Extremus: Year 115

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The Induction Ceremony. When Extremus first launched, the captain had a lieutenant as their second-in-command. That sounded practical, and it didn’t seem like they needed anything more. Later on, the lieutenant became first lieutenant, and a second lieutenant position was added. Neither lieutenant rank is a stepping stone to captain. It’s a separate track, and while it’s not technically impossible for someone in this position to eventually become captain, it’s never happened, and that’s not the intended protocol. Anyone of age can be appointed as captain. Hell, Tinaya could have selected some random 18-year-old who failed every class in school, and had severe behavior issues. She would have had no support, and the idea would have been vetoed by the council, but the point is, there is no particular rule for where the next captain comes from. Oceanus has changed all that.

There will now be three vice captains. It’s not entirely apparent what these people will be doing, just that they will compete for the top spot over the course of the next six years. Silveon guesses that they will take turns shadowing Captain Jennings at first, then gradually begin to take on more duties as they become more comfortable with the work. This never happened in his timeline, but he remembers Waldemar partially running his campaign on the idea, along with other broken promises. It was only a misdirect, of course, so he could get in a position of power, and keep it permanently. Now he doesn’t need all those lies. He’s already in, and just needs to beat out two other contenders. Their identities are currently unknown. Waldemar’s selection has been kept under wraps as well. Tinaya knows because he told her directly, but he wasn’t meant to, and technically, he shouldn’t have known yet either. The competition has already started, however. Three dozen young hopefuls submitted their applications last year, and took tests to see who out of them would win the precious few coveted roles. They weren’t aware that they were vying for only two spots, though, rather than three.

Tinaya has the unfortunate honor of announcing the winners. She doesn’t know why they chose her for this. It really should be Oceanus, since this is his thing, but they probably want to use this as an opportunity to suggest that everything is hunky dory in the executive crew wing. “Waldemar..Kristiansen!” she cries with a feigned tone of excitement. The crowd cheers. The other contestants clap too, but not too loudly, because their chances just went way down.

 Waldemar claps as well, and pumps his fist in the air as he’s jogging across the row, and down the aisle, which actually brings a little more energy to his competitors. He knew that he was gonna get picked, yet he chose a seat in the middle so it would be a bigger deal for him to climb over a bunch of people that he just bested. It’s all a performance. Once he’s on stage, he walks over to Lataran, who hands him his ceremonial dagger. Neither of them can figure out the symbolism there. Daggers aren’t part of standard dress for a captain, nor some meaningful symbol of their ancestors. It seems kind of random, but people are loving it. Waldemar stabs the air with it triumphantly, as if he’s a general preparing for battle, causing an uproar in cheers. Maybe it’s a symbol of masculinity. The other two candidates will probably be men too, so...that makes some sense, if you wanna be cynical about it.

Tinaya starts to open the second envelope. She didn’t just pick whichever one was closer. They were quite clear on what the order was. This is Envelope Number Two, and the last one will probably be a bombshell. They’re using envelopes in the first place to be reminiscent of ancient Earthan award ceremony traditions. But. Whatever. “Détha..Partanen!” Okay, maybe it won’t just be a boy’s club. Well, good for them, making it look like there’s any semblance of fairness, and the game isn’t rigged. At least they’re starting to understand optics.

Détha walks to the stage, briskly but with a lot less enthusiasm. Instead, she’s cool and composed, already giving off an air of authority. Tinaya isn’t familiar with her, so she’ll have to look up her file later. That was probably a mistake. There were only 38 applicants; she should have been studying them for the last couple of months. They could be in great danger. If Waldemar feels that his future is being threatened, he could resort to unsavory tactics; even violent ones. Détha, and whoever is in this third envelope, has now fallen under Tinaya’s protection. Hopefully she won’t die herself in the meantime. Détha takes her dagger, and immediately magnetizes it to her utility belt. She doesn’t need to perform.

Okay, it’s the third envelope. Let’s finish this up. Tinaya slices through the sticker with her fingernail, then slips it back through to open it. She stands there for a moment, staring at the name before her. This is bad. This is really bad. Thank God she’s holding it with two hands. She carefully reaches over to her watch, and secretly taps on the clockstopper button. Very few people on this ship have access to this feature. No one else even knows about it. And it’s not private. It’s an all-or-nothing deal, where time stops for everyone, except for the tight inner circle. For a few seconds, she’s frozen in place, like nearly everyone else in this room, except that she and the other clockstoppers are still conscious. This is to give them a baseline position. When she restarts time, they will return to this exact orientation, so no one is aware that time was ever stopped. This can be overridden, if necessary, but they’ll worry about that later.

Time restarts, but only for the few. The majority of the people on the ship, and indeed, the entire universe, is still frozen in time. “What’s the problem?” Oceanus asks, standing up from his baseline.

“You know what the problem is,” Tinaya says, pointing the envelope at him accusatorily.

“I don’t,” Lataran says, shaking off the baseline freeze. There are no lasting effects, but it’s an uncomfortable feeling, being a statue.

“You’re complaining to me?” Oceanus questions. He points towards the section of the audience for people who didn’t apply to be vice captains. “Why are they awake?”

Arqut and Silveon are starting to walk towards them. There’s no teleporting when the clocks are stopped.

“I hacked the system,” Tinaya admits. “They are the only people on this ship, besides Latty, that I trust. I made them clockstoppers, because I need support against people like you...for shit like this.” She shakes the envelope again, but more angrily. It slips out of her hand, and falls to the floor.

Lataran picks it up, and reads, “Silveon Grieves.”

“What?” Silveon asks as he’s approaching with his father.

Lataran scoffs. “We knew it was rigged, but...”

“I did this for the ship,” Oceanus begins to explain. “You told me that Waldemar becomes a tyrant. Silveon is my ace in the hole.”

“I’m a steward,” Silveon explains.

Oceanus shrugs. “Détha is a soldier. It doesn’t disqualify her.”

“I didn’t apply,” Silveon argues.

