Guardians of Time Read online

  It was a question for me, too. I’d reached the moment I’d viewed, the moment I’d prepared for, the moment I’d dreaded, and it vanished before I realized it. I’d failed and couldn’t go back. Six years gone in the twinkling of a single breath, leaving me few options to fix what remained broken.

  I stepped into the moonlight, making the floorboards creak. Cal unleashed his pain and pinned me against the wall.

  “What happened to my pa?” growled Cal. “Did you kill him? Take him?”

  “No,” I replied, pushing him back and surprising him, especially since I was half his size.

  “Got the strength for it,” huffed Cal, trying to decide whether or not to come at me again.

  “We’re from the same world. You can’t hurt me.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Who are you?”

  I’d screwed up and didn’t know how to tell him. Nothing assuages the pain of losing someone you love—ever. It would compound Cal’s grief to admit it was my fault his father was dead, that I’d missed my chance to stop it from happening, that despite my abilities, there was no way to bring back Sean—but it would hurt Cal more if I lied.

  “Nothing exists except the moment of existence,” I said calmly as Cal continued to chant to himself, clasping a wooden chair from the kitchen table to balance himself as he shook nervously. “There’s no future, no past ... not like you perceive them. There’s just a singular moment stretched out to infinity. We can travel back and forth throughout the moment and observe it at every stage, but every world is unique and perceives the moment differently. On this world, the moment is divided in a way that humans can comprehend ... minutes, hours, years ... what you know as time.”

  “Not much for science fiction malarkey, lady. What the hell does this have to do with my pa?”

  “The moment moves forward, always. When something happens that isn’t supposed to happen, it’s my job to fix it or the moment will be jeopardized, and reality and existence will be put at risk ... alternate lines, loops, splinters. Your father wasn’t supposed to die tonight. I was sent to stop it, but I failed. I’m sorry, Cal, but I’m going to need your help to resolve it.”

  “What do you mean you failed? If you can fix it, just go back and fix it.”

  “Can’t. There are protocols to correct the course of events, but we only get one chance to correct an imbalance.”

  “Eff that! Bring him back, lady!” shouted Cal, snapping the chair with his hands as he fell to knees and hugged the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

  I knelt next to him, holding him, comforting him as best I could, and the room began to spiral as we were caught in a temporal superposition. Cal looked at me, simultaneously sixteen and thirty-six, mourning the death of his father. The competing temporal waves intensified, threatening to further damage the continuum. I managed to break free from Cal and weave us out of the wake, slamming us to the floor as if we’d fallen from the rooftop.

  Cal sat up and looked at me, shocked by the experience. “What the hell was that?”

  “Temporal echo. Your father died tonight, but he also died twenty years from now. I held you at the funeral. The moments overlapped, and we experienced them simultaneously.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The entity who took your father commands a legion of Chrono-Sentinels who think they’re the Defenders of Time. His name is Malchron, and if we don’t stop him, he could unweave the fabric of the universe, causing dimensions to overlap and eventually collapse. The echo we experienced is nothing compared to what he’d do. Sean was supposed to teach you how to be the Harborman. Now it’s up to me to show you what you need to know. Always forward.”

  “You really expect me to believe all that? Why the hell should I trust you, lady? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “So you can come home, Dad,” I said, my voice cracking as I stared into his eyes. They were like mine, flecks of regret lost in a maelstrom of anguish. They’d seen too much, things that shouldn’t be seen, things that couldn’t be unseen, things that hovered at the corners of perception, reverberating from a life that should’ve never been lived.

  “What the hell do you mean?” he asked, trying to comprehend my words.

  Children aren’t meant to know their parents, not really. There’s always a distance, a gap in their respective experiences. It was inefficient, of course, with subsequent generations, often unwilling to heed advice and teaching, having to relearn knowledge already discovered. Using the logic that failure and experience were better teachers left an indelible burden on offspring bred to seek rebellion as if it were a virtue, creating a negation of history, lineage, and progress. Now our roles were reversed, and I had to tell him the truth.

