Time’s Raven, page 1
Book 2 of the gritty, fast-paced, thought-provoking Eternity Loop series.
What’s done cannot be undone. Don’t forget.
Having broken the rules against time travel, Indigo is in trouble with everyone, but at least the problem of Billy Raven has been solved — hasn’t it? Indigo isn’t totally sure. She’s not sure about a lot of things: whether Rigel will choose her over Brie, where Andromeda comes from and what the mysterious Eternity Loop is.
She will find out soon enough. It is only a matter of time.
‘Merriman is a gifted storyteller.’
— Rachael Craw, KidsBooksNZ
CONTENTS
CHARACTER LIST
PART I
ONE: BILLY
TWO: INDIGO
THREE: BILLY
FOUR: RIGEL
FIVE: BILLY
SIX: INDIGO
SEVEN: BILLY
EIGHT: RIGEL
NINE: BILLY
TEN: INDIGO
ELEVEN: BILLY
TWELVE: RIGEL
THIRTEEN: BILLY
FOURTEEN: INDIGO
FIFTEEN: BILLY
SIXTEEN: RIGEL
SEVENTEEN: BILLY
EIGHTEEN: INDIGO
NINETEEN: BILLY
TWENTY: RIGEL
TWENTY-ONE: BILLY
TWENTY-TWO: INDIGO
TWENTY-THREE: BILLY
TWENTY-FOUR: RIGEL
TWENTY-FIVE: BILLY
TWENTY-SIX: RIGEL
TWENTY-SEVEN: BILLY
TWENTY-EIGHT: INDIGO
TWENTY-NINE: BILLY
THIRTY: INDIGO
THIRTY-ONE: BILLY
THIRTY-TWO: RIGEL
THIRTY-THREE: BILLY
THIRTY-FOUR: INDIGO
THIRTY-FIVE: BILLY
THIRTY-SIX: RIGEL
THIRTY-SEVEN: BILLY
THIRTY-EIGHT: INDIGO
THIRTY-NINE: BILLY
FORTY: RIGEL
FORTY-ONE: BILLY
FORTY-TWO: INDIGO
FORTY-THREE: RIGEL
FORTY-FOUR: INDIGO
FORTY-FIVE: RIGEL
FORTY-SIX: INDIGO
PART II
FORTY-SEVEN: RIGEL
FORTY-EIGHT: RIGEL
FORTY-NINE: RIGEL
FIFTY: RIGEL
FIFTY-ONE: RIGEL
FIFTY-TWO: INDIGO
FIFTY-THREE: RIGEL
FIFTY-FOUR: INDIGO
FIFTY-FIVE: RIGEL
EPILOGUE: ANDROMEDA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
ALSO BY EILEEN MERRIMAN
FOLLOW PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
For Maisie, who knows about haiku and tigers burning bright and the power of imagination.
CHARACTER LIST
Black Spiral Intelligence Surveillance File Confidentiality Rating: High
HOFFMAN-MEHTA FAMILY & ASSOCIATES
Indigo Hoffman (Moon): 17 years old, second-generation virally optimised (G2); daughter of Bruno Hoffman and Harper Mehta Bruno Hoffman: first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member; Indigo’s father
Harper Mehta: first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member; Indigo’s mother
Griffin Lewis: 19-year-old friend of Indigo’s residing in 1996 London
Elodie Boucher: 18-year-old friend of Indigo’s residing in 1996 London
Billy Raven: a young man of indeterminate age who Indigo first meets in 1996 London
Andromeda: 20-something-year-old Offspring, currently being held prisoner in 2005 Santorini
FLETCHER-BLACK FAMILY & ASSOCIATES
Rigel Fletcher: 18 years old, second-generation virally optimised (G2); son of Johnno (Phoenix) Fletcher and Violet Black
Fox Fletcher: Rigel’s 13-year-old brother
Johnno (Phoenix) Fletcher: first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member; Black Spiral Intelligence (BSI) agent; father of Rigel and Fox
Violet Black: first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member; scientist at Apollo Foundation; mother of Rigel and Fox
Kit Williams: 18 years old, Rigel’s friend from high school Vaughan Johnson: 17 years old, Rigel’s friend from high school
BLACK SPIRAL INTELLIGENCE (BSI) STAFF
Rudolph Underwood: Director of BSI/Head of NZ Branch
Rawiri Sullivan: BSI agent and first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member
Camilla Chase: Head of UK Division of BSI
Harvey Wu: BSI agent/neurophysicist, UK branch
Brie Morrison: BSI employee
Ci Chang: BSI agent
QUICK FAMILY & ASSOCIATES
Billy Quick (Raven): 16-year-old from 1988 England