“Waldemar applied for you. I’m guessing he wants you to fail intentionally, so he can win. But you don’t have to. You can fight. You can become the next captain.”

Silveon is seething. “My mother was captain, and her aunt before her. It’s already a dynasty, it has to end.”

“I barely accepted the position,” Tinaya adds. “I was already worried about the whispers, but they begged me to take it. I’m still not sure that it was the right decision. Now you want to risk even more? Waldemar is a family friend. We can’t add Silveon to the mix. It screams nepotism and cronyism at the same time.”

“You had nothing to do with the selection process,” Oceanus reminds her, “and you will have nothing to do with ascension.”

“Oh my God, we’re not actually calling it that, are we?” Tinaya shakes her head in disgust.

“I know this is weird,” Oceanus acknowledges. “But Waldemar told me the ship was destroyed, and you confirmed it later. I didn’t agree to the vice captain program until he proved that he was from the future, and that proof came in the form of you and the Consul. I was bound by my word after that. I’m just trying to find a loophole.”

“There is no loophole!” Silveon yells. “Waldemar will become king whether any of us likes it or not! All we can do is make him less of an asshole, and spare some lives along the way. If he doesn’t get what he wants, people will get hurt. His ascension,” he says with airquotes, “is inevitable.”

“Why is it inevitable?” Oceanus claps back. “What, is he wearing the hundemarke, or something?”

Silveon grows silent.

“Holy shit, he’s wearing the hundemarke,” Oceanus realizes. “It was destroyed centuries ago.”

Silveon sighs. “You can’t destroy an object’s past, only its future. It still has a few more fixed moments in time that it needs to create.”

“Speaking of which,” Arqut jumps in, “I’ve seen the studies. We can’t keep time stopped much longer. It’s not healthy. The safeguards will kick in, and the way I understand it, you do not want to be too far from your baseline when that happens.”

“Read the name,” Oceanus insists to Tinaya. “It’s already done.” He faces Silveon. “You make your own choices, but I urge you to do everything you can to win. Please. Your ship needs you.”

“I’ll respectfully decline,” Silveon contends.

“You can’t,” Oceanus returns. “As I said, it’s done. If you back out, it will just be down to a race between Waldemar and Miss Partanen. We won’t replace you with another candidate. It’s you, or no one.”

“Let me see that,” another voice demands. It’s Head Councillor Regulus Crusan, who literally just had his own induction ceremony an hour ago. He wasn’t even here when the clocks were stopped. Tinaya is a little surprised that he was already turned into a clockstopper. Evidently, bureaucracy can work fast sometimes. He must have been so confused when he was mingling in a crowd, or talking to a friend. He takes the envelope from Lataran, and examines it, closing it back up to see it from all angles. “I don’t like how this looks, but we have to agree on it before we restart the clocks. Otherwise, we put reality in unnecessary danger.” He shakes it like Tinaya before, but not so angrily, just demonstratively. “Admiral Leithe reads the name, and whoever it is shall accept their role with grace and poise. Understood?”

Oceanus smiles. “Understood.”

“Admiral. Steward,” he prompts.

Silveon takes another breath. “I think you’ll mean vice captain.” He doesn’t like it, but it will keep him close to Waldemar, which could only help in his mission to lessen the negative impact of the Kristiansen Regime.

“Right,” Crusan says. “Do as you’ve been ordered, Admiral.” He hands the envelope back to Tinaya.

Everyone returns to where they were when time was stopped, and gets as close as they can to how they were before. Tinaya waits until they’re all in position to do the same. After she begins the time-restarting timer for eleven seconds, she approximates her own baseline, reopening the envelope at the last moment. She doesn’t even get the chance to smile before she’s frozen up again, millimeters away from her guess. Time then restarts, and she’s free to continue. Now she can smile. Head Councillor Crusan, you sneaky snake. She lowers her hands, and looks out at the audience. “Pronastus..Kegrigia!”

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The Fifth Division: Rockhead (Part II)

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The people who work in the Garden Dimension are not pleased to learn that Briar de Vries pushed the prisoner down a well, but they let it go when they realize that A.F. is no ordinary man. He’s in a posthuman body, reluctantly gifted to him by the infamous Team Matic. He’s not immortal, but he’s harder to hurt, and quicker to heal. The walls of the well are smooth and wet. It was designed with an ancient aesthetic, but constructed using modern techniques, so it hasn’t experienced any wear and tear. He’s not getting out of there unless he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly on his own power. He’ll survive, but not for long. Briar hasn’t clarified what he thinks his endgame is, but they’re letting him do what he thinks is best, for now.

It’s the next day now, and everyone appears to be up to speed. Hogarth Pudeyonavic’s artificial universe, Fort Underhill predominately houses people who used to be dead. Now Ingrid realizes why they didn’t call it Fort Hogarth, or something. She may have built it, but it was Ellie Underhill who used her immense powers to resurrect 120 billion people from the afterlife virtual simulation they were in, into new substrates in base reality. She evidently did it all at once. The thing about this situation, though, is that there was no longer anywhere for them to go when they died. Their bodies are no more invincible than A.F.’s. Some of them had spent thousands of years in the simulation, having died on Earth in ancient times. To them, coming back to a physical plane of existence wasn’t really a gift, even though the servers they were being stored on were about to be shut down.

Hogarth came up with a solution. It is she who has the power to demolecularize her body, and respawn elsewhere. Someone—it’s unclear who; perhaps Hogarth herself—replicated this ability in everyone. Now they all respawn. It’s relatively rare, because they’re kind of living in a utopia, so it’s not like people are dropping like flies, but it’s a nice contingency. Visitors from Salmonverse can still die in most places in Fort Underhill, but they too are protected as long as they remain in the Crest Hotel, as a safety feature for diplomatic reasons.

