Silver Shard by Betsy Streeter

Author:Betsy Streeter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction;steampunk;cyberpunk;time travel;young adult;strong female lead;portals;bounty hunter;JUV053000;Juvenile Fiction;JUV037000;Fantasy;Magic;JUV064000
Publisher: Light Messages Publishing
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

“Well, my friend,” Monder says, “it appears our project, the one you helped me to begin, is nearly complete. We can make contact with our fragment bearer, even if we can’t get to her just yet. Only a matter of time. And the boy’s maps are moving along nicely.”

The Tromindox stands at a control console at the center of the room, directing his words half to an ornately-framed monitor in front of him and half to the skeleton still in its place on the wall. He punches a few keys and magnifies the screen image. It shows something resembling a map, like a subway, with a dot moving around on it. A box in the corner displays a space for coordinates, but no numbers appear yet. The dot jumps around, as if the system is re-scanning for it every few seconds. Boxes form on top of the map, zoom in and out, and attempt to pinpoint the dot’s location. But they do not yet track along accurately. They appear, change shape, and disappear.

The dot represents the movements of Helen Silverwood, his fragment bearer. The girl who will free him from this life. The reward for his hard work and diligence in the face of imprisonment. Soon he will apply his vast learnings to the real world, the world that exists in time.

Time. Monder can hardly believe it. This rift has been his prison for so long he has all but forgotten what real time feels like. Cause and effect. Relationships to real things and people.

He thinks back to his first hours and months and years in this place out of time. Running, falling, stumbling into tunnel after tunnel and realizing only after he had reached total physical exhaustion that he was causing space itself to expand and contract. That there was no way to escape a thing that you made out of your own movements. No entrance, no exit. A self-creating prison.

It took him many years to find even a tiny hole in the rift. After such a long time (or lack of time), he had his very first link to the outside. To real time. And Monder only found that hole because he had help from the other side, from an unwitting accomplice.

Monder turns to the skeleton. “Your little Silverwood friend is coming for a visit, sir,” he says. “I don’t suppose this was what you expected from your experiment, was it? Not the result you hoped for when you began.”

The fragment around the skeleton’s neck, still encased in a clear box, looks brighter now. The broken edge appears smoother, the half-spiral more defined.

“I mean, your work was brilliant—don’t get me wrong, you have my utmost admiration,” Monder goes on, taking a few slow twirls around the room. His embroidered robes flow with him and he raises his pointed chin above his high starched collar. “Such a breakthrough you had, taking advantage of the ruptures that the portals created, converging space-times onto one other, exploring and mapping the rifts between time and no-time, expanding on the work of the Watchmakers.

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