Chronos - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

No set release schedule for this one. Just playing it by ear while I wait for news.

Chapter 1 – In Plain Sight

Lady Liberty didn’t know it, but I was still watching as she flew off. She never even suspected I might have hung around afterwards. In fact, I had been there the whole time.

Well, not the whole time. I had to borrow a car to take all the money back to my lair, after all, but I was there in the bank the whole time that time was flowing. Nothing special, of course, just one of the average joes going about their day, making a deposit. I was as surprised as anyone when the robbery happened, actually.

At any rate, Lady Liberty never guessed that I was one of the customers who was being held at gunpoint when she showed up to stop the robbery. She certainly never would have suspected the guy with a cane and a limp from an old injury of being the one who stepped in. That, of course, was totally by design. After all, I didn’t have some fancy costume or even a mask to shield my ‘secret identity’. Instead, I simply relied on my magic, the magic of chronomancy, which I had been born with.

The Pulse, as people called it, had actually weakened my abilities quite a bit. My control over time, which had been absolute, was now hampered, and forced to remain within certain guidelines. There were now limits on what I could or could not do.

Take freezing time, for instance. One of the core abilities I had developed after countless hours studying time, had been severely limited. Before, if I had wanted to kill those gunmen in the bank, I could have simply stopped time, slit their throats, and returned to where I had been standing, before I let time flow again. Nice and simple, right?

Now, however? The magic prevented me from attacking someone while time was stopped. I could pick up a blade, but it wouldn’t cut. And yet, I could take a pen from the table and write myself a note, or even borrow someone’s car and drive across town, and there was no problem. Insanely enough, I could take a grenade, pull the pin, and stick it in someone’s pants. The grenade wouldn’t go off until time started again, with obvious results. But, at the same time, I could shoot a gun, and the bullets would just… bounce off whatever I shot them at!

It was experimenting with my powers after the Pulse that caused me to discover strange loopholes in what the magic would let me do. For instance, I couldn’t shoot, stab, or do anything like that to a person frozen in time. I could throw them off a building, but they wouldn’t take any damage, even if they landed on their head from eighty stories up. If I jumped, however, I would have definitely felt the impact.

On the flip side, of course, when time stopped, I was immune to anything that was caught in the effect, which was everything. I could dive into a nuclear reactor and steal the uranium and plutonium being used without suffering so much as a tan, so long as I got the material properly shielded, and spent some time in a decontamination shower before releasing time. Somehow, I was able to interact with the stopped world, but those reactions were all mostly one-way, and how much I could actually do to the world was still unclear.

The whole thing was made even more complex and confusing when one considered ‘natural’ events. I could literally walk through a wildfire while it was burning and not feel the slightest hint of warmth. However, if I tried to walk across the bottom of a lake, I would drown if I didn’t have protections in place.

Bringing it back to dealing with other people, I quickly found out that, while frozen in time, I could move people around like they were action figures, or dolls. Except that these dolls were life-size, and were certainly more lifelike in their ‘equipment’ than a Barbie doll ever was. And I found out that, even though they were frozen between one second and the next, their bodies responded to things. I still wasn’t sure exactly how that worked, but I didn’t much care after that, either.

Actually, that duality in what would or wouldn’t affect someone also influenced my ‘calling card’. My first thought was to give my victims a piercing with a tag to proclaim my ownership, but the piercing gun was treated like an attack, and wouldn’t work. Same with tattoos. However, the temporary tattoos went on just fine, because they weren’t an ‘attack’.

So, once I’d figured out the limits of my powers, post-pulse, I went about enjoying my life. I still kept up the façade of being a normal, everyday guy. Even had a job as a librarian with the public library, working in their mystic arts section. There was nothing to connect me to my side gig.

My anonymity was one of my greatest strengths. When ranked by the System that the Pulse put in place, I was supposedly slightly more powerful than a normal superhuman. The truth was that I was far, far weaker than the combat-focused heroes. In a fair fight, I probably wouldn’t be able to take out even those gunmen.

My power was ranked highly not because I was able to destroy anyone I pleased, but because people had a hard time stopping me. Hell, I still had the limp from when I broke my leg during my training, before the Pulse. By the time I learned the magic to ‘roll back’ time on something to heal it, I would have had to experience all the pain it had caused me over the years, all rolled up into one single instant, if I could have even reached that far back. I was allergic to pain, so I didn’t really think that was the best use of my magic, thank you very much.

Still, for all of that, I was nigh impossible to stop, when I set my mind to something. No matter what, I just slipped in between one blink of the eye and another. Sure, I had to walk through the time-stopped landscape, or ride, but, because of that, I could get anywhere in the world and do anything I wanted, since the area covered by my time stop extended out, past lunar orbit.

