Agent of Time

by Nathan Van Coops

  As the blackness closed around her completely, she stretched her hand for the watch, fumbled with the safety, and pressed the pin.

  Stella hit the floor with her face again, this time the pain made her gasp.

  Air.

  Good God there was air.

  She gulped at it with her mouth wide, swallowing it down so fast she coughed and retched. She gasped again and rolled over. Her bloody leg lit up with fire again and she gasped once more in pain, but even that was a relief because she had air.

  She clawed at her neck, a frantic movement, but her fingertips found only the impressions on her skin. No charger cord. It had vanished.

  Stenger had vanished.

  The realization finally registered.

  It had worked! He was gone.

  But for how long?

  The haze of her mind cleared.

  A minute. The watch had read a minute.

  He was coming back.

  How long had she been writhing on the floor? Ten seconds? Fifteen?

  She forced herself to her feet, wincing again from the pain in her leg. How far could she get in forty-five seconds? She started to stumble for the door.

  But then she stopped.

  No.

  She wasn’t going to run. Not this time.

  Her pulse was pounding, keeping a beat inside her skull like a metronome.

  No. Like a clock.

  Thirty seconds?

  She turned back, scanning the living room until her eyes found the set of fireplace tools near the big stone hearth. She hurled herself toward it, the clock in her head ticking relentlessly. She was weak. Her leg was slick with blood and dragged behind her as she limped, but she wouldn’t go down. Not now. Not yet.

  Covering the distance across the living room took an eternity. Her hurt foot caught on the rug and she stumbled, falling to her knees.

  But her hand closed around the handle of the fire tongs.

  The feel of the cold iron gave her strength.

  But when she turned around again, she knew it was a lost cause. The distance back across the room seemed to expand into miles. She was never going to get back in the seconds she had remaining. Ten? Nine? Her chest was heaving, her head pounding.

  Seconds till he was back. Then death would be swift.

  Three seconds. Two. She wouldn’t wait any longer. Stella took a deep breath and screamed her rage as she hurled the fire tongs. They soared across the room and time seemed to slow.

  And all she had done was send a futile projectile into empty space.

  In her weakness, the fire tongs hadn’t even reached all the way to where she was aiming. They clattered to the floor uselessly.

  The clock in her head was screaming an alarm.

  Time was up.

  Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the fire poker and she used all of her remaining strength to hurl it.

  Stella watched with bated breath. But like the tongs, the poker failed to reach the spot she had aimed for. Her heart sank, but then the tip of the poker hit the floor and it bounced, arcing onward again—directly into the sudden apparition of Elton Stenger who, at that instant, reappeared on the floor.

  The half-naked man let out a shriek and went over sideways, not so much struck by the iron poker as impaled by it. He was flung to his side and then over again onto his front, and laid still.

  17 Time Crime

  Special Agent Stella York stared at the man on the floor in a daze. He wasn’t bloody but he was completely still. The end of the fire poker protruded from his torso like an extra appendage more than a weapon. It was as though the poker and the man were now one and the same.

  She refused to take her eyes off him until the sound of sirens slowly penetrated the fog around her mind.

  As the air filled with sound, she crawled slowly across the floor, found the dead man’s wrist, unfastened the chronometer the way Jessica had instructed, and yanked it free. She then squirmed back across the floor to rest her back against one of the armchairs, clenching the device tightly in both hands.

  A uniformed police officer was the first one to find her, his gun drawn and expression hard. He was immediately joined by a half dozen more. They asked questions, searched the other rooms, but Stella was slow to respond. She extracted her FBI badge from her pocket and flashed it at them. That seemed to change the mood. But it was only when a pair of crystalline blue eyes met hers that any words finally registered.

  “I’ve got you. I’m getting you out of here.”

  Detective Danny Briggs scooped her up and carried her out the front of Carson’s mansion. An ambulance pulled through the now open gate. The circular drive was packed with vehicles. Red and blue lights flashed and reflected from every one of the mansion’s multitude of windows.

  Stella winced as she was laid on a stretcher, but Danny stayed by her side.

  “You are one crazy woman, you know that? I said ‘promise me you won’t try to take this guy on by yourself,’ and what do you do?”

  “Wasn’t exactly my idea,” Stella muttered as she laid back.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  The paramedics pushed in to attend to her and she did her best to answer their questions. Yes, she was shot. No, just in the leg. They poked and prodded and inspected her. There was an exit wound and the bullet hadn’t hit any major blood vessels but they wanted a doctor to have a good look at it. She was bandaged and told to stay still.

  She stuffed the chronometer in her pocket.

  When they were satisfied at her condition, Detective Briggs was allowed into the back of the ambulance to sit with her.

  “So, you finally got him,” he said, picking up her hand and pressing it between his. “How does it feel?”

  Stella squeezed his hand back and allowed herself a smile. “It’s about time.”

