Extremus: Year 88

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For her first year as Captain, Tinaya lived with a lot of anxiety. It was eating her up from the inside. She was keeping so many secrets, and she just wanted to forget everything. She used to be grateful that at least she wasn’t dealing with a bunch of other tangible problems. Omega and the Verdemusians were protecting them from the war, leaving the Extremus free to continue on its journey. The crew and passengers were getting along, and there weren’t any major crises to solve. Her therapist would say that if she were working through those kinds of captainly issues, she probably wouldn’t have much space in her brain for anxiety, and that might be true. Whatever the case, all of that disappeared the day that her husband, Arqut did. Tinaya didn’t see it herself, but one person happened to be in the corridor with him at the time. He didn’t just blink away, which is the most common form of temporal or spatial travel. No, if he had done that, then the witness probably would have just assumed that he had gone away on purpose.

The way the passerby described it, Arqut was looking rather sweaty. Then he started spinning around like there was a bug on his back, and he was trying to get ahead of it. The witness apparently tried to reach out to help, but missed his opportunity when the spinning seemed to start to happen on its own. He vanished in a haze of dark particles, which gradually faded within seconds. Current temporal engineer Sabine Lebeau had never heard of anything like that before, and it wasn’t in any database that she could find. The uncertainty scared Tinaya more than anything. This was no accident. Someone wanted Arqut, and for the last three months, had yet to return him to her. Unfortunately, her means of investigating were severely limited.

Most people on the ship could not know that he was missing. He disappeared once before, but that was in pursuit of getting Tinaya back. If she admitted that this time was not a planned departure, it would raise too many questions. Only a few people were allowed to know what was going on, and were sworn to secrecy. The witness agreed to his silence in exchange for a minimum on his contribution score. Basically, no matter what he did now, his score would never go below a certain threshold. It was a small price to pay, as long as he didn’t try to use this advantage to become a serial killer, or something. But even if he did, no deal with the captain would protect him from retribution. After that matter was settled, she started to work through the investigation, mostly on her own, though she couldn’t let it interfere with her regular duties either. That would raise questions too. But she wasn’t completely hopeless. She couldn’t make a big fuss about it publicly, or risk other truths coming to light, but there were still ways to conduct this investigation both vigorously and quietly at the same time. She made a list of suspects, and started running down every lead. She started by accusing the Bridgers of having something to do with it, but they denied it, and even let her return to the Bridger section to see for herself. He wasn’t there, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t show up in the future, or hell, the past.

Today is not a good day, though. All of her leads have dried up. She has no one left to talk to, no test left to try. He could be lost forever. It’s worse than it was when she was the one trapped on the outpost planet. She knew where she was, and she knew where Arqut was. The uncertainty; what could she do to remedy that? She’s supposed to be discussing her problems with her therapist at the moment, but instead, she’s retching into the toilet in her stateroom.

“How are you doing, Tinaya?” Most people would not be able to just start talking to her like that without waiting for Tinaya to answer first, but some people have special communications privileges, such as medical staff.

Tinaya spits into the bowl. “I’m fine.”

“Come back, I need to talk,” Dr. Lebeau requests. That’s right, another Lebeau. Tinaya would normally use the Executive Psychologist for her personal needs, but Sabine introduced her to her sister in order to enact a sort of loophole. While any therapist would respect patient confidentiality, the EP is obligated to report meeting times to the ship’s council, so they can make sure their captain isn’t isn’t showing signs of not being able to handle this job. A private therapist, on the other hand, is under no such obligation. Tinaya can talk to her all she wants, and do so at their joint convenience. Plus, Virve Lebeau already knows many secrets that not even the EP does.

“I’m a little busy.” She spits again.

“I can tell. I can help.”

“Fine, one second.” Tinaya flushes the toilet, and washes her face. Then she teleports back to Dr. Lebeau’s office. “What is it?”

Dr. Lebeau is holding her watch between her thumb and index finger.

“It’s your watch. Okay, are you scolding me for wasting your time? I’m sorry, next time I’ll use your bathroom, and talk to you about my feelings in between forcing last night’s dinner out of my stomach.”

“No, it’s not about that, Captain.” Dr. Lebeau walks forward, and drapes the watch over her opposite backhand, as if presenting it as a prize for a gameshow. “See these little dots under here?”

Tinaya is confused. “Uh, yeah, those are for blood tests. They spring microneedles to take samples on the fly. Why are you asking me about them?”

“These are necessary when the user doesn’t have any sort of medical implant that could test twenty-four-seven,” Dr. Lebeau goes on. “Obviously, though, you can’t program the watch to poke you whenever it wants. You have to tell it to do it. You have to decide when you’re ready for an update.”

“Are you saying that I have a virus, and I should test myself for it?” She’s still so confused. “Okay, I’ll find out. I think it’s just acid reflux, though. Stress-induced, I’m sure; we can talk about that, if you want.”

“Not a virus. I think you’re pregnant.”

Tinaya chuckles. Then she does it again, but louder. She manages to stop at that, though. “What? I can’t be pregnant, I’m in my sixties!”

“Did you ever go through menopause?” Dr. Lebeau questions.

“I think so.” This isn’t a dumb answer. Thanks to advances in medical science over the centuries, menopause still happens for those who were ever biologically capable of birthing young, but it’s far less pronounced than it was for ancient humans. The same is true for pregnancy and the menstrual cycle as a whole. These conditions are not nearly as uncomfortable as they were back in the day. It’s not that uncommon for people who lived particularly physically rough lives to not even notice that menopause has come and gone for them. If they’ve ever been on advanced chemical or implantable birth control too, it’s really easy to lose track of the cycle due to persistent interference in the body’s natural scheduling.

Dr. Lebeau raises her eyebrows, and looks down at Tinaya’s own watch.

