Time Series: Complete Bundle

by Claire Davon

  “You can,” he continued. You’ve been to the Event – we’ve been to the Event. You can get there.”

  “But…she sputtered. “But we went there and there was nothing I could do. We would have died if we hadn’t been pulled back.” She thought of the Voice and wondered again whether she needed to trust these two. Should she tell them all of it? It could mean her death, and Sonder’s death, if she was wrong.

  Then again, Sonder had stayed behind, trusting that Illiria was doing what was right. He had faith in Illiria, more than Fiona, since he hadn’t told her of their plan. That stung. The time powers might have been better off with one of the more experienced people, but they hadn’t been granted to any of them, just her.

  “We were pulled back from the Event, though,” she said, and looked at the two fellow travelers. “The Commander is wrong. I don’t cause the Event, but I am here to stop it. I didn’t pull us back, Rogald. I don’t know how to explain it. I hear this Voice periodically, and not in a crazy hearing voices sort of way. It pulled Rogald and I back from the Event and it sent me to Thera before the volcano exploded. It told me to listen, and learn. Since then Sonder and I have been finding and tracking disasters and time anomalies. I don’t know if you guys have ever felt it, the difference between a natural disaster – like the one that took you out of the time stream, Rogald. Hurricane Camille was a natural catastrophe. But the explosion of the volcano in Thera was not. There is wrongness when it’s a disaster caused by a time anomaly. That’s what Sonder and I have been doing when we go to these locations. We are trying to learn how to stop it. Without me the Event happens. With me there’s a chance. I don’t know if what I can do is natural or shaped by someone or something, but I am the only chance we have. I would do better if I could, but I’m trying as hard as I can.”

  Rogald and Illiria were looking at each other, and neither said anything.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why, when we came back from the Event, it was prior to the trolley accident? Why we were separated? That doesn’t happen, from what Sonder has said. When we left, everything went back to the time line that it was, when I gained my powers, and I think the Voice had something to do with all of that. It was completely irregular. That’s because there’s something else in all this, something that seems to see and manipulate but can’t interfere. I don’t know…maybe, probably they gave you your devices, set up the bases. Nothing else fits.”

  “That is remarkable,” Rogald said. “I was there and I believe you. Of course the Commander is wrong. You’re our only hope.”

  “Speaking of which,” Fiona said. “Don’t you think it’s past time we stopped talking and went after Sonder?”

  Illiria shook her head. Fiona decided she really disliked the woman.

  “We will catch up with him. It’s all set. First, Fiona, we need to run some tests.”

  #

  Fiona blanched. Tests? She didn’t want any damned tests run on her. Tests led to probes led to…she focused on her new safe spot. Fiona had only been to Australia that once, and had seen the massive landmark known as Ayers Rock in pictures, but it was an easy place to fix in her head. She might need to use it now, if they were going to insist on tests. Maybe they had tricked Sonder, got him to track the Commander, and were going to snatch her back to a base. Which base she didn’t know, and didn’t care, but they weren’t going to run any tests on her. No way. Fiona focused, drawing the picture of the large reddish rock in her mind, while still looking at Illiria. She prepared to jump.

  “Stand down, Traveler,” Rogald said. “My lady doesn’t have the best way of expressing herself. It comes from having brothers, doesn’t it?”

  Illiria looked murderous, and Fiona could almost hear her grinding her teeth. Her jaw was clenched, and worked as if she was trying to stop herself from saying something.

  “Fiona, she means tests as in tests of your power.” Fiona wondered how he seemed to know she was getting ready to flee. She said nothing, her gaze on Rogald, keeping the image of the large sandstone rock the natives called Uluru in the Northern Territory of Australia fixed in her mind. She had found that the more information she had about something the easier it was, the quicker through the black. The blackness that signaled a time and space jump was dependent on the length of time travel you were attempting, but she had also learned that if she had a picture that was sharp that it seemed to take less time.

  “Nobody is testing me,” Fiona said, still fixing the image in her mind. “I’m not going to any base to be poked and prodded.”

  “Stand DOWN, Traveler,” Rogald said and the edge of command made her jump. She had no indication how high up he was in the ranks of the Liberator group, but his voice rang with authority.

  “Nobody is testing you,” he agreed and she thought he was making an effort to seem composed. “What Illiria means is we want to test a theory. Why have you been jumping to the time anomalies?” When Fiona looked surprised, he chuckled.

  “Sonder didn’t tell you.” She looked at Rogald. “This whole thing was set up by Illiria and Sonder, a few weeks from now. You’ve been checking disasters and trying to change them, but failing. We can help. Sonder realized that and he came to us to see if Illiria and I, not the Guardians and the Liberators, would aid your quest.”

  A sick sense of betrayal washed over Fiona. Sonder had set her up. He had made her trust him and then turned her loose with these…people and jaunted off to track the Commander. Somewhere right now they were having a good laugh at her expense.

  Once again Fiona made herself relax before Rogald could say anything. Of course that wasn’t true. Sonder had proved over and over again that he could be trusted, that he was a man who was good to his word. She was upset with him, but if he had done this then there had to be a reason. She didn’t know it yet, but she would find out. Just like she would send the selfie of her and Illiria back to herself of a few hours earlier to get her then past self to come to France.

