Time Jacker by Aaron Crash (nonfiction book recommendations .TXT) 📕

His tongue was bright red. “One o’clock, and how do you stop an angel and a demon and a door breaker, a clock controller, a new thing, a human thing?”

The fat clock man waddled into the courtyard, and all the clockwork animals knelt down on their front knees, or bowed outright, to pay homage to their master.

Jack stepped forward with the shotgun ready. “We thought you might know where something called Kerrata took Annie Blackburn. Kerrata has big horns and smells like—”

“Two o’clock, you can stop. I know of Kerrata and the long minutes of his decades plan, and the woman he held, pulled from the Tempus Influunt, the flow, the flow, the sacred flow.” All of the clocks on the fat man advanced by an hour, the big hand on the twelve, the little hand on the two. Even the tattoos advanced. The clock man moved up to Jack, and Jack had to stare up into the strange thing. Getting a look at the clocks impaled in the flabby white flesh didn’t make them any less gross.

“Great,” Jack said. “You can tell us what we need to know.”

The Clockwatcher’s wide nose flared. “Three o’clock, barrel, stock, and lock, and here you are. The demon is the barrel, the angel is the stock, but I don’t know about the lock. And what are you? Interim, Phantasm, or flesh made real?”

Jack had the distinct impression he was being sniffed.

“I’m just a human,” Jack said. “I want to find Annie Blackburn. And maybe find a way to better understand my powers. I can stop time.” From his pocket, Jack pulled the toy soldier. He kept his hand near the shotgun’s trigger, though. He could easily shove the barrel of the scatter gun into the gut of this fat clock man and blow his gears out the back of his ass.

“Is this one of yours?” Jack asked.

The Clockwatcher took the soldier in delicate hands. The hands of all the clocks adjusted by one. “Four o’clock, and here we talk. The toy is but a toy, but the Kairos in you is the soldier. And it longs to rise. The only surviving son—the sixth son of the sixth son of the sixth son. The beast the Beast fears. The god of time that cracks the clock as it adjusts the hands.”

Jack wasn’t sure he caught all that. Were there three sixes there? He knew his father had been the sixth son, but it hadn’t really been something they talked about. So Jack’s grandfather had also been the sixth son? How far did those go back?

And with Andy dying of cancer that September, Jack was the only surviving son. That seemed why he’d suddenly gotten the powers.

Bailey let out a laugh. “Oh, this is just getting better and more fucked. That’s fucking prophecy shit. I don’t want anything to do with prophecy shit. I’m ditching your asses.”

There went his hot demonic bedmate. Damn.

Gabby gasped, hands to her cheeks.

All the hands on the Clockwatcher clicked forward. “Five o’clock, and it’s the clocks that count the Tempus Influunt, for we all swim in the Kairos, but the Kairos swims in you. I can offer you a gift, godling.” The clock man dropped the toy soldier and grabbed Jack’s left arm.

It all happened fast and was over faster.

Jack staggered back, shotgun up, but he didn’t squeeze the trigger. Suddenly his vision blurred, and he could see his current Kairos level, but that wasn’t all.

<<< SEPTUA SANCTUS >>>

Level: 1

Current Kairos: 21/100

Current Corpus: 100/100

Current Nefesh: 100/100

Current Ijjinaya: 100/100

Current Psyche: 100/100

Current Morpheum: 100/100

Current Decaysia: 100/100

Special abilities:

Potential Auxiliary Storage: 0/100

<<< SEPTUA SANCTUS >>>

Jack blinked. “Yes! This is exactly what I need.”

All of it was fairly self-explanatory, and he wasn’t surprised that he was only level one. However, the auxiliary storage was an interesting surprise. Was that an extra tank he could use to keep on reserve? It was a great idea, but he wasn’t sure how it worked. He didn’t have that much control of any of this, yet he remembered how he’d taken damage from the Mouth. After killing the Fug, his flesh had healed. Corpus was his physical body.

Then Jack noticed something else. He glanced down and on his left index finger he had a new tattoo of the tin soldier, turned so he could see the key was turned to the left. The time-stopped position. He saw how he could rub his thumb over that index finger to turn the key to the right and start time again. If it worked like he thought, he could start and stop time with just the flick of his thumb.

The tin soldier lay on the ground, so Jack grabbed it and put it back into his pocket. He’d have to give it back to Hugo when he saw him again. And there was his mother’s Kairos levels to consider.

He did have to wonder about the Decaysia levels, since that was the level of decay in his body. He’d expected that to be one.

The Clockwatcher’s hands moved, little hand on the twelve, big hand on the six. “Six o’clock, the tock did you a favor, and you’ll return the tick at some point, son of the triple six. Gave you a clockface you’ll understand, given your human games and the gaming you do. You want to find Kerrata’s prey, the Annie of the Blackburn family, and I know of this transgression, but I want something first. I want the Eternity Cannon from the Palatinate of the Misplaced.”

Jack had to unpack everything the Interim creature had said. So, the Clockwatcher knew about human games, so that explained the interface and the point levels. Jack couldn’t help but be grateful. However, he knew that sometimes people did shit for you to control you. “Thanks for the gift, Clockwatcher. But I didn’t ask for it, and if there’s a price, I don’t want to pay.”

The Clockwatcher shrugged.

Bailey let out a strangled cry. “No. We are not going to the Land of the Tossed.” It seemed she