“Y...you want me to test right now? Fine.” She swipes the screen to the appropriate menu, and releases the microneedles. Once it’s done, she self-assuredly bobbles her head a little bit while they wait for the results. After the beep, she takes one look at it, and shows it to the doctor. “See? Look. Pregnant. Pregnant? Fuck.”

“Congratulations,” Dr. Lebeau says to her, rather unconvincingly, one might add.

“I can’t be pregnant.”

“You can. You receive some of the best medical care in the galaxy. Many don’t experience the change until their seventies. You don’t read that in the reports.”

“Virve, I can’t be pregnant. The Captain. Can’t. Be pregnant!”

“There’s no law that says a sitting captain can’t be pregnant. It’s just never happened before,” Dr. Lebeau reminds her.

“For good reason. It splits attention. I must be fully committed to the operations of this vessel, and the safety of its crew and passengers. That is literally my only job.”

“If that’s how you feel about it—”

“I can’t have an abortion either. It’s not illegal, of course, but it’s...unbecoming.”

“Sounds like you’re in a tough spot. I can help you through it, but you have to be willing to explore all options. And you have to be patient, with me, and yourself.”

“Those are my only two options. I mean, what the hell else am I gonna do?” She starts to pace the room. “And yeah, I know, I could put it up for adoption, but that would be scandalous too. That kid will grow up knowing that its mother was just too busy for it, not that she was genuinely incapable of caring for a child. Adoption doesn’t hardly ever happen here, because nobody dies before they’re old! And they don’t have kids after they become old, because that’s nuts! I mean, if Arqut were here, maybe we could make it work together. He could take care of the baby, and even when I’m there, I would be able to teleport at a moment’s notice when duty calls, and I could always argue that that’s an option when anyone tries to criticize me for going through with the pregnancy. But is that enough anyway? Because it’s not just about the perception that my priorities are split. It’s about them actually being split. How can I look out for everyone on the ship, when there are only two people I truly care about? Then again, I am the only Captain who has ever been married at all, so that’s always been a lingering criticism, even though I’ve never heard anyone say that to me, I’m sure that plenty of people feel that way. And now he’s missing, and I can’t even tell anyone about it. I have to claim that he’s on a new mission. But then once people find out that I’m captaining for two, they’re gonna wonder why the father of my child hasn’t come back for his family. Then some are gonna realize the possibility that he’s not the father at all, and there will be a cheating scandal that isn’t even true, but do you think people even care about the truth anymore? That’s all we’ve been talking about; perception, and there’s nothing I can do about that. And either way, this whole thing is gonna get people wondering where Arqut has been this whole time, and they’ll start asking questions, and they’ll all find out that he’s missing, and that we’re been course correcting for decades, and that Verdemus wasn’t destroyed, and why aren’t you trying to call me down!”

“I think you need this outburst,” Dr. Lebeau explains. “It sounds cathartic.”

“Well...” She starts, prepared to argue. “I think you’re right, I appreciate it.”

“Captain?” Tinaya’s First Lieutenant asks through her watch.

“What is it, Faiyaz?”

“It’s Arqut. He’s back.”

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Extremus: Year 73

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Tinaya Leithe blinks slowly. Something hard and sharp is on top of her, but she can’t see what it is. She’s in a glass chamber of some kind. It’s taking a moment for her mind to stop being so jumbled. She can’t remember what happened, but she knows that she was severely injured, and on the brink of death. Her vision focuses, and she’s able to get a better view of her surroundings. She’s inside in what appears to be an infirmary, but she can’t see much, and she doesn’t recognize it. She doesn’t get the sense that anyone is around, and if they’re nearby, she doesn’t want to alert them, because she couldn’t know if she can trust whoever has placed her in this. She struggles to sit up, and looks down upon herself in horror. First of all, she has somehow phase-shifted through the closed medical bed cover. Or maybe that isn’t the right word for it, because the glass is still all around her, embedded in her skin. Or no, it’s more like her skin is made out of a layer of glass now. How is this possible?

She lifts her hands out of the chamber, and moves them around before her eyes. They’re stiff, but still mobile. So it’s a flexible glass at least, but not pleasant either way. She reaches over to the side of the medical chamber, and feels around for some kind of switch. The cover slides away from her chest towards her legs and feet. They too are made of glass, though they’ve not yet passed through the cover. Maybe she was wrong about it. Maybe her glass skin is unrelated to the transparent cover. It sure feels like a different material, at least when she manages to concentrate, and touch it with her fingers. If she’s not careful, they will pass right through it, as her torso did before. She is now a glass-based entity that can phase through solid objects. Because that makes sense.

Tinaya spins to the side on her smooth glass ass, and plants her feet on the floor. It’s slick, and hard to balance on. No, the floor is probably fine. Her soles are made of glass. Is this her life now, doomed to skate around the world like Sasha Cohen? She feels like a newborn foal, teetering and tottering, arms out wide, ready to try to grab onto something if she succumbs to the fierce gravity of this planet. If she really is made out of glass, then it could kill her, but if that’s true, nothing she does for the foreseeable future will save her life. It may just stave off the inevitable. She’ll eventually drop a handheld device into her crotch, or accidentally bump her head on a cabinet. It might be better to shatter to a million pieces now than try, suffer, and ultimately fail anyway. She does fall, but does not shatter. It doesn’t even really hurt. She must look like an idiot, though, sprawled out on her stomach. How could Arqut still love her now? Her memories are beginning to come back; what brought her to this moment. An explosion of the extraction mirror threw her across a field, and nearly killed her. Someone has apparently managed to revive her since then, but she doesn’t know how long ago that was, or who this person might be. Lataran hopefully made it back to the Extremus.

The door opens while she’s still face down on the floor. Spirit runs in, and starts to help her up. “Oh my God, are you okay? The medchamber alarm should have alerted us to your awakening.”

“What happened to me?” She struggles into an armchair.

“We don’t know yet.”

“I’m made of glass!” Tinaya shouts.

“I know. It’s from the time mirror. That’s also why you’re not dead.”

