“I am by no means an ordinary person,
but considering the fact that the world is
strange, I think it is a good thing I was
prepared early.” ~ Monday Moody
THE CALL COMES IN AT 2.36 minutes past ten in the morning. My watch, like any other CU officer’s, is exact because time is of the essence and every second counts. The screen projects the necessary information. Code 103 at Fox Lane 15. That’s Mr Woodacre’s farm. The last time I went anywhere near his sheep, he chased me off his land with a pitchfork and such vigour that he lost his toupee. Unfortunately, his farm is close to where I’m enjoying my tea and scones, an unhealthy start of a disconsolate day in Yorkshire.
I could pretend to ignore the call, but who am I kidding? If I responded the time I had a fever, the most delectable scones of the county aren’t going to make a difference either. That had been an interesting case since I had hallucinated yellow penguins and dancing daffodils.
“Chip,” I call to the blonde waitress, a little person who always wears red clothes because she says it’s the colour of seduction—something she maintains, even after having seen the horror that is my frizzy ginger hair after a drizzle. She hurries over, her blue eyes large and inquisitive, probably because she knows that even death can’t separate me from my favourite food.
“I’ve just got a call. Can you bag this for me?” I say with an apologetic smile.
She raises her thin eyebrows and grabs my plate. “My scones not good enough?” Her voice is soft and low, as if her words are carried by an undercurrent.
“How dare you even suggest that? I sometimes dream about them. Even my dreams have dreams about them. No, I’m afraid duty calls.”
“You work too hard,” Chip says as I follow her to the counter. She disappears briefly and returns with a brown paper bag while I put on my bright yellow raincoat.
“I think I work the right amount.” I clutch the bag to my chest.
“So you think you should take a call on your birthday?” she asks.
I smile at her. “Since I hate my birthday, yes. Thank you for the free scones.” I bend down and kiss her on her soft cheek.
“Be careful,” she calls after me, but the rain drowns out the last few letters. It is starting to let up a little, but I still have to run to my light blue Beetle. It takes me a while to straighten my sharp bob every morning, and I will not let a drizzle undo that hard work.
I gently place the bag on the passenger’s seat and check that my red lipstick is still okay. I turn the ignition. It takes a few tries but then it purrs like a constipated, fat tabby. I tap the steering wheel lovingly before I reverse out of the parking space and drive towards the edge of town, to Mr Woodacre’s farm. There is a fat chance he hasn’t noticed the rip, but still I harbour hope that he will be absent.
DESPITE THE FACT THAT the morning started with gloomy feelings—I really don’t like my birthday—and gloomier weather, luck appears to be on my side, because Mr Woodacre is nowhere to be seen. In fact, apart from a herd of sheep, the paddock is empty. In the distance is his cottage, his green truck gone. I exchange my red heels for red wellies and head over to the rip.
It is small, tiny, in fact, so it was probably someone’s first time. Either that, or it is someone very skilled. The yellow and orange colours indicate that is not a rip in time, but only in space. Though messing with time travel is far more intricate and disastrous than messing with parallel universes, both are equally illegal. I hold out my scanner, but it comes up with nothing new. Parallel rips are easier to read, but in this case I can’t tell if someone went to another world, or just came back from one. Filing reports on parallel rips makes root canals look like fun. This tiny rip will take me a few days, at least.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I turn around. By my car is a young girl, about seven years old, in a long woollen jumper that is too large for her and an open coat that has sagged off her right shoulder. Her two braids hang limply beside her pale face. Her brown eyes are large and even from here I can see that she’s trembling. She must have been hiding in the woods at the edge of the field.
“Hi,” I say in my most gentle tone. It is a tone that I have to use often, since most offenders are adolescents and scared at the realisation that they can manipulate space and time, and by having done so, committed a crime. This is the first time, though, that one is so young. And even if all of them remind me a little of me, this one does so even more. I inch towards her, but stop when her eyes dart towards the woods.
