The Time Ender

by Debra Chapoton

  THE TIME ENDER

  by Debra Chapoton

  copyright 2018 by Debra Chapoton

  cover art by Boone Patchard

  Praise for THE TIME BENDER series:

  “I thoroughly enjoyed The Time Bender. Debra Chapoton has once again entertained and delighted me with her world building and lovable characters.” Norma Tolman Rudolph, author, Norma's Novels

  "Action, romance, mystery, suspense, and surprising twists--The Time Bender has it all. You'll care about the fate of the characters from page one until the exciting end." Tifani Clark, author

  The Time Ender

  Book 4 in the Time Bender series

  CHAPTER 1

  #VinesandBoots

  “ANYBODY GOT A knife?” I asked. Of course they didn’t. Alex and Coreg’s hands were tied behind their backs with Klaqin vines just like mine were. I bent forward and slid my hands against my backside in an acrobatic attempt to bring my hands in front. “Wait. I think I can … yeah … call me a contortionist.”

  “You’re a contortionist,” Alex said as I succeeded in bringing my arms under my knees. I stepped back through the ring my arms made, trying not to laugh at his silly comment. I wasn’t going to be one of those hysterical types. Emoji: tongue stuck out.

  With my hands in front I moved toward Alex to unknot his bindings. I could still feel ripples of laughter attempting to gurgle up through my chest. I gulped to stifle them, but they emerged through my nose in short painful grunts.

  “Untie me first, Selina,” Coreg said.

  “Don’t think so,” I clipped back. Ho-ho, score one for the pale little Earth girl.

  I worked at Alex’s vines, but who would have thought that slimy green vines could knot up so hard, plus the way my hands were bound I couldn’t work my thumbs very well. I might have let a few unsavory Earth expressions seep through my teeth. I took a deep breath and said, “Hashtag, Plan B.” If I could bite through the vines I might as well start with my own. I lifted my hands to my mouth and chomped on the slimy mess.

  “No! If they’re pechan vines … Marcum told me they’re poisonous.” Coreg’s outcry didn’t stop me. We were as good as dead anyway since we were tied up and locked in a room ten stories underground in this long abandoned city on the planet Klaqin. Why we—Alex and me—ever decided to cross the universe with a-hole Coreg escaped me now … oh, yeah, we have mad, awesome skills that could be useful in their interplanetary wars. Of course I did get a boyfriend out of the deal what with Alex promoting himself from best friend to galactic kisser … on the second try.

  A couple bites and tugs and the vines slipped away. I spit out strands of the bitter stuff and smiled. “I’m okay.” I knelt behind Alex and bit through his bonds almost as quickly. “There. Now for the door. Kick away.”

  I totally ignored Coreg’s protests. We would untie him eventually, but it felt good to have the upper hand for once.

  Alex did some martial arts kicks. He didn’t make so much as a dent in the door, but the sounds were loud enough they could bring the guards back.

  “Untie me and I’ll show you what these boots can do.” Coreg’s face changed colors. Greener, if that was possible. Hard to tell in the dim light.

  Alex kicked one more time and then said, “Fine, dude, but—” He didn’t finish his thought, just spun Coreg around to work on his bindings.

  No luck.

  “Let me.” I squatted down and bit and tore at the knot between his wrists. The vines shredded, fell off and Coreg rushed the door. He wasn’t any more violent than Alex, but his boots must have had gun powder or some powerful Klaqin element in the heels. The door burst away and there was a huge indentation where his boot hit.

  The next instant we heard an explosion back in the direction we’d come from. Great. Tying us up and locking us in wasn’t enough; the guards had probably sealed us down here for good.

  “Alex.” Suddenly I wasn’t feeling too hot. Or rather I was. Hot. And drooling. Crap, I felt my butt hit the ground first. I rolled back and my head and hands hit next, and either the ground or I went rubbery soft. I sank in. And the air … it was like I was breathing hot syrup.

  My vision narrowed to black, my mouth went numb, the sound of Alex’s voice diminished and then … nothing.

  ***

  ALEX KNELT AT Selina’s side and held her head.