Ingrid is looking down the wall at the prisoner. A.F. seems very calm. She can’t fully make out his face this far away, and in this poor lighting, but it kind of looks like contentment from here. She needs to get him out of there. She needs to talk with him herself. This well-centric moral lesson was a stupid idea. There’s a rope here, but it doesn’t feel like it’s sturdy enough to hold a person. It’s just meant to pull up water in a bucket. This unique jail was meant to be relatively self-sufficient. When you water some of the ground on the bottom of the thorny walls, nutrient-rich mushrooms grow in a matter of hours, reportedly providing all the nourishment a prisoner needs.

Killjlir Pike—who Ingrid is convinced made up their own name—walks in from the corridor. Ingrid heard them coming a mile away. As a seasoned warrior, Ingrid knows how to be stealthy. She wasn’t arbitrarily handed the job of running the entire offensive branch of her civilization’s military. She earned it. She earned it in her enemies’ blood, and her own. She sometimes can’t help but sneak up to people, even when surprise is not her intention. Killjlir is the polar opposite. They have no personal experience with war, nor bloodshed of any kind. They were indeed handed their role as leader of their people. The Andromeda Consortium is an incredibly bizarre and dysfunctional web of alliances that always opposed the Detachments, over which Ingrid presided in the Fifth Division parallel reality. These alliances are based on an incomprehensible mess of so-called hierarchies. Two factions can war with each other, and they can recruit allied factions into that, even if there’s a conflict of interest. Literally, one faction will fight this war on both sides. It doesn’t make any sense.

Killjlir’s official title is First Among Us. The Andromedans might be fighting each other every which way, but they all answer to Killjlir. The way the Consortium apparently sees it, the First World is superior to all others. But this doesn’t make sense either. Not only is the First World not the planet where humans originally lived, because that was in the Milky Way, but it’s not even the first planet that was settled in the Andromeda Galaxy. They discovered it something like three hundred years later. They don’t dispute this fact in their history, they just don’t see the problem with using the term. Only a First Worldian can become First Among Us, but that’s the only requirement. Ingrid believes that the successor is chosen due to their attractiveness, but she’s never heard anyone admit that. They don’t have to have any diplomatic experience, or leadership skills, or even basic intelligence. That’s what leads Ingrid to believe that it’s only about superficial qualities, but again, she doesn’t really know. All she knows is that Killjlir is an idiot, and they don’t get along. The sentient tree forced them both to represent the interests of the Fifth Division collaboratively, but it was clear from the beginning that Ingrid was going to have to do all the work.

“What are you doing?” Killjlir asks?

“Getting some water,” Ingrid lies.

“You’re gonna drink water from where there’s a person?”

“What’s it to ya?”

“I can help. Do you want me to help?”

“You don’t know what I may need help with,” Ingrid reasons.

“I bet I do.” They glide over to look down the well. “How’re ya doing down there?”

“Oh, I’m great!” A.F. responds. “How ‘bout you?”

“Hang in there! We’re gonna rescue you!”

“We are?” Ingrid questions.

Killjlir closes their eyes, and shakes their head to silently respond to Ingrid. “Hold your breath!” they call down to A.F. They take a little bottle from their oversized sleeve, pop the cork, and drop the whole thing down the wall.

In an instant, the water shoots up like a geyser. A.F. is sent flying into the ceiling, where he’s impaled on a couple dozen thorns, which hold him in place while the water settles back down. Ingrid is speechless as she sloughs the chemicals off of her body. It’s not just water, but some kind of hyperreactive polymer. She’s never seen it before. “What. The. Fuck!”

Killjlir tilts their head as they’re looking up at A.F. Blood begins dripping down on their faces, which Ingrid is too upset to block, and Killjlir seems curious about it, as if they’ve never seen blood before at all. “That was more powerful than I realized.”

“Was that your first kill?” Ingrid asks them.

“No,” A.F. ekes out from the ceiling. “She’s not killed me, I’m fine.” He groans and struggles to move, millimeter by millimeter, until pulling himself back off of enough thorns to let gravity take over. He falls down, smashing his face on the well between them before crash landing on the ground.

“Sorry,” Killjlir says, like their only crime was forgetting a friend’s middle name.

“You’re lucky he’s hard to kill,” Ingrid scolds. “We would have been screwed. And I need to talk to him.”

A.F. laughs as he’s still lying facedown on the dirt. “It’s too late.”

“I knew it,” Ingrid says angrily. “You wanted to be down that damn well. Or at least you didn’t care.”

He rolls himself over, revealing a bloody smile. “Did you really think we didn’t know about respawning? Do you really think that the First Explorer didn’t tell us everything? She’s omniscient!”

“She’s called the First Explorer?” Killjlir asks, with an air of seriousness that Ingrid has never seen in them before. “Tell me, is she called the First Explorer?”

He laughs again. “Yeah.”

Killjlir pulls a dagger out of their other sleeve. Their newfound stoicism has not subsided. They kneel by A.F., and unceremoniously drive the dagger into his neck, through his brain, and out the top of his head.

Ingrid doesn’t know whether she should be impressed, or horrified. Probably both. “Was...that your first kill?”

Killjlir hastily removes most of their elaborate dress, and tosses it down the well. They’re now wearing a sleek and stylish uniform. “Help me.” They bend back down, and lift A.F.’s dead body’s shoulders up.

Still shocked, but following her instincts, Ingrid reaches down and grabs the legs. Together, they bend him at the waist, and throw him back down the well, rear end first. “What are we doing here? What the hell is going on?”

Killjlir takes off their gemstone necklace, sets it down on the edge of the well, and hovers the water bucket over it. “Get ready to run. If you get cut by a thorn, don’t stop. Just keep going. I’ll heal you.” Without another word, they smash the gem with the bucket, and scrape it all down the well with everything else. There’s an immediate boom, and the ground trembles. The top stones begin to break apart, and crumble into the hole. Killjlir takes Ingrid by the arm, and ushers her out into the corridor. They then quickly let go, and run in front.

