The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 25, 2398

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They found only one other recognizable name from the comprehensive list of world religions. And it was another major one. Bhulahai was obviously named for timeline mapper, Bhulan Cargill. No one on the team who knew her knew how she could have ended up here, but it’s not that important. The fact is that she’s here, or at least she was, and she either created a religion, or inspired other people to start it, perhaps by performing miracles that would seem mundane to them. That’s probably how they all got started; Pryce turned himself into a sabertooth tiger, and the cavemen who witnessed it started worshiping him as a god. In Bhulan’s case, Bhulahai appears to be a pretty nonviolent religion. It promotes learning from one’s mistakes, and trying to predict the future with high accuracy. That makes sense for someone with the actual ability to do that with real past events.

It’s hard to say much more with just the list itself. It doesn’t necessarily tell them the whole story. Any of these others could lead to the identity of someone else and they just don’t recognize the name, or the name of the religion is simply not shared by the founder or inspiration. They need to do more research on the history of faith in this reality. Things can change a lot over the literal aeons. “Someone is going to have to trace these all the way back to their origin stories,” Mateo realizes.

“I don’t really have time,” Leona laments. “I need to get back to the fusion project. They have been operating independently of me for a long time now. I’m worried what they’ve been up to.”

“I have quite a bit of my own work too,” Ramses says.

Mateo would do it himself, but he’s not quite—what’s the word he’s looking for?—smart enough. “I shouldn’t bother, I would just make mistakes. I think I have an idea of who could handle it, though.”

“Who are you thinking of?” Leona asks. “Angela and Alyssa have the business, and Marie is helping them out while Kivi is in the field, looking for Erlendr and Meredarchos.”

“No, not them.”

Leona thinks she knows who he’s talking about. “Oh, don’t bother the people living at the condo either. They’re not a part of this anymore.”

“No, they made their choices,” Mateo says, smiling. “How quickly you forget the children.” Mateo leaves the lab, and goes up to the residential floor. He takes a quick look in the common area. Finding it empty, he walks back and knocks on the McIver door.

Young Moray answers. “Hi.” He hasn’t been the same since Trina’s memorial service. “My sister isn’t here.” He frowns. “I mean, Alyssa isn’t. Obviously Trina isn’t anywhere at all, since she’s dead.” Yeah, he’s definitely not finished grieving.

Maybe the boy just needs something to take his mind off of what happened. This doesn’t really have anything to do with that. “Is your brother here?”

“Car, it’s for you!” Moray shouts into the apartment as he slides out of the way.

“I’m here for both of you, actually,” Mateo says, stepping into the unit. “Could I have a word?”

Carlin comes out of his room. “Are you kicking us out?”

“Why in the world would I kick you out?”

“I caused a lot of problems yesterday.”

“Those are called feelings,” Mateo clarifies, “not problems. We’re working that out together, and I don’t know exactly how to help you, but I know it doesn’t involve kicking you out on the street.”

“What is this about then?” Carlin questions.

Mateo hands him the tablet. “This is a list of every religion in your world. That’s great and all, but we really need to know more about how they each got started, when and where, and how they evolved over time. We need to know which ones branched off into which others, and get lists of key important historical or mythological figures.”

Carlin peruses the list. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, we would like you and Moray to take on this challenge.”

Carlin drops his arms loose. “You want us to do homework?”

It sounds to Mateo like these kids need some structure in their lives. They have had it a little easy since they’ve come to Kansas City in terms of daily life. It hasn’t been easy—they’ve made sacrifices—but Alyssa has a job, and the boys need their own responsibilities. It’s not good for them to do nothing. “Everyone has their assignments. This is really important to us. We need to know who else like us is here, and this research could be the key to finding that out.”

He looks back at the list. Moray comes over to look at it too. “This isn’t just busy work?” Carlin asks.

“Ain’t nobody got time for that.” Mateo assures them. “Four of the most popular faiths in the world were named after people we know personally. One of them is my cousin, and I’ve been looking for her since we fell into this reality.”

Carlin sets the tablet on the dining table. “We’ll do as you asked, but we’ll need some direction on precisely what you’re looking for. Written guidelines would be helpful.”

Mateo nods. “I’ll have Leona draw something up for you. I’m liable to make mistakes, or I might try this project on my own.” He turns to leave the apartment gracefully.

“Hey, Mister Matic?” Carlin stops him somberly. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, and just call me Mateo.” He sends a text message to Leona as he’s leaving the apartment. He then walks downstairs to find Marie.

She’s taking a shift in the security room. “Hey, you wanna get in on this?”

“Nah, I came here to ask you a question. Do you remember when you and I were alone together in the Mariana Trench? Those bug aliens attacked us, and were probably going to kill you until a couple of bulk travelers swooped in and saved us?”

“Yeah, of course,” Marie says. “That was shortly after I joined the team, long before I split in two, so I was still just Angela back then. Why?”