  “Hey, come on, this isn’t the time for one of your episodes.” He wiped the colored drool from her cheek and glanced back at Coreg. He’d seen Selina through plenty of her inexplicable and rigid seizures, stuck by her side at school and defended her against the cruel comments their classmates made. Recently, after they left Earth, he learned of her astounding ability to bend time, slowing it so a nano-second could be used like an hour. The Klaqins were right in thinking she’d be useful to assist precision aiming in their battles. As for him, Alex discovered he had a complementary power: time-pacing, allowing him to skip ahead or speed up time, especially useful in the long-distance cross-galaxy cruise.

  Coreg clucked his tongue. “Told you they were poison. They probably have an antidote up topside. Wait here and I’ll locate a riser.”

  Alex didn’t waste time on questions, assuming a riser meant elevator. He’d been underground on Klaqin before and traveled by chutes and cages and probably risers.

  Coreg returned and helped him carry Selina farther down the passageway, away from the explosion.

  “Did you hear that?” Alex said, shifting to take more of Selina’s upper body into his arms. “Voices.”

  “If it’s a search party, it won’t be friendly. There, under that arch.” Coreg shifted his hold on Selina’s legs then dropped her feet to the ground, stepped over a pile of metallic litter and reached high to touch a hidden panel. A door under the arch split open and Alex dragged Selina forward. Coreg stepped forward to help and the three of them wound up crammed into the riser, Selina with her eyes closed and Alex and Coreg with their eyes locked in a testy stare down. The door closed and the contraption shot upwards, Selina’s unconscious body wedged between them. Alex, tight-lipped and tense, dropped his gaze first to readjust his hold around Selina’s waist.

  They ascended into the middle of a plickken field. The riser dropped back as soon as they managed to pull Selina out. Alex scooped her up and carried her like a child while Coreg trotted alongside of him, heading toward the nearest structure. They trampled pechans and disregarded the deafening squeals of the plants.

  They were half way to the house when Marcum’s clear command behind them reached their ears. “Ehk! Stop! Wait!”

  Coreg halted and ordered Alex to stop too with the same Klaqin word and a sharp jerk on Alex’s arm, nearly causing him to drop Selina. Marcum raced toward them, kicking off his shoes as he bounded over the plants, vines, and roots. When he reached them he stared at Selina’s drooping head.

  “I can heal her,” he said. “Let me take her.”

  “Uh-uh. We made a pledge to one another. On Azoss. Not lettin’ her go.” Alex hummed a few notes of an old Sergio Mendes song. On Earth he’d been suspicious of Marcum, a black-haired Superman lookalike, had punched him on Azoss for kissing Selina, but had accepted Selina’s insistence on trusting Marcum over Coreg.

  Marcum put one hand on Alex’s shoulder and the other on Selina’s, planning to put the three of them into a time-stoppage. Coreg started to object, but his words turned to stone as did every limb of his body as Marcum pushed himself to perform a space-specific stoppage.

  “She bit the vines to free us,” Alex blubbered.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Coreg said they’re poisonous.”

  “They are. If you’d stayed underground, out of the sunlight, she might have tolerated the poison. But—” Marcum bit
his lip. His feelings for Selina had hit him hard when he first met her and grown stronger until circumstances sent her and Alex to Klaqin and him back to Earth.

  “You’re crying,” Alex said.

  ***

  I FLOATED BELOW the surface of consciousness, aware of Alex and Coreg and movement, voices, and other things in the air-breathing world, but I could not breathe.

  Hands pressed against my flesh and my head flopped against something familiar, something like a beating drum. Voices spoke near me, muffled and meaningless, with words I should have understood, but didn’t: antidote, ehk and azoss. No sense could penetrate my liquid brain, no logic interpreted the shift in movement. Voices grew louder then changed to non-human sounds though some deep part of me accepted they were plants screaming. Feathers of thoughts winged around in my head, hung like wisps of spider webs, elusive and fine, yet pulsating with some mysterious hidden meaning.

  Without meaning to I breathed again. I felt the pull of an anxious clock, with its second hand stuck, its inner workings wound too tightly. The voices had changed. Alex, yes. But Coreg, no. It was Marcum’s quivering English, vaguely accented, that drew me.

