The Eighth Guardian (10 page)

Yellow drops it back into the box and shuts the lid. “You have nothing period appropriate. Where’s your Annum watch?”

I point to the bathroom, where the necklace is resting on the edge of the pedestal sink.

“Yeah,” Yellow says. “You might want to be a little more careful with a piece of government property that cost like twenty million dollars. Try explaining that to Alpha. Oops, sorry, I dropped a wormhole down my bathroom sink.”

My ears perk up. “Wormhole? That’s how the necklaces work?”

“Of course it is.” Yellow hands me the necklace, and I drop it over my head. “You have, like, thirty seconds. You’d better run.”

I can barely walk, but somehow I manage to make it down the stairs without falling on my face. I feel ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

Zeta is waiting for me in the lounge, near the table with all the flowers. “Are you ready for your first mission?”

“I thought last night was my first mission.”

Zeta doesn’t smile. “That was your admission test. This is your first
real
mission. Your first Chronometric Augmentation.”

“And I’m ready,” I tell him, even though I don’t think this is true. Shouldn’t I be brushing up on my history or learning the mechanics of time travel? I mean, even a quick briefing would be nice. But I don’t want Zeta to think I’m weak, so I say nothing.

I crane my head toward the dining room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tyler, but the room is now empty.

Yellow skips down the stairs and waves to Zeta, who smiles and nods at her. His face is relaxed, as if he genuinely seems to like her. That’s bizarre. I can’t imagine how anyone could possibly like Yellow.

She opens a pair of heavy, dark wood French doors across the hall from the dining room and slips inside. But not before I scan every inch of that room I can from where I’m standing. Tall bookshelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, and I even catch sight of one of those ladders on wheels. There are a number of desks in the middle of the room. A library. They have their own library. Of course they do.

Zeta clears his throat. “You ready to go?”

And then I get nervous. A bunch of little butterflies start flittering around in my stomach, which is weird because nerves are one thing I normally can control. But something about going back in time—projecting—Chronometric Augmentation, whatever—scares the crap out of me.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“1770,” Zeta says matter-of-factly. “We’re going to change the Boston Massacre.”

“Excuse me?” I say. I blink as I try to remember my last American history class. The Boston Massacre was one of the driving forces behind the Declaration of Independence. If we change the massacre, wouldn’t that mean the colonies would never declare independence? Would we
still
be colonies? Am I going to look out the window and see the Union Jack flying over the Massachusetts State House? Holy shit, will there even
be
a state house?

“Annum Guard has three rules,” Zeta says as he trudges down the stairs. “Three very important rules. Break even one of them and you’re out, so you’d do best to remember them.”

I’m still thinking about the state house.

“Is it really a good idea to mess with the Boston Massacre?” I ask.

“Rule number one. We do not project in front of anyone who is not an Annum Guard member, meaning we do not project in front of the public. Ever. Rule number two—are you listening?”

I clomp down the stairs and nod.

“Rule number two. No second chances. You only get one mission to change the past. If you bungle it, it stays bungled. If you manage to get yourself killed, you stay dead. Got it?”

I’m stunned into silence. There’s a chance of dying on these missions? I mean, I know I was trained for high-pressure situations at Peel, but I guess I never thought too hard about the risks I’d actually face one day. And why can’t we go back to fix mistakes? That makes no sense.

“Rule number three,” Zeta says. “Absolutely no personal missions. If you think you can make a quick buck by going back in time and betting on last year’s Super Bowl, think again. That’s part of the reason for the tracker. You go on an unauthorized mission, you’ll find yourself sitting in a jail cell.”

Zeta opens the door for me, and I step out into the too-bright hallway. “Do you understand these three rules?”

“Why can’t we go back and fix any mistakes?”

Zeta looms in front of me. He’s not nearly as tall as Alpha—Zeta only has a few inches on me—but it feels as if he’s towering over me. If he’s trying to make me feel intimidated, it’s kinda working. “Wormhole restrictions.” His tone makes it clear that the questions are over. “Now, do you understand these three rules?”

I nod.

“Good,” he says. “Because it’s the only time I’m going to tell them to you.” We walk down the hall to the door I went through yesterday. Zeta points up at the gold-plated plaque that hangs above it.

“Enhancement, not alteration,” he says. “That is what we do. We enhance the past; we do not alter it.”

It seems like a funny line to me—where enhancement ends and alteration begins—but before I can say this, Zeta punches in a code, and the door opens. Overwhelming, all-encompassing blackness is waiting on the other side.

“What is this?” I ask, pointing.

“A door.”

Thanks.

“What’s in there?” I ask.

“It’s a gravity chamber.” Zeta’s voice is bored, as if it’s obvious. I back away from the door, but Zeta grabs my arm and squeezes, and once again it’s clear to me that I don’t have control over this situation. I look down the hallway, up in the corners and crevices; and, sure enough, there are cameras everywhere, stalking my every move. “This room is a recent addition. Gravity helps ease the physical effects on the body that Chronometric Augmentation can wreak. It slows us down. Less stress on the bones and joints.”

My mind can’t help flashing to Epsilon, the woman in the wheelchair. Her body has been broken beyond repair. Is it because of Chronometric Augmentation? Is that why the other members of Annum Guard are all dead? Their bodies couldn’t handle the physical trauma?

Now I’m not so sure I want to do this, even though my options are either climbing the ranks to find out the one thing I’ve always wanted to know or life imprisonment.

Zeta pushes me toward the door. “You first.” He takes hold of my watch and presses the top button so the lid pops open. Then he hands it back. “Program it. We’re going to March 5, 1770.”

I hesitate before taking it. But I have to do this. I owe this to my dad. To his memory. And to my mom. I failed her once. I can’t do it again.