“What was the name of that guy who flew us from the rendezvous moon to the battle staging planet? Do you recall?”

“Yeah, he called himself The Hound, but his real name was...Hunter? No. Hold on...Chase.”

“Chase,” Mateo echoes. “That’s it. Chase what?”

“Chase...Palmer. Why?”

“He’s from another brane, and we didn’t spend much time with him, so I guess I forgot to put him on my running list. Have you ever heard of a religion called Palmeria?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 24, 2398

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Different countries have different laws and conventions, but the most common number to use is fourteen. Though not yet an adult in these jurisdictions, this is the age when an individual is considered legally free to choose their own religion. It’s difficult for the state to regulate what a given religion can do to and with their children, but certain morally universal laws have been passed to prevent abuse or any infringing on those children’s rights. Basically, yeah, you’re free to express your own religious practices, but if you indoctrinate children into believing the same without providing them with the proper education regarding alternatives, then you’re being a hypocrite...and that’s illegal. They have the right to figure that out themselves, and once they’ve been alive for fourteen years, society expects them to declare their beliefs. Of course, they convert to something else later, but people generally believe that—assuming all anti-indoctrination laws have been followed—they can make a well-informed decision at this point. Carlin McIver is at this age now. Today is his birthday.

There is nothing the team can do to solve the Meredarchos-Erlendr problem. Sure, Leona is a highly trained agent, and Mateo technically works for the same covert governmental organization, but that organization has many other well-qualified agents, operatives, and analysts. Everyone on the team is at the Lofts now, which currently excludes the late Cheyenne, her friend Bridgette, Heath, Vearden, and Arcadia. So there aren’t all that many people at the party, but the ones that are here are committed to making Carlin feel special, safe, happy, and ready to make his choice. They’re all sitting together in the common area on the second floor, eating his favorite foods, and trying to keep the mood light. It’s not working. Alyssa is being strong for her younger brothers, but they’re still struggling. Carlin is particularly upset, as he felt it was his duty to protect Trina from harm. He’s not angry at the team for letting her go. He’s angry at himself for letting them let her go. Again, he’s not an adult yet...but there is a loophole.

“Tamerism,” Carlin says quietly.

Not everyone heard. They’re still smiling from their respective conversations. “What did you say?” Alyssa asks him.

“I choose...Tamerism,” he elaborates slightly.

“Very funny,” Alyssa says.

“I’m being serious. I’m fourteen now, I get to choose, and I choose...Tamerism!” He’s raised his voice, but isn’t yelling yet.

Alyssa scowls. “You are not going to be a Tamerist!”

The visitors to this reality look over at Marie, who shrugs. She hasn’t heard of every single sect of every single faith.

“I have to protect my family, and this is how I do it!” Now he’s yelling.

“That is not how you do it, because we are a nonviolent family!”

“You said that all these people are our family now,” Carlin reasons, indicating the team.

“They are, and they’re working very hard to protect us,” Alyssa volleys. “And I know what you’re going to say; they’re using violence. Yes, to a degree, but that’s not what you’re going to do.”

“Forgive me for interjecting, but what’s happening here?” Leona asks.

“This country has maturity milestones. You can work at thirteen. You can choose your religion at fourteen. You can drive at fifteen. You can vote at sixteen. You can marry at seventeen.” She takes a beat. “You can fight at eighteen.”

“Okay...he’s not eighteen.”

“You can fight at fourteen,” Alyssa goes on, “if your chosen religion says that you can, and Tamerism is the only major one that says that. And it has to be one of the majors, because they’re the ones who get resources from the government. The problem is that Tamerism is fucking insane! The things that they believe, the things that they fight for...”

“I can fight for whatever I want!” Carlin claims.

“Once you reach a certain level,” Alyssa argues, “which takes, like, a year. Until then, you go where they tell you to go, and you kill who they tell you to kill.”

“Some people accelerate in the program.” Carlin crosses his arms in a huff.

“You are not going to join Tamerism.”

“You’re not allowed to say that to me!” Carlin cries.

“Seven witnesses will assure the authorities that I never actually said that.” She’s confident that everyone here will lie for her, except maybe Moray, who may be a little too young to understand the consequences. When the state says that you can choose your religion, they mean that no one can stop you, not even a legal guardian.

Carlin tightens his arms around himself.

“You want to join the mission to find those evil men, don’t you?” Alyssa guesses.

Carlin nods his head.

She nods back. It’s time for some tough love. “That’s not practical. By the time you level out of obligatory service, they’ll be found and dealt with. Don’t throw your life away. Tamerism is one of the hardest faiths to convert out of. They get dirt on you, they blackmail you. You don’t genuinely believe what they believe. They’ll know that, and they won’t let it slide. They’ll act like they do, but then they’ll slowly brainwash you.”

