“He did?” I tried to alternate between looking at Jay and looking at Hue, but the only way to manage it was to go cross-eyed, and I didn’t want Jay to laugh at me again.
“Well, not in so many words. But that was the impression I got.”
“Jay…” I was having trouble adjusting to the fact that I was standing there talking to Jay. I mean, there had been that one time when I’d been falling through the Nowhere-at-All, and Jay’s voice had given me advice, but I hadn’t been sure if it was really him or just me. Now, he was standing right there. Sort of.
“How’re things going at school?” It seemed like an odd question, the kind of thing an older brother would ask when he was trying to break the ice.
It was exactly what I needed. A question I could answer honestly, and someone I could talk to.
I told him everything. I told him about the mission to Earth F?986 and Joaquim and losing the shield disk and the twin Walkers and the training mission and Jerzy and everything—and then I told him about Acacia. Jay just listened, until I recounted my excursion to the library and the paltry results that had yielded. Jay’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline.
“TimeWatch?” He gave a low whistle.
My heart jumped into my throat. “You know about TimeWatch? What can you tell me?”
Jay hesitated for a moment, considering. “TimeWatch is basically InterWorld, just…not yet.”
“So…they’re what InterWorld will become?”
“Not exactly. Look, Joey, I’m not sure how much of this I should tell you.”
“Call me Joe. And please, don’t do the withholding-information thing. I’m tired of being kept out of the loop for my own good. You died before I even knew what was going on, Jerzy may have just died because someone set us up, and I’m out here on probation while they use PTSD as an excuse. Y’gotta give me something.”
I wasn’t really sure what possessed me to start all that, but I’d realized halfway through how right I was. It hit me, for the first time, that Jerzy—a good Walker and my friend—hadn’t been killed by accident. They were investigating the possibility of foul play, and of course there’d been foul play. The explosions, the scorch marks…It infuriated me. I was tired of being treated like a kid, and I was more than ready to get some damn answers for once.
Jay was looking at me like he was seeing someone different. He blinked and narrowed his eyes and then, to my astonishment, gave a crisp nod. “Yes, sir,” he said, with more than a hint of irony. “It’s not that they’re what InterWorld will become, exactly; it’s more that they’re the section of InterWorld that deals specifically with time. We keep HEX and Binary from ruling all the worlds on the Arc, and TimeWatch keeps them from ruling the timestream. Though they’ve got bigger problems than Binary and HEX.”
“Bigger problems? Such as—?”
Jay hesitated again, just for a second, as though he was reluctant to even speak their names. “The Techmaturges.”
“The…?”
“They’re the things that give both Lord Dogknife and the Professor nightmares. There aren’t many of them, but they’re so powerful that a single glance from one could destroy a world. They’ve refined the arts of both magic and science so as to be nigh indestructible. And incredibly destructive. They don’t want to rule all life, they want to wipe it out and start over.”
“But if they can destroy worlds that easily, why haven’t they won?”
“TimeWatch. I don’t know exactly how they do it, but they’re the ones keeping things in order.”
“And they can time travel.”
“You got it.”
“So…Acacia’s a—”
“Time Agent. Which means you two have a rocky road ahead of you.”
I didn’t really want to know, but I asked anyway. “What?”
“I know you two just met and all, but if you’re anything like me—and I know you are—you’re interested.”
“I’m not,” I tried, but Jay laughed.
“Please. I’m trying to talk to you like an adult. Act like one. You’re interested, and why shouldn’t you be? Sounds like she might be, too, from how she’s fixated on you.” My face was as red as the dirt beneath us, but I kept quiet.
“The Time Agents care about one thing, and one thing only: the future. Making sure it happens. I’d watch it around her, honestly. If she decides you might change future events, she’ll take you out—and no one will question her right to do so. In judgments about time their authority is absolute. No matter what your intentions are, or how she feels about you—”
“I get it, I said.” I drew a rigid index finger across my Adam’s apple. “Scchhhrreekkk.”