The split second timespe.., p.1
The Split Second (Timespeaker Series Book 2), page 1
The Split Second
Future House Publishing
www.futurehousepublishing.com
Cover image copyright: Future House Publishing
Text © 2024 Brit Stanford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Future House Publishing at rights@futurehousepublishing.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-950020-83-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-950020-82-9
Editing by Kelly A. Taylor
DEDICATION
For my incredible mum,
Who shows me time and again how possible impossible things are if you just work really, really hard (and don’t sleep as much as is ideal)
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part III
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
THANK YOU
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALSO BY BRIT STANFORD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GET IN TOUCH
Part I
* * *
Thank you for choosing this book! We hope you enjoy it. Please join our mailing list for new releases, exclusive offers, and our best deals.
CLICK HERE TO GET MORE GREAT SCI-FI & FANTASY BOOK DEALS
Future House Publishing
* * *
The night is not evil, but opposite.
Darkness fights light
Because it does not understand it,
Not yet.
Alsmer’s Book of Histories, Vol. 2, V. 31
Chapter 1
ETHER
Ether was drowning in words.
He tried to curl tighter into himself, limiting how much of his body touched the white stone, and yelled his mother’s prayers at the walls of his cell—walls that spoke to him. He understood now that the legends about his prison were all wrong. They downplayed the dual horror and beauty of the place. Strange for myths, usually great exaggerations of small truths.
There was no window in his cell, no way to tell where he was located in the gnarled fingers of rock that supposedly reached from the very heart of Tir. The stone, which he had stared at for far too long, was beautiful. Even in the darkness of his cell, the white stone gleamed with a mesmerizing luminescence of swirling color just below the surface. At first, Ether thought the stone had been rubbed to perfect smoothness by five hundred years of prisoners, but the entire cell, including the ceiling and the weaving, vine-like bars, were perfectly smooth—like petrified milk or bleached bone.
Yes, they were beautiful, these bones. But they hurt. Where his fingers touched the stone, it burned but left no trace on his skin. The bone sought bone, and it infused his with foreign, unfriendly energy.
Legends said Irlion meant “silence” in the Divine Tongue.
Though it was quiet, it felt loud in his head.
He couldn’t put his finger on what was so loud. The bone walls, he supposed. They buzzed. Or at least, it seemed so at first. Quickly, the buzzing made its way through the ground, through his skin. He felt saturated in the buzzing. It was annoying at first. Then maddening.
Finally, as if struck by lightning, he realized it wasn’t buzzing at all but words.
Time to take lives to save lives to take lives to save lives . . .
His demon, the one that had whispered in his head since his childhood, was in the bone. It spoke to him from the prison walls.
The sudden understanding brought him a strange comfort.
However long ago it was—Days? Weeks?—he had found the Divine, the entity he so desperately sought. In the moment he had tried to end his life, the Divine intervened, offering him an escape: a loophole in time. It guided him to a memory as real and tangible as the cell around him, of his past self in the backseat of a Deist’s steam carriage—a way to enter his past and change his future.
But when he tried to alter his past, making to jump from the vehicle, he felt the solidity of the cell around him and an exquisite pain deep in his chest. In that agony, he knew the Divine offered him an impossibility. He couldn’t escape into the river of his past. Doing so felt wrong, more wrong than stealing years or lives. He felt the beating current of Time, powerful and mysterious, yet weak and vulnerable. If he abandoned his place in the cell, escaping to his past, it would create a vast disruption in the flow of Time.
The Divine’s vision of deliverance hovered before him, cruel and mocking. In that moment, he hated the Divine more than he’d ever hated the demon: for tempting him with something so dangerous.
No. He wouldn’t destroy Time to save himself or Lisbet.
He pulled back from the memory and felt the pain in his chest grow, like the searing flame of a hot poker driven deep into his being by a cruel god. There was a horrible tearing within him, as if his soul were being ripped from his chest, and he watched a copy of himself peel away, diving through the door. He watched through the window, bewildered, as his phantom twin tumbled down the side of the road and into the overgrown grass of the ditch. Touching his chest, he expected to find a great gaping wound, but the flesh was whole. Still, he felt a terrifying emptiness within him, and he stared at where the pale Basal boy had fallen until Sallier drove around a bend, and his look-alike disappeared from view. The pain in his chest intensified. He doubled over, gasping like a wriggling fish on a hook. Sallier turned at the sound, but before she met his eyes, he felt Time surge around him, as if yanking hard on the hook in his chest. It sent him hurtling through time, back to the present.
He didn’t know how long he’d knelt on the floor of his white prison, yelling at Time to give him back what it had ripped away. He felt hollow. What had Time taken? Was there a part of him, still squatting in that ditch, also yelling at Time to give back what had been torn away?
