The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 5, 2457

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Leona and Marie were in hock, and had been for the last five days. They managed to return to their past, in the middle of the kasma, where they hoped to be, but they were immediately scooped up by the Angry Fifth Divisioner’s ship. As he was the one who deployed the technology needed to seal up the membranes of the two sister universes, he could pass through them freely using some kind of temporal skeleton key. They needed that key, as well as the technology itself. They just had to escape first. In the meantime, he was looking for their co-conspirators. He was convinced that the rest of the team members were floating around here somewhere, and had been on the search this whole time. It was only five days for them, but five years for him. He would not listen to reason. Well, to be fair, he had every reason to believe that the others were here too, but after all this time, how could they still be alive?

“Maybe you two had to bail out in your suits, but your friends had personal pods, or an evac shuttle.” He didn’t know that they had come back in time from the future. He assumed that the Transit had managed to escape, but left the team behind for whatever reason. There was no point in correcting him. At best, he wouldn’t believe them, and at worst, it would make things harder for them.

“Well, I think that you would have found them by now,” Leona told him. “They would be emanating heat, and you could detect that heat, right? There’s not much heat in the kasma naturally, is there?” She kept having to baby him, and it was exhausting.

“No, it’s even colder than the vacuum.” He was right about that. Ramses measured the mean temperature to be at 2.16 Kelvin. “So, where are they?”

“We don’t know!” Marie said for the upteenth time. “We got separated.” This was technically true, even though her wording implied that it was not done intentionally.

“So, what do you want me to do, let you out?”

“That would be a start,” Leona replied.

“You realize what you’ve done, right?” A.F. asked. “The only thing that was keeping you alive was the prospect of being able to kill you all at the same time. If no one else is here, I’m just going to cut my losses, and kill the two of you alone. I’ll worry about the others later, I suppose. Your execution will be scheduled for tomorrow morning.” A.F. said with confidence.

“Problem with that,” Marie started to point out.

“We won’t exist tomorrow,” Leona added.

“Right.” A.F. tried to figure a way out of this glaring mistake. “Tomorrow, Greenwich Mean Time. It’ll be later tonight local time.”

That was a dumb answer, but they didn’t push it. “Of course, sir.”

“I’ll go make the preparations. Say your final prayers to your god.”

“Yes, sir!” Marie saluted him sarcastically, but he took it genuinely. She watched him leave. “Okay, your plan hasn’t worked so far, so can we just go with mine now?”

“Yeah,” Leona answered her with a sigh. The original idea that Leona had for their escape plan was to hack into the keypad on the cell door. They heard the beeps when they were first locked in here, so they knew that they were dealing with an eight-digit combination. She was able to covertly stick a brute force strip underneath the pad, but in all this time, it had yet to find the right answer. It was probably something absurd, like 99999999. The strip was programmed to try them in order, so that would be its last guess. Unfortunately, it might take up to another year or more for it to get to that point, and they no longer had the time for that.

Obviously, when A.F.’s people captured them, they removed the outer layers of their integrated multipurpose suits, leaving them only with the biometric base. They stashed the response and armor layers elsewhere on the ship. Ramses upgraded their suits in various ways, but they appeared normal, so anyone here wouldn’t have felt any need to take any special precautions with them. They just stuffed them in a drawer, and forgot about them for the last five years. One special feature was the suit’s ability to become mobile on its own. This was possible to some degree in all standard models, but it would still need a user to be wearing it in order to provide physical support. It was meant to allow the suit to carry its user back to safety if they fell unconscious, or to their gravesite if they were dead. The original engineers didn’t think that the suit would have any need to move around completely on its own, but Ramses being Ramses, he did. It could indeed move while totally empty, like something out of a cartoon. It was less inconspicuous than a hacking strip, but it would work.

Marie placed her sleeve up against her temple to activate the remote neural interface, and began to command the outer layers to climb out of their drawer, and walk down the corridors towards them. The helmet was fully attached as well, so it looked like a real person, but that didn’t mean it had the authorization to go where it was going. If someone decided to stop and ask for its ID badge, or something, the jig would be up. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but making it to them was the easy part. Dealing with the hock watcher was the real challenge, and it was about to begin.

“Wait,” Leona ordered just before the empty suit could enter the hock section. “This isn’t going to work.”

“It’s all we have, LeeLee.”

“Just give me a second.” Leona tried to concentrate, but she didn’t have the power to see remotely. “Here, let me join.” She grabbed Marie’s free hand, and placed the sleeve against her own temple. She closed her eyes to see through the suit’s point of view. “I can do this. Throw your voice into the helmet, but put a delay on it. For everything you say, make it come out of the speaker ten seconds later.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m changing your plan so it actually works. Throw your voice.”

“It’s not my voice. It’s going to sound like A.F.’s.”

“Even better. Ten second delay,” Leona insisted.

The hock watcher opened the little window in the door when the suit knocked on it. “Can I help you?”

“I need to interrogate the prisoners again,” Marie said through the speaker, modulating her voice to impersonate the leader.

“Sir? You’re back so soon?”

“Yes. Open the door.”

“Why are you wearing one of their suits?”

“Because it makes me feel sexy, now open the goddamn door.”

The hock watcher was unconvinced, but that was okay. That was why Leona was here. “I’m sorry, sir, but this could be fake. I’m going to need you to raise your visor.”

Marie looked to Leona for guidance. Leona nodded confidently. She was ready for it. “I appreciate your dedication to the job,” A.F.’s voice said to the hock watcher. Marie raised the visor. Inside the helmet was A.F.’s face, in holographic form, of course. This was why Leona needed the delay. Every time Marie said something, Leona would need to match the hologram’s lips to it.

“Thank you, sir. I just want to be cautious.”

Of course, they didn’t want to make this any harder on themselves than they had to, so from this point on, short answers only. “I’ll remember that for your next evaluation.” Could’ve been shorter. Leona really struggled with that, but it seemed to work. The hock watcher opened the door, and let the deepfake A.F. in. “Go ahead and open it up.”

“Sir? That’s not protocol. You’re the only one who knows the code.” Shit. Really?

“Uhh...use the master code.” A decent guess?

“Master code?” The hock watcher questioned. “Who are you?” He shook his head. “This is a trick. I’m calling security.”

The suit reached up, and slammed the hock watcher’s head against the cell wall. He was knocked out cold, which would delay the security team’s response time, but someone would find him eventually, or he would wake up on his own, and call them then. The fact was they were still locked in this cell, and didn’t know the code. They were going to have to extend this mission even further, and go find A.F. himself.

