Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (25 page)

“Yes. He would seem to be quite crafty. Moreover, high intelligence combined with time travel makes for an incredibly formidable foe, and I’m speaking from experience. For instance, he could freeze time, enter this apartment, and be listening in the next room right now.”

“Or simply plant a bomb.”

“Uh…that’s unlikely.”

“Really? Why is that?”

Yelere seemed to ponder the question for a moment, then said, “Whatever he’s using to manipulate time, I’m guessing it’s a device that he carries on his person. Regardless, it creates a temporal field around him that allows time to move normally.”

“So when he does something like freeze time, this field you mentioned encompasses him.”

“Not just him. Also his clothes, his shoes – probably anything in contact with him.”

“So if he were to freeze time and try to plant a time-bomb on me, for lack of a better term…”

“As long as he was holding it, the explosive would be in his temporal field and continue counting down. Now, he could try to wait until the last second to pin it on you or stick it under your nose, but that’s a risky path.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s harder to freeze time and maintain that stasis than it is to simply travel through it to the past or the future. Time wants to move forward, so it takes a lot more energy to hold it still. The longer your friend keeps time frozen, the more unstable his temporal field becomes. And if the temporal field fails, under the scenario you described, he’s stuck there with an explosive that’s about to detonate. If he’s as smart as I think he is, your rogue wouldn’t take that chance. Not when there are easier, less hazardous ways to kill you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Got any other cheery observations?”

Yelere looked unsure of himself for a moment, as if he didn’t want to speak. Then he let out a pent-up breath and said, “If I had to guess, I’d say this person is someone close to you.”

Oddly enough, that statement wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should have been, mostly because the thought had already occurred to me. It just felt weird hearing someone say it out loud.

“Thanks for your candor,” I said sincerely. “One last question, though: setting aside your feelings of how Time will fix itself and I don’t have to worry about anything, if I wanted to stop this guy, how do I do it?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Eventually, he’ll get caught. These people always do, no matter how brilliant they are.”

“And will that happen before or after he kills me?”

“Probably after, if killing you is his intent,” Yelere said in a nonchalant tone that was almost comical in its delivery.

“Yeah, well, you’ll understand if I somehow find that outcome unsatisfactory,” I said. “Which brings us back to the question I just asked: if I wanted to stop this person, right here and right now, how do I do it?”

Yelere gave me a very frank stare. “You can’t.”

I left Yelere’s apartment brooding and in a dark frame of mind. I had been enlightened about the nature of what I was up against, but still had no idea about who I was facing or how to deal with them.

Stepping into the elevator, I synced it to my GPS and directed it to take me to the castellum. As the elevator went into motion, I began weighing my options.

With any luck, maybe Indigo’s efforts with the Time Monitors had yielded fruit. Maybe they already had a bead on this temporal rogue, despite Yelere’s statements to the contrary. Maybe they were closing in on him now.

In reality, however, this guy seemed too smart for that. They weren’t going to trap him easily. (Assuming it was a guy, that is; it most certainly
could
be a girl. However, it seemed easier to think of the enemy here as masculine, so I continued doing so.)

The elevator came to a halt and I stepped out, walking absentmindedly while still trying to figure out a game plan.

Sad to say, the best option really seemed to encompass becoming outlaws ourselves. If we could go back in time and maybe just
observe
some of the events that had occurred – not interfere in the least – it might go a long way towards helping us get a handle on the situation. Maybe put us in a proactive instead of a reactive posture.

Preoccupied with these thoughts, I strolled along for a bit, paying almost no attention to my surroundings. Slowly, however, at the back of my mind, it began to dawn on me that something was out of place. Something was missing. Still, I kept ignoring the notion, pushing it back down while I focused on the bigger issue of the chrono criminal who was out for my blood. And then, in a burst of clarity, the thought I had been suppressing rushed to the forefront of my brain:
It’s too quiet!

Normally, in the castellum, there’s constant noise as servants hustle about cooking, cleaning, delivering messages, and so forth. Since stepping out of the elevator, I had failed to consciously note the dearth of those sounds.

With my attention now focused on the absence of the usual din, I blinked and looked around. I wasn’t in the Castellum Cardinal. Instead, I appeared to be back in the museum repository I had come through the day before while following the Beobona. (More specifically, I was in the area with the holographic displays.)

