by KD Mack
The Time Hopper’s Gambit
The Chronomancer Chronicles
K D Mack
Copyright © 2020 by K D Mack
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without written permission from the author. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any means without permission.
This short story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Introduction
Graduating Chrono Corp Academy to become part of the teams that helped preserve the timeline was a dream come true for Steff and her friend Bendon. Now they would work together to pick up Time Hoppers that weren’t following the rules and keep the timeline safe.
Kreg accidentally figures out how to travel through time and navigate the vortex without getting lost in it. But he knows he will have to evade Chrono Corp Officers if he is to keep his freedom.
When Steff starts having dreams of other events that appear so real, she begins to see glimpses of a man and objects in the vortex that seem to be breadcrumbs leading her, but to where?
Find out in The Time Hopper’s Gambit…
Also by K D Mack
The Paradox Journals Series
Book One - Ripples in Time
Book Two - A Time of Madness
Book Three - A Switch in Time
Book Four - A Time of Trouble
Book Five - Just in Time
Book Six - A Rift in Time
Prequel - The Story of Amy, Elliot & Blaine
Box Set - Books One - Six
The Story Continues With…The Paradox Adventures Series
Book One - Time for Hunting Rabbits
Book Two - Artifact Hunting in Paris
Book Three - Fight for the Scepter
Book Four - A Time of Discovery
Book Five - The Race to Apocalypse
Book Six - Time for Deception on Oak Island
Book Seven - Showdown with the Collector
Book Eight - A Time for Hacking
Book Nine - Trapped in Time
Chronomancer Chronicles Series
Prequel - Sacrifices Must Be Made
Book One - The Time Hopper’s Gambit
Coming Soon…
Book Two - Time for a Mission
You can also find all of my book titles with updated links on my author page here:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/paradoxseries
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Also By KD Mack
Join Me!
About the Author
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Chapter One
“We’re done!” Bendon laughed triumphantly as she spun Steff in a circle. “Can you believe we survived this place?”
“Put me down!” Steff laughed, stumbling out of her grasp. “You know we still have to wait for them to post the results later today. Not everyone will be walking tonight.”
“Such a buzzkill.” Bendon rolled her eyes. “You know that you passed, and I know that I did. So, we can celebrate now! Walking tonight is just a formality.”
“I don’t know…” Steff hopped back and forth from one foot to another. “What about that section in the middle? The self-travel section?”
“Travelling without an anchor?” Bendon asked. “Oh, they just put that in there to make sure you aren’t cheating or something.”
“What?” Steff asked, hurrying to keep up as Bendon started making her way back to the dormitories. She was taller, broader than Steff, and Steff always found herself rushing to keep up with her friend.
“You know, for the cheater people.” Bendon waved her hand. “Like, for the test, you have to use a test-approved anchor, something designed specifically by the Academy. People are always doing weird stuff to their own anchors, trying to tweak them to make them able to jump further, or faster, or whatever. They standardize it. But sometimes, people try to sneak in their own anyways. Slip it in their clothes, make it look like they’re using the test anchor and use their own instead. So, they throw some test like that one in the middle. If you travel without your anchor, you must have brought your own. Cheaters can’t help but show off, make it look like they can do the impossible.” Bendon paused for a moment. “That, and all the body scanners. Between those two, it’s crazy hard to cheat at the exam.”
“But –” Steff started to speak, then shook her head, looking down at her feet as she walked. A test? A test that you were supposed to fail? Would they think that she had –
“What is it, peanut?” Bendon elbowed her. “You didn’t try to sneak your own tools in, did you?” She said it jovially enough, but there was a hint of worry in her voice.
“No, it’s not that!” Steff protested. “I would never do that. How long would it work, anyway? You cheat and then you’re part of Chrono Corp. and people would find out before long. It’s a stupid strategy.”
“People always get caught.” Bendon nodded. “So what’s eating at you? Did you not make your last few jumps or something?”
“I – I made all of my jumps,” Steff told her.
“Right, good!” Bendon beamed.
“No, Bennie, like – all of them. Even the unassisted one.”
Bendon gave her a long look then threw back her head and laughed. Steff felt a spike of frustration. This wasn’t a joke. Why was she laughing?
“Sure, you did.” Bendon wiped a tear, holding the door of the dormitories open. “Sure, okay. You did an unassisted jump, anchor-free, just like it’s any old thing that anyone can do.”
“But I did! I’m not messing with you!”
