Time Shifters

By Shanna Lauffey

An ancient people who can move through time or space...
A secret that never should have been revealed...

One day in a Los Angeles restaurant, Akalya of the Harekaiian witnesses the capture of several of her people and is the only one to get away. Now it is up to her to rescue the captives and learn how... and why... they are being apprehended. The key lies in discovering who is behind the hunt for her people, when no one should have known they existed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Golbin Publishing
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310826696

Shanna Lauffey

Shanna Lauffey is a native Californian currently living in Europe. She spends her time between homes in Sweden, France and the UK. She writes Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance in her spare time between attending university and travelling.Her first novel, She-Wȕlf, was released 1st January 2012. A Science Fiction series involving time travel is in progress.

Book preview

Time Shifters

Episode One

by

Shanna Lauffey

First published in Great Britain in 2014

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310826696

Copyright Shanna Lauffey 2014

Shanna Lauffey has asserted the right to be identified as the author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords or your retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Time Shifters

Episode One of The Chronicles of the Harekaiian

Chapter One

My people live invisibly among you, though each of us disappear within the multitudes of humanity in our own ways. For some it is easy to fade into the crowd. We serve you in shops, or better yet, in restaurants where people come and go frequently and government surveillance of income is more difficult to track.

Some of us prefer to live off-grid, although it is becoming more challenging to remain unnoticed in a world dominated by documentation and records. We have often been mistaken for Gypsies or hippies, partly because of the colorful silks and velvets that we wear. These are always in blues and purples; colors that make the eye turn away in distant focus.

It is by these colors that we first recognise others of our kind when we cross paths. Few of us know each other well. We drift. We make friends, then move on. Like many people who pass through the lives of others, we are easily forgotten.

Many choose to slide into the past, to times when individuals were more easily overlooked. Yet the excitement of the present sits more naturally, even for a Time Shifter.

We can shift through time or across distance, but never both at once. It would make us easier to track, though we never thought that a time would come when anyone would think to track us.

We were wrong.

At first we thought it was the government. The military in particular is always looking for special abilities to exploit. But as more of us were taken, we wondered... Did someone wish us harm? How did they know of us? Discovering answers to these questions quickly became essential to our survival. We had little time to find them as our numbers began to thin too quickly... far too quickly...

September 2015, a Moroccan restaurant in Los Angeles

Akalya reached for a handful of Bastilla, her favorite delicacy among the fragrant Moroccan dishes that covered the table. The powdered sugar that covered the pastry stuck to her hands as she savoured the contrast between its sweetness and the spicy chicken filling within the succulent pie. Her companions, Jon and Alice, talked between themselves, enjoying the exotic atmosphere as they sat cross-legged on cushions at the low table. Dim candlelight reflected moving images, like dancing fairies across the rich fabrics that covered the cushions and the brightly patterned walls that surrounded them.

Jon and Alice were Memlekel, ordinary people. They wore jeans and casual shirts, yet reeked of office polyester with their plastered false smiles and short-cropped hairstyles. Jon wore his neatly trimmed in almost a military cut so that the sandy color was hardly detectable except on the top where a generous wave belied the effect, while Alice’s soft brown curls fell just below her ears. They did not know about the Harekaiian people, or that their waitress as well as the chef were of Akalya’s kinship. Akalya had noted two others of her kind at a table by the opposite wall. Drifters probably, yet some instinct always drew them to places where others could be found.

Akalya did not know their names. She could not be sure if their paths had crossed before. The effect of the low lighting and the colors that they wore produced the desired result, even on their own kind. The eye focuses rich blues and purples at a distance. Reds and yellows would draw attention as they made the eye adjust so that things appeared nearer, allowing the cooler colors to dissolve into a haze of background. Even Alice’s soft pink top and Jon’s ivory shirt drew the eye away from the shorter wavelengths near the indigo end of the spectrum, as in Akalya’s long, dark blue/purple skirt and shawl, and her deep purple satin Gypsy blouse.

It served both as disguise and as an identifier to their own kind. It had never occurred to any of Akalya’s people that a day would come when some among the Memlekel would recognize the mark of the Harekai.

A fracas just inside the kitchen began to draw attention. Akalya had witnessed the capture of illegal aliens in restaurants in Los Angeles before. It was a regular feature in certain establishments. The shouts and kitchen doors flying open sounded very much like such a capture. The ethnic table cleaners would put up a nominal fuss, then allow themselves to go along with the inevitable. Usually they were Mexican. The border crossers kept their full pay checks in their pockets for such eventualities and would often return in time for their next shift. Still, the scuffle brought a little diversion to the onlookers. Akalya saw two men dragging a captive into the main dining room, only the captive was the chef, a Harekai, and the captors were not wearing uniforms.

