Chapter One, Draft One, Nulla Tempus

My phone was ringing. At least I thought it was. I had a thumping headache and all I could really hear was this loud buzzing sound. Of course, since I could see my phone vibrating its way across the bed, I kind of knew that it was ringing. Although, I was desperately hoping that if I ignored it long enough, it might either fall off the bed or stop.

It stopped.

Then it started again. Oh, cripes.

One thing that I’d come to appreciate about leaping was being able to go back to pre-mobile device times. In my time there was this constant background noise that was near impossible to escape. Just this constant buzzing in your ear; or the inconsequential chatter of people on their phones; or the unfortunate tapping and beeping of touchscreens as messages, tweets and facebook statuses were uploaded. That was the most annoying. Only because you were then bombarded with messages on your own device telling you that everyone you followed had just made an update.

Leaping into times that were mobile free were quieter, less stressful. The people were nicer, too. They were without anxiety and that was an interesting situation. There was this missing urgency to their daily lives that was a consistent pressure in my time and I enjoyed being able to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. I struggled without Google and Wikipedia and I still couldn’t figure out how anyone actually knew anything before the advent of the internet, but the past was a lovely place to visit for a bit of time out from my reality.

Of course, that was the intention of the Nulla Tempus project, which is what I was currently working on. The official story is that Nulla Tempus is a time travel project, being developed for general use as a holiday destination and presently in beta testing stage. I’m one of the guinea pigs.

However, the reality of the Nulla Tempus project is something entirely different. I wish I could tell you what, but I don’t really know. I just get the feeling that there’s more to the project than what they’re letting on. There’s gaps in the logic and far more questions about it than there are answers. But, I’m not really in a position to be doubting the project, especially since it’s about to offer me my freedom.

You see, I used to be your pretty ordinary, run of the mill type girl. I’ve got really long, straight chestnut brown hair. I used to keep it cut short and layered and dyed with red highlights, but after my incarceration it was a little difficult to be so precious about something as insignificant as your hair. And besides that, after it grew I kind of became attached to it – I liked the luxury of having long hair, of being able to plait it – something I’d never been able to do before – and Dean had once mentioned that he preferred short hair, so after that I kind of kept it long just to annoy him.

My eyes are probably considered hazel, although they’re mostly green around the outside with a concentration of amber around the iris. In my left eye there are two separate, large flecks of dark brown in the centre. You don’t really notice this unless you look really closely at my eyes, but it kind of freaks me out a bit. I spent a lot of my childhood obsessing over how that happened, why my eyes were so completely different and what it might mean for the future. It wasn’t until I was undergoing medicals for the Nulla Tempus project that I was told it was nothing but extra melanin in that eye, a chemical which absorbed more light. The doctor told me I should embrace it, as it made me “unique”, but I’m not sure whether or not to take that positively, especially in light of the Nulla Tempus project. It seems the ‘unique’ people can never escape it.

I’m short, about 5 foot 3 inches, and fairly petite. I’ve always played a lot of sport so I’m in fairly good shape physically, but I’d much rather go shoe shopping than visit a gym.

In my past life, I had a fairly cushy job as an IT systems manager with Price Waterhouse Cooper and a lovely little apartment in South Yarra where I lived with my cat, named most appropriately Kat. She was a bit tempestuous and slightly odd.

I really miss the cat.

But then, I kind of had a bad day. And I murdered Daniel.

Which is how I ended up on Nulla Tempus. In exchange for my body, they were willing to offer me a reduction in my sentence. However, at this stage of my involvement, I would probably give all I had to complete the original sentence if it meant never having to go near Nulla Tempus.

Somehow I’d managed to get caught up in the middle of a war between the people who were developing the technology for the project and the people who were financing it and now I was stuck trying to reverse the changes to history that were being made. One guess as to which group it was creating the havoc.

So, here I was in 1938, with a headache and instructions to find one Rachel Bergstrom.

And, unfortunately, I had to bring parts of my reality, which included my mobile, along with me when visiting the past. And said mobile was still ringing.

Closing my eyes tightly against the headache, I answered the phone, flicking it to speaker. Aiden’s voice, all honey and surf filled the room.

“Afternoon, Ash,” he said cheerfully.

“Maybe in your part of the world,” I grumbled out miserably.

“It’s four pm,” Aiden said, as though my comment were completely invalid.