“Stuff the body in that cabinet,” Leona ordered.

“He’s not dead.”

“He still has a body. Put it in there, please.”

“You do it...Captain.”

“This is your plan!”

“You’re supposed to be the smart one. You should have come up with both Plan A and Plan B. Now you’re going to have to impersonate someone else for A.F., and he’s going to be a lot less accommodating since he’s apparently the guy in charge.”

“Well, we may have had more options if you hadn’t knocked him unconscious,” Leona reasoned.

“I didn’t do that. You did.”

Leona was taken aback. She decidedly had not. Before they could argue any further, though, the door clicked, and swung halfway open. The stared at it for a moment. “Hm. The strip found the code.” She stepped out, and looked at the keypad. Her guess was close. It was 88888888.

Marie saw it too. “All ones would have been easier on us.”

While Marie was putting her suit on, Leona dragged the hock watcher into the cell, and locked it back up. She removed the hacking strip, and tucked it back into her base layer, in case they ever needed it again. They also didn’t want to let anyone know how they managed to get out of here. Hopefully, they would just blame the hock watcher for the whole thing, and not investigate any deeper. “I still can’t teleport. I think the power blocker works all over the ship.”

“Well, you can obviously make yourself look like anyone, so I’ll continue to be A.F., and you be the hock watcher. We’ll go down to get your suit, and then get to work.”

“No, I don’t want to run into anyone else again. Let’s become invisible instead.”

“That’s Olimpia’s forte.”

“We can all do it. There’s a mirror over there for us to practice with. I’m sure no one will be back too soon.”

The door opened, and A.F. walked back in.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 26, 2399

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Leona woke up yesterday, but she only spoke with Winona and Aldona. She wasn’t ready to speak with her future self, even if it meant staying away from her husband too. She’s still not ready for that today, so she’s focusing on the prisoners. Mangrove Rocket Three is orbiting Earth now, but they have no current plans to land on the surface until all of these loose ends are resolved. Right now, she’s sitting with Senator Morton. “We’ve never met. My name is Leona Matic.”

“I met a Leona Reaver.”

“Did you meet her, or did you lock her up and study her?”

“We mostly just kept her locked up,” Morton replies.

Leona nods. “Well...” She’s about to tell him that this is Reaver’s body, but he doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t need to know anything.

“If we were to return you to Earth, what would you do? How would you handle the situation?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been dead for over eight months. They had a funeral. Some of your shady and corrupt dealings were later made public in a posthumous scandal that made headlines nationwide.”

He’s seething.

“Oh, don’t be mad at us. When you died, we moved on with our lives, and barely gave you another thought. You locked up our friends, but you were gone, so you couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. We had no need to soil your purported good name. We didn’t care. Other people found the skeletons in your closet, because they were there to be found, and those investigators cared. But that changes nothing, at least as far as I and my team are concerned. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter to us. We’re only worried about what you’ll tell the public. How will you explain your absence? Did you fake your death? Did someone else fake it?”

“Yes,” he interrupts her. “That one, ‘cause it’s true.”

“All they would have to do is exhume your body, and call that into question.”

“We’ll say I have a twin brother, who died in my place, and I tried to run for help, but they caught up to me.”

“Why did the people who murdered this twin brother because they thought he was you let you live once they realized their mistake?”

“Their boss changed their mind,” Morton suggests. He’s scared.

“You’re worried we’ll kill you, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You think that we’ll solve the problem of your highly exaggerated death, as reported by the news, by turning it into a real death.”

“Well, is that so crazy? You killed me before.”

“Winona killed you, and I think she’s grown a lot since then. She was trying to protect her asset anyway, who you had unlawfully abducted.”

“I just wanted to understand who you people are. I still do!”

“Your daughter died too, did you know that? Did you see her in the cafeteria while you were learning how to be alive again?”

He was seething before, but now he’s fuming. “No. I could barely see a thing before the hock you just escorted me out of. The lights were so bright, and everything was blurry. Did Winona kill her too?”

“Absolutely not. It was an enemy, who we managed to destroy, and I’ll have you know that if I hadn’t sacrificed my own life, he may have been brought back too.”

“You look fine to me.”

“I’m on borrowed time,” Leona explains. She’s not going to get into the fact that her future self does end up returning too, especially because of the body deficit caveat.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I wanna live, and honestly, I’ll do whatever you want to make that happen.”

Leona nods, and takes out her tablet. She starts flipping through photos of men with various hairstyles for Morton to see. He thinks nothing of it yet, but he’s going to be shocked, and probably afraid, when she tells him what these have to do with him. “I noticed that you have a full head of hair, which is impressive for a man of your age.”

“Yeah...”

“What if I told you that you may be able to look like a whole new person, but you would have to shave your head, and replace it with hair transplants?”

“Why would I do that? I mean, why would that be a thing?”

“We have a friend with the ability to make herself look like anyone. If we transplant some of her hair onto your head, you may gain that ability, except it won’t be an ability. You’ll only be able to choose your form once, and have to stick with it for the rest of your life. This will allow you to blend in with the public without anyone knowing who you really are. Even if you try to tell them the truth, they obviously won’t believe you. We’ll send you into the witness relocation program, and get you set up with a new place to live. You’ll have to stay out of the spotlight, though.”

“That sounds absurd.”

“Is it worse than being in hock? Because that’s what you’re facing if you don’t take this deal. We can’t have someone running around the planet, revealing all of our secrets to anyone willing to bend an ear.”

Morton sighs, shakes his head, and massages his temples. “Can I think about it?”

“You’ll have until the end of the week to decide.” She looks over to the door, and nods at Winona through the window. This conversation is over.

“Wait, how long until the end of the week? What day is it?”

“It’s February 26, 2399. Friday.”

“Dammit!” He’s frustrated, but the average person doesn’t ever need more than one day to make a decision. That’s plenty of time to weigh the pros and cons, and just get on with it. He lets himself be taken away.

Leona gets herself another cup of tea before the next subject comes in. He’s already sitting when she comes back in. She doesn’t bother joining him. She takes a slow sip by the door as she’s having a staring contest with him. “Lock ‘im up,” she orders decisively. “We’ll send him back to the main sequence whenever the opportunity arises.

Winona takes Erlendr away, and returns with Fairpoint. He doesn’t even get over the threshold before Leona dismisses him too. He’s going right back to the black site, just in a shiny new body.

