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: July 22, 2398

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No waiting, no getting sidetracked. They decide to get to Utah quickly, and start formulating a plan to get Alt!Mateo out of prison. Does he deserve to get out, or will he turn out to be a psychopathic killer? Hard to say, none of them knows him all that well, but they can’t just leave him there either. Most of the team has stayed in Kansas City. Leona and Ramses have a lab to finish, and Angela has her own thing going down on the first floor. Heath managed to convince Marie to stay out of it, for the sake of their marriage, so it’s just Mateo, Kivi, Alt!Leona, and Andile. They don’t know what they’re going to do, but they don’t want to waste time. It’s a two day trip from Kansas City to Provo, Utah, with a stop in the middle in Aurora, Colorado. They can’t take The Olimpia, because it’s still in need of some repair, which Ramses is doing during his free time. He never takes any actual free time. The workload will catch up with him later. It’s mid-afternoon now, and they have made it to their resting place, the McIver house. It looks a lot like their farmhouse in Kansas. Family aesthetics.

“Welcome, welcome,” Alyssa says sincerely, ushering them in.

The eldest boy, Moray begins to help them with their bags, deaf to the protests.

“Thank you for letting us stay with you again,” Mateo says graciously.

“Do you really have business out here,” Alyssa asks, “or are you just making sure we haven’t told anyone about all that stuff in Lebanon.”

“We really do have business. We just needed a place to stay for the night,” Alt!Leona explains. We’ll be out of your hair in the morning.”

“You can stay as long as you need, there’s plenty of room,” Alyssa promises.

“Where are you aunt and uncle?”

“Strawberry Cemetery,” Alyssa answers.

“Oh my God,” Mateo gasps, “what happened?”

“They died,” Alyssa says with a shrug. “It was about sixteen years ago.”

“That timeline doesn’t make much sense,” Kivi argues. “We gave you some money to help you make your way here to live with them much less than sixteen years ago.”

Alyssa shrugs again. “We lied. We were worried that you would try to take us in, or call social services.”

“So whose house is this?”

“It was theirs,” Alyssa claims. “I don’t know how they handle things in the future, where you’re from—”

“Not the future,” Mateo interrupts.

Alyssa just keeps going, “but for us, when the owner of property dies, it passes on to their next of kin, and they’re free to do whatever it is they want with it. We chose to ignore it until a couple of months ago. We have a secret mountain cabin down near Bryce that our grandparents left us too.”

Alt!Leona perks up when she hears that. “How much?”

“How much what?” Alyssa asks.

“How much for the secret cabin?”

“If you wanna use that too,” Alyssa begins, “you can do so for free. We’re not allowed to sell it. I signed a secret will when I was a child.”

“Who asked you to sign this will? Your grandparents?” Alt!Leona asks.

“Yeah,” Alyssa replies.

“Did your parents sign one too?”

“No, they didn’t even know about the cabin.”

“Someone knew a long time ago that we would be coming.” Alt!Leona realizes.

“What makes you say that?” Mateo asks. “Did a seer tell you to look for a mountain cabin, or something?”

“No, it’s not the cabin itself, but where it’s located,” Alt!Leona explains. “Bryce Canyon is where Maqsud Al-amin created the cosmic sextant.”

“How would you know that if you pretty much came straight here after the surgery?” Kivi asks.

“It wasn’t immediately after. I spent a year trying to gather every bit of evidence I could find, in case there was a way to bring him back,” Alt!Leona says, referring to a different Alt!Mateo. “What I found was a book called Hotspots.”

“A Look into Places of Great Power on Earth, and Beyond?” Alyssa asks.

“Where did you hear that title,” Alt!Leona asks her.

Alyssa goes to an old-timey cabinet thing that’s not built into the wall. She unlocks a drawer, and pulls out the book that they’re talking about.

“Where did you find that?” Mateo asks.

“Carlin found it in the cabin,” Alyssa responds. “It...literally doesn’t open.”

Alt!Leona reaches over, and opens it anyway. There must be a special lock on it that only allows time travelers to access it. “This can help us.”

