The Bureau of Time (26 page)

I’m not going back,
he thought, half-expecting one of the Bureau’s black SUVs.
Not without a fight, and even then…I’d rather die than live with their lies.

But there were no helicopters or SUVs coming to drag him back to Brightwood Ranch. Instead, a red pickup truck came into view, and after only a moment’s hesitation in the sweltering heat, he stuck his thumb out.

The truck slowed to the side of the road. A man in his mid-sixties peered out of the window at Shaun. He was completely bald, with a thick brown beard, wearing overalls and a dirty patchwork shirt.

“You need a lift, son?” the old man asked, his accent thick and Southern.

“Yeah, thanks,” Shaun said, climbing into the cabin. The truck started up again, heading further west, chasing the midday sun.

“Name’s Cliff,” the old man said, glancing deliberately at Shaun’s fatigues. “You in the army, kid?”

“You might say that,” Shaun said, holstering his gun. He wasn’t in the mood for idle chatter; the radio was turned down low and tuned to some terrible country music station, offering little distraction.

“My father served in Vietnam,” Cliff continued, intent on carrying on a conversation, “and I did a tour during the Gulf War myself. Took a bullet during a nasty scrap, damn near lost my leg.”

Shaun pressed his head against the window, trying to ignore Cliff’s ramblings.

“We’re a military family, yes sir. My own boy’s over in Ukraine, keeping the Russians back, and I’m damned proud of him. If we don’t stop them—”

Cliff slammed on the brake three seconds too late. In the shimmer of the mirage, Shaun had missed the flicker of light as two Adjusters appeared in the middle of the road. The truck’s tires locked up and the vehicle careered off the road and into another cornfield.

The truck came to a stop, and Shaun leaped out of the cabin.

“Stay there!” he shouted at the driver, pulling his handgun out. Tall stalks surrounded him, blocking his sight, but his Affinity could sense the Adjusters coming toward him, threading their way through the field.

Shaun’s heart was in his throat. He pushed through the field, catching glimpses of black jumpsuits and mannequin-like faces. His Affinity hummed, the Adjusters’ signatures burning brightly inside the static of his mind, like radio beacons on a satellite map.

He whirled around just in time to see an Adjuster spring toward him. He fired, but the shot went wide, and then he was on the ground, fighting and punching the monster. The assassin plunged its knife downward, and he twisted away, losing his gun. The blade missed his heart and stabbed into his right shoulder. He let out a howl of pain, but the Adjuster was weaponless now; he punched the monster in the face, breaking its teeth and jaw. It fell over backward, hissing and spitting black blood at him.

Shaun gasped and pulled the knife from his shoulder, gripping the hourglass-shaped handle in his left hand. He staggered forward and made a clumsy swipe, his right arm hanging dead. The Adjuster snarled, ducking easily under his attack, punching him in the throat. Shaun staggered, his breath rushing out of his lungs.

“Get back from that boy!” Cliff roared, shoving his way through the field, a Remington shotgun in his hands.

“No!” Shaun wheezed. “Don’t! Get out of here!”

Cliff fired, blasting the Adjuster in the chest; but the war veteran didn’t see the second Adjuster as it came up from behind and slit his throat. The old man collapsed, blood pouring down his chest. Shaun turned, frantically searching for his gun, trying to buy enough time to heal his injuries. The Adjuster grabbed him and threw him backward, its mouth open in a victorious roar, knife plunging down—

There was a blur of motion, and the Adjuster was sent tumbling backward. Shaun threw himself over, his hand finding the reassuringly cold metal of his gun.

He turned to see two Adjusters fighting each other.

The monsters howled, slashing and spitting, ribbons of blood slicing through the air. The one that had attacked him, the one with the crimson sash, backed away, both its arms hanging limp; then came another Adjuster in a bright flash of light, and the red-aligned Adjuster was cut down with a single, swift blow.

Shaun Timewalked his injuries, T.E. coursing through his body and restoring the feeling in his right arm. He swapped his gun to his better hand and stood square-on, pointing the Glock at the new arrivals. The Adjusters wiped their blades on their jumpsuits, but neither made an attempt to attack him. They didn’t wear red armbands – instead, they had patches on their shoulders.