I spin the dial. Year first. We’re going back to before the American Revolution. That’s a lot of spins around the watch. Next is month. It’s October here and March there, so I guess that’s seven spins back. Then the day. Seventeen spins backward. Zeta is standing next to me, staring at me. Like he wants me to hurry up. And now I’ve lost count.
Was that seventeen spins or only sixteen?

“Ready?” he asks.

I have no idea. Seventeen or sixteen? Why didn’t I focus? I hate myself in this moment. I spin the day dial back one more click and nod my head at Zeta.

“Go,” he says.

I take a cautious step forward, then inhale. Let’s do this.

“Go,” I repeat. I leap into the room and snap the lid of the watch face shut.

It’s as if the floor is there one moment, and the next it’s whisked from under me. I fall, and my heart flies into the back of my throat, and I choke on it. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. I fall and fall and fall, as if I’m on an endless roller coaster.

And then my knees slam into the floor of the broom closet. I gasp and slap my palms to the ground. This is what makes Chronometric Augmentation easier? What the hell was it like before?

I push up. The closet is completely empty. There’s not a whole lot of room in this closet, so maybe I’m supposed to wait outside. Or maybe I’m supposed to wait right here and Zeta will be pissed if I leave. He doesn’t strike me as a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy.

Time passes. Several minutes. Too much time. Enough time to make it clear that I’m not supposed to wait here in the closet. I turn the door handle and brace myself to find an angry Zeta waiting for me on the other side, but all I see when I open the door is a field. What the—?

But then there’s a loud
swoooosh!
It’s coming from above. I look up, and Zeta appears beside me, out of nowhere. He pulls me back and slams the door shut, trapping us in this little broom closet.

Zeta turns on me with angry eyes. “Tell me, did you fail second-grade math?”

My heart skips a beat. “I . . . what?”

“You’re in March 4, 1770, not March 5. Can you really not handle a simple task like counting backward? Do you need me to program your watch for you like you’re a toddler?”

I bristle because I’m still tired, so my fuse is short; but I also shrink inside myself at the same time. This is partly my fault for not paying better attention when setting the watch. I hate messing up. Hate hate hate when I do things wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter.

“I had to project to March 5, realize you weren’t there, then project back to the present, trudge upstairs, activate your tracker, and figure out where you were. You’re wasting my time.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Get it right the first time. Reset your watch. One day forward. Do you think you can handle that?”

I don’t respond. Instead I pull out my watch, turn the day knob once, and shut it. I brace for the fall, but it doesn’t come. Instead I’m pulled up like someone tosses me in the air, and less than a second later I’m on my knees in the same broom closet. Zeta lands on his feet next to me.

“Ready now?” He straightens his powdered wig and stomps his buckled shoes. He doesn’t wait for a reply but instead opens the door and walks out.

I linger behind and try to figure out the sensations of projecting. Why did I feel as if I was being sucked up that time and not falling? It happened before, when I left 1874 to go back to the present and—oh. I get it. You fall into the past. You’re whisked up to the future.

Zeta clears his throat, and I shake my head and jump out of the closet. And then I stop in my tracks as colonial Boston spreads out before me. And I do mean spreads out. I’m not looking into an alleyway. I’m staring at open land. There are cows where the Public Garden will be one day. There’s no Back Bay. There’s . . . water. It’s an actual bay. I look out over Boston Common. There’s no looming state house with a giant dome. There are no skyscrapers, no downtown shopping district. Instead, in the distance I see the Old State House. That’s where the Boston Massacre took place. It’s right there, unobstructed from view.

There isn’t a row of brownstones either. Just this one house, set here on what will one day become Beacon Street, one of the most densely populated streets in Boston. I mean, the cheesy Cheers replica will be going in right down the street, a tourist trap for the unwary. The house we’re standing in front of is tall and wide, with brown, stone walls and a balcony off the front.

“What is this?” I ask. “Where’s the brownstone?”

Zeta doesn’t blink. “The brownstones are still about a hundred years away. This is Hancock Manor. And that”—he points across the Common to the Old State House—“is our destination. You are to listen to me and do exactly as I tell you, understand?”

“Do we have some sort of plan?”

“
I
do,” Zeta says. He yanks on his sleeves to tighten them and doesn’t look at me. But his implication is clear. I’m on a need-to-know basis, and Zeta doesn’t think I need to know
anything
at this point.

Just then church bells ring in the distance.

“Come on!” he shouts. “It’s starting!”

Zeta zips down a Beacon Street that looks more like a cow pasture than the crowded road I know. He makes a right, and I have to run to catch up. I can’t breathe in this damned dress! We make a left, where the state house sits in front of us. A crowd has already gathered. I head for the action, but Zeta pulls me back.

“Uh-uh,” he says. “We watch from afar.” He whips me around so that I’m facing him. His hands are pressed into my forearms so hard I’m going to have bruises. It’s a display of strength. A way of telling me not to bolt for it because he’s stronger and faster than I am. Yeah, I get it. Let’s not forget the fact that I also have a
tracker
in my arm.

“What’s our motto?” Zeta asks.

“Enhancement, not alteration.”

In the background, dozens of men rush toward the Old State House. They’re cursing and shouting about taxes, and a chill runs down my body. People are going to die. Soon. The crowd is yelling at the soldiers, pelting them with sticks and clubs. The soldiers’ faces are white with terror, a polar contrast to their gleaming red coats. They’re young. So young. They could be me.

The whole scene is chaos. Frantic chaos. It reminds me of one of my mom’s paintings. Whirls of competing colors racing around on canvas, so frenetic that your eye doesn’t know which way to look. Her paintings display madness, and that’s all I see here. A red coat here, a flash of white there. A woman screams, a baby cries, a man behind me barks an evil laugh as he launches a rock over my head. It misses a soldier by several feet.