“That’s not all we found,” little Trina exclaims. She takes a rock out of her pocket, and smiles as she shows it to them. It’s a homestone.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 21, 2398

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There is something that Andile didn’t even tell Alt!Leona. When the latter first came to this reality, they were surprised to see each other again. Two women out of time, there under different circumstances, and having already known each other. Upon hearing Andile’s new story, Alt!Leona realized how focused on herself she had been this whole time. She hadn’t asked Andile much about what she had gone through. She only knew the basics of the event; not the details. And she hadn’t made much effort to change that. But that doesn’t mean Andile didn’t lie. She could have volunteered the information, back then, or at any point over the course of the last year.

“How do you feel about this?” Leona asks her husband when they wake up the next day.

He’s had time to sleep on it. “It won’t be the first time. It’s not even the first time meeting this version.”

“You don’t know that it’s the same one from Dardius,” Leona says, not believing it herself.

“Let’s be real. He told Andile that he just came from what he called a Death Race. It’s the same guy.” Back in 2251, Mateo and a handful of his friends were living on Tribulation Island. There were once more people, but their then-enemy, Arcadia Preston was tormenting them with expiation challenges. Every three years, she would remove another person from the timestream. Only Mateo and Lincoln could remember that they even existed in the first place; the former quite intentionally, and the latter because knowing everything is his whole thing. One of these challenges involved Mateo street racing a different version of himself. This other Mateo lived in what was once known as Reality One, and has been commonly blamed for Leona Reaver’s death. Mateo’s niece, Dar’cy sacrificed herself by sending both her and Alt!Mateo back to Reality One, just before his death at the hands of Horace Reaver. Dar’cy had a hard time returning home, but once she did, she never mentioned that anything special had happened to Alt!Mateo, so everybody just assumed he died like he was meant to. Apparently, he survived.

Leona and Mateo left the safehouse after the news to let Andile and Alt!Leona discuss the secret in private, but now it’s time to get back to the matter. They have to find this other Mateo, and figure out what makes him so damn special. Marie wants them to hold off, and maybe get back to their other issues, but that sounds like a mistake. They’ve had so many missions since they’ve come here. Most of them were impromptu, and most of the rest were sidetracked…sometimes by one of the impromptu missions. They really need to stick to the plan for this one, and follow through. It’s important. The other stuff is important too, but there is no point in going to Easter Island if the other Mateo gives them all the answers they were looking for.

As the two of them are getting dressed, there is a knock at the door. Angela is already up, so she answers it. To everyone’s surprise, it’s Andile and Alt!Leona. They explain that they’ve decided to abandon the safehouse, mostly because a covert branch of the government set them up with it, which sort of pretty much negates the whole safe aspect of it. The condo isn’t safe either, but at least it’s more comfortable. There’s not exactly room for everyone there, but Ramses woke up hours ago, as he has been for the last few days, to continue working on their space issue.

“You know where he is?”

“I do,” Andile answers, not elaborating.

“Go ahead and tell them,” Alt!Leona urges.

Andile still hesitates.

“Where?” Mateo asks, not understanding the hold up. “Topeka? Croatia?”

“Utah.”

“A prison in Utah,” Alt!Leona adds.

“Lemme guess,” the other Leona begins, “this nice little place outside of Vernon.”

Andile pulls out her device, and checks her map. “Uh...yeah, that’s the closest town. You’ve been?”

“We’ve broken people out of there,” Mateo explains.

“Could you do it again?” Alt!Leona questions.

Leona shrugs. “Probably not. We had a certain time advantage back then, and access to detailed plans. I doubt we could get any of that here. Does the government know he’s in there?”

“No, he’s using a fake name,” Andile tells them. “The government knows one of his aliases, but not the one he was using when he was arrested.”

“What’s the alias that the government recognizes?” Leona asks her.

“Leon Delaney,” Andile replies.

They can’t help but laugh. This other version of Mateo knew the other version of Leona, of course but they weren’t together. She was with Horace. Perhaps this suggests that maybe he was in love with her even then, though?

“And the other one?” Mateo asks. “What’s the one that he’s using in jail?”

