Time's Echo: A CHRONOS Files Novella by Rysa Walker Page A

It was here at the Farm, but she didn't tell me the date.
She entered the coordinates into my key and deleted the stable point as soon as
we arrived. Saul came out of his suite for all of five minutes. He glanced at
me once, tossed a few harsh words in Pru's direction that had nothing to do
with me, and slammed the door.
    Pru has always known where and
when to locate Saul. Always. If she doesn't have his
coordinates, there have been some major changes within Cyrist International.
    After Pru jumps away, Franklin
enters the location into my key and I blink in. The conference room I arrive at
is almost identical to the one we just left. I step away from the stable point
and two more people pop in, followed a few moments later by Franklin and Edna.
I guess the gang's all here now.
    Prudence is at one end of the long
black conference table, her back to the wide glass wall with a pleasant view of
the sun setting over the ocean. That narrows the location down to the west
coast of some place near some ocean, so not exactly helpful.
    Saul—or maybe I should say Brother
Cyrus , since he's in his white temple robes—sits at the other end of the
room, his eyes closed like he's praying or something. Simon's on his left and
the five regional Templars are seated around them, each in the dark suit and
gold scarf they wear when they preach. Conwell's daughter, Eve, sits to the
right of her father. I don't much care for Eve. She acts much too superior for
someone who has even fewer abilities with the CHRONOS equipment than I do.
    I'm closer to Pru's end, along
with six others, all jumpers I remember from when I lived here. I can't attach
names to the other faces in the room. They're definitely not jumpers, however,
so I'm guessing maybe senior staff at Cyrist International in 2030. Or bodyguards. Saul always keeps a few of those around.
    There's a strong family
resemblance among almost everyone at the table. Even the staffers and
bodyguards are Saul's grandkids or great-grandkids. They may have missed out on
the CHRONOS gene, but they still find work in the family business. It's a
complicated family tree, since most of them were born to surrogates and raised
communally. Simon once told me he has a kid who's maybe ten years older than him, but Pru said he couldn't know that for sure.
She says Saul's the only one who really knows who's whose. Still, we all make
guesses based on skin tone, eye color, and whether they have Conwell's nose.
    Simon, who seems to have been
tasked with running the meeting, calls the group to order. I'm not sure that
was necessary, since there's none of the idle chatter you might expect before a
meeting. Even with ten yards or more between Saul's end of the table and Pru's
end, the tension hangs in the air like a thundercloud. Everyone in the room
seems nervous, except Simon, but then I'd wager he's been egging both of them
on behind the scenes.
    Twenty minutes into the meeting,
Saul has spoken only three times, each remark laced with a bit of poison aimed
at his daughter. Twice, Prudence responded in kind. Saul's third comment—a very
pointed reference to the fact that the Prudence here today is at least the age
of her dear old dad—seems to have shut her up, but the look she gave him spoke
volumes.
    I pull my focus back to the table
and the woman who's speaking—Jeanine, the regional templar for Asia. She's a
slightly darker and plumper version of Saul.
    "—we'll capitalize on seven
different prophecies in the Book that refer to the region, most notably the
Tohoku tsunami, which reads, 'In the year two thousand ten and one, the Nanbu clan must seek higher ground when Tohoku shakes the
ground and the waters swallow the earth and all th —.'"
    "Use caution on that
one," Saul says. "Pushing too hard prior to the tsunami could have a
lot of impact on population size. We don't want to make too many waves."
    There's a pause, and then Simon
laughs and most of the table joins him. Prudence just lifts an eyebrow—not