Juncture: A Serial Novel

Hiatus

2016-02-12T13:24:00.001-08:00

Due to a surprising workload this semester, along with some other things happening that are all taking up parts of my attention, I will have to be putting Juncture on hold for about 2-3 months.

I know that some of the more recent chapters haven't been up to snuff, and I hope to fix that, as well as work up a fairly sizeable backlog so I can be more timely.

See you guys in a while!

Juncture 5.8

2016-02-07T13:36:00.003-08:00

On the walk back, I kept trying to think of people I had met recently. The same odd sensation, the weird feeling of memories getting written as I thought them persisted. When I made it back to my loft, I made sure to avoid the kitchen and make a beeline to my office. Although I was hungry since having puked up the food I had eaten earlier, I had to attend to more important business.

I flicked on the lights and closed the door behind me. The room was as boring as I had been able to make it. There was a chestnut desk covered with brown accordion folders. Most of them were filled with generic paperwork that could be applicable for any number of different careers. In front of the desk was a large leather office chair, which was the most comfortable thing I’d ever sat in.

I sat down and pulled open one of the desk drawers. Inside was another nondescript brown folder. I pulled it out of the drawer and slipped my hand inside. There was a sheet of paper, slightly thicker than a normal one. In reality, it was one of the coolest pieces of technology that the OST had available.

The sheet looked like a conversation from a screenplay. Lines began with a name, followed by a bunch of text. I read through the last couple of lines.

“Marc: Still no results. She won’t talk.

Seph: Well you have nothing but time, don’t worry about it. If you need anything else, I’ll be on call.”

I put the paper down on the middle of the desk, and unfolded the bottom half. It was what looked like a printed image of a computer keyboard.

Yeah, laptops had gotten a lot more portable.

I began typing. The words showed up on the top ‘screen’ as I typed them.

“Marc: It’s been a week for me. I think I found an anomaly.

Seph: What is it?

Marc: Try and remember something about someone you met recently. Think about the small details.

Seph: …Huh. That’s weird. And you’ve been experiencing this?

Marc: Yeah. Do you know if there are any previously recorded anomalies like this? I have a hunch that it may be caused with intent, but I have no idea who would do something like this.

Seph: Well we don’t even know if this is a natural occurrence yet. I’ll get the research department to look into it, but meanwhile, you need to get this info on King. We’re going to have to keep that as our biggest priority.

Marc: Okay. Any tips? I don’t want to have to torture her.

Seph: Sorry, Marc. That’s not really my area of expertise, you know that.

Marc: Right, right. I guess I’ll have to get back to you when I get some information.

Seph: Yup. I’ll still be here.

I folded the piece of paper back up, slid it into the folder, and put the folder back into the drawer. I had gotten used to the weird mode of communication. I had been here for over two years, and yet it was still the same day that I had left for Seph.

See, travel and information interaction to and from the OST headquarters had some weird, apparently arbitrary, probably necessary rules. For one, you could never come back to the base before you had left. You also couldn’t send information back to before you had left.

This kept the information flow to and from the OST strictly linear. There were disadvantages, but I was told that it made the paperwork a hell of a lot easier.

I left the office and went to the kitchen. There was a large analog clock just above the gas oven range, and I noticed that it was late. A quick glance out the window corroborated this evidence. The light was fading quickly, and the sky was a deep pink, with scattered clouds blocking out much of the light which remained.

I decided that I would start cooking dinner, since the workday was almost over. I pulled out a pot, cutting board, and a sharp knife. Then I grabbed a bunch of aromatic vegetables; carrots, celery, and onions.

I began chopping. Two years was a whole lot of time to practice new skills, especially since I didn’t have a traditional job taking up eight hours of each day. Because of that, I had gotten pretty good at cooking. I had to eat every day, so it had made sense to learn.

Within minutes, the vegetables were chopped into tiny wedges. I tossed them into the heating pan, followed by a spray of vegetable oil. The contents began to hiss as soon as they hit the bottom of the pan, and fairly soon the delicious smell of cooking vegetables filled the apartment.

I pulled a small package that was wrapped in oiled paper out of the fridge. Inside was some deboned chicken breast that I had gotten prepared at a nearby butcher’s shop. I quickly cut it into small strips, and prepared to throw them into the pot once the vegetables had finished.

I began to hum – it was just a habit that I had picked up whenever I was doing work with my hands. There was no tune really; I had never quite gotten the hang of it. I couldn’t really sing, either. It was just an odd drone, long held notes. It was calming.

The humming was probably why I didn’t notice that the door opened until several minutes later. I was stirring the pot, to which I had added a large quantity of water, a packet of bones, and a bunch of spices.

I covered the pot and was about to turn around when a pair of arms gripped me around my stomach. My back straightened instinctively and I turned, trying to pry the hands off. When I saw who it was, I managed to relax myself before I could hurt them.

It was Derry.

Juncture 5.7

2016-02-04T19:55:00.001-08:00

Three weeks had passed. Three weeks, and I was no closer to finding out anything about King and his crew than I was before I had captured his agent. Although I wasn’t torturing her in any real way, I was strictly limiting her food and liquid intake. My hope was that at a certain threshold, she would become delirious and details would pour out like water.

If that didn’t end up happening? I could resort to other, more extreme forms of questioning. During the years that I had been working for the OST I had been in a large number of sticky situations, in which I would have to simply endure whatever was being dealt to me in order to escape.

Unconsciously, I straightened and bent my arm, the joint clicking as I did. It was still difficult to think about many of the things that I had gone through. They all felt fresh, as if the memories had been imprinted yesterday. But that tends to happen with physical trauma; the memories don’t lessen over time.

I unlocked the door to the warehouse. She was sitting in the chair, her head leaning forward; her hair greasy and matted. I walked over to her, and picked up the plastic bucket that was next to the chair – I had to be careful to breathe through my mouth. It was disgusting. I carried it over to a plumbing unit on the far side of the building and slopped it into the open, waiting pipe.

“So, have anything to tell me?” I asked as I walked back over to my prisoner. “If you do, I might even be persuaded to give you a little extra water this week.” I kneeled in front of her, putting my hand on her chin and pulling her face up so she was looking at me.

Her eyes were dull – as they had been after the first two weeks. She smelled terrible; almost as bad as the bucket.

She refused to meet my gaze. I gripper the lower half of her face, pinching her cheeks in, dragging her eyes to mine. She finally acceded, and a layer of steel that hadn’t been there enveloped her. Her eyebrows knit together in a look of defiance.

“Fuck… you,” I heard in an undertone. Her voice was dry and scratchy. Anger bubbled up, and I gripped her jaw harder. When I released her, she grunted and her head fell – she didn’t have the energy to hold it up. There were small marks where my fingernails had dug into her skin.

All of a sudden bile bubbled up in my throat.

This is wrong.