“Yeah, that explains it,” Tinaya spit sarcastically.

“Well, it’s made of magic, so it doesn’t really explain it, but if it were a regular explosion with a regular mirror, the regular glass would have given you regular cuts, and made you regular dead.”

“Right.” Tinaya focuses on lowering her heart rate with slow, deliberate breaths. She accepts the cup of water that Spirit gives her. “Report. How are you alive?”

“It’s tough to kill a Bridger,” she begins to explain. “I was given certain temporal properties to protect me. The explosion that killed me was massive, but even that wasn’t enough to keep my molecular structure apart forever. They reconverged at an exponential rate, and eventually made me whole again. Your body experienced something similar. It even took about the same amount of time for it to reacclimate to its own new structure. It’s 2342 now.”

“We’re stuck on Verdemus, I assume. The mirror was the only way back to the ship.” She was still only thinking of Arqut.

“Affirmative.”

Tinaya takes a look around. “You’ve rebuilt the infrastructure quite nicely.”

“We had help.”

That’s a weird thing to say. “From who?”

“A ship arrived. The Iman Vellani. You remember it from your studies?”

“I remember her from my studies.”

Spirit nods. “Her namesake was built by an android who was involved in the world of time travelers named Mirage.”

“Oh yeah, I remember her from history class. I’m better with people.”

“Yes, Oaksent’s evil army sent her and her crew to kill us. They destroyed the planet, so they could record the whole thing. Then we sent our consciousness back in time to stop ourselves from doing it, but kept the recording. They took it off to sell the lie that we were all dead. Hopefully the bad guys won’t be coming back here ever again.”

“That’s quite the story. I’ll require the full mission brief.”

“Of course, when you’re up to it.”

“Will I ever be up to anything again? I’ll repeat in case you forgot, I’m made out of glass! How does one get over something like that?”

“I did,” Spirit answers.

“What are you talking about?”

Spirit lifts her shirt all the way up to reveal her bare stomach and chest. “Go ahead and touch it.” The skin is reflective from its own layer of magical glasses. Her entire left breast is hardened and unmoving, while the other is only partially restricted. The rest of her body appears to be okay. “While I was still reconstituting, I fell upon you, and some of the shards stuck in me as well. As you can see, it’s not as severe, which is why I woke up faster. I’m also part phoenix, so that helped.”

“I’m sorry, Spirit.”

She winces, and pulls her shirt back down. “How could this be your fault? The mirror exploded, and struck you. What could you have done, steered away from me while your were flying through the air uncontrollably? You’re just as much of a victim as I am; more even. Besides, Belahkay kind of likes it.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“He was one of the crewmembers who showed up, but he decided to stay. We’ve been together for about two non-realtime years.”

“Must. Be. Nice.” It’s made her think of Arqut, who is now hundreds of light years away from her, and counting. But that was rude. “I’m sorry, I’m just still trying to get used to all this.”

“It’s fine. You’ll like him, he’s cool. We’re a small group, we have to stick together.”

“The kids. The kids! I saw them just before I passed out. They didn’t make it through the mirror? But they were gone by the time I started running up there?”

“They made it through,” Spirit replies, trying to calm her down with hand gestures. “They’ve led their own lives for several years, and returned to us with homestones. They’re older in mind than they appear, so speak to them as if they’re young adults...because they are.”

“How did they get here in the first place? Why would a homestone bring them to the planet?”

“They were born on Verdemus. The young man’s mother is Hock Watcher for Ilias Tamm. The girl’s parents are dead. Died in the explosion.”

“Is that everyone?”

“Yeah. Like I said, small group.”

“Hm. Only need 141 more people, and we could populate this world with a self-sustaining faction of humans,” Tinaya muses. “The Glassmen.”

“Right.” Spirit laughs.

“I need a light,” Tinaya determines.

“Hey, Thistle, turn the lights up to 100%.”

“No, not that kind of light. Where are my clothes? We can communicate with Extremus through my own little time mirror, but I have to open the spectral lock.”

Spirit stands up, and walks over to a cabinet. She grabs the tactical clothes that Tinaya was wearing when she first came here, and sets them on the little table next to the visitor chairs. She then takes a handheld device from her back pocket, and hands it over. “This is all yours. You can apply your profile to it.”

Tinaya unravels her jacket to find the hidden pocket, and spreads it out on the table. Then she fiddles with the device’s flashlight settings, searching for a specific shade of green. She can’t remember exactly which it was, but she has a general idea, so she only has to try a few hex codes before the right one illuminates the zipper. She opens it, but the mirror is gone. She’s able to stick her hand all the way through, and back out to realspace on the other side. “Shit. The pocket dimension I had it in must have collapsed in the explosion, or something.”

“I dunno,” Spirit says. “The spectral lock is still there, which means it’s still detecting the pocket dimension. It’s just...been moved.”

“Moved where?”

Spirit thinks about it for a moment, darting her eyes in saccades. “Into you? Maybe that’s how you survived the explosion.”

Tinaya sighs, and leans back in her chair to rest again. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Let me put you back in the medchamber. Just because you woke up, doesn’t mean you’ve finished recovering.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

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Extremus: Year 72

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There are really only two outcomes when a dead man’s switch for explosives is in play. Either the explosives go off, or they don’t. If the person holding the trigger ultimately wants the bomb to explode, then fine. How Ilias handled the situation was perfectly reasonable. He was waiting for someone to trigger it, and Tinaya did, so mission accomplished. If he didn’t want it to go off, though, then he should have freaking said something! It doesn’t work as a deterrent unless people are aware that it exists. The tactical team that Tinaya and Spirit went with never said anything about it. Lataran never said anything about it. Apparently no one knew that it was there. It’s impossible to say for sure, however. Everyone in that mess hall may have been privy to the severity of the situation, but they can’t attest to that, because they’re all dead now. Spirit is dead, the tactical team is dead. Nearly everyone who was on the planet of Verdemus at the time is gone now; notable exceptions being Ilias himself, and Tinaya. He’s locked up somewhere probably, and her? She’s locked up too, but she’s not in hock. She’s under house arrest. They have to keep up appearances.