But Time had remained silent and distant. And finally, he’d given up. He could no longer hear Time. He was not worthy. He wasn’t even Win anymore, it seemed. He stared at the blue skin of his large Deist hands. Etherwin the Executioner, they’d called him. Perhaps that’s all he was now: Ether, a fabricated Deist husk with no soul, abandoned by the Divine.
The resulting void, the nothingness of purpose and meaning in the eerie glow of his alien cell filled him with terrible loneliness . . . So when his old demon spoke, he had embraced it, desperate to hear something speak to him. For the first time in his life, he’d welcomed the voice. He’d drunk it up and listened to it.
Perhaps that was his real mistake.
The demon’s whispers poured, unreserved, into his mind and drowned everything else.
Like phantom snakes, the words slipped down his spine, into his heart, lungs, and stomach. He often looked down in panic, lifting his trembling fingers to his eyes, expecting his body to no longer be flesh, but white bone, pulsing with the raging words that hummed through his body like a frantic heartbeat.
In rare moments, when the furious words seemed to slump into exhaustion—when there was enough quiet in his mind to think—he wondered if this was what happened to all half-breeds who listened to the demon voice. When he first heard the demon, ten years ago, he had hated it and had sworn to smother it. But if he had listened back then, would the demon words have poured into him as they did now, filling him with rage and pain and hate? Is this why the half-breeds became Radicals? Is this why they burned down factories, slaughtered Deists, and turned into destructive monsters? Had they been infected, consumed, by the demon voice?
Time to take lives to save lives to take lives to . . .
“Let us train our hearts in submission to the Holy Ones,” he yelled back, “even the Deists, who slew the half-breed Enel, and saved mankind from evil! Let the benevolence of the Ancients smile upon our heads this day. For they are holy . . .” He bellowed the words but could barely hear them over the demon in his head. He knew he was slowly losing himself.
He tried to remember the sound of his mother’s voice. Listen to me, son. You need to control it. Breathe. Quiet your mind. Repeat the prayer. She had believed in him. If he gave in to the demon now, he’d fail her. She always believed he was strong enough to fight this demon.
He was. He’d had years of practice.
But he was tired. He shouldn’t have let
It was difficult to judge the passing of time. Guards made their rounds. Bland meals in chipped bowls appeared just outside his cell. He’d worn the letter in his cell to shreds, folding and unfolding it, crumpling and smoothing it out. The words haunted him still. Impressive, the Minister Arolyn’s neat script said, its intent mocking. You will be an asset to the Heartland.
Lisbet has also been incarcerated in Irlion Prison. Depending on your conduct, we will negotiate her release.
The Rithion execution will go forward tomorrow morning as planned.
And a postscript in Galton’s hand: a plea for forgiveness from his old mentor. I did what I had to.
He did not know how much time had passed. It felt like weeks since he had first woken in his cell, but the Atrium had never come for him to carry out the letter’s threats nor to demand he carry out the botched execution. Had they executed the Radicals themselves, content to let him rot in prison? He thought of Ani and Pider, desperate to believe they had escaped, wondering if he would sense their death if they had been recaptured and executed without his knowing. Still, part of him wondered if he was already half-mad and mere hours, not weeks, had passed since entering the prison. He was in some sort of hellish limbo where time itself seemed to have no relevance.
The longer he was in the cell, the more he sensed pain in the demon’s whispers. He felt the demon’s terrible confinement and its bitter hatred for those who imprisoned it. He felt an intense desperation to be released from all constraints, all control, until he thought he might do anything, anything, to be free. The pain felt so exquisite, the yearning for escape so strong, that he often pitied the demon, wishing he could somehow grant it freedom from whatever held it bound.
He heard approaching footsteps and hurried to his feet, gathering the three solitary items in his sparse cell: a cup, a bowl, and a bedpan. He was completely alone most of the time. His neighboring cells were empty. The guards refused to speak to him, but their appearances gave him some sense of the passage of time, some hope that Galton and the Atrium hadn’t left him here indefinitely. He crouched, pushing the cup, bowl, and pan through a tiny gap in the bars, straining to push each far enough away. If they were too close to him, the guards wouldn’t approach. They had nothing to fear—he couldn’t sense their Timestreams through the bone whispers—but they stayed far away from him. They didn’t seem to hear the bone voice like he did.
Ether hummed tunelessly, thumping his head dully against the white stone, when they brought a new prisoner in, heedlessly kicking Ether’s bowl down the long hall.
He launched upright. “Have you heard anything about Lisbet? What’s happening with the war? Please, tell Galton—”
But the guards were already gone. Ether threw himself back from the bars of his cell, not even ashamed of the desperation in his voice. Perhaps someday they’d answer him. At least they’d brought him a neighbor. Finally.