Natalie Quick: Billy Raven’s older sister
Cedric Quick: Billy Raven’s father
Mr Elder: Billy Raven’s English teacher
Aurelia Nightingale: a teenage girl whom Billy Raven meets in 1988 England
Catherine Edwards: 16-year-old girlfriend of Billy’s from 1988 England
OTHER
Laura Strom: a virally optimised scientist (G1) working for a splinter cell
Callum Templeman: first-generation virally optimised (G1); former VORTEX member
Miles Newton: Eternity Project employee
Grace Newton: Miles’s wife
Rua Matipo: Aurelia’s friend, lives in the Cook Islands
PART I
ONE:
BILLY
1988
Once upon a time … Is that how one starts a tale like this? I have been battling with time all my life; battling and playing with, and conquering.
Once upon a time, I conquered time.
Once upon a time, I was sixteen years old, sitting in a classroom that smelt of aged sweat and Mr Elder’s breath.
‘Speak up, boy,’ he said.
I took a deep breath, trying to chase the bad thoughts out of my head. Hoping my voice wouldn’t shake. ‘To sleep, perchance to die.’
Elder threw a piece of chalk at me. ‘Perchance to dream, Mr Quick. Your surname is somewhat of an oxymoron, don’t you think?’
I heard titters from behind me, some louder than others. Rubbing my forehead, where I was sure the chalk had left a bruise, I said, ‘To sleep, perchance to dream. For in that sleep of death—’
Mr Elder strode forward and brought his ruler down on my desk. I’m ashamed to say I jumped.
‘Ay, there’s the rub!’ he bellowed. Oh, how I hated him then. How I wished it was my English teacher who had slipped into the sleep of death ten days before, rather than my mother.
‘A-ay, there’s the r-rub,’ I stammered. ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil …’
Elder held his hands in front of him, his fingers laced. ‘Thank you, Mr Quick. I think you’ve successfully murdered Hamlet now.’
More laughter. My whole body felt as if it was on fire. If only I could shuffle off my mortal coil, escape this nightmarish existence forever. All my father had done since Mum had died was drink and cry, cry and drink.
I didn’t cry anymore. I just wanted to die.
But I even failed at that.
TWO:
INDIGO
He sneaks into my dreams sometimes. Billy Raven, I mean. In my dreams, we’re standing on Tower Bridge, kissing as the river coils beneath us. But then he starts kissing my neck, and it’s not long before I realise he’s feeding on me, taking my immortality for his own. When I twist away, I see that the river beneath us is running red.
I always wake with the same words clanging through my thought-stream: What’s done cannot be undone. Don’t forget.
If only I could. I’m in so much trouble, not only with my parents (How could you run away like that?) but with the BSI, too (Your hearing will be on 8 January).
Rigel, or, as the BSI like to call him, Hunter Blue, is about the only person I’m not in trouble with, even though it’s my fault he nearly got separated from his body forever, suspended somewhere between the past, the present and the future. And if he blames me for the disappearance of his father, Black Wolf, he hasn’t let on.
But I’ve hardly seen Rigel lately. He’s been too busy cuddling up to Brie.
It’s a slow, syrupy summer’s day, and I’m relaxing by Dad’s pool. Perhaps ‘relaxing’ is the wrong word. I’m hardly relaxed. All I can think about is the hearing tomorrow. I’ve been charged with unauthorised time travel, which is a direct violation of Black Spiral rule number two, designed to keep us Offspring, the second-generation products of the Foundation experiments, out of trouble.