  Her head whirled as it always did when she tried to get her mind around paradoxes.

  “Okay, I don’t understand, but okay. Sonder never does anything illogical.” That was true, she realized, and felt ashamed for her momentary sense of distrust.

  “What do you want to do?”

  #

  Fiona looked at the sky, doubt crawling across her body. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  Illiria shot Rogald a look that said “I told you we were wasting our time” as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud.

  They were standing in the Atacama Desert of Chile in a time ten years from her original time. All around them was nothing but sand and dots of low, scrubby plants - the only thing that could survive in this harsh climate.

  There was an earthquake coming, Rogald told Fiona, and its signature suggested that it was caused by the time anomaly. Fiona hadn’t been sure they believed her about the Voice, but they did about the anomalies. “We’ve been aware of that for some time,” Illiria had said. “There is a mark that hangs over certain disasters. We haven’t been able to identify what they were, or when they would happen, but we have noticed them.”

  She focused on the present. “What am I supposed to do?” Fiona asked. Illiria snorted.

  “You’ve studied them,” she said and her tone was laced with impatience. “You’ve been trying to change them. What did this Voice say?”

  “Study the disasters,” Fiona said, her body numb. Where was Sonder?

  “One minute,” Rogald warned.

  “Studying them is not enough. Act. You must succeed. Otherwise, your powers are only good for stealing lotteries.”

  Fiona flushed. It hadn’t been robbery, since she had jumped to the day after to get the numbers, but she didn’t think that Illiria would appreciate the semantics.

  There was a shimmer, and then Sonder was there. The transfer seemed quicker than normal. She had never been so glad to see someone in her life.

  “Forty seconds,” Rogald said.

  “Was your
trip worth it?” Illiria asked and Sonder nodded.

  “Thirty seconds,” Rogald continued, nodding at Sonder.

  What was she supposed to do, Fiona wondered. She had been only marginally successful up to now. She had become good at picking out which ones were natural and which ones were tainted by the way their time signatures felt. It was as if the disaster was subtly wrong, thickened with a power that didn’t belong to it.

  “Twenty.”

  “Fiona, let it happen,” Sonder’s voice was harsh, as if he had been shouting. He looked disheveled, his hair at right angles and his clothes were wrinkled. The dark circles under his eyes made her wonder how long he’d been gone. She gave Illiria a hard stare.

  “Ten.”

  As Rogald continued the countdown Fiona focused, drawing into herself for her time powers. It took considerable effort to seek them out this way. Up until recently, the only time she had pulled them out was when she froze time. This anomaly, like the ones she had tested with before, had no significant impact on the downstream. If she succeeded, a few plants might get their life extended, but that was it.

  Was that what the real goal of the Liberators was? Since they were the ones sent to change things, where they felt it necessary, had they been designed to find and fight the time anomalies – and failed? It was an interesting thought.

  “One.”

  The ground started rumbling, and they heard a sound like a freight train toward them and then the noise of a quake, familiar to Fiona now. Sonder took her hand and pressed his skin against hers. She was grateful for the warmth. Like an ink stain in a white blouse, she could see the wrongness. It danced along her time sense, unseen to the naked eye, but clear with her other senses.

  She frowned and then concentrated. Focusing on the wrong, the blemish on the time stream, she reached for the sensation. Her body and the bodies of all of them were being jerked about by the quake. The rumbling continued and sand lifted off the ground and back again, particles streaming into the air.

  Around her she could see Rogald and Illiria calibrating their devices. Sonder squeezed.

  Fiona surrounded the wrong in her mind, enveloped it with her senses, and added the feeling of the black. When the wrong separated from the disaster it was like the pop of a suction cup letting go from its holder. She pushed it where it fell into the black and started to vanish. Then it surged up again and she pushed harder. It gave, and then faded.

  The ground was still rolling but the noise leveled off. Within a minute, the land stopped moving. Particulate still hung in the air and small rivulets of sand continued to shift, but the earth was solid under their feet.

  Rogald and Illiria were pressing buttons on their devices.

  “Well?” she asked with impatience. “Did it work?”

  “How did it feel?” Sonder asked.

  Fiona pressed her lips together, and then licked her top lip. “Good. Weird. I felt as if I sent the wrong part of the time stream into the blackness. It fought me.”

  “You did it,” Illiria confirmed. “Our readings are normal again.”

  “Do the Guardians and Liberators know you’re here?” Illiria had seemed to go rogue, but using their devices said to Fiona that the groups were still involved. They both nodded.

  “Why you two?” she asked. She gestured to Rogald. “You I understand. We seem to be connected. But you?” She pointed at Illiria. “You don’t like me. You’ve never liked me. I’ve got Sonder, therefore I have a Guardian, even if he’s, er, on leave. So why you?”

  Sonder took her hand again. Fiona wanted to yank it away, but let it stay.