Andile smirks. “Andy Dufresne.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 20, 2398

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Andile didn’t want to say much else after dropping that bomb on them about the alternate version of Leona. She said that it wasn’t her place to explain. The other Leona’s flight would come in the next day, and they could ask their questions then. So that’s what they did. They went back to the condo to fill in the rest of the team, and waited. The others wanted to come too, but the other Leona apparently didn’t know them at all, so it would probably just be overwhelming. The next morning Alt!Leona answered the door, not surprised, but yes, unnerved at the sight.

“Thank you for coming again,” Andile says once they’re seated.

“Thank you for having us,” Mateo says.

It becomes evident that Alt!Leona wants to talk first, but she needs them to be patient with her. Lips closed, almost pursed, she stares at the space between Mateo and her alternate. “I trust you’re doing well?” she asks Mateo.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Mateo answers.

“It’s nice to know there’s at least one Mateo out there who didn’t die.”

“Actually, he did die,” Mateo’s wife, Leona clarifies. “A few times.”

Now Alt!Leona purses her lips fully. “Well, at least he came back.”

“Leona, what happened?” Leona asks her self.

“I’m going to tell you my story,” Alt!Leona begins, assuming nothing about what you’ve been through. I may tell you things that you already know, and you’re just going to have to accept that, and be patient. I also don’t want any commentary about how things played out for you, or anything like that.”

“Understood,” Leona says.

Alt!Leona begins. “When I was nearing my sixteenth birthday, a friend of mine suggested I try alcohol, because drinking alcohol is the type of thing that normal teenagers do. So I did, and it went poorly. It made me sick—not enough to have to get my stomach pumped, but I had to go to urgent care just the same. I was sitting across from a man in the waiting area, trying to retch into a bag, when I ended up getting some on him. Long story short, I figured out who he was, and went to his house to apologize. That’s when everything changed. I learned that he was a time traveler, but not in control of his own life. I don’t know who was in control, if anyone, but I, admittedly, fell in love. He and his situation were fascinating, and I couldn’t just let that go.

“I probably would have become a film student in college if not for him. Instead, I pursued a physics degree. I wanted to understand what was going on with him. We met another; a teleporter, and she led us to believe that there were others. There was this one other guy too, but we weren’t really sure what his deal was. Anyway, I learned that an organ transplant might allow a normal person to take on the temporal characteristics of a traveler. Lucky for me, I was suffering from some kidney problems, which I might have been able to deal with, but I didn’t want to, so I started to not take very good care of myself. I needed a kidney transplant, and as luck would have it, Mateo was a match.

“Obviously, this process normally takes a long time, but we couldn’t wait for the bureaucracy. Mateo only existed one day out of the year. Through my connections, I was able to find a surgeon who was willing to perform the surgeries under unusual circumstances. Let’s just say that he had lost his license for a similar infraction years prior. This was the biggest mistake of my life, and seeing a version of Mateo sitting here hasn’t helped, like I hoped it would after Andile called to tell me that he was alive. The surgery went bad, and Mateo died. After a year of mourning, I discovered that his death didn’t prevent me from becoming like him. I guess it just delayed it. I only made one jump before I was approached by a stranger with an offer.

“She told me that it was her job to rescue people from the timeline. She said that I was in a different reality completely, and I could stay here, and not be on my pattern anymore. I only did it to be with Mateo, so that seemed like a good deal. Before she disappeared, she reintroduced me to Andile, and I never saw her again, so I never got the chance to ask her why it didn’t work. Instead of freeing me of my pattern, I just ended up taking Andile with me. I didn’t mean to. It’s not like I gave her my kidney too. At most, I touched her during a hug. Maybe you have an explanation for it.”

Leona and Mateo nod reverently, as they have been during the story.

“Do you?” Alt!Leona asks.

“Oh, sorry, we didn’t want to comment.”

“It was more about not being interrupted,” Alt!Leona straightens out.

It was hard for Leona to hear that story. She has met other versions of people before; even of herself, but this one is a lot different. This Leona didn’t spend hardly any time with Mateo, and never built a team. She and Andile have pretty much been alone this whole time. That changes a person. “Everything happened to me just as it did for you, until the surgery. A time traveling doctor did it for us, probably following what went wrong in your reality. Someone must have wanted things to play out differently, so they altered history. Normally, you would cease to exist as the result of that, but when you’re dealing with parallel realities, that all gets more complicated. Who was this stranger who told you this would free you of the pattern?”