  “My name is Liris, and I’m your daughter. You raised me and trained me to be what I am.”

  “I don’t even know what I am,” said Cal, overwhelmed by the night’s events.

  “You’re my father, a man broken by time. If you let me, Dad, I can help you put the pieces back together.”

  “All I can see is me taking my first steps on this floor, on the spot my pa died,” said Cal, looking down in despair. “At least, that’s what Ma always told me. Pa had been out at sea, brought home a swordfish ... smelled horrible ... but I ran to him. Don’t really remember it, you know, just the story Ma would tell ... but I can smell the fish, the harbor. That’s what our life is, isn’t it? Stories other people tell us about ourselves, and we never know if they’re real or if they’re just made-up tales we’re told to make us feel like we have a past, one that matters. Thought my dad fished me out of the ocean, that I was just a kid someone threw away that he’d found and loved. Learned a different fable earlier tonight. What else don’t I know?”

  “To change the past, we have to remember the future,” I said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Means you need to put this on,” I answered, handing Cal the Harborman suit as he took several steps backward and began to shutter like he did when Sean gave him the medallion.

  “My father’s suit, not mine,” he said. “How could I possibly put it on now?”

  “Because when I took my first steps, Dad, I ran to you,” I said. “Malchron is dangerous. The suit isn’t a costume; it’s temporal armor.”

  Cal held the suit close as if he were holding Sean. “Do we win?” he asked, his watery eyes wanting to believe me.

  “Don’t know ... everything happening right now never happened before,” I said, glancing out the window toward the harbor, seeing the Deer Island Light glimmer in the darkness, and hearing Peggy’s words still echoing in the salty air.

  “We’re always with you, too,” I whispered.

  Five

  “GIVEN YOUR ACTIONS, the council recommends exile,” said the Overseer. “You will be stripped of your status, your powers, your memories, and sent to a Fissure to exist outside the continuum.”

  I stood accused, judged, knowing nothing I’d say would matter. I’d failed again, and it couldn’t be undone.

  “Must her memory be taken?” asked my Advocate.

  It was a barbaric ritual that hadn’t been performed in eons, but they didn’t just want to make an example of me; they wanted to erase me without killing me. For some reason, their moral code permitted every atrocity except death. What would I suffer if I couldn’t remember? If I didn’t know my own self ... if I didn’t recall the crime or the punishment? To me, it was a gift, a balm for my pain, a way to alleviate the burden of knowledge I’d been saddled with my whole life.

  “What did you do?” asked Cal as we hid in a sphere and waited for Malchron’s sentinels to dissipate. I’d hit them with a phase bomb.

  “Betrayed our most cherished belief ... I said time was real.”

  “They’re Wardens of Time and don’t think time is real?”

  “We’re taught time is an illusion. It’s not just relative; it’s a projection, a way to comprehend the existence of the moment. The moment may always
be moving forward, but time isn’t inherent; it’s imposed, and we can manipulate it into whatever we want it to be, like the concepts of past, present, and future. We create time, bend it, break it, and put it back together ... phase bombs, shield spheres, alternate dimensions, even the cosmic strings we use to travel. All of it is constructed.”

  “We make our way,” said Cal, and I nodded. “I don’t know. Met Mickey at six a.m. every morning ... no matter how late we’d be out, no matter how tired I was. Mickey needed a full Irish breakfast to start each day. That was real ... so was his reaction if I’d ever show up late.”

  “Eggs, bacon, black pudding, beans, fried potatoes, potato pancakes, and soda bread, with a side of mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. It’s why he never ate lunch. How could anyone be hungry after a meal like that?”

  “How much did you observe?” asked Cal with a tenor inflected with shame and indignation.

  “Only what I needed to see,” I replied, feeling awkward.

