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

  “Got a light?” Steff asked, raising her glass in a silent ‘cheers’ to him as they walked out.

  “Right here.” He grinned, flicking a switch on the side of his hand, a small flame erupting from the fingertip.

  “Nice arm.” Bendon nodded, her eyes glancing over it. “What is that, the model 8X-24? Pretty nice augmentation set.”

  “It’s actually the –” His eyes narrowed. “You’re cops.” His human arm rapidly tapped in coordinates in his cybernetic one.

  “I‘d stop that,” Steff said, bringing her gun up and letting off a low pulse. He staggered back as it hit his human arm, a look of panic filling his face when he realized he couldn’t move it.

  “Stun,” she said, waving the pistol. “Now, if you’ll give us your full name, we’d be happy to escort you back to a more appropriate time.”

  “Screw you,” he spat, and took off down the side of the building. Steff brought her gun up again, but he was expecting it now, and dove to the ground, hopping up out of a roll and slipping around the corner.

  “Go!” Bendon yelled, taking off after him. Steff split, coming around the other side of the building in case he tried to double-back.

  “Undercover police!” Bendon yelled from the other side. “This man is a criminal! Please stay back!” There were shouts as the town’s residents scattered.

  “He’s coming your way,” Bendon said into the comm. “Get ready.”

  Steff raised her stun gun, smiling as Harry whipped around a corner, his face going pale at the sight of her. His cybernetic arm came up, and Steff’s eyes widened as a huge blast of electric energy surged out at her, throwing her back hard against the side of the building. There was a crack as her head snapped against the wall, and a rush of darkness surged around her.

  “Steff!” she heard Bendon yell as she rounded the corner, careening into Harry’s back, sending him forward. “Steff, get up!”

  “Just a – just a minute –” Steff mumbled, her voice a slur. As she slumped to the side, the back of her head pounding, her hand found the anchor. Something strange overtook her, and she activated it, losing consciousness.

  Steff woke up in the stream, still lying down. She staggered to her feet, looking around her, trying to piece together what had happened. He had hit her…

  She looked down. Her suit had reverted to its standard look, all blue steel coloring and clean lines, the deception disc on the front spazzing out. Headquarters would love that. These suits were no cheap thing to repair. But why had she shifted? Something had come over her and Steff didn’t like that she couldn’t place the origin of the feeling. Just an urge, such an intense urge to be here…

  The golden light of an anchor shone out ahead of her. Had she entered coordinates? No, the beam wasn’t connected to her anchor. Someone else’s anchor? You weren’t supposed to be able to see other people’s Corp. anchors. It could only cause confused travel. The Corp. usually disabled that. Steff walked towards it, rubbing the back of her head, wincing at how tender it was. She’d need to be checked for a concussion. Losing consciousness like that was no joke.

  What she found in the stream didn’t make her feel any better about the state of her own mind. It was a snowball. A perfect, unmelting snowball, slightly flattened on one side where it had been… dropped? Thrown? She poked it hesitantly –

  “Anything?” Steff asked, chewing on the energy bars Kreg had handed out earlier.

  “Nothing,” Amy sighed, scrolling through the data disc they had pulled from the Archives. “I mean, a lot of stuff, honestly, but I’m not sure how much of this we can actually use. There’s just so much about the apocalypse –”

  “We’re going to figure it out!” Elliot insisted. “It’ll take time, but we’ll get it.”

  “I just don’t know how much time we have,” Amy said, and then looked up, grinning. “I mean –”

  “We have all the time in the world.” Elliot laughed. “All the time we could need.”

  Steff grinned at the joke, though they all knew that wasn’t the case. Every day, Xavian got closer to achieving his goals. She felt a hand on her shoulder, put her own hand over it, and returned the squeeze that Kreg gave her –

  Steff yanked her finger back, sucking on it to warm it. What was that? She thought furiously. For a minute, she had been somewhere else, someone else entirely. Some other version of herself that had never existed. Was it her future? Were parts of her future leaking through? Was that even something that could happen? Steff shuddered. Something wasn’t right. Who were all those people? Who was Xavian? What was the apocalypse?

  Steff typed in the coordinates to return to where she had been, shifting out to find a panicked-looking Bendon and an angrily bound Harry.

  “Oh, Steff, thank god,” Bendon said, relief flooding her face. “Where did you go? Why did you shift?”

  “I just hit it as I fell. A freak accident. Sorry about that.”

  “Scared me half to death.” Bendon shook her head. “Help me get this guy back to headquarters. You were right – not his first rodeo. Serial offender. Got out of his cell like a week ago.”

  “And I’ll just keep getting out,” Harry raged. “Chrono Corp. can never stop me from working towards freedom!”

  “Anti-anchor advocate,” Bendon whispered as she hit him with a stun charge, quieting him. They hauled him back to base, handing him off to the guards who scanned him and took him off. “Do you need to get checked out? You hit your head pretty hard there.”

  “Yeah, I think I could use a med scan.”

