The Time Hopper's Gambit: The Chronomancer Chronicles

by KD Mack

  “No.” Bendon sat down. “But you have, haven’t you?”

  “How did you – I mean, I haven’t –”

  “The day you hit your head, you told the table that crazy story about people seeing stuff in the time stream. Said that Rickon told you. Only, I know you hadn’t seen Rickon lately, because I am your stalker and know everything you do. I thought maybe you were just trying out some rumor or something, for fun, but then you’ve been so weird lately.”

  “I have been seeing things,” Steff admitted. “Or, I guess, finding things. Little objects in the time stream, and these images of things – they do look like they’re happening through these holes in the vortex, though I know that doesn’t make any sense. And whenever I touch one of the objects, I end up seeing more things. Or, like, remembering things. That’s what it feels like, at least.”

  “You’re seeing strange objects in the time stream and then just interacting with them? You’re supposed to be more careful than that! We have to report this. The supervisors are going to want to know if someone is just, leaving junk scattered throughout time…”

  “We can’t tell anyone,” Steff insisted. “I’m the only one I’ve been able to confirm is seeing any of it. And they already treat me like a strange case. I don’t want them to pull me from the force. Can you imagine me stuck in some other job, unable to travel except for a tourist trip every once in a while? I’d go crazy.”

  “But we can’t not look into this. Someone is messing with time, messing with you. What if it’s a group? Or you’re being targeted by some criminal?”

  “I don’t think he’s a criminal,” Steff said softly.

  “He? What?” Bendon leaned forward, “Have you seen someone?”

  “A few days ago.” Steff winced at the look of shock on Bendon’s face. “I remembered. Running into him, I mean. On the day of my trial, when I did the unassisted jump? I ran into him then. Only I just remembered it happening a few days ago. How does that make sense? And the stuff I saw then… I found the letter he left, tucked away in the bottom of my bag from school, all folded up like I had read it before, and I must have, but I only remembered now. I think he went back and interrupted it.”

  “He found you in the stream? Without you traveling together? How could he know your travel points, what you had done?”

  Steff shrugged. “The same way the researchers or anyone else does? Everything becomes a part of history at some point, Bendon, and once it is, it’s trackable. You know that.”

  “I don’t like this.” Bendon said, shaking her head. “Some guy stalking you, messing with time? They aren’t going to fire you; they’re going to want to lock this guy up, and rightly so! We have to tell them!”

  “Just let me figure it out some more,” Steff begged. “I am serious, Bendon, if you tell anyone I will stop talking to you.”

  Bendon shifted in her seat. She didn’t like this, Steff could tell, and she knew she was asking a lot of her friend. But there was just something about it – something about him – that didn’t seem bad or wrong. There had been almost a recognition, in the memory of that moment. She was as unsettled as Bendon about this coming out of the blue, out of this emerging from her memory like a moment trapped in time, but it wasn’t wrong.

  The visions, though. The objects. That did seem bizarre. It struck her as something… leftover. Leftover from something bad. But she couldn’t hope to explain that to Bendon any more than she could hope to explain anything else. Steff melted back into the couch cushions, wishing she were someone else. Someone less complicated. Bendon was just living, doing her job. Why did Steff have to be tangled up in something that didn’t make sense to either of them?

  Bendon left not long after. Steff knew she was falling away in the conversation, and Bendon could tell, giving a last, worried goodnight before taking her leave. Steff was left alone with her thoughts and with all these new memories.

  There had been a lot of talk recently theorizing how humanity gained this new power. For most people, it was just something miraculous. One day, they couldn’t travel through time, and the next, half of humanity woke up and could. There was talk of some great incident that had rippled through time, something they couldn’t know about. The most radical theorists talked about the “un-happening”. Researchers from Chrono Corp. had given them plenty of data on what happened to a correct timeline and how it seemed to rubber-band back into a form it remembered. It was one of the signs that an action had been corrected, the way the timeline seemed reluctant to move again afterwards. And, from what they said, there was one moment – one immovable moment – the day everyone got their powers. Some people, willing to try anything, had gone back and tried to change things, had tried to see what they could alter. Often, this was to see if they could make themselves the only person who had ever gained these powers. But that one moment was concrete, immutable, and it led some theorists to believe that something had happened that was such a great disruption to the timeline that it simply refused to change again.

  Was she seeing, remembering, what had happened? That seemed insane. Why should she, of all people, be able to see that? Why should she be able to remember the things nobody else could remember? It didn’t make any sense. But there was something completely true, completely natural about these things she was encountering…

  Steff woke up the next morning, still on the couch, having fallen asleep at some point. There was a message on her tablet from her supervisors. Steff panicked as she dressed. They had detected something, through her travels. They knew, somehow. She was getting called in to be fired. She was sure of it. When she faced her supervisors, an hour later, Bendon by her side, she couldn’t stop her own shaking. The currents of fear passed through her, again and again.

  “We have become aware of certain disturbances in the timeline,” Matias read off the sheet in front of him, his voice as monotone as always. “We are setting the two of you on investigating whoever is responsible. Someone is leaving debris in the timeline, and we need you to stop them.”