I felt it almost too late. Revulsion for what I was doing washed over me, and I ran outside, trying to look casual. As soon as I had closed the door to the warehouse all of the food that I had eaten in the past day escaped through my mouth.

I stayed there for the better part of ten minutes; kneeling on the floor waiting for the next round of bitter nausea to gut-punch me. I couldn’t explain just what had overcame me, but the entire situation felt immensely, abstractly wrong.

It was as if I was still that dumb, impressionable teenager. As if I hadn’t gone through all hell since I joined the OST. All at once I was certain that something weird had happened.

My immediate thought was that some wonky stuff was happening with time travel. I’d experienced time travel though, it was nothing like this. There was no sudden realization, it was just – travel, only you ended up in a different when instead of a different where.

No, this was something entirely different. I would have to contact someone at OST to ask them if they had any information on this type of thing.

Maybe Seph, she was – there was a momentary hitch in my thoughts. For a second, all I had was a name. Then, information and memories flooded in, and I remembered who she was.

That clinched it – something was up. It was like my current existence was a bad computer simulation, and it was taking some time to retrieve the information.

In the meantime, I had to finish. I still needed the information from this woman; she was a danger to her current society. I steeled myself and re-entered the dark room.

Her head twitched a little as the door squealed shut. I didn’t exchange any words with her, just walked over to the side of the room where the storage was. I grabbed a bottle of water and turned to walk back over to the prisoner. I had another thought, and turned back around, grabbing a second bottle and a can of beans.

I put the water bottles down in front of her, then opened the can and poured it into a clean, curved, plastic bowl. I didn’t want her to be able to slice my face open with the metal can.

I gently placed the bowl down in front of her. She managed to lift her head up to lock eyes with me.

I saw hatred – but deep in the back, in the darkest recesses of her pupils, I could see that she was just as scared as I was. I felt her see the same fear in my eyes. I broke off the contact.

As I began walking out, I heard a noise behind me. I turned. She had said something, but I hadn’t heard it. She was looking down again.

I walked out of the building, breathing in deep gulps of the fresh air. I would come back tomorrow, instead of waiting multiple days. As much as it pained me to do this, I would go back. I would get the information that we needed.

In the meantime, I had a lot to discuss with Seph, and quite possibly a whole host of other people at the OST. This sudden phenomena needed to be explained, and it needed to be explained fast.

Juncture 5.6

2016-01-31T18:42:00.002-08:00

Frederick leaned forward, cupping his mug of coffee tightly in both hands. Steam rolled up from the coffee inside, twirling and spiraling up until it slowly dissipated.

“So before we get any further, you understand that everything I’m saying is true, right?” He asked. Apparently the police hadn’t believed him when he told them about futuristic weapons. That made sense.

“Absolutely, I will,” I answered. It was the go to response; interested, but not too eager. “I understand if it’s something weird. I’ve seen a lot of strange things during my life - I’ll understand.”

He nodded, sending wisps of steam curling around his face. “It was last week, Thursday night. I had finished – it was a good day. I had managed to sell this one naggling bracelet that had been taking up inventory space. It was a beautiful piece, though; just a bit too expensive.”

“So, I had sold the bracelet, and the shop was empty. I was locking up the display shelves, and as I finished the last one the bell above the door chimed. It was right about closing, so I was going to tell them that. But when I looked up I saw the barrel of something like a gun aimed at me.”

“I dropped, thanks to my military training. There was an explosion above me and all of the glass in the building shattered. A chunk of something caught me in the back of the head, I’m still not sure what it was. I was awake, but everything was a blur. The people were talking, one guy and one girl. They took everything that was in the display cases.”

“They said something. Most of the words were gibberish, of course, but I could make out some things.”

He paused to take a sip, and I interjected with, “Such as what?”

“I heard what I think were names, or monikers. One of them called the other “Jack”. The other said something about a “King”. They left soon after.”

“I’m so sorry that you had to go through that,” I said. While he had been talking, I had been scanning the area around us. I had brought us to a public area on purpose. If the thieves had thought that Frederick had been dead when they left, they could have begun searching for him after newspapers started interviewing him.

It was cruel, I know, but using him as bait was the easiest way for me to draw them out of hiding. So far nobody had done anything to garner my suspicions, but at the mention of King I saw a woman wearing sunglasses sitting at a nearby table suddenly sit still.

It was something that happened to people inexperienced at hiding secrets. They tried so hard to mask any surprise that they swung all the way over to the other side, stopping all movement.

I took a sip casually and stood up. “Excuse me for a second, Frederick. Something’s come up. I’ll be right back.”

I walked in the opposite direction of the woman, and when she went out of view behind the café, I ran around the back of the building. I came back around, and she hadn’t moved. Perfect. I stalked up behind her. When I got close enough I pulled out the pen I carried with me. Slowly, I leaned down and pressed it into her spine.

“Don’t move,” I whispered as menacingly as I could. Her spine straightened and I dug in with the pen. “I said don’t move!”

I sat down next to her, keeping my hand firmly behind her back. She didn’t turn to face me. It seemed like she was holding her breath.

“Now you’re gonna tell me what I want to know, okay?” I said, “Nod if you understand.” She nodded.

“Good. Who are you?”

She didn’t answer.

“I said, who are you?” I gritted my teeth and spat the words. She whispered something, and I leaned in to hear her better.

“-Five. Four. Three-“ I realized too late. I shot up and opened my mouth to tell Frederick to duck, to run, to do anything. He lifted his cup for a drink.

Bang.

Frederick got a surprised look on his face. He stopped mid-sip and looked down. Blood began to stain a hole in his yellow plaid shirt. He put the mug down, slowly lifted his hand up to the spot.

Then he collapsed sideways, the chair clattering next to him. Movement entered the café area and surrounding street. People began shouting and running in all different directions. The woman got up, and I grabbed the back of her jacket, digging the pen in.

“No, you’re not going anywhere. You’re coming with me.” She nodded. I began steering her away from the café as fast as I could, not wasting time to glance backward at Frederick. From what I could tell he was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die.

“You’re some sort of sick monster, do you know that?” I said. She scoffed, and answered. Her voice had a thick quality to it, like she had a throat full of molasses.

“As if you’re any better, leading a lady away at gunpoint.” I knew her for maybe thirty seconds and she was already getting on my nerves.

I led her down the streets to a nearby warehouse. The OST had rented safe spaces in almost every time period in almost every civilized area, places to go if an agent was in trouble.

I unlocked the door and flicked the lights on in the room. There were cans and cans of food, along with an odd machine that I learned could communicate with the OST headquarters.

Most importantly, there was a set of handcuffs and a chair, with the legs connected to the floor via concrete. I forcefully sat her down in it, and handcuffed her to the chair. I took a can of food and emptied it into a round bowl, then placed that on the floor in front of her.

“I’ll be back. You’re going to tell me why the hell you stole that man’s jewelry, then killed him. You’re going to tell me how you did it.”

“And you’re going to tell me who sent you.”