  Steff hummed impatiently as she waited for the scan results. The tech had reassured her that she seemed fine, but after what she had seen in the vortex, Steff had insisted on it, even though she didn’t tell the tech what she had seen. All medical visits by staff were recorded and reviewed, and Steff didn’t want to risk getting taken off the job over something that was probably just lack of sleep or a bump to the head. She had been having weird dreams and then gotten disoriented and then hallucinated. It happens, right? That was all. There had been no sign of any snowballs or extraneous anchors when she and Bendon had travelled with Harry. It was just a freak incident.

  “You’re all clear, just like I said,” the tech said, handing over the scan results. “I’ll upload these to the database. There will be pills at the front desk for you to take as needed, just until the soreness recedes, but there’s not real damage done. You’re lucky – if the blow was as hard as you said – but I find mancers tend to be a sturdy group.”

  Steff thanked her, picking up the pills and popping one as she left. The headache was a constant, low, throbbing thing in the back of her skull. She hoped these would help.

  She found Bendon in the mess hall, which meant she was too lazy to cook tonight, not unusual after a busy day. The mess hall was one of the many perks of working for Chrono Corp. If they wanted, they could even have housing provided by the organization, though it tended to feel a little too much like being in the Academy for Steff. The organization liked encouraging the mancers to spend time together, to talk about the missions they had been on, build comradery. Everything that helped build them up into a more cohesive unit.

  “Steff!“ Bendon waved her over. She was surrounded by a few of the other mancers she was friends with – Bendon had always been the more outgoing person – and Steff frantically tried to remember people’s names as she sat down. “I was just telling them how you got blasted in the head today.”

  “Messed up my suit.” Steff nodded, and the others let out little clicks and tuts.

  “They’re going to give you crap for that,” one of them said.

  “Like I could help getting shot.” Steff rolled her eyes. “It’ll just need a little rewiring, I’m sure.”

  “I was asking them if they’d ever shifted unintentionally like that,” Bendon said, and Steff felt an old but familiar flare of annoyance. Bendon considered everything open for conversation. Steff had learned long ago that if she really wanted to keep s
omething secret, she had to keep it to herself. She wanted to divert the conversation from herself, but she also realized this might be an opportunity to figure out if anything she had seen had been strange.

  “Oh, that’s nothing.” Steff shook her head. “I was talking to Rickon earlier and he told me the craziest thing.”

  Bendon perked up, as did the others. Gossip from the research department was always welcome.

  “Apparently some mancer – he wouldn’t tell me who, confidentiality and all that – reported that they saw things in the vortex. Like, random anchor objects without a traveller. Even saw scenes through holes in the vortex.”

  “Holes in the vortex?” The man – Steff thought his name was Rollins, but wasn’t sure – next to Bendon shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right. How could there be holes in the vortex?”

  “Rickon was pulling your leg,” a young-looking girl to Steff’s right piped up. “There’s no way there were anchors in the stream without a mancer to use them. You can’t just… leave things in the time stream. It‘s not like a place or something.”

  Steff shrugged. “That’s what he said,” she said, taking a bite of her food, staring down at her plate. So, they hadn’t heard of anything like that. Or experienced it. This couldn’t be good.

  Chapter Six

  Kreg was in another argument. He kept promising himself he‘d stop doing this, and then here he was again, having it out with some guy who was wearing an ‘I Support The Corp’ t-shirt at the grocery store.

  “Why can’t you see how dangerous this crap is?” he said, pointing at the shirt. “Look, I get it. You like the idea of someone cleaning up the mess we‘ve all made, but there’s no way this is the solution.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s your plan?” the man snapped back. “All you complainers don’t want things to be liveable again!”

  “We can’t have one organization that’s in charge of time itself!” Kreg protested. “I don’t know, maybe multiple groups? Something like that? Different districts, different countries, something?”

  “So they can all argue and use time to sabotage each other?“ The guy turned away. “We’ve got dinosaurs roaming the streets and I’ve been mugged on the same spot ten times by jumpers appearing out of thin air. You just don’t like following rules and you’re making it a stance.”

  “Like you aren’t taking a stance,” Kreg muttered, walking off. He wasn’t in the mood for dinner now. There was so much he still needed to figure out, so much that the people around him were oblivious to. He still wasn’t sure how he’d do it. The Corp. was in its infancy; they were still negotiating with different governments, getting deals. The same groups of scientists who had designed the tools they now used to travel – those of them who had the abilities, that was – were now seeking to centralize and control that power. And Kreg was sure that could only lead to one thing.

  Phoenix Base. A group that was so set on maintaining its power, it was ready to preserve an apocalypse that had cost billions of lives.

  Of course, that was in the timeline that didn’t exist anymore. The timeline that only he, apparently, remembered, though he was still piecing things together. And her… he still needed to figure out how to get back to her. His other self – Kreg Alpha as he had taken to calling him, out of some weird respect– had clearly been more concerned about uniting himself and this woman, Steff, than he had been about Phoenix Base or anything that went along with it. But the memories had returned as he found the anchors, as he spent more and more time in the vortex. Kreg Alpha had left a breadcrumb trail, though Kreg was sure some pieces were missing.