“Her name was Olaya,” Alt!Leona answers. “I don’t know if it was a first or last name, but she didn’t give me any other.”

“Never heard of her,” Mateo says.

“Nerakali did say that there were other teams, but I don’t remember if Jupiter did. That was back during his era,” Leona says.

“So, do you know the answer?” Alt!Leona asks again.

Leona shakes her head. “Olaya should have been right. This place doesn’t have time travel, or at least not much of it. We don’t think it ever did. My theory is that that’s why it was created in the first place.”

“You did eventually lose it, though,” Mateo says. “When did that happen?”

“It was about three months ago,” Alt!Leona replies.

“Three months and twelve days.”

Mateo and Leona exchange a look. “That’s when we arrived. We did this to you.”

“You helped us,” Andile corrects. “We don’t want to time travel. We just want to stay put. I mean, we could do without the shady government people chasing us all over the country, but that could have happened either way. People crave power.”

“Do they know about you?” Leona asks. “If anyone would recognize you, then they probably know that there are two of us. And they know that there are two Angelas, so all in all, they know too much.”

“I don’t think they know about me,” Alt!Leona tells her.

“They only caught me,” Andile says apologetically.

“And you’re one of a kind.” Alt!Leona reaches over to take Andile by the hand.

“Look,” Leona begins, “I know you don’t want to have anything to do with this stuff, so we’re prepared to leave, and never mention you again, but I don’t feel like that’s enough. If you want to be somewhere safe, it’s not in this city. I don’t know where it is, though. I don’t know how to help you.”

“We don’t need your help,” Alt!Leona claims, “but we may be able to help you.”

“How might you do that?”

“I heard them talking while I was being transported to the fishbowl,” Andile says. “They’re looking for someone more valuable than any of us. And I know where he is.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 19, 2398

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Leona got lucky back in the timeline that they used to just call Reality Two. K-State University assigned her a roommate for her first semester in college, which was the spring of 2018. Andile Mhlangu was a year younger, but already a sophomore, having skipped the third and seventh grades. Her former roommate was a night owl partier, who didn’t like how strict Andile was with her schedule. Andile was actually okay with the incongruent living arrangement. She grew up with four siblings, so she knew how to study and sleep amidst a lot of noise, and a little chaos. The old roommate felt bad, though, and got tired of tiptoeing around, so she decided to go live on her own. She reportedly got herself a note from her doctor, claiming to have social anxiety, which is what allowed her to secure a single dorm room, despite having missed the registration deadline by months.

Andile, meanwhile, needed a roommate of her own, or she would have to start paying for a double as a single, which is kind of a bullshit rule that the university shouldn’t have had. Fortunately, Leona was there to fill in after graduating from high school a semester early. The two of them didn’t become great friends, but they got along very well. They kept pretty much the exact same schedule, maintained comparable work loads, and had no use for the noise. They occasionally had dinner together, but didn’t know each other’s secrets, or anything like that. They continued to be roommates for the next three years after that. Andile decided to stay there for grad school, so they moved off campus together. Even then, they weren’t great friends, but Leona didn’t want to risk being assigned someone crappy, and Andile still couldn’t afford to pay full rent anywhere.

After Leona received her bachelor’s degree, she was accepted to grad school in Colorado—once more starting in the spring—so she had too move out of the apartment, but she agreed to pay Andile her half of the rent for the next semester anyway. They remained connected through social media after that, but still from a healthy distance. A few years later, Andile paid back the extra rent, with unnecessary interest, after getting a great job at a prestigious laboratory. Then she disappeared; fell completely off the map. There were two theories: one, that she was abducted or dead, or two, that she was working for the government, or some other clandestine organization. The second option wasn’t all that crazy. She was sure smart enough to be doing something like that, and she was in a good position to be recruited. When Leona became a time traveler in 2028, she theorized that Andile was, in fact, a time traveler as well. It might have been true, but no one she met along the way had heard of her, and the investigation ran cold, especially since she was so busy with her own stuff. Then the timeline reset, and the new version of Leona didn’t even meet Andile in the first place. She hadn’t thought much about her until yesterday when Kivi dropped her name.