Most people on Extremus aren’t allowed to know that the crew has maintained access via mirror portal to the habitable planet that they discovered. Ilias committed an unambiguous crime, and he’s not in the public eye, so they can punish him however they please. Tinaya, on the other hand, can’t just disappear from the ship without arousing suspicion. Arqut won the election for superintendent, though there were only two choices. The passengers and crew could have either voted for or against. If they had decided upon the latter, they would have had to wait until someone else asked for the job, and then run a revote. No one else seemed to want to do it at the moment, which is understandable, given the position’s unfortunate past. It was the lowest voter turnout in ship history, but it wasn’t even close. Just about everyone who bothered to vote voted yes. Superintendent Grieves is now working to facilitate a smooth transition from the old government to the new.

Tinaya has been ordered to remain in her stateroom unless requested for a public appearance with her husband. She feels so shitty about what went down, even though she knows that it was Ilias’ fault for not explaining the stakes to them. She doesn’t really want to leave her stateroom, and in fact probably never will. It reminds her of how she felt when she was totally lost, with no hope for a better future, and no idea for a purpose in life. But this is worse, because she isn’t just failing to succeed. She actually caused harm. She got people killed. Again, she recognizes that Ilias should have warned them that that would happen if they attempted to rescue the hostages, but she feels no less responsible for those deaths. She doesn’t even know who they are. The list can’t be made public. People who go on such secretive missions are generally chosen for their lack of family and friends. It’s not like on a planet, where you can join the military, and tell the people you care about that you can’t tell them what you’re really doing. On Extremus, there’s nowhere to go, so if you walk out the door, and never come back, people are going to wonder how that could possibly be. At most, you should be several hundred meters away at all times.

Lataran has distanced herself from Tinaya for obvious reasons, and Tinaya does not blame her for that. She has to protect her reputation. It is bad enough that Verdemus is being kept secret from the people. If anyone finds out what actually happened there, she could go down in history as one of the bad captains. They could see her as worse than Tamm, which would be worse than anything. The question is, why is Lataran standing in Tinaya’s doorway right now. “We need your help.”

“My help with what?” Tinaya asks her solemnly.

“You have to go back to Verdemus,” Lataran replies.

“I’m not doing that.”

“You’re the only one who can.”

“It didn’t exactly turn out great the last time you said that to me.”

“This time, it’s no less true,” Lataran begins to explain. “We would ask Ilias, but we try not to talk to him if we don’t have to. We don’t believe he’s part of some movement, or insurgency. He was a crazy asshole with a bomb. All he should be doing right now is stewing in hock, and regretting every single one of his life choices. Besides, he may not have the information we need anyway. We don’t know what he saw, or what he noticed, from his vantage point. We’re pretty sure you’ll know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The explosives were...comprehensive. One of the gatewatchers was blown off of his post, and the other suffered minor burns. Anyone anywhere near the epicenter was vaporized. We know who was there, but we don’t know specifically where anyone was standing in space when it happened.”

“If you needed to know this, why didn’t you ask me before? It’s been months.”

“We didn’t need to know before. Like I said, we have a manifest. We didn’t need the details until today, because something has changed.”

“What? What has changed?”

“I would rather just show you. Don’t you want to get out of here, if only for a moment?”

Tinaya crosses her arms self-protectively, but not too tensely. “I’m fine.”

“Miss Leithe...this is not a request.”

Tinaya stands up. “That’s all you had to say.”

They cross back over through the mirror portal together. The leader of a three-person tack team tries to hand Tinaya a pair of sunglasses again, but she refuses. It feels like she doesn’t deserve it. Lataran sighs. “I told you I need to show you something, which means you need to be able to see. Put them on please.”

“Okay.” Tinaya accepts the glasses, and begins to adjust to the harsh natural light. They walk down the path, and towards where the offworld base used to be standing, leaving one tack team member to guard the mirror. The base has been flattened, with only a few of the strongest parts of the infrastructure still standing as ruins. They lead her through the now fully open gate, and towards where she was when she was trying to negotiate with the hostage-taker. Lataran was right. This is something that needs to be seen. Ashes have begun to cling together over a spot on the ground, like ferromagnetic dust to a telescoping groundsweeper. They have coalesced themselves into the vague shape of a human being. It doesn’t look like anyone in particular right now, but more ash is jumping up into place by the second. Eventually, the entity could be made whole once more.

“Do you know who was standing here?” Lataran questions. “I know it’s hard to get your bearings—”

“It’s Spirit.”

“Are you sure?”

Tinaya steps around, and gestures towards the ash being. See, she’s holding some sort of shovel thing. It’s what she used to sever the shockwire that Ilias had hooked up to the woman he used to speak through, so he wouldn’t place himself in the line of fire. That...is Spirit Bridger, and she...is resurrecting herself.”

“That was our guess as to what was going on,” Lataran agrees. “It would make some level of sense that she would be the one to possess such power. Though—and I don’t know about you—but I’ve never heard of this sort of thing before.”

Tinaya shakes her head. “Neither have I. Some kind of phoenix power, that’s crazy. Have you asked Omega about it? He would know.”

“He’s on the frontlines of the Three Bears War right now.”

“Of course he is, because as always, I know what that is,” Tinaya says sarcastically. “All right. I’ll be going now.”

“That’s it?” Lataran asks. “You’re just gonna go back to your stateroom?”

“Well, what the hell else should I do?” Tinaya snaps back. “I’m still a danger to society, aren’t I? Or is this my new prison? Should I stay instead? Yeah, that makes sense. Is this even real?” She reaches up towards Spirit’s supposedly recoalescing body.

“Don’t. Touch that. Yes, it’s real,” Lataran begins, then falters, “I think. I just thought you might want to take a second to...” She trails off, and shakes her head before continuing, “....breathe the fresh air.”