Ingrid does get cut as she’s racing down the tunnel behind a person she thought she knew well enough. They have seemingly been faking their entire personality this whole time? Is the same true for the rest of the Andromedans? Are they not as dumb as they come off? Is there a method to their madness that goes beyond anyone’s comprehension? They keep running until they get to the exit, not looking back, but knowing that the bower is collapsing behind them, and getting sucked into the well.

Once they’re free, Killjlir stops suddenly, spins around, and wraps their arms around Ingrid. The wood and thorns continue to be pulled away, as do some leaves, blades of grass, and other plants which happen to be nearby. It tries to pull them down with the debris, but Killjlir is steadfast, digging their heels into the ground more and more the stronger the implosive force becomes. When it’s all over, they’re standing in a barren patch about the size of the thorn barrow that once stood there.

“Can you tell me what happened now?” Ingrid requests as the dust settles.

“That’s what I would like to know.” Leader of this dimension, Storm Avakian is standing next to them, just removing her hand from Briar de Vries’ shoulder, who presumably teleported her here from wherever.

Before anyone else can speak, a thunderous roar screams down at them from the sky. The comfortable minimal sunshine that once blanketed these lands during the day brightens more than it ever has since Ingrid arrived. It’s blinding. The dimensional barrier that Onyx was talking about is flickering as bolts of lightning shoot along the surface. “We’re too late,” Killjlir says. They sigh and look at Storm. “Prepare for war.”

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 22, 2199

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The first thing that Leona Matic could remember was being killed by one of the mercenaries that she had commissioned to break Ulinthra out of her prison cube. She could recall the sting of the bullet, and the flow of blood spilling out of her wound. She could feel the light of her life dim little by little until there was nothing but a single pixel left. She never actually experienced that pixel being destroyed in her very, very final moment, but it still made her feel small. Though, through the magic of alternate timelines, she knew she had died before, no one had ever shown her what it truly felt like before. But she had apparently asked for it, and she had to trust her own past. The memories began to return to her backwards from there. Interrogating Ulinthra to find the ardusite dagger, retrieving an alternate Horace Reaver from the extraction mirror, watching Brooke Prieto die in a darkburster explosion. They just kept coming at an accelerated rate, until everything she had done before had finally returned, added to the ever-growing pile of parallel memories. The Warrior removed his hands from hovering at the side of her temples.

“I’m not screaming,” she noted. “Why am I not screaming? The others screamed. It always makes you scream.”

“Not always,” the Warrior explained. “You’ve had your brain blended before. It gets easier each time, and your brain is particularly...magnificent. Plus, the way you changed realities has never been done before, as far as I know. That dagger seems to have come from a completely different universe, so there’s no telling what other side effects it brought with it.”

“Where’s Horace?” Leona asked.

“He was never here,” Vitalie told her. “He and I followed Ulinthra to where she hid the ardusite dagger. Despite the fact that cops have been playing that trick on criminals throughout all procedural drama history, Ulinthra fell for it. She couldn’t help but check to see if we were bluffing about already knowing where it was.”

“Who did it?”

“He did, of course,” Vitalie continued. “He tried to tell you; that he knew it would mean his own demise. Ulinthra never existed. We are the only few people who have ever heard of her. Unfortunately, if she never existed, then we had no reason to go get Horace from the alternate reality either. As soon as he stabbed her with it, reality changed around everyone, leaving us with this, and without him.”

Leona shook her head. “We needed Horace to erase Ulinthra from history, which meant we didn’t need Horace, but if we didn’t have Horace, then Ulinthra couldn’t have been erased from history. It’s a vicious circle. A paradox.”

“I can’t tell you why it’s not a paradox,” Vitalie said. “Let’s just let it go, and be grateful that everything worked.”

“Yes,” Brooke finally spoke. Let’s.”

“It appears to be unanimous,” Ecrin pointed out.

Paige sighed. “The motion has passed.” She mimed banging a gavel.

“If that is all,” The Warrior said, “I will be going.”

“Yes,” Leona said, almost thinking they ought to give him a tip, as if he were a helpful bellhop. “Thank you so much, Anatol..for everything.”

The Warrior nodded respectfully, and disappeared.

“Well, he’s right that this feels different. Before, I got blended memories of different times. But this just went back through the last two weeks of my life, with only a little extra from having encountered Ulinthra at Stonehenge before we left for Durus.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s interesting to me,” Brooke said. “There are minor differences in what happened to us between the first time we saw Ulinthra in this time period, and when we saw her again in Panama, but nothing big. I have conflicting memories of recharging my systems on the ship one day, instead of going over navigational calculations; or of Dar’cy and Missy arguing over something trivial, when that actually never happened. But no one died who should have survived. No one was born that shouldn’t have, or anything like that.”

“I guess, in the end,” Ecrin began, “despite all the havoc she wreaked on the world, she wasn’t really all that important. It makes you wonder, do any of us matter? How different would the universe be if any one of us just disappeared?”

“Yes, about that,” a man said as he stepped through an invisible door in the middle of the room. In the timeline that had since been erased, they spent most of their time in Panama, but in the real timeline, Leona only got one day there before everyone went back to Kansas City. A couple years ago, they decided to move to one of the outer Northwest Forest circles, which was where they were now.

Ecrin tilted her head in friendly, mild surprise. “Ennis, how nice to see you again.”

Ennis looked like a mailman, complete with shorts, a cap, and a large satchel. He also had terrible burn scars on his face. “Miss Cabral, hello.” He tipped the cap.

“What do you have for us?” Ecrin asked him. “Anything good.”

“I guess,” he said.

“What did you mean, about that?” Leona asked. “About what?”

“Oh, you were talking about people disappearing, and I have something for you that is relevant to that.” He pulled a thick folder out of his bag, but did not hand it to anyone. “I was meant to come to you earlier, but I’m not allowed on Durus, and I don’t do moving vehicles. I could have given it to you after that, but I was told to leave you alone during the Ulinthra corruption. So I’m here now, at my earliest convenience, to give you this.” He handed the heavy folder to Leona.

Leona didn’t open it, but looked to Ecrin for guidance. She trusted her judgment.

