Microstory 2132: Don’t Have Anything Special

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The thing about being in prison all day and all night is that nothing about your situation changes. I promised that I would only use my computer for work and to update this blog, and I’ve held to that. You don’t know how hard it’s been to not sneak a peek at the news, or watch a funny video while I’m on a break. I don’t, though. When I’m not busy with something, I just go over to my bed and sit down to stare at the wall. I’m not even allowed to have anything to read, because books can’t be disinfected. The warden said that it would be okay if I read something on the computer, and that he would be more bothered by videos or games, but as I said, I made a commitment. I’m not going to go back on my word just because my life is now even more boring than it was before. I made the conscious decision to leave Kansas even though I was meant to stay put, and regularly report my goingson. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the warehouse where I contracted the fungus in the first place. That’s on me. The work I’ve been doing has been interesting enough, but I can’t tell you about it, since it’s privileged information. The rest of my posts this week are going to be short, I’m sure, unless something crazy happens, like if Michael Scofield suddenly showed up through a hole behind the toilet, and told me that we’re breaking out. That’s a reference to a TV show that you don’t have in this universe. Maybe that’s what I’ll do every time I don’t have anything special to tell you about my day; tell you more about how my homeworld worked, and how it’s different than yours. We’ll see. For now, I’ll just end this here, and implore you to use me as a cautionary tale. Things might not seem that bad, since I’ve been given so many accommodations, but my story is not typical, and it still sucks here. If I had the choice between prison or jail, or being completely free, I would choose freedom every day of the week.

Microstory 2121: Try to Escape, Blah Blah Blah

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I’ve been calling this weekend jail, but the real and official term is intermittent jail. I don’t know about anywhere else, but the people of this Earth decided that they wanted a lot of their criminals to be able to serve their time while still being able to contribute positively to society. Some prisons offer some sort of work program, but this is difficult to regulate, and studies a long time ago discovered a lot of exploitation, and unfair wage practices. The reason it’s called intermittent is because not everyone can do it on the weekends, because that makes the process too complicated. Everyone who works there would be really busy during these short periods of time, and they don’t want to have to do that. It’s actually harder to get a weekend schedule, because that’s what everyone wants, for obvious reasons. I was able to secure it because of my rising readership count for this website. They argued that my blog was a fixture of public interest that had the potential to paint the court system in a positive light. The system is not known here for its negative press, but good publicity is always welcome, and the judge agreed. So here’s what happened. I checked in at 19:00 exactly on Friday night. First, I should say that there are entire facilities dedicated to intermittent jail time, but some of them cater to mixed populations. You may end up as a cellmate to someone who has to stay there the whole time. In this case, we were all there for the same thing, and I think they’re going to try to keep me with the same cell mate each time, though that might not always work out. I have no feelings on this matter yet, as I have not even had a cellmate, because I was in the intake section.

The intake section is meant only for people who are going in for the first time. Well, it doesn’t have to be their first time full stop. If they’re a repeat offender, they have to go through the initial intake process all over again, so some of the people I saw there might have already known what to do. That’s the point of all this, to familiarize residents with the process before throwing them in with everyone else. So I got there at 19:00, and started filling out forms, and confirming information with the intake officers. After that, I was asked to place all of my belongings in a box after they were logged, and hand it to one of the officers while I went into a privacy room, and removed all of my clothes. It wasn’t that private, though, because we were all in there together, which I didn’t have a problem with; I just tend to notice funny language errors like that. It was just a locker room. So I removed my clothes, and put on an ugly multicolored striped shirt and ugly multicolored striped sweatpants. These did not have any pockets, because there is no reason to carry anything, such as—you know—weapons? Why were these striped and ugly? Well, if anyone breaks out, they want them to be immediately identifiable by their attire. It would be crazy for someone to break out of intermittent jail, since you would only have to wait a day or two, but I suppose there might be extenuating circumstances, like a dying loved one, or some other emergency.

After I got my new clothes on, I tucked my regulars in an aluminum tub, along with my other personal objects. I then put that whole thing in a big locker, the combination to which is known to the officers, and not to me. The normal lockers inside the privacy room serve no purpose from what I can tell. They led me down a hallway where I continued the intake process, which involved another physical exam, as well as a psych evaluation. All of this stuff is mostly for the first time you go there, but they warned me that they will periodically make me go through it all again, so I should never try to rely on a consistent schedule. Once I was cleared for lockup, they gave me a quick tour. The facility is not complicated. The common area is a hexagon in the center, which includes a gym, the cafeteria, chairs, televisions, and a few recreational amenities, like a pool table. That’s where the phones are too. On the first side of the hexagon is the Intake Sector, where the entrance is, as well as all the stuff that I’ve been describing, plus I think some offices on the upper floors. The common area is only a few stories high but the other sectors go up fourteen stories. The actual cells are in the middle levels of that first sector. The other sides of the hexagon are dedicated to all of the other cells, which is where I’ll go at the end of this week.

My first two nights here weren’t too terribly bad, but again, we were all in the same boat. Everyone there was scared, nervous, anxious, or just unfamiliar. Once I get placed in gen pop, I’ll start running into people who know the ropes. There could be drugs in there, or fights; who knows? I can’t give you a full impression since I’ve had such a limited experience so far. They did lay out the rules for me, most of which are obvious, like don’t cause trouble, or try to escape, blah, blah, blah. There are some less obvious ones too, like when mealtimes are, and how often I’m allowed to use the phone. There are times when I have to be in my cell, and even times when I’m not allowed to be in my cell, even if I just want to go in there to be alone or sleep. These vary by the sector, and by my current privilege status, so they’ll inform me of those specifics later. They will continue to update me with my status as my behavior continues to be monitored and appraised. For the time being, it felt more like staying in a hotel in Iowa. As we all know and agree, Iowa sucks, so if you have to be there for whatever reason, there’s no other reason to leave your hotel room. It’s not like there could be something that you would like to see or do, so staying in the room is the only rational way to pass the time anyway. I’m sure that it will start to feel more like a prison the more I’m obligated to go back, so stay tuned for my shifting perspective.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 20, 2411

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After their nemesis left them, probably trying to instill mysterious fear in their hearts, identityless stormtroopers kept guard over them for the entire day. If they were on the right side of things, they would be wearing red shirts. The fact that there were so many of them, and they were all armed, implied that there was some way to escape. At first, Mateo, Leona, and Olimpia let the bad guys hold onto their advantage. They had the numbers, this could not be denied, and they may have all been true believers in whatever cause this was, but they didn’t love each other like the three prisoners did. They seemed to be from different realities, and weren’t too terribly organized. Who was in charge was a big question, because while it seemed like the angry dude from the Fifth Division, the troopers didn’t give them the impression that they even knew anything about the guy. In fact, it was possible that no one was in charge, but this was a random collection of everyone who fought for the cause, and happened to be on main sequence Earth at the time.

