by S. E. Babin
He pointed to one of the smaller wingback chairs I stood beside. “Sit,” he ordered.
He was much less frenetic than usual. It made me nervous. I sat.
“Penelope,” he began, his voice calm and soothing, “I know you have only been here for a little while, but we do things a little different around here.”
No shit, I thought. I crossed my arms and stared at him.
“When you come into a new organization, you should at least try to fit in. While I do understand your situation is a little more...delicate, making a fuss as soon as you arrive is in poor form.”
Anger caused my hands to shake. I swallowed hard, clenching my teeth together.
“Furthermore, while I do know our quarters are old, they are certainly serviceable for living. I do not hope to think—”
I’d had enough. “Serviceable for living?” I scoffed. “I had a half-inch layer of dust on my pants after sitting on the ground for five minutes. The cabinets are hanging off their hinges and the lightbulbs don’t even work. Those were worse than military dormitories. At least those are clean.”
My father’s lips thinned.
“Furthermore,” I stressed in a seriously sarcastic tone, “my situation is so far beyond delicate it isn’t even funny. Do the people here know who I am or what you did to our entire genetic line?”
He reeled back like I’d slapped him. Guilt shot through my body but I pressed on. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask for all the weirdness going on. I didn’t ask for a relationship from you and I certainly didn’t ask to get placed in a rat infested hovel of a living area when I was perfectly content to live in my own apartment.”
I glared at him and stopped talking. We sat there staring at each other for a few moments in tense silence, until my father snorted and finally grinned. Even though he still looked like he wanted to choke me, I thought maybe my words had sunk in.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a woman’s touch around here.”
Even though that was a little bit insulting considering it seemed like he was equating cleanliness with women, I decided to wait.
He scratched his chin, a thoughtful look appearing on his handsome face. “I do suppose the dorms could do with a spring cleaning.”
“You should burn those dorms,” I said, anger still simmering beneath the surface of my words. “How many people are here right now who use those dorms?”
I wasn’t sure what I expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t, “Hundreds.”
My eyes widened. “Hundreds,” I echoed.
He nodded.
“Then why does it look so deserted outside?” When Mr. Friendly had marched me down the hall, we hadn’t seen another soul.
“Everyone is in training or out on missions.”
“Missions?” I was beginning to feel like a parrot.
“I would have thought Watson would have briefed you by now.” He seemed irritated, and I was glad the light was low in here because I could feel a slight, heated blush creeping up my cheeks. Watson and I had been too busy doing other things to talk logistics.
“No,” I said. “We didn’t have enough time, I guess.” I was amazed my voice sounded normal.
If he noticed anything off, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he slipped off his glasses, picked up a white cloth resting on top of his desk, and proceeded to clean his glasses meticulously as he spoke. This was the second time I’d seen him do this. Was it a nervous habit or did he just really like clean glasses?
“You are one of the last true Time Wardens, Penelope. We are a dying race. A dying breed. I need you here with me.”
This was the second time I’d heard the term Time Warden and I still didn’t know what the hell it was. “What exactly is a Time Warden?”
He shook his head, and muttered, “Just what exactly was John doing all the time he was with you?”
I bit my lip and shrugged.
“We are gatekeepers of time, if you will. We enforce the rules and laws of time travel, prevent corrupt influences from altering history, and keep the universe stable.”
I blinked. “Oh, is that all?”
My father’s eyebrows snapped together. “Isn’t that enough?”
I bit my lip again to keep from laughing. Must not forget Daddy Dearest is immune to sarcasm. “Kidding. So, where are all the other Time Wardens?”
A shadow crossed his face. “Gone.”
Talking to him was getting me absolutely nowhere. “Gone where?” I prodded. “On vacation? Workman’s comp leave? Where?”
His serious gaze met mine. “Most of them are dead.”
My heart sank. How was that even possible? “What happened?”
He shrugged. “Many things happened, Penelope. War. Coups. Suicide.”