‘Urrgh.’ I slip off the hammock and dive into the pool. The water is a perfect twenty-eight degrees. I flip over, staring up at the cloudless sky. Tomorrow is Friday, a scheduled rain day. It seems appropriate that it will be grey and wet the day I’m sentenced to my punishment, whatever that turns out to be. I just want to get it over and done with.
And then what? I’m meant to be starting my final year of high school. What if I’m not allowed to because of my criminal convictions?
Relax, Indy. It’s BSI business. Normals won’t hear about that kind of stuff.
I close my eyes, tempted to tell Rigel to get the hell out of my thought-stream, but something holds me back. That’s the problem, I think-reply. The BSI could banish me to Siberia and no one would even blink.
No one’s going to banish you anywhere. They’re just doing what they have to do.
I stretch my arms abov
It’s the kind of stuff I just know.
And what have you been doing? Or shouldn’t I ask? I’m trying to block the next image, but it bobs up anyway: Brie greeting Rigel at the airport five weeks ago with a hug and a kiss. Ugh, why am I remembering that?
Rigel’s thought-stream blurs, and I realise he’s blocking me as well. Training.
Is that what you call it?
It’s not what you think, he think-says. See you tomorrow. Then he’s gone, and I’m floating by myself, staring into the blue.
I’m on house arrest, being shuffled back and forth between Mum’s and Dad’s. At least Dad has the pool. Tonight, the night before my hearing, I’m at Mum’s again, enduring a trip through the Virtual Mall to choose my outfit.
‘Why am I dressing up for a hearing?’ I grumble for what must be the tenth time. ‘It’s not as though they’re going to give me demerit points for looking scruffy.’
‘Believe me, first impressions matter.’ Mum touches her I-Bio, taking control of the Indigo avatar on the e-screen so she can get the avatar to enter the next shop.
‘Is it just me, or is everything in here purple?’ I take over my avatar again, spinning her around and into the next store.
Mum frowns at my selection, a pair of white wide-legged trousers paired with a blue shirt. ‘You can see your belly-button.’
‘What’s so offensive about a belly-button?’ I’m winding her up and I know it. ‘OK, OK,’ I relent. ‘How about this?’ I click on a longer version of the shirt, one that sits on the waistband of the trousers. ‘No breasts, belly-buttons or vaginas.’
‘I hope you’re not going to use that tone at the Tribunal.’
‘I’ll try my best to be civil.’
‘Because if you talk to them like that, I can guarantee your punishment will be worse.’ Mum purchases the items. A message flashes up on the screen, promising a drone delivery to our front door within the next ninety minutes.
I slump into the couch. ‘I’ll be good, I promise.’
‘And you need to tell the truth.’
‘I’ve already told the truth. In my debriefing, remember?’
My mother’s glare is a mirror-image of mine, I’m sure. ‘Excuse me for remembering what happened the last time you promised to tell your father and me the whole truth.’
‘I was under the influence of a vampire,’ I mumble, squirming beneath her gaze. Time’s vampire.
But he did love you, a voice inside me insists. He wasn’t lying about that.
‘Because you chose to deliberately flout all the rules that were meant to protect you,’ my mother snaps. ‘And quite apart from that, how old was this Billy Raven anyway? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?’
My anger rising, I say, ‘I can’t believe you of all people are telling me off for going out with an older man. How old was Dad when you met him? Oh, twenty-five, you say? And you were — what? — my age?’ I jump up and retreat to my room, my mother’s thought-voice chasing me. Indigo Hoffman, how dare you speak to me like that … wait until I let your father …
‘Blah blah blah,’ I whisper, blocking her so she doesn’t get completely hysterical at me. I’m probably already grounded for the rest of my life anyway, but arguing with my mother is exhausting.
Mum’s voice floats down the hallway. ‘Get back here Indigo — we haven’t chosen your shoes yet.’
‘You choose them,’ I yell. ‘I’ve got a headache.’
