Free The Bureau of Time by Brett Michael Orr Page A

back against a tree, the rising sun glaring in his eyes. He took a deep breath, focusing on a point far away in the distance, past the Ranch’s fence, over the rolling countryside of Virginia.
    “The truth is…as hard as we try, we can’t protect every Timewalker. We can’t save them all. Our – mutation ,” he hated that word, it always made him think of doctors in lab coats, pricking and prodding him, testing his Regenerative ability over and over, “—our abilities, are very rare. And the Adjusters are strong, and deadly. We’re always too late, sometimes by hours, sometimes by just minutes.”
    His voice trailed off into a quiet whisper. Hayden’s body flashed before his eyes again, a boy he’d never even known, murdered by those monstrous assassins. His blood boiled with white-hot rage, and he turned to face Cassie with a furious conviction humming through his bones.
    “That’s why we’re here, Cassie,” he told her. “We have to be better, we have to train our physical and temporal abilities, so we can stop the Adjusters.”
    He let out a breath and felt his anger melt away, replaced with sheer exhaustion. He looked at her, a sentence half-formed on his lips – he wanted to tell her how grateful he was that she was there, that the Bureau had managed to reach her in time. But he couldn’t force the image of her body away, the Adjuster’s knife buried in her chest just like Hayden Miller.
    He couldn’t martial his thoughts into line, and then the moment passed.
    Mathers’ bellowing shouts drew closer, and with a resigned sigh, he pushed off from the pine tree.
    “Come on,” he said. “It’s going to be a long day.”
    They fell into line with the recruits, Mathers giving them both a fresh barrage of insults. Shaun barely paid the Drill Sergeant any notice at all, lost in his own dark thoughts of Adjusters and Timewalkers.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    THE ROUTINE
    The first week at Brightwood Ranch was harder than anything Cassie had experienced before. The Bureau was unforgiving and unapologetic for the brutal schedule that started before dawn, forcing the recruits to neatly make their beds or face extra cleaning duties and pushups as punishment.
    Then they were outside, running the ten-mile track that snaked through the three-hundred-acre woods of Brightwood Ranch. The dirt trails were steep, covered in loose stones and fallen pine needles, winding through the hills and down near the electromagnetic fence.
    After the run, they trained with agents and operators in the gymnasium. They started with cardio training, then sparring with padded gloves, and finally self-defense tactics like knife disarmament. Cassie struggled with almost everything, only saved from complete humiliation when Ryan or Shaun could help her – but neither of the boys could make Drill Sergeant Mathers stop the dreaded tirade of insults and slurs that cut her to the core.
    Breakfast was a simple affair in the mess hall, consisting of large volumes of scrambled eggs and a substance that claimed to be bacon. The food was far too salty, but the physical exercise gave her a ravenous hunger – and at least while she was eating, she was too preoccupied to think about anything else.
    With stomachs full of cheap food and bitter coffee, the recruits separated again and were taken by agents – like Natalie Hunt – for tactical training in the classrooms, or by range masters to shoot targets on the indoor firing range.
    The first two nights, Cassie cried herself to sleep; the next three, she was too exhausted to do anything except collapse face-first into her bunk, her body aching in places she had never imagined could hurt.
    Her dreams were convoluted and haunted by dark, shadowy forms that vaguely resembled her family. There was a dull ache in her heart that had nothing to do with the rigorous exercise – she missed her parents desperately. She had once hated her mother for sending her back to Pennsylvania, screamed at her over the