Winona was surprised to hear from Leona, and not be yelled at about something, but not surprised when she heard that it was for a favor. Then she was surprised again when she learned that the favor was providing Leona with Andile’s location, but quickly realized that it made sense. Senator Morton locked up Andile for a reason, and while the Honeycutts were apparently not cognizant of everything that Morton knew, it was entirely plausible that her imprisonment was for the same reason as the team’s. There are at least three sides to this war, including Leona’s, the Honeycutts’, and Morton’s. How those two relate to one another remains a mystery that Winona refuses to divulge at this time. That wasn’t good enough for Leona, who demanded something for all the trouble. Winona agreed with this assessment, and was half-prepared to comply with the request to find Andile, but half not. She was reluctant to hand over the information, citing a desire to protect Andile from further disruption of her life. The plan was evidently to get her out of town, much in the way a witness protection agency would. Leona has a hard time believing that.

It’s taken a day, but Winona has finally come through, and now Leona and Mateo are at the safehouse. They open the gate for the really tall front yard fence, and knock on the door not sure what kind of person they’ll find on the other side, or how she’ll react to this development. Mateo ran into Andile once when he came to visit Leona that first semester, but that was well after he started jumping through time, and again, this was in an old reality. Neither of them expects her to recognize either of them, but especially not him.

Andile smiles when she opens the door, as casually as she might if she were expecting a friend, but not for a few hours, once she’s finished cooking a meal. “He told me an old friend would be stopping by.”

“Who told you that?” Leona questions.

“This guy. He called himself a seer.”

That makes a bit of sense, but it doesn’t answer their real question.

“How did you get here? Did the seer tell you how to travel?”

“Let’s talk alone.” Andile pulls her inside gently. She offers them a seat on the couch. “I didn’t believe him when he first approached me, but he started out making simple, yet hard to explain, predictions, so I started to believe. I started to trust him. He didn’t tell me that I would end up in this world—there was a lot he didn’t tell me, in the end—but the last thing he said was, once you’re safe in the brown house, an old friend will be stopping by. The next day, I found myself in this reality, and now I’m sitting in here. It’s brown, wouldn’t you say?”

“You found yourself in this reality...in the year 2398?” Leona asks.

Andile thinks that’s funny. “Oh, no. Noooo. It was 2026, just like it was where we’re from.”

“So how did you get here?” Mateo asks, “Or have you just lived long enough?”

“I only spent a few years there. My friend brought me the rest of the way,” Andile says cryptically. “It wasn’t 370 years, like it was for most people. To us, it was more like 370 days.”

Now that is a surprising response. “Andile, who is your friend?”

Andile hesitates for a moment, but resolves to answer. “Leona, it...it was you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2398

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Once they received a message from Leona, telling them that she had managed to get on board The Olimpia all the way in Russian waters, Marie asked the others to not say anything about what happened to them. The whole ordeal with being locked up in a fishbowl for three days was a fluke, and it would just cause needless concern. They were rescued, and all back safe and sound. There was no need to bring it up again.

The rest of the team has returned now. Leona figured it was possible to duplicate anything almost indefinitely as long as they didn’t completely destroy the original object. He shouldn’t need to cut a hole in the center of the lantern. If he just poked the base of it, a new one would be born, and they would both retain their powers. As it turned out, this wasn’t one hundred percent true. Possibly as some kind of inherent function of the quantum duplication knife, each lantern stabbed loses its special ability to illuminate system flaws. What it doesn’t lose, however, is its temporal energy. It’s still stored in there, just unusable, like tearing out the processor in a cell phone, but keeping the battery intact. Temporal energy is amazing and insane, and capable of teleporting them to the other side of the world, but it’s also just a really great power source. The teleporter that Ramses designed only works on immortality water, and it’s not capable of processing raw energy. So they had to take the long way around, but they were able to do it in the air, and that was better than driving up into Russia, and making their way over the land to Finland.

