An Agent's Inbox #50

Dear Awesome Agent,

On Annika Fitzsimmons’s eighteenth birthday, she learns she is a Traveler--someone born with the ability to move through Past Events and to change the future for the better. That explains the vivid, excruciatingly painful visions she's had since she was eight years old, but not the same blue-eyed boy she sees in each one.

When Nik arrives at the underground compound of Traveler's City for initiation, she discovers her ability to move through time without the aid of computers or coordinates is rare--the stuff of legend. Only one fellow initiate can do the same: Davis, the boy from her visions. Nik and Davis soon discover they are Bonded, born to Travel together no matter what.

But Traveling is dangerous, and sometimes people die. That’s what happened to the husband of the charismatic Director of Traveler's City--he accepted a Final Mission when he learned his death was the only thing that could convince a key witness to testify against the mob. When Nik and Davis are repeatedly pulled, against their will, into the same treacherous Events that caused his death and see the Director there every time, they realize that she’s trying to bring her husband back from the dead, and it’s their job to stop her. Now, Nik and Davis must risk their own lives to keep the Director from killing them, violating Traveler’s Law, and changing Current Events as they know it. As they discover even more about Traveler’s City, the Bond, and what they truly mean to each other, they’ll learn just how far someone with power will go to save the one they love.

THE TRAVELERS is a Young Adult light science fiction novel complete at 81,000 words and stands alone, with potential for a sequel. Thank you for taking the time to consider my submission.

Sincerely,
L.A.K.


THE TRAVELERS

Nik forced her eyes to open and flexed her jaw against the rough carpet fibers of her bedroom floor, wincing when it popped.

Ten years since her father died, and ten years since she’d been having these episodes, or visions, or whatever they were. Sometimes once in a month, sometimes twice a week.

They all had three things in common. They only happened at night. They wracked her body with piercing, all-consuming pain. And in them, she saw the boy with the blue eyes. Every single time.

She always felt his presence an instant before she saw him. A thrill ran through her, followed by a delicious warmth. No matter how terrifying the vision, when she met his gaze, she felt calm, confident, strong.

Too bad she’d never seen him in real life. In the end, he twisted, confused and distorted, together with the asphalt or dancing candlelight or sounds of police sirens, into the same thing.

Pain, stabbing at her skin from the inside and invading every inch of her body, so intense that nothing else mattered.

Nik dragged her still-pounding head from the floor and glared at the useless pile of medical textbooks that sat on her desk, mocking her cluelessness. For years, she’d been trying to figure this out. Her blood pressure and sugar tested fine. No anemia. Three separate EKGs had shown her perfectly functioning heart.

Narcolepsy could strike at any time of day, but didn’t cause pain. Epileptic seizures could be painful, but they happened any time, too. Besides, the MRI had come up with nothing.