“I am Monday. Monday Moody,” I say in a cheerful voice. “I suppose you made that happen?”
She says nothing. “I just need to do something, okay? Hold still.” I hold out my watch to her face and after it scans her, it beeps. I check the screen. She appears to be from this world, since her name is immediately displayed.
“Hi, Lovelace. Did you make the rip happen?”
The girl looks at the rip and then at me. Her eyes tear up.
“Don’t be sad,” I say. “Listen, I need you to do me a favour.” I check my watch. Six minutes have passed. “I need you to run home, okay? And don’t mention what you did to anybody. Perhaps your mother, or someone you trust, but nobody else. You might be in trouble, you see? And I don’t want you to be in trouble. I know what it’s like and I wish I could teach you, but all I can say is: try not to be too upset. Your abilities are linked to your emotions.” That sounds like lousy advice, even to me, but time really is of the essence. “Run, go.” I nudge her arm gently and point at the woods. She runs off after a moment of hesitation, becoming smaller until she is swallowed up by the first line of trees.
The moment she is out of sight, another car comes up. A blue Hudson Hornet. Saoirse. She parks her car behind mine and at first her black curls come out above the car door. Then her pale face with sharp eyes and a lopsided grin. “Beat me to it,” she says in an Irish accent.
“Can you believe I was eating Chip’s scones when I got the call. Lousy timing.”
“And on your birthday no less,” she says and slams the door shut. She walks up to me and surveys the rip for a few moments.
“Ugh. I don’t like to be reminded of the fact that my life is flashing me by with great speed,” I say. That’s not the only reason I hate this day. It may also have something to do with the fact that I nearly died on my 18th birthday.
“Oh, please. That’s what happens when you have kids. You can at least do whatever you want.” She squeezes my shoulder. “How I’d love to go back to a time of one-night stands and drunken make-out sessions, just for a day.”
“Saoirse,” I say, my mouth falling open.
“What? A mother of four can have desires.” She chuckles and walks closer to the rip. “You haven’t closed it yet, then?”
“I was conversing with Shaun over there about the reason for our existence.” I point at the nearest sheep who is grazing languidly.
She chuckles. “Don’t tell my kids. They’ll get jealous.” She takes out her Sonic gun and aims it at the rip. As soon as she pulls the trigger, the edges of the rip start weaving their way to each other until it disappears entirely. It is the only weapon we carry, and it’s not even a weapon.
“The paperwork is going to be hell.” She sighs. “I’ll request some Ladybug Drones to survey the area for anything unusual, just in case.” She swipes her watch a few times, then turns to me. “So, even if you don’t celebrate your birthday, I still got you something months ago. I saw it and it’s perfect for you.” She grins.
I can’t help but smile. Though I hadn’t expected to make any friends as soon as I joined the Chrono Unit, she made it so damn easy. She is also the best partner I could have asked for. “Fine. Because it’s you, I’ll allow it.”
She rushes back to the car and comes back with something hidden under her coat. “You’re going to be so happy in a second.”
“Stop stalling and give it to me.” I hold out my hand.
In it she places
a book and I nearly topple over. An actual book. “Oh, wow. Alice in Wonderland,” I whisper. “Where—how—?”
“I have friends in high places. Well, only one. She was doing this cleanse—yes, that’s what she called it—for her house and she got rid of loads of stuff she doesn’t want. She’s loaded and she’s been hoarding crap for a while now. She was donating everything, but I fished out this copy when I spotted it.”
“This must have cost her a fortune. Especially a book like this.”
“Yeah, beats 3-D holograms, right? Well, you think that. I like holo-books.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “They’re not books.”
She chuckles. “Welcome to the 21st century. Now give me a hug already.”
I smile and give her a bear hug. “You’re amazing. Thank you.” She smells like smoke, as if she’s been burning wood in a fireplace. “I can’t believe you have a friend in high places, you have to tell me the story sometime.”