  Cal thought for a moment as we watched the sentinels writhe in pain as their temporality disintegrated. Phase bombs weren’t just a nifty quantum tool devised to thwart adversaries; they were designed as a punishment, ripping an entity’s temporal signature apart one Planck Unit at a time. It was a beautifully horrifying process, disassembling a life through the temporal spectrum.

  “Guess I shouldn’t worry about what you’ve seen me do, given what you’ve done,” remarked Cal uncomfortably. “Don’t even know what I’m supposed to be feeling, knowing what you know about me, knowing what I know about you.”

  My past was his future, but only in the memory I retained. The father I knew would never exist beyond my dreams.

  “How’d you get out of it?”

  “This mission was my second chance. Don’t imagine they’ll give me a third.”

  Cal stared in awe as the last sentinel faded into oblivion. “Wish I had your power,” said Cal. “Wish I could go back.”

  “Weaving time isn’t about changing things; it’s about restoring order to things that have already been changed. Sean wasn’t supposed to die.”

  “But he did,” said Cal, finishing his thought with his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I can’t undo that, but I can still help you get to where you need to be.”

  “Why? Because time is real now? Can’t create it anymore?” asked Cal, losing control of his anger. “Why am I so damn important? Where am I supposed to be? What happens to me?”

  “I happen,” said Malchron, materializing before us as he unwove the sphere protecting us.

  Cal stood up, his strength surging. “You killed my father,” said Cal as I wove a Javelin array with my fingers. Javelins were worse than Phase bombs. They targeted an entity’s temporal gravity, creating a stream of micro black holes, each existing in its own temporal universe, shredding an entity across a plethora of dimensions.

  “Javelins?” asked Malchron. “Thought you were trying to get back on the council?”

  Malchron opened a vortex, swallowing the Javelins, as I spun a volley of wormhole arrows, which he swatted away with bursts of exotic matter.

  “Forbidden tactics won’t endear you to the Overseer,” said Malchron, bending the temporal dimensions surrounding us, “especially since you’ve come to see things as I do. You have knowledge, Liris. Can’t unlearn what you’ve learned.”

  “How can I help?” asked Cal as I shielded us with sonic blasts and rewove Malchron’s gravity well.

  “You can’t, Harbor-boy,” sneered Malchron, trying to recalibrate his resonance. “Don’t even know how to use your armor.”

  Cal mustered the sum of all his rage for all he’d lost, for all he’d done, for every pain he’d ever felt. “Don’t need armor,” growled Cal as he grabbed Malchron, who generated a distortion.

  “It’s okay, Dad, your suit will absorb it,” I shouted as I opened a rift.

  Cal nodded and tossed Malchron.

  “You used to be a Warden, like your mother,” said Malchron, reappearing through a portal. “Now you’re no better than a Ranger, a time-hound told when to sit and roll over, told what to believe, even after you’ve seen the truth.”

  “Mission’s all that matters, Malchron. Who cares what happens after that?” I said.

  “I do,” said my mother, materializing between Malchron and us, encasing us inside a stasis cocoon.

  “Kaira!” shouted Malchron as my mother transported us to a gap zone, a pocket of extraneous time existing outside the continuum, caverns we occasionally used to hide and regroup. It was the only way to shield our temporal signatures from Malchron, the Overseer, and from time itself.

  Six

  “I HAD HIM, MOM. WHY’D you do that?”

  “Reckless, illicit, mindless. Given to heresy and false ideology,” she hissed at me. “Overseer’s evaluation, and you’ve changed nothing since then.”

  “She changed me,” said Cal.

  “I doubt that,” said my mother. “You may be a younger version, but you’re still the man who left us, and who’ll leave us again.”

  “Eff that, lady,” snapped Cal. “I know what abandonment feels like, and I’d never do that to someone, especially a wife and kid.”

  “Same ol’ Cal, never understood a damn thing about me, about us, about yourself.”

  “Don’t even know you, lady. Can’t imagine being married ...”