“Like I said, maybe in your part of the world. I’m in Vienna, remember? It’s just after six am.”

Aiden was quiet for a moment. He’d forgotten about the time difference, obviously.

“Vienna?”

“Yes, Aiden. That’s where you sent me, remember?” I was quickly getting cranky. This was a crap conversation to be having.

Aiden was my mentor on Nulla Tempus, and as such should already know this information. In fact, it should have all been written down in front of him, in a neat yellow manilla folder. Every single detail of my leap should be at his fingertips. I know he was new at this, but seriously. The admin part of his job wasn’t that hard. I mean, if Dean could do it then surely Aiden, with his university education, could manage.

I could only hear static coming through the phone line though, and the faint rustle of papers. So, he did have the folder in front of him.

“Yeah, about that,” Aiden started. I opened my eyes abruptly.

“What about it, Aiden?” I asked, rather harshly.

“Well, it’s just that –“

I cut him off.

“Don’t beat around the bush, Aiden. I don’t have the patience and I haven’t had a coffee in a while.” I sneered to myself at that. I was hanging for a coffee.

“Geez, Ash, I’d heard you were snarky before coffee, but I honestly thought that was just a rumour….” Aiden put on his “attempt to calm Ash down” voice, but it wasn’t really cutting it with me this morning. Dean had often employed that particular tactic, however he usually failed too if I hadn’t had any caffeine. I couldn’t imagine Aiden, who had far less practice at dealing with me, would manage any better than Dean ever had.

“You know that’s why Dean resigned?” I retorted. I was already over this conversation. Aiden was silent for a while.

“Yeah, I’d heard that too,” he finally said quietly. I could practically hear the wheels clanking around in his head as he debated his next move.

Dean had been my mentor. But he’d suddenly resigned last week, leaving me without any support and one last assignment to finish off. Needless to say, I was fair pissed about that.

As far as I knew though, no one actually knew why Dean had resigned.

I’d heard that particular rumour, about my caffeine dependency, floating around the office and it seemed as good as any to perpetuate, so I’d held onto it. I didn’t really want to face the reality of why Dean may have resigned anyway, but since he’d also vanished without a trace upon his resignation, I had been afforded the luxury of being able to believe whatever I wanted to.

Dean and I had been working together on Nulla Tempus for the last eleven months. We’d had our moments, more than enough arguments and on the rare occasion shared an intimacy that was probably inappropriate for co-workers. Our last conversation had kind of breached the casualness of the relationship that we had both tried to keep hold of though. Awkward.

Nevertheless, I tried very hard to keep that conversation a distant memory so that I could believe he’d gone AWOL because of my coffee tantrums. The fact that he might have just walked away from me hurt that little bit too much.

However, since Dean was fairly instrumental in getting Nulla Tempus off the ground, it did seem likely that there was more to his vanishing act than my declaration of affection. Plus, no one else actually knew that my relationship with Dean extended to the bedroom. He’d been pretty adamant that we keep our work life and our private life completely separate, so there would have been little chance of anyone even guessing that there was hanky panky going on between us. Which is why the rumour about me yelling at him one too many times for screwing up my coffee order worked well.  And since that had actually happened, it wasn’t difficult for anyone to believe.

“Just get on with it, Aiden,” I said abruptly. “I need to go and get some coffee and the longer you keep me from that task, the longer it’s going to take me to save the world.”

Aiden laughed, a rich hearty sound travelling through the phone and surrounding me. It was warm, honest and it was refreshing. Laughter hadn’t been a part of my life for so long. It kind of stopped me in my tracks for a moment.

Just one of many differences between Aiden and Dean, I suppose.

Aiden was one of the good guys. As much as I resented him replacing Dean as my mentor, it wasn’t really him that I was angry at. It wouldn’t have mattered who had taken on the torch, I still would have treated them with some level of contempt. Fortunately though, this was my last assignment so we wouldn’t really have the opportunity to get to know each other that well. Probably a more fortunate situation for Aiden than for me.

He was a fairly quiet guy, contemplative and overly cautious. Aiden liked to make sure all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed before he did anything. Dean, on the other hand, usually went in guns blazing and had more of a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy. I was somewhere in the middle.

Aiden had been employed with Nulla Tempus as the lead art director, right from the beginning, so he’d been around as long as I had and was fairly familiar with the project. Although, we’d only met for the first time a couple of days ago.