After a while of sitting around, Mateo decided to take a risk. He and the girls didn’t ever speak out loud. They communicated with their feelings, doing their best to convey their intentions and thoughts through startling shifts in emotion, as well as a few sly macroexpressions. He teleported himself out of the room, directly on the other side of the guards standing in the entryway. They flipped out, but he was too fast for them. He teleported again, and again, and a few more times. Each time he landed, he took note of more information regarding the layout of this underground lair. It didn’t appear to be too large but he only stuck to one level. He was looking for an elevator, or even the stairs, but he didn’t really want to let on that all he was doing was building a map in his head. He wanted it to look like a genuine escape attempt. He mostly just wanted to be sure that he could teleport at all. The power suppressors were preventing them from leaving the lair, but they could evidently jump wherever they wanted within its walls. Before anyone caught him, he was back in the first chamber.

That was when the nemesis came back. “What exactly did that accomplish?”

“I may or may not have been counting your numbers,” Mateo lied. “And I may or may not have been checking to see how responsive they were to a threat. No comment.”

“You can’t say no comment after you make a comment, you idiot.”

“That’s why you’re over there, and I’m stuck in here.” Mateo has found that, even when someone thinks that they’re not susceptible to flattery, they are. Even when they know someone else is trying to stroke their ego, they’ll fall for it. They’ll fall for it every time. That doesn’t mean the manipulator will be able to turn their target into an obedient zombie, but it always moves the needle. It’s always worth a shot.

He scoffed. “We’ll double it—no, we’ll triple it.” He looked down at his wrist. “You’ll be gone in a few hours, and you won’t come back for a year. We’ll have that entire time to increase our numbers, and build the craziest prison you’ve ever seen. This entire place will be covered in monkey bars.”

“Monkey bars?” Leona questioned.

He chuckled. “Monkey bars. That is my design. Even if you teleport out of this chamber, you’ll be caught in a metal net, somewhere in the hallway. Sure, maybe you can start slithering your way through them like the snakes that you are, but you won’t get far before someone with a gun finds you. You could try to teleport again, but how confident are you that you won’t twist your ankle between two bars, or even rematerialize with one going through your neck?”

“Sounds like you have this all figured out,” Olimpia mused.

“I think of everything. You can’t get past me.” He sighed, and walked away. “Guns up at all times. If they disappear, and it’s not midnight...?” He looked back over his shoulder for dramatic effect. “Find them again, and shoot them in the kneecaps.”

“Sure,” one of the guards said. He didn’t say, yes sir. Yeah, he wasn’t really their boss. They were humoring more than anything. But the monkey bars. Those will be real.

Once he was gone, the prisoners stepped deeper into the room, and started exchanging emotions. Mateo slowly lifted his chin, and looked up. At the same time, he forced himself to express the feelings of being high, and elevated in the sense of euphoria. Then he shifted to boredom and fatigue while bouncing his head from side to side, like one might do while walking up the stairs. To the guards, these gestures meant nothing, but to the three of them, they were the first vocabulary of a new language.

Leona took a moment to interpret his meaning, then nodded slightly with her eyes shut. She echoed the boredom and fatigue with her own bounces. They would take the stairs. She added the feeling of falling, followed immediately by shock. They weren’t going to walk two kilometers up the stairs. They would teleport all the way up, using line of sight to better see where they were going, which wasn’t something they would be able to do in an elevator. Even in the shaft, they wouldn’t know where they could land.

The two of them looked to Olimpia, who nodded back. She understood the plan. There wasn’t really any to translate monkey bars into an emotion, so she carefully pantomimed grabbing onto objects one hand at a time, and also itched at her armpit.

Mateo nodded as he was tapping on his wrist. He held up five fingers, then dropped them one by one. After zero, he suddenly opened his hand again, and nodded more deliberately. This was a timing issue. The guards took their watches, and started lying about what time it was, hoping to stop them from using their jump to the future as an advantage, like they did with a past prison break. But it was futile. These bodies always knew how far midnight was. Now that the plan was set, they stepped farther from each other to wait out the day. As midnight approached, the guards became more agitated, checking their own watches more and more frequently, so if the team didn’t already know exactly when it was time to execute the plan, they could gauge by that.

Seconds before go-time, the guards tensed up their weapons, and drew nearer, terribly afraid of what they were about to do, and thinking that there was any way to stop it. There wasn’t. Mateo stood in the middle, and held hands with Leona and Olimpia on either side. He was the obvious navigator, so there was no reason to have communicated that beforehand. Five, four, three, two, one, jump. They were in the staircase. None of the guards was around, but they would have immediately noticed that the time jumpers never returned to the timestream. An alarm began to blare.

“Can you feel that?” Mateo asked.

“Yeah,” Leona said. “You got the timing right. We could have jumped just before midnight, or just after, but if we had waited until after, we wouldn’t have gotten through this wall.” Their time powers were gone. They were no longer able to teleport.

“I don’t know if it’s right. We’re still stuck,” Mateo reasoned.

“We can’t jump—can’t jump,” Olimpia said through her time echo affliction, which she was forced to revert to when they stole her Cassidy cuff, “but we can jump—we can jump.”

Leona did the math. “Two kilometers. Each flight is three meters tall, which means fifteen steps per. If we jump to each landing, that means skipping seven steps at a time, which is doable for us, but that’s still over thirteen hundred physical jumps.”

“I’m not suggesting we skip seven steps. I’m suggesting we skip all of them. It’ll be less like jumping, and more like climbing.

They all looked up as far as their vision could see through the space between the flights of stairs. Mateo sighed. “These substrates are brand new. I have all the energy this body holds right now. I think we can do it.”

They started to hear people rush into the stairwell from other levels. “We better go now.” She took a few steps back on the landing, then ran forward and dove up to the railing. She swung herself around, and landed on the nex railing. But she never stopped. She held onto her momentum, and kept swinging around, and around, and around. Olimpia went next, followed by Mateo. They would occasionally lose their momentum to kick a guard in the face, so they would just start again, and get it back right away.

This didn’t last forever. The guards eventually wised up, and just took the elevator far enough above the team’s location. Then they packed themselves in like sardines, and created a blockade on level 345. There were countless mooks before them, all wearing black, and multiplying like Agent Smiths. The Fifth Divisioner walked up to them from below. “Did you really think that this would work? That’s why we chose somewhere so deep. You can’t get out. You should have given up on the first step.”