I looked at my GPS. Berran had said it was acting glitchy. Apparently when I had tried to direct the elevator to the castellum, the GPS had instead directed it to one of the earlier places I had visited. (And I, completely distracted by thoughts of how to deal with my unknown, time-traveling nemesis, hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t where I had expected to be.)

I was about to go trudging back to the elevator when I noticed a flickering near the rear of the room. Pulled by an impulse I couldn’t put a name to, I walked towards it. As I got closer, I realized what I was looking at: the hologram projected by the podium that the Beobona had run into.

Apparently it was still incapable of turning off. It also kept showing the same scene – the construction of the building where Vicra had thrown his party two nights earlier. I smiled, looking at the image and thinking of the time I’d spent with Myshtal there. And then I noticed something that made me do a double-take.

Thoughts racing, I stepped over to the control panel for the holograph and began testing it. The controls were similar to those on my grandmother’s transport – the ones she had taught me to use.

As already noted, I couldn’t turn the display off. However, I was able to manipulate the images being shown. I froze the portion of the hologram I was interested in and then magnified it. For a moment, I just stared, not believing what I was seeing.

I knew who the temporal rogue was now. The thought had barely sunk in before I heard a noise and realized that I wasn’t alone.

“So you’ve found me out,” said a familiar voice from behind me.

It was Vicra, standing about ten feet away from me and accompanied by two robots of the same make and model as Sloe, from what I could tell. He was dressed once again in one of his military-style outfits, and grinning broadly.

“It’s you,” I said accusingly. “It’s been you the entire time. My ship exploding, the wine, my robot Sloe…everything.”

“Admitted,” Vicra said without shame or remorse.

He looked at the holographic image I had frozen and blown up in size: he and I lying on the ground after I’d crashed into him at his little shindig.

“It’s a good likeness,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Too bad it’s two hundred years in the past.”

Vicra let out a sigh. “It’s my fault, really. When you were demonstrating your power at my party, I froze time in order to embarrass you a little.”

“You tripped me.”

“Yes, but I misjudged the direction I thought you’d fall. You slammed into me and accidentally triggered my temporal device, taking us into the past.”

“And later you faked being a teleporter – freezing time while you simply moved from one place to another.”

“Yes. I was trying to win your trust. I thought that if I revealed something deep and private, you’d be less inclined to be suspicious of me, among other things.”

“But why? Why do all of this? We’d never even met before a few days ago. What did I do to you?”

“You took what was mine!” he screeched, suddenly angry.

I shook my head, confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not,” he said, with a sigh. “My family’s been a major supporter of temporal research for years. We’ve had some amazing breakthroughs, but haven’t really been able to capitalize on our advancements because of the Temporal Monitors. Still, we’ve been able to enjoy the fruits of our labors to a small extent – little daytrips here and there through time. On one such jaunt a few years back, I decided to go to the future, just to see how things would turn out for me.”

“Aren’t you supposed to avoid stuff like that?” I asked. “You-might-see-your-own-grave and that kind of thing?”

“Yes, that’s what they say, but I was curious. After all, I’ve typically been considered one of the most talented royals of my generation, with a bright future ahead of me. That being the case, I just had to know.”

“And what did you see?”

“You!” he said, his face darkening in blistering, bitter anger. “Sitting on the Caelesian throne, with your bride at your side! You were sitting in what was rightfully
my
place!”

“And that’s why you hate me? Because of what you saw in some possible future?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t hate you. I actually like you. But I can’t have you standing in my way or taking what’s mine. So I devised a plan to take care of you.”

A mighty truth suddenly became clear to me.

“It wasn’t just the near-death stuff,” I said, now understanding the scope of what Vicra had done. “It really has been
every
thing. Summoning me from Earth, the
prexetus
…all of it. You’ve been behind it all.”

“Yes,” he said with a grin. “And – if you can control time – it’s a lot less difficult than you might think. I can freeze time, walk into the queen’s study, and stamp a dozen documents with the royal seal. And almost no one will ever question any of them, because they come from the queen.”

“Is that what you did to get me here? Forge a royal decree?”