“Hold on a minute.” Ramses jumps up. There’s a little whiteboard on the refrigerator. He wipes the party shopping list away.  “How do you spell that, Tamerism?”

“T-A-M-E-R-I-S-M,” Alyssa answers.

He writes it up in black marker. “Marie, how do you spell the one that your husband is in, or was in, or whatever?”

“Daltomism. D-A-L-T-O-M-I-S-M.”

Ramses writes that one up there two. He breaks each word in half using a red marker, and adds different letters to the ends. Tamerlane. Dalton.

“Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?” Leona asks. “Two of the biggest religions in the world were founded, or perhaps inspired, by two people that we know personally? How did I not notice this before? Why did I not research the religions for clues?”

Mateo stands up, and regards the whiteboard. “I wonder if my cousin, Danica has one too.”

“Oh.” Marie approaches the whiteboard. She writes the word Anicari in black marker, and then adds a D to the front with the red marker.

Mateo nods as he’s staring at the names. “We need to make a list of every religion in the world. Something fishy is going on here. There may be more time travelers that we weren’t expecting to be involved.”

Leona retrieves her tablet from her bag.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 23, 2398

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Meredarchos’ plan presumably hinges on this idea that the team is not meant to know that he has transferred to Trina’s body. While the authorities were looking for Andile, he would apparently be free to move about the world unnoticed. Except that he would be noticed, because we’re talking about an unaccompanied six-year-old girl. His plan just doesn’t make any sense, especially considering the fact that Ramses knew about the secret refrigerated room, and would discover it eventually, if not immediately, which he did. Of course, little Trina was not capable of carrying Andile out of the building, so he couldn’t take the body with him after the transfer, but then why didn’t he just take Trina’s body, and make the transfer somewhere else. This is all sloppy work, and Ramses believes that he has an answer for why.

“Erlendr is in there.”

“They’re sharing a body,” Leona understands. “That’s always been a theory, but it doesn’t explain why they would use Trina’s instead of Andile’s, and risk us finding out.”

“I think it does explain it. They’re both alpha males, trying to control the outcome of whatever it is they’re doing together. They have their own objectives, and their own ways of accomplishing them. It’s sloppy because they can’t agree on anything, and neither of them will concede to the other, which means that nothing gets done right.”

“The problem with this possibility,” Mateo begins, “is that we have a short window to take advantage of their disarray. Eventually, one of two things will happen: either they’ll learn to work together—though this is less likely—or one will win out over the other. It depends on who is the stronger psychic, I would guess.”

“There’s at least one other option,” Leona says. “They may be able to split their minds to a second body.”

“Whose?” Mateo asks. “The only other vacant body we know of is Leona Reaver, who is being protected by layers and layers of agency security.”

“Who says it has to be vacant?” Ramses poses.

Mateo shakes his head. “If they can share the body of someone who doesn’t want to share it, why take Trina at all? Why not go straight to the guy who owns the pizza place down the block, or any other random stranger?”

“Erlendr may not be able to resist the poetry,” Rames suggests. “The pizza guy means nothing to us, but he doesn’t think we can hurt Trina. Again, sloppy.”

“Well, that’s another problem,” Leona says before a pause. “Can we? Can we hurt Trina’s body? Can we hurt any child?” That is the classic question issued in philosophy classes the world over. Would you be able to kill Hitler as a child, knowing what he would turn out to be? Except they don’t know what Meredarchos is, or will be, and Erlendr has already done his worst.

They’re silent for a moment before Mateo speaks again. “We still have the Livewire, right?”

“Yeah,” Ramses answers. “Meredarchos apparently doesn’t need it to control the Insulator of Life, so he didn’t steal it too.”

Mateo looks at his wife. “I would hate to kill someone who looks like you, but...”

“But it would be easier than someone who looks like little Trina, and honestly, we would probably ask Arcadia to actually do it for us.”

“If you place someone in Leona Reaver’s body, they’re not going to die,” Ramses reminds them. “They’ll fall back to her original timeline, and then be dropped right back here in that parking lot.”

Leona nods. “I’ve been thinking about that. I need you to do something for me.”

“Okay. What might that be?” Ramses is worried now.

“I need you to build me a prefrontal cortical scanner, unless they exist in this reality already, in which case, you would just need to procure one.”

“Lee-lee, what is that?” Mateo asks.

“Leona Reaver and Alt!Mateo keep subverting death because an extraction mirror keeps saving them. They thought that they couldn’t get out of the loop, but I believe that they’re not trying hard enough. It’s true that it is difficult to let yourself die when you see a way out, even when you’re suffering from suicidal thoughts. That’s why people who genuinely want to die can’t just strangle themselves with their bare hands. These decisions are made in the frontal lobe, and with enough science, you can manipulate which decisions an individual makes.”

“Are you talking about inventing a suicide inducer?” Mateo questions.