Juncture 5.5

2016-01-28T20:21:00.002-08:00

There was a tinkling noise as I opened the door to the jewelry store. It was called Mason’s, and it didn’t take long to find. The name was embellished over the top of the storefront in garish, cursive letters. The exterior of the building was shockingly different than the inside, though. Here, shattered glass was the main feature, making appearances throughout the room; on the floor, on counters, and even embedded in some of the walls.

On the far side of the room, there was a dark, almost perfectly circular burn mark plastered on the wall. Whatever tool or weapon had done that wasn’t from this time, that was certain. I stepped gingerly over the floor, being careful to not puncture myself with the strewn glass.

The owner of the store was behind one of the shattered countertops, sweeping up the mess. I felt a pang of pity for him; he shouldn’t have had to deal with something like this. Hell, he probably couldn’t comprehend exactly what happened; nuclear cell batteries for weapons this powerful were eons away.

I examined him. Cold reading was a skill that I had picked up over the years, and it hadn’t stopped being useful. A quick look up and down; he wasn’t wearing any visible bandages, so he hadn’t actually been harmed during the robbery.

He wasn’t a bad-looking man necessarily. I would even say that he would have been quite attractive if he were ten or twenty years younger. His hair was just beginning to go grey, but it had already managed to recede from his forehead quite a bit. He was kind of short, and was in the beginning stages of the tragic weight-gain of middle age.

I walked over to the counter, and he held up a finger. I stopped, and he continued sweeping. It was only after several seconds that he looked up at me. His eyes flickered to my hat and his face turned to a look of distrust.

That was one of the disadvantages of the press disguise.

“I’m very sorry, but I’m not conducting interviews right now,” the man said as he dumped a full dustpan into a nearby trash can. The glass made a high-pitched clinking noise as it cascaded in.

“That’s… fine,” I answered, “I’m not here on business. I actually live right near here. In the Towers, actually.” His face softened a little bit, but he still looked suspicious. I took off the hat and held it in both hands for good measure. “I was worried when I heard about the robbery, so I came to check out what happened.”

“Oh. Engaged, citizen I see,” he said with a chuckle. “We don’t get too many of those anymore. The times sure are changing.”

“Heh, yeah it’s unfortunate.” I put my hat down on one of the least shattered surfaces and held out a hand to the man. “I’m Marc.” The man gingerly put down his broom against the scorched wall and grasped mine. His grip was surprisingly firm.

“Frederick. Frederick Mason. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.” He looked me in the eyes as he said it, and managed to make me believe it. This guy was legitimate; he meant it. That was extraordinarily rare, and I was mildly taken aback.

“Here’s an idea:” I said as I pulled my hand back, “You look like you could use a break from cleaning. I could use a coffee. Why don’t I treat you to lunch?”

Frederick nodded, “Well sure. I’m always willing to eat out on another man’s treat.” He chuckled at his joke. “Just let me put this broom away and lock up.”

At that, I gave a pointed look at the windows lined next to the doors. They weren’t there enough to prevent anybody from walking in and grabbing… there was nothing to grab either. The place was cleaned out by King’s crew. Nevertheless, Frederick took his time twisting the key in the old, rusty lock, and shaking the door to ensure that it was well and truly locked.

While he was doing this, I crossed over through the shattered window back into the shop, and back out. He didn’t notice.

We walked to a nearby café, a small outdoor affair – complete with umbrellas and wicker chairs. As soon as we sat down a waitress came over and took our order. I got a coffee with sugar and cream, and a bagel, Frederick got a black coffee and an open-face egg sandwich.

We shot the shit until our food came out. I managed to finagle some information out of him that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Our discussion hit on a lot of topics about the area, the changing times, his shop. After a while, I finally managed to convince him to tell me about the robbery.

Juncture 5.4

2016-01-24T18:06:00.004-08:00

I swung my legs up over the side of the bed, shaking it as little as possible. I walked out into the hall and went into the small bathroom. I grabbed my toothbrush that was sitting on the edge of the sink, squirted a little bit of toothpaste onto it, and began brushing.

I looked into the mirror. I hardly recognized myself. There was a healthy amount of scruff on my face, but not quite what would constitute a full beard. I spat, opened up the cabinet behind the mirror, and pulled out my electric trimmer.

After several minutes the growth on my face had been cut down to a manageable shadow. I turned the trimmer off and stowed it away again. I went back into the bedroom to get dressed.

I pulled open the closet in my room, and selected a pair of khakis. After that, I grabbed a dark brown oxford shirt and slid it on, buttoning it up as I went.

I grabbed a brown belt, socks, brown loafers, and a plain, light-blue tie, and assembled them in all of the proper places. Then I walked over to the small kitchen that came with the loft to prepare breakfast.

There were a couple of eggs in a cardboard carton in the fridge, and I picked up two of them to fry. I also cut two pieces of toast off of the loaf of bread on the counter, and put them on a plate.

I grabbed a pan from the cupboard over the stove and pulled out an iron pan, putting it on the stove and turning on the heat.

Shoot. I had forgotten the butter. I went back to the refrigerator and pulled out a pat, and put it down to sizzle on the hot pan. I placed the bread on it and held it down for a few seconds with my fingers, then flipped it over. As it toasted, I located a clean spatula for the eggs.

I pulled the toast out of the pan and cracked the eggs into it. After several minutes I carefully flipped them, being careful as to not crack the yolks. When they were done I laid them across the toast and pierced the yolk with one of the pointed corners of the spatula. They oozed out, thick and yellow.

I grabbed the plate and walked over to the small circular table just outside of the kitchen, where I left it out, along with a fork, knife, and fresh-brewed coffee. I had things to do.

I grabbed my hat from the rack near the door as I left. It was a light tan fedora with a newscard in the rim. It had gotten me into more places than any acting I could have done. That, along with a matching long coat finished my ensemble. I exited the apartment, locked the door behind me, and began the long walk down seven flights of stairs.

I exited into the warm air of Chicago. A sudden strong breeze almost blew the hat off of my head, but I grabbed it quickly to ensure that it stayed where it belonged. At first the wind had bothered me, but I had grown to appreciate it, as I had much of the local area.

It was funny, it didn’t really feel like that much time had passed. It almost felt as if I had just gone on my first mission yesterday again. I laughed, letting the fresh air seep into my lungs. I was such a novice back then it almost made me cringe.

I walked down the side road until I hit Main Street. Once there I stood on the corner, looking around. This had been my modus operandi for the time that I’d been here. I was a member of the press; I was on the lookout for a story. If nothing presented itself, then I wasn’t harming anybody just by standing there.

The details of this mission weren’t very specific, although I had, from the time that I’d spent here, learned what it was. Unfortunately – or fortunately, from my point of view – I had to befriend a few key people in order to accomplish my goal. This meant that I’d spent upward of two years here.