Shaun recognized the emblem – a white rook on a silver arrowhead.

White Tower.

“Who are you?” he shouted, his throat sore. His gun wavered, flicking between the new Adjusters. He saw Cliff’s dead body and his stomach churned.
Another casualty. Another person dead because of the Adjusters. But not these ones. What are they?

The leftmost Adjuster opened its mouth and spoke, over-enunciating the words as though speaking was foreign to it. “We are humble servants of Captain Miller, Temporal Adjustment Division.”

“White Tower?” It was all too much to comprehend.

“The same,” the rightmost Adjuster intoned, stepping closer to Shaun. He backed away, keeping his gun steady. “We have been tasked with finding you, protecting you. You are in grave danger, Shaun Briars.”

Of course they know who I am,
he thought.
Everybody’s in the loop, except for me.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Shaun said fiercely. He glanced through a gap in the field at Cliff’s pickup truck. The keys were probably still in the engine.
Twenty, thirty feet maybe. Get in the car, drive, don’t look back.
“Let me go, and I won’t fight.”

“We cannot do that,” said the Left Adjuster. “This is for your own safety, Major Briars.”

“No,” Shaun shook his head, “you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not the ‘Major’ of anything. I’m a Timewalker, nothing more.”

“And you will become a great leader,” the Right Adjuster added, its voice less patient. “That is your fate. Why do you deny your fate?”

“We must go,” said the Left, glancing around the cornfield, despite its lack of eyes. “The enemy approaches.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Shaun repeated, raising his voice. “If I’m a Major, then I
order you to stand down!
”

The Right cackled, the noise horribly wet. It looked at its partner, the hexagonal disc on its temple pulsing brightly. It turned back to face Shaun. “You would deny the protection of your own government? You would insult the generosity of Captain Hayden Miller?”

Shaun’s blood turned to ice. His gun arm faltered. “Did you just say…Hayden Miller?”

It can’t be possible. This isn’t right. He’s dead, I saw him die. Hayden Miller was murdered by Adjusters.

“
Captain
Hayden Miller,” the rightmost Adjuster repeated. “We are not the enemy. You have been fighting our kin, but they are rebels, renegades blinded by their leader. Come with us. Captain Miller wants to talk with you.”

Shaun hesitated. His mind was at odds again – his rational side screamed for him to get into the pickup truck and drive away; the emotional side pleaded for him to find out if it was true, if Hayden Miller was alive. The twelve-year-old boy who had haunted his dreams for months on end – was it possible?

He lowered his gun.

Satisfied, the Adjusters approached, each taking one of his arms.

“Do not fight the sensation,” one of the creatures said. “We will be teleporting, so you may be disorientated.”

Shaun gave a hollow, empty laugh. “It’s not my first time today.”

Then the universe dissolved into nothingness, and he was adrift in the great void of time and space. He gritted his teeth through the nausea-inducing feeling, closing his eyes against the kaleidoscopic insanity of colors that flared around him. His Affinity sent electric sparks down his spine, responding to the raw stream of Temporal Energy that knitted the universe together.

With a sudden jolt, the world reformed around him and his knees buckled.

He stood in the middle of an open room with concrete walls and floor. Stamped into the ground was a massive symbol twenty feet wide – a white rook with the words:
WHITE TOWER
.

“We have arrived,” the Left Adjuster announced. “Welcome to Forward Operating Base Chester.”

The Adjusters released Shaun’s arms and led him across the empty room, toward a strange metal door with no markings. As they approached, he saw red lights around the door flash green, and the door split apart in the middle, one half retracting into the ceiling, the other half disappearing into the floor.

Shaun ran a hand over the smooth walls. They were made of a dark-gray metal, faintly warm to touch. He felt Temporal Energy humming through the building, as though the whole structure was acting as a relay point, gathering and channeling the exotic matter.

They turned a corner and the corridor opened to reveal a cavernous room with high ceilings and a floor that sloped down to a massive glass window; Shaun couldn’t see what lay below, but he instinctively knew he was elevated, the sky open and blue before him.