Winona brings in the vengeful Fifth Divisioner.

Leona tries to rub some dead skin off of her cuticles, and pretty much ignores him for a few minutes. “What’s your name?” she finally asks impassively.

“Business.”

She rolls her eyes. “Did you mean to say Nunya?”

“No,” he insists, embarrassed. “Hold on, ask me again.”

She consults her watch. “I don’t care what your name is. I just can’t decide if I want to let the government interrogate you, or if I should send you to Antarctica. I’m hesitant to do either, because I don’t trust either party with this task, but I also don’t want to waste my own breath on it. I’m not sure you have anything valuable to say to me, but I worry that you might know something you don’t realize is important, particularly about Constance!Five.”

“I won’t tell you anything, and I won’t tell anyone else anything either.”

“You won’t? Why not?”

“Because I hate you with every molecule in my body.”

“How do you train new molecules to share this hate?”

“Huh?”

Leona narrows her eyes to try to read him. “Nah, you don’t know anything. You were just a tool. A new ally of mine killed you, and he did it to save me, but he also had his own reasons, and I don’t want to take that away from him.”

“So you’re going to kill me again?” he figures.

She stands up. “Go float yourself, whatever your name was.” She leaves the room, and manages to run into Mateo-slash-Future!Leona. “Wanna do me a favor?”

“Anything,” they promise.

“Teleport the prisoner in the interrogation room to the edge of the atmosphere.”

“Are you sure?” Meona asks.

“Yes,” she confirms as she passes by. Winona has been following her. “Did you put the next one where I asked?” she asks her.

“He’s on the bridge,” Winona says. “Vearden is watching him. Well...Tarboda is watching him, and Vearden is watching Tarboda.”

“Thanks.” Leona enters the bridge. “Computer, open the sunshields.” The viewports rise, allowing them to see the Earth above them. She steps up to one of them and looks out. “Have you ever seen such a thing?” she asks her grandfather.

“Such beauty,” Labhrás responds in his cool Irish accent.

“Do you ever wanna see it again? Not this view, of course, but something more than the inside of a prison cell?”

“I would. Very much, I would. I sincerely regret my life choices, and I’m ready to start making better ones. My death has been an eye-opener.”

“Parole rules,” Leona begins. “No contact with old associates, no firearms, no breaking the law. I’ll assign someone for you to check in with. You’ll be taking drug tests, and getting yourself a real job so you can contribute positively to society.”

“That all sounds quite reasonable. I appreciate the opportunity...granddaughter. I would also like to get to know you better, and find out what happens to me.”

She ignores his personal remark. “We’ll discuss the details of your responsibilities later. Vearden will take you to your new temporary cabin. Get some rest in a real bed.”

“Thank you.”

The vengeful Fifth Divisioner appears out of nowhere, and collapses to the floor.

Leona looks over to see him through the security mirror. “I knew it. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.” She sighs. “Take him back to hock please.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 27, 2398

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They didn’t think to have Arcadia build a mental defense for a doctor, and now that she’s pregnant, they don’t want to place her in any danger, or the baby at risk. They need to sedate Meredarchos, so they’re just going to have to do it themselves, and hope not to kill him in the process. This isn’t his body, and the man who owns it may still be salvageable, so they have a responsibility to protect it. Leona flicks the syringe to force the bubbles to the top, then releases a little bit of the sedative to clear them. She finds a vein, and plugs in. He has a black bag over his head, so she can’t try to prompt a response. His vitals show that he’s been put to sleep, though. She checks his restraints for the fourth time, then exits the room.

Leona performs the secret knock on the door to the observation room. “He’s out cold,” she says when Mateo opens it.

Mateo looks back at Kivi and Ramses. “Are you two ready for this?”

They both nod, but don’t reply vocally. Ramses gathers the Insulator of Life and the Livewire, as well as his laptop. Kivi gets behind Andile’s gurney, and follows him through the corridors. Winona takes up the rear to stand guard with her weapon. Mateo and Leona will be watching through the window.

Kivi pulls the bag from their target’s head. “Oh.”

“What? Are you okay?” Ramses gets defensive.

“Yeah, sorry, his eyes are open a little. It’s creepy.”

Ramses shuts the man’s eyelids closed all the way.

“Still creepy.”

“We can put the bag back on,” he suggests.

“No, I can make a stronger connection with physical contact. Get ready.”

“Hold on, I need to calibrate the interface.” Ramses thinks he’s found a way to connect his computer to the Insulator, so he can get a readout of its activity, instead of just having to blindly hope that it’s doing what they want it to do. “Okay, we’re good. It’s up to you now.”

Kivi prepares herself emotionally, then places her hands upon Meredarchos’ temples. She exhales, and focuses her intentions. At first, she visualizes her own mental barrier, but right away, it becomes the real one. Each time she tries this is a little easier than the last. She opens the door at the base of her wall, and stands at the bridge. She stands there with a frown.

Meredarchos and Erlendr are on the other side. They each have a sword to Cheyenne’s throat, having finally caught her while Kivi wasn’t here. “You shall not pass!” Erlendr shouts.

“You have no right to quote those words!” Kivi shouts back.

“Step one foot across that bridge, and we’ll kill her!” Erlendr replies. “If you’re killed in The Matrix, you die here! The body cannot live without the mind!”

“I think we both know that’s not true, not in our world!”

“Walk away, Miss Bristol,” Meredarchos demands, no time for pop culture references from a world that is not his own. “I have no problem with you. I don’t even have a problem with Cheyenne here. She’s just a nuisance at this point.” He’s not shouting, yet Kivi can hear him. This is a shared mental state, not a physical place. Sound doesn’t have to traverse a distance. They’re just exchanging brainwaves.

“One foot!” Erlendr repeats.

Kivi gazes into the abyss, which is more than just a manifestation of the gap between her mind and theirs. It needs to be there, but it doesn’t have to be so wide. The two land masses move towards each other until she’s standing a couple of meters from the other three. She could hop to the other side if need be. “I didn’t take a single step.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Erlendr admits.

“You should not have been able to do that,” Meredarchos says. “I’m the only one in control here.”

He’s lying or he’s wrong. This isn’t his mind. He is an intruder here, just like everyone else. This brain can only be controlled by one man, and even if Kivi can’t find that man, Meredarchos still does not have an advantage here. She can fight back. But she’s not going to do it with thought violence. Kivi puts on her diplomacy hat. “We have a new body prepared for Cheyenne. Let her go, and she won’t bother you anymore.”