Two years pretending to be someone who I’m not was exceedingly difficult. I had gotten to keep my first name, but I had grown more used to calling myself “Richards” than “Antony”. Of course, the years of travel and missions before that had also helped prepare me for that.

Years?
I shook my head as an odd shiver ran up my spine, as if someone had stepped on my grave.

I pulled out the notebook that was in my coat pocket, shortly followed by the fancy pen I kept with me at all times. These, along with my hat, had combined to form a nearly impenetrable defense for anyone who would see me and think to question my motives.

The target I had for today was a little guy who ran a jewelry shop. He was robbed a couple of days ago, by some very heavily-armed thugs, and I had a sneaking suspicion that they could be connected to the guys I was looking for. They had weapons that were apparently like nothing that the owner had ever seen, weird guns that had glowing ends and fired beams of light.

He could have been crazy… or they could have access to technology beyond what was available here. The guy I was looking for was known to the OST as King, and he was a weapons manufacturer. He had a scary TA, one that somehow let him make weapons that hadn’t been invented yet. He could build things that he had no way of knowing how they worked.

It was worrisome, to say the least. With a sigh, I stepped off of the corner and began walking toward the jewelry store.

Juncture 5.3

2016-01-21T11:48:00.006-08:00

To get to Dierdre’s office, I had to walk up a surprisingly large amount of stairs. This was odd because so far, everywhere I’d visited in the building had been on the same level. This was the first that had any difference in elevation.

I stopped to catch my breath at the top of the stairs. I had been walking for what felt like hours, aeons even. Objectively it was presumably around five, maybe six minutes. I reasoned that it was probably some sort of temporal anomaly around the area put there to give ample time to warm Dierdre should anyone be attempting to get at her.

Yeah. That was definitely it.

After I had taken some time to catch my breath and gather my wits around me, I continued on my way. The hall up here was much smaller than the lower ones. They were also darker. The halls below were a bullet-grey, but the section of the building that I was in had an eerie red hue on the metal.

At the end of the hall was a lone steel door with what looked like several hundred industrial bolts and locks. I walked cautiously over to it.

Nothing happened. It didn’t swing open eerily, there was no clangor as I approached. Just a quiet hall with a heavy door at the end. I was kind of let down; the ambiance had made me feel like I was in some sort of horror movie.

I lifted my fist and knocked. As my fist made impact with the metal, I felt an odd shock leap from the door to my knuckles. I rapped once and pulled back instinctively.

Several seconds passed unspectacularly. Suddenly, all of the locks pulled back and unlatched themselves simultaneously, creating a huge noise. That was shortly followed by the door itself swinging open, to reveal the room behind it.

It continued the trend of defying my expectations. The interior walls were a bright, sunny yellow, studded with impressive modernistic paintings. The entire room was carpeted in thick, orange shag carpet.

I walked in and my shoes were enveloped in the carpet. There was another door across from the small foyer, though this one was wooden and old-looking. I stepped forward, sinking into the surprisingly deep carpet, and knocked again. I was incredibly confused. It was as if the entire setup of the office was meant solely to distract people who enter.

Once again, some time passed, then the ornately carved swung open. An elderly looking lady stood behind it.

She had her silver hair up in a severe bun, and an enormous pair of thick glasses covering the majority of her face. They made her eyes look enormous, and the rest of her look tiny. She was leaning on a thin, shiny black cane.

“Hello Marc,” she began, “Sit down please.” She pointed at two stools next to an open window. It was the first window I’d seen in the entirety of the facility.

“Sorry, are you…?” I left the question hanging as I walked over to the stool.

“Dierdre? Yes, that’s me. Surprised, are you?” She asked, raising one thin eyebrow as she limped over to the other stool.

“Oh, okay. Do you want some help?” I asked as I reached out to help her steady herself. She shook her head and waved a hand.

“So you have an issue,” she said as she righted herself on the seat and laid the cane across her lap. I sat down on the other stool.

“Yeah, it’s about the mission I was given.” I answered. She didn’t say anything, didn’t argue or anything, so I continued. “I don’t think that I can do another one so soon. I just finished getting the scrolls from Pompeii yesterday, and I can’t handle another one right now. It’s like, I’m tired. I saw people who died right after I met them. I’m – I’m fatigued. I don’t have the emotional endurance to do something again without any time in between.”

The entire time I monologued, Dierdre was watching me and listening with a patient look on her face. When I had finished, she spoke up.

“Now, I understand what you’re saying; however, I think you’re mistaken or a few reasons. For one, I heard that you actually managed to ensure the safety of upwards of ten people in Pompeii. That’s an incredible achievement, and one that should absolutely not go unspoken.”

“Secondly, I don’t believe you actually read the envelope. Do you have it with you?” I nodded and pulled the slightly crumpled envelope out of my jacket pocket, straightened it out on my pant leg, and handed it to her.

As she took it I felt the urge to defend myself to her. “Well, I don’t know if you know this or not, but-“

“You have dyslexia, and have trouble reading the written word. Yes, I know. It’s on your file,” she said with a tight smile.

“Uh, yeah. So I didn’t read it. I don’t know what it says.”

“That’s fine,” Dierdre responded. She pulled the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it so it made a sharp, crisp sound. “In its essence, it is a letter of congratulation for your outstanding efforts during your mission. It also has, right here at the bottom,” she pointed to the area she was speaking about, “several suggestions for excellent holidays you can take during the next week. Oh, I went on this one several years back, the trip to the Andes before civilization took root. The view is breathtaking, let me tell you.”

She stopped, then continued, “Sorry, I’m getting off track. Anyhow, the issue you came up here for was that you couldn’t do a mission right now, yes? Problem solved. You have a week to yourself. You may go anywhere, and anywhen, at your leisure.” She got off of her stool and leaned on the cane, holding the letter out to me. “Was that all?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, I’m good. Thank you,” I said. I grabbed the letter and envelope and turned to leave, thought of something, and turned back around. “Actually, I do have a question. I can go anywhere over the next week? I just ask someone?”

“Yes. Our travel facilities are yours to use.” Dierdre said. “Though be warned, you can’t go to the same time that you’ve been before. It doesn’t work.”

“Okay. Thank you so much,” I said.

…

The next day I departed. When I arrived at my trip’s beginning, I was on a familiar hill. The once-lush grass was now yellow and grey, shorter and dying. This time I had come wearing thin cloth clothing and a sack tightly packed with several day’s essentials, held up by two rope straps around my shoulders.

I began my hike, following the crumbling aqueducts weaving their way through the hills. Here and there they would end, with hunks of marble fallen in piles and dusty water dripping off of the ends. My hike took longer than it had before. I was in no hurry.

The view was less beautiful than it had been, but it was more impressive overall. The whole area had a somewhat apocalyptic feel to it, yet the skies were blue, there were no clouds, and I could see verdant forests off in the distance.

