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

escape, of running all the way back to Pennsylvania. Then she thought of her parents, and fresh tears welled up. She wanted to go back to them, but at the same time, she knew she had to be here.
    I have to know why I’m different. I have to know why the Adjusters want to kill me.
    The lights in the classroom dimmed; Natalie walked back and sat at the table beside Cassie.
    “Welcome, new recruit, to the Bureau of Temporal Integrity, Monitoring, and Execution.”
    A cool, female voice boomed around the room.
    “The Bureau of Time was formed in 1990, replacing an earlier scientific research division of the United States Government,” the voice continued. Various images flashed up on the projector screen, including President George Bush Senior signing an important-looking document in the Oval Office. “The Bureau was created to defend America and its citizens against the outside threat that we called ‘Adjusters.’”
    More images: a fuzzy picture of an Adjuster, as though the photo had been taken on an old Polaroid camera. Cassie’s blood ran cold. The faceless monster, its waxy, mannequin-like face contorted into a snarl. Her gut churned with a chaotic swirl of emotions – anxiety, terror, anger. The image disappeared, but the fear remained as a tight knot in her chest, shortening her breaths.
    “Through preliminary testing and observation, the Bureau determined that the new threats were highly advanced humanoid soldiers from a future timeline.”
    Future timeline. The words sank into Cassie’s mind like a lead weight through thick jelly. The future. You can reverse time. Timewalker. It was all starting to fall into place, and the gravity of the revelation threatened to swallow her whole, dragging her down into its insanity.
    “The Adjusters appeared unwilling or unable to communicate,” the presentation continued, “however it became clear they were targeting high-value domestic personnel within our agency, and in particular, were attempting to assassinate – often in a very bloody and obvious manner – a portion of the American population born with a mutated gene.”
    Pictures of young children cycled on the screen – the footage was distinctly old, perhaps from the late ’80s, at least based on the assistants’ hairstyles. She watched a young girl, about four, with her pudgy arms outstretched.
    In front of the toddler, sand flowed backward through an hourglass.
    “This was called the Cronus Gene,” the voice explained, “and its users were called ‘Timewalkers.’ Timewalkers are capable of manipulating an exotic matter that binds the dimensions of space and time into one continuum; this matter is called Temporal Energy, or T.E. for short. People without the Cronus Gene are unable to feel or access T.E.”
    Cassie flexed her fingers. She knew she had felt ‘T.E.’ before, on the football field. There had been a rush of tangible energy from the Adjusters – the same inexplicable power that had allowed her to reverse time to save Ryan Boreman. And perhaps the same energy that had allowed the other Timewalker, the boy with the white hair, to heal her near-fatal injury.
    “Timewalkers vary in their abilities,” the presentation continued, bringing up a slide with six different categories on it. “All Timewalkers share an extrasensory ability called their ‘Affinity’, which enables them to locate and harness Temporal Energy. In turn, different subtypes of Timewalkers have varying types of control over T.E., such as Shifting, Regeneration, or Bridging.”
    It seemed impossible – and yet, entirely reasonable. She knew what she was capable of. Ryan had died before her eyes, and she had brought him back to life. She was still alive despite being stabbed by an Adjuster. They were not miracles, not marvels of medicine, not explainable by something more mundane. They were the effects of Timewalkers and their abilities.
    “The Bureau of Time is a covert intelligence-gathering and operational agency