The Time Travel Chronicles Read Online Free

appear.
    “I’m the one down here sprinting my ass off,” Maddix said, “so I’ll complain all I want.”
    “How’s it looking?” I asked, watching tendrils of clouds stream by overhead.
    “Uh. Nothing on the top floor. Lots of storage and equipment, food and clothes,” Maddix said. “Bunch of engineer types running around, lots of overalls. A couple soldiers stationed at the bottom of the stairs.”
    “Leave them for now,” I said. “We’ll deal with them once you’ve located Abi.”
    “Roger, roger,” he said. “All right, ready for round two whenever you are.”
    I closed my eyes and released a burst of tachyons that sucked me back through time, the sensation not unlike stepping into a whirlpool.
    BLINK
    When I opened my eyes, Maddix and Zoe were standing in front of me, completely oblivious. “Start the tim—” Maddix was saying.
    I held up my left hand to stop him while massaging my temple with my right. The slurry of future memories settled into place and I said, “Top floor’s clear. Soldiers at the bottom of those stairs—” I pointed to where Zoe’s rifle was already aimed. “—leave them for Zoe.”
    “Afraid I’ll steal all the fun?” he asked.
    Zoe smiled and said, “More afraid you’ll get sho—,” but Maddix blitzed away before she could finish.
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
    THEN
     
     
    Abigail sat one row below me on the aluminum bleachers, watching Zoe’s Judo class hip-toss one another like sacks of potatoes. The slap of flesh on padded floor was accompanied by groans and giggles from the onlookers.
    “Pop quiz time,” I said, picking at a kernel of corn wedged between my incisors with a wooden toothpick. “Tell me why there’re so many girls down there.”
    Abigail let out a slight huff. “Is that the best you can do?”
    “Humor me.”
    “Tachyons bond to the X-chromosome, so females have access to twice as many time-manipulating molecules than males.” Abigail’s fingers twiddled with the multi-colored bracelet that had mysteriously appeared on her wrist sometime in the last week. I hadn’t asked where it’d come from, or why a certain red-headed boy on the mats kept glancing up at the bleachers in Abi’s general vicinity, but I had some educated guesses. “Which is why all the boys here are Blitzers.”
    “Why is that again?” I asked, playing dumb.
    Abigail shrugged, her bony shoulders rising up to her ears. A subconscious gesture she often used despite knowing full well the answer to whatever question I’d asked. She had a sharp mind, but that intelligence had never received due credit in her life before Central. To the time-locked, Chronos were cheaters, gaming the system to get ahead.
    People couldn’t look past Abigail’s chrono-gifts to see all the other ways she was exceptional.
    “Of the three types of Chronos, Blitzers use the least amount of energy because they're traveling with the flow of time, so the current is doing most of the hard work for them,” Abi said, locking eyes with the boy on the mat who, now distracted, never saw his Chinese training partner with pigtails—or her foot—flying towards his skull. Abigail winced and gripped her bracelet between white knuckles as the boy went down. “The…uh…the tachyons just give Blitzers that extra nudge.”
    “And who uses the most energy?”
    “Pausers.”
    “Not Blinkers?”
    She smirked and said, “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    “’Cause…” her words trailed away as she watched the boy dust himself off and limp towards the locker room with the rest of his cohort.
    After a couple seconds of silence I said, “That’s a well-thought-out argument. Keen insight. Beautifully articulated.” I tossed my toothpick at her head. She scooted sideways and snatched it out of the air. Her déjà vu was getting pretty impressive.
    “Huh?” she grunted, ripped from her daydream. She studied the object in her hand before recognition dawned. “Ew, gross!” She dropped the toothpick and