  If she could have had her way, she would have done without the hospital stay, but the one advantage to the overnight visit was that it gave her an excuse to delay her conversation with SAC Devers from the bureau office in Las Vegas. As she checked herself out of the hospital, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer. When he picked up, it was clear from his tone that her excursion hadn’t gone over well.

  “Do you mind explaining to me how one of my agents ends up involved in a murder investigation in California working a case she hasn’t been assigned to in thirteen years?”

  The rest of the conversation went about as well.

  By the end of the call, Stella was facing a fourteen day suspension and a possible meeting with the Office of Professional Responsibility.

  When she hung up with her boss, Stella simply stood there. She pulled the purloined time travel watch from her pocket and stared at it. Over a decade of searching. Was this all she had to show for it?

  She was startled from her daze by the phone ringing again. It was a number she didn’t recognize. She picked it up reflexively.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Miss York, do you have a moment to talk about the advertisement you posted in the newspaper?”

  Stella sighed. “I’m sorry to waste your time. That wasn’t a real posting. It was part of a criminal investigation. It’s over now.”

  “I don’t believe it’s over just yet. You do still have the chronometer, don’t you?”

  Stella frowned and looked down at the device in her hand. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “My name is Doctor Harry Quickly and I’d very much like to meet with you.”

  Harold Quickly?

  The scientist.

  “Um. Yes. I actually have so many questions for you.” Stella felt around her pockets for a notepad.

  “Let’s meet at the location you suggested in the ad. Exposition Park? Near the rose garden. You said noon.”

  Stella glanced at her watch. “Wait, that doesn’t give me a lot of time to—”

  “I’ll see you there.” The call ended and Stella found herself staring at her phone’s home screen.

  She limpe
d her way out of the hospital lobby to the cab stand.

  Stella checked her watch again as she slid into the cab. “Exposition Park. As fast as you can get me there.”

  The Exposition Park Rose Garden sprawled over seven acres. The tall bushes would have provided excellent concealment for law enforcement agents, had Stella really been setting up her sting operation. But with Elton Stenger dead, the view was a lot more relaxing. The midday sun shone brightly on the myriad varieties of roses in bloom and the sky held not a single cloud. To her satisfaction, Stella had arrived with over five minutes to spare. She overtipped the cabbie and then wandered slowly along the grassy lanes of the garden, nursing her aching leg and keeping an eye out for someone who looked like they were looking for her.

  She was wearing her badge and sidearm openly on her hip, which drew occasional glances from passersby, but otherwise she moved unmolested.

  Several tourists with cameras were snapping photos of the roses and she even spotted a few artists set up with easels. She wandered into the center of the garden, trailing a mother and daughter both sporting sweatshirts with the Trojan emblem of the neighboring University of Southern California. The pair were chatting amiably about the girl’s college life, but when they turned right down a neighboring lane, Stella froze.

  Ahead in the grass aisle, not more than fifty yards from her, stood Elton Stenger.

  He was staring down a perpendicular avenue, his expression intent on his search.

  “What the hell?” Stella swore and reached for her gun.

  She had nearly cleared it from her holster when a strong hand closed over her wrist. She spun to find an old man in a tweed vest standing behind her. She jolted and wrenched her wrist free of his grasp.

  “Don’t.” The old man said calmly. “Wait.”

  Stella aimed her pistol at him and backed away a step. “Who the hell are—”

  “One more moment,” the old man said. He held up a finger, his gaze somewhere behind her. Stella spun around again and located Stenger. He was staring straight back at her. But then he lunged to one side, racing away down the path and sprinting out of the garden.

  Stella moved to follow but the old man called to her again.

  “You can relax! It’s done now.”

  Stella turned to guard herself against the old man again, watching him warily. But nothing about his posture suggested a threat. He had a kindly face, well-tanned with good humored crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He smiled.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, Miss York. I’m Harry.”

  Stella’s heart was still racing from having sighted Stenger. She glanced again toward the exit of the rose garden. “That man—is supposed to be dead!”

  “And he is,” Harry replied, keeping an outstretched palm toward her. “He just doesn’t know it yet. Come on. Let’s walk. I have a feeling we have a lot to talk about.”

  Stella slowly lowered her gun.

  The old man gestured for her to follow him, and they walked back the way she had come, away from the exit Stenger had disappeared through.

  In a patient and pleasant tone, the old scientist began to talk.

  “We had to close the loop, you see? The events that happened to you yesterday began today. Elton Stenger, having seen us together here in the park, will now jump back in time to find you. He’ll ascertain who you are, follow you, and take you captive from the back of your own vehicle. The rest of yesterday’s events will unfold as they did. You’ve already lived through them, but they are an end that Mr. Stenger has yet to experience.”

  Stella recalled Stenger’s rant in the car the night before about having seen her with Harry Quickly. It made sense now.