  I can mark the significant events of my life by my parent’s arguments. It didn’t matter that the two people standing in front of me weren’t technically married—it would be years until they’d meet—as they seemed fated to oppose each other, and they fell into their usual rhythm without even acknowledging the chasm between them. It was instinct.

  At different times, both defined the strife as passion, a way to love someone in the extreme, a way to excuse the decisions of their youth, but all it ever made me feel was rage—and desire. I desired to find a way to love someone in stillness, where the only sound was our hearts beating slowly, like drifting through the serenity of a nebula, knowing nothing else in the universe could match the ethereal beauty of two souls becoming one.

  “Enough!” I shouted. “This is my life and your marriage, a zero-sum calculated across the dimensions of time, inescapable even in this temporal reality.”

  My mom and Cal looked at each other, embarrassed and confused.

  “Got a look at Malchron’s weaving. He’s beyond anything the Wardens know, and it’s because he’s operating on a different level.”

  “Because time is real?” asked Cal.

  “Please,” scoffed my mother.

  “You don’t have to believe, Mom. You just have to believe me,” I said. “Malchron has what he needs, and if we don’t stop him—”

  “The Order of Temporal Defenders is charged with protecting time by freeing it from the Temporal Guardians,” said my mother dejectedly. “That’s the malarkey Malchron peddles to his followers. They think they’re the true Wardens of Time, that the Overseer and our council are frauds. They took your father, Liris, remember?”

  “What do you mean they took me?” asked Cal.

  “You really don’t remember?” asked my mom. “You left us to join them, and now our daughter’s been polluted with their ideology.”

  “Dad didn’t leave us, Mom. You left him, and you left me.”

  “I saved you. The Overseer would’ve consigned you to non-existence in a Fissure if I hadn’t intervened.”

  “Would’ve defeated Malchron if you hadn’t stopped me. Guess you’ll see I’m right when he reweaves the universe. Fissure doesn’t sound so bad.”

  My mom had always treated me like a child, a girl who could never grow up, but for all her scolding, all her so-called lessons, she’d never laid a hand on me. So, the slap I felt across my face caught me completely by surprise, as well as her and Cal.

  “The Overseer wanted me to expel you before you were born because he said he’d seen what you would become,” said my mother as she moved away and sta
rted to cry. “I told him that for all his sight, all his knowledge, all his supposed wisdom, he couldn’t really see your future because you hadn’t woven it yet. Still, he found every excuse to hold you back, to prevent you from becoming the woman you’ve become, and every time he did, you proved him wrong.” My mother glanced at Cal before looking at me, wanting to hold me but not allowing herself to get any closer. “I would unweave the universe if it meant saving only your life.”

  “So would I,” said Cal, smiling at me.

  “Touching,” said Malchron, appearing before us. “Now you see what motivates me.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Cal, his power surging as my mom moved in front of me.

  “I wasted my life looking for a revenge I could never find,” said Malchron. “That’s when the Overseer found me and showed me a power I soon realized could undo my pain.”

  “Then you betrayed him and our Order,” growled my mother.

  “You betrayed me, Kaira!” shouted Malchron. “You betrayed our daughter. You loved this fool who doesn’t even know who he is or what he is. It was my greatest joy to deprive you of him, to lure him to my side. He became my most prodigious disciple.”

  “Eff that, Masshole,” said Cal. “Don’t know what happened in your past, but my future’s not written yet, and there’s no way in hell I’d ever join you.”

  “We make our own way, Cal,” sneered Malchron, removing his helmet. “Gave you a choice, remember?”

  Cal fell to his knees in disbelief. I’d seen my father defeated before. The light returned, flashing in the distance, and I ran to Cal and held him. My mother stood over us, weaving a temporal knot to ensnare Malchron. Cal and I diverged again like we did in his kitchen. The realm we were in began to shimmer as time fractured itself, causing every memory from all the lives we’d lived to merged into one.