Time's Mirror: A CHRONOS Files Novella (The CHRONOS Files) (13 page)

June 16, 2024 6:01 a.m.

I feel the change in the air on my skin before my eyes open. Everything smells real here—earthy and alive. A soft buzz surrounds me. Crickets, maybe.

When I open my eyes, I’m near the back of the banyan tree. The aerial roots hanging down around me make it look more like dozens of trees instead of just one. Closer to the building, I see the guy on the bench, still looking down at whatever is in his hand.

Farther away, Saul—if it even
is
Saul—moves at a rapid clip toward the gate. The burqa fans out behind him as he rushes past the information booth, unmanned at this early hour.

I slip the key into my back pocket and take off toward the gate, dodging banyan roots as I go.

But someone calls my name before I even clear the tree. It’s the guy from the bench.

How in hell does he know my name?

I ignore him and keep moving. Saul is about to turn onto the sidewalk that runs along the white picket fence bordering the estate. If I don’t hurry, I’ll lose him.

A hand grabs my upper arm just as I reach the outer edge of the banyan. “You need to wait, Pru.”

I give one confused look back at the sidewalk, but I can’t even see Saul now due to the tall shrubs. At that moment, a wave of dizziness hits me and I lean against one of the tree’s twisted prop roots for support.

I can feel the bark of the tree against my back. I can feel this idiot’s fingers digging into my upper arm. I
know
these things are real.

But I also remember when he
didn’t
stop me. I didn’t hear him yell my name, and I didn’t get socked in the stomach with this…whatever this dizzy sensation is. I picked up my pace and caught up to Saul less than half a block outside the gate.

My mind insists both of these things happened. But that’s impossible. Right?

“Prudence? You need to listen, okay? Following Saul is a
bad
idea. You did that once, and yeah, it eventually works out, sort of, but this way will be much faster.”

He’s talking like I’m a child. Not a very bright one, either.

“Who
are
you?” I take several quick steps backward, away from him, nearly tripping over my feet in the process. “How do you know me?”

After heaving an overly dramatic sigh, he smiles. The expression reminds me of the tiger from that
Jungle Book
movie Deb dragged me to the theater to see last summer. I don’t trust that smile, not one little bit.

“It’s
complicated,
” he says, stretching the smile even wider. “The name is Simon. Saul—and you, actually—sent me here to make your adjustment go more smoothly…”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to reconcile another memory as it floods in. Or is it a memory? It’s like it’s happening now, at the same time this guy is talking.

I catch up with Saul. I grab his sleeve and he shoves me backward, into the fence and takes off running. I yell the word Campbell told me to say—
zwischenzug
. Tate says it a chess term they appropriated for some history game they play. Even though it makes zero sense to me, the word stops Saul dead in his tracks.

Back in reality number two, Simon is saying, “…going to have to trust me, Pru. All of this is a bit disorienting at first, but we’ll be able to move a lot faster this way, because we already know the things you’ve done. How and when you did them. What went wrong, what went right.”

I pull away and go to the bench, clutching my head in my hands.

He sits down next to me. “You’re remembering catching up to Saul, right? Giving him that CHRONOS diary you’re carrying, the one with the messages.”

The diary and a few other items I didn’t want to leave behind are in my purse. The game plan was for me to give the diary to Saul right after I said the
zwischenzug
code word.

I clutch the purse tighter and slide toward the other end of the bench. There’s no way I’m turning anything over to this guy. My gut is screaming that he’s not a friend, not an ally, even though something about him seems familiar.

“After Saul looks at the diary, the two of you go off and eat donuts or cookies or whatever.” Simon’s voice takes on a snide tone as he continues. “And Saul gets all emotional ’cause you’re his baby girl all grown up, and he never got to see you toddle around in your diapers and pick your nose and watch TV. All that dad stuff he missed.”

He pauses, like he’s expecting me to respond. When I don’t, he goes on. “Come on. You know I’m telling you the truth about that first part, because you can
remember
it. You remember catching Saul, right?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I don’t
know
!” I scream. “How can I remember something that didn’t happen?”

“Well, it
did
happen. Just in a slightly modified timeline. You’re wearing the key, so you’re going to remember both events. So will Saul. I wasn’t here the first time around, so I’m okay, but I’ve had double memories. They’re a little disconcerting at first, but you get used to them, and Saul thinks it will be easier on everyone if we skip you forward. You’ll remember what you need to, and we’ll get a lot more accomplished while you’re still young enough to be useful. Now, if you’ll just give me your key—”

My hand slides into the pocket of my shorts, but I don’t pull out the CHRONOS key. Instead, I pull out the little device Tate insisted I carry, once it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to talk me out of going. It’s about the size of my pinky, and it has a button on the end that you twist and then depress. Tate called it a masher-basher, and said it should disable an opponent for about two minutes. Long enough for me to run away or use the key to return to 2306.

“Back off,” I say to Simon. “You’re not touching my key.”

Simon holds his hands up. “I just want to transfer some coordinates! You don’t need that. Just hand me the key. I’ll give it right back.”

“No. You heard me. Now. Back. Off.”

He takes two steps away, rolling his eyes. “As usual, you are one truly unreasonable bitch. Fine. Fine. Have it your way.”

Simon pulls a CHRONOS key out of his pocket and tosses it to me. Then he turns around. Even with his back to me, I can tell he’s reaching down the front of his pants.

I squinch my face in disgust. He catches the expression as he turns back toward me. “Had to get my spare out. Since you’re being
unreasonable
. The first stable point on that key I tossed you? That’s a little place Saul calls Nuevo Reino. The rest of us just call it the Farm. It’s about ten miles from here, but that stable point is a couple years in the future. We’ll drop in, let you chat with your papa, and then we can plan next steps.”