  “What about where he came from? Two-thousand and nine. Whatever brought him here. Will all that still happen?”

  As they walked, Harry told her the tale of the five friends from 2009 and their accidental displacement through time due to a lab accident at the Temporal Studies Society. He explained his connection to Malcolm and how, if it hadn’t been for the actions of this misfit band of time travelers she had encountered, he would have ended up as one of Stenger’s victims.

  Carson Bradley was dead, but in another timeline, his friends had come back to save him. She had witnessed Stenger’s end on the Interstate at the diversion of that timeline. Somewhere, in some time, the whole lot of them were now safe and alive.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any negative effects from having experienced that particular paradox,” the scientist said. “But I hope you’ll stay in touch if you do. This is all very much a new field of study for all of us. But as far as Elton Stenger is concerned, that danger is over.”

  “A closed loop,” Stella muttered. “So what does that mean for the future?”

  “An excellent question. I think that depends largely on you. How do you feel about your future? Any changes you’d like to make?”

  By now they had wandered across Exposition Boulevard via the pedestrian walkway and on through the USC campus. She noticed that she had been so wrapped up in the scientist’s explanation that her leg hadn’t bothered her at all. She found herself staring up at a beautiful red and gold clock with four faces on it that sat at the edge of Alumni Park.

  “You make it sound like I have some choice in all this,” Stella said. “But I’m not like you.” She reached into her pocket and removed the beautiful silver chronometer. She held it out to him. “I think this might be what you’re after. It won’t do me any good.”

  Harry Quickly took the device and played with a few of the dials, then slipped it into his pocket. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t. But if you promise not to report me to the time travel authorities, I can give you some insight into the future.”

  “I don’t know any time travel authorities.”

  “Not yet,” Harry said.

  Stella narrowed her eyes. “You know what’s going to happen to me?”

  “I know a few things that are pretty certain. For one, this case of yours—the deaths in Saint Pete and the murder of Carson Bradley—won’t be reopened. A young Elton Stenger in Florida will go to jail for the killings. Your reports on the subject will mysteriously vanish, and the anomaly of the existence of two Elton Stengers is going to be swept under the rug. In a matter of weeks, all evidence of the existence of time travel will be erased from this timeline. The general public will never be the wiser.”

  “They’re going to cover this up? The truth about the existence of time travel has to be the most world-changing information that the human race has ever discovered.”

  “Which is precisely why the powers that be don’t want it out. Not yet anyway. It’s almost the new millennium of course. The time is coming.”

  “Why cover up my work then? I’ve sacrificed my career getting to the bottom of this.” Stella felt the heat rising in her cheeks. “I’ve been through hell for this. What gives them the right to take that away from me?”

  “That’s something I thought you might like to ask them yourself.” The old man reached into an inside pocket of his vest and extracted a business card. It was gloss black with silver lettering. She took the card and read the organization name. “Time Crimes?”

  “It’s a division of the Allied Scientific Coalition of Time Travelers. As an organization, I don’t often see eye-to-eye with them on their methods, but that number will put you through to a time when one of the contacts I trust is running the Temporal Crime Investigation Division. Her name is Doctor Noelle Chun. She was a professor before she took on this job.”

  “A woman is in charge of the organization? That’s certainly a plus,” Stella said.

  “She won’t be born for another hundred years, but leave a message. She’ll get back to you. Word on the street is that she’s looking for more agents she can trust. She told me to keep an eye out for anyone I thought might be a good candidate.”

  “Time crimes,” Stella murmured, studying the card.

  “You already c
aught one dangerous time traveler, and you’re good at it. Thought you might want a shot at more.”

  Stella glanced up at the multi-faced clock again. She could leave Vegas. Possibly leave this whole timeline? Suddenly it seemed like the future was full of possibilities. “With all these diverging timelines, how do I know which future is the right choice for me?”

  She turned back to the old man, but found she was staring at empty space.

  Stella turned slowly in place, searching the grounds of the campus around her.

  Harry Quickly had vanished.

  Stella stood open-mouthed for several seconds, still scanning the grounds, then she shook her head.

  No one was ever going to believe her.

  Her Nokia vibrated in her pocket, and when she pulled it out, she noted that she had a new voicemail from Danny’s number. She also noticed that the battery symbol was down to its last bar.

  She suspected she only had enough power left for one call.

  Stella bit her lip and glanced up at the clock again.

  Then she dialed the number on the card.

  The phone made a strange pulsing noise before going straight to the beep of a voicemail.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Hi. My name is Special Agent Stella York, and I’m ready to get to work.”

  The Chronothon Sneak Peek.

  “Time travel is hard. Let’s get that straight first thing. If you think any part of this will be simple, you can stop now and have a safe, happy, life. Of course, if you’re reading this, you’re likely not content with safe.”-Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2037

  I feel very alive considering I haven’t been born yet.