“Then we’ll lose our leverage,” Meredarchos contends. “She’s the only thing standing between us and death.”

“What do you care? You’re not really here anyway.”

Meredarchos is silent.

“Oh, you didn’t think we knew that, did you?”

“If you kill this body, you’ll force me back to my home universe. Establishing a new connection will prove difficult, especially if I want to return to this time period. I would rather avoid the hassle.”

“You would rather, but it’s possible to survive.”

“It’s not possible for me,” Erlendr reminds her.

“What do I care?” Kivi asks.

“I too am holding a sword,” Erlendr says.

She shrugs, and removes two swords from behind her back. “So am I. If you can dream it, you can do it. Literally.”

“Two can play that game.” Erlendr lets go of Cheyenne’s neck to pull a hand cannon from behind his own back.

Kivi takes this opportunity to stab the man in the throat. He instinctively reaches up, and takes hold of the blade. Instead of pulling it out, she just reangles it to get better leverage. Once Cheyenne safely ducks away, Kivi pulls Erlendr towards her, and lets him fall into the narrow gap, down into the abyss.

Meredarchos doesn’t take time to mourn his body-buddy. “I’m going to break out of this prison eventually, like I did last time.” He hops over, and grabs Cheyenne, and throws her into the gap.

Kivi moves her physical mouth. “Ramses, now.”

Out in the real world, Ramses flips the switch that activates the circuit that the Livewire is plugged into. Energy surges out of it, passes through the patient’s hand, hopefully picking up Cheyenne’s consciousness in the process. It then continues on down the wire, and enters Andile’s brain. She wakes up. “Chey, is that you?”

“Yes, I thought I was dead.”

“We all did,” Ramses replies.

Kivi comes out of the psychic connection, and turns to the one-way mirror. “Get in here now.”

Winona opens the door for the two of them. Mateo wheels Alt!Mateo’s body into the room. Ramses quickly takes the Livewire, and rearranges it.

“Get her out of here!” Kivi orders.

Mateo grabs Cheyenne’s gurney, and pulls her out of the cell. Andile’s brain is the only one whose head hasn’t been protected against mental intrusion. Arcadia didn’t even feel comfortable doing that much, and Kivi still can’t figure out how to do it herself. He runs off at full speed to get her as far away from here as possible.

“How many consciousnesses do you see in that man’s head?”

“I don’t have time to check,” Ramses replies. “It’s more complicated than just looking for two dots. What do we do? Do we make the transfer, and hope it works?”

Everyone looks to Leona. “Do it. We’ll sort it out later.”

While Ramses gets back to work, Kivi pulls Leona aside. “Something happened in there. They had already caught her, so I was forced to improvise. Erlendr fell into the abyss first. It was before Ramses provided power to the Livewire, so I don’t know where he went, if anywhere. Meredarchos seemed to believe that the abyss was bad, though. Maybe he’s met the true death.”

“We all have barriers,” Leona reasons. “Except for Cheyenne. That wolf may be in sheep’s clothing.” She looks through the door. “Winona, go protect my husband.”

Winona cocks her gun, and runs out.

Leona turns back to Ramses. “Make the transfer. Now.”

Ramses plugs the Livewire back in. Power runs from the wall, down the wire, through the patient, back down the wire, and into Alt!Mateo’s body. Now Cheyenne is in Andile’s body, Meredarchos is in the ill-fated Atl!Mateo’s body, and Erlendr—as long as he didn’t seek refuge in Andile’s body first—is in the Insulator of Life. That’s where he belongs, because he has to eventually get back to the main sequence, and complete a series of events that lead to both good and bad outcomes. It too is fate.

“Did you do what I asked? Did you put the suicide inducer into his brain?”

“Not yet,” Ramses replies. “It’s right here.” He holds up a little device, which he’ll connect to the Livewire for one final transfer to Alt!Mateo’s head. It has been programmed to want one thing, which is to die. When Alt!Mateo’s body is sent back to the moment of death, it will prevent Meredarchos from letting the body fall back into the extraction mirror, and coming back to this reality. This should finally close that loop.

“Leona, come in,” Winona calls through the radio.

“Leona here, go ahead.”

“Cheyenne seems fine, but Mateo is gone. She doesn’t know where he went.”

“I’m right here.” Mateo steps into the room holding a gun. “Everyone out!”

“Matty, what are you doing?”

“Everyone out!” he repeats.

“You’re working with them?”

“Hell no. Now do what I asked, and everything will be fine.”

They do leave the room, and go right to the observation window to watch. “Killing him won’t work,” Leona explains through the intercom.

“It will how I’m doing it.” Mateo takes a bomb out of his bag, and places it on the belly of the man whose mind Meredarchos took over. He sets the timer at thirty seconds, then goes over to the end of the Livewire. He holds it by the metal, instead of the rubber. “Your husband is waiting for you, tied up in the Walton bunker in the woods. I’m sorry you have to watch me die, but my secrets must die with me.” Fax!Mateo plugs it in, and sends his own consciousness into Alt!Mateo’s body. Then the bomb goes off.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 26, 2398

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For the first time in a long time, the whole team is back together, heavy a few extra people. They all came into the city at about the same time, but they didn’t meet at the hotel suite, or the Lofts, or the condo. The government has a facility for this sort of thing already in the area. It’s a sanctuary for negotiations, where members of opposing sides can come together, and figure out how to solve their conflict nonviolently. It’s stocked with food, water, and other basic amenities, but it’s nothing fancy. There isn’t even a security system in place. That’s expected to be up to the guests, should they feel the need for it. In this case, they don’t, and they’re not even really dealing with enemies. They just need to ask a few people a few questions.

Marie flew in from Manila with a woman named Divina Tiongson. The latter called the authorities on the former. They took her in for some psychiatric care, which Marie actually felt was helpful and refreshing. Divina came to visit during her stay, and after some explanation on Marie’s part, admitted that while she doesn’t know anything about time travel, she has memories that are not her own. In a few cases, she can recall entire lifetimes that other people presumably experienced for real. She’s always believed that these visions meant that she was crazy, and never told anyone for that reason.

