Excerpt: Time Changer

Timeframe 2501
She had three minutes before she could leave and she took that time to make a quick assessment of what she had with her. She had deliberately planned to leave so late. Morrison worked the late shift. He would not search her and it was imperative that he did not. He saw her often enough to trust her, but what she carried with her now meant a lifetime in prison. She would not tolerate that.
Her change of studies had not been questioned. She had been working in Dimension 138-ULN for several years now. A change of course was to be expected. She had wanted to change sooner, but she had suspected that she was being investigated. She decided it would be better to bide her time than to risk exposure. So she waited, but the time for waiting was over.
Morrison was waiting for her and she laid her knapsack and briefcase on the table in front of him. He made a pretense of looking through the knapsack, keeping his body between the table and the security camera so there would be no record of his negligence.
“All set, Ms. Coffey?” he asked.
She nodded and stepped into the circle laid into the floor in front of her. He handed her the briefcase and the knapsack along with a short, flat electronic disk that was her ticket home.
“Here’s your key. You’re set to come home when your work is done. Have a good trip.”
Verna Coffey nodded. It was the moment of truth. She couldn’t believe she’d made it this far without being discovered. She was angry that she even had to worry about watching her back. With her education, her experience, her expertise she should have been running the GSN and the Department of True History. Instead, she was being treated as a probationary officer and had been since her conviction of gross impropriety ten years ago for the death of a co-worker’s family two years previous to that. Her rank was stripped and she had to work her way back to into the Department.
It wasn’t going to happen. Forget the Department. The GSN was sure that their true power lay with the Department, but she was beginning to see things differently. She would prove where the power lay, and they would be nothing the cowards who sat behind the office doors could do to stop her. Perhaps demoting her back to Dimensional study had been a benefit to her rather than a bane. If it hadn’t been for that demotion, she would never have found out what she had about Victor Kane and Franco Salvio.
Whatever her situation, she was pleased with the bulk of the outcome of the attack on Leon Rousch’s family twelve years earlier. The insufferable fool had stepped through a wormhole and had disappeared, but not before drinking himself into a dark corner and a questionable reputation. She had intended to destroy him, and she had.
Now she had plans that he could never thwart. She was stepping into the past—250 years in to the past—and then jumping the rest of her journey. Leon and his meddling were gone, but her journey still had one kink that needed to be straightened. She was sure she had the materials she needed to accomplish that straightening. Her step through the wormhole would take her to Timeframe 2251, and the obstacles that stood in her way in there would be impossible to reach. Lane Barrett and Seth Ransom were keeping time in that timeframe, and they were a seemingly unstoppable team.
She smiled up at Morrison and nodded to him. She needed to go now. Someone in Timeframe 2251 was where she told him to be, waiting her arrival. Morrison activated the wormhole and Verna Coffey disappeared.

Timeframe 2251

“Have you seen my father? Has anyone seen my father?” DJ Archer was a man on a mission, but the mission seemed to be eluding him. His father, Colonel Daniel Archer, usually the easiest man in the agency to get a hold of, was nowhere to be found.
Leon was DJ’s next bet and he grabbed the elevator at the lobby level. The door was about to close when it slid back open and his step-mother walked in. He was relieved. Regardless of who his father might feel the need to hide from, Jori was never one of those people.
“You look frantic, DJ,” she said when she saw him. “What’s going on?”
“Do you have any idea where Dad is?” he asked. “He’s not answering his cellular or his pages.”
“He should be on the way to his office,” she said. “He was in New York this morning and he just called to let me know that the helicopter has landed on the pad upstairs.” She frowned and regarded him. “DJ, what is wrong?”
“Jared’s awake.”
Jori felt her heart drop to her stomach. She had to have misunderstood him. “What did you say?”
“Jared’s awake. I have him in the subbasement medical lab. I can’t tell what’s going on, but neurology is Dad’s area of expertise. I hate to leave Jared down there alone, but I couldn’t find a single Level 1 anywhere in the building until you stepped onto the elevator.”
They stopped on the second floor and Leon Rousch entered the elevator. DJ held a helpless hand out to him and Jori shrugged. Leon stood watching them, trying to figure out what he’d just walked into.
“First I can’t find any of you,” DJ said, exasperated, “and now you’re all crawling out of the woodwork.”
“You were looking for me?” Leon asked.
“I was just heading to your office,” DJ said. “It’s my father I was looking for.”
“Leon,” Jori said. “Jared’s awake.”
It took a moment for Leon to realize what she was saying. “Awake? As in not comatose?”
“Awake,” DJ said. “I wanted to talk to him before he headed to work and I’m supposed to be at the hospital later. I thought I’d drop in on him. His avatar was dormant. So I got out of there and checked on him. He was struggling, breathing hard. I got him out of the Department and into the medical lab as quickly as I could.”
Leon started to ask if Archer knew, but then remembered that DJ had just said that he’d been looking for the Colonel. He turned around and hit the button for the fourth floor where Archer’s office was. Then he pulled out his cellular and punched buttons.
“Holli? I’m on my way to Archer’s office. I think you’d better get up there.”

