The Time Travel Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

me. “Whoa, hey now.” I recognized Maddix’s voice. “I got you, I got you.”
    My vision pulsed with black spots that slowly resolved into a blurred image I vaguely recognized to be Zoe. Her face was an object lesson in concern. “What happened?” she asked.
    “I, uh…” I massaged my eyelids with finger and thumb, “didn’t want to miss the reset point.”
    “Jesus,” Maddix said. “I’m sure you could’ve erred a second or two on the short side.”
    I shook my head and pointed at the stairwell. “Soldiers down there.” Strength and clarity returned as the effects of my big blink faded. “Didn’t want to accidentally drop you in on them.”
    “I could have handled them,” Maddix said, entirely overconfident in his abilities.
    “Does getting shot qualify as handling them?” Zoe asked, her look of concern for me ebbing as my equilibrium returned.
    Maddix crossed his arms with feigned indignation. “Eventually that’s gonna get old.”
    Zoe shrugged. “Kae’s seen the future. Any sign of that joke losing its luster?”
    “Not at all,” I confirmed.
    Maddix sighed and asked, “Where am I in the search?”
    Which suddenly reminded me that we’d found Abigail. Though judging by Maddix’s words before the last blink, I wasn’t going to like what we found.
    “You found her on the fourteenth floor.”
    Maddix beamed like a toddler mastering the toilet for the first time.
    “You said something about soldiers down there?” Zoe asked, gesturing with her rifle.
    “Six.”
    “On it,” she said, her eyes clouding over. And then with an utter lack of pomp or circumstance, she vanished. My brain shied away like a skittish horse from a snake, trying to make sense of what could only be conceptualized as a smoke and mirror type illusion.
    And then Zoe’s voice chirped in my earpiece, “All clear.”
    Maddix and I stared at one another, dumbfounded as always following a long pause.
    At the bottom of the stairwell, Zoe stood with eerie nonchalance over the bodies of six Crask Incorporated soldiers lying unconscious in a variety of uncomfortable positions.
    Maddix surveyed the controlled carnage and said, “Took you long enough.”
    Zoe shrugged. “Something, something, something…at least I didn’t get shot.”
    “Gah.” Maddix threw his hands in the air. “You’re not even trying anymore.”
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    THEN
     
    Matilda squatted over a battlefield of red, green, and blue building blocks assembled in a rough approximation of Central’s campus—albeit more colorful than the actual facility, which only employed two tones in its color wheel: beige and beiger.
    Abigail sat in a chair painted nuclear pink while I knelt in an opening of blocks indicating the southwest quad.
    “Mati, I’d like you to meet my friend,” I said. “Her name’s Abigail.”
    Matilda cocked her head to the side and froze as though listening for something far off. Her lips pursed, creating crow’s feet of wrinkles that forked across her cheeks like dry lightning.
    “Abigail,” she repeated quietly. “Did she bring me a present?”
    I smiled and nodded to Abi, who held out a closed fist. “I sure did.”
    Matilda studied the outstretched hand dubiously. Her fingers tapped Abi’s knuckles twice. “What is it?”
    “A secret,” Abi whispered. “Can you keep a secret?”
    Matilda nodded once, twice, and then a third time; each occasion gaining in momentum and decisiveness. “I can keep a secret. I have lots of secrets.” Matilda smiled with a youthful deviousness entirely out of place on her middle-aged facade.
    She jabbed her empty hand out, holding it below Abi’s nose, and closed her eyes. Abi placed a small conch shell in her palm. When Matilda’s eyes opened, they went impossibly wide. She jumped to her feet, squeaking and grunting with unbridled excitement. Clutching the shell to her ear, she did a half-run, half-skip maneuver across the room.
    Matilda pulled a shoebox off the shelf and