“They already exist in the main sequence, and probably the other advanced realities,” Leona reasons. “Or rather, they could. Whether anyone has ever actually used such technology is irrelevant. It’s possible regardless. I’m not talking about using it on all my enemies, but I think it might be worth the risk.”

Ramses is torn between the two of them. “I’ll investigate the possibilities, but I make no guarantees.”

Leona tilts her head as she’s standing up to leave. Sometimes she wishes this were a dictatorship. Sometimes.

“I know my wife,” Mateo says after she’s left. “You may also know her well enough to know what she’s really planning.”

“I do. She’s not interested in making Meredarchos and Erlendr suicidal. She’s going to copy her own brain, and upload all three consciousnesses into her alternate self’s head. She’ll kill herself, and the other two will just be along for the ride.”

“How do we suppose we stop her from doing that?”

“Not how you’re thinking,” Ramses warns. “Don’t forget, I know you too.”

“It’s the only play that makes sense.”

“Sacrificing yourself to prevent her from doing it isn’t a fair trade.”

“It won’t really be me. It’ll be a different me. But it won’t even be that, right? It’ll be a lesser me. No memories, no real thoughts...just the impulse to get out of the extraction mirror loop, and end it once and for all.”

“You can get semantic on me all you want, Mateo. This is a murder-suicide pact. Whatever happens, you both need to appreciate that truth.”

Mateo stands up as well. “It won’t be the first time, and I doubt it will be the last. And hey, won’t they end up in the afterlife simulation anyway?”

Ramses shakes his head. “I don’t think so. It’s an old timeline. We don’t believe it existed back then.” He watches Mateo leave the lab too. Then he unlocks his Completed equipment locker, and takes out his neural scanner. It’s funny that the two of them are under the impression that she’s the one who came up with the idea to copy consciousness. He was working on this for weeks, and now he knows how he’s going to use it. He’ll scan his own brain, and end this once and for all.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 22, 2398

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The agents are on the case. Cheyenne’s murder was a terrible tragedy, but in the end, it hasn’t changed anything. They still need to find Meredarchos, who is hiding out in Andile’s former body, and they still don’t know where he’s going. His motives are difficult to understand, to say the least. Why sneak into the Lofts, and how did he do it? Why kill her? For the Insulator of Life? If he’s as powerful as he sounds, death is probably not something he’s really ever had to worry about.

Angela calls Leona, Mateo, and Ramses into the security room. She’s been studying the footage, and might not have slept last night. At first, she was focused on making sure that Ramses didn’t do anything, or his body, anyway. After she cleared his name, though, she apparently wanted to go back through, and look more closely at the feeds. “How did he get in the building?” she poses.

“We don’t know. How?” Leona asks right back.

“I’ve seen every frame from every camera,” Angela begins, “and he doesn’t. He doesn’t step one foot in this place.”

“Okay... Do you need to sleep?”

“I’m fine, I’ve had some coffee,” Angela says. Coffee indeed, the trashcan is full of coffee pods. She takes another sip from her current cup of the stuff. “The reason I didn’t see him enter the building is because he was already inside.” She switches the monitors to the feeds from the fifteenth of this month, which is the day Rothko broke out of the blacksite, and—probably unintentionally—freed Meredarchos. It is here where they see him pick the lock on the side door, and enter the building. “I looked into the operation records from SD6. He came straight here. He knew exactly where we lived and worked, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.”

“What did he want to do?” Mateo asks.

Angela begins to step through the timeline. They see Meredarchos walk right up to the lab, let himself in using a badge that shouldn’t exist, and which he definitely shouldn’t have, then approach the Insulator of Life. He touches the top of it, and disappears in a flash of life.”

“Where did he go?” Alyssa asks. She wasn’t in the room before.

“That I don’t know,” Angela answers, all jittery. She tries to take another desperate sip, but Mateo takes it away from her.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Whatever, you can’t control me, I’ll just wait until you leave. Now, that’s not the interesting part. Here’s the interesting part.” She jumps back to the feed from two days ago, dragging one particular camera over to the main screen, so they can see it better that’s showing the outside of that side door. “Okay, so watch her—I mean him—leave.” Meredarchos does indeed leave the building, and walk out of frame. “Right quick, look at the distant viewer...there. Did you see that? His arm—well, I mean, Andile’s arm—appears in frame for a second, and then he goes back out. So it looks like he’s leaving, right? Wrong. He comes back. Now, we don’t see him coming back, but I know that he did. Because look at this camera.” She switches to the loading dock camera, where nothing happens. “Uhuh. See it right? Right?”

“See what?” Mateo questions. “Nothing happened.”

“Run it again,” Leona asks, leaning forward, and squinting at the screen.

Angela nods. “Okay.” She does so. “There! Aaaaaand there! And there, and there, and there.”

“Yeah, I see it,” Leona acknowledges.