When night fell I pulled all of the camping necessities out of my bag. A makeshift tent, fire starters, and tightly packed dehydrated food. In a matter of hours, I was comfortably seated next to a roaring fire, chewing on strips of meat and listening to music on a small earphone. That was my one concession, the only non-era-appropriate equipment I had brought along. I nodded my head to the sound of Silver Sun Pickups until sleep took me.

Late afternoon the next day, I arrived in old Pompeii. The area was already drastically different. Every inch of space was grey, coated in ash and soot. People lined the streets. Former people, statues now. It was true what I’d heard. They were frozen in place. But these people were none of my interest. I kept walking on the familiar streets until I found a building.

The inside of the inn was dark enough that I had to close my eyes to get acclimated. Once I did, I began my search. I cleaved my way through the rooms, searching for any more of the eerie statues.

When I had finished my search I still hadn’t found anybody. Julius and his family had made it out safe. The weight in my stomach dampened. I had to certify it for myself, otherwise I would never have believed that they made it out alive.

I slept in the same room as I had before, and left in the morning.

Juncture 5.2

2016-01-18T00:54:00.000-08:00

Bullshit. There was no way I could go on another assignment so soon after this one. Whoever was giving out these missions was clearly doing something wrong. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally fatigued. I couldn’t do it.

I tore open the envelope, tearing off a piece of the paper flap that kept it closed. Inside it was a small folded sheet of lined paper. As I spread it open it became apparent that the note was hand-written, not typed. It was also noticeably old, yellow spots beginning at the corners of the paper and spreading inward in splotchy lines.

I wasn’t willing to put up with this right now. I folded the paper and shoved it back into the envelope, crushing the paper slightly. I tossed it on the floor next to my bed, and then flopped myself onto the bed.

I was asleep within minutes, and eerily vivid dreams weaved and bobbed in front of my eyes. The first one, as I recalled it, consisted of me standing in the center of an apocalypse. Blood-red stone and fire was hailing down upon my head, and everything in the distance was consumed in flames.

I was in a glowing-orange cage, and when I tried to touch it I burned my hand. Just on the outside of my enclosure were a group of devils encircling the cage. As I walked up to each one in turn, they spat angry words at me, gibberish, but invective nonetheless. Their skin was crisscrossed with lines of black, as if their skin was molten lava.

The next scene was a familiar one; I was walking in the middle of a rainstorm, the cold chilling me to my core. As I walked, I heard a noise behind me. I turned around, only to see a car rushing toward me. As it got closer, its front bumper split, revealing sharp, jagged teeth. I turned to run, but the car was too fast, and I saw the teeth close in front of me.

For what felt like a while, I was stuck in darkness, but to me it didn’t feel like normal darkness. It was almost like some sort of advanced darkness, thick and heavy, holding me in place. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I could barely think. I turned my head, only to feel part of it stay in place.

I was falling. The odd darkness passed in thick wisps and clouds, to be replaced with an expansive skyscape. I managed to flip myself toward the ground, only to see a vast ocean quickly closing in on me. As I was about to scream I landed in the water, sending bubbles careening upward behind me. I felt intense pain where I landed, spreading from my right shoulder all the way down to my hip.

It was getting darker again, and as I fell further and further, I realized that my eyes were closed. I opened them.

I was on the floor next to my bed, and the lights were off. I groggily sat up and the same pain I felt in the dream hit. I had fallen off of the bed sometime during the night, and pulled some muscle in my side.

I got back on the bed, being careful to not exert the side of me that was catching on itself, and laid down facing the ceiling.

Another mission?

I couldn’t do it yet. I knew that. I would talk to Dierdre in the morning.

(Author’s note: I apologize for the lateness of some of the previous chapters, and the length of this one specifically. I’ve been on holiday, and travel has been a reoccurring theme. We should be back on schedule with an extended chapter on Thursday. Thanks.)

Juncture 5.1

2016-01-14T07:08:00.004-08:00

“-did the best we could given the time constraints, and hey, at least you managed to convince Julius to get out. You saved him and his entire family. That’s good, you’ve got to let yourself off the hook sometimes.”

I chewed listlessly on the piece of food that was in my mouth as I listened to Jake try to explain just how he could rationalize leaving an entire city to die.

I considered that a bad record. There was an empty, black, pulling feeling in the bottom of my stomach that refused to lessen. In school, ages ago, lifetimes ago, I had seen pictures of Pompeii. The people who had stayed were almost flash-frozen, trapped in whatever positions they had been in as the volcano erupted.

A thought popped into my head. What if Julius had died before I had intervened? Would my actions have changed anything? I would ask somebody about that as soon as I could.

As I was thinking to myself, Jake kept talking. I appreciated that he was trying to cheer me up, but his efforts weren’t bearing fruit. I swallowed the food in my mouth and stood up.

“I have to go.” I said. Jake nodded after a several-second pause, then went back to eating. I left the room, feeling slightly worse for having left him there to stew with his own thoughts.

I walked down the oppressively sterile halls, toward Major General Siegfried’s office. I didn’t know who else to talk to, and I felt most comfortable talking to him. Several turns away from the comfortable office, I ran into Hans. He took a look at me and moved forward as if to say something, then thought better of it and backed off. I didn’t acknowledge him as I walked past.

The door was unlocked, and I swung it open. The Major General wasn’t inside. I swore to myself. I was brimming over with anxiety and worry, I needed answers now. I stalked out of the room and the door slammed shut behind me.

“Hans!” I called. He turned around and looked at me, arms crossed.

“Oh, now I get acknowledged? How nice of you,” he said. I groaned. This exchange wasn’t going to be any easier than any exchange I’ve had with Hans, apparently.

“I have an important question. I was going to ask the Major General. Where is he?” I asked.

“He’s not here,” Hans replied.

“Yeah, I got that. I didn’t ask where he isn’t, I asked where he is.” I was getting annoyed. In no way was I in the mood for this. I wanted to get answers and then… I didn’t know what then, probably go to sleep. I was tired all the way down to my bones.

“He’s out. On a mission,” Hans said in a clipped, unadorned voice. “He’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Damn it. Okay, then I guess you’ll probably know.”

He rolled his eyes underneath his large glasses. “Wow, thank you for this incredible honor, Mister Antony. I get to answer your questions? Whatever did I do to deserve this?”

“Look, I don’t want to deal with this right now, okay? I just need to know whether or not changing something in the past will have repercussions. Like, drastically changing something?”

Hans’ eyes got thin. “What changes?” He asked me, lips tight.

“Let’s say I saved a family from some sort of huge natural disaster? A mother, a father, and three or four children. What effect would that have on time?”

Hans gripped his hands together in a worried fashion. “Well, first of all, have you heard of the butterfly effect?” I shook my head. “So the saying goes ‘a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side.’ In essence, it means that one small change can cause larger changes.”

“Taking this concept and applying it to time travel is worrying at best, and terrifying at worst. A small change in the past can lead to enormous differences in the future. Just think of how many people a single person interacts with over the course of their lifetime. By killing someone, or saving them, you’re potentially impacting hundreds, or even thousands of people.”