Olimpia looked at her friends, and conveyed the feeling of overwhelmingness while she massaged her throat. Another benefit to Ramses’ upgrades was the ability to simply switch off their hearing. Most animals never evolved the ability to do this, because it would be unadvantageous to not be able to detect danger when not looking at it, or sensing it in any other way. But that wasn’t a problem for them. Olimpia faced the Fifth Divisioner. “You should have let me keep my cuff,” she said rather quietly.

He couldn’t quite hear that. “What?”

“You should have let me keep my...” she repeated, increasing the volume with each word, but waiting for the last one until she could build up the energy that she needed. This was when Mateo and Leona shut off their hearing, but they could read her lips as she turned back to the blockade, and screamed, “cuff!” with enough force to knock them into each other, and burst their eardrums. They pawed at their ears, but there was no stopping the sound. It reverberated up and down the stairwell, hitting everyone not on the right side of a door. It bounced off the walls, and continued to attack, even when Olimpia was no longer expelling the syllable. They took this opportunity to turn, and head down one-half flight, knocking the Fifth Divisioner down the other half as he struggled against the sonic weapon as well.

Mateo opened the door, and shuffled the ladies inside. They ran down the hallway, pushed the button, and then took the elevator to the surface. From there, they teleported to one of the arcologies in Chile, which was a random location that none of them had any prior ties to. They found a courtesy phone in the atrium, and contacted the Dante. Ramses, Angela, Marie, and Constance were still in the middle of planning the rescue mission. They burst moded themselves away from Earth, then darkbursted themselves a little bit before making a stop on a random asteroid in the inner belt to regroup. Even with this inconvenient detour, they still needed to locate the second Earth Nexus. Constance thought that she may have that figured out.

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Microstory 1957: Keys to Success

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Sasho Dreyer: Oh, wow. This place is a lot bigger than I realized, Agent Parsons.

Reese Parsons: Yeah, everybody says that.

Sasho: I just called you Agent. Are you an agent? What is your full title?

Reese: Department for Exogenic Affairs Special Agent-in-Charge is my full title. But you can just call me Reese. I’m not saying that to be polite. I really would prefer it.

Sasho: Very well, Reese. Who installed these cells down here?

Reese: I finally learned what this place was. It was originally designed as a special courthouse and prison for internal crimes. If I had broken the law a few years ago, I would have ended up in a place like this, instead of a regular facility.

Sasho: Why did they abandon it?

Reese: Elections happened; laws changed. Now it doesn’t matter who you are, or what your crime was. Everyone ends up in the same place. This building wasn’t zoned for standard prison housing, so they couldn’t use it for that anymore. Fortunately, it works just fine for us, because no one has passed any laws regarding aliens.

Sasho: *inspecting the nearest cell* I’m not so sure that these are perfect..

Reese: What do you mean?

Sasho: How many specimens do you have at the moment?

Reese: Four. The three you were around for, and one who came in before. We can’t be sure if more are coming. Hell, there could be thousands hidden in the Amazon rainforest, and we wouldn’t know it. That’s why we need every cell up to code, and ready. The inspections have already happened; I just wanted you to see where you’ll be working. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone down here; but you will be the man in charge.

Sasho: *nodding* That’s not my concern. Nor is in the integrity of the cells themselves. *removes his shoes, and starts hitting the wall with it* Do you think the guy on the other side of the wall would be able to hear that?

Reese: Absolutely. These aren’t soundproof.

Sasho: They ought to be. *slips his shoe back on* I’ve guarded at a lot of different places. I was around for two major escape attempts, and obviously, one successful escape. I’ll tell you this, the second attempt almost went all the way through. I’m actually the one who put a stop to it. I was so proud of myself; that is, until the prisoners were all found murdered two days later. The official story is that they turned on each other after their failure, but we all know that other guards did it to protect their reputations. That’s why I downshifted to a regular law station jail, and also why I let that group escape. One of the dead prisoners was innocent. He was totally innocent, and I could have let him go free. I didn’t want that to happen again.

Reese: I’m sorry to hear that; it’s a tragic story. Thank you for telling me.

Sasho: I didn’t really need to; it’s not relevant. My point is that they got so close to getting out because they worked together, and they were able to do it secretly, because...

Reese: Because their cells were close together, and not soundproof.

Sasho: Yeah. I know it would be an extra expense—

Reese: No, you’re not wrong. We’ll keep these first four really far apart from each other, but then I’ll look into some upgrades. I’ll expect your continued input.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 26, 2398

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The process of freeing the unconscious prisoners is not easy. It wasn’t legal for them to be kept there like that in the first place, but that doesn’t mean it’s legal to just let them out, and drive away. Certain people should be notified about all of this so a proper investigation can take place. The Matics didn’t have time for this, and they didn’t want all that heat on them anyway, so their only choice was to sneak them out themselves. Most people working at the facility didn’t know about the secret prisoners, but enough of them did to avoid having to actually break out, like Mateo and Leona have had to do so many times in the past. Still, they had to wait for the cover of night, and the few guards who could help them had to dress differently. The prisoners would have been spooked to see a guard’s uniform. It had to look like a legit covert mission by a third party, which it essentially was. They loaded them into a school bus, and drove off without a hitch. Winona had to go back to finish one last thing first, which Leona assumed was code for killing the doctor who kept them locked up there, but she can’t prove that.

It’s morning now, on a Sunday. They can’t take the strangers to the secret McIver cabin, because there must be a reason they were in the prison in the first place. The question is what was that reason, or those reasons? It wouldn’t be any of their business what they allegedly did to get themselves into a special isolated section of the prison under normal circumstances, but since the team broke them out, it doesn’t seem crazy to ask. But are they entitled to an answer? Maybe, but food and shelter first, and Winona claims to have a little place to take them just outside of Las Vegas. Leona tried to call it a safehouse, but Winona was hesitant to agree with that guess. Both she and Mateo slept most of the way, the Energy water they injected themselves with having worn off, and caused them to crash

“Where are we?” a groggy Mateo asks Winona, who is sitting behind him.

“A few miles past Santa Fe,” Winona answers.

“Santa Fe...New Mexico?” he questions.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that the wrong direction? I thought we were going to Las Vegas.”

“Yes,” Winona confirmed. “There’s also a Las Vegas in N-M.”

Mateo relaxes his neck. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve been there.”

“You have?” Leona asks. It’s funny that she should forget such a thing. How many other memories managed to escape her steel trap?