Ecrin nodded. “If The Courier hands you something, it belongs to you. He’s legit.”

“Mrs. Matic,” Ennis began.

“Miss,” Leona corrected.

This confused him a bit. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you pregnant?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Leona asked, appalled and offended.

“Well, it’s just, I was told...who’s the father?”

Now Leona was getting really offended. “That is none of your business.”

Ennis scratched at his chin, then took a notepad out of his bag, and started looking them over. “Oh, you’re only starting to remember. Hmm.”

“What? Are you? Talking about?”

“Okay.” Ennis clapped his hands together to begin his explanation. “There was a man. This man..was named Mateo. A...bunch of stuff happened, and then a really powerful asshole took him out time. Kind of like what you did with Ulinthra. And also kind of like Ulinthra, he owned a planet, but in this case, it was legitimate, and the people who lived on it actually liked him. Since he’s no longer here, however, the rights to that planet fall to his next of kin, which is you.”

“You’re telling me I have some relative that I don’t know about, because someone erased his history?” Leona had seen a lot as a salmon, and knew there were entire timelines she had no recollection of, but this was sounding fishy.

“I’m telling you that you had a husband you don’t remember. He’s the father of your child, which means that child is proof that Mateo Matic did indeed exist. His history wasn’t erased. He was erased. You don’t remember everything he did, nor do most people, but he still had an impact on the way things are today. And the days before, since we’re time travelers.”

Leona once again looked to Ecrin, who clearly had no memory of this either. “Again,” she said, “this man doesn’t lie. If he says this dude existed, then he existed.”

“The more the baby grows inside of you,” Ennis went on, “the more it will have an effect on you. You will start remembering. The Superintendent can do a lot, but he can’t stop that. I didn’t mean to suggest you had to be married to have a child, I just thought you were far enough along to start getting your memories back.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Leona said, trying to wrap her head around having a husband she couldn’t remember. “I’m not saying I believe it, but I’m not saying I don’t. Assuming it’s true, is there any way to prove it? Can you..show me something? Can we get the Warrior back here?”

Ennis shook his head. “The Warrior and The Blender can give you quantum memories from an alternate timeline. But this isn’t an alternate timeline. It’s a corrupted timeline, but still the same timeline. Same same, but different.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, I got blended memories from the Ulinthra corruption, which is what you called it.”

“That shouldn’t have worked either,” Ennis began, “but you made arrangements so that it would. You spoke with The Warrior before Horace used that dagger thing, and prepared him to help you today. That’s not gonna work here. I want to make it clear—and Ecrin can attest to this—I am quite literally the messenger, so don’t shoot me. I didn’t erase Mateo, I can’t put him back, I can’t prove that I’m not lying, and lastly—this is an important one—I can’t put you in touch with the Superintendent. He’s the one who did this, and like a witch’s spell, only he can undo it.” He pointed at the folder, which Leona had yet to open. “That is, if you even wanted him to undo it. Dardius is pretty nice this time of millennium.”

She didn’t know the answer to that. Surely if her memories had been removed against her will, she would want to get them back. Yet this was her life now, and though no sane person would call it a good one, it was one she understood. While she would likely never see Serif again, Leona would never want to lose the memory of her. If they only got together because Mateo wasn’t there instead, then what would happen to her? Could she give up one love for another? “What would that mean for Serif? Was what we had even real?”

“Oof,” Ennis said lightly, “that’s a loaded question. Was Serif real? Technically, no. She was fabricated, but she was fabricated...before Mateo was removed from time.”

“But she was, what? Just some friend?”

“No, you were with her; you and Mateo both. Don’t ask me to give you details on how your relationships worked, I just met you today. Some things I know, some things I don’t.” His watch beeped, as did Leona’s, though she didn’t know why. “Oh, look at that, it’s time. Are you guys going to the show? Do you have tickets?”

“Tickets to what?” Brooke asked.

“The Last Savior’s Last Save? It’s today, in just a few minutes.”

“You mean, she retires after this?”

“Yep, it’s over. The Age of Saviors is kaput. I can hook you up, if you want. I’m pretty good friends with Sanela. Hey Leona, she’s your, uhh...great-something-grandmother...in-law. Umm. Twice removed? I don’t know how it works, your family tree is crazy.”

This was getting to be too much.

Ennis kept going, “so do you guys want to go, err...?” He trailed off an awful lot.

“That would be lovely,” Paige said.

“Yeah, sure,” Leona agreed. She was the last to step through Ennis’ invisible portal. It would be nice to see Étude again, but honestly, all she could think about was what she was going to do about this Mateo guy.

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 21, 2198

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In one of the other timelines, a bad Horace Reaver formulated a plan to capture Mateo Matic, whom he considered to be his archrival, once and for all. After years of trying to track his movements, he was finally sure of where Mateo would reappear in the timestream after an interim year, within a couple dozen meters. He was also in the right position to purchase the entire chunk of land, so when Mateo did come back, he would do so right in a trap. While his plan ultimately failed, due to a number of unforeseen traitors, Horace was confident he would be able to employ the same strategy again, but make it work this time. This he explained to Leona Matic, who was meant to be in a relationship with Mateo. But this was a new timeline, and something had happened that had somehow prevented Leona from remembering him. The name sounded familiar, like that of an actor you know you’ve seen in a number of films and series, but cannot identify a single one at the moment. His name elicited a response of love and connection that Leona could not explain. Someone had messed with reality, and her memories of it. Unfortunately, this was not the time to deal with it. Right now, they needed to put Ulinthra and her plans to rest, and Horace’s idea was exactly what she was hoping for. It had even worked.