“And then those people will interact with other people in their life, and then on, ad infinitum.” Hans stopped and swallowed, then took a breath as if to continue. I stopped him before he could keep talking.

“So you’re saying that I may have just fucked up everything for everyone, everywhere. Forever. Why was I not warned about this?” I asked. I saw a smirk break out on Hans’ face.

“No, I was just explaining the butterfly effect. Do you really think that we would have sent you back if that were possible? More so, do you think that if that were true we wouldn’t have told you?”

My breath was hitched in my throat. Hans kept talking, occasionally giggling as he paused. “We send you back, and because of that, you had always been there. You always saved that man and his family. I was just pulling your leg.”

Never before then had I experienced every muscle in my body relaxing at once, but it was a wonderful feeling. The euphoria brought a shaky grin to my face.

“Thanks, Hans,” I said, “I was really worried there for a second.”

He looked at me as though he couldn’t take me seriously. “Sure, sure,” he said, “That’s understandable, if you actually didn’t know.”

“No really,” I said, “thanks.”

“O-of course,” he answered. I rushed to get back to the cafeteria to tell Jake, but when I got there he had left already. I made a promise to myself that I would explain it to him.

I still wasn’t hungry after that, so I decided to go back to my quarters. As I opened the door, I realized that I forgot to tell anyone about my TA discovery, but I rationalized it away, thinking that I would try to avoid using it if at all possible anyway, so nobody else really needed to know.

I walked into my room and saw a manila folder laid out on my bed.

Interlude 0.6

2016-01-10T14:00:00.002-08:00

Meanwhile, in the grandest sense of the term meanwhile...

From a birds-eye view, it appeared to be a small patch of darker brown moving across an enormous expanse of tan which stretched out in all directions. From closer, it becomes apparent that the patch of darker brown is an army, slowly treading their way across a never-ending desert.

They were making slow progress across the desert. They had been marching for almost a week now; stopping during the day to rest and conserve their energy, and treading their path at night, seeing only by what little light the moon exuded.

Today, though, they walked during the day. They could see their destination, and they would arrive at night at this rate. Exactly as planned.

The troops were demoralized, though. The captain had done his utmost best to keep their spirits up, but it was difficult, if not impossible. They were weak. They had run out of food, and most were out of water.

As they marched, one of the troops – a soldier who was staggering along with the rest of the contingent in the back – collapsed. His compatriot next to him stopped and looked, an expression of hopelessness overtaking his face. He started walking again; he didn’t want to be next to fall. A gust of wind began the long process of burying the unfortunate corpse. If the soldiers passed by here again they would find no trace of him.

The commander, a young man rising through the ranks of the military, turned to look at the men under his command. He swept his thin hood off of his head and brushed the lengthening hair out of his eyes. He hadn’t cut it in a while, and it was starting to get into his eyes.

He was weary, and he could tell that his soldiers were even more tired than he was. He turned forward again – there were at least five hours until they arrived. He would give a rousing speech when the sun went down. It would be useless before then, as any emotions he could muster would dissipate as they continued their march.

Instead, he unclasped the water container he had on his belt and popped the cap open. Turning it over, he opened his mouth to receive what water would fall. A small, single drop fell out. After another few seconds, a second drop followed.

That was it then. Out of water, out of food.

The next few hours were some of the longest of his admittedly short life. Though he hadn’t the life experience of the other grizzled commanders back in his city, he had been promoted based on merit – he had accomplished every goal set in front of him. These tended to be smaller skirmishes and one-off battles, each of which he had swiftly and ruthlessly won.

Everything that he had accomplished getting to this point paled in comparison to the hellish torture of this funereal march. Every so often he surveyed his forces, noting their cracked, bleeding lips and their loose hanging armor. Fortunately, the only casualty was the one soldier earlier.

As the sun set, the march eased. No longer did the touch of metal on their body sear their skins, and their incessant sweating stopped robbing their bodies of the precious liquids they needed to survive.

Yes, this was the capital’s strongest contingent; reduced to a host of starving beggars. They were close enough now. The captain turned around clenching his fist in the air where all of his men could see it.

“Men,” he started, but the words came out dry and wheezy. He coughed, swallowed, and began again.

“Men. We all know what we came here for. We have traversed this nightmarish dryland for the noblest of reasons. We came to conquer.”

He saw that his words weren’t having as great of an impact as he had hoped. The small metal band curving around his left ear, curving into it gave a small sting as it tried to send him the optimal data on what to say. Unfortunately, it had stopped working at the same point where he could no longer be rid of it; an unfortunate coincidence to say the least.

It didn’t matter. He had long since learned the language, and long since learned to be a convincing orator.

“These people are guilty of grossest injustice against the Kingdom. They live under our protective graces, yet they refuse to bow. They refuse to pay their tax. They sin against the gods!” That got a response. He had found that referring to the gods almost always got some sort of rise out of his troops. They were either very religious, or not at all.

It didn’t even matter what he personally believed. He could speak as though he were the most fervent believer of either side of a debate, and more importantly, could convince both sides that he were on theirs.

“Though we use subterfuge, we are still working for a higher cause. We have just survived a trip through hell on earth, and we are stronger for it!”

“We will win!” He shouted.

“We will conquer!” He exclaimed.

“We will welcome fate, and welcome war, and we will be victorious!” He roused.

As his soldiers began stamping feet with what little energy they had remaining, and clapping hands, beating swords against shields, he thought;

“I will be guilty.”

“I won’t be able to undo this,” he thought.

“I’m sorry,” he thought.

--

As the soldiers were found the next morning, passed out on the outskirts of the village in disarray, they were hurriedly brought into shelter, and given food and water. They were nursed back to life by the caring citizens.

The next day, the soldiers piled all of the bodies up in the middle of the village, and lit one single pyre.

Juncture 4.7

2016-01-07T08:46:00.004-08:00

~24 hours remaining~

My eyes flew open, and I heaved in a gasp. My lungs filled with slightly chilly morning air. I blinked. I could breathe. I could see. There was no ash.

My next realization was an obvious one; I was lying down.

It had worked! I had figured out - through unfortunately perilous trial-and-error – how my TA worked. All I had to do was die and I would get sent back to a point where I could actually do something about it. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t do anything different in school, but as I windmilled my arms and gulped the fresh air I noticed that I wasn’t held back by those limitations.

I could go back and do what I want. A small section of my brain noted that it would be prudent for me to carry around a gun at all times, in case I needed to reset something, but the rest of my brain quickly shushed that part into submission.

I got off of the cot, and got dressed quickly. I walked out and quickly found Jake.

I knew that the first two places we would look wouldn’t have any of the scrolls we were looking for, but the last one might. I found Jake chatting with Julius, no doubt asking about where we should be going. I walked behind him and tapped him on his enrobed shoulder.

