The Time Hopper's Gambit: The Chronomancer Chronicles Read online

  He noticed something up ahead. A pure, golden light, clearer than the other shifting colors and lights around him, like a marker. Without thinking, he moved towards it.

  How far had he come from where he started, he thought, looking back over his shoulder as he touched the thing. Should have counted his steps, Kreg realized with a twist in his stomach.

  “A letter?” he said, squatting down to get a better look. It was an envelope, his own name written on the front. He reached out to pick it up. A shock went through him as his fingers brushed up against the soft paper.

  A blaze of light. A burst of fire from his own fingertips. A laugh, not his own. No, it was hers. It was her laugh – the laugh he got so much joy out of causing. Target practice, and he was showing off. But then – a plan. A plan not to lose her. A plan to find her.

  Kreg’s hands trembled as he opened the envelope. A single scrap of paper inside, his own handwriting on the page.

  If you found this, you have a chance to find her.

  “What?” he said, and as quickly as he had slipped into the stream, he slipped out, the same jerking feeling yanking him back to his home, his shower, the water now running shockingly cold. He stumbled out, fumbling for his phone, the piece of paper still clutched in his other hand. Two days. He had been gone two days. Kreg stared back sourly at the shower.

  “That’s not going to be a fun water bill.”

  Chapter Three

  “Is that thing annoying?” Bendon asked as they unsuited after a mission. She pointed to the small chip that was planted into the side of Steff’s wrist, occasionally blinking.

  “No, not really.” Steff rolled her wrist. “It took some getting used to but I’m fine with it now. I put a band-aid over it at night so the light doesn’t bug me.”

  “I can’t believe they literally planted an anchor in you,” Bendon repeated. She’d been saying this for a year, since Steff returned from the meeting with the dean.

  Steff sighed. She wasn’t a huge fan of it either, but what could she do about it? They had been clear at the meeting; it was for her own safety. After spending some time complimenting her on her unusual abilities, they had then spent quite some time explaining exactly how dangerous it was to be able to leap without an anchor. There were people who had slipped into the stream in their sleep, only to emerge a hundred years later, completely unaware of what had happened. There were people who had gotten lost in the stream and never emerged.

  “At one point,” the dean intoned, “people tried to train without anchors, believing that the power could eventually be harnessed, used for more dramatic jumps than previously thought possible, greater mobility within the stream. But, in the end, all of these individuals were lost. It was deemed too great a risk.”

  And so, the chip, the permanent anchor.

  “Can’t they track you with that or something?” Bendon wrinkled her nose.

  “Bendon, Chrono Corp. can track all of our jumps. That’s, like, half of what they do.” She was tired of talking about it. It was there, annoying or not. And she did like the peace of mind it gave her. Steff hated the idea of making a jump and ending up stuck somewhere she didn’t mean to. The vortex was overwhelming enough on its own.

  “Sorry, sorry. It just weirds me out. I’ll get off your back.” Bendon gave her a grin. “Guess I’m just relieved I wasn’t as good of a jumper after all. Dinner at mine?”

  “Sure.” Steff smiled at her friend. She had a sneaking suspicion Bendon had been trying to flirt lately, but Steff was ignoring it, hoping it would go away with time. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Bendon – she was pretty sure she did, actually – but she didn’t want to complicate things.

  The new mission info came through after dinner. Bendon and Steff looked over the files as they munched on brownies.

  “Another early jumper,” Bendon said, flipping through the pages, “trying to mess around with stuff.”

  “Do you ever feel weird about that? Enforcing rules before the Chrono Corp. was established?” Steff asked. “Like, they don’t even know who we are yet.”

  “They’re still trying to change the past,” Bendon said. “It causes damage whether the Chrono Corp. exists yet or not. And it’s not like they throw them in jail for a first offense. If anything, they just get to see a little glimpse of the future.”

  “It’s weird though, right? Half the researchers at the Corp. are just combing through the timeline, trying to detect the moments that things were already changed. Like, we already live in a world where this guy succeeded in whatever –” she squinted at the page “– whatever he thought would happen by stopping the… Australian Emu War? That’s a weird one.” She laughed. “How do they even tell that something happened? We exist in a world without the emu war. And it’s the wrong world?”

  Bendon shrugged. “You know I never paid attention to any of the anomaly detection stuff. I just like them to aim me in the right direction, let me do my job.”

  “I wonder why it takes them longer to find some than others. That was something about like – stacking changes, right? The more things that were changed in the past, the more it shields or blocks out evidence of changes made after it? Because it could simply be a result of the first change, or its own independent thing?”

  Bendon groaned, thrusting a brownie towards Steff. “More eating, less talking. This time stuff always bends my brain. I like getting to jump, and I like knowing we’re helping to keep time safe. What more do you need than that?”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry.” Steff smiled, accepting the treat. “I just think its worth knowing how it all works. That’s why they had us take those classes, even training as agents, right?”

  “You were always a nerd. Anyway, I think I’m going to turn in. This guy sounds properly bonkers. I think we’ll need our rest for tomorrow.”