  He paced around his apartment, thinking. The feelings had returned with the memories. The longing for this woman, to be around her again, though if his current understanding of the situation was right, she was hundreds of years ahead of him. And he couldn‘t just pop out and surprise her.

  But Kreg Alpha had shared how he had placed the anchors, how he had figured out how to leave things in the time stream. His old self had apparently been able to control fire, not time itself, but Kreg hadn’t had any luck with that so far. He couldn’t get the feeling for it, and had wasted way too many evenings staring at candles until his head hurt.

  No, the important thing was retrieving the anchors, trying to leave them in places she could encounter. So much of it was about timing, intention. Only one had been affected so far: the snowball, gathered from the same mountain where, in another life, they had apparently holed up from the world, fighting a monster named Xavian who had arisen in that timeline. She had touched it – or at least he hoped it was her, there was no real way for him to tell – leaving a perfectly round fingerprint in the snow. None of the other anchors had been disturbed. He worried he had put them in the wrong spots, that they had gotten whisked away somehow, dissolved in the stream, as some of the ones Kreg Alpha had left for him. That’s what he suspected, anyway. His picture of everything still wasn’t complete. How they had defeated Xavian? What the apocalypse had actually been? Would Steff want to track him down as much as he wanted it? Surely she did. Surely, he wouldn’t go through all this effort for someone who didn’t feel the same way?

  No. He couldn’t start doubting the goals or sanity of Kreg Alpha at this point. He was the only person that seemed to be giving Kreg any sense of direction or purpose in this insane new world that they had been catapulted into, where Kreg was sure that the Chrono Corp. had already become a formidable organization. Of course, they only existed now in their smallest form, but he had heard stories from other travelers about being caught out and warned about trying to do things in the time stream. If they legitimized the Corp. now, if they gave them the power, they’d only get more powerful later. And they’d come back and change his present. He was sure an organization like that would.

  Kreg shook his head, writing out another letter. In case the anchors didn’t trigger the memories the same way he hoped – he was still unsure how Kreg Alpha had ensured that would happen – he had started littering the stream with letters, trying to explain everything he thought had happened, everything that could still happen again if things weren’t brought under control. If only he could get through to her… With every passing day, the certainty that they were supposed to be together was growing in him. He couldn’t leave this up to chance.

  Kreg slipped into the stream, holding his breath against the brief wave of nausea that still plagued him, even now, even after all these trips. It was like stepping off of a ship you had been on for three months and being thrown off by the stillness of the earth beneath your feet. He pulled out his journal, checking for the dates and times he had tried to assemble, moments he knew she was existing up ahead. The most important ones, he had learned, were the ones that overlapped somehow with the periods from the non-existent timeline. Something about that space seemed to enhance the power of the anchors. There was one he hadn’t tried yet: some leap that the janky scanner he had hacked together was marking as important, but he couldn’t figure out why.

  Kreg strode through the timeline, marking his way back with the long, golden thread of his own anchor. He didn’t use one of the mass-produced ones – he was absolutely convinced any trips with those were being tracked, whatever the news releases said about them – and had built his own, like any of the time hoppers like him who didn’t want to be associated with the rising organizations.

  A shimmer and shift up ahead: his destination. Kreg pulled the key from his pocket, turning it over in his hand as he approached. It was a strange thing, a key built into some sort of golden, flying eagle figure, but his other self had left it for him, and its use had soon become obvious.

  Kreg pressed it into the whirling stream, holding his breath as the warping tear started and ran, opening the space up to the void on the other side. He pulled it back quickly – couldn’t make the tear too large. The larger it was, the longer it took the stream to repair, and the more dangerous it became for anyone travelling through. He’d just have to hope that th
is one stayed open long enough. If the anchor he left worked, she’d be able to see what could have been at that point in the void.

  Kreg didn’t like to think about what the void actually was, or what that meant in the grand scheme of things. There was that tiny voice in the back of his head that wanted to try it, that wanted to step out into that big, blank space and see what was really on the other side, but the rest of his brain, the much smarter part, knew that could only end badly.

  He placed the letter on the ground, activating it with a quick tap, then looked around for a moment before travelling back.

  Steff appeared in front of him, staring at him in confusion. “Who are –”

  “Aw, crap,” he said, shifting out.

  Chapter Seven

  “Something’s going on,” Bendon insisted.

  “Nothing’s going on! Really!”

  “You are lying, and you know you’re lying, and I know you’re lying because you’re bad at lying.” Bendon stood with her hands akimbo. “We are not going to the show until you tell me what‘s going on.”

  Steff sat heavily on the couch. She couldn’t lie to Bendon; it was true. Steff had tried to hide it, to not give her friend any reason to ask, to even question it, but after she had run into him in the stream like that… that insane letter… the fight she had seen in that tear…

  “What’s happening?” Bendon crossed her arms. “As you know, my patience is eternal and my stubbornness is boundless.”

  “Your patience is anything but eternal.” Steff gave a weak grin. “And I’d like to tell you, but you really have to promise this time. To keep it secret. I’m not kidding. This isn’t a story for other people.”

  “This is about things in the time stream, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Steff replied, feeling a nervous sort of hopefulness. “You’ve seen things?”