She did not stop to think as the couple across the room were assaulted next by two more men that burst through the doors from the restaurant kitchen. Akalya did not even observe the protocol that usually kept her people safe; never shift where you might be observed. It was only a slight distance jump. A new customer had opened the door to the street and the shift to just outside at that moment would appear as if she had moved very quickly. Then she made another jump to just beyond view of the glass door and she was free to shift through time. By some fluke, the street was empty of onlookers... perhaps because it was a Sunday.

It was one of the oldest streets of Los Angeles and would not be so unpopulated often. Although she did not expect that any pursuer could follow her, Akalya shifted forward instead of back. Skipping a day would not bring any great consequence, except that her trail would grow cold in that time. Choosing a time in the darkest part of the morning just before dawn would make anyone who saw her suddenly appear believe that she had been there all along and had only just caught their eye. People easily believed whatever made most sense to them.

She walked then, thinking hard about what to do. Akalya had only a few friends among her own kind in the area. She must contact Gaye to warn her. After walking far enough to duck into an alley where a trash dumpster could hide her presence, she shifted forward a few hours more so that Gaye would be awake. Then she walked carefully out of the alleyway and lost herself amidst the crowd of busy people going to lunch from their respectable office jobs. She stepped onto a bus that was heading towards Manhattan Beach to put some distance behind where she had last been seen. If there were some way of tracking shifts, a little mundane travel would cool the trail.

Akalya got off the bus when it stopped in a familiar area just past El Segundo and entered a small diner that she knew had a back door. She watched the people around her carefully as she made her way to a public phone in a partially concealed hallway in the back.

To her relief, Gaye picked up the phone after just two rings.

Hello?

Reviews for Time Shifters

[eisah-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.(This review will contain spoilers).Time Shifters is a fairly short story. It does a pretty good job of pulling the reader into its world, where, for Akalya, shifting around through time and space is completely normal.She and others like her blend into the background as they go through life, but someone is starting to kidnap them, and she decides she should do something to save them.Akalya is a pretty strong character. I like that she's a fairly old character, and I also like that she definitely had strong opinions about what she liked. I didn't feel like she was a blank slate.She's pretty realistic in her motivations. On one hand, she doesn't really know the other Harekaiian all that well. But she feels compelled to save them - not because she has some superb sense of justice, but there's a layer of problems facing her. One of the captives is someone she's familiar with and wants to help. She's also worried about the fact that her people are being kidnapped, and she could be next. There's also a smaller sense of not wanting to turn her back on them. All of her feelings about it are very understandable.The way she uses her powers to solve problems is interesting. She has a great advantage over others, but she's not invincible, and she doesn't know what tricks the enemy is using.It was a fun read. It did drag at parts where things got over-described. For example, using her powers makes her hungry and she often stops to eat in the book, but I didn't need to know exactly what she was eating every time. Sometimes she made mental commentary - like comparing shakes in the late 60's to modern shakes. Other times it was just a list of food.I think the other weak spot was when she was with Marcus. We get told more about the time they spent together and don't get shown too much of it, so the connection we're supposed to believe they formed during their talk wasn't as strong as it could have been. I also got a little lost in how he got to where he was. She teleported him back in time, and had him bring her food in another place, but after he brought her food what happened to him?In the spot where it's initially described, he kisses her, brings her food, and then is sort of forgotten in the narrative. It doesn't say he leaves or vanishes or anything. It's like the book just forgot he was there, and the Akalya travels through time on her own. So wouldn't he have still been left in that time? I got a bit lost at that part.It was a nice start for a series though, with a strong lead and an interesting plot.

[carriepalmer-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

All I can say is More Please. This series reminds me of my favorite X-Men!

[avoraciousreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

*Book source ~ Purchased at AmazonAkalya is different than a regular human. She is a member of the Harekaiian and they are time shifters. They don’t know exactly how or why they are different than others, only that they can use their mind to shift through time and distance, but never at the same time. They live simply and peacefully trying their best to stay under the radar of anyone who might harm them to find out how they do what they do. When Akalya witnesses the capture of some of her brethren and manages to escape, she realizes it’s up to her to find out who the enemy is, why they’re nabbing her people and, most importantly, rescue the victims. Luckily, she has time on her side.While this is predominantly sci-fi it’s also a thriller as Akalya races to find out how to rescue her people. Fortunately, she can shift back and forth in time, so the task isn’t as urgent as it could be. She literally has time on her hands to gather intel and plan what to do. Her movements and thought process are interesting and the time and distance shifting becomes quite complicated as she tries to avoid any contact with the enemy. I’ve always had a problem when it comes to time travel books and that’s probably why I tapered off in reading them. However, even though I couldn’t quite grasp the mechanics of time travel in this book, it didn’t squash my enjoyment of the story. I like Akalya and her solutions. Her knowledge of her people and their abilities is also fascinating. Even though she’s no scientist or expert in biology she still has a decent understanding of how her people shift. The plot is a bit simplistic as are the solutions she applies and there isn’t a lot of character development, but overall I enjoyed it very much. There is resolution in this episode, but the door is wide open for the overall arc to continue and I’m looking forward to it.