“I see it too,” Ramses says. Of course the three smartest people in the room see what the other two don’t.

“What is it?” Alyssa asks them.

“There’s a leaf on the pavement. The wind picks up, and pushes it maybe a centimeter to the left. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s there. And it keeps repeating. This footage is on a loop. In fact, it loops the same five seconds over and over again for twenty-five minutes. That’s enough time to step out of the blindspot, and into the dock through the regular door.”

“I thought that’s why you guys put those lava lamps all over the place,” Alyssa points out. “Don’t they prevent loops from happening?”

“There are none outside. It’s not a mistake,” Leona tells her. “We made a conscious decision to not put them on the exterior.” Having lamps on the outside would draw too much attention. It seemed safer to assume that anyone wishing them harm from the outside, would try to make their way inside, where cameras would be waiting. That seemed good enough...unless they had explosives. “They would look suspicious. People would be asking why the hell they’re out there.”

“So, what does this mean?” Mateo poses. “Meredarchos snuck in here to kill Cheyenne for the thing he already had in his possession a week ago?”

“It’s all about Erlendr,” Leona realizes. “He knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep Ramses’ body forever, because we would figure it out, and we would spend untold resources to get him back if he escaped with it again, so he came up with a plan to get himself into Andile’s body, which is extra, and thusly less important. Because apparently Meredarchos has the ability to store full substrates in the Insulator, which we were to understand is not something it’s capable of.”

“So both Meredarchos and Erlendr are in Andile’s body?” Alyssa guesses.

“Either that, or Meredarchos just took the Insulator with plans to use it on some other poor unsuspecting soul later,” Leona suggests.

“That doesn’t explain why he came back into the building,” Angela reminds her. “What did he need in the basement? We swept the whole place, nothing was taken.”

“You didn’t sweep everything,” Ramses reveals solemnly.

“What are you talking about?” Leona asks.

“Okay, don’t get mad, but I found something in the basement when we first got here that I decided to keep secret in case I needed to store hazardous materials. I don’t have all my memories of when Erlendr was in my head, but I get fragments back. I think he put something in there.”

“Something, like what?”

“Something like...Trina’s body?”

“Oh my God,” Alyssa exclaims.

They all take a field trip to the basement to see whether what Ramses believes is true. He remembers digging in the dirt, and coming down here with something approximately human-sized, so he just put two and two together. Now he needs proof. He removes the false panel, and opens the secret refrigerator door, but they don’t find Trina’s body in there. Instead, they see Andile’s.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 21, 2398

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Bridgette is about to leave her room when realizes that she put her skirt on backwards. “Chey!” No response. She spins it around, glad she didn’t leave the apartment looking like that. Cheyenne would find it funny. “Chey!” Still no response. “Cheyenne, have you seen my bracelet! I don’t remember when I last wore it, but it’s not on my nightstand!” Why isn’t she responding? She needs to sleep a lot, even with the Insulator of Life, there’s no way she beat her out of bed this morning. She opens her door, and reaches over to knock on Cheyenne’s. “Are you there?” What is up with this? She takes the liberty of opening Cheyenne’s door. At first, it’s like she doesn’t see what she’s seeing. That’s not her, hanging there. It’s a big decoration for some kind of holiday that she’s not that familiar with. It’s a...it’s an illusion. There’s nothing there at all. This is some kind of trick. That Alyssa girl can make you see things, right. But why would she do that? Why would she make her see her best friend hanging from the rafter? That’s sick. This is sick. It’s a sick joke. “Help!” She flips the upturned chair upright, and jumps onto it, holding Cheyenne by the waist as high as she can. “HELP!” she screams again.

“The door is locked!” someone on the other side of it muffles back.

“Break it down!”

“Mateo!”

Mateo suddenly appears in the common area of the apartment.

“Get a knife!” Bridgette orders.

Mateo grabs a kitchen knife from the block. He runs into the room, squeezes himself onto the chair with her, and slices through the bedsheet. He tosses the knife to the corner just in time to catch them both before they fall to the floor.

Bridgette scrambles to remove the sheet from Cheyenne’s neck. She doesn’t check for a pulse, or a breath. She goes right into chest compressions and rescue breaths. By now, Leona and others have rushed into the apartment, having retrieved the master key.

Leona kneels down and takes Cheyenne’s wrist for some reason. “She’s gone.”

“No!”

“She’s cold,” Leona explains solemnly.

“So? It’s a little cold today. It’s the first day of fall, isn’t it?” Bridgette keeps going.

“Bridgette, stop.”

Bridgette stops. Her hands come off of her friend’s dead body, and land on her own knees as she leans back. “She’s so cold,” she agrees, tearing up. “She did this last night. Either I was here, or I came in, and didn’t check on her like I usually do. Why didn’t I check on her? If I had just...”

“Where is the Insulator of Life?” Mateo asks, looking around the room.

“Is that all you people care about?”

