Rewinder by Brett Battles Read Free Book Online Page B

wonder.
    “This is yours,” she says.
    “Mine?” I say, still looking at it.
    “It’s the same one as before, but is keyed to you. Can you open it, please?”
    After I unlock the latch, she takes it back and turns the power on. Once the screen comes to life, she navigates through several displays until she comes to one with the heading TRAINEE SETTINGS . There, she touches a button labeled SLAVE . Immediately a box pops up, with the word AUTHORIZATION at the top, an empty entry line in the middle, and a row of numbers, 0-9, at the bottom. She quickly taps in seven numbers, and as the last is entered, the authorization box is replaced by another with the word LINKING glowing in the middle.
    “Right now it’s trying to link with my Chaser.”
    She sets it on the table and removes her device from the other satchel. When she turns it on, the word LINKING on mine begins to pulse. After about five seconds, the word is replaced by READY .
    “Repack the bag,” she tells me. “All but this.” She touches the Chaser.
    I carefully put the items back inside.
    When I’m done, she says, “Strap it on. You may need some of it on the trip.”
    My hands begin to shake. Trip? Now?
    She pulls the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, and after I did the same, she hands me my Chaser. “Technically, the two of us could jump with just mine if you held on to me tight, but you need to get used to what it feels like to be alone. After training is done, you’ll always leave from the departure hall. But we don’t have to worry about that at the moment. All set?”
    I nod, though how can one ever be ready for this moment?
    “We won’t be going far. Five years only. So the most you may feel is a mild headache, and likely not even that.” She pauses. “What is the mission?”
    “To observe and record,” I say automatically. It’s a phrase that has been drilled into us during both mental and physical training. It’s also printed on a banner in the dining hall and a plaque above my bed. As Sir Gregory has stressed countless times, “It’s not just what we do. It’s all we do.”
    “All right. Then I guess we should go.”
    She pushes the GO button on her Chaser, and—
    __________
     
    A DARK GRAY mist surrounds me, but it’s there only long enough for me to register it before a different kind of darkness replaces it. A starry, moonless night.
    I gasp. I don’t know if we’ve really gone back in time, but we have gone someplace other than my training room.
    “Steady,” Marie says from beside me. “On first arrival, what do you do?”
    On first what? My head aches with dull pain.
    “Denny, take a breath and tell me what you’re supposed to do.”
    I take three, not one, each slower and deeper than the last. Finally, the pain fades enough for me to answer. “Check your surroundings.”
    “Then do it.”
    I scan the area and see we’re in what appears to be a deserted alley.
    Our location and time of day fits standard Rewinder procedures. First arrivals should occur at an out-of-the-way spot in the dead of night, suggested time between three and four a.m. This rule allows a Rewinder to get the lay of the land before daylight hours.
    My Chaser displays a local time of 3:21 a.m. on May 16, 2009. The actual location is given as a string of numbers that can only be deciphered using the device’s calculator program, so I ask, “Where are we?”
    “Chicago,” she says.
    The Midlands, I think. Though I flew over this part of the continent on the way to New York, I have never set foot in it before. But the same could be said for anywhere that’s not New Cardiff.
    “Come on,” she says, and then leads me to where the alley dumps onto a road lined with parked carriages.
    I’m not an expert on vehicles, but none looks like any of the newer models I’ve seen advertisements for. The buildings on either side of the street are apartments, some with businesses on the ground floor. It could be 2009, and it could be 2014.