Bhulan agreed to follow Alyssa back from the site of Springfield, Kansas, but made no promises in regards to whatever questions the team might try to ask her. They probably can’t compel her to comply, but Fax!Mateo is a different story. The version of Mateo who came out of stasis months ago, and has been living here with his wife, knows what buttons to push. For one, Fax!Mateo will never be able to be with Leona, unless they can find some other version of her who would be interested in that, so that’s a weakness they should be able to exploit. He thought he was going to be able to get away in the Constant, but Ramses still had enough temporal energy in him to teleport to his location, and capture him. The reason they didn’t use it to get to Lebanon in the first place was because they needed to save it for their exit from the Facsimile. Fortunately, the Constant gave him just enough of a boost to transport all three of them back to Kansas City, where they exited the Salmonday Club with time to spare.

“Does she need to be here?” Fax!Mateo asks, in regards to Divina.

“You have a problem with her?” Leona asks him.

“Why are there two of you?” Fax!Mateo questions.

“Uh...I’m Arcadia, actually,” the other person wearing Leona’s face explains.

“Of course you are,” Fax!Mateo says.

“You need to turn your attitude off,” Mateo scolds.

“Forgive me for waking up in a world where my wife doesn’t love me, and I’ve missed out on months of my life. What makes you so special? When this Facsimile thing was created, why did I end up over there, and you managed to stay on the correct side?”

“You tell us,” Leona says. “You’re the one who remembers what happened in the Constant, however long ago in the past. Why were you in stasis at all?”

“I’m not saying a word,” Fax!Mateo insists. “It is far too early for that.” He can’t help but glance over at Bhulan.

“Just as I suspected,” Leona goes on. “You were there too, and your memory is intact as well. Tell us what’s going on here. Why don’t we have any time powers, or transhumanistic enhancements?”

“Who told you that my memory is intact?” Bhulan asks her.

“Oh, wouldn’t that just be super convenient,” Alyssa muses. She’s really embracing her new role on the team now.

“We have two psychics,” Leona warns her, pointing to both Arcadia and Kivi.

“I’m busy with another project with SD6,” Kivi says. “And to that, I can only stay a short while.”

“My baby is too far along,” Arcadia reveals. “The only thoughts I’ll be reading will be hers, and her mine. I can’t risk interfering with her development.”

“I didn’t know that’s how it worked,” Leona says to her.

“That’s what Dr. Hammer hypothesizes,” Arcadia adds. “There haven’t been many studies on the development of children from mothers with psychic abilities.”

“That’s fine,” Mateo says. “Bhulan is going to tell us what she knows because it’s the right thing to do, not because someone invades her mind.”

“Oh, you know me so well,” Bhulan says sarcastically.

Mateo reaches across the table towards her, but doesn’t touch her. “I don’t want you to become an enemy. I find it annoying every time that happens. The Anatol Klugman thing was heartbreaking.” He stands up, and starts pacing like this is his room, and they’re all his guests. He places both hands on Arcadia’s shoulders. “I much prefer accumulating friends.”

Bhulan pantomimes chewing gum, just because she’s uncomfortable sitting still. She’s a bit of a fidgeter. She doesn’t speak at first, but it’s clear that she’s about to, so everyone just waits patiently. “I can only tell you my story. I won’t say anything about anyone else, and I’ll be as vague as I must to protect their identities.”

“Very well,” Mateo agrees. “Its a start.”

“I was in the main sequence,” Bhulan begins, “when I found myself in the company of Horace Reaver, Serkan Demir, and Paige Turner. They were in possession of the hundemarke, and they wanted to destroy it. For those of you who don’t know, the hundemarke creates fixed moments in time. If activated, it will protect every event that occurs within its spatial bubble, no matter how much time travel tries to interfere with it. This means that it can’t be destroyed under normal circumstances. You can’t just throw it in the fire, and watch it burn. As soon as you let go, the hundemarke will deactivate, and that moment will have the potential to be changed. And with something so powerful and important, it will be changed. Someone will want to stop it from being destroyed, even if they’re born a trillion years from then.

“Therefore, if you want to destroy it, you have to destroy yourself along with it, so that it remains activated the entire time. You use the power of the object against itself, it’s the only way it’ll happen. So that’s what I did. I was a trespasser from an old timeline, and I decided that my sacrifice was worth it, and that I was worthy. I don’t know if what we believed about it was untrue, or if I was just the wrong person to try it, but my plan failed. I jumped into the fire, and landed in this reality, unburned.”

“In that parking lot,” Alyssa figures.

“No,” Leona says, shaking her head. “The parking lot didn’t exist yet.” She points at Bhulan knowingly. “You landed in The Constant. You were with Danica Matic.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that I was with The Concierge in the Constant.”

“That’s a yes,” Vearden claims. “That always means yes.”

“Forgive me,” Winona interjects, “but is this what’s most important right now? I have a prisoner in my custody who needs to be dealt with. If you can get him out of my universe, I would be fine with that, but I can’t be responsible for him forever.”

“I need to talk to everyone about that,” Kivi says. “Well...not everyone.”

That’s fair. They are not getting anywhere with these extra people around. The core group needs to peel off, and discuss things on their own. They all trust Winona by now, but she doesn’t need to be involved, so maybe she would agree to guard the others for them. Or maybe not guard them, but keep watch over them, so they don’t get lost in this five room building. “Is there somewhere we can go?” Leona asks her.

“Down the hall, to the left.” Winona stays seated, like she knows what Leona needs out of her.

Leona, Mateo, Ramses, Marie, Alyssa, Kivi, Vearden, and Arcadia leave the room, and go to the other conference. Arcadia doesn’t even hesitate, which is a big step for her. She’s learning. Leona waits a moment to speak. “We have a plan to kill Meredarchos and Erlendr. I won’t go through with it, though, if anyone here can come up with a good reason why we shouldn’t, besides the obvious fact that killing is a no-no.”

“Well, for one, Cheyenne is still alive,” Kivi finally tells them.

“Excuse me?” Leona asks.

“She’s in that victim’s body right now, along with the other two. She hides in his subconscious. I’ve been reaching out when I can, but the longer I stay in the triple mind, the easier it is for him to find me. That wouldn’t be a big deal, but if he finds me, he finds her, and I can’t let that happen. We have to get her out before we do anything else to that body, but I don’t know where she could go.”

“We still have Andile’s body on life support,” Ramses throws out there. “We have Leona Reaver’s body too, though we’re planning on getting rid of it, so I wouldn’t call that a good long-term strategy.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about trading bodies around like they’re cars. Has anyone considered the ethical ramifications of all of this?” Alyssa asks.