Horace let Leona sleep after she came back in 2198, because there wasn’t anything they needed from her. Once she was awake, he proudly marched her into the interrogation room he had commissioned two months ago after he and the whole world had finally located Ulinthra’s whereabouts. Ulinthra came back a week before Leona did, showing that the time-skipping pattern was wearing off. “Don’t worry,” Horace said. “This is Round Two of today, and you did not speak with her the first time around. Everything you say to her now will be just as unpredictable for her as any normal human conversation.” He looked towards the glass, and flipped on the lights inside, which illuminated Ulinthra on the other side. She was not only in a different room, but also locked in another confinement chamber, as if Hannibal Lecter. “She has lost all of her leverage.”

“So you didn’t find what I described?” Leona asked him.

“They’re still looking. No one else knows what it can do.” His eyeballs fluttered to Ulinthra, then back to Leona. “Not even her, I presume.”

Leona took a breath. “I never told her. At least I have no memory of telling her.”

Horace nodded in understanding.

“I’m kind of surprised she’s still alive, though. Lots of people have it out for her, not the least of which is you.”

“It wasn’t hard to keep the radicals at bay. Capital punishment was outlawed everywhere decades ago, which surprises me, but it did make it easier to keep Ulinthra safe. I don’t want her dead. She’s the only one of my kind.”

“Yet, you..” Leona trailed off.

“...would do anything for you,” Horace completed her sentence for her. “I’m not like this Ace you told me about. “While I’m no longer the antagonist, I’m still a villain. If I weren’t going to die anyway, it would probably be in your best interests to kill me after her.”

“Why would you die at all? We have this figured out. Everything in the other time branch happened just as it did before. The Arborist was wrong; we didn’t create a paradox. You don’t have to go back.”

Horace smiled kindly. “That’s not it.” He was going to continue, but was accidentally interrupted.

“Is anyone going to come talk to me, or what?” Ulinthra asked from her cell. “Let’s get this enhanced interrogation party started!”

Horace scoff-laughed. “It’s nice to be on this side of a prison cube.”

“Yeah,” Leona smiled coyly. “I see you used a similar design. Maybe you need to talk to a professional about your hang-ups.” She gave him a wink.

“I love you,” Leona thought Horace whispered, but she couldn’t be certain. She decided to not embarrass him by pushing the issue. “I mean, I’ll be right here.”

Leona nodded. “Horace, if everything goes according to our absolutely insane plan, I’m going to need you more than ever. I won’t be able to help tomorrow.”

“I won’t let you down,” Horace said to her, wiping a tear from his cheek. “Not this time.”

“Thank you,” Leona said solemnly. Then she opened the door and went into the other room.

“Ah,”  Ulinthra said. “I thought it might be your day, but I lose track of time in here. They’ve got some system going. I know that my days are resetting, just like always, but they make it hard to see it. That’s a form of torture. Guiltless Leona of yesterday would not approve.”

“I wasn’t here yesterday,” Leona said, knowing full well that Ulinthra was using the term in a more general sense.

Ulinthra tried to hide a smile. “Funny. I do want to extend my congratulations. Clever recruiting Horace Reaver. I would have thought of that, but I wouldn’t think you would have thought of it. I’m impressed.”

“I appreciate your support. You know why I’m here?”

“For the first time in my life, I do not,” Ulinthra answered.

“You stole something from me, years ago. I want it back.”

Ulinthra tilted her head to think. “I stole many things. I stole a planet from its peoples. I stole the lives of people you loved. I stole the hearts of my loyalists. But I don’t think I stole anything that I could ever give back.”

“This was literal.”

Ulinthra thought some more. It didn’t seem like a game. She genuinely might not have known what Leona was talking about. “I’m afraid I legit don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My family heirloom.”

“Oh, that sword thing? The glass sword?”

“It’s a dagger, and it means a great deal to me.”

“Okay...sorry? I don’t know what you want me to say. I tossed it a long time ago, I think in a swamp. I don’t really remember, it meant nothing to me.”

Leona studied Ulinthra’s face for a moment. “Nah, you didn’t throw it out. It intrigued you, and you could tell that it was special.”

“It is—I mean was? What does it do?”

Leona needed a lie that was believably interesting. Ulinthra needed to feel like it allowed her to maintain leverage over Leona, but still consider giving it up for the right price. It was a good thing that Leona and Vitalie had spent last night thinking of a good one. “It removes your time powers...or pattern, depending on what subspecies you are.”

It was working. Ulinthra leaned back to see if she believed it. “A stabby thing that takes away powers?”

“Think of it as...a prototype for The Warrior’s Sword of Assimilation,” Leona explained. “It can’t transfer powers, but it can take take ‘em out.”

“It does look old, like it could have been one of The Weaver’s early inventions.”

Leona nodded slightly, and consistently.

“But no, I’m not buyin’ it.”

Leona closed her eyes in exasperation. “I am tired. You may enjoy rewinding your days, but I can’t do that. I was blessed with suck, and I want it gone.”

“Why didn’t you use it before?” Ulinthra questioned. “It’s unlikely I stole it just after you received it.”

“Actually it wasn’t all that long after, but that wasn’t why I hadn’t tried it yet. First of all, it doesn’t work alone. It’s one of two ingredients,” Leona continued to lie. “The other is easy to come by, but I just hadn’t gotten a chance yet. I have what I need now.”

“And second of all?” Ulinthra waited.

“Secondly, it’s a dagger. I wasn’t relishing the idea of stabbing myself with it. It requires something bigger than a wee papercut, but not so damaging that I can’t heal. If I just wanted to kill myself to end it all, I would have used any other dagger.”

“I see.” Ulinthra definitely believed the lie now. “What’s the second ingredient; the thing that makes the dagger work?”

“I’m withholding that. You need to tell me where it is.”

“No,” Ulinthra said firmly. “I don’t need my powers gone, I don’t care what happens to yours, and as long as I’m stuck in here, I can’t use it to control my enemies.”

“This feels like a classic impasse,” Leona said. “I can’t let you go until you give me the dagger, and you can’t use the dagger unless I give the other ingredient. The difference between you and me, however, is this barrier between us, and who’s on which side of it. I also have time. You’ll rot in here for years before I get the hankering for Chinese food again. I can wait.”