Jared was watching him and suddenly Archer felt uneasy. He felt guilty, but Jared had never watched him through those eyes before. It was disconcerting in some way.
“What’s happening to him?” Holli asked. “Why did he wake up?”
“In all honesty,” Archer said, “I have no idea. There was no reason for him to be in a coma when he was a boy. No apparent injuries, nothing. I have a feeling that his waking up is going to be just as enigmatic. What made it happen after twenty-five years is beyond me. I’d have expected stirrings over the years and there have been none.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Jori said.
“We can’t,” Archer agreed. “But we need to find a way to get him out of here without anyone seeing us. It shouldn’t be too hard; just a case of waiting for most of the day workers to go home.”
“Do you want me to pull a van around to the loading docks?” Holli asked.
“No, I want you to grab the unmarked ambulance we use to bring the Time Keepers in from the hospital.”
“Where are we taking him?” Leon asked.
“My place,” DJ said. “He may need medical care, and I’m in the best position to take care of him.”
“Jared,” Archer asked, leaning down so Jared could see his face clearly. “We’re going to get you out of here. Do you understand me?”
Jared frowned a little and gave an imperceptible nod of his head. He looked helpless and Archer couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.
“Listen, Jared,” he said. “Over the past twenty-five years we’ve had you hooked up to some machines that massage your muscles to keep them from atrophying. I’m hoping you’re going to get some movement back, but I don’t know how long it’s going to take. There’s been no way to gauge how right or wrong we are. Do you want up us to sit you up a little so you’re not lying flat on your back?”
Jared looked terrified, and Jori picked up his hand. “We’ll leave you where you are,” Archer said. “Holli, I want you to go get the ambulance. Leon, see what you can do about the cameras. I’m going to have a word with Templeton, and then I’ll meet all of you at DJ’s.”
“We have no idea what’s going on, Dan,” Jori said. “What are we going to tell everyone else?”
“I’ll come up with something on the fly and we’re all going to have to keep it straight. But Lane we’re going to have to tell the truth.”