  And then Alex said the most unexpected thing and I knew I was in his arms.

  “Who’s crying?” I asked. My weakened voice chilled the air, or so I thought, the space around me boiled. A time stoppage. Right. I cleared my throat and demanded in a stronger tone. “Alex, put me down.”

  He obeyed me and I saw Marcum’s hands drop too. He wiped at his eyes. I dabbed my mouth with my sleeve and avoided his eyes. Down was a good place to look. Old habit.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yeah, hey, call the archaeologists.” I pointed at the ground. “There are Indian arrowheads in your garden. And Marc, where are your shoes?”

  We all looked at his feet. He lifted one and then the other. His socks were ragged and a couple spots of blood were splattered on the thorns I’d called arrowheads.

  I didn’t care that no one answered me because I was enjoying some amazingly good shivers. Yet the air maintained its oven heat. I may have burped or maybe that was another throat clearing, anyway I took a deep, deep breath and hummed out an expression of good-to-be-alive relief.

  Alex grabbed Marcum’s hand and shook it wildly. “You did it. Your power … This is incredible. She’s fine. Thank you!” They snorted quick laughs, but I swear their sudden change in demeanor was hiding some forbidden or possibly embarrassing emotion. Alex put his arm around my waist and jiggled me. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Then I noticed Coreg. Stiff and standing board-like with a sweat glazed face.

  Alex followed my gaze. I gave him the one eyebrow up question and he smiled, first at me and then at the rigid image of Coreg. “Hey, Marcum, why don’t you borrow Coreg’s boots?” he said, swatting a hand at Marcum’s arm. “And let’s leave him in the field. I’ll pace us away.”

  News flash: Coreg wasn’t part of this time-stoppage. Too bad for him. And double good for me because Marcum’s time-stopping included magical healing power. Awesome. There was still a bitter taste in my mouth, but the effects of the poisonous vines were reversed. Me: giddy. I gave Coreg a little shove. Oops. My action knocked him on his you-know-what. The guys each grabbed an end and lifted him like a mannequin. We headed to Marcum’s place with Alex constantly monitoring my ability to walk unaided.

  ***

  I WAS SURPRISED at how much neater Marcum’s house was than when Alex and I had come through here before. They’d fixed the roof and the inside walls were whole and the floor cleaned up too. I wondered how Marcum’s parents, Krimar and Pauro, would greet us—three galactic travelers carrying one stiff time-stopped Fifth Commander—and if they would agree to confine Coreg while we flew away. But if we found them here they’d no doubt be statues too.

  “Let’s set him on the floor,” Marcum said. He and Alex were fairly gentle in lowering my cousin … if you can call dropping him the last foot gentle. He didn’t bounce, didn’t move, didn’t react any more than one of my brother Buddy’s toy soldiers. Thinking of Buddy made me miss my family and I guess I sighed then. The guys must have thought I was feeling sorry for Coreg because Marcum told me not to worry that any damage to Coreg would heal in the time-stoppage. For sure he was making that up because we were the ones in the time-stoppage. But he was right about healing. I felt awesome and when I looked at my hands my skin was a new shade, not pink or blue or even green.

  Marcum made a weird sound then, a laugh I guess, as he discarded his socks and worked on removing Coreg’s tight boots. He grumbled a bit as the releasing mechanism stuck, but a moment later the boots opened from top to toe and Marcum slipped them on his own feet.

  “I’ll leave a message for my father,” he said. He messed with his thumb ring, spoke a few words and then motioned for Alex to help him pick up Coreg again. This time I helped a little as we made our way toward an outbuilding that Alex and I had hidden in before. I glanced at Alex and wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking: we should stick Coreg in that stinky pit. I wondered if Marcum had encountered practical jokes on Earth.

  Nope, he had a different plan, pretty tame.

  “All righty, dighty,” Marcum said. Time out, he sounded like Alex’s father, which made sense if he really did spend eight months on Earth with him. “To the Fighter Five, where we’ll meet a few new Academy recruits. I think you’ll like them, Selina.”