“Yeah, my parents and I were stranded there once, back in, uh...” That was 378 years ago, in an old timeline.

“Right, I remember now. I was in school at the time.”

“Do you have something against the town?” Winona asks, worried about pissing them off.

“As long as it helps these people, it’s fine,” Leona brushes off.

“Anyway, we’re not technically going to be in Vegas. We’ll pass it in a half hour or so, and end up closer to a one-horse town called Arriba.”

Leona nods, unperturbed. She doesn’t know about Marie yet. Mateo doesn’t know how to tell her, or any of them, for that matter. He should talk to her first, to get her side of the story. She’s obviously not evil, but the Honeycutts have caused them all a lot of problems since they came here, and that’s not something they should have to just forgive and forget without an explanation.

The bus exits onto Highway 104, and heads away from civilization. Before too long, it turns again, and takes them to a place in the middle of nowhere called Jimenez Cemetery. “Ominous,” one of the prisoners muses. “You are saving us, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Winona replies believably.

The driver stops, and opens the door. Everyone begins to climb out, looking for any sign that this is the right place to be. It might be a poetic location, fit to kill a bunch of ne’er-do-wells that society doesn’t want to deal with anymore. She’s probably going to force them to dig their own graves.

There’s a little shack on the other side of the graves. A man comes out of it in response to their arrival, polishing something in his hands. As he approaches, Mateo starts to think that he must recognize him. Even Leona seems to be having trouble matching a name to the face. “Mr. Halifax,” Winona greets him respectfully.

How could they not spot him immediately? It’s The Gravedigger. Though, to be fair, it’s been a pretty long time since they’ve seen him, and he looks a few years older. If anyone can get them back home, it’s this guy. He lives in another universe, and is on a first name basis with the powers that be. Or maybe they should be referred to as the powers that were. Nah, they’re still in control of other people’s lives.

“Is this all of them?” Halifax asks.

“Yes,” Winona says. “Can you take them all at once?”

Halifax narrows his eyes at the crowd, particularly at Mateo and Leona. “That depends. Do any of them not want to come with me?”

Leona crosses her arms. “That depends. Where are you taking them?”

“That depends...on where they belong,” Halifax says cryptically.

“Where might they belong?” Mateo asks him.

“Various places,” Halifax begins. “Kind of like how I belong elsewhere.”

“They’re bulk travelers,” Leona realizes.

“What does that mean?” Winona asks.

“It’s above your paygrade,” Halfiax says to her.

Winona looks over at Mateo. “This is why I need to debrief you, despite what you think I’ve already been told.”

“You’ve been told enough for us to want to debrief you.

“How did they end up here?” Leona asks Halifax, ignoring the short exchange between her husband and Winona.

“Westfall,” Halifax answers, surprisingly forthcoming.

“So, they don’t even know,” Leona notes.

“Unclear,” Halifax says. Westfall is a section of The Crossover which instigates travel between universes while preventing travelers from even realizing that anything happened. Instead, they believe that everything they see is just a part of their own world.

“We’ll go with you,” Leona begins “as long as our friends can come with us, and as long as we get certain biochemical characteristics back.”

“I can’t give you either,” Halifax says apologetically. “I wish I could.”

“Come on, Honeycutt,” Leona says as she turns away. “It was nice to see you!” she yells back to Halifax.

“Likewise,” he returns.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 25, 2398

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Mateo didn’t really have a plan, he was more just winging it, processing his actions through instinct, and powering them by his emotions. When he saw Leona Reaver lying there, helpless on the table, he felt guilty. It was an alternate version of himself who was responsible for her inevitable death—the one, in fact, in a medical coma on the other side of the room—which as Nerakali would remind him, was someone completely different, but he still felt the blame. This was his chance to protect her in the way his counterpart couldn’t. She’s young, and untraveled, and by all accounts, innocent. His wife, Leona, meanwhile, has lots of experience getting out of scary situations. He knew that she could handle it, and would jump at the chance.

Before any guard could return to the evil prisoner experimentation lab, the Matics teleported in, and took their respective places on the tables. Leona and Ramses don’t know whether immortality water injections wear off over time, even without use, so they needed to be as quick as possible. The Energy water they used should be pulling double-duty, insulating them from any mind-numbing drugs, and keeping them powered up. To pull off this latest prison break, they probably won’t be able to teleport everyone to safety, but the trick might still come in handy. The others are relying on them. Time travelers or no—part of their group, or no—these people need help. They are the only ones in a position to do it, and if they didn’t swap places with their alternate selves, then the prison would have heightened security after the first escapes. Now the prison isn’t even aware there were any escape at all.

It’s been two days, and nothing has happened. The non-plan won’t work if they don’t encounter at least one person who is part of all this. All this time, they have only ever seen the other test subjects. Leona is starting to think that maybe they’re not even subjects at all, but special prisoners who are simply not allowed to get up and move around. It’s plausible that the fact that Leona Reaver and Alt!Mateo are time travelers is a coincidence, and this section has nothing to do with that. No, that can’t be true. It’s too unlikely of a coincidence. Leona is about to tap a status report request from Mateo when the doors finally open. She shuts her eyes to avoid getting caught.

“I believe this is one of the two you are interested in?” asks a voice in a sort of Baltic-Canadian accent. He sounds fairly close to Leona’s table.

A familiar voice replies, “yes, that would be her. Where is the other one?”

“Over here,” he answers, stepping farther from Leona.

Winona follows, but speaks loud enough for Leona to hear. “And that’s the other one. How long did you say they’ve been here?”

“The man came to us almost one year ago, but the woman hasn’t been here but a month.”

“And you’re certain of this? There is no way they could have escaped?”

“Escaped? But how? And why would they return?”

“Far be it for me to answer that, just assure me that they could not have.”

“I keep a man posted at the door at all times, and personally check in on my patients at least once a day.”

“Except for yesterday, when you were in Washington to meet with us.”

“Except yesterday, of course. But I promise you, that door has not opened.”

Winona mutters something under her breath that Leona can’t hear. Then she continues with, “and the others? Who are they?”

“Oh, you do not want them. There is nothing special about them. No unexplainable photographs. They are down here for other reasons.”

“Give me the reasons.”

“Well, it’s different for each of them. You don’t have the time. You came here for these two, just take them...and there is a matter of my payment?”

“I have been unable to locate any security cameras in the basement.”

“I’m sorry, no cameras down here, as we like to keep this project private, but as I said, they never could have escaped, and even if they could, they would not have been able to return. It’s quite simply impossible.”