Standing in the middle of the room, locked in the middle of an argument, were two human men – one in his mid-forties with graying hair, and the other roughly thirty, his long hair tied back in a ponytail. Adjusters stood in defensive positions on the left and right sides of the room, each guarding a door, their featureless faces looking directly ahead.

“We cannot afford to engage the enemy on foreign soil!” the older man shouted, his face turning beetroot red. He wore a pressed white dress uniform, with epaulets on his shoulders.

“This is
war,
Gerson!” the man with the ponytail yelled, towering over the other. He wore simple cargo pants and a muscle shirt that emphasized his toned physique. On his left temple was one of the same hexagonal-shaped devices that the Adjusters wore. “We cannot allow the Bureau of Time to be destroyed, or else Zero will seize this world for himself!”

“The Evacuation is
not
White Tower’s primary objective!” Gerson argued, standing his ground. “The Resistance have already taken Chicago, and they hijacked our weapons shipment to San Francisco! While you attempt your
noble endeavor
here,
our
world is suffering! Your mission here is
not
to eradicate Zero, but to safely contain his forces and finish constructing the camp.”

“And I’ll remind
you,
” the other snapped, leaning forward, “that my orders come directly from Major Briars himself. If I believe – which I do – that Zero poses a threat to the evacuation of our people, then I’m well within my rights to request additional soldiers to supplement my forces! A request you have denied
twice
already!”

The device on his temple pulsed with a purple light, and he snapped his head around, as though suddenly realizing he had company.

“We will discuss this later,” he said abruptly.

Gerson gave a short bow that bordered on condescension. “By your leave, Captain Miller.”

It can’t be,
Shaun thought, standing dumbly in the entrance.
This isn’t possible. It can’t be real.

The older man – Gerson – turned and stalked out of the room. Hayden Miller strolled across the room, looking less like a military captain and more like a reckless mercenary.

“It’s really you,” Shaun breathed. Images flashed before his eyes.
The hallway. The bodies. The blood. The boy hanging from the ceiling fan.
The same boy that stood before him, now a grown man. “You’re not – you’re
alive.
”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Miller asked, with a broad smile. Then his smile dropped and his expression turned somber. “Oh. I didn’t even think.”

“I saw you die,” Shaun murmured. “You were twelve years old. You died, I saw it.”

“You saw the
me
of this universe,” Miller said, putting a firm hand on Shaun’s shoulder, a ghost reaching from beyond the grave. “I’m not from here, Shaun. I’m from the other world – something I think you already know too much about. We know you crossed over; you talked to the Warden, didn’t you?”

Shaun’s shock started to fade, and he swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “He said that White Tower made Timewalkers, that they
created
us.” He looked around the base, at the White Tower seal, and his blood boiled. “You created us for war!”

Miller frowned, his forehead crinkling. “You’re angry, I get that.”

“Damn right I’m angry!” Shaun shouted, not caring who heard him. It was all boiling over, everything he had tried to contain and bury was coming to the surface. “I’m angry that some sick government program made me into – into
this!
I’m angry that the Bureau lied to me, and that nobody around here can give me a straight answer!”

He took a deep breath, and lowered his eyes. “And I lost a…a good friend of mine. Someone I loved, I left her behind. I should have gone back, I should have done something different, but I didn’t.”

Miller – the ghost made real again – nodded at the two Adjusters standing behind Shaun. The creatures offered a short bow, and retreated into the corridors.

“I can’t imagine this is easy,” Miller said, choosing his words carefully. “I can tell you everything you want to know. But you have to be willing to accept the truth – and to forgive. White Tower made Timewalkers, and there’s no denying that, no changing what you are. But this is a dangerous new world, Shaun, and we can’t let ourselves be turned against eachother. Our enemy is out there, a force far greater and more dangerous than you can imagine.”

“I thought our enemies were Adjusters,” Shaun said, glancing at the faceless soldiers.

Miller gave a low, humorless chuckle, and he shook his head sadly. “No. That’s what
they
want you to believe.”

“And who’s
they?
”

“Just – come with me, come sit down,” Hayden Miller said. They walked down the slope toward the glass window, where there was a small table and two comfortable-looking chairs. Shaun could see over the edge of the building now, and his jaw dropped.