“Nothing so blunt. Besides, that wouldn’t have worked. The queen and Prince Norbeo are close allies. His immediate response would have been to ask Queen Dornoccia why she was sending for his heir and she would have replied that she’d done no such thing. Instead, I had to manipulate others into demanding the
prexetus
; and after that, your presence was required.”

“And with the ability to control time, it must have been easy.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, laughing. “Intercept a message here and replace it with one suggesting a
prexetus
. Seize a proposal for a new law on taxes and tack on an addendum regarding rights of inheritance. Half of the Mectun are incompetent fools who are drunk most of the time. Show them their signature and signet on a document, and they’ll think they wrote it, no matter how absurd it is.”

“You won’t get away with this,” I said. “I’ll stop you.”

“Stop me?” Vicra said with a laugh. “You can’t even stop this!”

All of a sudden he vanished, and then reappeared right in front of me, slamming a fist into my gut. I doubled over in pain, collapsed to the floor. The pain was bad – I thought I was going to retch. I had tried to phase before being hit, but nothing had happened. It had to be the stupid crown again. Disgusted, I reached up, took the coronet off, and flung it away.

“It’s too late for that to help you,” Vicra said as he pulled back a leg in order to kick me.

I tried to do multiple things at once: tweak my nerves so I wouldn’t feel any pain, phase, and shift into super speed. As Vicra’s foot smashed into my ribs and flipped me over, I realized none of them had worked.

“Having a problem, Youth Fascination?” Vicra asked sardonically as he kicked me in the side, causing pain to explode like a grenade going off.

“It’s Kid Sensation,” I muttered. “Get it right, you moron.”

Incensed, Vicra kicked at me again, but this time I was ready. I caught his foot before impact, then twisted hard. Vicra went down with a yelp of pain.

Fighting the agony of my own injuries, I scrambled over on top of him and began pummeling him as best I could. Vicra tucked his chin and put his hands up defensively in front of his face, trying to protect his head.

I swung wildly for about ten seconds, trying to strike whatever area seemed to be open – ribs, jaw, neck… All of a sudden, something gripped my arms and I was bodily hauled off Vicra. Confused, I looked around and noticed that it was Vicra’s two robot guards. They stood on both sides of me, each holding an arm in a literal grip of steel (or whatever metal they were made of).

As Vicra got to his feet, I concentrated again on trying to get my powers to work, hoping that the earlier failure was no more than a glitch. My face must have been telegraphing what I was trying to do, because Vicra just stood there smiling at me.

“Your powers aren’t going to work,” he finally said.

I was almost afraid to ask, but managed to croak out, “What have you done?”

“I injected you with a neural blocker.”

I felt the blood leaving my face. “Wh–what?”

And then I remembered: the sting I’d felt when I was outside with Myshtal – when I thought some type of insect had bit me.

“You know that crown you’ve been wearing?” Vicra asked. “The one that was helping you learn our language? Its telemetry was altered, modified to monitor and broadcast your synaptic connections. In short, it tracked the neural pathways that were activated whenever you used your abilities.”

I flipped back through my memories, trying to figure how often the crown had been out of my possession, when this alteration Vicra mentioned could have taken place.

My banquet… Vicra’s party… When else?

Then I realized it didn’t matter; with his temporal device, he could have corrupted the crown’s purpose at almost any time.

“Once the proper pathways were identified, it was simply a matter of crafting an inhibitor to shut them down,” Vicra continued. “The trick, of course, was getting you to use your powers.”

“That’s why you kept asking for a demonstration – at that first lunch, and during your party.”

“Don’t forget the guys in the tunnel,” he said.

“So what – they were supposed to kill me and then you’d kill them?”

“Oh, I never thought they’d kill you. I just needed the situation to be dire enough for you to use your abilities. As for killing
them
– well, I couldn’t afford for them to get captured and have everything traced back to me. But I was humane about it; I used some alien science that we found on a distant world. I’ve heard that it’s painless.”

“It was gruesome and they died screaming.”

“Really?” Vicra said, seemingly taken aback. However, he recovered quickly, saying, “Well, I exhausted that technology, so it won’t happen again.”

“So I guess you’re going to kill me, now,” I said.

“Hardly,” Vicra replied. “I mean, I wanted you dead at one time, but now I have a better use for you.”

Then he landed a solid blow to my jaw and everything went black.