  “I asked for her,” he said and Fiona wondered when he had asked. She felt like the player left on stage while all the events happened off of it. “You need more training than I can give you, and Illiria is the best. We needed help, kale mou.” His words offered no apology, no hint of weakness, just a recitation of the facts and a statement that told her he made the decision without consulting her. The coloring rose in her face as she fought to keep her temper. It would keep until later, but there would be a later.

  “I don’t understand, but I’ll shelve that for the time being. You’re right, I do need training. If Illiria can provide it, then as long as she can stand to be in the same room with me I guess that’s what I’m stuck with.” She looked over at Rogald, so easygoing, so cocky, a glimpse of that slouching teenager he’d been before she sent him to the 1950s showing in the way he stood, one hip canted forward. “How did you two, you know...”

  Rogald opened his mouth but Illiria jumped in. “I already told you that was none of your concern.” She shot Rogald a sharp look. “Helping her doesn’t mean trusting her with our personal business.”

  Fiona wondered if somewhere in the time line was a dog of Illiria’s she had killed, or a boyfriend she had stolen, something to make Illiria dislike her so much. The old Fiona might have been stung by that, and try harder to make Illiria like her. The new Fiona just nodded.

  “Okay, your business. So now that we’ve established I can work with the time anomalies, and that I need training, where does that leave us?” She looked at Sonder. “What did you find out from the Commander?”

  Around them the sand was settling back down, although smaller aftershocks still threatened to knock them off their feet. Now that it was just a normal moving of the earth, the quake had lost its power to terrify.

  Sonder glanced at Illiria. “Rogald’s team has a tracker system they developed and at a preset time I pulled out. I’d love to get my hands on that tech. It could benefit all of us.” He gave Rogald a questioning glance and the man shook his head. Sonder nodded, but Fiona knew his body language enough to know the subject wasn’t closed. “The Commander has many theories but there was something else.” He stopped and looked at all of them. “I think, if I was hearing his ravings correctly, that he thinks it was a descendant of his that was the one who developed the technology that was responsible for the Event.”

  Chapter 6

  Fiona blinked. “Repeat that last one back to me?”

  Sonder looked around. “Let’s go somewhere else first. Our signals are easy to track. Rogald, Illiria?” The two time travelers looked at each other, and Fiona realized something had been discussed.

  “I’ll turn it off, but only for a little while,” Illiria said. “We have a responsibility to our groups.”

  “How are you here anyway?” Fiona asked Illiria. “Isn’t this against all your rules?”

  “We’re not stupid,” Rogald said. “You’re the wild card we’ve all been waiting for. We thought we could recruit you for our side, use you to help change things. The fact that you don’t need tech to jump, the fact that you don’t fade…remarkable. But once it became clear you were that person, and you did what you had done in the past.” He stopped as Fiona gave him a puzzled look. “Sending me back to the 1950s, of course. We didn’t want to act until you had done that in case you didn’t do it. We had to be sure.”

  Fiona’s head swum with all the paradoxes, but she nodded. If she hadn’t have sent him back, then what would have happened? Would the older Rogald, or perhaps Illiria, have intervened to send Rogald back and ensure that his time line remained the same? What if the Commander had succeeded? Would Rogald have winked out as a member of the Liberators forever, never knowing of the destiny that he had missed? It was enough to drive a person insane. Illiria had said that the time stream didn’t like to be changed, but Fiona knew there had to be exceptions.

  “It made sense to pool our resources, with you in the picture,” he continued. “As much as possible we keep things pure, although it is inevitable that the mix of time travelers will mean some information is available. Sometimes you encounter someone who has met you already in their past but your future and they start talking to you about things you know nothing about. When that happens, and it has happened to all of us, it’s weird.”

  Illiria grudgingly picked up the thread. “With the Commander AWOL we decided that we nee
ded to work together, to stop him and to help you. We have had indications from other travelers that we did this.” She looked at Sonder. “Your decision to go with her wasn’t unexpected. Did you ever wonder why we didn’t force you to stay?”

  He nodded. “I knew.” Fiona gaped at him. This was one more piece of information he had never shared with her. “I got enough from future travelers to realize that many things changed after Fiona’s arrival, and I was no longer part of the Guardian force. It doesn’t take a genius to put it together.”

  Her head was pounding, their voices seeming to come from far away.

  “The dreams,” she said, and her words were directed at Sonder. “Were they ever ours or were they sent?” Now she didn’t know if they had ever been real or if she’d been manipulated into thinking he was the man of her dreams.

  He looked at her for a long time. “The dreams, everything between us, that is real. Nothing changes that.”

  Fiona kept her face impassive but knew he could see the doubt and uncertainty swimming in her eyes. Or perhaps those were tears.

  “We should keep moving,” Rogald said. “We’ve been here too long. Fiona, will you do the honors?” He beamed her a picture from his wrist. It looked like a field, an open space somewhere in a tropical area, if the palm trees were any indication. “We need to strategize our next step.”

  We, Fiona thought. A we that included Illiria, who didn’t like her, but who had saved their lives in Santorini. But she had done that for Rogald, it seemed, and not out of love for Fiona or Sonder. Would she have done the same if it had just been the pair? Or would she have let the Commander do his worst?

  Fiona didn’t know the answers. She didn’t think she’d like them if she did.