“I know the next place we have to look,” I interrupted them with. Julius gave me a quizzical look, no doubt because to him I was speaking fluent gibberish, and Jake turned.

“What?” he asked succinctly.

“I’ll explain while we walk. The first two places Julius will suggest don’t have anything. Or at least, anything for us. The scrolls we’re looking for, I mean.” I answered. Wow I was having issues talking. Death sort of messes with your head, you know?

“Marc. Julius lives here. He knows more than you about Pompeii.” Jake said in response.

“We already looked through them. Or, sorry, I remember us looking through them. It’s my TA, again, I’ll explain later. So we looked through the first two places, then I came back to try and save Julius from the explosion. He didn’t go. So I reset myself. It wasn’t fun.” I paused to take a deep breath. “Now we’re back here and I know that the scrolls aren’t in the first two places. So just follow me, okay?”

Jake blinked at me with a blank look on his face. He opened his mouth, then closed it; then flapped it back and forth a couple of times.

“You… can time travel? By yourself?” he asked.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Yes. Kind of. Sort of, it’s hard to explain. Just come on already!” I turned, then thought of something, and turned around again. “First, ask Julius if he can pack us some lunch. It’s delicious.”

…

~17 hours remaining~

We went to the collector’s house again, only this time he was there. Fortunately, Jake managed to convince him that it was of the utmost importance that we find the scrolls. The collector, Alma, had me drag out a large chest, which she rummaged through quickly. She pulled out around twenty different scrolls and four limestone tablets, being careful to not let any of the dripping gold circles on her person catch on the thin, waxy paper.

She handed them to us, and we sat there, on the floor of the foyer of her house, looking for the symbols that would designate the document as important. I didn’t find anything on the first two I looked at, but struck pay dirt on the third.

The odd sigil that the Sybil used was on the bottom of the scroll, underneath what I saw as hundreds of super-small, super-thin Latin writing. It probably wasn’t that much, but it was a whole lot of words.

“I found one,” I said to Jake. He looked up, a look of fierce concentration perplexing the right half of his face.

“Good. I’ve found four, and gone through… six total,” he paused to count. “As soon as we finish the rest of these we can get the hell out of Pompeii.”

~15 hours remaining~

We had found nine scrolls total, and one tablet, and managed to lug them back to the inn. I ate while Jake was up to something in the room he had slept in. Julius had a late lunch prepared for us, and since Jake passed through the front room without stopping, I got to eat his plate too.

~14 hours remaining~

I was holding onto a half-eaten turkey leg, slowly chewing through the mouthful of meat I had just bitten off when Jake burst out the door. He was carrying one of the scrolls, and he brought it over to Julius, who read it, an expression of horror making itself apparent. He gave the scroll back to Jake with shaky hands, and sat down on the closest stool.

Next, Jake came over to me.

“Grab the bag of scrolls, we’re heading out.”

“What about Julius? What did you just show him?” I asked.

“The Sybil’s prediction for Vesuvius’ eruption. He should be getting everyone he’s close to and getting out as soon as possible,” he said. “People take her seriously around here.”

I dropped the rest of the turkey leg onto the plate on the counter I was sitting at and stood up. Julius looked at me, his eyes full of grief. I couldn’t say anything, so I gave him a wan, sad smile.

~1 hour remaining~

We were almost back at the office. The sky wasn’t quite as dark as it was when I died, but it was still a bloody red. I was barely able to leave everyone else in Pompeii, but there was no way that I would have been able to save all of them. I gave one last look back, then walked through the doorway.

I never went back.

Juncture 4.6

2016-01-03T05:58:00.003-08:00

~24 hours remaining~

The first thing we did come morning was to find out where important documents were held. Jake and I were pointed in the right direction by the innkeeper, whose name I later found out was Julius. He was incredibly helpful, and even gave us small linen sacks of food – the preempt of a sack lunch.

The building that we were pointed toward was a small one. The exterior was mostly stone with some marble columns, and there were numerous graffiti carvings all over the building. The interior was much less impressive than the shabby outside. Worm-eaten wooden shelves lined the walls and filled the floor of the building, leaving small, thin traversable passages throughout.

Jake and I decided to split up in order to cover more of the building in less time. I was told what symbols to look for (it helped that they weren’t in English) and we went our ways.

~18 hours remaining~

I had finished my lunch several hours ago, and my stomach was vying for my attention via gurgling and growling. Even cold, Julius’ food was delicious.

I hadn’t found the scroll, and judging by the lack of communication between us, neither had Jake. I had gone through – by my best judgement – around one-twentieth of the building. At this rate we weren’t going to find any of the scrolls in time.

~16 hours remaining~

I talked to Jake. He hadn’t found it either, but he was covering much more ground than I had been able to. He was almost through his side of the building.

~10 hours remaining~

The scroll wasn’t in the library. We left as soon as we figured it out and ran back to the inn to find the next place to look.

~9 hours remaining~

A large temple on the top of a hill, entirely made of marble. Torches hooked upon brass sconces lined the tall, ornate walls, dying the hall with a deep, orange glow. The priest, or whatever she was, the woman wearing golden rings and white silk, showed us to a back room. I have no idea what Jake said to get us in but it worked wonders.

There were two huge oaken chests in the room, and we began looking, perhaps with less care than we had the library. We were running out of time.

~3 hours remaining~

Nothing in the chests. We had left the church and found the next building that may have contained the scrolls we were looking for. A house, purportedly of some famous collector of artifacts and religious objects. He wasn’t there, so we snuck in. I kept looking out of the nearest window. The sky was a dark crimson, and my heart was busting through my chest.

We still hadn’t found the scroll, and we didn’t have much time left. I couldn’t take it.

“Give me the translator. I’m going to tell Julius to leave.”

Jake didn’t look up from the box he was rummaging through. He only lifted one arm to his ear, unhooked the translator, and tossed it to me. I caught it and sprinted out of the room.

The atmosphere outside was heating up, and the air had a sluggish, thick quality that felt like a soup.

I ran down toward the inn. I couldn’t just let them stay here and die. I’d seen pictures of the statues that were all of the remnants of the citizens of Pompeii. I had accepted bed and food from these people. I had seen the pure, innocent curiosity of his child the night before.

I couldn’t let them die, not without trying to save them. The sandy, dusty path exploded into dust clouds as my feet impacted it, harder than usual due to the speed of my running. The armor I was wearing wore heavier as sweat began to drip down my forehead.

I made it to the inn, stumbling in through the door. Julius was behind the bar, watching me, looking very interested. As I thought of what I was going to say, the translator on my ear let out a little zap, and words started flowing out of my mouth. I couldn’t recognize them, but I knew what they meant.

“Julius, you need to get your family out of here. There’s going to be an explosion. You can’t stay.”

He said something back, and the same weird, electric sensation emerged from the translator, and I understood what he had said, without knowing the words.

“Buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, it’s a bit sunny outside, but nothing bad is going to happen. This happens all the time here.”

