school physics teacher. Objects in motion stay in motion. You can manipulate time. Stars are hydrogen in plasma state. She felt it inside her, something she had never been able to name. The information slotted into her mind like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

  “I saw someone die, and I brought him back to life.” She knew it was true the moment she said it. She whispered the last words, “I reversed time to save him.”

  “Only you can tell us that,” Director Anderson said. “If you did indeed turn back time, only you would know about it.”

  Another image formed in Cassie’s mind, appearing as if out of nowhere – the white-haired boy with slate-gray eyes and bloodstained hands. She felt another answer come to her without prompting.

  “It was the boy who saved me, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t be alive.”

  Anderson glanced at Doctor Sharma, as though acknowledging her for the first time. She removed her latex gloves with a distinctive snap and threw them in a medical waste bin.

  “According to our operators, you suffered life-threatening wounds,” Amita explained, her tone gentle. “Timewalker Briars saved you, using his own powers.”

  Someone else like me? Her heart leaped at the possibility. Then her sudden hope was replaced by soul-crushing fear again, and she crumpled under the weight of the revelations. She lowered her gaze even further, until she was just staring at the blanket. “Why am I here?”

  “You’re here for your own safety,” Anderson rumbled. “And because I have an offer for you. Timewalkers are exceedingly rare, Cassandra. This agency was built to find and protect Timewalkers, but our enemy is numerous and far deadlier than we first expected. We need people like you to help us.”

  She swallowed and her throat burned.

  “How could I possibly help you?” Her voice was timid and broken. “I’m…I’m not good at anything, my grades—”

  “This isn’t a school, Cassandra,” Anderson interrupted her, but kindly. He offered a small, almost fatherly smile. “This is an agency. We train soldiers here. You are a Timewalker, something very special and very powerful. Adjusters hunt people like you because of what you’re capable of.”

  Anderson unfolded his arms, allowing her to see the folder. The seal was beautifully ornate – a golden crest with an eagle in mid-flight, an hourglass caught in its talons. Surrounding the crest was an inscription: BUREAU OF TEMPORAL INTEGRITY, MONITORING, AND EXECUTION.

  “We are the Bureau of Time,” Director Anderson said. “A heavily classified U.S. Intelligence and Operational agency, dedicated to finding and protecting people with your specific geneti
c mutation. If you join us, we can empower you. The Adjusters have hunted you, Cassandra, they have been planning to kill you for months, perhaps years. Join the agency and strike back against the Adjusters, stop them from hurting others like you.”

  Cassie gripped the sheet tightly, her mind spinning, her stomach churning.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Director Anderson frowned, as though offended by her question. “Of course you have a choice. We won’t force you to join. Be warned, though. You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of your choice. Should you decline our offer, I cannot guarantee that the Bureau will exhaust its resources to protect you again. Other, more accepting Timewalkers, might be better worth our time and effort.”

  Anderson cleared his throat. “Joining the agency would also mean leaving your family behind, often for months at a time. They won’t know where you are, or what you do. Even calls are restricted on the base – you would be ending your old life and starting a new one here, at the Bureau.”

  Her pulse quickened, and then suddenly her mind was spinning out of control. This is too much, I can’t do this. The walls were closing in around her, the blanket suffocating her.

  “I need air,” she croaked, pulling the cannula out in a single motion. She winced, a trickle of blood running down her arm. “I need to get out of here.”

  Doctor Sharma darted forward, but Anderson waved her down.

  “Let her go,” he rumbled. Cassie struggled out of the bed, her modesty gown flapping open at the back and sending a hot flush across her cheeks. Amita handed her a light robe, which she gratefully wrapped around her body. One of the soldiers stepped inside the room, and Anderson talked with him briefly.

  She barely saw what was happening – the world had turned into a monochromatic blur. The guard ushered her out of the room and down a long hallway, passing more rooms on either side. Doctors and nurses rushed past them; then Cassie was led down another corridor, green exit signs hanging overhead.

  The drumming of the soldier’s boots against the tiled ground was echoed by the blood pounding in her ears. The noise was like a roaring ocean, threatening to swallow her completely. She couldn’t breathe, trapped beneath the waves, her lungs burning, screaming for air. I can’t do this, I need to get away, I can’t be here.

  The guard opened a door, and she squeezed past him. For a brief moment the soldier held onto her arm, then she twisted out of his grasp and she was running, without direction or purpose. She heard him shout, then someone else yelled, “It’s all right, I’ll bring her back!”

  That only made Cassie run faster. It was raining heavily, and within seconds the thin robe was drenched, the hospital gown plastered against her skin. She ran across a carpark, the asphalt tearing into her bare feet. She squeezed between two SUVs and then into a thick pine forest, slipping down an embankment until she reached a small clearing.

  She collapsed on her knees, letting out a frustrated scream that ended in a choked cough. Her entire body was wracked with uncontrollable sobs, and tears streaked down her cheeks, lost with the rain. She heard somebody shouting behind her – probably the soldier, come to take her back inside, to force her to sign away her life to the agency.

  It’s all too much, she thought, staring down at the ground. Her hands were partly submerged in a layer of grass and mud. The rain was uncomfortably warm, the drops striking the back of her neck like pebbles.

  Boots crunched against a layer of pine needles, and then a man said, “You have to come back inside.”