  Steff headed home. She liked the walk down the few blocks that separated their apartments. Bendon had made her promise, when they left the dormitories of the Academy, that they’d live close to each other, and it had been worth it. Steff was never really as close to anyone else at the Academy, besides Rickon, who had ended up transferring to the analysis and research section last month. Maybe she could ask him about this stuff, about how they detected them, figured out which cases were worth following.

  It was the Chrono Corp.’s whole mission – a unified, unaltered timeline. The second that humanity had gained the power to manipulate time, they had started to change it, and the first couple of years after the powers had emerged had become a dizzying rush of constantly altering pasts. For every person who wanted to kill some past dictator, there was someone else who wanted to bring them back, or someone who wanted to rule ancient civilizations as a technological god. It was a disaster. It became clear pretty quickly that if there was going to be any sort of stability moving forward – or any humans left, for that matter – there had to be rules in place. And while the Chronomancer’s Code technically stretched for pages and pages and pages now, what it all really came down to was straightforward: One Must Not Change Time. No souvenirs, no altering the past to change the present, no changing the future to suit the past, nothing. They were allowed tourism, of course, where you could travel with shields that disrupted past perception of you so you didn’t freak out any of the locals, but outside of that, humanity’s new power was essentially used to maintain the austerity of the timeline.

  People could never help themselves, after all. There were always new cases, and Steff figured there always would be. Humanity had been given god-like powers, through whatever forces that had made it a reality, and it was the Chrono Corp.’s duty to keep everyone in line.

  Steff considered taking a brief tourist trip, before bed. She had been really enjoying the medieval period lately, had been watching with some fascinating the building of the bridges in Prague. The sheer engineering prowess that had been needed, all without the tools available to them now…

  But Bendon was right. The case files on the Emu War
preventer had looked a little out there. She had a feeling that, even after his warning, they would be picking him up here again in a few cycles.

  Steff got ready for bed, pulling out a new pack of band-aids and putting one over her anchor. The dean had suggested that they were seriously considering making implanted anchors mandatory for all the chronomancers on the force, something she had purposefully neglected to tell Bendon. The last thing she needed was her friend ditching the force out of some fear of getting tracked.

  The dream started almost as soon as she fell asleep. It was the same as last time. The mountain, the cabin, a group of people she could never make out. They needed to do something, stop something from happening, stop someone from carrying out their plan. She would forget the names in the morning, any glimpse she caught of a face would be washed away, but as she rubbed the daze of sleep out of her eyes, Steff would be left with that same feeling. Something… someone was coming. For her.

  Chapter Four

  “Why couldn’t they give us an origin point?!” Steff shouted as they tumbled through the vortex and landed, side by side, in the middle of the Australian bush.

  “He’s like you!” Bendon said as they landed. “Didn’t you see? Anchor-less traveler. Even the researchers have a hard time tracking trips made without those old-fashioned anchors they used back in the early days.“

  “I hope he’s not too much of a hassle, then.” Steff sighed, pulling out her stun gun. Chrono Corp. had a strict rule against any sort of lethal weaponry. The death of someone out of place in the timeline was guaranteed to end up changing the course of history in a way they couldn’t predict or plan for. An obvious bad call, given their own creed.

  “I always like it this way.” Bendon grinned as they scanned the horizon. “Way more fun than just picking up some guy who’s about to do something.”

  “You were born for this job.” Steff laughed, then pointed to a spot several hundred meters away. “That, there. Does that look like a herd of emus?”

  “A herd? Isn’t it flock?”

  “Whatever it is, is that guy riding one?” Steff started running forward, switching on the boost on the side of her suit as she did so. She felt the augmenters kick in, powering her steps forward, giving her that extra push that was often useful when catching up with a runner. Or a guy riding on an emu.

  “We’ve jumped in too late,” Bendon said, catching up. “We need to go back further. Whatever he’s doing, it‘s already started.”

  “I want to know what it is!“ Steff called over her shoulder. “I think the researchers got it wrong!”

  In a few minutes, Steff was jogging alongside the man. He had a wide-brimmed hat on and, bizarrely enough, was riding on the bird, in a saddle he had clearly made specifically for the purpose. He was quite small, too, reminding her of jockeys she saw in the old horse racing videos, before such practices were banned.

  “Sir, I am with the Chrono Corp. We regulate action through time and ensure the timeline remains undisturbed.” She flashed her badge, and he glanced down at it, apparently not bothered by the fact that a person was currently keeping pace with him.

  “Never heard of you,” he said, and snapped the comically small reigns around the emu’s head, spurring it on faster.

  “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to stop what you are doing. What was the date you travelled from? When did you arrive in this time?”

  “Always lived here,” he said smugly, giving her a grin and a nod.

  “I’m sorry sir, are you saying this is your origin time?”

  “Ab-so-lutely.“ He grinned again.

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible sir.”

  Steff could feel herself running low on breath. This guy would just not stop. She lunged out for the emu’s reigns, yanking them back towards her before he could stop her. The man went flying over the bird’s head, landing with a crash on the ground in front of them. The birds that had been running alongside them scattered, squawking in panic.

