The Bureau of Time Page 4

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE RECRUIT

  Timewalker Shaun Briars stretched forward and touched his toes with his fingertips, his muscles aching with the effort. He straightened, flexing his back, the hundreds of small scars across his body feeling as though they were only a day old.

  He leaned against the side of the gymnasium’s boxing ring, glancing up at the large clock suspended from the ceiling. Around him, dozens of the Bureau’s agents and operators were training alone or with partners. His gaze lingered on a pair of young female recruits sparring close by, then moved to the senior operators practicing disarming techniques against their knife-wielding partners.

  Shaun looked at the clock again and clucked his tongue.

  The cavernous gymnasium easily outshone any other government agency, not just in its size and range of equipment – including a rock-climbing wall that Shaun was too terrified to attempt – but because the room, like the rest of Brightwood Ranch, was built entirely underground.

  The gym doors opened, and Ryan Boreman came strolling across the foam mat flooring, his hair slick with water.

  “You’re late,” Shaun observed. “And wet – did you go outside?”

  “I was talking with the new recruit,” Ryan answered, stopping in front of a low table. He stripped off his camo pants, revealing his boxer-shorts. “The Doctor gave her a clean bill of health, thanks to you.”

  “It was nothing,” Shaun muttered. It was anything but nothing – he had, somehow, done the impossible. He had used his Regenerative powers to heal another person. He flexed his hands open and closed. There were still flecks of blood dried underneath his nails that no amount of scrubbing could remove. “Where is she now?”

  “In with Anderson. Here, take these.”

  Shaun took the boxing gloves and slipped them onto his hands. He was wearing nothing but his shorts, his scar-riddled back exposed to the cold air-conditioning.

  “I’m surprised she agreed,” Shaun said, slipping under the ropes.

  “She’s stronger than you’d think.” Ryan ran his fingers over an array of weaponry on the bench, eventually settling for a pair of brass knuckles. He slipped the weapon on and clenched his fist. He hesitated, then added, “I’d almost given up hope of finding another Timewalker.”

  Me too, Shaun thought. Aloud he said, “Did they say what type she is?”

  “I thought you could sense it?” Ryan asked, his question muffled by the mouth guard. He ducked under the ropes and entered the ring.

  A small crowd had gathered to watch the main attraction, towels hung around their shoulders. Shaun grimaced, ignoring the onlookers. He was the only Timewalker in the Bureau, and his powers had earned him an unwanted celebrity status. Not the only Timewalker. Not anymore.

  “My Affinity doesn’t work like that,” Shaun explained, raising his boxing gloves. He started a slow circle around Ryan, watching the older boy’s clenched fists. “I can feel her in my mind, but I can’t tell where she is – or what she is.”

  “Well, the lab results came back as a Shifter.”

  “So that explains it,” Shaun murmured. “The déjà vu I felt last night.”

  But she’s untrained, he thought. If she reversed time, she must have been in extreme distress, and her Affinity acted by itself. He shivered, and not from the cool air against his chest. It was better not to dwell on the possible reasons why an untrained Timewalker would need to reverse time.

  Ryan launched forward, his sudden aggression taking Shaun by surprise. The brass knuckles collided with Shaun’s cheek and sent him spinning around, pain blooming across his jaw. He coughed and spat blood onto the canvas, a white tooth falling from his mouth.

  “Christ!” he exploded. “Give me some warning—”

  Ryan struck out again, and this time Shaun countered the blow, smacking Ryan in the ribcage and shoving him backward. In that brief moment of time as Ryan steadied himself, Shaun activated his innate powers.

  Temporal Energy – the universal force that knitted the dimensions of time and space together – rushed toward him. With an uncomfortable heat through his jaw, a new molar pushed through his gum, the bruised muscles regenerating with a pins-and-needles sensation.

  “Adjusters don’t give warnings,” Ryan said, his words barely intelligible through the mouthpiece. “We have to prepare for real combat.”

  “Out in the field, I get a rifle, not boxing gloves!”