They walk into the condo, happy to be seeing each other again. Marie, Heath, and Kivi are sitting at the kitchen counter. Leona starts to get a weird feeling about it. They all look fine; too perfect, really. Sitting there like this, they’re reminding her of the kids in a teen comedy about a rager they threw before having to clean everything up in preparation for their parents’ return. “What did you do?” she asks them.

“What are you talking about?” Marie asks.

“Something happened,” Leona presses. “What was it?”

“Everything’s fine, we’re glad you’re back,” Marie insists.

Kivi is about to explode. “We were captured by some black ops guys, and taken to this glass prison cell in the middle of a warehouse, where they left us for days—probably to die of starvation, or perhaps even boredom—until Winona Honeycutt came in with, like, an entire army, and took out all the bad guys, and rescued us from being electrocuted by a menacing scowling man, who I guess just wanted to cut his losses, because I’m sure he knew that Senator Honeycutt would want to have us back.”

Leona stares at Kivi for a minute, then turns her attention to Marie. “Why are you keeping things from me?”

“I just wanted our family back. I was afraid that you would go back to the Capital, and we would end up being separated again. I know I’m the cause of the latest issue, with the Fountain of Youth. I just wanted to fix it. I didn’t think it through.”

“Oh, and we met a new friend,” Kivi keeps going. “Her name is Andile, and she—”

“Andile Mhlangu?” Leona interrupts.

“Yeah,” Heath confirms, “do you know her?”

Despite his low intelligence, and poor memory, Mateo actually recognizes and remembers the name. “She was Leona’s college roommate...like, a dozen timelines ago.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 17, 2398

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It has now been well over three days, and they have yet to see any sign of their captors, besides the fact that someone had to break into their condo, knock them out, and transport them to this fishbowl cell. Marie, Heath, and Kivi occasionally exchange looks. The fourth prisoner may not be a prisoner at all, but be here to observe them in some way. She doesn’t ask questions, or do anything else to complicate matters. She’s been answering simple questions simply, and generally gives off a vibe of trustworthiness. But perhaps that’s just what she wants them to think. Maybe it’s all a grand act.

The food is running out. Soon, they will have nothing to ration, and will have to subsist on water alone, but eventually, even that won’t be enough. They’ll waste away and die in this box, just as Heath predicted. Marie is regretting some of the choices she made, and she’s about to fess up to them when they hear a noise. It came and went so quickly, none of them is sure it ever happened at all. Based on each other’s faces, something had to have happened, though. It couldn’t just have been in their heads. Another sound; a pop, really. More pops, some closer than others. They’re gunshots, mostly handguns and a few automatic weapons. They can hear screams and maybe war cries too. They’re muffled and still distant, but they’re definitely human voices.

“This is it,” Andile says in a defeatist tone. “They’re coming for us.”

“No, they can’t be,” Kivi contends. “They wouldn’t be shooting if they were just gonna come and kill us. This is a rescue.”

“Is it Leona, maybe with all of our other friends?” Heath hopes.

“No.” It can’t be their friends. After all of her experiences in war simulations, Marie can tell that at least two opposing sides are shooting at each other, and that’s not something that Leona would tolerate. She would come in surgically and rather quietly. It’s not an execution either. What is it? “This is something else.”

The firefight grows either louder, or closer, or both. They hear a pounding on a wall or door that must be just a few meters away in the darkness. Another pounding is followed by a heavy click, and then a second click, which is immediately followed by blinding lights. The rest of the room is illuminated, besides just their cell. A man in black is holding a gun. He is covered in blood, and grimacing at them. He looks around until he finds what he’s searching for. On the other side of the door is another one of those huge power levers, but this one has a cage around it so it can’t be pulled. He shoots the lock off, and opens it. He doesn’t pull the lever down, though. Instead, he pops the panel open, and presses a blue button. They start to hear rushing water, and quickly realize that it’s coming from under the sink. The room is flooding.

“What about the air holes?” Heath questions, assuming that the guy is trying to drown them.

“Get on top of the cots,” Marie orders.

The other prisoner, Andile follows the suggestion.

“No, he’s right,” Kivi says. “The water will drain before it reaches our waists.”

As the man is pivoting over to the other side of the box on the wall, Marie repeats herself, but more earnestly this time, “get on top of the cots!”

