Chasing Killers Through Time

7 Starfall Alley, East End, London. Banker Sir Thorne was found dead in his locked study, an Oriental dagger in his chest and a bloody “X” scrawled on the wall. A locked-room mystery, no trace left behind, a perfect murder.

But Allen Blake saw the truth.

He was a former Scotland Yard detective, fired for “meddling.” No one knew that after a raging fever at the age of eleven, a memory palace had appeared in his mind. Anything he had ever seen or heard could be stored there and replayed. At a crime scene, the palace would actively replay every remnant of the past three hours.

Three hours earlier, he had seen the victim draw the bloody symbol himself.

Three hours earlier, he had seen that the killer was missing the little finger of his right hand.

Three hours earlier, he had seen a crack open where the lines of the “X” crossed, revealing a sliver of silver patternwork inside, identical to the mark that had just appeared on his left wrist.

“Welcome to your awakening.” The tall man in the shadows was Hector Grey, a bleeding silver mark in his palm. He said Allen was the only “Witness of Time” to awaken naturally in half a century. Two groups of madmen around the world were hunting for him:

The Atlas Society wanted his blood to rewrite history. The Chronology Reclamation Society wanted to devour his memories for fuel.

The Society’s members could freeze time and space or turn back three seconds. Those of the Reclamation Society could “eat” all your memories, leaving you a living husk. The two factions had hunted each other for two thousand years, but now, in a rare moment of accord, both wanted to capture Allen Blake alive.

But there was one thing Allen hadn’t told them. Someone was in the basement of his memory palace