He had this big fuzzy beard that covered nearly his entire face, with fairly unkempt, long blonde locks and these amazing blue eyes underneath all that hair. His eyes were the colour of steel, not bright or vibrant but overwhelming in their intensity and their openness. Aiden wore his heart on his sleeve. Dean, on the other hand, possibly didn’t actually have a heart. The jury was still out on that.

Aiden was super tall, and lean and angular to go with it. That, and his ass, which was usually the focal point of the office, made him one of those guys you just wanted to spit at, because unlike Dean, who spent more time in the gym than he did anywhere else, I’m not sure Aiden even knew what exercise looked like.

Unfortunately for Dean, he should have probably backed off on the gym at some point. As a result of his excessive exercise regime, he was actually a little disproportionate. Massive up top, with absolutely amazing muscular arms, all of which tapered down to his slightly less built waist and legs and produced a body reminiscent of Mr Strong, from the Mr Men series of characters. It wasn’t particularly appealing.

Dean was also kind of lacking in discernible neck – his shoulders were so huge that his head just sort of seemed to sit at the top of them. He had this brooding face as well, a perpetual crease between his eyebrows, like he didn’t trust anyone and he was always waiting for them to step out of line. He used to be a copper, part of the special operations group, so I guess that might have been learned behaviour, but I didn’t really think so. His total lack of trust towards anyone was what had made him so good at his job.

Also in complete contrast to Aiden, Dean shaved every day but he still always had a 5 o’clock shadow, which only accentuated the angles of his face. His nose was broad, his lips always closed together tightly. His light honey-coloured eyes were often angry and I don’t think I ever saw him smile. Not once. Not even a little bit.

When Aiden smiled, the entire room lit up, and everyone within a five mile radius caught a bit of his sunlight. If it weren’t for the beard, when Aiden smiled he might just have been a lady-killer.

In opposition to Aiden’s unruly mop of hair, Dean had short, dark brown hair that he wore immaculately styled; gelled up to a point and the front of it pushed back, kind of like a flat Mohawk. One other thing about Dean, and I’ll be damned if I know how he did it, but he was uncreasable. Dean went to bed and woke up the next morning looking exactly as he had when he’d slipped under the covers. Aiden, I imagine, woke up in the mornings with that rustic sex appeal, rugged and wild and yet totally aware.

Did I just say that about Aiden?

Anyway, moving along. Aiden was definitely not my type. And he’d started speaking again.

“I’m sorry,” Aiden started. “As you know, we’ve got a few issues with the databases, namely one particularly useful one that is now missing due to Morrison’s, shall we say, interruptions?”

“How about we just stick with ‘diabolical plan to take over the world’?” I suggested. Aiden went quiet again for a moment. I think he may have been struggling a bit to figure out my sense of humour and it showed every time I made comments like that. Dean used to just ignore them completely.

“That could work,” Aiden replied eventually. “Anyway, do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“Oh yes, Aiden. Please give me the option to choose and drag this conversation out even further.” I heard Aiden smile though the connection. Well, sometimes he got my jokes.

“Ok, so the good news is that you’re in the right time, a few days early even.”

“Yay,” I said. “I’ve got time to go and do some sightseeing.” The sarcasm was dripping from me. Even I was getting a little over it.

“Well, that’s where the bad news comes in. You actually need to be in Berlin, not Vienna.”

“Berlin?” I took a deep breath. “And how the hell am I supposed to get there?”

“Train?” Aiden proposed.

“Oh you’re hilarious, Aiden.”

He laughed again and the sound wrapped around me, comforting. The headache released it’s grasp just a little bit and I almost felt like smiling, just because Aiden was. That was a strange feeling.

“I’ve got a techie working on sending through some cash and paperwork for you – identification papers and a passport and the like – but once you’ve got those in the next hour or so you’ll need to book yourself passage to Berlin. We’ve got a pretty small window of opportunity with this assignment and I’d hate to see you miss you it,” Aiden had his “I’m in charge” voice on again, which was also surprisingly comforting because I’d begun to rethink his capability of being my mentor after the train comment. Last assignment, I kept telling myself.

“And when I get to Berlin?” I asked.

“Well, I would suggest your first port of call be coffee,” Aiden said. “Then, you go find Rachel.”