“Yes,” Leona answers. “History’s top ethicists debated it for centuries before it was possible, decades once it was, and continued to regulate it as necessary. No one takes this technology lightly. I appreciate and recognize your concern. Andile signed away her body to do with it what we need. I firmly believe that she would agree to donate it to Cheyenne in a heartbeat.”

“The last time we tried to use the Insulator of Life and Livewire in this way,” Ramses begins, “it didn’t go so well. We have to figure out how to get one consciousness out of a body shared by two others, and not accidentally pull in those other two.”

“That’s what Kivi is for,” Arcadia believes. “She’s already described performing head dives. Use her in tandem with the temporal objects.”

“Okay,” Leona says. “Assuming we succeed in that endeavor, I’ll ask again; is anyone opposed to executing the prisoner via intervening fate.”

Divina opens the door. “You won’t be killing him. Meredarchos is not on this world. He’s safe and sound in his own universe, reaching out psychically. That’s how he always does it. He doesn’t have the ability to travel the bulk physically.”

They all stare at her. Why did Winona let her leave?

Divina sighs, realizing that she has to start being honest. “All right, I may know a little more than I let on before.”

Microstory 1818: Grandfather Death

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About a year ago, the papers and the public began to call me Grandfather Death. Capital punishment has been abolished in every country in the developed world, and much of the developing world as well. Mine was the last holdout, and I fall into a special category. You see, my trial was going on at about the same time as the law was being debated, so once they finally settled on abolishment, they realized that I was in a bit of a gray area. Two others were executed once the new law was passed, but before it went into effect. No others were on death row with us at the time, so there was a question as to whether I should be grandfathered into the old law, or placed back in the normal prison system to carry out a life sentence. Being grandfathered into a prior law is often a good thing, like back in the day when I could drive a car at the age of 15 even after they suddenly upped the minimum age from 14 to 16. This time, it’s not so good, and the whole thing was all really complicated and over my head. Because of the way the proceedings happened, I didn’t technically have a life sentence. I was sentenced to death, so there was nothing for them to fall back on. It was a weird loophole that everyone missed, and as much as it would benefit me to go free, it was honestly a huge mistake that never should have occurred. They considered retrying me, and reconvicting me, so they could do it right this time, but I think there was a legal precedent issue with that. It was just easier if they went ahead with the plan, and assured the public that this would be the very last execution ever. There were a lot of protests that I remember seeing outside my window. That was a concession, I guess, or a consolation prize. Death row was built underground, but they moved me to luxury accommodations for the last several months of my life. I’m not using that word sarcastically either. I would have killed to live in a place like that before I went to prison, it was so nice. Even for white collar criminals, this seems like far too much creature comfort. Why does it exist at all?

I’m not going to lie here and try to tell you that I don’t belong in this room, with these straps around my body, and this needle in my arm. I did what they said I did, and I would do it again. People sometimes ask me if I truly had to beat him as hard as I did, and like, that was the whole point. I wasn’t actually trying to kill him; that was just what happened to him in the end, because he couldn’t survive his injuries. My intent was for him to feel pain like all his victims did. He got in trouble for taking people’s money, but he didn’t suffer. Meanwhile hundreds of families were still destitute, and unable to believe in the concept of justice. I had to right that wrong, and I have no regrets. I made no attempt to conceal my actions, and when the police came, I did not resist. I knew that things could get this bad for me, because that man had a lot of loyalists that were holding onto a lot of strings. But he finally suffered, and that’s what matters, even if it means I go down too. Because, you see, even though he had people honorbound to him because of how much money he made them, I’m the one with fans. I’m the one with a following. I’m not just talking about the victims and their families either, but people who agree with my solution, and only wish they could have done it themselves. That’s what I gave them; peace of mind that he can’t hurt anyone anymore, and that they aren’t responsible for stopping him. I’m sacrificing myself so that they can get on with their lives. Yes, I lie on this table fully at peace—smiling, even—because today...I die a martyr.

Microstory 1805: Field Work

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Like any young girl with parents who taught her to be independent and powerful, I dreamed of joining law enforcement. No, I know, that’s not a universal dream, but it sure felt like it back then. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. As I grew up, my passion for the work only grew stronger. I wanted to be out there in the field, making the tough calls, and actually seeing the people I was helping. While I was still in college, my personality began to change. I still wanted to help others, but I no longer seemed interested in field work. Fortunately, I knew that there were plenty of jobs that didn’t require me to do anything like that. I won’t get into specifics about the path I took, but I ended up becoming a Threat Investigator for the government. It was my job to process calls from civilians who were reporting crimes and of course, threats. I occasionally had to go out and speak to people in person, but that only ever happened when the potential threat was nearby. Most of the time, I asked questions, and determined next steps, which generally involved contacting local authorities, or my branch’s local offices. It could be rewarding, but it was also stressful. It would be terrible if I downplayed a threat that turned out to be a really big deal, and it was almost as bad if I sounded the alarm about a threat that ended up being nothing; maybe even a hoax. Citizens from all over the country counted on me to accurately evaluate each situation, and decide the best course of action from the information I was given. I made mistakes, and I lived with regrets, but nothing was bad enough to warrant a disciplinary response...until it was. I made the wrong call, and people got hurt. No one died, but they very well could have. I should have taken it more seriously, even though the caller sounded unconvinced himself, and a background check made it look like he didn’t have much credibility. I wasn’t fired, but I couldn’t let anything like it happen again. Then I received my last call.

It was from a young man who lived in my city, or rather on the outskirts of it at the time. He was a member of a militia who was supposedly planning an attack on the capitol. The more I spoke with him, the more I realized that this guy actually joined the militia with the intention of taking them down from the inside. Apparently, his family was more into the anti-government stuff, and he had been forced to pretend to be like them so he could blend in, and stop his life from being so hard. Now he was in way over his head, and he needed my help to get him out of it. I went out into the field, and investigated the threat myself. Suddenly, I found myself in over my head. It wasn’t against protocol for me to go out there for a visit, but things snowballed so quickly, and I was captured and detained by the aggressors. Well, this proved that the threat was real, but there was nothing that I could do about it, at least not on my own. Fortunately, the self-appointed mole in the organization wasn’t found out himself, so I was able to sneak him a message, which he bravely took back to my superiors. They sent a strike team to raid the place, and I would like to tell you that they successfully prevented the attack, but I honestly don’t know one way or the other. It turned into a bloody mess just as the year was coming to a close. The bad guys realized immediately which among them ratted them out, and we were both executed in an attempt to show the agents that they meant business. Again, I can’t tell you what happened after that, but I can only hope that some good came out of our sacrifice, and they weren’t able to commit any further acts of violence.