Bendon stood there for a moment, clearly chewing something over, then leaned against the wall. “Steff, you seem serious, but you have to understand why I don’t believe you, right? No one can do unassisted jumps. You have to have an anchor. Even if you could get into the stream on your own – which I don’t see how you could – how would you manage to move through it without getting horribly lost? You could have popped out in the middle of the mastodons, for heaven’s sake.”
“I don’t know how I did it. I thought – I don’t know. I know they told us unassisted jumps were rare, if not impossible, but then when it was on the exam itself… I thought that maybe they told us that while we were at the Academy so that we wouldn’t go hopping around time on our own. You know, student shenanigans?”
“And they were, what? Being cute by suddenly revealing that you could do it during the exam?”
“I don’t know! All I know is they took the anchor, put me in the room, and told me to do an unassisted jump back and forth a year. And I figured, might as well try it, right? So, I did, and it worked.”
“They must have thought you were cheating! Steff, if you aren’t crazy or lying to me, there’s no way they’re going to believe you didn’t fake that!” Bendon shook her head again, turning towards the stairs. “Let’s just – let’s just go watch some shows or something until the results are posted, okay? There’s nothing to do about it now.”
“Do you want me to show you? I think I could do it again, and then you would
know I wasn’t making it up –”
“Steff, no.” Bendon sighed. “That would go one of two ways. You do it, and I lose my mind, and then you get slammed for an unauthorized jump. Or you don’t do it, and this whole thing is like the worst, most embarrassing prank you’ve ever tried to pull.”
“Alright,” Steff gave in, feeling anxious. Would they think she had cheated? Would she have undone all of her hard work the last six years, just to try out something she thought they wanted her to do in the first place? Why had she even done it? She thought it was part of the test, Steff reminded herself. She thought she was supposed to. And it had been tricky, but in the end, it wasn’t that much harder than her first jump with an anchor. She had been so aware of the way the stream moved around them, through them, for as long as she could remember. With some focus, she could step into that place. That had been the easy part. The tricky part had been figuring out how to get back. That’s when she saw the real value of anchors, giving you a clear sightline of where you’d come from and where you wanted to go. It had been basically guessing on her part, and she hadn’t told Bendon that she’d actually been nearly a month off on the first jump, only fixing it when she jumped back. Would that look bad on her, too?
The next few hours were an anxious blur for Steff. Once everyone had completed their exams, the arbiters compiled and posted the results and all the students that passed would be able to walk in the closing ceremony this evening. Anyone who didn’t – well, the bars in the area stayed open late tonight for both parties.
Bendon chatted with other students as they arrived after their own tests, and Steff wanted to ask all of them if they had even tried the unassisted jump in the exam. Bendon seemed to sense this and would place a hand on Steff’s arm, shaking her head no. So Steff stayed quiet, anxiously, awkwardly, wishing that she could jump now to when the results were revealed – she probably could – but one look at Bendon was enough to keep her from trying. Did her friend think she really had cheated, and was just trying to cover her tracks now by claiming insane powers?
“Attention all prospective graduates,” the voice came over the speakers, “we are glad to announce that the graduating class has now been chosen by the arbiters of the Academy. Please check your provided devices for the results of your exam.”
Bendon and Steff pulled out their tablets, as did everyone else. A hush fell over the room. Bendon found hers first, and Steff was relieved at the look of excitement on her friend’s face; she had hated the idea that only one of them could have gotten through.
Her page loaded slowly, each second feeling like a year, until the result was finally on her screen.
Status: Graduated.
“I made it!” She grinned at Bendon. “I didn’t screw myself over!”
The news was the same for the rest of the room. Their block, at least, did not have anyone who would be disappointed tonight, looking at another year or more of Academy training, or considering packing their bags and heading home. They blasted music, everyone hurriedly trying on outfits, picking what they would wear for the ceremony that was now only a few hours away. It was only when Steff stopped by her tablet again, before they headed to the graduation that she saw the message from the dean.
See me after ceremony in my office.
Chapter Two
Kreg woke up feeling hungover again.
“It’s not fair,” he muttered, rolling out of bed. “Not freaking fair.” He downed a cup of water at the sink. This wasn’t happening to anyone else. They weren’t getting these weird effects. He wasn’t even drinking. Taymer had invited him out last night, and he could have gone, but he did not want to find out what a real hangover on top of whatever this bullshit was felt like.
The dreams had been worse last night. Almost relentless with that constant feeling of falling throughout. Just falling through a strange space, momentary lapses, glimpses of something that he could never remember in the morning. And then yesterday… he shook his head, splashing more water on his face. Kreg had already promised himself not to think about yesterday. The lost time. The weird, waking dreams. Whatever had been going on there. There was no way that could be good, so he wasn’t going to think about it.
