“For instance,” Alpha continues, “you go back four hundred years, and every minute you spend there passes nearly two days in the present.”
My mouth drops open. I don’t mean for it to. It’s betraying nearly everything I was taught in Practical Studies about keeping my cool.
Alpha clears his throat and presses on the top knob of the watch. The lid pops open, and Alpha presses the top knob again. The dials fly around the watch six times.
“For future reference,” Alpha says, “whenever you need to get back to the present, just press on the top knob when the lid is open. It will automatically take you to the present. You’re about six hours behind, in case you were wondering.”
“What—”
Before I can finish the thought, Alpha pushes me backward into the black room and shuts the watch face lid. I’m sucked up again, and I choke from the shock. But only a second later I land in a heap on the same metal railing.
Alpha’s hand extends in front of my face. “We still past it?” he asks.
I think I’m going to throw up. The grate below me starts to swirl. “Past it,” I say.
Alpha yanks me up, and I follow him back into the too-bright hallway. He stops outside a door at the other end and enters a code, then turns the handle and cracks open the door an inch. He looks back at me.
“Are you ready to serve your country in a way you never thought possible?”
When he says that, the hair on my arms stands on end. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m more exhausted than I have ever been, or that it’s only about sixty degrees in this hallway, or that, maybe deep down, there’s a tiny little part of me hoping Annum Guard is for real. That there’s a secret government organization with the ability to time travel. And that they want me.
I nod my head.
Alpha opens the door and gestures me inside. The first thing I notice is the green-striped dress. That bitch who was tailing me is here. She’s taken off the hat and let down her hair. She has pale-blond locks that spiral in curls around her face, and she might actually be pretty if not for the look on her face. It’s the look you might get if someone was holding a bag of dog crap under your nose. I don’t like this chick. I don’t know anything about her, but a girl just has an intuition about these things. She’s not going to like me, and I’m not going to like her. End of story.
She’s standing off to the side of the room whispering with the guy who was tailing me before. He’s smiling at me, but it doesn’t annoy me like it did back in 1874. The smile is . . . friendly. Relaxed. But still I don’t return it. Not yet.
There’s a long table at the front of the room with two people seated behind it and an empty seat in the middle. One chair is set front and center before the table, and another row of chairs sits behind it. Seven, I count. Seven chairs. Five of them are occupied by guys and girls who have their backs to me. It’s like everyone is waiting for me.
Alpha pushes me forward, and I walk past the row of chairs on my way to the seat that I assume is for me. I pass by the girl with the purple hair, but I don’t look down the row. I’m staring straight ahead, at the people sitting behind the table. It’s clear they’re in charge. Alpha takes the empty seat, pulls out the same worn notebook he had on Testing Day, and jots down something. There’s a woman to Alpha’s left, and I know I shouldn’t stare, but I can’t help myself. She’s in a wheelchair, and her arms and legs are bent at unnatural angles and are as thin as twigs. There’s despair on her face, and it makes me think of my mom.
I look away, to the man on Alpha’s right. He’s in much better condition. Like Alpha, he’s probably around the age my dad would be today. He doesn’t have that tough, gritty look that Alpha does—if I’m being honest, he was probably a bit of a pretty boy when he was younger. He has dark-brown hair flecked with slivers of gray, an angular jaw, and aquamarine eyes staring at me from under eyelashes that most girls would kill for. But still, behind the exterior, there’s something about the way he carries himself that’s really intimidating. That’s one thing he has in common with Alpha. He has to be military or former military, too.
“Sit,” Alpha commands. I do. “You passed the test. Welcome to Annum Guard. From this moment on, your code name will be Iris. You will go by this name until the day you die. Understand?”
I don’t move. Don’t blink.
Alpha stares right at me. “Annum Guard was founded by seven men in 1965,” he says. “These seven men were given the ability of Chronometric Augmentation, to project through time and tweak past events to improve present consequences. They are our founders—our forefathers, if you will. They created the organization and the rules we abide by to this day, including the use of code names. These seven men used numbers as their codes: One through Seven.” Alpha gestures to the people sitting at the table. “My colleagues and I are the second generation of Annum Guard. You already know me. To my left is Epsilon, to my right, Zeta. We are all that remain of the second generation.”
I rack my brain, trying to remember the Greek alphabet. Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon . . . what?
“The people seated behind you are third generation. Your generation.” I crane my neck, but I can only see the guy seated all the way on the left. He has dark hair, olive skin, and cheekbones like a movie star’s, and is wearing a white button-down shirt and a pair of navy pants.
“Red!” Alpha says, and the guy I’m staring at jumps up. “Introduce your team.”
He nods his head once. “Sir.” I turn all the way around in my seat to look at him. If he was going to give a presentation, you’d think they would have come up with a better seating arrangement beforehand, one that wouldn’t require me to sit backward in a chair.
“I am Red,” the guy says, even though Alpha made that clear. “The leader of Annum Guard Three. Our code names are colors.
“This is my team,” he continues, “your team. Orange!” The guy next to him stands up. He does, in fact, have orange hair. That’s unfortunate. “Yellow!” The bitch in the striped dress stands. “Green!” My gazes follows down the line to a short guy with long brown hair. “Blue!” I stare at a tan, blond guy who has his head down, staring at his feet. But at the very last second he looks up and makes eye contact with me. My heart lurches, and I let out a sputtered choke.
It’s Tyler Fertig.
I barely hear Red introduce the guy who was tailing me as Indigo and the girl with the purple hair as Violet. Because Tyler Fertig is Annum Guard. Tyler Fertig, superstar of Peel who didn’t get selected to graduate as a junior. Tyler Fertig, who looked angry enough to punch a wall during that graduation. Tyler Fertig. He’s here.
This does more to solidify Annum Guard in my mind than that little stunt back in Boston. If Tyler Fertig is a member, it has to be legit.
Tyler and I lock eyes, and I know he recognizes me. He knows who I am. But then he breaks his gaze and sits down with the others.
Alpha clears his throat, but I hesitate before I turn back around to look at him. I can feel Tyler—Blue—whatever his name is—staring at the back of my head, boring a hole through my skull.
“And you are Iris,” Alpha says.
“Which isn’t a color,” I point out.
“It’s not,” he admits as the man to his right—Zeta, I think?—raises his eyebrows, as if he’s shocked that I just spoke to Alpha that way. “And that’s because you are here on a trial basis.” He clears his throat. “Before we get to that, I think we’d all like to hear a report of how you performed on your first mission. Indigo, we’ll start with you.”
Indigo makes his way to the front of the room. He’s standing off to the side, in between me and the table.