Leona takes both Bridgette’s hands in hers. “If it’s not here, where would it have gone? Would she have put it somewhere else?”

Bridgette wipes the saltwater from her eyes, and looks around too. “No. You were done with it, so she would have brought it back here, where it belongs.”

“She did,” Kivi says. “We were chatting, so I followed her in. I saw her set it on her desk.”

“And she wasn’t suicidal, right?” Leona asks.

“No, of course not.”

Leona looks up at Ramses, who sighs, and shuts his eyes in sadness and fear. “The boo-boo cage is on, right?”

“Yes,” Leona answers.

Ramses takes a little remote out of his pocket, and presses a button, dropping the remote in time for it to not teleport with him.

“Angela, check the security feeds. I want to know everything that happened in this building since I let who we thought was Ramses out of that cage.”

“You have a client meeting today,” Alyssa points out.

“You take it,” Angela requests.

“I’m not qualified or experienced, I’m just the receptionist.”

“You helped me edit the discussion notes. You know the material. I trust you. I need to watch the feeds. My mind can absorb the footage better than normal people.”

“Shouldn’t Kivi do it instead?” Alyssa suggests.

“Kivi needs to find someone for me,” Leona says, standing up.

“Who?” Bridgette questions.

“Erlendr Preston,” Leona answers with a burning hatred. “We may be able to rewrite history.”

Mateo wraps Cheyenne’s body in her blanket, and carries her out of the apartment. Bridgette doesn’t know where he’s taking her, or what they’re going to do with it. They’re not really a part of society anymore. Would they even be able to call the authorities on this matter? No, they have to handle it in-house. When they find out who did this, be it Ramses, Erlendr in Ramses’ body, or a random burglar, Bridgette is gonna deal with it herself. She’ll hurt anyone who tries to get in her way. They’re going to answer for their crimes, and she’s the only one who gets to determine what that means.

Leona doesn’t feel like it’s good for Bridgette’s mental health to be at The Lofts right now, so Marie escorts her to the condo. Heath has been sleeping in his old master bedroom, and Arcadia and Vearden sleep together, so that leaves the smaller room free for Bridgette’s use. She woke up well-rested this morning, but she’s feeling so tired. She can’t even keep her eyes open. She passes out on the bed.

She doesn’t wake up until night has fallen. The other four, including Marie, are sitting in the living room. “I’m hungry.”

“We’re warming a dish for you,” Vearden says, standing up, and heading for the kitchen area to retrieve it.

“What is it you people like to say,” Bridgette begins, “report?”

“Please, sit,” Marie recommends. “Angela finished with the security footage. The whereabouts of Ramses’ body has been accounted for all day yesterday, and all this morning. He fell asleep in his lab, having missed out on a lot of work, so a camera was always on him.” She hesitates to continue.

“Say it.”

“Andile Mhlangu was seen leaving your apartment, going down the stairs, and exiting through the side door.”

“I can’t remember who was in her body,” Bridgette admits.

Marie nods. “It was the man we’ve been looking for, Meredarchos.”

Bridgette nods. “That’s good,” she decides.

“Why would that be good?” Heath asks, afraid of the answer.

“Andile doesn’t need her body anymore, unlike Ramses. That means I can kill it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 20, 2398

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Leona is back from Orlando. She was supposed to return last night, but there was just too much to do. She’s here now, though, and she’s ready to move on to the next issue. They have to somehow get Erlendr’s consciousness out of Ramses’ brain without also removing Ramses’ consciousness, and they have to somehow know that they have been successful. Erlendr is not the best actor in the universe, but he’s been convincing enough before, and he doesn’t have to be the one in charge of the body to be in it. He could go dormant, let Ramses take over for a day or two, and then bubble back up to the surface. What they need is a way to confirm that there is a consciousness inside of the Insulator of Life, that it’s the person they’re expecting it to be, and that no one else is in there with him. Unfortunately, the reality’s foremost expert on the temporal object is Ramses himself, and he’s not a reliable source right now.

Cheyenne doesn’t know very much about it, but she’s agreed to help in any way she can by looking over Ramses’ notes on the Insulator in the lab, just in case something catches her eye. “I can’t find page three from the sixth.”

“The sixth of what?” These notes aren’t exactly organized. This is unlike Ramses. Erlendr must have scrambled them on purpose.

“September.”

Leona hunts for the page elsewhere on the table.

“It looks important,” Cheyenne says. The page before references a breakthrough

Arcadia comes into the lab with a big dumb smile on her face. “Hey, there!”

“I thought you were wiping your hands of all this,” Leona points out.

“I had to make something for you first.” Arcadia slaps a tablet on the table.

Leona picks it up. “What is this?”

“A personality test,” Arcadia explains.

“I see that. Do you prefer round or squircular watches? Does cilantro taste like soap? What is this for?”

