Heavily armored Special Response Team units roared past the nondescript sports utility vehicle parked at the side of the road. Inside the SUV, Hector Salazar, Union Subdivision’s timeslinger team lead, frowned.
“If setting off the alarm doesn’t force them out into the open, the SRT should.”
“Nothing yet,” said Jack Harrington. His eyes monitored the stream of information flowing through his datapad. “Wait–”
The Subdivision team held their breath. Xi’an Liberation Society timeslingers had been evading them for days, but this time the Subdivision agents were closing in, and not a moment too soon. The XLS wanted classified information dating back to 2008—almost two centuries ago. Union Subdivision’s best guess was that the XLS was after research gathered by a scientist named Rahul Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who had conceptualized the formula for advanced stealth technology, or “cloaking.”
Introduced to the scientific community at Los Alamos in 2008, cloaking technology would become a reality about eighty years later in 2091. But ever since its inception, cloaking technology had always faced severe limitations related to the mass and size of the cloaked object. In the present time, 2147—a century and a half after the theory had been published—no one had been able to cloak anything larger than a human being.
In July of 2008, cloaking’s pioneer, Banerjee, had claimed that his approach could cloak an entire city. However, before Banerjee had completed his theory, he had died from a drug overdose. His undocumented formulas were lost to history, and no one since had ever overcome cloaking technology’s limitations.
XLS timeslingers had traveled back to 2008 to contact Banerjee before his impending death. Hector and his team had to stop them.
“Their network connection terminated just before the alarm went off,” said Jack. “They’re moving.”
Hector engaged his datapad’s communicator. “Keep your eyes open, guys.”
“Nothing here,” Jessica Prentice reported.
“Got ‘em!” said Sam. “I’ve got eyes on two XLS timeslingers heading toward the Theoretical Sciences Building!”
“That’s Banerjee’s current location,” said Jack. “You think they’re just gonna go ask him?”
Hector gunned the engine. The SUV lurched forward. “Let’s go find out.”
The Theoretical Sciences Building had beige wood siding with green trim—a perfect blend of sophisticated design styles that only scientists and government officials could pull off. It looked like something out of a 1950’s sci-fi flick.
Sam darted out from a side road and met their SUV at the front of the building.
“They just ducked into the second door. One of them pulled a gun.”