Ulinthra laughed abruptly, and loudly. “You don’t even know why that’s funny, because you don’t remember—”

“Mateo Matic?” Leona took a guess.

“So you do remember.”

“I remember...” Leona paused for effect, “that I know people with powers. Your problem is that you relied too heavily on yourself. You didn’t make any friends. I don’t have that problem, so when I asked my mind-reader buddy for a favor, he just did it. I don’t even owe him one.” She looked over at the glass, on the other side of which no one was standing, but Horace Reaver. “He’s just standing over there, getting ready to tell me where the dagger is. All I needed was for you to think about it in your brain.” Leona tapped on her own temple, again for effect.

“What? No, you’re lying.”

Leona shrugged. “Maybe I am, but you’ll die in here, never knowing for sure.”

Suddenly, there was gunfire on the other side of the door. Leona jumped out of her chair, and slinked back in fear. Ulinthra was noticeably frightened as well, because she didn’t yet know if this was a good thing or not. The firefight stopped, replaced with a grinding sound as someone was cutting through the wall with a laser. Once they were all the way through, people with guns slipped inside. One of them raised his weapon, and shot Leona right in the stomach.

“Oh my God!” Ulinthra cried as she watched Leona fall to the floor.

Leona had experienced a lot of pain in her life. She had lost everyone she had ever cared about, and despite being a time traveler, she rarely ever saw them again. But this. This was pain unlike any other. She did not expect it to feel like this.

“Is it a trick?” Ulinthra asked. “It’s a trick.”

“Lord Arianrhod,” the man who shot Leona said. “We’ve come for you.”

“You shot her!” Ulinthra shouted at him.

“Ma’am,” he affirmed.

“I wasn’t done with her yet!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. What can I do?”

“You can shoot yourself in the head.”

Without hesitation, the man lifted his pistol, and did exactly as he was told. His dead body fell right next to Leona’s dying one. Their blood started intermingling as someone managed to unlock the prison cube. The last thing Leona felt before she died was Ulinthra’s warm fingers on her neck, checking for a pulse that would soon be gone.

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 15, 2192

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As instructed, they didn’t approach any of the people giving each other butterfly signals in 2191. First of all, they didn’t know what it meant. It seemed shady, but it could also be some strange new form of greeting that they weren’t privy to since they only existed one day out of the year. They couldn’t even be sure if the people were trying to say butterfly at all. To communicate the word in sign language, one was meant to wave their hands, as the flapping of wings, which none of them was doing. Vitalie, of course, was entirely convinced that this was some underground resistance movement, presently working against the Arianrhod occupation. They should have done better at keeping themselves informed about the events they missed during their interim years, on the arc, and elsewhere. If any rebels attempted to fight back sometime in the past, they definitely lost, and Ulinthra would have buried it. Now they had too little intelligence to go on. That night, they got together to discuss how they were going to proceed, ultimately deciding to wait until the next year, so they could have a fresh start.

“All right,” Leona began near the end of their latest breakfast meetings. “Brooke, you’re sure these heart trackers aren’t also listening devices.”

“I’m certain,” Brooke answered with a formal nod.

“Then on to Vitalie.”

“On to me?”

“I know your power doesn’t work with Ulinthra, and we think she has some time power blocker, but we’ve not until now had reason to use it elsewhere.”

“We should have tested it at some point,” Ecrin said.

“I’ve tested it,” Vitalie said, as if it were obvious. “I can go anywhere on Earth. It’s not easy, because I think that blocker she uses has minimal effect on me no matter what, but like you said, there was nothing to see.”

“In that case, you think you could stomach a trip to one of the common areas, like a shopping mall, or restaurant?” Leona asked.

“I could,” Vitalie said.

“Do you think you could take one of us with you?”

“I could take both,” Vitalie answered. She looked at Brooke with guilt. “Sorry, I don’t think I could take you.”

“I’m used to it,” Brooke said, not feeling left out.

“Then let’s go back,” Leona said, “and find someone giving what we think is a butterfly sign—”

They were suddenly in the marketplace.

“I didn’t mean right away,” Leona said.

Vitalie shrugged. “No use in waiting.” She took off her shirt, and started swinging it around like a lasso. “We’re invisible, by the way!” she shouted.

“Are our bodies just slumped in our chairs, back at the unit?” Ecrin questioned.

Vitalie pointed at her. “Uh, you fell to the floor. Don’t worry, you’re not hurt, and Brooke is carrying you to the couch.”

“Do you maintain a presence in both locations simultaneously?” Leona asked out of scientific curiosity.

“It’s like I’m wearing bifocals. I just adjust my focus to one or the other. It takes less than a second, and I can always kind of see both at the same time. I don’t think you can do that, though.”

Leona nodded understandingly. “Let’s walk around while we’re invisible. Keep your shirts on, though.”

“They’re not real shirts, Leona,” Vitalie needlessly reminded her.

“Look for a butterfly,” Leona continued. “Call out when you see it.”

It was a half hour before Ecrin saw two people give each other the secret sign. They seemed to be doing it a lot less than they did yesterday. A lot can happen in a year, and there was no way of knowing what these people had been through. Vitalie allowed the man and woman to see them, but no one else, so they could have a secret conversation.

“What does it mean when you do that?” Leona asked of them, trying to be careful about broaching the subject.

“When I do what?” the man asked.

Leona mimicked the movement. “When you interlock your thumbs like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to leave, but Vitalie teleported Ecrin’s image right in front of them. “How did you do that?”

“You first,” Ecrin said.

He looked around in paranoia. “Not here.”

Ecrin swept her hand downwards, like a model at a game show. “Lead the way.”

“What are you?” the man asked after leading them to an empty storage room.

“We can’t be here physically,” Vitalie explained. “Ulinthra planted tracking devices on our hearts, so we have astrally project to have this conversation.”

Someone in the early 21st century would have needed that term explained to them, but enough science fiction had become science fact since then. While astral projection was not something other people could do, it was a concept that audiences these days would find easier to grasp. “Who is Ulinthra?”