Tinaya realizes her error. “This was meant to be a gift.”

“I still love you, Tinaya, and I don’t personally blame you for what happened. I just...I couldn’t be seen with you. It’s a very complicated and delicate situation.”

“I know.”

The tack team member pivots a quarter turn away. “Go ahead.” She tenses up as she’s listening through her comm, then she faces Lataran. “Sir, we have to go. There’s something wrong with the portal.”

“You two run up ahead,” Lataran orders. “We’ll teleport back right away. I just need to talk to her for one more minute.” It’s unclear why they wouldn’t be able to teleport themselves, but they literally run off. She senses Tinaya’s confusion. “Teleporters don’t work on this planet anymore. Ilias’ bombs destroyed the local relays. We haven’t bothered to replace them. We’re not sure what we’re gonna do here anymore.”

“Why would you be able to teleport then?”

She lifts up her shirt to reveal an emergency teleporter strapped to her chest. “Mine has a much longer range. I’m still linked to the ship, through the portal, of course. Look, I just want to—” She stops when she hears a rustling in the brush that has already begun to grow amidst the destruction.

“You heard that too?”

“Yeah,” Lataran whispers. She slowly creeps in that direction.

“Are there wild animals here?” Tinaya asks.

“A few. One species is particularly dangerous, and particularly valuable.”

“You’re not a wrangler. We should go.”

“No, just give me a second.”

Lataran continues the search, forcing Tinaya to follow. Neither one of them excelled at hand-to-hand combat in school, but the latter was always a little better at it. Though, to be fair, she didn’t go to college, so maybe the leaderboard has shifted. They approach the overgrowth, but don’t find anything, so they keep going until they hear more sounds behind more brush. They carefully pull it to the side to reveal two small children. They’re dirty, and barely wearing any clothes. They’re probably hungry, tired, and scared. “Hey, it’s okay,” Tinaya says to them gently. “We won’t hurt you. Do you understand me?”

Lataran looks away slightly. “We have to go. There’s something seriously wrong in the Mirror Room.”

“You go,” Tinaya demands. “Take them, and then you can come back for me. I’ll be on my way.”

“I might only have enough juice for one jump. We’ve walked really far away now.”

“Then don’t waste it! Save the children! Obviously!”

Lataran grabs the kids by the hands, and disappears.

Tinaya has also never enjoyed running, but she’ll do it today. She races back into the ruins of the base, then towards the gate, and then up the path to the mirror. The place is swarming with people in military uniforms, but they’re nothing like the kind she recognizes. They do not belong to any branch of the Extremus security or military force. She doesn’t stop running, though. It doesn’t seem to bother them that she’s running for her life. If this is some kind of coup, they don’t consider her a threat. She doesn’t make it all the way to the mirror, anyway. It explodes right towards her, but not in a fiery storm. It’s concussive, and maybe even spatial warping. She’s thrown high into the air, back towards the base. All she can think as she’s flailing about is that there is no way she survives this. Even if what’s injuring her weren’t the portal that will no longer be able to take her back to help on Extremus, the damage will be too severe.

Only when she crashes onto the ground does she feel the sting of the glass shards in her skin. They are all over her body. She’s still alive, but hanging on by a thread. She’s fallen right on the other side of Spirit, whose recovery has been sped up exponentially somehow. Tinaya watches the wind blow the majority of the ash away to reveal human skin. It’s definitely her.

Spirit blinks, and starts to reorient herself. She looks down to find Tinaya gasping for breath, and then gurgling on her own blood. “I guess my plan didn’t work.” Her eyes lose focus, and she starts to look like she’s nodding off. Finally, she passes out, and lands right on top of Tinaya’s body. Tinaya reaches up and tries to pull the secret signal mirror from her inside pocket, but remembers that she no longer has access to it. It’s still tucked away safely in the pocket dimension, but the only way to unlock it is with her watch, or something else that can generate the right shade of green to reveal the zipper. That was taken away from her after last year’s debacle. She’ll never see her love, Arqut again, and he will never know what happened to her.

Before Tinaya loses consciousness, she sees two figures hovering over her. They look like the children from before. Damn. They didn’t make it through either.

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Microstory 1971: Team One

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Leonard: So, I hope this doesn’t sound judgy, because I’m genuinely interested. Who takes care of your kids while you’re out on stakeouts, and other missions? You have four of them, right?

Ophelia: My eldest stepson is 23, so he takes care of the two little ones. His sister’s in college right now. She’s in Baton Rouge, actually, so I’m geographically closer to her than the others in Kansas City. But I won’t be visiting her, of course. None of them has any idea where I am, or what I do now. I still don’t really know.

Leonard: What do they think you do?

Ophelia: They believe I’m a merch rep. I claimed that it was a promotion. I supposedly go all over the country, helping the satellite stores introduce new merchandise.

Leonard: Oh, that sounds nice. Nice and safe.

Ophelia: Yeah, no need to worry them. It was a bad cover, though. The idea was that I needed an excuse to be out of town all the time, which is why I volunteered for this assignment. Well, I didn’t know that I would be camped out in front of a restaurant, waiting for a mysterious possible traitor to come back home. I just asked to go in the field at the first opportunity, ya know, to sell the lie about having to travel for work.

Leonard: It’s not a lie. I have a feeling we’ll be doing more and more of this kind of thing as the department grows.

Ophelia: True, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it anymore. I miss them so much. I don’t mind the job itself, but I underestimated how much I prefer to go back home to them at the end of every day.

Leonard: Reese is a reasonable man. I’m sure if you asked for more domestic responsibilities, he would understand. We’re all trying to find our place here. Sasho thought he was gonna run the jail, because it was the obvious choice, but he’s been working hard with Sachs. He’ll be a spotter in no time.

Ophelia: Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.

Leonard: So, what about the other parents of your kids?