  They had figured it out. But how? Steff shot a glance to Bendon, who stared straight ahead, at attention. Surely, if she had told them, they would be asking Steff about it? Grilling her about what she had seen?

  “Yes, sir. We will look into it immediately,” Bendon replied.

  “Thank you. For this case, your investigations will be strictly confidential. No going on about it with the other chronomancers. I trust you will have no trouble tracking this particular miscreant down.”

  “We’ll get to it, sir,” Steff said, still confused, but relieved that she wasn’t being pulled for interrogation.

  Bendon broke down when they were outside. “I’m sorry, Steff,” she said, looking miserable. Bendon was as good at lying as she was keeping secrets. “I didn’t tell them it was you. I sent in an anonymous report, about strange things happening. I couldn’t – we can’t not look into this. You said you wanted more time. I thought this would give it to you.”

  Steff breathed deeply as she looked at her friend. She had been wrong to confide in Bendon, she realized now, and the thought made her feel utterly alone. Bendon couldn’t handle something like this.

  “It’s fine,” she said, not believing it, not trying too hard to make it believed. At least she could look into it now, without it looking too strange.

  “Just show me where to go,” Bendon said, with a watery smile.

  Chapter Eight

  Kreg looked around furtively as he moved through the market. He should be able to find what he was looking for here. The trade markets had sprung up almost as soon as people had gained their new abilities. All the great objects from time, the most renowned antiquities, available for you on the street corner for half of their true value.

  “Street where the riches of ages are stowed… anything and everything a chap can unload,” he sang to himself, quietly. Some song from some old movie of his childhood; he couldn’t even remember the name now. But it fit well here, and he had learned,
quite early in his efforts, that old objects held something, some kind of resonance in the timeline. Like the key he carried with him, they left the strongest signatures. They served as the anchors that were least likely to be swallowed in the vortex.

  He had seen her. He had seen her, she had seen him, and in that moment, it had been right. Now, more than ever, he felt the urge to get to her, to lead her back to him. But no. She had to come of her own accord, he told himself. He couldn’t simply show up and try to explain everything. That had gone wrong plenty of times with people who didn’t want to hear about the future that never was. They were more than ready to hand over everything to the Chrono Corp. just for a little peace of mind. No, he needed her to come to him. Then she would have remembered enough, and would understand what he was trying to prevent.

  He took another look around. Everybody seemed to be minding their own business. Good. Kreg ducked under some hangings into a shop.

  “Tapestries!” the man hollered as he came in. Kreg winced at the man’s volume. He didn’t need to announce to the whole street what Kreg was looking for.

  “Everything from finished to unfinished,” the man continued, motioning around the shop. Kreg gave him a brief nod and started his circuit. He needed something small, but significant. Something that could hold its own.

  He was looking at a scrap of a thing that looked quite old – some medieval picture, a unicorn bowing and half destroyed – because some hoppers grabbed things far after their own time, thinking the aged look of it gave it more value. It was dumb, but it would serve his purpose. Kreg bought it and hurried out, tucking it under his cloak, looking around again.

  There was something that set him on edge: two figures. They blended in, they really did, but they blended in too well. They looked entirely casual in a space where people were trying to go about their business, hurrying to get their work done and go home. Kreg made eye contact with the one he could see, without meaning to, as his eyes scanned over them. A tall, broad redhead. The second they locked eyes, he knew.

  Kreg took off running, groaning internally at the sudden rush and shouts behind him.

  He cursed under his breath. The damn Chrono Corp.

  He dodged between stalls, ducking as a bolt blasted above his head, obliterating a sign and sending the shards careening down. That was good. They were proper Chrono Corp., a later breed, that didn’t use piercing rounds. The shock rounds destroyed objects but didn’t destroy people. This wasn’t life or death yet.

  He turned a corner, trying to backtrack, but they had split up and he found himself facing a tall woman – the same he had seen earlier – brandishing a badge.

  “I am an agent with the established Chrono Corp.,” she rattled off. “You are required to stand down and come with me. You are under arrest.”

  “Screw that,” Kreg said, diving down next to her as she pulled out her blaster, sweeping her off her feet. He grinned as she fell. They never saw that one coming. He took off running before the other could round the corner, darting towards the trees that ringed the marketplace. He didn’t want to jump this close to them. Even with his off-market anchor, he knew that the future Chrono Corp. members were better at tracking jumps. Better to get some distance, get out of their range, then to get somewhere properly.

  “Halt!” a voice called out behind him, but he didn’t pause to see who it was. He kept running, now through the trees, wishing he could use Kreg Alpha’s pyro abilities. It had to come to him at some point, right?

  Kreg thrust his hand out, though he wasn’t sure why, hearing the sound of the damn time cop approaching. They were getting closer. They were fast, faster than he had expected. He wasn’t sure if it was his panic or something else, but the closer they got, the more he felt a strange surge running through him. There was something else he felt here, something big, something coursing through him –

  He shouted, his hand out beside him, and the energy tore through him. There, suddenly, the trees to his side were aflame. Kreg laughed aloud. He had it! He didn’t know how, and he wasn’t going to waste time questioning it now. Without looking behind him, he threw his hand back, and the energy coursed again and he smiled at the sudden rush, the heat, the burning of the trees. A wall of fire, protecting him. There was a shout of frustration from his pursuer, and once he made it further forward, he couldn’t help but stop and look back.