“That’s Arianrhod’s real name,” Leona said.

His and the woman’s eyes widened as they looked at each other. “How do you know this? Do you use your...ghost powers to spy on her?”

“We go way back,” Leona replied. She looked to the other two, hesitating. But the cat was out of the bag, and they needed allies. “We’re time travelers, and so is she. If you’ve ever tried to do something against her, there’s a reason she always wins. She’s already been through it.”

He lifted his chin to think this over, not sure if he believed it, but wanting to entertain the possibility. “Then we have to be unpredictable.”

Vitalie shook her head. “She’s already lived through this day. Every time you try to be unpredictable, you could just be making the same unpredictable choice you did in the first timeline.” She surrounded the word in airquotes.

“I assume you don’t use real names,” Ecrin said, briefly changing the subject, and recalling her time in the IAC, where everyone had a callsign. “What are your designations?”

“I’m Gatekeeper,” the man said.

“Holly Blue,” the woman finally spoke.

“Are those butterflies?” Vitalie asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We always suspected Arianrhod to be a fake name,” the woman now said enough for it to be clear she had an Irish accent. “It’s the name of a Celtic goddess, and means silver wheel. Who breaks the butterfly upon the wheel?”

“No one,” Leona understood. “Not if the butterflies fight back.”

“Assuming we believe you about the time travel thing,” Gatekeeper tried to begin, but was stopped when Vitalie walked right through the wall, and soon thereafter appeared through the other wall. “Okay, that’s pretty convincing, unless we’re having the same delusion.” He looked to Holly Blue, who indicated that she had seen it too. “You mean to tell me Arianrhod can go back in time, but only one day?”

“It’s not that she can do it,” Leona explained. “It’s that she has to. She experiences every day twice. And only twice. She can’t control it.”

“Well, what hope would we have?”

Vitalie then started in on the explanation of what they were doing with the penny; how their only hope of changing the timeline was by using Ulinthra.

The two revolutionaries understood the logic, and recognized the flaws. “What did you flip today?” they asked.

“We didn’t flip today,” Leona replied. “Our biggest problem now is that we don’t know what we can do against her. And we’re afraid of what she’ll do in retaliation. Whatever move we make, it has to be a final blow, because the consequences last time were too great.”

“But you said that was reversed?”

“They’re not gonna reverse the next one,” Ecrin said.

“We may be able to get something done,” Vitalie started, “if we work together. Now that we know about you, we stand a chance. How many are there in your group?”

Holly Blue and Gatekeeper looked at each other again. “Three,” he finally said.

The two of us, and one other,” Holly Blue added.

“How is that possible?” Leona asked. “Only three of you signed up?”

“Lots signed up,” Gatekeeper said. “They’re all dead now.”

“You act like you already know each other. Why the hand signal?”

“It’s not just to prove we’re rebels. We also use it to indicate that we need to talk, and that the coast is clear to do so.”

“Where’s the last one right now?”

“Monarch is our designated survivor,” Gatekeeper explained. “No one knows who they are. He or she stays out of sight until something goes wrong. If we all die, it’s up to them to start it back up again, which they’ll probably soon have to do. You seem like lovely people, but you’re still just three recruits.

“Barely recruits,” Holly Blue noted.

“Isn’t there something else you can do?” Gatekeeper asked. “Someone you can talk to? You said there are other time travelers. Can they help? Can you contact them?”

Leona knew a few people with potential. Unfortunately, Ulinthra never let her touch land, so she couldn’t dig a grave for Mr. Halifax. The Forger might be willing to help? Ecrin probably knew many choosers, so this was a good question for her to answer. She looked at her inquisitively, completely forgetting that Ecrin hadn’t been involved in her own personal thought process.

“What?” Ecrin asked.

“Do you know someone? Maybe you know someone that we don’t? Maybe someone that Ulinthra doesn’t know?”

“Ulinthra has the memory of countless versions of herself, from indefinite timelines. I don’t know who she knows. There may be someone, though. You’re not gonna like it, but he may be our best chance. There’s one thing we’ve not yet discussed, but I think we all know it needs to be on the table.”

“You’re talking about killing her,” Vitalie realized.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Leona said. “Not again.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You wouldn’t have to. When I was working for the coalition, there was a team we came across. They were deadly travelers, and we spent a lot of resources trying to catch them. I stepped into the field myself to work on it, even though I was mostly in administration.”

“Who is it?” Vitalie was intrigued.

“The leader is called The Maverick; his team, The Mavericks. Not very original.”

Leona nodded her head solemnly. “I met one of them once. Darrell, or something. He helped Gilbert go back into the extraction mirror, for his death.”

“Darrow,” Ecrin corrected. “We would probably want to deal with him only, since he can be reasoned with. The other two can be rather..insufferable. But we all have to agree to it, including Viceroy.”

“Viceroy?” Leona didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Yeah, the other one in our group...since we’re using butterfly codenames?”

She meant Brooke. “Right. Viceroy, yes. We’ll ask her, but I don’t see her taking issue with it. I suppose I always knew it would have to end like this. If the powers that be don’t step in, we may have no way of getting her to Beaver Haven.”

Vitalie was totally on board, as were Holly Blue and Gatekeeper, who assumed that was what everyone was going for anyway. After going over some secret protocols with their two new allies, the three of them jumped back into their own bodies. They needed a couple of things to reach the Maverick, though, so Ecrin went out in physical form to shop. She came back with a cloak, and a dagger. She hung the cloak up on the door, and used the dagger to cut a symbol into it twice. They looked like bird tracks. Once she was finished, she jabbed the dagger into the cloak, sticking it into the door.

Within seconds, the cloak started billowing out, until the figure of a man appeared inside of it. He reached behind him and pulled the dagger from his back before turning around. He smiled and shook his head when he saw it was Ecrin. “I bet you just loooved doing that.”

“I don’t love that you’re here,” Ecrin said. “But we need your help. We just don’t know when.”

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