  “Didn’t have to do that,” he said, rubbing his head and looking up at her as Bendon came up alongside.

  “Sir, I‘m afraid you’re lying to us, which isn’t helpful to anyone,” Steff said. “How could this be your origin time?”

  “Why couldn’t it be?” he snipped back, sticking his tongue out like a child. Bendon put her hand on Steff’s arm a took a step forward.

  “As my colleague has pointed out, this can’t be your origin time for the simple fact that time travel doesn’t exist yet, as far as this generation is concerned,” Bendon said. “And yet, clearly, you are planning to alter the course of an already existing event, with technology –” she looked at the various devices he had strapped to the emus “– that does not exist in this time period.”

  “You’re after the wrong guy. I didn’t do any travelling. Harry did.”

  “Harry?” Steff started the recorder on the side of her visor, turning her head so the tape would capture everything: the equipped emus, the annoyed jockey, and Bendon’s attempts to not laugh at whatever setup the man had created here.

  “Yeah, he can travel. Showed up and offered to help me lead the emus.”

  “Lead the emus? To what?” Bendon asked.

  “To victory!” he crowed, jumping up to his feet. “They’re going to try and destroy them, did you know? I couldn’t let that happen. So, I’m gonna lead them. Take the fight back to those bastards who think they can take these lovelies out. And Harry helped me. Told me what I had to do, sold me the gear. All that.“

  “Where and when did you meet this Harry?” Steff asked. She shot a surprised look to Bendon. It wasn’t unusual for the researchers to miss a few things, or confuse some facts – even the fact that they were studying the event could change it by the time any mancers reached it – but they didn’t usually get the target this wrong. That being said, she couldn’t remember the last time someone from the future had equipped people from the past. They tended to choose to carry plans out themselves. But if it was someone they had already warned before…

  “Why would I tell you that?” the man stalked towards her, grabbing the reigns back. “You’ll just ruin all my fun.”

  Steff shook her head and stepped back, pulling Bendon aside. “Let him have his fun while he can. We’ll just have to stake him out over the last several days and figure out what he’s up to.”

  “I wanted to get in a shootout with a guy on the back of an emu!“ Bendon complained. “But alright.”

  “We have his home address.” Steff looked around. “This is pretty far out from where he lives. Do you think he rode out here?”

  “Absolutely.” Bendon nodded. They could hear him whooping and cheering in the distance as he crested a hill and went out of sight.

  Steff pulled up the map and did some math in her head. “I’m thinking a week back? And we can adjust from there?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Bendon said, activating her anchor. Steff tapped the side of her wrist, following suit, and they jumped into the time stream. They entered the coordinates, and the anchors cast a beam ahead of them, showing them the way. Bendon went on ahead, and Steff started to follow when the first image appeared.

  There was something new – almost like a tear in the side of the stream – and the scene from her dream was there. She could see herself, feeling the déjà vu. Some of the others from the dream were there too, in deep conversation, huddled around something. Some sort of object? Steff saw herself look up, and just like that, it was gone.

  “Steff?” Bendon called back to her. “You coming?”

  “Uh, yeah, sorry!” Steff hurried after her, shaking her head as she stepped out of the stream.

  They stepped into a cramped attic apartment, found the emu man crouched over a pile of tools on the ground, furiously assembling the emu saddle.

  “Oh, dammit,” he said grouchily. “He told me you guys might show up.”

  “I’m afraid he was right. We know about Harry,“ Steff said. Flexing your
knowledge of time always helped assert Chrono Corp.‘s authority. The image she had seen in the time stream was parading for her headspace, but she shoved it aside. She‘d ask Bendon about it later.

  “What do I get? Sent to time prison?“ he asked.

  “A warning,” Steff said. “As does anyone from the period before the Chrono Corp.’s creation. But let it be known that if you ever try to meddle in time affairs again, you will face harsher punishment.”

  “Soon as something cool happens, cops have to come along and ruin it. I suppose you want the guy who gave me all this stuff?”

  “If you could provide more information, yes. I’m afraid the future you we encountered was much less cooperative.”

  His face lit up with a grin. “So you already met me doing it? Did it work? Did the saddle work?”

  “It did.” Bendon nodded. “It was awesome.”

  “Bendon!” Steff snapped, but her friend just shrugged.

  “It was,” Bendon said. “It‘s not like he can do it now.”

  “That’s good to know.” The man grinned at them. “Good to know. His name was Harry. Met him two days ago at the market. Shady looking guy, was hanging around the bar. You can’t miss him. Had a metal arm, of all things.”

  A metal arm. Why did that bother Steff? It set off something, some old memory… but what would it even be a memory of?

  Chapter Five

  Emu man was right. Harry was impossible to miss, leaning in an almost exaggerated pose against the bar’s back wall, a cape pulled back to reveal his arm. He clearly wanted people to ask about it. Wanted to cause trouble.

  Bendon and Steff shifted their suits to resemble tourist clothes, easier to blend in, and after ordering a drink at the bar, pretended to chat about this and that before heading outside. Steff timed it so a group of smokers was just leaving, giving them some alone time with their time interloper.