A thought occurred to me. “So, who are the hundreds of people here now if they aren’t Time Wardens?”
“They are soldiers. They do not have the full powers of a Time Warden. We equip them with a DAR bracelet and send them on missions. However, if they lose that DAR or something happens to it, they could be stuck wherever and whenever they landed.”
Something wasn’t adding up. “But what makes Time Wardens so special?” I lifted my wrist to show off my DAR. “I need one of these too, right?”
My father gave me a sad smile. “No, you don’t.” He motioned for me to give him my arm. I leaned over the desk and presented it to him. He snapped it off with one quick motion.
“Time Wardens are able to travel at will.”
I almost swallowed my tongue. “Then why give me the DAR?”
Holmes chuckled. “Think of it as training wheels.”
The ramifications of what he just told me spun through my head. Holy crap. Can you imagine the kind of terror I could have put my mom through had I only known with one blink and a ponytail bob I could have been in 1623? I took my wrist back and rubbed the place the bracelet had sat for the last couple of days.
My interest was piqued. “So, what else can we do?”
Holmes’ expression closed. “You’ll find out soon enough, Penelope. True Time Warden training takes years. We only have a few months.”
On that cryptic note, my father stopped polishing his unnecessary eyeglasses, put them back on, and said, “We will see to new dormitories. In the meantime, there is an efficiency apartment we use for visiting dignitaries you will stay in. Parker will see you there.”
With that, he picked up a sheath of papers and began studying them as if I were no longer in the room. Sensing I’d been effectively dismissed, I turned around, picked my way out of the darkened room, and found the door out.
Mr. Friendly, possibly named Parker, stood there waiting for me with a blank expression on his face.
“Parker, I presume?” I held out my hand to him.
“Yes, Miss Wilde,” he said in a soft baritone, grasping my hand in his massive paw and giving it a shake.
“Nice to meet you.” I took my hand back and adjusted my duffle. “Can you show me to the dignitary quarters?”
Something flickered through his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. Parker nodded once and turned to walk away. Assuming I should follow him, I kept pace slightly behind him. I was much, much shorter than him and having a hard time keeping up.
“The dormitories will be redone,” I said in polite conversation as we continued to walk. I’d never seen this place from the outside, but from the inside, it felt like this building was acres and acres across.
“Huh,” Parker said, and kept walking.
He was a man of very few words.
“Is that a good ‘huh’?” I pried, trying not to sound breathless as I kept up with his brisk pace.
“I don’t like change much, Miss Wilde.”
So he was that kind of guy. “Penelope,” I corrected. “Change can be good.”
He shook his head once in the negative. “Rarely is change good, Miss Wilde.”
“Penelope,” I said again. “Change is often good.”
For such a handsome guy, I wondered briefly if Parker was playing with a full deck. I studied him out of the corner of my eye. He was blond with a military high and tight cut. His nose was hawkish and from the looks of it, broken a time or four. Parker sported a cruel scar extending from his eyebrow down to the middle of his cheek. It was thin and white, so it must have happened a long time ago. It was a miracle he’d kept his sight. Then I remembered who I was the daughter of and wondered if it was really miraculous at all. His upper lip was thin, but his lower lip was juicy and full. He was like a slightly thinner, slightly less chiseled version of Dolph Lundgren, complete with badass spy apparel.
“Like what you see?” Parker drawled, a small smile forming on those beautiful lips.
I coughed in embarrassment. “Sorry. Have you ever seen The Expendables?”
Parker laughed out loud, which made me smile. It was such an open and friendly laugh. I knew he had it in him. There was something so refreshing and appealing about him, even with his Nordic good looks. While we had hit it off on the wrong foot, I hoped we could get over that because I was pretty sure I liked him. Not in a dreamy, swoony way, even though Parker totally had it in him to make the girls swoon, but because he seemed like a decent guy and I knew only Watson and Holmes—one of which was being super standoffish, and the other would be cryptic even if you asked him what peanut butter contained.