  Shaun made the first move this time, closing the distance in a heartbeat, opening with a left-hand haymaker that he shortened at the last moment, bringing his right glove around toward Ryan’s jaw. But the older teen ducked under both blows, slamming his brass knuckles into Shaun’s exposed side.

  He gasped, the air rushing out of his lungs. He whirled around, bringing his hands into a defensive position, but Ryan darted behind, planting another devastating blow on his kidneys.

  Shaun hit the canvas, pain shooting through his sides. He crawled toward the corner, trying to avoid Ryan’s onslaught.

  “Come on!” Ryan shouted. “Get up!”

  He kicked Shaun in the stomach, triggering a chorus of pained oohs from the onlookers.

  He enjoys this way too much, Shaun thought, seizing the ropes and pulling himself upright. His injuries burned, but a fresh rush of adrenaline swept through his body, quickening his pulse and lessening his pain. He sucked in a quick breath and turned around just in time to see Ryan aim for his cheek again.

  This time he was prepared. He dropped to his knees, throwing as much force as he could into his clenched fists, both gloves slamming into Ryan’s stomach. The operator swore loudly and stumbled away, doubled-over. Shaun felt a sudden rush of energy, victory in sight. He swung his legs around, tripping Ryan and sending him crashing to the canvas.

  Shaun scrambled upright and knelt on Ryan’s back, one knee pressed into his spine.

  “Yield!” he shouted, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Ryan struggled against the canvas, trying to worm away. Then he stopped moving and spat his mouthpiece out, mumbling something that Shaun couldn’t hear.

  “What was that?” he asked, pushing down harder.

  “I yield!” Ryan growled. “Get the hell off of me.”

  Shaun relented, backing away as Ryan stood. The crowd drifted away, returning to their individual or group training.

  “That was a low blow,” Ryan snapped, removing his brass knuckles and pulling on his fatigue trousers.

  “You’re using actual weapons,” Shaun pointed out. He ducked out from the boxing ring and retrieved his water bottle, drinking in large gulps. Now that he had a moment to breathe, he Timewalked his injuries, the purple bruises over his kidneys fading back into the patchwork of thin scars.

  Each scar was a reminder. An Adjuster knife here, a training exercise there; they all stayed with him, never healing perfectly. They were supposed to remind him to become better, but more often than not, they were simply ghosts of his own carelessness.

  “You can do that,” Ryan countered, pointing at Shaun’s chest. He reached out and punched Shaun in the arm. “One of these days, you might even be able to beat me without cheating.”

  Shaun laughed, pulling tracksuit pants on. “Is that the day you skip your arthritis pill, old man?”

  In reality, there was only three years separating their age – Shaun was sixteen and Ryan nineteen, though the older boy carried himself with an air better befitting a man of forty. A playful grin flickered across Ryan’s face, replaced a second later with a serious frown.

  “Heads up,” he said, nodding at something over Shaun’s shoulder. The Timewalker shrugged on a jacket, and turned to face the Captain of Clockwork Unit.

  “Captain!” Shaun and Ryan both straightened and saluted.

  “At ease, boys,” Tallon said, his voice rough. He wore black-and-gray fatigues, the twin silver bars of his rank pinned to his shoulders. “Good work last night, Briars,” he said, nodding at Shaun. “The new recruit will be joining the Bureau. Once
she passes her basic training, she’ll be assigned to Clockwork.”

  “Isn’t that a little quick?” Shaun asked, then immediately regretted the question. He added a quick, “Sir?”

  Tallon glowered at Shaun, his eyes dark. “You know how this works, Briars. You were fifteen when you joined the agency, and without a second thought. I was right there when you signed your name.”

  “That was because I didn’t have anything to miss outside the Bureau,” Shaun said, quietly. What would I return to? I wasn’t going back to the state’s care…and living rough on the streets of Manhattan, I wouldn’t have made it through the winter.

  “Yes,” Tallon agreed, after an awkward pause. “That was different, I agree.”

  “Cassie knows why she’s joining the Bureau,” Ryan interjected. “She knows what we do here, why she has to leave her family behind.”