He turned to the prisoner in the cell next to his. The man was still crumpled on the floor where the guards had thrown him.
“Hello?” Ether got to his knees and crawled across the smooth stone. He tried to hold himself back from the bars, from reaching for the closest living contact he’d had in . . . days? Weeks? It could be months, for all he knew. It was a cruel torture, cutting him off from people, from daylight, from Time.
Ether got as close to the bars as he dared. He squatted there, staring at the crumpled form illuminated in the eerie bone glow. His eyes relished the dark greasy folds of the man’s coat and the white matted curls peeking above his collar. He had seen nothing but white stone for too long.
“What’s your name?” Ether tried again, hungry for the sound of anything but his own voice. He’d gotten tired of yelling. Of singing. Of talking. Weeks ago . . . Hours ago? He’d settled for random bursts of humming, babbling even, to try to distract himself from the unholy whispers coming from the twisting bleached bones of his cell. “I just want to hear your voice . . .”
Ether trailed off. The man didn’t move.
In the stillness, Ether could hear the man breathing, and that calmed him.
“I’m sorry you’re here,” Ether murmured, inching closer to the bars that separated them. “But it has been so quiet. For so long.”
Still the man didn’t move.
“Are you injured?”
Silence.
Ether hovered by the bars.
The whispers grew louder than the sound of the man’s breathing. Ether lunged toward the bars, wrapping his fingers around them. “Please! Won’t you just—ach!”
The moment Win’s fingers touched the bars, the man moved, and suddenly, Ether struggled to draw a breath. Ah yes, the man’s hands were around his neck, clenching, squeezing. Ether choked, his arms straining, pushing against the blessed bars that separated them.
The man’s eyes were inches from his own: colorless Basal eyes, no iris around the black pupils. Black flecks began to spot his vision. His head felt like it was swelling, filling with air or blood or something—but it was pressure, and he swore his head was going to explode.
Throw yourself forward, the demon whispered.
Ether abruptly yanked himself forward, cracking his face hard against the bars of the cell.
It was enough.
It took the man by surprise.
He loosened his grip enough to let Ether throw himself back, far from the reach of the man’s now empty fingers, extended through the terrible, wonderful bars of his cell.
Ether lay on his back, hacking, until he felt blood and phlegm in his throat. He rolled over, lethargic. He spat, finding a hazy satisfaction in the dark blood splattering the floor of his cell. He hated that unblemished white.
His coughing eased finally. Every breath felt like fire, scorching the inside of his lungs, all the way through his throat and tongue. His head pounded furiously, hushing the terrible demon whispers . . . whispers that had just saved his life.
Ether opened his eyes, staring at the glow pulsing under the bone. What was this bone? Why did it speak to him?
Finally, he rolled over.
The Basal man was still there, sitting cross-legged, on the other side of the bars. He stared at Ether, his colorless skin nearly the same white as the stone.
Ether waited until the dim corners of the cell stopped spinning, then squinted at his neighbor. The man didn’t seem angry. Just sad. Resigned even.
“Ahem.” Ether spat another large glob of blood-streaked phlegm. “I suppose I had that coming, yeah?”
The man shrugged.
“Did I . . . kill someone you know?”
The man looked at him. “My daughter.”
Ether felt sick. “I’m sorry.” He thought of the Basal girl on that execution stand, white hair in braids.
The man was silent. Too silent. The whispers were bleeding through the pounding in Ether’s head.
“So you’re an assassin then?” Ether tried. “Sent to kill me? Not that I’m blaming you really,” he added hastily. “I considered killing myself too, so I understand.”
The man looked at him with interest. “Why?”
“They were trying to manipulate me. They were trying to control me.” Ether stopped, aware of the growling vehemence in his voice, unsure if it was him or the demon speaking. “The Atrium was trying to force me to be their weapon, to end the war for them. I didn’t want to kill anyone, I swear, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice.” He shrugged. “I realized weapons can be destroyed. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before.”
“What?”
“To kill myself.”
“Well go ahead then,” the man said hopefully.
“I tried.” Ether eyed the man, annoyed. “But something stopped me.” Ether thought of the Divine Tongue. The thing that didn’t exist. At least, he didn’t want it to exist . . .
“I mean,” the man said, “if you’re so intent on it, you can just let me do it. That’s the whole reason I’m here anyway.”
“Suicide mission?”
The man nodded. “We’ve been planning this for weeks, finding a way to get me in here, with you. Best case scenario: you’re dead, they find me, kill me too. Worst case: I fail and they kill me anyway.”
“Huh.” Ether moaned and rolled to his knees. “You a zealot or something?”
