Splinter: A CHRONOS Files Story Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locations, events, or people, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Rysa Walker

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews.

  Originally published in CLONES: The Anthology © 2016

  For information:

  http://www.rysa.com

  ALSO BY RYSA WALKER

  Novels

  THE CHRONOS FILES:

  Timebound

  Time’s Edge

  Time’s Divide

  Time Trial: The Graphic Novel

  The Delphi Effect

  Novellas

  Time’s Echo

  Time’s Mirror

  Simon Says

  Short Stories

  “The Gambit”

  “Whack Job”

  “2092”

  Splinter

  by Rysa Walker

  Boston, Massachusetts

  07161905_11:23:00

  A flash of green pulls my eyes to the corner of the room. As always, my heart jumps, praying it will be Kate. Knowing it won’t be, can’t be. The heart keeps looking for miracles, long after the mind has abandoned hope.

  The new arrival stares back at me, CHRONOS key still in his hand. Or rather, still in my hand, since he’s clearly a version of me. A future me, most likely, since I don’t remember any circumstances from my past that could have put another me here. Something is smudged in black on his forehead. It looks like one of those…can’t remember the name, but it’s the symbol Hitler and his Nazis thugs will use in a few decades.

  And Future-Me is bleeding. The right side of his white shirt is drenched, the red appearing almost black in the green glow of his CHRONOS key.

  Bloody hell. I’ve got a double memory coming.

  When presented with a future version of myself who is injured, possibly seriously, the fact that I’m about to get hit with a double memory probably shouldn’t be my first concern. But it is. I can feel it starting already, gnawing away at my brain.

  In memory number one, I’m sitting here all alone, flipping back to the front of my notepad, to see if there’s anything I missed the first few times I tried to reconstruct that night in 1893. It’s a tougher task than I’d imagined it would be, given that I’ve dreamed about running through that burning hotel hundreds of times in the years since. Or maybe that’s why it’s tough--the memories from eight-year-old me are all mixed up with the nightmares.

  In memory number two, which is growing by the second, the notepad in my hands is still closed. And I’m staring at this second version of me who’s popped in out of thin air. Who I’m pretty sure has been shot.

  The two realities feel equally real, equally true, but since I’m in the middle of the second reality where there are two Kiernan Dunnes in my room, that’s the one I have to run with.

  “What happened?” I ask, as I reach under the bed to grab my makeshift first-aid kit.

  “Tried taking his gun away. Doesn’t work. And don’t bother with bandages. I won’t last that long.” He registers my expression and then adds, “No, I’m not dyin’. Hurts like hell, but I don’t think it’s gonna kill me.”

  “What’s that on your forehead?”

  “A four.”

  I squint, and I can see it now. Kind of. “It’s backwards.”

  “Try writin’ a number on your own forehead when you’re in a hurry. I’m livin’ proof that you suck at it.”

  I don’t even bother to ask why the number is a four. I’m pretty sure I know the answer and it makes me physically ill to think that it’s not just a double memory I’ll have to reconcile, but a quadruple or maybe even quintuple memory. Never had one of those. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

  “No,” he says, reading my expression. “It’s only a double memory. We just needed to keep track of which double I am.”

  I open my mouth, but then close it again, pretty sure that any clarification on that point is going to make things worse.

  “And stop askin’ questions. I don’t have much time.”

  “How far in my future are you?”

  He gives me an exasperated look, probably because I’ve just asked another question. But this one is kind of important, since it’s the best indicator I have of whether I’m going to still be here ten minutes from now--whether he’s the splinter or I am. The amount of time a splinter has varies, but Simon says twelve minutes is the longest he’s seen.

  That’s the thing with splinters. They’re really easy to create, although I can’t say I understand the temporal physics or whatever that’s behind it. To create a splinter, you just jump back a few minutes into your own timeline and change something little thing. Keep yourself from doing whatever you were about to do. The version you see when you arrive in the past--he’s usually the splinter and his clock starts ticking as soon as you arrive.

  The key word there is usually. Under some circumstances, the one who created the splinter is the one who ceases to exist. No one seems certain as to why, but Simon thinks it has something to do with how far you jump back. Twenty minutes or so, and most likely, the other guy is the splinter. Longer than that, and the odds are reversed. I’ve only splintered myself once, and Simon didn’t mention that there was any ambiguity on this point until after we were both staring at our duplicates.

  But then, that’s typical of Simon. He’s never been bothered by existential questions. Me, I’m not too fond of looking at an identical version of myself and wondering exactly what’s going to happen when time’s up. Simon treats splintering--and every other aspect of time travel--as a game. He once splintered himself so he’d have company on a roller coaster that looked like it was made of spit and twigs, after I refused to get on the deathtrap with him.

  In one sense, I guess Simon has a point when he says it doesn’t matter who’s the splinter. The other guy is still you. But it gives me a god-awful headache. Judging from the expression on the face in front of me, Future-Me feels the same.