  “Cassie?” Shaun asked, frowning at Ryan. “Since when did you get on a first-name basis?”

  “This isn’t the point,” Tallon growled, cutting off Ryan’s response. “She’ll be assigned to your training division. Shaun, you’ll be helping her come to grips with her Temporal powers.”

  Shaun paled at the suggestion. He wasn’t sure even he understood his own Timewalking powers – how did Tallon expect him to help the new recruit control her Temporal abilities? The Bureau’s Intelligence and Monitoring Directorate had their own scientists who investigated Timewalkers and their powers – wouldn’t they do a better job of helping the new girl?

  “Sir,” he started, hesitant. “I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”

  “Doctor Sharma will be assisting you,” he said, with a lazy wave of his hand. “When you came into the agency, we were underprepared for a Timewalker. We didn’t have anybody to train you – I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  Shaun flinched. Mistake. There was nothing callous in Tallon’s voice, merely his usual cold arrogance. The Captain had already moved on, and Shaun only caught the tail-end of his sentence: “…it was a close call out there.”

  “I agree,” Ryan nodded, ever the Captain’s lapdog. “There were more Adjusters than I’ve ever seen before.”

  “The General’s breathing down my neck,” Tallon added, with a sour twist in his tone. “We’re the only unit with a Timewalker – and soon we’ll have two of them. So I want you both training even harder than usual. We can’t afford to let our guard down.”

  “Yes sir!” The two teenagers snapped out another salute.

  A sharp buzzing emanated from Tallon’s belt, and he glanced down at his pager. Shaun had half-turned away, desperately wanting a shower to wash the sweat from his body, when Tallon tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Director Anderson wants to see us both,” the Captain said, a curious look in his eye. “It’s about the new Timewalker.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BUREAU

  Cassie watched the black ink absorb into the paper, her life now signed over to the Bureau of Time. She stared at her sloppy signature, barely legible as the phrase ‘C.R.Wright’, and heard her tenth-grade English teacher criticize her terrible handwriting.

  “You’ll never get anywhere in life with penmanship like that,” the bitter old woman squawked. Thoughts of high school flashed through her mind – a place she would never return to now. She wouldn’t have much to miss of course. She had drifted through countless schools, always the newcomer, the outsider that nobody wanted to be around, the girl who thought faceless men were trying to kill her.

  Guess I proved them wrong, Cassie thought, without any trace of humor. Her hands were shaking so badly that the pen slipped from her grasp and sent a squiggle of ink across the page.

  “Sorry,” she said to the agent standing over her. The woman offered her a friendly smile and took both pen and contract away. Cassie hadn’t read the contract – the paperwork was edged with black-and-red stripes, the word CONFIDENTIAL stamped multiple times across the header. Phrases like preservation of national security, clandestine operations, and protection of state secrets were scattered throughout the black print; she had glanced over them and then signed on the bottom line.

  “You’ve made the right decision,” the young agent told her. Her name was Natalie Hunt, and she had chestnut-colored hair cut in a short bob, her cheeks full and rosy. She placed the document back inside a folder emblazoned with the eagle-and-hourglass seal.

  Cassie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She looked down at the table. She was in some kind of classroom, with dozens of metal tables lined up in neat rows; a projector screen hung from the far wall. She wiped a hand across her face, trying to force down the emotions threatening to overwhelm her again. She wore simple black jeans and a gray T-shirt, both given to her by Natalie. Her hair – wet from the rain – hung limply over her shoulders, and her eyes stung from a mixture of crying and the dry underground air-conditioning.

  “We have a video for you to watch,” Natalie said, breaking the silence. She walked past Cassie, toward the front of the room. Natalie wore a black pencil skirt with a white blouse and high heels that gave the already-tall woman far more height than was strictly necessary.

  “All of our recruits go through the same orientation process,” she explained, busying herself over a computer. She adopted the sickly-sweet tone of an adult attempting to explain something to a three-year-old. “But you’re an extra-special type of recruit, so things will move a little faster than usual. Don’t worry though, after a few weeks, this place will really feel like home.”