Kivi and Heath finally do as they’re told, but the man just chuckles. He knows that the water is going to get high enough to electrocute them anyway. Marie desperately looks around for something to grab onto, or maybe something to hang the sheets over like a hammock. There’s nothing. If they don’t find a way out of here, this guy is going to get his way. The water keeps rising and rising, until it does spill over the cots, and kisses their feet. Marie tries to balance on the frame, which is just a tiny bit higher, but the water gets high enough to cover that too. The man reaches up and takes hold of the lever. He’s about to pull it down when they hear one more gunshot. His head jerks over to the side, and he falls down to his face.

Winona Honeycutt walks all the way through the door, and presses the green button on the panel. The water begins to drain away. She shoots their attacker in the head one more time for good measure. She too is covered in blood.

“Thanks for saving us,” Heath tells Winona as she approaches the glass. “Could you open the door now?

She examines the cell, particularly in one spot, which must sport a keypad that the prisoners can’t see. “I don’t have the code.”

“Of anyone, I would think you would be entrusted with the code,” Marie muses.

Winona winces. She looks back at the dead guy on the floor. “Wait, do you think we’re the ones who locked you up?”

“Who else would?” Kivi asks.

“There are things that you do not know,” Winona begins. “We have been searching for you for the past three days. Once we realized that you freed the wrong Amir Hussain—which, by the way, my father and I don’t care about; he wasn’t our objective—we thought you may be in danger. We knew that the people who actually wanted the right Amir would not be happy about it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to you in time, and it’s taken us this long to figure out the location of this black site.”

“Who? Who did this to us?” Heath demands to know.

Winona puts her watch up to her lips. “Bring me the highest clearance you can find.” She returns her attention to the prisoners. “You’re not allowed to know that. You’ll have to commit to us to be read in.”

“Commit to who?” Heath asks impolitely.

She smiles, then looks behind her as they’re dragging a bloodied man up to them. “Senator Morton? What luck that you just so happened to be on site during our siege.”

“Go screw yourself, Honeybutt,” he spits. Then he spits some blood at her.

“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” Winona spits back. “Give me the code, or your daughter and I are gonna have a playdate, like we did in the old days. Except the guns won’t be imaginary this time.”

Scowling, Senator Morton recites, “Zero-nine-one-one.”

“Her birthday?” Winona asks rhetorically. “How typical of your generation.” She punches in the code, and lets the prisoners out.

Morton looks up at Marie as she’s stepping out. “I finally remember how I knew you. Did you ever get your dress fixed, Madam Milf—” He can’t finish his sentence when Winona shoots him in the head, like she did with the other guy.

“Daddy’s not gonna like that, but secretly...he will.”

The other three are horrified, but Marie is grateful. She thinks that she can explain away what he managed to say before his death, but she wouldn’t have been able to if he had been allowed to keep talking. She signs thank you to Winona as she’s backing away, hoping that no one else notices.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 16, 2398

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Finland. That’s where they want to go. Mateo doesn’t remember a whole lot from school, but he does recall a classmate of his once getting into an argument with their math teacher. The teacher claimed that the shortest distance between two points is a line, and she illustrated this using a geographical map. The student argued that it didn’t matter if the line was the shortest, because it wasn’t the fastest. Going that direction meant trudging through thick brush, and over a lake or two. It meant crossing straight through streets, and climbing over buildings. The fastest route was to get on the freeway, pass the destination just a little until the next exit, and cut through the city. The teacher insisted that this wasn’t what she was trying to teach, and he contended that she should be. Mateo recalls one quote quite clearly when his classmate said, “if what you teach us can’t be applied to the real world, then why are you trying to teach us anything at all?” He failed the assignment, and came this close to flunking out of the class.

To get back home, their shortest route would take them pretty much directly southward until hitting mainland Norway. There they could resupply, repair The Olimpia to its former glory, and contact their friends back in Kansas City with reliable cell service. They can’t do that, though, because in addition to it being the most direct route for them, it simultaneously creates the shortest distance between the island of Svalbard and the United States government, who they know they can’t trust. To protect Amir, and all the locals of Vertegen, they have to take the scenic route. Fortunately, they have a way to create a distraction in the form of Russia.