“It’s a very boring one. I once helped her when someone Travelled back in time to Alter knowing her by crashing a party and inserting himself into her life. He didn’t do a very good job and became frustrated that it hadn’t worked out the way he wanted and became a stalker.”
“I see. So you arrested him?”
“Yep, Collared and arrested. Though he’s free now. Still Collared of course. Thank goodness.”
“Thank goodness,” I mutter, glancing at the woods, certain I’d done the right thing, but sad that I could never confide in Saoirse completely.
Both our watches beep as we get another call. The screen shows a 101 in progress, which causes Saoirse and I to frown. Two rips in one day? Usually we had two a month, at most a week. The address is a thirteen-minute drive. “Let’s go,” I say and hop into my car. I glance at the woods one more time before I turn around and follow Saoirse towards the town centre.
“MONDAY MOODY AND SAOIRSE Cavanaugh,” I say as I point from me to Saoirse. We both tap our watches and a holograph of our badge with a serial number, name, and a photo appear above it. The constable barely glances at it, his face pale and his chin covered in a dab of ketchup. “I was—it’s in there,” he says and physically backs away as if he can get sucked in himself.
Inside the pub is a much larger rip that isn’t a rip at all, but a portal. The size being the difference between the two. The cause the same. The black and red colours swirl in a mesmerising fashion. A time portal.
The fact that it is still open means that someone is inside. We both take out our scanners. The rest of the pub is empty. Soft music is playing in the background. The person that steps through the portal has a certain feel to her or him, being from this time. The scanner shows it as the colour purple, a thread that leads into the black and red portal. All we have to do is follow the thread and forcibly remove the perp, though it only works if the person is still close to the portal.
Saoirse hates doing this and always calls it a hassle, but I know it’s because she’s afraid that something will go wrong and she’ll be stuck in some past or future, lost to her loved ones. Which has happened to some of our colleagues. I have a similar concern, but I do not let myself get deterred. I don’t like fear. I also don’t have to worry about getting stuck in a different time or place, though I can’t tell Saoirse that.
And so I step into the portal, surrounded by swirls of light and an immense pressure that soon subsides. A wave of nausea sweeps through me, and forces me to double over. I press my hand against my lips and wait for it to pass. Since the portal is still open, it means that the person stepped through, expecting to be but brief and in the vicinity of the portal itself. It has been open since the time it took for us to drive over, so something must have gone wrong.
“Hello,” I say. The pub is empty and much seems unchanged except that I can sense it is not, and my scanner makes lots of gurgling noises, much like my old cat Sourpuss used to do when snoring. Something has disturbed this place and it feels heavy, as if weights have been put on my limbs.
“This is CU officer Monday Moody, please respond.” My voice is firm and unshaken. One never knows what to expect on the other side of a portal, but to me, that is part of the challenge. Then, out of nowhere, I get tackled by a black blur. I scramble around on my back and realise it is not, in fact, a blur, but a woman dressed in black, trying very hard to incapacitate me.
“This is very rude,” I manage to articulate with strain as her hands have found themselves around my neck. I poke her in the eyes with my fingers and knee her in the stomach before I push her away. She falls on the floor, giving me a brief moment to observe her. She has short, blonde hair and an athletic body. She’s not afraid to attack a CU officer, so she might have had run-ins with the law before. Was she waiting for me?
By the time she gets up I crack a bar stool over her head. It breaks. “Please, don’t get up.”
I don’t like that she managed to knock me off my feet, but at least she is unconscious now. Despite her athletic body, I’ve faced bigger and stronger enemies. I adjust my dress and glance around. I can sense that it is her that opened the portal, but I can’t help but wonder what it is that took her so long. Did she want to hurt me? Or is there something else? Why Travel back to an empty bar?
I search for any signs that might tell me what she was doing and it takes me a few minutes before I find the reason for her outing.
A bomb. Strapped to the toilet on which there is an ‘out of order’ sign. I do not know much about bombs, but I know they are bad.