  On the way to the ship Marcum explained how he trained dozens of females in “no time at all” chuckle, chuckle, and how they would help us. When I saw Renzen and Makril and the others I stuttered out a greeting before I registered their stiff postures. Marcum resumed time and they reanimated. Renzen and Makril, the first friendly people I met on this planet, were all right. Surprise, surprise, they spoke perfect English though Makril’s consonants bordered on sandpaper sounds. Marcum explained how he had stopped time for them to learn fighting and flying and multiple languages, like English and Chinese. That made me think of Mingzhu and how much I missed her too. I gave each girl a hug, something I never did on Earth.

  We filed into the Fighter Five and strapped ourselves in. Alex sat at my side and all female eyes were fixed on how we were holding hands. Cue the green eyes of jealousy. As for me I directed my eyes to the single recognizable piece of equipment on the ship: a digital clock. My father, or maybe my grandfather, had added this familiar component on Earth. The seconds ticked off in regular beats, comforting, but then the numbers started spinning. Broken, I supposed.

  The tone of the cabin changed and the girls shifted their attention away from me and Alex and our cozy hand-holding as Marcum powered up the Fighter Five. An alarm beeped.

  “It’s an emergency message,” he said. In a stiff voice he read out, “One thousand unidentified starships in space alley.”

  The other girls gasped, so universally feminine, and Alex cracked the knuckles on his other hand by pressing them against his knee.

  “What’s that mean?” he asked. “Should we join an offensive group and attack them there? We don’t have enough protective helmets.”

  I was suspicious. “Wait. Hold your horses. Why are they unidentified? Who sent you that message?”

  Marcum turned the comm toward us though he had to know we couldn’t possibly interpret the Klaqin symbols. “It’s a standard alert, sent from a space alley guard ship.” He returned the portable comm to the control panel and pressed it in until the bio-metals accepted it. So cool.

  “Isn’t the space alley the route you take to and from Earth? Why are the Gleezhians there?” I asked. I thought I had a pretty good point and I was, of course, hoping a thousand starships meant an invasion from Earth … my dad, Alex’s dad, special forces, red, white and blue flags.

  Marcum didn’t open his mouth.

  “Dude,” Alex said, using his favorite out-of-date expression as the girls listened like polite citizens, “if it’s possible, your skin just got a whole l
ot paler. What are you thinking? If it’s not a Gleezhian attack, could it be an army from Earth? Our dads?” Naturally Alex’s thought process would be the same as mine; we were so much alike. I lifted my hand to rub at my nose—our old signal that I liked him—and then he did the same. His lips hinted at a smile.

  Marcum pointed a finger at us. “You told me I got here shortly after you did even though I spent nearly a year on Earth. Perhaps your dads have had time to finish the project and years have passed there while only double-moons and mistings have passed since I’ve been back here.”

  We nodded our heads as one. Some of the girls acted confused by our English conversation, so Alex leaned their way and whispered quick summaries to them. An unaccustomed stab of jealousy sprang up somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. Huh, that was new.

  The Five’s screen started to flash a warning and the girl to Makril’s left made a startled sound.

  “We should launch,” Renzen said. She waved two fingers at the bottom screen and her cheeks turned cobalt blue.

  The camera showed Coreg running—barefoot—toward our ship. Clearly he had reanimated when the girls did and found his way out of the storage room under the barn, where we stashed him.

  Marcum slipped his boots into the piloting divots and smirked at the screen. “First thing we’ll do is make contact.” He totally ignored Coreg’s advancing. “Alex, use the helmet comm and see if they respond to English.”

  The Fighter Five rose into the atmosphere and hovered quietly twenty feet above one hopping mad alien.

  “Yes,” Alex said. He rubbed his nose again and I signaled back, willing that jealous bone to wither. “Yes, it’s them. Our dads. A whole American air force on ships like the Galaxer. Awesome.”

  “Do they have a plan?”

  “They’re sending my dad ahead. He’s pacing. He’ll meet us behind the second moon.”

  CHAPTER 2

  #StopTheMerryGoRound