  Cassie took a deep, shuddering breath. A few weeks. She felt her throat closing over, the walls moving in to suffocate her. Her heart beat faster and her mind whirled with thoughts of escape, of running all the way back to Pennsylvania. Then she thought of her parents, and fresh tears welled up. She wanted to go back to them, but at the same time, she knew she had to be here.

  I have to know why I’m different. I have to know why the Adjusters want to kill me.

  The lights in the classroom dimmed; Natalie walked back and sat at the table beside Cassie.

  “Welcome, new recruit, to the Bureau of Temporal Integrity, Monitoring, and Execution.”

  A cool, female voice boomed around the room.

  “The Bureau of Time was formed in 1990, replacing an earlier scientific research division of the United States Government,” the voice continued. Various images flashed up on the projector screen, including President George Bush Senior signing an important-looking document in the Oval Office. “The Bureau was created to defend America and its citizens against the outside threat that we called ‘Adjusters.’”

  More images: a fuzzy picture of an Adjuster, as though the photo had been taken on an old Polaroid camera. Cassie’s blood ran cold. The faceless monster, its waxy, mannequin-like face contorted into a snarl. Her gut churned with a chaotic swirl of emotions – anxiety, terror, anger. The image disappeared, but the fear remained as a tight knot in her chest, shortening her breaths.

  “Through preliminary testing and observation, the Bureau determined that the new threats were highly advanced humanoid soldiers from a future timeline.”

  Future timeline. The words sank into Cassie’s mind like a lead weight through thick jelly. The future. You can reverse time. Timewalker. It was all starting to fall into place, and the gravity of the revelation threatened to swallow her whole, dragging her down into its insanity.

  “The Adjusters appeared unwilling or unable to communicate,” the presentation continued, “however it became clear they were targeting high-value domestic personnel within our agency, and in particular, were attempting to assassinate – often in a very bloody and obvious manner – a portion of the American population born with a mutated gene.”

  Pictures of young children cycled on the screen – the footage was distinctly old, perhaps from the late ’80s, at least based on the assistants’ hairstyles. She watched a young girl, about four, with her pudgy arms outstretched.

  In front of the toddler, s
and flowed backward through an hourglass.

  “This was called the Cronus Gene,” the voice explained, “and its users were called ‘Timewalkers.’ Timewalkers are capable of manipulating an exotic matter that binds the dimensions of space and time into one continuum; this matter is called Temporal Energy, or T.E. for short. People without the Cronus Gene are unable to feel or access T.E.”

  Cassie flexed her fingers. She knew she had felt ‘T.E.’ before, on the football field. There had been a rush of tangible energy from the Adjusters – the same inexplicable power that had allowed her to reverse time to save Ryan Boreman. And perhaps the same energy that had allowed the other Timewalker, the boy with the white hair, to heal her near-fatal injury.

  “Timewalkers vary in their abilities,” the presentation continued, bringing up a slide with six different categories on it. “All Timewalkers share an extrasensory ability called their ‘Affinity’, which enables them to locate and harness Temporal Energy. In turn, different subtypes of Timewalkers have varying types of control over T.E., such as Shifting, Regeneration, or Bridging.”

  It seemed impossible – and yet, entirely reasonable. She knew what she was capable of. Ryan had died before her eyes, and she had brought him back to life. She was still alive despite being stabbed by an Adjuster. They were not miracles, not marvels of medicine, not explainable by something more mundane. They were the effects of Timewalkers and their abilities.

  “The Bureau of Time is a covert intelligence-gathering and operational agency that is free to act with impunity to defend American civilians from this threat,” the video continued. “Our Intelligence Analysts use state-of-the-art satellite technology to detect changes in T.E., while our Temporal Operators are highly-trained soldiers that risk their lives to destroy Adjusters and protect Timewalkers.”

  Images of soldiers in black combat gear flashed before her; fresh-faced recruits jogging through a forest, practicing in a firing range, and sparring in a boxing ring. At the same time, Cassie felt an uncomfortable headache spread across the base of her neck, and in her mind, she saw – or rather felt – a bright beacon flare to life, growing in intensity.