  “I’m twenty-five days in your future. I’m pretty sure that makes me the splinter, but if I’m still here five minutes from now, you can pull out the first aid kid. For now, just shut up and listen, okay?” He reaches behind him, grimacing as he pulls something from under his belt. A few drops of blood spatter onto the wooden slats of the floor, and then he shoves a handful of papers toward me. “Most...of the information you’ll need is here. Skip the stuff we already tried. Any attempt to rescue Kate before we get her grandmother to safety will fail, and it’s getting crowded in that room. And--obviously--don’t try for the bastard’s gun. He’s got more than one bullet. Me takin’ this one didn’t save her.”

  The confusion I’ve been feeling for the past few hours makes perfect sense now. This is the reason I’ve scratched through seven pages of in my notebook. Earlier today, I’d have sworn I knew exactly what happened that night in Chicago, at least up to the point where my eight-year-old self, along with a much-younger version of Kate’s grandmother, dropped out the window onto the fire escape. But tonight, when I began writing things down, my memories were jumbled, out of sequence.

  “You said it was just double memories.”

  Future-Me gives a reluctant shrug. “If you count the old memories we’ve been tampering with--from when we were eight? Well, then you’re gonna need double digits. That’s why I’m sayin’ to steer clear. Your first idea of stoppin’ Holmes before he torches the place just muddles things up anyway. I
t’s gotta be after we get through the window. But...there’s not much time. Five seconds, tops.”

  “Before…?”

  “Before Holmes kills Kate.” His tone--which I guess is my tone, although it’s hard to think of it that way--is annoyed, like I should have figured that out on my own. Shouldn’t have made him actually put it into words. “Give me your key.”

  I pull the leather cord that holds my CHRONOS medallion over my head and slide it out of the pouch. He presses the back of his key to the back of mine in order to transfer a stable point.

  An odd tingle runs up my arm.

  “What was…”

  Other-Me shakes his head and runs his finger across the key to check it. “Don’t know. We think it’s the whole duplicate thing. This is the same key, just twenty-five days older. They’re still working fine, though.”

  I pull up the interface on my key and he’s right. The only change is the new stable point he transferred--a single black square speckled with green lights. Five, maybe six, of them.

  The other me reaches out and grabs my arm.

  “We’re losin’ it okay? Everything’s gettin’ jumbled. That’s why I came back. To find a time when your--our--head is clearer. If you have to go in more than once, don’t...don’t interact with the earlier versions. It just confuses things more. And it would be nice if you avoid this, too.” He nods down at the gunshot wound.

  “But I thought you were--”

  “Yeah, so what? It’s not fatal and I’m the splinter. It still hurts like bloody hell. Skip the early steps, and move carefully so you don’t have to erase anything. Read the notes. Maybe if we can avoid creating splinters in the first place and focus on--”

  And then he’s gone in mid-sentence, just like the duplicate me I created that one time with Simon. No fade out, no sound effects. He didn’t pull up the CHRONOS key and blink away to another place and time. He’s just there one minute and not there the next. Even the red splotch on the floor from his blood--my blood--is gone.

  It’s probably not logical to be glad that he’s the one who disappeared instead of me. He knew more about what worked and what didn’t than I do, even with these notes in my hand. But I am glad, nonetheless.

  When I unfold the papers, I see a list of eleven time jumps, each crossed out. Below the list are notes corresponding to each jump. The first in the list is marked Kate’s Room, with a timestamp of 10311893_19:13:00. The next is Third Floor Corridor, same day, at 20:22:30. Another says Holmes’s Office 20:20:00.

  The remaining eight jumps are all within the span of a single minute, most clustered between 20:25:37 and 20:25:42. None after that point. All are marked Hidden Room. The words make my gut clench with the remembered smells of rotting flesh and smoke.

  I activate the key and navigate visually to the stable point that Future-Me transferred, a black square with the green lights. The familiar shade of green tells me that those specks are from CHRONOS keys. If Kate was viewing this stable point, those lights would be blue. Simon claims they’re the deep orange of the setting sun, one of the rare moments where Simon has ever waxed poetic. Anyone without the CHRONOS gene couldn’t see the display at all.

  When I expand the view, I detect a single light in front of me, slightly to the right. It moves slightly as I watch and I see a hand--Kate’s hand--in the light. She’s trying to pull up a stable point on her key. She seems vulnerable, exposed, and I have to remind myself that Holmes doesn’t have the CHRONOS gene, so he can’t see the light from the keys, can’t see Kate in the darkness.

  But he could hear her. I find myself straining to pick up sounds--Kate’s breathing, Holmes’s movements, or noise from the city--even though I know it’s not possible to hear anything through the key.

  A green light flickering off to the left in the display catches my eye. Another version of me popping in to scope out the situation, I guess. Closer to the stable point, I make several cots against the wall. An array of bottles on the floor nearby reflects the green from the CHRONOS key. Just above the bottles, a skeletal hand hangs over the side of the cot, a hand that was fuel for many of my childhood nightmares.