Ophelia: My first husband is dead. He was already a deadbeat, so it wasn’t much of a transition. My second husband and I drifted apart, but he’s still fairly involved. Mostly in a monetary sense, but we all have an okay relationship with him. He tried to go back to his girlfriend, who mothered my stepchildren, but it didn’t work out either. She’s still alive, and still a deadbeat.

Leonard: You care for her kids as if they were your own?

Ophelia: They are my own.

Leonard: *awkwardly* Right. Of course.

Ophelia: It’s all right, I know what you meant. They’re great kids. A lot of children in that position would idolize their birth mother no matter what, but they know who’s been there for them, and they consider me their real mother. They call me mom; just about always have. Wait, is that him?

Leonard: *holds up a photo* This is pretty grainy, but I think so. It looks like our guy.

Ophelia: *into the radio* Team Lead, this is Team One. We have eyes on the target. He’s heading upstairs.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 6, 2400

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Leona undoes her safety straps, and tries to stand up. She falls right to the floor, having not realized how dizzy she was until it was too late. Cedar struggles to get out of his own seat to help, but he’s no better off. “Everyone hold still for a few minutes,” Danica orders. “Just breathe in...breathe out. It wasn’t supposed to be that rough, but we were pressed for time, so I had to improvise.”

Leona rolls to her back, and pads her hips, looking for the communicator she used to reach out to Kyra, but she must have dropped it. “I need to get to Egypt.”

“I’ll transport you there once we’re back to a hundred percent,” Danica promises. “Constance, show me the outside.”

The walls and floor turn invisible, showing them what it looks like outside of the Constant. “Oh, crap,” Leona says. It just looks like she’s a dozen or so stories up in the air, and it’s making the dizziness worse.

“Constance, this house is glass.”

The floor returns, but is still very transparent, so they can still easily see what’s what out there. A car is parked in the middle of the field where the Constant landed, the occupants sizing up the building that appeared out of nowhere In the opposite direction, they can see Danica Lake. Danica aimed extremely well for it being such an emergency. More cars are coming. “The Dark Citadel has arrived, Leona muses, standing herself up.

“What does that mean?” Angela asks.

“It’s from a passage in the Word of Dalton,” Carlin explains. “Leona recited it earlier. I think it predicts our arrival.”

Leona watches as even more cars appear from over the horizon. “It’s over. This chapter in my life is ended. I don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore. Navigating what’s happened today, and how it may or may not alter the religious landscape on this planet, is no longer my problem.” She breathes in. “I have spoken.”

Angela steps up to Leona’s side, and takes her hand. “It’s okay to move on.”

Marie steps up to Leona’s other side, and takes her other hand. “As long as you don’t move on from us.” She smiles and holds up a little fob. She presses the button, and sends all three of them to the Great Pyramid of Giza.

They’re standing at the very top of it, which gives them an area smaller than a single-family home to walk around. Kyra, Ansel, and Allison are already here, admiring the view. Constance!Three left the roof when she generated the hologram of the exterior of the Constant, and Leona was focused on the ground, so she didn’t notice the sky before. It’s like the Auroras Borealis and Australis, but with technicolors. “Does it always look like this?” Leona asks.

“No, never,” Kyra replies. She nods at the beauty. “This is new.”

“Where are we exactly?” Leona asks her. “I mean, where is the Earth situated, in relation to other star systems and their orbitals?”

“We’re on the other side of the sun. “The Fourth Quadrant probably didn’t even notice us since they’re not all that advanced.”

“Kure, Japan, and Panama both have major astronomical monitoring equipment. It has not necessarily been long enough for them to notice yet, but it will be soon. Our arrival would have had a profound impact on the solar system. It’s not instantaneous, since gravity travels at the speed of light, but it’s fast. How are you station-keeping?”

“I’m not,” Kyra answers. “We’re orbiting a tiny bit farther from the sun than the Earth that belongs here does.”

“That’s Lagrange point three,” Leona notes. “That’s highly unstable. We’ll start drifting in a matter of weeks, depending on the orbit of Venus.” Leona was so preoccupied with the attack from the Parallelers that she couldn’t focus on anything but that. She didn’t stop to think about the fact that you can’t just move a new planet to a new solar system. The gravitational forces could destroy all celestial bodies, including the new one. Either Kyra doesn’t know that, or she knows something Leona doesn’t.

“Weeks is enough time. When the Reconvergence finishes, everything will be okay, at least in the celestial sense. Politically, it’s going to be a nightmare. But that’s not our problem to worry about. Our only job is to save lives.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” Kyra promises. “I’ve seen the Sixth Key.”

“No one who knows what the Sixth Key is like in the future seemed to know anything about this,” Leona points out.

Kyra only now turns her head to face Leona. “We did not tell you everything. We’ve still not.”

“What does that mean?”

“Go to the main sequence, Leona.”

“What? Why?”

“Go to the main sequence,” Kyra repeats.

“Hold on to my shoulders,” Leona says to Angela and Marie, now very worried about Mateo. She removes the tip from the center, and places it on the spoke for the Third Rail. Then she tries to turn it to the main sequence. Nothing happens. “Oh wait, we’re in the Fourth Quadrant now.” She removes the tip, then puts it on the Fourth Quadrant, and then turns it to the main sequence. “No, that didn’t work either. Maybe I need to...” She reverses everything she just did, and tries to start over, unsure how this device really works. They still don’t go anywhere. “No, it’s...it won’t do it.”

“What?” Kyra takes the device, and fiddles with it. There aren’t a whole lot of different things to try, so she runs into the same issue in that nothing happens at all. Her eyes glaze over, and she looks into the distance. “The time jump.”

“The what?”

“The time jump?” Kyra repeats. “It threw off the calibration.” She shakes the Helm of Reality demonstratively. “This is like an app, and the universe is a phone. We upgraded the OS, but now this app is no longer compatible with it.”

“What..time jump?” Leona repeats herself as well.

“We went into the future. It’s April 6, 2400.”