We stopped in front of two large silver doors. Parker did something fancy with his DAR and I shuffled my feet around, trying to appear like I knew what the hell was going on. The doors slid open with a whoosh and Parker gestured for me to walk in ahead of him. I did so with a bit of trepidation. You never knew what the heck was going to happen around here, so I walked slowly, but not enough to appear like I was scared.
I was scared, though. A little.
Parker stepped ahead of me and I followed, taking in the sights. Holmes had built himself an impressive empire here. Though, this part was different than the rest of what I’d seen so far, so I was a little bit confused. Behind me, everything was vintage or antique. Lots of coppers and browns, disuse and dust. Weird clocks and even weirder people. Here, it was all business. People walked around looking very important while wearing white lab coats and trendy spectacles. It looked like we were in a laboratory. But that would be weird since I was supposed to be going to the dignitary headquarters.
The floor was a highly polished chrome. Bright white walls and ceilings gave the large area a starkly modern look. Tables, some filled with electronic equipment and some with beakers full of strange liquids, lined the room, one behind the other. At least two people sat behind those desks, their heads bent over their work in deep concentration.
The weirdest thing of all was how quiet it was. There was a slight electronic hum, the clicking of a woman’s heels across the floor, and the occasional whisper of a printer, but there was zero conversation.
“Are these androids or something?” I stage whispered over to Parker.
He rolled his eyes and put a finger to his lips. I blinked, shrugged, and shut my mouth. He strode quickly through the room, silent like a predator. I envied him his stealth. I was wearing sandals, so the slap, slap, slap of my shoes against the chrome floor sounded like multiple gunshots. I tried to walk softer, but it just made me look like a loping gorilla.
After what seemed like forever, we reached the end of Holmes’ bizarre whatever the hell that was and stood in front of two different silver doors. Parker repeated his weird bracelet ritual and again, the doors whooshed open to reveal a small apartment. While it was definitely not luxurious, it was at least clean, borderline sterile, and had a small kitchen.
I stepped inside and turned to Parker. “These are the dignitary quarters?”
Parker smirked. “There are no dignitary quarters here, Miss Wilde. You should really get to know Mr. Holmes better.” With that, he shut the door behind him, leaving me staring at it with a confused look.
So this is what I get for being a brat. I set my bag down by the edge of the bed and studied my surroundings. It wasn’t too bad, even if it did resemble a hospital room. A modern one, I guess. The room had the same chrome floor and bright white walls as the lab. It made me a little nervous. Is this where they keep psyche patients or something? Silver pendulum lights hung from the ceiling. I took the few steps into the kitchen and opened up some of the cabinets. There were pots, pans and some plates, cups and utensils, but it was sparse.
It would do for a while, until I figured out where the heck I could go grocery shopping at. I wasn’t even sure what town I was in. I pulled open the shiny chrome refrigerator and saw only water bottles and some red apples in the bottom fruit tree. Either the person here before was a supermodel, or this room was rarely used.
I trudged back over to the bed and sat down to think about my next step. Since it didn’t appear my life was my own anymore, I wasn’t sure whether I was allowed to do anything or I had to ask how high when someone told me to jump. I sighed and slipped off my shoes. The bed wasn’t so bad, not as good as the plush pillow-top I had back home, but it would do for now. The blankets were a drab brown, but the sheets smelled somewhat fresh. I slipped into the bed and closed my eyes for a few minutes.
Chapter 12
I awoke to a soft knock and the sound of my door being pushed open. I sat up abruptly, brushed my hair out of my face, and scrubbed my hand across my face.
Watson popped his head in the door, his face unreadable. “Penelope, your presence is required in the arena.”
Arena? I blinked. “The what?”
“Arena,” Watson sighed in annoyance. “This is where we normally train, but today, your father wants to introduce you.”
“Oh joy.” I pushed the blankets aside and sat on the edge of my bed with my head in between my hands. “He has to do this today?”