“It’s the only way to test for a psychic invader,” she claims.

“How exactly?” Leona presses. She swipes down to the second page. “By asking them to describe the perfect April 25th of 2001?”

“It’s not the questions themselves that matter, it’s how the responder answers them. You know Ramses. You know how he talks, how he behaves. Ask these questions, and pay attention to his micromovements.”

Cheyenne looks at the tablet over Leona’s shoulder. “So if he were a stranger this would be useless?”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s so important to have friends and loved ones,” Arcadia lectures as if she hasn’t spent thousands of years not believing it.

Leona sighs and swipes through more of the questions. “Do you ever smell fudge where there is no fudge? You stole that from Warehouse 13.”

“Well,” Arcadia scoffs jokingly, “if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

“Can you help with the Insulator at all?” Leona asks as she puts the tablet down.

“I’m honestly not that familiar with it,” Arcadia admits. “I can tell you that it’s psychic, so you’re going to need a strong mind to control it.”

Leona widens her eyes, and sticks her turtle head out towards her.

Arcadia mimics the gesture. “Yeah, what?”

“You’re the psychic here, dummy,” Leona reminds her in a tone.

Arcadia shakes her head profusely. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re not tricking me into being responsible for helping Mister Abdulrashid. More to the point, I won’t let myself be the one to fail at it.”

“We need someone strong of mind. There is none better than a Preston.”

“You’re thinking of my sister. I’m an asshole, remember?”

“I remember,” Leona agrees. “Look, you’re the closest thing we have to a telepath, Third Rail power suppression system notwithstanding. If you can’t do it, no one can. I need you, Arcadia. I need you to go up against your father...one last time.”

“What makes you think I would do that?”

Cheyenne takes a half step forward. “You’re the one who put him in there in the first place.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Arcadia questions.

“I can’t tell you how I know this, but the reason he’s in this reality is because you trapped him in that thing for billions of years.”

“I haven’t done that yet,” Arcadia explains.

“I know,” Cheyenne tells her. “But you will. You do it in your future, which means you can do it now.”

Arcadia frowns, and looks back over at Leona. Her face gives in even more. “Okay, bring him up here. I’ll try to transfer his consciousness out, but you have to run the Turing test, and you can’t blame me if it doesn’t work.”

“That sounds fair,” Leona says. She holds her hand out.

“What, you want a cookie, or something?”

Leona just shakes it once.

Arcadia reaches out and shakes it too.

Mateo escorts Erlendr upstairs, keeping him in chains the whole time. They place him in the boo-boo cage that Ramses built for anyone trying to teleport in or out of the area. Leona connects the Livewire to the Insulator of Life, then hands the other end to Arcadia, so she can work her magic on it. The latter takes deep breaths to center herself. She doesn’t have much psychic power here, so she concentrates what she does have, and focuses on a singular objective. When she’s ready, she plugs the wire in, and commands Erlendr’s mind to come out of the body he stole, and into the Insulator. Leona then sticks the Insulator away in a miniature Faraday cage, and the Livewire in a separate cage. Mateo takes the wire away, and Cheyenne takes the Insulator. Leona proceeds to test Ramses on his behavior. After running through the questions twice, she’s as satisfied with the results as she’ll ever be. It will never not be a risk.

That night, Cheyenne takes the Insulator back upstairs to her apartment, happy to once more have it in her official possession. She was all right lending it out to these people, but she really needs it so she can get back to the future. She sits down to craft a thank you and goodbye letter to them that she plans to have delivered after she leaves to restart her life. Halfway through, the Insulator begins to glow. It doesn’t normally do that; not unless it’s being used to store a consciousness...or free one. The glow expands into a light, which sharpens into the shape of a human. When the light fades, Andile Mhlangu is standing before her, except it’s not Andile; it’s Meredarchos. This is where he escaped to. Before she can scream for help, he rips the topsheet from her bed, and wraps it around her neck. He squeezes tightly until the lights go out.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 19, 2398

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Meredarchos fell off the map. He never tried to sneak into The Lofts. He never showed up anywhere near the Fountain of Youth. If they were right about his motives in any sense, he probably connected with the past version of Erlendr, who they still haven’t found. They’re not even destined to find him. Erlendr left the universe, and so did Mateo, Leona, and Alyssa. When they came back, they may have come back to a different timeline. Nothing they think they know about the future can be trusted. They could be stuck with two Erlendrs forever. One of them must theoretically cross over to the main sequence to jump start the series of events that leads the team here in the first place, but they’re not even sure of that. This is all new territory, and they’re lost in it.

Leona and her SD6 team are preparing to leave the Orlando area tonight, but not before a permanent installation is established. A group of researchers and operatives will be monitoring the Fountain in case Meredarchos does ever show up, but will also be protecting and studying the Youth water bubbling up from the spring. That’s what they plan to do anyway. Anyone who steps foot into the water becomes immediately stricken with a strong sense of urgency to head for the center, where they will most likely be transported to Birket. So far, by a system of pulleys and ropes, it has not yet come to that, but it is always a risk. The team gave the government all the details about the phenomenon, and they’ve now wiped their hands of all responsibility.