He fixed himself some tea, taking a moment to message his boss that he wouldn’t be in today. If he lost this job right now, he wouldn’t care too much. There was just something… different about things lately. He knew that some other people were feeling it, too. When he went out, he had started to see more and more people with the same dazed look that greeted him in the mirror every morning. One day, he had gone to sleep, and the next he had woken up, and the world had been different. The only problem was, he didn’t know how or why it had changed. But there was something. It had to be something.
Or he was just going crazy.
Kreg flipped through the news as he had his morning tea. It was a good way to ruin a day, he knew, but for some reason he just couldn’t break the habit. A few stories down his eyes lit up – people were reporting his same symptoms: waking up with hangovers despite being entirely sober, foggy moments throughout the day, suddenly ending up somewhere you couldn’t remember…
He opened the articles, reading through them rapidly, his breath catching as he did so.
While scientists are still unsure how these new abilities came about, it has become indisputable that many of the people reporting such symptoms appear to have a previously unseen ability to manipulate either time or matter.
Studies are still being conducted since all evidence of symptoms began six months ago. Physicists are remarking on unexplained disturbances and differences in studies made during that time.
The symptoms seem to be stronger in some than others, though there is no clear reason for this fact as of yet.
Those who have managed to enter what is being called the “time stream” or “time vortex” describe the experience as a sort of “shifting”.
“I could suddenly feel something all around me, like I had been moving through water my whole life and didn’t even notice it until last week. When I focused on the water-feeling, I was able to push myself into the stream, but only briefly. I came out a week later! I don’t recommend it. I missed my own birthday and felt like hell,” said Courtney P.
Scientists are warning individuals to not try to “shift” unless they do so in a supervised environment. Technology is already in development to assist and control this process, though studies have shown that most individuals seem unable to “shift” without the assistance of a related device, which is still in the prototype stage.
Shifting. Kreg realized he had forgotten his tea as he read, wincing as he sipped the cooled drink. This would require another cup. He made it through three more before he had finished reading everything, he could find on this new power that he – and others – apparently had. The warning the “experts” – if there could be experts on something so new, he thought to himself – was intensely clear: Don’t Try This At Home.
He mulled over all he had read, staring out at the city from his porch. Those dazed people he had seen out and about – were they thinking the same thing he was? How could he not try it? The ability to travel through time? To shift in and out of the actual, real, time stream?
Kreg could feel it around himself, if he focused. He had thought of it as brain fog, some bleariness inconveniencing his movement around his own house and town, but if that wasn’t the case, if he was feeling the passage of time, actively and fully…
What harm could it do to try? He didn’t have anything important coming up that he would mind missing. And surely his boss would understand if he missed some work because he was travelling through time. If nothing else, it was worth it for getting to use that excuse.
Kreg relaxed in his chair, focusing in on the feeling of the flow around him. Nothing he read had provided any sort of clear instructions – obviously in an attempt to keep people from being able to use their own abilities – but from what he had gleaned, the people who had succe
eded had all focused on the stream somehow, until it was the only thing they were perceiving, and then had made some sort of internal… leap?
It took two hours of not much happening at all. Two seasick hours of feeling like he almost got it, only to open his eyes and be in the same chair, the same place. He even kept checking the date and time on his phone, half hoping to discover he’d actually jumped forward or back without noticing. But the minutes kept ticking by at the expected pace.
A shower, he thought. Something to center his mind. Help with the nausea. Kreg could still feel the stream in the shower, around him, so he started to imagine what being in the vortex itself would look like. It was surprising how easily it came to him. It felt like remembering a place he had been to, years before, like recalling what the inside of his primary school class had looked like. The vague outlines settled into clear ideas the more he thought on it, and he relaxed, and then –
The shift was like being yanked through a thick curtain. Kreg stared around him in amazement, the water dripping from him into the swirling vortex around. It was so bright, he found himself wincing at the constant glow, the tangled rush of colors that streamed in both directions for as far as he could see.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, wiping soap from his eyes. “Ha!”
He jumped, pumping his fist in the air, then froze. Was he still in the shower itself? He had no idea how this worked. Little good this power would do him if he slipped and cracked his head. Kreg tried to gain his bearings. If it was a linear sort of thing… what if he just…
Kreg took a step forward, wondering if he was actually moving through time. How much? A few minutes? A week? A year? He’d find out once he got back… once he figured out how to get back.
