Time Shift

Chapter 2

Faerite sat in her office, a rather luxurious room with two air conditioners installed opposite each other on the ceiling, directly facing and blowing cold wind at her. The office table was made of ebony wood, with a mixture of a lighter wood to make a pattern. She rocked her cold leather-made chair. Even the keyboard she was typing on was cold. She looked dully at the monitor as she keyed in words for the next report of the Centre of Rome incident. A black corpse was found together with a man who had a black spot on top of his head. No spheres were found. On the table, besides the keyboard and monitor, was a cup of iced coffee.

She wore a casual set of clothes, a buttoned and checkered blue shirt without sleeves. She wore blue hot pants to fit with her shirt. Around her left wrist was a purple bracelet. It was purely an accessory that she liked. She folded her legs and alternated between two positions whenever she felt uncomfortable.

She yawned and stopped for a while, moving her chair back and resting her legs on the table. She placed her hands behind her head and looked at the ceiling. It was a tiled pattern of stars, not a pattern she liked, but she didn't mind at all. She took deep breaths, her chest moving up and down in a slow pace. It was super relaxing until her assistant knocked the door.

"Shit.." She cursed quietly. "Come in," She said with a cold tone.

Joy's name described her face, full of joy. She strutted in with a cheerful face, holding a folder with probably some important stuff that Faerite didn't want to read through. She had to write her report, not read other people's report. But then again, she was an executive member of the Department of Time. It was a secret ministry that was set up solely for the control and restriction of the use of the time sphere, and to set rules too. That was what Faerite thought of this department.

She was once a time shifter, but then she didn't want to be one anymore. Luckily, she was in time to change her discipline into a protector. But sadly, she was contracted to Joy, who had a lousy water sphere. Faerite couldn't do much with water. She was hoping it was an electricity or fire sphere, or anything useful. Water didn't really have much lethality in comparison to the other two elements.

"Here are the reports of other incidents that happened in Sid. And practice begins in five minutes. Don't forget, alright?" She smiled at her protector before exiting the office. Faerite didn't even bother to open the folder as she continued to write her own report. She'll read the reports later.

The fifth minute ticked and Faerite got up from her seat. She left her office.

The hallway was thin, like it made obese people not welcome in this department. Faerite frowned at the width of the hallway every time she encountered it. Doors were built opposite one another and parallel, never to meet. They were made of the same material as the door to her office. The floor had a shiny-looking path planned out, a carpet with a golden lining at its perimeter. To her right were more doors until there was a dead end probably about twenty metres away with an opening to a stairway. To her left was a normal elevator. The steel door was closed and a sign hung that said, 'Out of Order'.

"Stairs, it is. Fuck," She sighed with disappointment as she turned to her right and walked to the stairway. She headed down the stairs for a few more minutes, cursing as it got more tedious. When she finally reached her destination, on the wall in front of her were two big letters that said, 'B5'.

Her legs were about to give out when she opened the door in front of her. The room here was a large room, its length extending to an equivalent of a large hall. In the room were many features and facilities to help protectors and time shifters train. Since every time shifter and protector knew that freezing time would cost someone's lifetime to decrease, not by aging but by accelerating that someone's inevitable cause of death, scientists had found a way to create time spheres to freeze time, but they would take away the factor of decreasing a person's lifetime. For now, it was too big to be portable. One of these time spheres took up at least twenty-five metres of space.