It’s not a lie. A headache is exactly what I get every time I think about what happened only five weeks ago. I draw my curtains and lie down on my bed, trying to chase the memory away, but it’s still too vivid. All I can smell is blood, blood and the overwhelming scent of cloves.
Do tigers hunt alone? Rigel, Andromeda and I had asked before attacking Billy in tiger form. It was a taipan snake rather than a tiger that had ended his life, though, its venom paralysing him before he bled to death.
He’d told us he was a god, but in the end he died like any other man.
I shudder, turn onto my side. I haven’t heard from Andromeda since that day. Maybe she’s returned to 2005 Santorini, where Billy hid her. Or maybe she’s gone back to 2088, where she came from — although there’s no guarantee that the threat she had fled from has now gone.
My headache is getting worse. I pull the covers over my head and escape the only way I can.
If my mother finds out, she’ll kill me.
But there are worse things than being dead.
A giant yellow orb floods into my eyes. I am a Tiger Moth, Arctia caja, navigating by the light of the full moon, my giraffe-patterned wings outlined in its hypnotic glow.
Billy: What’s your favourite animal, Indigo Moon?
I float high above the trees, a celestial calm filling me, one I feel only when I’m travelling. Since I’ve mastered whole-body shifting, it has become almost effortless to travel, unlike when I used to send out my dream-flow and leave my earthly body behind.
Not time-travelling, though. As far as the BSI are concerned, it’s unlikely I’ll ever be doing that again.
Thought I might find you here, a familiar voice think-says.
If I were in my human form, I might sigh or groan. Instead, I flit around my newly arrived companion, whose wings are equally resplendent in gold, blue, green and pink.
Sneaking around again, Hunter Blue? I think-ask.
It’s Rigel to you. My childhood friend — although we’re hardly children anymore, now he’s eighteen and I’m only ten months away from that, too — settles on a tree trunk.
Aren’t I allowed to call you by your BSI name, then? I think-ask, alighting beside him.
You’ll call me whatever you want, I’m figuring. A split second later, the moth has gone, and a Rigel-tiger is prowling around the base of the tree.
Show-off, I think-say, cycling rapidly through my favourite moth forms like a model on a catwalk, Hawkmoth-Coffee-Clearwing-Emperor Moth, before changing into tiger form too.
I’m not even going to dignify that with a reply. Rigel sits next to me and starts licking a front paw, his tiger-toes fanned out. Your moths are pretty and all, but can they bring down a deer?
Haven’t you ever heard of an Assassin caterpillar? If your tiger eats one of those, it’ll bleed to death. I stretch out in the long grass, my eyes still full of moon. Is it weird to worship a rock the way I do?
Rigel stretches out next to me. Remember the time we went travelling as elephants and nearly got shot by those hunters?
See? Sometimes it’s better to be small but deadly. I shudder, remembering that day. I thought we were going to die.
Maybe it’s not as easy as that, he think-says. Since we’re immortal and all.
I don’t know if you can grow back your head if it’s chopped off, though, I think-say, and if we were in human form, we’d probably be giggling. Instead, I ride the pink bubbly wave of Rigel’s thought-stream, happy to bask in the glow of the moon with the guy who used to be my best friend, back before I nearly got all of us killed.
I’m still your best friend, Indy, he think-says, as I drift into sleep. Aren’t I?
Of course, I think-say. If you’ll have me.
I sense Rigel’s thought-stream turn a cryptic blue-green, feel the feline rasp of his tongue on my nose. You’ll be OK tomorrow, he think-says. I promise.
THREE:
BILLY
1988
I walked home slowly, the sun peeking at me through the clouds. It was twenty minutes to the semidetached house I shared with my father and my older sister, Natalie, if I took the shortest route.
I wasn’t interested in the shortest route, though. Intent on spending as little time at home as possible, I cut down to the river and wandered along the footpath, watching the swans slide through the water. A trio of youths in uniforms different from mine watched me with half-lidded eyes, cigarettes dangling from between their fingers. Ducking my head, I traced a semi-wide berth, avoiding them without wanting to look too obvious. I was average-sized, not too fat, not too skinny, but it was easy to get picked on when you were a loner.