Lane wasn’t sure what was going on, but he was sure he didn’t like it. Jared never turned down a dinner invitation, much less skipped out on one. But the table was laid and
Jared had yet to make an appearance.
“Should we wait?” Sharon asked.
Lane didn’t answer her immediately. He started to pick up the phone put pulled his hand away. He’d just called ten minutes ago and Jared hadn’t answered. Five messages on the answering machine would precipitate a frantic call if Jared was in a place to reach his phone.
“How close is dinner to being done?” he asked Sharon.
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” she said.
“The let’s give him that much time.”
Sharon was piling food into serving dishes when someone knocked on the door. Lane looked half-relieved, half frustrated when he opened the door. The person on the other side wasn’t who he expected.
“I wish I could say I was happy to see you, Boss,” he said, “but I’m a little freaked out right now.”
“Jared’s—” Archer stopped when he saw Sharon standing in the doorway “—in England. We had to lend him to their Department on an emergency basis. Sorry we couldn’t get a message to you guys earlier. I was New York when Templeton had to make a split-second decision.”
Sharon put a hand on her chest and breathed a little easier. Lane frowned at Archer and waited for his wife to go back to the kitchen to finish serving up dinner.
“What really happened?” he asked when the kitchen door closed behind her.
“He woke up,” Archer said. “I don’t know why; I don’t know how. He’s at DJ’s apartment right now. We can’t exactly take him to a hospital.”
“Woke up?” Lane asked. “That can happen?”
“For most of you, no,” Archer said. “But Jared’s coma has always been different. We don’t know why he’s awake. We don’t know if he’s going to stay awake. All we know is what’s going on right now. We’re going to have to play it by ear.
“In the meantime, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to pull a little more weight in the Department. We’re fortunate that things are as quiet as they are right now. I’ll have Jori and possibly Holli come down to help from time to time, and I’ll be here as I can.”
Lane nodded as Sharon peeked out the kitchen door. “I have a lot of food here,” she said. “We were expecting Jared. Would you like to stay for dinner, Mr. Archer?”
Archer nodded. “I’m actually here to talk to the two of you,” he said, “about something besides Jared.”
Sharon served up heaping plates—London Broil, asparagus, scalloped potatoes—and poured them each a glass of Bordeaux.
“I spent the day New York,” Archer said. “I think I’ve found another Time Keeper. I’m not sure where we’re going to put her yet. It all depends on you, Sharon.”
Sharon glanced up at him, startled. “Me?”
“I know you’ve been wishing for children, that you’d like to stay home and be a mother.”
“But—” she started, and Archer held up his hand.
“And I know that DJ told you that it would be impossible after the miscarriage and infection you suffered with after you were shot. But, while I was at the hospital in New York meeting with the new Time Keeper, I met someone else, someone I didn’t expect to meet.”
He picked over his food. He should be addressing Lane on this matter as well, but Lane had already expressed the wish that Sharon could somehow have a child. It was all virtual reality, wasn’t it? But Leon had nixed the idea. It was something he had yet to experiment with, and Holli had backed him up. There was too much risk that Sharon might find that her perfect little world was not real.
“There is a little girl in New York who needs a home. She’s barely three years old right now and she’s coming from an abusive home. I thought that maybe you could help her grow up after coming from that background yourself.”
Sharon stared with wide eyes as he slid a photograph across the table to her. The child in the picture was a petite girl with long ringlets of auburn hair. Her red lips were pinched into a heart-shaped smile and light shined from emerald green eyes.
“She’s beautiful,” Sharon said. “She has no one?”
Archer shook his head as Sharon passed the photograph to Lane. Lane picked it up and smiled.
“Everyone’s going to suspect you were up to something with Jared,” he said.
“It’s okay? We can take her?”
“Anything to make you happy,” Lane said.
“Her name is Beppie,” Archer said. “Despite what she’s been through, she seems like she could be happy, eager to please. I’ve also been looking at houses closer to the South Side so you’ll still be close to work, but you’ll have a yard in a good neighborhood.”
“Lane?” Sharon asked.
“If this is what you want, Sharon, it’s yours.”
“That settles it, then,” Archer said. “I’ll arrange for Beppie to come to Washington. We’ll arrange for you to move into a house with a yard for her, and Sharon, don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll set the new Time Keeper up in your station.”
While Sharon carried dishes to the dishwasher, Lane stood outside the apartment door with Archer.
“This little girl…?”
Archer nodded. “She’s real. Her mother was absentee, left her with an abusive boyfriend. Given their stories, it’s hard to say who the culprit is, but one of them threw the girl with enough force to put her head through the drywall in their unfinished basement.”
Lane shook his head. “My God. I came from a good family. I just don’t understand how things like that happen. I used to think that a lot of those stories were blown out of proportion until I met Sharon.”
“It can be hard enough to believe that one person can do some of those things to another. It’s always hard to believe that it can happen to a child, and harder still when it’s a good child and there seems to be no real reason for the abuse. Sharon will know what this little girl needs.”
“What if she wakes up one day?”
Archer shook his head. “I took a look at her charts. She’s not going to wake up. Frankly, I don’t understand why she’s not brain dead, but I can guarantee that she won’t wake up. She’s not like Jared. She’s more like the rest of you.”
“Thanks, Boss. I know she’s moved on from the disappointment of not being able to have children, and, believe me, the only thing that kept it from being impossible to keep from telling her the truth was the thought of how she’d take the truth. This, though,” he shrugged. “It’s going to make her feel complete, and I think that’s what she needs right now.”

Jori was relieved that her husband seemed more relaxed as he slipped out of his clothes. She was worried about him, and more so after a talk with DJ a few months back that Archer’s heart could be healthier. He was doing too much, dealing with a lot of stress. She worked to make his home life more relaxed, subtly changed the way she cooked—if he’d noticed he’d said nothing—and bought him the bottle of aspirin that DJ had ordered him to start taking. She was tempted, on occasion, to ask Leon to break his promise not to discuss the future and tell her how much time Dan had left. She was beginning to realize, with stark clarity, that Dan was not a young man.
“What did they say?” she asked.
“They are more than happy to take her. And, I’ve got a story to tell everyone tomorrow when Jared doesn’t show up for work.”
“What’s the official line?”
“That a similar Department in London has had some kind of emergency and Jared has been sent to deal with it and help run things until they’re back on track.”
“You think it will work?”
“Sharon bought it. I called DJ on the way home. I wanted him to tell Jared because you know he’s going to be worried about what everyone down there thinks.”
“I’ve got dinner in the oven. Hungry?”
Archer laughed. “I just ate at Lane and Sharon’s, so, naturally, I’m starving. They were expecting Jared so Sharon made a lot of food.” He shook his head. “I think I may have just laid a lot on Lane. I don’t know what else to do. I wish I was spending more time down there but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon. Not with Jared topside.”
“Do you want me to sit in on some of the research while Jared’s out?” Jori asked.
“Only if we can do it without making the Time Keepers feel like their being babysat in Jared’s absence. Maybe with Emily Mortimer coming in it won’t seem like that. They’d all understand our need to observe a new Time Keeper. I’m thinking of asking Holli to spend a little time down there as well, but she has as much on her plate as I do.”