“What do you think, Agent Reaver? Would you have been able to escape this place unnoticed?”

Leona sits up on her table. “I’m sure I would have figured out a way.”

The evil doctor, or whatever it is he is, is mortified. “What is the meaning of this?”

“You have been holding two of my best SD6 agents against their will. We have spent untold amounts of taxpayer money in the search for them. Agent Reaver here caught a lead in the whereabouts of Agent Dufresne. She followed it right here, which is obviously when you abducted her as well.”

“I...I had no idea,” the doctor apologizes.

“I believe you, but that doesn’t mean my superiors will be lenient with you.”

“No, please. Take them, take them. No charge.”

“And the others.” Mateo sits up on his table as well.

Winona looks to Leona for guidance, then sighs. “Yes, the others.”

“Are they all agents?” the doctor questions.

“They’re persons of interest,” Leona explains, hopping down to the floor.

“Yes, of course.” He bows humbly. “I’ll begin revival procedures.”

He jogs over to one of the other patients, and starts fiddling with the equipment. Leona goes to watch him in case he tries to do something funny, like release a cyanide solution. Winona turns to Mateo. “This is the last favor I do for you without any answers. I don’t care if my father and I have built enough trust, or not. You’re going to tell me what I want to know regardless.”

Mateo tilts his head. “I don’t think I have to.”

“Mister Matic, I have helped you on a number of occasions, and now I’m breaking you out of prison, which will take money to stay quiet. You—!”

“I don’t know why you’re so hellbent on getting me and my friends to admit what we are, but I don’t care. There’s a song I like where we’re from. It has a lyric that goes, no one can tell you what you already know. You keep showing up at the right place at the right time. We’ve scanned for trackers and listening devices. There is no way you could know the things that you know without amazing intel. So why don’t we cut the shit, and you tell me who it is?”

“Who who is?” Winona asks, still playing dumb.

“The mole. Who has been feeding you information about us?”

Winona frowns, ‘cause she knows she’s been found out. “Agent Walton.”

“I knew it! I knew we couldn’t trust Heath.”

“No.” Winona shakes her head. “Agent Marie Walton.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 24, 2398

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Mateo wasn’t gone for long. He teleported himself, his other self, and yet another Leona to the Provo farmhouse, which was not part of the plan. He was supposed to take them to Alyssa’s secret cabin. It’s only by luck that the rest of the group hadn’t left for the rendezvous yet. He asked Kivi and Andile to drive the rescues to the cabin the long way around, and for Alt!Leona to accompany him elsewhere. He apparently had business left in the prison. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

She didn’t know him that well, but, “yes.”

Once they were gone, the other two did as they were asked, and headed for the cabin. They carried the third Leona over to the bed, and laid Alt!Mateo on the couch. Then they waited, all day, and all night. There didn’t seem to be anything medically wrong with them, but they could see electrode marks on their temples, and IV sites in their arms. They clearly hadn’t just been in prison, but in the infirmary, or something. They didn’t know what had happened to them, but Mateo and Alt!Leona weren’t back, which could mean the same awful thing had happened to them during this new mission.

The rescues wake up at the exact same time, as if programmed to do so. They’re both surprised to see each other. Neither of them knew that the other was in the same prison as them. Their memories are a little fuzzy, so they drink some water, and rest, before they can launch into their respective stories. Mateo goes first. “You see, there’s not much a man can do when he finds himself in a strange land with no identity, no money, and no hope for help. Especially if the world is designed to screw over anyone not fortunate enough to have been born...um, fortunate. I had to scratch and claw my way to everything I had, and even that wasn’t much. I managed to get enough money for a fake identity, so that’s what I used, hoping to find a real job. I didn’t want to be a criminal anymore. Problem is, I reached that point in my life just as World War III was starting up, and I feel like they started from the bottom of the list, because I got called up right away. They sent me straight to Russia to hold back forces advancing on Mongolia. That’s when I learned that I can’t die. I can get close. I can get real close, but something always pulls me away.”

When he pauses, Kivi speaks, “the extraction mirror.”

“Bingpot!”

“That’s how you survived Horace Reaver killing you in the old timeline in the main sequence.”

“Except I don’t survive. Or I won’t. Or whatever. I’m destined to die there, and every time something threatens my life here, I end up right back there.”

“But eventually, you have to die,” Kivi reasons. “You can’t just keep on doing that forever.”

Alt!Mateo smirks. “It’s on the floor.”

“What’s on the floor?” Andile asks.

“The extraction mirror,” Alt!Mateo says. “It’s literally on the floor in the hospital, right under me. Each time I go back, I just fall down again, and return to that goddamn parking lot on the edge of Crown Center. It’s a loop. It doesn’t matter how many times I do, it will never end.”

“That still doesn’t make sense,” Kivi believes. “You would constantly run into your alternate selves. You couldn’t all fit in the mirror at once.”

“I don’t know what to tell ya,” Alt!Mateo begins, leaning back in the wobbly chair. “That’s what happens to me. A Russky tries to kill me, I go back to the hospital room to find Horace Reaver frozen in time, trying to bludgeon me with a bedpan, fall into the mirror, and land in the parking lot. I fall down a flight of stairs, hospital, Reaver, bedpan, parking lot. Reaver never moves, the mirror is always there.”

“Who put it there?” Andile asks him.

“No idea,” Alt!Mateo answers. “No one’s come to claim responsibility, not even the first time.”

“How long have you been in this reality?” Andile asks.

“Eh, time, right?”

“Are you saying that you don’t age?” Kivi questions.

“No, I do. I skip time, and land in the parking lot at random points in the future.”

“Mateo was right,” Kivi decides. “This guy is the key. He’s been using temporal energy this whole time. Whatever is suppressing it in all of us has no effect on him.”

“What about her?” Andile asks, gesturing towards who they have decided to refer to as Reaver!Leona.

“I was skipping time too,” Reaver!Leona explains. “But more periodically. I live one day a year, just like he’s supposed to. It suddenly stopped a few months ago.”

Kivi and Andile look at each other. Everything changed on that day.

“This is all fun and interesting,” Alyssa begins, “but it doesn’t explain where our Mateo is, or the other, other Leona.”

“Who are you?” Alt!Mateo asks.

“Our friend,” Kivi replies.

“Who are you?” Mateo repeats, this time to Kivi.

“Your other self’s friend.”

“I dunno, where would they be?” Reaver!Leona asks Alyssa, hoping to avoid any further argument.

“He said they were going back to the prison,” Alyssa answers.

