The Bureau of Time by Brett Michael Orr Read Free Book Online

merely his usual cold arrogance. The Captain had already moved on, and Shaun only caught the tail-end of his sentence: “…it was a close call out there.”
    “I agree,” Ryan nodded, ever the Captain’s lapdog. “There were more Adjusters than I’ve ever seen before.”
    “The General’s breathing down my neck,” Tallon added, with a sour twist in his tone. “We’re the only unit with a Timewalker – and soon we’ll have two of them. So I want you both training even harder than usual. We can’t afford to let our guard down.”
    “Yes sir!” The two teenagers snapped out another salute.
    A sharp buzzing emanated from Tallon’s belt, and he glanced down at his pager. Shaun had half-turned away, desperately wanting a shower to wash the sweat from his body, when Tallon tapped him on the shoulder.
    “Director Anderson wants to see us both,” the Captain said, a curious look in his eye. “It’s about the new Timewalker.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    THE BUREAU
    Cassie watched the black ink absorb into the paper, her life now signed over to the Bureau of Time. She stared at her sloppy signature, barely legible as the phrase ‘C.R.Wright’, and heard her tenth-grade English teacher criticize her terrible handwriting.
    “You’ll never get anywhere in life with penmanship like that,” the bitter old woman squawked. Thoughts of high school flashed through her mind – a place she would never return to now. She wouldn’t have much to miss of course. She had drifted through countless schools, always the newcomer, the outsider that nobody wanted to be around, the girl who thought faceless men were trying to kill her.
    Guess I proved them wrong, Cassie thought, without any trace of humor. Her hands were shaking so badly that the pen slipped from her grasp and sent a squiggle of ink across the page.
    “Sorry,” she said to the agent standing over her. The woman offered her a friendly smile and took both pen and contract away. Cassie hadn’t read the contract – the paperwork was edged with black-and-red stripes, the word CONFIDENTIAL stamped multiple times across the header. Phrases like preservation of national security, clandestine operations, and protection of state secrets were scattered throughout the black print; she had glanced over them and then signed on the bottom line.
    “You’ve made the right decision,” the young agent told her. Her name was Natalie Hunt, and she had chestnut-colored hair cut in a short bob, her cheeks full and rosy. She placed the document back inside a folder emblazoned with the eagle-and-hourglass seal.
    Cassie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She looked down at the table. She was in some kind of classroom, with dozens of metal tables lined up in neat rows; a projector screen hung from the far wall. She wiped a hand across her face, trying to force down the emotions threatening to overwhelm her again. She wore simple black jeans and a gray T-shirt, both given to her by Natalie. Her hair – wet from the rain – hung limply over her shoulders, and her eyes stung from a mixture of crying and the dry underground air-conditioning.
    “We have a video for you to watch,” Natalie said, breaking the silence. She walked past Cassie, toward the front of the room. Natalie wore a black pencil skirt with a white blouse and high heels that gave the already-tall woman far more height than was strictly necessary.
    “All of our recruits go through the same orientation process,” she explained, busying herself over a computer. She adopted the sickly-sweet tone of an adult attempting to explain something to a three-year-old. “But you’re an extra-special type of recruit, so things will move a little faster than usual. Don’t worry though, after a few weeks, this place will really feel like home.”
    Cassie took a deep, shuddering breath. A few weeks. She felt her throat closing over, the walls moving in to suffocate her. Her heart beat faster and her mind whirled with thoughts of