Microstory 1643: Fighting Fire With Accelerant

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Like a lot of human cultures that manage to evolve, and survive past their early Great Filters, the people on one version of Earth figured out how to defeat death. They did it both biologically, and technologically, which is standard. The outcome wasn’t as favorable as it is for others. While inventing immortality is in no way inevitable, it’s pretty hard to miss unless you’re deliberately trying to avoid it. If you do, there is every chance that you will run up against your next Great Filter, and die out as a species, so be careful. Still, some people don’t think that death is something that should be overcome, and this side of the argument wins about as often as it loses. This is about an Earth where that didn’t happen initially, but it became that way after they already started to walk up the path of immortality, and actually go pretty far along it. Right around the time that scientists and engineers were coming up with the right solutions, the world was suffering sociopolitically. Leaders were being elected in multiple countries who did not have the best interests of the public at heart. Fascists, is what they were, but unlike their predecessors, they were a lot less obvious about it, and a lot more insidious. They started manipulating laws slowly and quietly, so as not to sound any alarms. While they were doing that, they instigated social unrest, which led voters to believe that the secret fascists were their only hope. Eventually, they just did away with voting altogether, first by postponing it due to extenuating circumstances, and then simply refusing to let go of their power. Meanwhile, longevity researchers were allowed to keep working, but when their work was sufficiently complete, there were significant downsides to releasing it.

Once the rich took notice of the new technology, they took control. The wealth disparity increased drastically, raising the richest of people to almost godlike status, and dropping everyone else to ants. It was bad before, where tyrants could pass their unearned power on to the next generation of tyrants, but now the threat was insurmountable, for the original tyrants could conceivably be able to maintain their power literally forever. A great war began, and nearly resulted in the destruction of the human race. They survived, but everything changed. Instead of finally making longevity treatments and upgrades free for public use, the victors simply made all such enhancements illegal. The standard lifespan was eighty years, and it was against the law to live past it, even if one managed to be healthy enough to surpass it. All seventy-nine-year-olds were executed, and many people were executed before that if the new government felt threatened by them in some other way. They weren’t about to let a fascist plutocracy rule the lands again, and their anger clouded them to the fact that the only way to enforce their will was to become the fascists. Anyone who attempted to show them this reality was—you guessed it—executed. Of course, once a given technology exists, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. Another resistance rose up in response to the consequences of the first one. They lost, and were wiped out, but this only served to galvanize a third resistance to try again. They won this time, and were able to make immortality free for all. Unfortunately, when they looked around, they realized that almost everyone was dead, and it didn’t really matter anymore. Most of the few immortals left standing would later find ways to let themselves die, and leave the uninhabitable world behind.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, August 4, 2150

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The clocks were moving about four or five times faster than they should have been. Leona started tapping on her cuff to see if there was any way to fix that. “That pause button you pressed,” she said after apparently discovering no remedy. “It has a wider range than we needed. We’re all frozen now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jeremy pointed out. “Angela is frozen from our perspective. Time is moving even slower for her?”

“Because I pointed the remote directly at her I guess?” Mateo said.

“Well, we have about six hours before our jump to...” Aeolia began.

“To 2153, Leona filled in. If we don’t break free of this by then, we’ll miss whoever it is we’re meant to transition. We may have already missed our chance.”

“I can’t press this button again,” Mateo said. “Angela is hurt. We need time to help her. More time than we have. We gotta find a way to unpause only us.”

“I can try a few things,” Danica revealed. “Miss Sarai, could you please assist me? The rest of you just keep an eye on her.”

Once Danica and Aeolia were gone, Leona knelt down, and pulled the mask off of the intruder. “I know this man. He’s younger, but it’s definitely him.”

Bran unmasked the other intruder. “This one isn’t younger. He’s about the same age that he was when we last saw him.”

Mateo peeked over at the older version. He never met the guy himself, but Leona and Bran had a hostile encounter with him in 2161. They were trying to retrieve the Escher knob, but he was hoarding it, along with several other temporal objects, under the false belief that they would protect him from the Deathspring.

“The scar on his hand,” Bran noted, “it’s where I shot the lockbox out of his grasp. Why does the younger version have the same scar? That makes no sense. It doesn’t happen for another fifteen years.”

Leona stood up, and checked the older version. Then she went back to the younger one, and cross-checked them a few more times. “It’s not exactly the same. It’s very similar, but...oh my God, he shot himself.”

“Excuse me?” Jeremy questioned.

“He came back in time, found his younger self, and shot him so they would match,” Leona posited, knowing how weird that theory was.

“That’s insane.”

“Uhh...yeah,” Leona agreed. “We don’t know who he is, or what his deal is, but it was clear from the start that he is not well.”

The older version started waking up, so Bran shot him with his stunner. “What are we going to do with him?”

“Can we take him to that time traveler prison?” Jeremy suggested. “Beaver Heaven?”

“Beaver Haven,” Leona corrected. “I’m not sure they would take him. As far as we know, he never threatened to expose us all to the world. The Warden doesn’t care about time criminals unless they risk the secret of the underworld.”

“They made an exception for Reaver and Ulinthra in an alternate timeline,” Mateo reminded her.

“Yes,” she concurred. “But they didn’t place them at the facility. They each got their own special prism, far removed from everyone else.”

“They had to,” Mateo realized. “Because it was against their code. And technically, none of the staff ever worked there. They outsourced the entire thing to distance themselves from it.”

“What does this all mean?” Jeremy asked.

“If we want to keep these two locked up,” Leona decided, “we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

“How do you lock up someone that no one can remember?” Jeremy asked. “Who’s gonna feed them, maintain their cell, or cells?”

“We’ll do it,” Bran decided. “We’ll stay with them until...well, they’ll both die eventually, right? Aeolia and I don’t seem to age, so what’s a few decades?”

“Kallias...” Mateo urged vaguely.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bran urged, less vaguely. “We’ll see each other again at some point. Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang. You may not even remember us.”

When he first started jumping forwards in time, Mateo realized he would have to say goodbye to everyone he loved. This truth has held despite the fact that half his friends are time travelers, and the other half are immortal. Everyone leaves eventually. Leona is the only one who has stuck by him. “If he’s in prison,” she began, “he won’t grow up to attack us in 2161. Even if we let him go, we wouldn’t have even been able to see him. This is a new reality, it has to be. We’ve changed things. What is the world going to be like in the future?”