The Republican Federation of Russia bears an even more tumultuous history here than its counterpart in the main sequence. It has been on the sidelines of nearly every major world war since the first one. Funny enough, it doesn’t seem to experience much direct conflict with other states. It’s just been known to wait until the hostilities between two or more parties begin, and then choose a side. Some xenophobes might chalk this up to them making their choice randomly. A number of political cartoons, comedy sketches, and modern memes feature a blindfolded Russian leader throwing darts towards a map, or some variation therein. The reality is that Russia always chooses to back the belligerents whose victory would spell some kind of success for Russia. Russia chooses Russia is a slogan from a certain social awareness organization that is always trying to help people understand this.

The Russian government holds no convictions, and has no strong feelings about any specific faction. They are probably the least religious nation in the world—or maybe just when accounting for its sheer mass. The presidents have run their nation like a business, accepting benefits to their economy wherever they can find it, be it with a neighbor, a former enemy, or even a terrorist sect. At the moment, the United States is its biggest competitor, because while citizens of the U.S. would deny, deny, deny, their social practices are not without their similarities. They would never work with terrorists, but freedom fighters are just fine, and the difference between the two can often be found only in the nuance of personal perspective. So while Mateo labeled Russia the enemy, they are in fact more like a rival, and the Olimpia’s presence within their territory is no more dangerous than meeting an industry colleague for coffee in the cafeteria on the first floor of their office building.

Still, as stated, this is a distraction. If the team is spotted making their way through the White Sea, this will be all that Senator Honeycutt—and anyone else involved in all this—will focus on. They won’t even consider the possibility that they were once on Svalbard, or make any attempts to retrace their steps at all. It’s been a long journey, but thanks to Mateo’s new knife, not as long as it could have been. They’ve not had to stay on the surface of the water for the whole trip. Short bursts. They can stay in the air for a limited amount of time, which is what has allowed them to cross the distance as fast as they have so far, but they’re running out of power, and they need a new tactic. Leona may have come with the solution. “Well, if you have this thing, why can’t you just replace the solar panels altogether?” Solar power has been providing them enough energy to fly for a little bit, but they use that energy faster than it can come in, which is why they always have to drop back down to the water.

“I don’t know how to work this knife,” Mateo explains. I can’t get it to replace the entire panel. I can either replace part of the framing, or an individual...what did you call them?”

“Tiles,” Ramses helps. “Each time he stabs a panel, it only destroys that specific tile, and spits out a new one. I can’t figure out why efficiency is so low. It could be one or more of the tiles, but which ones?”

Leona takes the knife from Mateo, and examines it. Before anyone can stop her, she downs the rest of her water, sets the cub back on the counter, and tries to stab it. Nothing happens. “What did I do wrong?”

“You accidentally aren’t your husband, Mateo,” Angela says.

“What?”

“Only he can use it. We’ve both tried.”

“Well, I suppose I had to try too, given our connection, and the fact that some of that Existence water is still swimming through my veins.”

“Well, that was my favorite cup,” Angela laments.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me use it.”

Mateo chuckles once. He takes the knife back, and stabs the mangled cup himself, which generates a pristine replacement.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Leona shouts. “Okay, it makes a new one; it’s quantum duplication, whatever. But why does it make an unbroken one? It goes back in time to before it was damaged? How far back in time? How much damage does it correct? What if there was a dent in it that had been there for twenty years?”

“These are all questions that none of us can answer,” Ramses tells her.

“Did you try asking the Rakripa where they got it, and what they thought of it?”

“Yes,” Angela says, looking suddenly tired. “I asked them a lot of questions. Communication was difficult, and I eventually learned that it wasn’t only because our languages aren’t mutually intelligible. They were cagey. They were nice...but they didn’t want us to stick around. So we didn’t.”

Leona sighs. “Where is that lantern thing you were talking about?”

Ramses goes back down to engineering to retrieve it. “I’ve been all over this thing. I don’t think anything else needs to be replaced. What we need is power.”

“And I’m going to get it for you,” Leona says. She sets the lantern on the counter, and arranges her husband in front of it. She adjusts his arms and hands like a sexy golf instructor, or a pottery ghost. “Okay. Go for it.”