Well, when I put it that way, I definitely sounded like I earned the ‘high-powered’ designation, but that didn’t change the fact that it was heavily specialized. My offensive and defensive abilities did not match the sheer utility that came with controlling time itself. Even my other time abilities that could be used for offense were weaker, and less likely to hit, than other supers on my ‘level’.

*Riiing*

I was startled out of my reverie as I walked back to the subway station from the bank by my phone going off. The caller ID said that the name was Restricted. Curiouser and curiouser. Most people who had my direct number were either in my address book, after all. That made me intrigued enough to answer the phone, instead of letting it go to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dr. Remington Livingston? The Doctor of the Arcane Arts who works for the Liberty City Public Library?”

A woman’s voice, and she sounded upset. And there was something familiar about it. How very interesting indeed.

“Yes, I am Dr. Livingston. Who might I be speaking to?”

“Ah, I am Bailey Diaz, and I work at Liberty Tower. I’m one of the support personnel for the Protectors. Your manager at the library said you might be available for some consulting work?”

“Ah, I see.” And I did. The Protectors were the main superhero team in Liberty City, though they mainly worked regional, or even national crises. Lady Liberty was one of their members, as had her predecessor, before she took up the mantle. More importantly, Bailey Diaz was their local liaison with the city. So, this was something official they were dealing with.

“While I am certainly willing to help out the Protectors with research into the Arcane, I do hope you know that I am just an academic, yes? I am not going to be able to do any flashy spellwork on the fly in the field. But if it is just research, or perhaps ritual work, then I am amenable to helping, for my standard consultant fees.”

“Of course, Doctor. It is clearly stated in your file that you are a noncombatant. Would you be interested in stopping by for a discussion?”

“Ah, I’m sorry, but my leg has been paining me more than usual. Ever since I injured it back in ’04, I’ve found that it hasn’t reacted well to high-rises at the best of times, and with it acting up, I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to give the conversation the attention it deserves. However, I would be happy to have a conversation at the library. That might even be better, since most of my reference materials are there. Unless this is something too sensitive to be discussed in public?”

I could practically hear the knowing smile in her voice when Diaz spoke. “Of course, Doctor, I completely understand. Few people connected with the arcane wish to enter another’s sanctum without prior guarantees.”

I chuckled. That was, indeed, part of the reason, which tied into my main reason, me being somewhat wanted by their group, especially after my actions today. “I am glad to see that someone has been teaching you the etiquette, then. The library is not my sanctum, nor anyone else’s, and the references I might need would be there, unless you were willing to give me access to whatever libraries the Protectors have access to.”

“Sadly, that isn’t something I can guarantee at this time. There is a lot of classified data there, and, unfortunately, you have not yet been vetted and cleared to that level of clearance.”

“Oh, I would be very surprised if I was,” I laughed. “But you can’t blame an academic from trying, can you? Learning new things can be one hell of a drug.”

“Naturally, but I’m sure you understand how people need to keep some secrets.”

“Naturally. So, would a meeting at the library suffice?”

“Yes, it will. Are you going to be back in the office today?”

“Yes, I am just on my way back from the bank. There was a bit of excitement, but, thankfully, Lady Liberty came on the scene quickly enough, and the only injuries were the would-be robbers.”

“I see.” There was a bit of surprise in Diaz’s voice. “Well, that should make things easier. Would you be available for a meeting to discuss things in, say, half an hour?”

“Best make it an hour, I’m afraid. The subway is usually a bit delayed, this time of day, and I’m not exactly one for running, you understand.”

“Of course. I’ll have someone meet you at the library then. Thank you for your time, Doctor Livingston.”

“Thank you for the consideration, Ms. Diaz. Until later.”

She hung up, and I quickly switched my cell phone for my tablet, which was easier on my eyes, to make sure that I reserved the conference room closest to the Mystic Arts section. The less I had to go tromping about the building, the better. And if this turned into a research project, like I expected it would, then I would already be close to my books.

Of course, I had a sneaking suspicion what they would be asking me for. The Black Hat had been the Protector’s expert on magic for twenty-five years. Unfortunately, he had ‘retired’ just after the Pulse, due to ‘health concerns’. With his ‘retirement’, I was probably the most knowledgeable scholar of the Arcane Arts in the entire region, if not the country. And, unless they were complete fools, by now someone with the Protectors must have noticed an arcane signature associated with my magic. They probably were looking to try and take me down.

It really was too bad that Black Hat retired. But I couldn’t fault him for that. After all, there are many health concerns that come from having a few grenades (sans pins) drop into your lap while you were driving on the highway, especially when they weren’t there when he started the car.