  In the other direction, near the small door leading into the linen closet, a green light blinks out and then reappears a few feet to the right of the door. Then that one flickers out, and reappears a bit closer toward the stable point. More versions of me scouting the room. It’s a bit like watching fireflies and I’m mesmerized for a moment, waiting for the next light to appear.

  It doesn’t.

  The narrow window of time that Future-Me mentioned must have passed. When I pan back toward Kate, I no longer see the light from her key, except for a very faint glow around the man in front of me. And then he moves, and I see Kate again. Slumped to the side, eyes closed, a bullet hole near the center of her forehead.

  Something else, too. Something seems to be eating away the green fabric of her dress. Her hair. Her skin.

  I wince and look away. Then I roll the time back thirty seconds and watch again. And I take notes this time.

  ∞

  Boston, Massachusetts

  07171905_06:45:00

  The familiar aroma of tobacco hits my nose when I blink into the storeroom. Jess won’t open the doors to customers for another hour, but I know his routine well enough to be sure that he’ll be puttering around behind the counter. Unless it’s a day when his arthritis is really acting up, Jess always pours a cup of coffee after breakfast and takes it downstairs, telling his wife he has work to do. In reality, he’s just seeking a bit of solitude, because Amelia tends to snipe in the mornings. She needs a few hours to mellow.

  This morning, Jess isn’t even pretending to be busy. Just sitting on the barstool he keeps behind the cash register, enjoying his pipe as he stares out at the early morning bustle. A lone automobile is winding its way around the horse-carts in the road outside the store. The sight is still enough of a novelty that two kids run along behind the car for a better look.

  If I wanted, I could jump into the store directly. I set a stable point off to the right of the register earlier this week, while trying to explain the whole time-traveling insanity to Jess. But Jess is nearly eighty-three. I prefer to give him a bit of a warning, rather than just popping in and scaring the holy hell out of him, even though he’s had a crash course in the effects of Cyrist-engineered time shifts over the past few days. The last shift cost him a granddaughter, a girl he can remember only because he was in the range of my CHRONOS key when the shift happened. To the rest of the world, Jess’s granddaughter never existed at all.

  I tap on the door to give him a warning before interrupting his solitude.

  “Jess?”

  He raises one gray eyebrow and turns slightly toward the storeroom. “Was beginning to think another time shift came along and swallowed you up like it did Irene.”

  “Just been a little...preoccupied. Thought I’d stop in and let you know I’m goin’ out of town for a bit.”

  “I see. Taking the train?” The wry look on his face makes it pretty clear that he’s teasing me.

  “No train to the 1893 World’s Fair. I’m stuck usin’ the key.”

  “What’s in 1893?”

  I want to tell him that Kate’s in danger, but Jess has been through enough in the past week. Losing his granddaughter was a blow, and he only saw Irene once or twice a year. Kate has been in here every few days for the past eighteen months or so. Helped him behind the counter on many occasions. They flirt shamelessly with each other, and threaten to leave me and Amelia behind so that they can run off to Niagara Falls together. Jess has asked about Kate each time I’ve stopped by the past few days. Well, past few days for him. It’s been weeks for me, but I spent most of that in other time periods, trying to piece together what Simon and his Cyrist cohorts have done with Kate.

  The one thing I know for certain is that the Kate I’m trying to save isn’t the one Jess knows. She’s not the Kate who stood at the altar with me, as Jess and Amelia watched me
slide that gold band onto her finger a few short months back. This Kate is younger, and she barely knows who I am. Telling Jess that Kate’s in 1893 would mean explaining the differences between the Kate I need to save and the Kate that Jess has come to know and love. I’m just not sure he’s ready for that.

  “A really bad man is in 1893. Do you think I could I borrow your gun?”

  “Depends on who you’re planning to shoot, boy.”

  “I’m thinkin’ more of using it as a threat. Or maybe as a distraction.”

  “In my experience--which I’ll admit is limited in these matters-- it’s never a good idea to bring a gun into a situation unless you’re willing to use it.”

  “I’m more than willing. It’s just...complicated.”

  Jess reads my face for a moment, and then reaches under the counter to pull out the pistol. But he keeps one hand on it.

  “So... who is it you’re planning not to shoot?”

  Jess and I talked a lot about my time at the World’s Fair during the months that I worked for him here at the shop. Back in 1893, Jess had wanted to make the trip from Boston to Chicago. He kept telling Amelia it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the wonders of the world, all collected in one place. But she wasn’t nearly as keen on it as Jess and there was no one to watch the store for them, so they never made the trip. I think Jess was glad that he at least got to visit it vicariously through me.

  My father was one of the many job-seekers who flocked to Chicago in the months before the Exposition opened in May of 1893, as they struggled to turn 600 acres of swampland into one of the most celebrated World’s Fairs in history. At age eight, I tagged along behind him most days, helping out with small chores and running errands, but mostly just being a kid. Watching. Learning. By the time the Expo opened its gates, I knew the place like the back of my hand. I put that knowledge to good use, giving guided tours to visitors, and earning a bit of extra cash.