Nothing is really happening today back at the team’s building. Leona is the only one capable of safely operating the Insulator of Life, plus the Livewire. Arcadia has agreed to help fix Ramses, but then she really does just want to get back to her normal life with Vearden and Heath. Angela’s work is presently on autopilot, so she’s bored, and upstairs in the lab, where she comes across the box of Rothko’s magical flashlights that were recovered from the grounds of the blacksite. There are eleven of them in total, of all different shapes and sizes. The largest is the size of her head, and the smallest can fit on a keychain. She lays them all out, arranging them according to color, because again, she’s bored. She wants to switch them on, but she knows that the others would not be happy. She finds herself focusing more on the penlight than the rest. Is it less powerful? Will it run out of energy sooner, if any of them run out at all? What can it do? What can she do with it? Ah, it doesn’t matter. She’s just curious about a unique thing.

“What are you doing?” Marie has secret agented her way into the room unheard.

Without even realizing that she’s doing it, Angela slips the penlight into the back pocket of her pants after she turns to face her alternate self. “I’m just making sure that everything is okay in this room. Why, what are you doing?”

“I was looking for you,” Marie explains.

“Well, I’m here.” Is this the first time she’s hidden something from someone in the centuries that she’s been alive? Well, not always alive, but whatever.

“My old boss called. He wants to speak with me about an incident that happened about four months ago? I did the math, that was when you were impersonating me, so I don’t know what he was talking about. He didn’t say who you had the problem with, because he assumed I would recall. Tell me what happened,” she asks gently.

“I don’t understand how you stood it for all those years. This world is more backwards than ours. I’ll tell you, but only if you promise not to get mad.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 18, 2398

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It was Vearden who figured it out. Rather, he made a guess, and the team has taken a gamble on it. He realized that when Arcadia explained to them that they should assume Erlendr knows everything that Ramses knows, she missed one detail. They must also assume that he recognizes that Arcadia is smart enough to know that, and would tell the team. The theory is that Erlendr convinced Meredarchos to start a trail from Kansas City to Nashville, then double back. They should have been suspicious the whole time. He was nowhere to be found after the escape until he suddenly popped up on a convenience store security feed in St. Louis. The next day he made a second appearance, all the way in Tennessee. He wasn’t heading for Orlando. He was drawing them away from his real target, which is the man who helped break him out of the blacksite.

Arcadia wasn’t lying, she just failed to see the entire plan. Meredarchos is a psychic from another universe. Temporal energy has nothing to do with that. Telepathic powers have always been a separate thing from time manipulation. They just so happen to be present in the same world. Those who possess both do so via coincidence more than anything. He has no use for immortality water of any kind. Being transported to Birket would have been a great way to escape North America, but then he would be trapped in Birket, and even with the ability to push thoughts into people’s minds, it would have been too much work to escape. He would have been better off going in any random direction, and trying to blend in with the civilians there while he learned how to take back control of his powers. Erlendr knew that his cover was not going to last forever. As intelligent as he is, he’s not a particularly good actor. He can mimic the behavior of those he knows best, and that really only includes his so-called family. He may have access to Ramses’ memories, but he doesn’t understand his personality.

He needed a way out, and Meredarchos is that way. It’s the only thing that really makes sense when trying to explain why he made any attempt to break Meredarchos or Rothko free. No matter what he says, Erlendr doesn’t do anything unless it’s for Erlendr. He cares about no one, and he doesn’t help people out of the kindness of his heart. He’s a predator, and a user. The Fountain of Youth couldn’t be anything but a red herring. Even so, they can’t risk it being the answer, so the team is splitting off. Believing more firmly that Meredarchos would be coming to help Erlendr, Arcadia stays behind with Mateo, along with most of the restidents of The Lofts. Leona and Vearden, meanwhile, will take the SD6 operatives to Florida, and wait for him there. If he does show up, Mateo will teleport Arcadia to their location. Her own psychic prowess is still their best weapon they have against his psychic invasions. They’re holding Erlendr-slash-Ramses in the basement, inside of a cage that was designed to transport gorillas. Alyssa comes down to give Mateo and Arcadia some lemonade. “I had a thought.”

“Okay,” Mateo says in a welcoming tone.

Alyssa is watching Ramses’ face for any reaction to her words. “There are two Erlendrs in the world right now, right? There’s the one who ran off with Ramses’ body, and then the one we found in that other universe, evidently from our future.”

Mateo nods. “Right.”

“So...which one is this Meredarchos guy on his way to rescue?”

Mateo looks to Erlendr too, to see if he gives the truth away. Unclear. “Crap.”