“Oh, he shouldn’t have done that,” Alt!Mateo warns. “He’s not going to like it there. They know about us. They’ve been doing tests on us. I’ve been in there the longest, I guess you just got there?”

“I’ve been there for about a month,” Reaver!Leona negates.

“How do we get them back?” Alyssa questions.

“We don’t.” Another Leona walks into the cabin from outside. They don’t know which one it is, though.

“Report,” Kivi says to her.

“I’m Alt!Leona,” she says, taking Andile’s hand affectionately to clarify her meaning a little more. “Mateo tried to keep me safe by spiriting me away to Kansas City, but we’ve all come back.”

The rest of the team files in behind her. “The third floor is done,” Ramses announces proudly. “There’s enough room for all of us.”

“Who are all these people?” Alt!Mateo asks vaguely.

Alt!Leona goes on, “the married Matics are in the prison together, having taken the place of their counterparts. We have been instructed to let them get themselves out, which they will do while freeing all the other test subjects. Our job is to be ready for them when they do that.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 23, 2398

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Mateo was excited to find the homestone at first. Its entire thing is being able to send people back to where they started before they first experienced time travel, whether that was in the present reality, or another. But that’s the thing that Alt!Leona pointed out, which is that every member of his team was from a different reality. Not even Mateo and Leona were from the same one. Even if Kivi’s idea of trying to duplicate the stone with Mateo’s quantum knife worked, it would still separate them all. Homestones were known to transport multiple people to the same point in spacetime, but asking for it to do it for nine or ten people all at once was more than pushing it. Plus, whether Alyssa knew it or not, she was destined to leave the Third Rail too, so the total number of people in need of such a thing was even larger.

Upon the properties of a homestone being explained to her, Andile thought there might still be a way if they could just get someone like Ramses back home, where he could use the vast resources of the main sequence to come back for the rest, but that seems like a stretch, and they have other thing to worry about at the moment. They have to focus on the mission at hand, which is to break Alt!Mateo out of Black Crook Rehabilitation Facility. Despite sharing a near identical name with its counterpart from 350 years ago, where Horace Reaver and Gilbert Boyce once lived, the two prisons are not very much alike. The first was a tower built on the peak, holding up a platform where residents lived in almost suburban-like homes. They worked together to maintain a microcosmic society, safe from and for the general population in its isolation. The one here is just a regular building with a fence around it. Rehabilitation isn’t even really part of the program. They just included that in the name to make people feel better about letting their social scraps waste away behind bars, kind of like how the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is neither democratic, nor a republic.

Mateo will not be able to get his alternate self out of there using wingsuits, as he did last time. The plan went well, but looking back now, it was reckless and foolish. Sure, they had the advantage of time that the guards were nowhere near prepared for, but so many things could have gone wrong. They pretty much just got lucky, or maybe the powers that be protected them in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to recognize at the time. They have a chance this time to do it differently, to make it far easier on themselves. Back in those days, time travelers were time travelers, and teleporters were teleporters, but they have learned so much about reality, the lines have been blurred. More specifically, Mateo is carrying with them one syringe of temporal energy-infused immortality water. It’s actually activated Energy water; double the energy. Ramses believes there is enough power in this thing to make two, maybe even three jumps, which is better than they have been able to do thus far.

“I wasn’t able to figure out where Mateo’s cell might be,” Andile says regretfully. She has become their resident researcher, which makes sense, because that’s what she did before all this happened to her. “That’s all confidential.”

“I don’t think I’ll need that,” Mateo hopes. “Whenever I get a taste of temporal energy, I also get back my superempathy. If there’s anyone in the world I’m more connected to than my Leona, it’s my self.”

“Are you sure?” Andile questions.

“No,” Mateo answers honestly, “but Kivi came up with a contingency plan.”

“It’s not a plan,” Kivi points out. “It’s just an idea.”

“And it’s a good idea,” Mateo tells her.

“It’s...not,” Kivi contends.

“It’s...going to be okay.” Mateo has learned in his advanced age that confidence is key to the success of any mission. Without it, he has to rely too heavily on other people, and he doesn’t want to do that anymore. He doesn’t want to be helpless and sad. He wants to get back in the driver’s seat of his own life. So after a quick goodbye to his friends, he injects himself with the Energy water.

Andile was right to be worried. He gets his empathy back, but he can’t feel anyone he hasn’t before. He can sense Leona, Ramses, Angela, and Marie back in Kansas City. He can feel Kivi in the room with him, which is a bit ambiguous except when accounting for the fact that he can’t feel Alt!Leona, because she’s not the one he’s in love with, and his mind is conscious of that. As Nerakali would explain it, there is only one you; even alternate selves are only approximations. So since he doesn’t know where Alt!Mateo is, he’s going to have to go with Plan B.

Mateo teleports into the prison, getting as close as possible to the room where they think the cells should be controlled. It’s dead center, and would be impossible to reach from the outside without being spotted, but he doesn’t have to worry about all the doors. He appears to be wrong about the purpose of this area, though, as this looks more like a rich person’s fancy office. The walls are lined with books, and there’s a putting strip on the floor. What a giant cliché, it must be the warden’s office.

“Mister Matic,” comes a voice from the other side of the chair. He spins around, once more like a cliché. It’s Tamerlane Pryce. Because of course it is. “I’ve been waiting.”

“Have we met?” Mateo asks. He doesn’t mean to act like he doesn’t know who he is, but it could be a different version of Pryce, rather than the one he grew to hate in the afterlife simulation.

Pryce understands the meaning. “We’ve not, but I’ve heard of you. I am aware of how my alternate self treated you, and for what it’s worth, I am sorry for that.”

“I have dealt with far worse people, Mateo says sincerely. The other Pryce was rude and self-centered, but not evil. When all added up, he probably did more good than bad. He did save the lives of tens of billions of people throughout history.

“I assume you’re here to bust Andy Dufresne out?” this Pryce asks.

“I assume you’re not going to stop me,” Mateo says, both because maybe saying it out loud will make it come true, but also because there’s a strong chance that it is true.

Pryce looks halfway disgusted. “Ugh, you don’t want that guy. He’s a douche. There’s someone else I have in mind who doesn’t deserve to be here, and could use your help instead. I assume you possess a limited number of jumps?”

“I can do what I need to, as long as you stay out of my way.”

Pryce takes out a big book of residents, listed in alphabetical order, and opens to a particular page. “This is where your other self is right now.” He’s deliberately keeping his finger over the location. Then he switches to another page. “This is where someone who deserves to escape is.” This time, he’s deliberately keeping his finger over the name, and only showing the location. “I won’t tell you who it is until you choose.”