“That’s not the biggest question,” Mateo said. “The real question is, how do we deal with our alternate versions when we run into them? If they’re not predestined to one day turn into us, what will we do?”

Like an ominous answer from a mysterious God, the lights all shut off at once, following that familiar thump from the main power switch. The darkness lasted about thirty seconds, at which point Mateo discovered Bran to be gone, along with the two versions of the man. Danica walked in from the back alone, and showed no signs that she should have been anything but. No one else seemed to have the sense that they were missing two members of their group. When Mateo checked the stash of Cassidy cuffs, he found all five extras. Not even Danica was still wearing hers, for she only needed it so she could interact with the retgone coiners. Why was he still able to maintain his memory of their friends? What had changed in him that didn’t change for Leona, and for that matter, why not Nerakali?

“Thanks, everyone,” Danica started, “for helping me fix the power.” They did what? What did these people think just happened?

Angela sat up on the couch. “What happened? Why do I feel both energized and tired at the same time?”

“The answer is...don’t think about it,” Mateo said to her. They all seemed cool with this nonexplanation.

Their cuffs beeped. “Well, this was a nice break,” Jeremy said. “We have to get back to it, though. It’s not far from here.” A break?

“Beaver Haven Penitentiary,” Leona noted. “Oh, it’s 2150.”

“What’s the significance of this year?” Mateo questioned.

Danica took this one. “The prison is designed to hold those they deem guilty for the duration of their entire lives, and these people are taken from all over time and space, both the past, and the future. So it doesn’t need to exist throughout all of time. It just needs to be big enough to contain all those people until they die out. Based on minimal turnover, a hundred and sixty-three years is that figure. It will soon be shut down, if it wasn’t already earlier this year.”

“We’re already in the main sequence,” Angela pointed out, “so let’s just go find out what’s happening. I’m not a huge fan of prisons, so I wouldn’t mind seeing one close forever.”

The four of them left Danica and the dimensional destroyer behind, so the former could help the latter get back to wherever it was she belonged. Mateo was the only one acutely aware that they never needed her to do anything for them. The others only had a vague recollection that they recruited her to stop some disaster in The Constant, which apparently never took place. They didn’t know why, and they didn’t wonder about it either. While they were on their way to the prison, Mateo felt like there weren’t enough people in their group, and not just because they suddenly lost two of them. Four was too low a number, but they only ever had more than that for organic reasons. Never before had they attempted to recruit anyone else into the mission, so this was liable to be their current maximum, at least for a while. Again, the three others didn’t seem bothered by this.

They arrived at the prison to find it eerily empty. All the cells were just left open, and it was mostly silent, except for some noises coming from the offices above. They headed for them, and walked into the Warden’s lobby area. “Oh, God,” she said. “What are you people doing here?”

Jeremy checked the time. “Someone is about to be transitioned to an alternate reality from here. Know anyone whose life needs saving?”

She plopped herself on her chair, amongst all the half-packed boxes, and small piles of trash. “There’s one. Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Ambrosios?”

“Yeah.” Mateo looked at his wrist. “He’s dead.”

“Not quite yet. He will be come midnight.”

“You’re executing him?” Leona questioned.

“I can’t keep doing this,” the Warden explained. “I can’t keep the prison open forever. I certainly can’t keep it open for only one immortal.”

“So you’re just gonna kill him?” Leona pressed. “For convenience?”

“He doesn’t wanna be trapped forever. This is best for everyone, including him.” The Warden leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the desk. “Unless you have some way around it? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Who are we talking about?” Jeremy asked.

“A true immortal,” Leona answered. “At least, he should be. They’ve come up with some way of making his power wear off. We never found out how.”

“There’s only one way,” the Warden said. “It has nothing to do with making his immortality wear off.”

“That’s how it was done in the reality where I come from,” Mateo explained.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I saw his body,” Mateo replied.

The Warden nodded. “Did you see it just once, or did you check in on it after a few years?”

“Wull...I guess it was just once,” Mateo revealed.

“Then he probably wasn’t really dead. There are ways to suppress some aspects of true immortality, but not all of them, and they will eventually come back and survive. Unless...”

“Unless what?” Leona was suspicious.

“Lucius Carlisle has agreed to help us in this matter,” the Warden finally said.

Leona scoffed and shook her head. “You’re gonna make him do that.”

“Like I said, he agreed.”

Leona was in the mood to fustigate. “Lucius Carlise is a good person who does everything he can to do that right thing. And people like you keep exploiting him, and ruining his progress!”

“He agreed.”

“Stop goddamn saying that!”

“It’s okay, Leona,” Lucius said from the doorway. “I’m okay.”

“No!” Leona continued to fight. “We’re not doing this! We’ll take Ambrosios to The Parallel, where they will help him in their own ways. They can probably treat his mental issues.”

“We can’t keep relying on the natives to fix everything for us,” Angela reluctantly reminded her. “They’ve made too many exceptions to their noninterference policy already.”

“I don’t care!” Leona went on, her voice still raised.

Mateo didn’t want to listen to this anymore. He turned around, and took Lucius by the hand. “Come on, we need to talk.”

No one followed them, either because they didn’t guess what Mateo was planning to do, or didn’t notice. He led Lucius down the steps, and into one of the empty cells. Once they were there, he retrieved one of the extra Cassidy cuffs, and handed it to Lucius. “You’re going to teach me how to use your power.”

Lucius regarded the cuff, but didn’t reach for it. “You don’t have to do that. I really am fine.”

“You say that now, but every time you kill someone, a little bit of your soul flakes off. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

“And that won’t happen to you?”

“I’m an alternate version of Mateo Matic. No, my soul doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“It does in my case. I know what my options are. At some point, the real Mateo and I are gonna have to make a decision about how to proceed, and I fully intend to...just die.”

“You say that now,” Lucius echoed.

“People always make excuses for me, so when I kill, it’s an aberration. When you kill...” Mateo placed the cuff on Lucius’ wrist, and was met with no protest. “...it’s Tuesday, and a little racist. So you have to avoid it every chance you get. Besides,” he said with a smile. “I can erase people’s memories if I want.”

“Thank you,” Lucius said. “I owe you a favor.”

“This will be the last we see each other.”

“How do you know?”

“I just feel it. You have your destiny, and I have mine. They’re in opposite directions. Now. How do I molecularly teleportize someone?”

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