  An inferno raged behind him, and Kreg looked at his hand in wonder. So this is what he had been missing. There, past the flames, he could see a dark outline behind the flickering light, moving back and forth, trying to find a way around. Kreg grinned. They wouldn’t get him this time. He surged ahead again, getting good distance between them before he jumped back to his safe spot. He took a quick detour, halfway through his trip, into the depths of the streams, and released the piece of fabric. Another anchor. Another marker, lighting her way back to him.

  Then he arrived. The cabin in the mountains.

  The crunch of the snow under his feet was a relief. There would be no one coming here because it had already been wiped away by the time that never was. Far in the past, when time travel was only a rumored thing, a skill held by – if you trusted some conspiracy theories – a select few members of some shadowy tech corporations, and no one else. There was no reason to look for him here, in the middle of time, in the middle of nowhere.

  Kreg was eager to try out his new power now that he had finally harnessed it. But the energy wasn’t the same here; it was just a faint echo of what it had been, back in the forest. He wasn’t sure why. Was it connected to the time powers? The further he got from the point of origin, the weaker it became? But it was still strong enough to start a fire, light some candles, and he settled down with his books.

  He had made it his purpose to record everything he could of the time that had not happened. It was almost all together now, the fights that had been fought, the apocalypse, the way the Phoenix Base force had twisted from its original purpose to becoming the power-hungry, singular controlling force in human society. How they had refused to use their own powers to reverse it in order to stay strong, and how those who had gained power after the fact had worked towards the same ends. And through it all, the person he had found after a life on the streets after the apocalypse, who had tried to arrest him and eventually recruited him, Steff.

  Steff, who he had seen just for a moment, and it had felt like coming home. Steff, whom he had sacrificed everything for, and promised he would return to. The reason he had not wanted to save the world. The person he had left clues through time for, even as he was working towards aligning the timeline, to ensure that they met together again.

  He looked at his notes. He had left all the anchors he could. Anything else, he thought, would just get swallowed. It was just a matter of time until she found him. He just had to stay out of Chrono Corp.’s way, stay underground, and she would find him. And it would all be worth it.

  Chapter Nine

  “He did what?” Bendon said as Steff helped her up.

  “He set the forest on fire. I couldn’t get through; it was insane.”

  “Aren’t people only supposed to get one thing?” Bendon groaned, stretching as she stood up. “Who can do fire and time? You sure he didn’t have, like, some sort of flare? Or bomb with him?”

  “No, it was just him, and he put his hand out, set some trees on fire, then laughed, and blasted the whole patch between us.”

  “And you still think this guy isn’t something to worry about?” Bendon asked, eyeing her.

  Steff didn’t respond. She hadn’t responded, to all the little comments, the little ways Bendon had been defending herself since they had set out on this mission. Whoever this guy was, as suddenly as he had appeared to her, he was hard to find. Steff had only encountered more of those objects, those moments, in the timeline in their travels to find him, but she had stopped telling Bendon about them. It wasn’t anything Steff could share anymore.

  Bendon had kept trying to make things up to St
eff, despite her comments. Steff hadn’t paid for a single meal since they had gotten out on the trip, and she kept finding the little things done, the extra stuff they always had to do for work like this. Field reports filed, tools calibrated, suits cleaned and prepped, everything taken care of. Steff knew she would forgive Bendon, especially once they finally tracked this guy down and figured out what was going on. There was no mysterious man in time and his antics that could sever a friendship this long and deep. But she needed time, and she needed to find him, to know what was going on before she could move past it all.

  “There’s a new report in from headquarters,” Bendon said, when they got back to camp. “They’ve managed to detect the anomalies. Apparently, since this sort of thing hasn’t happened before, they didn’t know what signature to look for. But they tracked it from your trial. And now they know how to find them through time.”

  “Are there many more signatures?” Steff asked. She had a bag full of the objects which had created the signatures. Could the Corp. detect them even once they were out of the stream, in her possession? She hadn’t left a single one behind, not since the snowball.

  “A signature popped up after our chase,” Bendon said. “He must have been trying to set something up. It’s hard to fix it in the timestream, but there’s something else there.”

  “Huh,” Steff said, eating her dinner.

  Bendon tried to make conversation about the market, about how the place would be crawling with chronomancers shutting the place down and returning objects to their own time. Steff wasn’t paying much attention. Something else was bothering her. The story this man – Kreg, she was sure his name was now – was stitching together for her now was starting to make some sense. He wanted to stop something from happening, something he was saying had happened before, when a different group had been in power, but it wasn’t quite there. And he was trying to bring her somewhere, that she knew. Somewhere she had already been, in another life. If he was right, there had been a time when there were two worlds, and people lived with their doubles like it was nothing.