The timer says twenty minutes. I press my watch to check the time. It shows me the time here and the time where I came from. We have Travelled twenty minutes into the past which means it is set to go off as soon as we go back. Interesting. Was her plan to kill us? Members of the CU? If so, she didn’t know who she was messing with. I can’t disarm the bomb, but I can buy myself some time.
Now, this next trick requires a huge amount of concentration and an even bigger amount of guts. Luckily, a near-death situation is enough motivation to produce both. With sweat on my forehead and several knives from the kitchen, I manage to peel off the bomb from the tiles under the two sinks.
Then I close my eyes and focus. Going back a minute or so is enough. A tornado of feelings sweeps up inside of me until the momentum reaches a climax and I hold out my hand. A portal opens and I step through, nearly throwing up this time. I place the bomb in the toilet and peer out from the bathroom to check if the woman is indeed gone now. It means I have pulled her through in the near future. Then I step back through my portal which closes afterwards and this time I turn slightly green. I have no time to throw up though, and run towards the woman, dragging her through the portal.
I feel Saoirse’s hands on my hips as she helps me pull the perpetrator through. As soon as we’re through the portal she stops pulling, but I don’t. “Quickly, we have to get her out of the building, there’s a bomb. We have about a minute.”
Saoirse turns a shade paler and after a split second of surprise, she grabs the other leg and we pull her out of the pub. The cold weather is welcoming after the sweat explosion caused by stress and nausea. Similar feelings I experienced on my first ever date.
“Did it go okay?” the constable asks, but I shout for him to get back. I shout for everyone to get back. And just as we push the majority of onlookers towards the opposite side of the street, the bomb goes off. It produces a deafening sound and its force shatters the windows and blows the door off its hinges. It also pushes the first line of people, me and Saoirse included, back into the nearest car.
A loud ringing in my ears is the least of my worries, as my nausea catches up with me. I throw up next to the car and nearly over the constable’s hand, who has also fallen down. Unfortunately this also reminds me of my first ever date.
Not a bad start to my thirtieth birthday.
Chapter 2
“There is one kind of robber
whom the law does not strike
at, and who steals wha
t is most
precious to men: time.” ~ Napoleon I
AS FAR AS BOSSES GO, mine is pretty okay. After all, she did once save my life. It also wasn’t an easy task, because at the time I was pretty drunk, and the entire debacle involved a wedding cake knife and a clown. Fiona Steele calls me into her office at my earliest convenience, which means that I can freshen up first before giving an oral statement of what went down at the pub. Luckily, nobody was injured, but still, it was serious. Especially since no Traveller has ever tried something this destructive.
When I enter her office, she stops typing and presses twice on her typewriter, deactivating the holo-screen. Her desk is neat and minimalistic with only a mug of steaming coffee. She goes through about five cups a day, even though she claims she doesn’t like it. The dark circles around her eyes indicate that she really does need them. I wonder if it’s the job or if she and her wife are having troubles. They have an open marriage and have been together for a long time. As far as soulmates exist, they are soulmates, so I hope it’s the job that’s causing her stress.
Fiona smiles at me and it reaches her grey eyes. Her hair is dark, but has lightened over the years due to grey streaks. “Are you alright?” she asks. She has a quiet voice, but any temerity travels through her eyes, not her lips.
“I am still a bit shaky,” I say, not one to lie. “I am relieved that nobody got seriously injured.”
“Me too. What happened exactly? Can you walk me through it?” She folds her hands in front of her and nods at the chair in front of the desk. Her office smells like coffee and her sweet perfume lingers in the air.
Omission is key when handling sensitive information. “I entered the portal and something felt off. Before I could have a good look, I was attacked and we struggled. I knocked her out with a bar stool and then had a look around. I spotted the bomb in the bathroom and bolted. I mean, I ran and took the perp with me.”
Prelude to Poison Page 20