  Cassie sniffed, refusing to turn around or acknowledge him. “I’m not going. I can’t do this. I can’t make this kind of decision.”

  The footsteps came nearer, and she flinched as the man draped a jacket around her shoulders. The newcomer crouched down in front of her and she suddenly recognized him. His bright eyes and sandy-blonde hair were unmistakable. I saw you die. How is this possible?

  She opened and closed her mouth, unable to find the right words.

  “My name is Ryan,” the soldier said, rocking back on his heels. His face was firm, but somehow friendly. The rain flattened his hair, and she realized he was only a few years older than her.

  “I can’t do it,” she repeated, numbly. She looked down, unable to meet his eyes. “I want to go home.”

  Ryan nodded slowly, apparently oblivious to the rain. “You can do that, Miss Wright. Nobody’s keeping you here against your will.”

  “My name is Cassie,” she said, eerily reminded of their first encounter. “Miss Wright is my mother.” The thought of her mother sent a flurry of emotions through her, stinging her eyes. “They said I was crazy,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the noise of the rain. “My parents took me to all these doctors, psychiatrists…they all said I was hallucinating, that I was making it up.”

  She looked at Ryan, at the physical manifestation of what she could do. You can reverse time. That’s what Director Anderson had told her. The Adjusters hunt people like you, because of what you’re capable of.

  “You’re not crazy,” Ryan told her, reaching out to pull the jacket tighter over her shoulders. She twitched again, and was painfully aware that her robe had become almost see-through with the rain. She crossed her muddy arms over her body. “You’ve seen things Miss—Cassie. You know what’s out there, you know what we’re facing. We’re trying to help people like you. We’re trying to stop the Adjusters from killing Timewalkers.”

  Images of the assassins swarmed to the forefront of her mind. She put a hand to her chest, feeling the knife wound that wasn’t there. The same knife that had killed the sandy-haired soldier – but he was right there in front of her, as if nothing had ever happened.

  “What about my family?” Cassie asked, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I want to call them, I want to tell them I’m – I’m okay.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath.

  He hesitated, rain sheeting off his forehead. His voice was tender when he said, “I have a sister, on the outside. A few years younger than you. I get to see her and my parents every few months. They don’t know what I do, but they do know I’m protecting my country. And for them, that’s enough.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a bulky cell phone. She took it, her hands muddy.

  “You can call them,” he said, quietly. “Don’t let anybody know, though. And you can’t tell them where you are, just that you’re okay, and the government is looking after you.”

  She tried to say ‘thank you’, but it come out as a tiny squeak instead.

  “Come on, out of the rain,” Ryan murmured. He helped her to her feet, adjusting the jacket to cover her better. They made their way back up the embankment and into the carpark, where the soldier she’d run away from was having a heated discussion over the radio.

  “She just needed a minute,” Ryan yelled out, but rather than take her back to the base, he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked a black SUV. “You can make the call in here,” he told her, gesturing to the passenger seat. “Don’t worry about making a mess,” he added, when she pointed out her muddy gown.

  She slipped onto the cloth seats, grateful to be out of the rain. Ryan walked away to talk with the other soldier, leaving her alone. Her hands trembled, and the phone slipped into her lap. She was suddenly terrified of making the call, not sure what she’d say. She didn’t even know what decision she would make – whether she would stay at the Bureau, or go home.

  Go home and do what? Pretend that the Adjusters don’t exist? I can’t go back to that life, to pretending everything is okay when I’m falling apart inside.

  She wiped water from her face, and punched in her father’s number.

  The phone rang four times before her dad answered.

  “Hello?” Thomas Wright’s voice tremored. Her lips parted, but she couldn’t speak. “Hello, is someone there?”

  She was about to talk when she heard another voice. “Thomas? Who’s on the phone? Is it—?”

&n
bsp; Cassie let out a choked sob – it was her mother. The divorce had been bitter and spiteful, and even though she had wished against all hope that her parents would come back together again, she knew there was nothing in the world that could reunite them.

  Except the loss of their daughter.

  “Cassie?” her dad asked, his voice shaking. “Cassie, is that you, darling? These men came, from the government, they said they had to take you away—”

  Whatever her father said next was muffled; then her mother took the phone from him.

  “Cassandra!” Patricia squawked. “Please come home, honey, we’re scared for you; the house was broken into—”

  Cassie ended the call and lowered the phone, tears running down her cheeks. The house was broken into. The Adjuster had been after her, had wanted to kill her – but it had endangered her family. If Dad had been home, it might have killed him too.

  The thought terrified her – but it wasn’t the same fear she was used to feeling. This time, she could do something about it. She could protect her family, by staying away. Even though it made her heart ache, she knew that as long as she was apart from her family, they would be safe.

  Ryan’s shadow fell over the open passenger-side door. “You ready to go back inside?”

  Cassie handed him the phone. She hesitated, conflicted, caught between what she wanted to do, and what she knew she should do. The decision, she realized, had already been made. It had been made the moment Director Anderson walked into the hospital room with that folder in his hand.

  There’s no going back. There never was.

  The answer came as little more than a whisper: “I’ll do it.”

  “Do what?” he asked, ducking his head into the car. His voice was gentle, but guiding. “Cassie?”

  “I’ll do it,” she repeated, closing her eyes. “I’ll join the Bureau.”