Watson chuckled. “Holmes has his own special way of doing things. You’ll get used to it.”
I didn’t know that I would. “Fine.” I stood up and tried to brush the wrinkles out of my shirt. I expected to hear the door close, but Watson stepped inside and closed it behind him.
I looked up at him as he extended a clothing bag toward me. My quizzical look only seemed to amuse him.
“Is this prom or something?” I hesitantly reached out and took the bag, but I really, really didn’t want to open it.
“Not quite,” he said, amusement in his tone. “I’ll wait outside while you get dressed.”
He turned away, his hand hovering over the knob. “Penelope—”
I interrupted him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened back there. I was being a brat and things got out of hand. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”
He turned back to me, his honey gaze searching. “Out of hand?”
“Yes.” I nodded once and prayed he walked out of my room before I jumped on him again. He smelled good. He looked good. I wanted to say so many things, but I was giving him an easy out. I wasn’t sure where all these possessive feelings were coming from. I certainly wasn’t used to them. I never had a lot of boyfriends before, but the ones I did have I’d never felt so grabby toward. I wanted to pull Watson down to that crappy bed I just got out of and do horrible things to him. It had to be the serum. It was the serum. Had to be. I was screaming inside.
“And that’s all?”
No, that’s not all, I wanted to shout, but I smiled politely and nodded. “That’s all. My apologies, Watson. It won’t happen again.”
Something flickered over his expression before his face cleared and he gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Of course. Please accept my apologies as well.” He opened the door and stepped outside.
I wanted to throw myself on the bed like a lovesick teenager and cry it out. Being an adult was really not much fun. A sick feeling twisted in my stomach. It would be a terrible idea to get involved with Watson. I knew this, yet I craved his presence. I tossed the garment bag on the bed and unzipped it. I needed to stop thinking abo
ut him and get on with this new life. Whatever it might be.
The garment staring back at me was some weird Hunger Games-esque space suit looking things. It was leather…at least, I thought it was, and black. Royal blue stripes rested on the shoulders and down the sides of the jacket and pants. I rummaged around in the bottom of the bag only to pull out royal blue combat boots and a pair of long black socks. Who wore blue combat boots? Certainly no one trying to sneak around in the woods—or anywhere, for that matter.
I laid everything out on the bed and giggled. I was going to look ridiculous in this. I stripped out of my clothing, except my tank top, and pulled everything on. It was more comfortable than I’d expected. I squatted down and the leather moved with me seamlessly.
“Huh,” I said out loud. I padded into the bathroom in my bare feet and flipped the light on. There wasn’t a full length mirror, but there was one located over the sink so I could see myself from the waist up.
It wasn’t…terrible. I still looked like I belonged in a novel, but I guess it would do—for a little while, at least. I pulled my hair down and rewound the thick bun back around the top of my head. I looked tired, but it was to be expected. I padded back over to the bed and put my socks and those ridiculous combat boots on. They weren’t as comfortable, but boots always needed to be broken in. Maybe I wouldn’t have to wear these long enough to break them in.
I left everything in the room and went outside to join Watson, who was leaning against the edge of my door. He straightened when he saw me, his gaze flicking down my body and back up to my eyes. Heat simmered in his eyes and I self-consciously pulled the zipper on the jacket up a little bit higher. Even though the leather wasn’t tight, it did squeeze me a bit and put the girls on a little bit more of a display than I was used to.
I cleared my throat because the hallway was getting a little bit hot. “Ready?”
Watson blinked. “This way,” he said, his voice hoarse. He left me to follow him and I couldn’t help the slow grin that slid over my face. Watson liked leather. Good to know.
I stared at the sight in front of me. Watson hadn’t been kidding when he used the word “arena”. Was this place in some kind of strange warped time and space vacuum or something? I’d never seen the outside, but from what I could tell about the inside, this place was seriously ginormous, and it was quite possible my father was filthy, dirty, Richard Branson rich.
