Beele’s eyes flickered to Colton, but the Instructor said nothing.
Archer gave a dramatic sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to choose myself.” He went down the line again, his eyes skimming over the smallest of the children and the oldest of the seasoned time servants before falling on those in between. Everyone dropped their eyes, trying to disappear into themselves.
Only Colton defiantly met Archer’s gaze. The man stopped before him, his upper lip curling. No doubt he was remembering their run-in the other day.
“I’ve been told,” Archer said, as if to Colton directly, “that one of you shows great promise in this particular field. So much so that there have been experiments of a sort happening right here in Enfield.”
Colton felt the blood drain from his face. Out of the corner of his eye, Castor turned to look at him.
“I’ve been informed that he was strong enough to connect to time on his own,” Archer explained, kneeling before him. “We need someone strong if this is to work.”
Colton’s lips trembled. He pressed them together, forcing himself to keep looking Archer in the eye. The man was oddly somber now, his earlier sneer wiped from his face.
“Colton Bell, was it?”
Slowly, Colton nodded.
“If you volunteer,” Archer said softly, “you’d be saving your town, Mr. Bell.”
His breaths were shaking as they left him, but still he didn’t look away from Archer. “How? How could I possibly stop what’s happening?”
“There is a way. I can’t say any more than that.”
Colton licked his dry lips. Time rippled up and down his arms, as if rubbing them in comfort. He leaned into the feeling, opening himself to the fury and the fire of time without Aetas’s control.
He thought of Abi in her bed, begging him to make it stop. His promise that he would fix it for her.
Colton gritted his teeth and again met Archer’s gaze. Stiffly, he nodded.
“No!” Castor made to get up, but the guard coming to take Colton kicked him, and Castor crumpled back to the ground. “No, stop! Take me instead! Don’t take him, take me!”
Colton was seized by a sudden panic. Something wasn’t right. He tried to elbow the guard holding him in the face, but a second man grabbed his other arm, and together the two of them dragged Colton through the church, toward the open doors.
“Castor!” he screamed. His own name was cried back, but he couldn’t see Castor’s face. Just heard his name, over and over.
“Castor!”
“Colton!”
“What are you doing?” the priest demanded as the flood of angry voices grew louder. “Release this young man at once!”
“Please say a prayer for us, and for him,” Archer said.
Colton fought again, frightened tears streaming down his face. “Castor!”
His name reached him one last time before the doors closed, and then he was out in the road, the men pulling him toward the village green. Shouts rang out through the dusk; he thought he heard his father above them all. Lucius ordered for him to be restrained.
Past the village green, Colton saw a glint of bronze. Someone had blocked off a square of unused land, where scraps of metal lay.
No, not scraps.
Cogs and gears.
Colton squirmed against his bonds, breathing heavily. The men forced him into the plot where he fell on his side, on top of the clock parts. Someone rolled him over onto his back, and his legs and shoulders were pinned down. The spokes of the gears bit into his skin.
“Let me go!” he shouted, struggling still.
“You agreed to help us, Mr. Bell,” Archer said above him. The last of the sunlight lit his hair like fire, shadowing his face.
“Not like this! I can help you, but there must be another way—”
“This is the only way,” Archer said. Now the man was the one avoiding his eyes. “Believe me, we don’t want this. We’re only doing what we must. I’m sorry, Mr. Bell.” He turned to the man on his left. “It has to be all his blood. Every drop.”
The knife gleamed red in the last rays of sunlight. Colton’s entire body froze with fear. He whimpered, making one last, feeble attempt to escape as the knife rose above him, a single stretch of a heartbeat.
And then the knife plunged in.
He grunted. The pain lanced through his chest, down to his feet, up to flood his brain with agony. Screaming—someone was screaming. His mother? Abigail? Castor? Blood pooled underneath him, soaking his shirt, running over the cogs and gears that lit up brilliantly at the taste of his blood.
“The throat, too,” Archer ordered.
Someone grabbed his hair and craned his head back. The knife left him with two mouths that gaped at the crimson sky above.
He twitched and jerked. The cogs grew hot. He choked on blood. His heart fluttered.
Time compressed around him, focusing on this one point of existence. It fed on him. It made him bleed faster, greedy for his life. Greedy for the power within his body that Aetas had planted so long ago. The complex knot of time unraveled, weaving into a new pattern. No more chaos. Now, there was order.
Death. And life.
“It’s working!”
It was the last thing he heard before death pulled him under like a hungry wave.
Colton woke to the smell of mint. He sat propped against the box, staring into the heart of nothing. His body was shaking. His throat began to convulse.
He dragged the cog holder nearer, clutching it to his chest. A thin, whining sound escaped him. He tried to stop it, but the keening grew louder, and longer, until he broke into tearless sobs. He banged a fist against the box marked FRAGILE, screaming and scratching at his throat and chest.
I died. I was human. They killed me.
It didn’t take long to remember the tower they’d built on the grave they had dug for him in that plot of land. The blood-soaked cogs had been installed in that tower. The cog directly beneath him had become the central cog, the main life force of the tower that ran Enfield’s time.
For hundreds of years, he had been walking on top of his own bones.
The compartment door slid open. “Hey! What are you doing in here?”
Colton stopped screaming. He stared at the officer with the blond mustache, the one who had patronized him at the station. There were other officers behind him. Slowly, Colton stood, his legs weak but sturdy enough to support him. He slipped on his cog holder.
“What are you doing in here?” the officer asked again. “Where’s your ticket?”
“I don’t have one.” Colton could barely hear himself. Barely feel himself. He was only that: barely.
“Stowaway,” another said.
The officer reached for his pistol. “Don’t make a scene, boy, and we might let you off easily.”
Without thinking, Colton turned and ran to the door on the opposite side of the carriage.
“Grab him!”
Colton darted into the next carriage, the one reserved for British passengers. Everyone turned their heads to see what was going on. Colton noticed an open window, one without bars. He dove toward it, shoving people out of his way. A woman screamed and smacked him with her parasol.