Remembering his thing about the driver’s seat, Mateo takes a letter opener out of its cup, and jams it into Pryce’s wrist, who cries out in pain. He carelessly removes the book from the bloodied hand, and scans for the second name. It’s Leona Reaver.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 8, 2397

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Leona was frustrated to have to leave the blue dwarf, but one of their friends was out there, and they may really need their help right now. Besides, it would seem that traveling across realities could be easier than they thought before, so perhaps one day, they could return for her to study it. The truth was that she didn’t really need to study anything. Information on it was probably in a database somewhere, having been discovered long ago. She just wanted to live around it because of how crazy it was. The time to dwell on it was past, though. They were about to jump to another reality.

“We’re all synced up,” Ramses said, checking his Cassidy cuff. “Everybody ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Good to go.”

They jumped. It was as jolting as the last two times, but they knew what to expect this time, so they all landed on their feet. They were in a dark room. Men with suits immediately took them by the arms. “Sir, there’s more,” one of them said.

A man who was trying to walk out of the room turned around and sneered at them. “Bring ‘em too,” he instructed in a graveled voice.

“By order of Captain Waldemar Kristiansen, Eighth of Eight, you are being detained for questioning. You will be escorted to primary hock, where you will await further direction. Resistance will be met with fatal violence. Please, please...” he begged, “resist.”

While the members of the team were not capable of psychic communication, they could feel each other’s emotions, and there were other practical applications to this. When one of them began to teleport, the rest could feel that too. Ramses did this, not to escape, but to see everyone else’s reactions. Leona’s emotions indicated that they should not try to jump. They were presumably on a moving vessel, and they were unfamiliar with its layout. These substrates were designed to survive, so even if they ended up in the vacuum of space, it wouldn’t kill them. But unless they retained momentum, they would quickly fall out of range, and wouldn’t be able to return, so just for now, they would do as they were asked. The good news was that they could feel Angela. When the men dragged them out into the hallway, they could see her too, also being dragged towards hock.

The men carelessly pushed them into the cell. “Sorry for the poor accommodations,” one of them said after the others had walked away without a second thought. He used a sarcastic tone at first, but then he made sure his compatriots were out of earshot. “We’re just...kind of full right now. The ship wasn’t designed to hold so many political prisoners. Whoever you are, you have to find out how to get out of here. If even one more person gets arrested, they’re going to kill them. Or maybe they’ll kill the oldest prisoner, I don’t know. We just don’t have the space anymore, and no one wants to spend the resources keeping people like you alive. So tell them what they want to know, and be good. It will probably take them a week to get to your interrogation, so hopefully no one else will screw up.”

“Thank you,” Mateo said to the boy.

“Our cuffs,” Leona said simply.

The boy shook his head. “You’re not getting your devices back. Teleportation is illegal, and they’re going to assume that they contain subversive media.” He closed the door and left without another word.

“He may sound nice,” came the voice of a stranger in the cell with them, “but...he still works for him, and that was his choice.”

Leona stepped forward. “Captain Leona Matic of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

“I know who you are. Those morons would have recognized you too if they spent a little more time in history class. My name is Kaison Summerling.”

“What are ya in for?” Ramses asked.

“Possession of subversive media,” Kaison explained. “I was once Captain. I stepped down due to accusations of nepotism, but now I wish I hadn’t, because I would not have selected Kristiansen as my successor. And he’s aware of that, so I’m public enemy number one.”

“This is Extremus, isn’t it?” Leona asked.

“It is,” Kaison confirmed.

“That ship from Gatewood that Omega created?” Mateo asked.

“He didn’t create it, but yes,” Leona said, “we were there when he showed up at the lounge to plant the seed of this idea. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Kaison agreed. “Things are only going to get worse. Did they call the current captain Eighth of Eight in front of you?”

“They did,” Angela answered, not thinking much of it.

By the end of this mission, there are supposed to be eleven total—rest in peace, mother. Kristiansen doesn’t ever plan on stepping down. Of course, nobody knows that, or they would get rid of him. There’s only one reason they let you hear that that’s the plan.”

“They’re going to kill us anyway,” Mateo figured, having seen a movie in his life.

Kaison nodded. “This isn’t a hock; it’s a morgue.”

Leona began to pace. She pushed her feelings to the other three. They were just as unsure as her. “We might be able to help.”

Kaison sighed. “Oh, you definitely can. You could teleport us right out of here since it’s part of your biology, and not something that can be switched off by central control. Then you could rescue all the other prisoners, and help begin our revolution.”

“But you’re not going to let us do that,” Angela realized.

“It would only fuel their hate. A revolution is nothing without the people in revolt. If we all break out of here, he’ll argue that that’s all the more reason he should just kill every seditious actor. You’ll give him the best excuse ever to wipe us out.”

“We have to escape either way,” Mateo pointed out.

Kaison understood. “The four of you do, yep. I don’t know what you got going on, but I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that your roster isn’t complete.”

“How do we leave without causing you problems?” Leona asked.

Kaison crossed his arms, and thought about it. “How strong are you?”

“Pretty strong.”

“Strong enough to break down that door?” Kaison questioned.

They all looked to Ramses, the engineer of their bodies. He stepped over to the door, and tested out its integrity. “Yeah, with a little time. I mean, no one here is as strong as Superman, but it could be done. Why would we, though, if we can teleport?”

“That would cause us problems,” Kaison said. “I’m brewing a plan, but...”

“But we’re not gonna like it?” Mateo guessed.

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that, but I wouldn’t call it foolproof, and I sure wouldn’t say it’s safe.”

They waited until it was closer to midnight central before making their move, using the time to get a little rest, and fill Angela in on what she missed. Mateo and Angela started punching and kicking the door, occasionally looking out the little food opening to make sure no one was coming to stop them. As much as these security guys loved to arrest people, they weren’t very careful with them once it was done.

Leona was regarding Kaison as he watched them slowly break down the door. “You’re coming with, right?”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“If you tell us where on this ship is safe, we’ll get you there.”

“No. I either die a martyr, or I live long enough to help the cause. Running isn’t going to save my people. The former would be better than anything, but my guess is Kristiansen would keep my death quiet, as he’ll keep what happens today quiet. It’ll be too much of an embarrassment. The upside for us is he can’t use it as a justification to round up every dissenting voice.”

“Okay,” Leona said, knowing there was no point in trying to convince him.

“In fact, if you could knock me out cold, that would be great. I’ll make something up about trying to stop you. He won’t let me go, of course, but it could earn me a few brownie points. They might even let me have an e-reader.”

“Thank you...Captain Summerling.”