“Excuse me? You never said that you were going to do that,” Leona argues.

“It’s fine. Mateo is here too. Well, he’s not here; he’s still in the main sequence, but he jumped forward too. That’s not the issue. The issue is that this thing doesn’t work, and we’re gonna need it. We need all Helms on deck.”

Leona sighs, upset about being lied to. “What needs to be done to fix it?”

“You’ll have to go back to the now uninhabitable Third Rail, though I don’t know how. It would be like changing a setting on the app, which you can’t even open.”

“Enough with the metaphor.” Leona snatches the device back. “I’ll figure it out! Like always!” She and the Walton twins teleport away.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 5, 2399

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Mateo’s eyelids feel as heavy as an elephant. They tug themselves down so hard, they take the rest of his head with them. He barely keeps himself from falling flat on his face. It’s a symptom of his pattern, which he has had since he was first starting out, and it even continued on through his multiple deaths, and body transferences. It hasn’t happened since shortly after his arrival in the Third Rail, and only then when he happened to be close to a point of strong temporal energy, such as the parking lot in Crown Center where they first came through.

“Whoa, what was that?” Labhrás asks. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, something’s different. What year is it?”

“It’s 2399, I would assume. Should it not be?”

Mateo takes out his communicator and tries to contact Leona in the Third Rail, but no one answers. The line’s completely dead on their end, which is not a good sign. Tarboda answers when he calls the Parallel, and Winona when he reaches out to the Fifth Division. Aldona in the Fourth Quadrant confirms what the first two said, which is that it’s April 5, 2399 for everyone. Whatever he felt, it was limited to him, which isn’t surprising. He’s the only remaining member of the OG team still accounted for. Marie and Angela are still traveling at relativistic speeds, and they still don’t know where Olmpia went. Ramses is dead, and now Leona is missing. He’s all alone.

The time zones are a little weird, but the Key Protectors generally try to stay on the same schedule as each other, so everyone goes to sleep afterwards. Mateo can’t do it, though. He’s too worried about Leona, and everyone else in the Third Rail. What happened? Why can’t he reach them? And why has she not shown up to tell him that everything is okay? She checks in with everybody physically at least once a day, and comes to the main sequence a few times, because this is where her husband is.

Things begin to happen late the next morning. Winona calls back first to announce that she, Hamilton, and Mithridates are no longer alone. Summit Ebora and Trina McIver suddenly showed up. They’ve been preparing to protect the Key all this time, and now it’s their chance to prove that they can do it.

“No, you’re not protecting the Keys.” Trina has forced herself into frame.

“Hi, Trina. You’re older now,” Mateo says.

“It happens. There seems to be some confusion. You’re protecting the Keyholders. The Keys won’t be anywhere near these realities. That’s the whole point.”

“Who’s protecting the Keys, then?” Mateo asks.

“Don’t you worry about that. It’s not your issue.”

“I’m not worried about it, just curious,” Mateo admits. “What I’m worried about is my wife. Do you know where she is?”

Trina sighs. “Yes. She’s fine. She’ll be back.” She’s reluctant to elaborate when he asks her to. “She’s...in the future.”

“How far in the future?” Mateo presses.

“I’m sorry, I can’t say any more than that. Goodbye.”

“Wait!” Mateo tries to stop her, but she’s gone. If she heard him, she doesn’t care. She hangs up, and doesn’t answer when he tries to call her back. She may be ignoring him deliberately, or she’s in the middle of another call. Aldona didn’t seem to include call-waiting or voicemail on these things.

One by one, the other parallel realities call in to let everyone know that the Keys and Keyholders are here. At some point, the Keys will leave, but they won’t say how they’re going to accomplish that. If Leona won’t be back in the timestream until later, they must have some other way of traveling to the Sixth Key. Trina was the one who gave Leona The Helm of Reality, so they could easily have another one just like it. Once everyone’s spoken their piece, Mateo waits a good hour, and then tries to call Trina back, but she won’t come to the phone. Hopefully she’s trying to respect Leona’s Rules for Time Travel, and is not just being an asshole.

Nothing else interesting happens for the rest of the day. No one shows up for them, which is a bad sign. If the whole Third Rail is missing, they could be in really big trouble. A part of him hopes that he’ll jump to the future come midnight central. No, that could be bad. If Leona comes back after, say, two months, they’ll end up on different patterns. He doesn’t know what to do but stress about it. Labhrás tries to take his mind off of it with a new game of RPS-101 Plus, but it’s not working. Is this what it feels like for Leona every time he’s died or disappeared, and she’s the one who doesn’t know whether she’ll ever see him again? He must say, he does not care for this.

Fifteen minutes before midnight, he starts to get a weird vibe, like maybe he will actually jump to the future, as if the whole Omega Gyroscope thing were over. It couldn’t be, could it? Two people suddenly appear before them, one of them being Summit Ebora, and based on context clues, Mateo guesses the other to be his mother, Iris Blume. “I was not told that you would be here,” Mateo says as Summit is checking the perimeter for threats. “It’s nice to meet you, though.”

Iris shakes his hand. “Likewise.”

“The plan was kept secret intentionally, to prevent interference. We need your help, and you’re the only person in five realities who can do it.”

“Shoot,” Mateo offers.

“Can we borrow your communicator?” she goes on.

“We’re clear,” Summit informs his mother.

Iris takes the device, and selects a recipient. “Bring the rest over,” she instructs.

“Got it, boss.” That sounded like Alyssa. “Red rover, red rover, send the Helm of Reality on over.” Yeah, it’s definitely Alyssa.

Iris widens her arms, the communicator in one hand, and the second Helm of Reality in the other. She smashes them together. A flash of light shoots out from the small blast, and when she’s done, only the communicator is left.

“Neat trick,” Mateo says.