“Why didn’t Saul just meet me here? Why send you?”

He shrugs. “Saul’s grounded. None of the historians can use the key. While Saul won’t admit it, I don’t think that was part of the master plan, but…he’s adjusted. He has me to help him now.”

The emphasis on the word
me
is subtle, but it’s there.

Another of the double memories kicks in—

—I’m sitting on a bench, watching Saul try to use the key. He’s still wearing the burqa, so all I can see are his eyes, but they’re angry. Furious. I give him the diary, tell him to listen to the messages. That maybe we can fix what my mother did.

I squeeze my palms against my temples again, but it does nothing to relieve the headache.

“Hey.” Simon is standing a few feet away, his expression somewhere between pity and exasperation. “We have a doctor at the Farm, you know. She has stuff that will help—a bit—with the pain. But we need to get moving now, before the crew that works this place arrives. First stable point—top left corner. You go first.”

I activate the key Simon gave me, but keep the other one in my hand, still not entirely certain if I’m going to use the stable point to this Farm place or switch keys and jump back to Tate. After about thirty seconds, a thin, dark-haired man comes into view. He’s wearing a long white tunic with gold trim over a pair of ordinary-looking jeans. He’s a few years older, but it’s definitely Saul. I recognize his face from the videos Sutter showed me when I was in the hospital.

And…yes, I’ll admit it. I recognize him from features I see in the mirror. His hair is straight, but the color is the same as mine—deep brown, bordering on black. The shade of his skin, his nose, his cheekbones…all similar. For years, I’ve looked at my parents and wondered what weird throwback gene produced me. Mystery solved.

Saul Rand is not my dad. He’ll never be my dad. But he’s quite obviously my
father
.

I’d almost managed to forget about Simon, until he clears his throat. “Come on, Pru. Blink or get off the pot.”

I shift my eyes from the key and glare at him. My dislike is almost instinctive. I hate that he acts as if he knows me. And the way he seems to treat everything as a big fat joke. I’ll jump into this stable point because I’m here to talk to Saul and I can see him waiting on the other side, but it chafes my very last nerve to follow this rat bastard’s orders.

“I’m going. But you need to jump somewhere else. Saul and I are going to have a father-daughter chat.
Private
. And since you’re not family…”

“What?” He laughs, and gives me one of those fake-offended looks. “I’m hurt that you’re disowning me so soon. Come along,
mamacita
. Let’s not keep Gramps waiting all day.”

T
HE
F
ARM

E
STERO,
F
LORIDA

April 10, 2030, 2:21 p.m.

Saul slides a glass of water onto the table in front of me and drops two lavender pills into my hand. “June says two of these will do wonders for that headache.”

“Who’s June?”

He crouches down next to the chair where I’m sitting. Simon jumped in right behind me, but he made himself scarce at Saul’s insistence as soon as we arrived.

“She’s the doctor here,” Saul says. “And, just like Simon, she’s one of yours.” He reaches out and lifts one of my curls. “When I first saw June, her hair looked a lot like this, but…that was a long time ago. Well, for her. Just a few years for me.”

The idea of having a child who’s older than I am—who’s older than her grandfather, apparently—sets the headache off again. I was going to ask exactly what these pills are, but unless it’s aspirin or Tylenol, I wouldn’t recognize it. And if they were going to poison me, they could just as easily put something in the water. I pop the pills into my mouth, hoping this June person isn’t a quack.

“So, how many of…mine…are around here?” I can’t bring myself to say my kids, my children, offspring, whatever.

Fortunately, Saul gets my drift. “Here at Estero? Right now? Five, maybe? But if you mean in total, then twenty-one. No…wait. Twenty-two.”

My eyes drift down to my abdomen, and Saul laughs. “No, no. Only one pregnancy for you. The others were through surrogates.”

“What?”

He explains the term and I follow him, more or less.

“So, it’s like that test tube baby born…” I’m about to say
a few years back
, but I guess it’s over fifty years ago in this time.

“Well, sort of. Your offspring were carried to term by other women here at Nuevo Reino. Women who were honored to help us. Honored to carry your children.” His eyes darken. “It’s a shame that most of those children are useless.”

I guess he catches my expression, because he smiles. “Useless with the key, I mean. And even so, I still find ways for them to contribute. It’s taking a lot of effort to fix the mess that Kathy made…the mess I should have had the good sense to stop. And at the same time, we’re fixing other problems that no one has had the courage to address. Just think of it, Pru—we can stop wars before they happen! Clean up the planet. Make sure that the people who
know
how to lead are the ones who stay in power, and—”

His eyes are glowing as he speaks, but my mind shifts over to that other reality. Simon was right—

—we’re eating donuts, or rather I’m eating them. Not the kind with the holes in the middle, but more like Munchkins, even though it’s not a Dunkin’ Donuts. They’re good, with lots of cinnamon. Eating them gives me something to focus on while Saul watches the videos that Tate and Campbell included in the diary. He stashed the burqa in a bathroom trash can and he’s now in jeans and a white shirt. I watch his face, trying to decipher what he’s hearing from his expressions, since I can’t hear anything without one of those translator disks behind my ear. I know what Tate told him. I was there when he recorded it, right after begging me to call the trip off. He said he had a bad feeling about all of this. But I still don’t know what Campbell recorded. Saul keeps shooting looks over at me, mostly angry looks, as he listens. I can’t blame him for being furious that he’s stuck here, that he can’t use the key to get back, but it’s not my—