All Chapters of The Boy who Circled Time: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Most of the guards had then left the room, after the announcement was given, leaving only two of them behind as the group of them from Gryaz tried to form some sort of cohesive movement between them all. One of the elder men, the one that had been stood along side Gretel during that briefing, immediately took charge, deciding to stand in front of them all and then pace for a moment as he tried to come up with a few words to say.Eventually, he decided to settle on the statement," We need to all calm down and try to come up with a project plan of what we need to do. We're all here in this together, and I know that we've got a tough task to complete, I'm sure that we'll all make it through this to the otherside, so let's all introduce ourselves."Gretel's usual immediate reaction was to internally scoff and scowl, before quickly panicking and try and prepare herself to speak out in front of them all.It was so much easier to keep quiet and express you

"I'm Green_Six. I did a master's in astrophysics. Also out posted," another man then called out, introducing himself.He punctuated his two short sentences with a tired sigh, before returning back to the state he was in prior.Not once did he open his eyes throughout the statement he gave, looking the most exhausted and weary out of all of them, and Gretel could not blame him in the slightest. He looked about as tired as she felt with heavy, black bags hanging the bottom of his eyes, the skin there visibly swollen and looking as if it had been barely hanging on for a long, long time.Gretel had to have sympathy for him, as she watched him lightly sway as if he was about to fall onto his face on the floor at any second now."My name is Yellow_Two. I studied medicine," another lady introduced herself as.She had the most fake and plastic smile plastered over her face as she attempted to market herself to the rest of the group with minimal success. Th

"Belinda, computing," the final woman at the end of the line introduced herself as, her voice small and taciturn, as she kept her arms crossed over her body, as if giving herself a hug, shivering and shaking as she stood there curled inwards with her head bowed down and face hidden in the shadows of her hair.Gretel immediately wanted to take her into her arms and give her a hug, reassure her that everything was going to be alright, and reminded her distinctly of the children of the soldiers who were forced to attend the funerals of their deceased parents.They had often just wanted to curl up somewhere quiet with their loved ones and bawl out all their emotions, but were forced to keep their faces black to not disrupt any of the state ceremonial proceedings, and if they wanted to cry, if their faces scrunched up bright red, then they would be paraded around as symbols to show off exactly what the Sýnnefan Empire had done and why it needed to be stopped at all c

The easiest way to get to the box was to line up again, and Gretel found herself doing that exact thing, quickly managing to get to the front and picking up a sheet of paper.It was preserved inside two other clear sheets, and after a moment, Gretel realised that she had been holding plastic within her hands.She ran her fingers down the smooth sheen of it, noting how the surface was slightly cloudy in colour - a clear sign of the plastic being taken from an already used item and then being recycled - and how it seemed to quickly warm up underneath her fingers, and didn't invite the same screeching sound that glass did.The first thing she noticed on it was the symbol Theta, and wondered if she had maybe picked up something that she needed to put back to try and get something else that she could actually solve, but as she took a closer look, she immediately recognised that it was something a little more for Yellow_Two to solve instead.There was a half co

When she had finally finished tracing over the top of the diagrams and more lightly marking out the mottled and burnt areas of the sheet, a hand suddenly lightly poked her shoulder, causing her freeze.Somewhere within her, there was the instinct to turn around with her fists raised to retaliate against the shock to her system, but at the same time, the image of the spy, begging for his life, flashed through her mind, the scene playing out in front of her, forcing her body to stop to a juddering halt in fear of retaliation.So she did nothing."Sorry for surprising you," a voice called out, apologetic in tone and whispering to be heard over the deafening and ringing silence of the room.She recognised it immediately and turned around to face Green_One, who was leaning over with a slightly sheepish and worried look.Nodding to him to indicate that his apology had been accepted, Gretel let herself indicate to a chair to try and let him maybe sit down

"So what are you working on?" Green_One asked Gretel, his voice a soothing balm upon the wounds of her rage, snapping her out of her worked up state into something much more manageable.  Breathe inone   two   three   four   five  Breathe outone   two   three   four   five  "Photolysis in prototype teleporters," Gretel answered him, trying to keep her face as blank as possible and her voice level enough to not betray any of her emotions at all in the slightest, determined to not have Green_One decide to never talk to her again.It was harder than it looked, especially when other people did it so much easier than she ever could hope to."I don't know what photolysis but I can guess that it has something to do with light. I'm doing this one guy's calculations on proving the existence multiple dimensions and his a

It was alright.Gretel would be alright."I'm sorry you had to go through that. I've heard horror stories and stuff. It wasn't good of them to use students to get out of paying for services," Green_One consoled her, bringing a hand up to tap her a few times on the shoulder."If you ever need to talk to somebody about it, I'm here, and so is Blue. He's better than me at this," Green_One went on to explain, before his hand dropped down and he went quiet.None of them spoke afterwards, the sounds of pencils scratching and paper rustling filled the void between them.Gretel cursed herself.She should have lied.If she had lied and had said literally any other institution, other than the truth, then the situation would have worked out far better, but no.She had to go ahead and think that she could open to the man in front of her, she felt guilty about her taciturn phrases as soon as she said them, and she felt like she had a debt t

The worry and panic soon gave away to something much less turbulent with Gretel, as she tried her hardest to focus and understand the chicken scratch that somehow managed to pass as handwriting in the eyes of the Sýnnefan officials that had handed the work off to her.It was atrocious and tedious work to complete, especially when Gretel thought that she had managed to understand one particularly badly written word, before she read ahead and saw that no, she hadn't actually been able to decipher the random and eclectic scribbles in front of her.The frustration of it all was a simple, familiar and distracting one - a task that she had already spent hours doing previously when looking over her own old notes, and served as a good enough distraction from the world around her.The simple, swooping mechanical movements of her hands gave off a quiet sort of delicacy that she hadn't particularly experienced in a while, the joy of simply writing something that she

"Alright! Get Out!"The loud yell forced another freeze into Gretel, as the loud words, from an unknown voice boomed loudly around her, stealing away her breath and inflicting upon her a harsh slap to her sanity.It took Green_One placing a hand on her own to help her return back to the world as thoughts of whether she had done something wrong, or had violated some sort of code of conduct and committed some grievous and traitorous error, consumed her and left her empty with little else.The weight of the warm hand steadied her and she found that she had needed to stare it for a few long, long seconds to even understand and full see that it was with her.He was with her.She hadn't done anything wrong.He did not leave her like the rest.Slowly, taking in a deep shuddering breath to steady herself, Gretel turned around to see the guards much closer to where they were before.No longer were they standing at the door, manning thei

Gretel had to stop and stare when she saw what awaited for her in the food hall.The same grey mush that she had been forced to consume for breakfast laid there on the tables as if there was nothing else that the facility could offer her, or more likely, was willing to offer her, considering that she was just a prisoner from Gryaz doing free labour for them, because they were incapable and unwilling to do the work themselves.Green_One yanked her along and brought her properly into the room with the rest of them to not hold up the line, as soon as his arm had straightened up, him walking in front of her and leading her to her meal.She let go of his hand and walked over to her own table, attempting to sit down while making the least amount of noise possible, cringing internally at the screeching sounds and the painful squeaking of the structure.Ducking her head down to eat her food, Gretel hesitated to even try and pick up her spoon, the metal shiny and