Seconds later, Alyssa appears with Vearden and Arcadia, holding little baby Cheyenne in her arms. Neither of them are surprised to be there. Alyssa disappears, and returns quickly with someone who looks a little bit like Vearden, so it must be his father, Ansel. She leaves again to retrieve Trina, and then another man that Mateo doesn’t recognize. He gives Iris a kiss, so it must be her husband, Rino. None of the protectors is here, except for Mateo and Labhrás—or maybe not. Where’s Labhrás?

“Where’s Labhrás?” Mateo asks.

“He’s not a part of this,” Iris answers. “Now give me your arm.” She takes blood from him to fill several vials. Once one is full, her son takes it, and begins to inject it in one of the others, even little Chey-Chey. When midnight central hits, they all jump to the future together, except for Alyssa. It’s now the year 2400, a.k.a. The Edge.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 8, 2399

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Roeland’s little outburst alerted the authorities to his presence at the quarantine hotel. They ran over right quick to place him in his own quarantine, which will only partially overlap Leona and Tarboda’s. It isn’t until late the next night that they’re able to reconnect in the post-transition lobby. “Mr. Roeland. Do you have time to talk?”

“I do if you have time to tell me what this is.” He pulls his shirt away to show the timonite stain again.

“We’re not sure how it works, or really why. My husband was infected with that—that’s not really the right word, he wasn’t infected. It started out as a rock, and he somehow...absorbed its power. It’s what fueled his ability to teleport to orbit, and install something I now call a leechcraft on a preexisting satellite. The leechcraft was designed to scan the entire surface of the Earth, looking for time travelers. Well, it was only meant to find a specific person, but we think it found everyone, including you and...”

“Go on. Including me, and who?”

“And whoever you’re living with on Vulcan Point.”

“I told you, I’m not living with anyone. I’m alone. Your scanner is wrong. And you’ve still not explained why this thing is on my shoulder.”

“It must have gotten on the scanner, and then got transferred to you during the scanning process. It was entirely unintentional, but as long as you don’t step within proximity of my husband, you’ll be fine.”

“What happens if I do get too close to him?”

“It would transport you to another universe. There you would find all sorts of objects that were randomly dropped there from the multiverse.”

“How do I prevent this from happening accidentally? What if we end up sitting next to each other in a couple of bathroom stalls without realizing it?”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“He’s dead.” She doesn’t believe that, but all evidence points to it, and admitting her true feelings undermines her argument that Roeland is safe, so she’s not going to mention it.

He nods. He’s old, and has seen death, so likely he no longer feels the need to pretend to be butthurt over the death of a complete stranger, like most people do. He’s more honestly indifferent. “So you have one too?

“A timonite stain? I don’t.”

“Why not. Were you not on Earth when it was scanned?”

“No, I was, but...” That’s a good question.

He turtles his head out when she doesn’t finish her sentence.

“You’re right. Why weren’t we also marked? We found eleven errors, but that number was in addition to the people we already knew about, so we disregarded them.” That’s a good goddamn question.

“This kind of implies that it actually was intentional,” Roeland points out. “Who’s the we in this scenario? Who helped you build the thing?”

“No. Ramses would never do something like that.”

“Ramses Abdulrashid? He’s one of us?”

“He’s a time traveler, but he doesn’t have a power or pattern. Or rather, he does have a pattern now, but he wasn’t born that way. He turned himself into it. How do you know him?”

“I don’t know him personally, only by reputation. In my timeline, he was a famous engineer for the Freemarketers in the early 23rd century. Legend has it, he defied them, and defected to the mainstream. They consider him the first domino to fall. The movement did not last long after that.”

“That’s a wholly inaccurate story. The truth is he didn’t defect to the mainstream, he defected to us. How you would have heard about it at all, but not known that part, is bizarre, especially since a great deal of Freemarketers were reportedly killed in an interstellar ship cataclysm, but were rescued by Dardius.”

“Then you and I are from different timelines, because the Ramses Abdulrashid that I learned about in school went on to become an activist for the post-scarcity lifestyle, focusing on educating and rehabilitating the most violent of antiestablishment insurrectionists. He refused most life extension advancements, considering him unworthy of immortality since he rejected handouts prior to his epiphany, so he eventually died. I don’t recall the details of his life; I was born in the 24th.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely different.”

“Is he here? I would not mind meeting him, even if it is an alternate version.”

Leona is staring into space. “No, he’s lost, I can’t find him.”

“Can’t your satellite scanner do it?”

“He designed the thing. I’m sure he has a way to shield himself from it.”

This piques Roeland’s interest even more than the news about Ramses. “Really? How would one go about doing that?”

“Are you hoping to keep us from finding the other ping that we’ve detected on Vulcan Point?” Leona guesses.

“I’m telling you, there is something wrong with it. I live alone. I chose that spot because it’s beautiful and remote.”

She takes out her handheld device, and shows him the data. “My satellite scans every ninety minutes. Whoever was there with you during the first pass is still on the island. See? This is you, this is me, and that is the other person.”

“I don’t know what to tell ya. If there’s another time traveler in the area, maybe it’s, like, a rabbit who unwittingly ate some—what did you call it?—timonite, and ended up there. It’s not a human. I would know. It’s a very tiny island.”

Leona shakes her head. He is showing all signs of lying, through macro and microexpressions alike. If she knew him prior to this, she might be able to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he could be keeping Alyssa prisoner. She could be trying to get away as they speak. It would be irresponsible of Leona to just walk away without investigating. If the other error is fine, she’ll leave without further questions, and try to forget it ever happened, but until then, she is getting on that damn island. It’s up to her to find Alyssa. She’s the only one who can. No one else is capable, and no one else cares. Ramses made that quite clear when he abandoned them. Roeland is looking at her with puppy dog eyes, so she can’t just keep arguing with him about it. “Okay, I believe you.”

“Good. Are ya hungry? I found the quarantine food to be no bueno. Perhaps you and your bodyguard would like to join me for a late night snack. I know a great place.”

She laughs. “He’s not my bodyguard. If anything, I’m his.”