He laughed. “Not a captain. Maybe I’ll start going by General.”

“We’re out,” Mateo announced. They were one kick from breaking the latch.

Leona turned her head, and frowned. “Good luck with your revolution.” She reached back, and punched him in the jaw. Then she strode over to the door, and gave it the final kick before leading her team towards freedom.

According to Kaison, the hock was equipped with an airlock in the floor. It wasn’t a very good escape option for normal people, because there weren’t any spacesuits anywhere around here, but that was fine with them. They just needed to make it look good. He didn’t have anything to write with, so he did his best to describe the layout of Extremus, and told them where they could go.

They weren’t going to have much time. At reframe speeds, jumping out of an airlock was indeed going to do what they feared before. They would pretty much stay put while the ship continued on its journey faster than light. They weren’t exactly in hyperspace, but it did kind of operate like that. The warp bubble was wrapped tightly around the vessel. Leaving it meant losing momentum. Since they weren’t wearing their Cassidy cuffs anymore, they couldn’t sync up as they normally would. Leona was going to be in charge. She would control the teleportation, and the others would surrender to her mind’s decision, using their empathy to link their simultaneous jumps.

When the outer doors of the airlock opened, the air disappeared, but it didn’t suck them out. They were still standing above the opening, preparing themselves. Their nanites automatically placed themselves at action stations to keep their hosts alive. When Leona was ready, she pulled them all downwards, and out into the cold. Mateo smiled and waved at the camera recording them from the corner. Just as space was trying to sweep them away, Leona engaged teleportation, and delivered them to the safehouse.

It wasn’t so much a house as another darkened room. There wasn’t anything in it except for a bench along the wall, and an extraction mirror in the middle of the room. “Did he tell you this was in here?” Angela asked as she was admiring it.

“He said it was an extra bridge that they used to use to pilot the ship,” Leona answered. “I don’t think this is that. Like I said, teleportation is hard to navigate in an unfamiliar place. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Mateo said. “There’s no one else here, we’re fine.”

“We still need to get our devices back,” Ramses pointed out, “but...I like this as our exit strategy.”

“Okay,” Mateo said. “You all stay here. I’m going to retrieve them for us.”

“No, we go together,” Leona demanded. “We promised each other.”

“It’s irrational for us all to get caught,” Mateo reasoned. “If anyone tries to get through that door, you go through that mirror. Can you do that for me? Can you save yourselves? Can you...not argue with me about it?”

Leona stared at her husband. “You heard where the evidence room is?”

“Yes.”

“Hurry back. And be quiet.”

“Stealthy is my favorite of the eight dwarves,” Mateo revealed.

He jumped, and to his surprise, he was exactly where he wanted to be. He was in the narrow aisle between two shelves. They were filled with tons of stuff, but mostly personal teleporters. He looked around for some semblance of organization, but could find nothing of the sort. Nothing was labeled, nothing was grouped. Everytime they confiscated something, they obviously just threw it wherever they found space. So he just started walking up and down. Nothing. He passed by another door, where he could see a woman sitting at a table. The dimensional traverser was sitting open on the table, and she was preparing to do the same thing to the friend detector. He opened the door. “Stop! What are you doing?”

“They asked me to figure out how these things work,” the woman answered.

Mateo picked up the lasso device. Wires and other parts were hanging out of it, and he knew he could never fix it himself. He shook it in her face. “I need to make sure every single miniscule part is here, whether it’s attached where it’s meant to be, or what.”

“It’s all there. Just...sorry.”

He peered over, and saw a chain around her ankle. “You’re a prisoner too.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know that I’m a survivor, and I can get you out.”

She stared at him a moment. She grabbed a toolbag, dumped out the tools, and swept all the parts of their devices into it. She reached out to him. “Let’s go.”

“You’re not leaving anyone you love behind?”

“No, he...he’s gone.”

Mateo reached down, and yanked the chain away from the table leg. Then he accepted the woman’s hand, and transported back to the extraction room.

“What the hell is this?” Ramses asked after Mateo handed him the bag.

“Can you fix it?” Mateo asked.

“In the next few minutes? No. Everything’s fine, it just...”

“It just what?” Angela asked.

“I could send a message across the dimensional barriers, but we won’t be able to cross over,” Ramses replied.

“What happens if we just wait a year?” Angela suggested.

“They’ll be waiting,” the woman contended. “They’ll have plenty of time to realize who you were, track your movements, and just be waiting for your return.”

“Besides,” Leona began, “we don’t have a cuff for her. Do you know where those are, by the way?”

“I didn’t see any cuffs,” the woman said apologetically. “I work on what they give me.”

“Don’t we have to wait until the next window opens up anyway?” Angela thought.

“Not technically,” Ramses said. “Before being taken apart, this thing could go whenever we wanted it to. We just wouldn’t necessarily be heading for a friend. It has to connect with the detector to accomplish that objective.”

“There’s a workaround,” Leona decided, looking at the mangled remnants of their device over Ramses’ shoulder. “Link it to the mirror. All you need is a portal, and that’s got one. Then you’ll have time to fix it permanently. Then we’ll go get the other two.”

“You can’t promise that,” Ramses said. “This ship has resources. We don’t know what we would be walking into.”

“We have to risk it.” Mateo placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

Ramses exhaled. “Okay, I’ll need your help, Lee-Lee.”

Mateo and Angela stood by while the other three got to work. The woman was just as smart and experienced as they were, and she noticed something. “Is this supposed to look like this?”

“Crap, that’s what I was afraid of. We’re running out of power.”

“By how much?” Mateo asked.

“We have one more jump,” Ramses determined. That was unacceptable. They had two friends missing. One more jump was not going to be enough. They had to find some kind of power source here, because there was no way to know whether they would be able to find one tomorrow. There had to be something on this ship...somewhere. Before anyone could come up with a solution, they were surrounded by a team of teleporting security officers.

“Uhhh...we don’t have time,” Mateo warned them. “Let’s just go through the mirror to any old place.”

“We don’t have time for that either,” Leona said.

“We can hear you.” It was the leader security guard from before; the one who sounded like he smoked. “You’re not going anywhere, except back to hock.”

They stood there frozen, not wanting to comply. The others could feel Ramses’ feelings, implying to them that they only needed to wait for midnight. It was all ready to go. They couldn’t just walk through the portal, though. These guys would shoot them as soon as they moved an inch. Except they never got the chance. One turned against the others, and shot them all dead before they could react. Then he took off his mask.

“Omega!” the woman cried, relieved.

“Come on, Valencia. Let’s let the nice people go home.”

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