“No, there’s a volcano! Mount Vesuvius! Right there, the mountain next to the city? It’s going to erupt.” I shouted.

He looked at me with one eyebrow cocked. “Here, sit down and calm yourself. I’ll get you some wine. You look flushed.”

I sat, but didn’t drink what he poured for me. “No, I’m being serious. I can’t let you stay here. You will die. I’ve seen it. You’ll die instantly, and get turned to stone. The ashes are going to cover the whole city. It’ll be a tragedy.” I took a breath, “please leave.”

He let out a low chuckle. “Buddy, I’m not leaving based on the ramblings of a strange drifter. I can’t just leave my city. It’s where I live, you know?”

I was crestfallen. He didn’t believe me. He was going to die, along with everyone else in this godforsaken city.

Suddenly, a spark. A way I could potentially save them. It would suck, and I wasn’t even sure if it would work. I was dehydrated, hungry, and more than a little tired. But I was going to try it.

~2 minutes remaining~
I looked up at the darkening sky. As the distant sounds of explosions tore through the landscape, the sky had gone dark. Now people were getting worried. It was too late, though. It was going to happen and there was nothing more I could do here. I hoped Jake made it back to the office in case this didn’t work.

I closed my eyes.

~now~
The ashes rained down, and I laid on the ground. For one second I felt hot pinpricks on my skin, and then I felt nothing at all. After that, even that stopped. Everything stopped.

Juncture 4.5

2015-12-31T05:29:00.002-08:00

I was woken up in the middle of the night by an odd rumbling. I swung my legs over the side of the cot I had been sleeping on and leaned down to feel the ground. The dirt floor was shaking softly, and dirt particles flung their way onto my fingertips.

Something was going to happen. As I rose back up, a sense of doom balled up and sunk deep into my gut. I looked for Jake, but he wasn’t in the room. The shaking stopped for a second, long enough for my wariness to go down. I relaxed – and it began again, harder than before.

I went over to the window. Maybe there was some event going on outside that I didn’t know about. Looking out, I was surprised at how bright it was. A weird, dull, red light was emanating from dark cloud cover over the city.

I blinked.

Red light, in the middle of the night.

Rumbling ground.

Rome.

Ancient Rome.

It clicked.

“Pompeii,” I whispered to myself. Then I began getting dressed as fast as I could. While I was tying up my sandal I tripped and fell, losing precious seconds and almost landing on my sword.

I ran out of the room into the lobby of the inn. It was completely empty, and I exited as fast as I could.

Just outside of the entrance was Jake, still wearing the heavy grey cloak; that in the light looked more maroon than anything else. He was looking up in the direction of the red light, and as I got nearer I saw that he was holding his ornate porcelain mask rather than wearing it.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted as I ran up to him. He turned around, a look of surprise on his face. “There’s a volcano and it’s gonna explode and... kill… everyone here.” The realization hit me like a truck. “Is that why we were sent here? Are we going to save people?”

Jake sighed. “No, we’re not, but you are right about the volcano. It’s going to explode in a day and a half, and we have that much time to get what we need. Namely, there’s a bunch of scrolls somewhere in this city that are apparently extremely pertinent to the organization—“

“What scrolls?” I interrupted. It was apparently hard to get Jake to talk, but he was incredibly long-winded when he did. That was surprising.

“I’m not sure exactly, but I have an idea of what they are.” He turned toward me. “Let’s say that you were given a long mission in a different time-period than your own. While you’re there, you get attacked, and lose track of your time machine. You also lose your memories. But after that, you’re plagued with memories of your past, or the future from where you’re at now.”

“Suddenly, things that you dreamed about start happening. Maybe you remember that you were supposed to save somebody, and they die. You can see the future. You’re a prophet. Naturally, you start telling people about these visions.”

“In Rome, people took prophecies seriously. They had the Oracle of Delphi. They had the Fates. And they had the Sybils. So I believe that the original Sybil - the one that the position was named after – was an OST agent.”

I nodded. It made a grim sort of sense. “So… how are we supposed to find these scrolls, if that is what they are? Wouldn’t they be in a library or a museum or something?”

“They might have been if the Sybil had any sense to share them, but from what I could tell, and what I’ve gleaned from the people at the OST, she wasn’t all too careful. There’s almost definitely a shrine or a temple or some religious site that the scrolls are kept at. When morning comes, we’ll just ask around for it.”

“I guess that sounds like a plan. Are you sure about the volcano?” I asked. I was terrified that he wasn’t right about when it was going to blow, and I didn’t want to get stuck here when it did.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” was his response.

“Okay, I’m gonna head back to sleep then. We’ll start looking in the morning, yeah?”

“Yup.” With that, he turned around and looked up at the sky again, and I was left to wearily go back to the inn. I swayed my way through the foyer, almost missing the small child staring at me with wide, brown eyes.

He looked to be about five, wearing a large shirt-like thing that was belted at the waist and hung down around his ankles. I stopped in my tracks, and we both stared at each other for several seconds. Then he whispered something I didn’t understand. I blinked rapidly.

“Um… no speak Latin?” I tried. The kid looked at me and babbled some more. No dice. I shrugged, pointed at him, pointed at my ear, and shook my head. He said something else and waited for me to respond, when I didn’t he walked away, up the stairs.

I went back to the room that I had been occupying earlier and started the tedious process of untying the stringy sandals. When I finished I laid myself back down on the bed.

I hadn’t realized just how scratchy it was when I had gone to sleep before, but I noticed its scratchy nature now. I turned onto my side – it helped a bit.

I closed my eyes, trying to go to sleep. It didn’t work. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, probably at least until I was far, far away from here.

I spent the rest of the night thinking about what could go wrong.

Juncture 4.4

2015-12-28T11:20:00.003-08:00

The next morning, Jake and I walked out of the office into the blustery yellow day, seventy years or so before the Common Era. I was decked out in Roman military garb, dull metal armor covering my head, arms, legs, and chest, and heavy cloth over the rest of my body. Avice had handed it to me, and when I had complained about its lack of shine, she had impatiently informed me that the armor was dull and pockmarked because it had been in several real wars, and she knew it was trustworthy.

I also had a short sword and small shield strapped to my arm. I felt pretty cool, standing there, looking the part.

Jake got the worse end of the deal. Since he had obvious malformations, we had to keep him hidden. He was wearing a heavy grey robe, complete with hood and cowl. Underneath that, he was wearing a mask which he had apparently designed himself. It looked like the traditional happy jesters mask, made of white porcelain with carved swirls and sigils coursing over the surface. The difference between this and other jester masks was that while half of the face looked happy, with the smile and up-curved eye, the other half had inverted these details, making that side look depressed.

If I was forced to describe what he looked like, I would have had to say that he looked like some sort of evil alchemist.

It was pretty cool, but not as cool as my outfit, in my esteemed opinion. We made a pretty neat-looking team though.

Anyway. We emerged in a yellow-grassed field underneath a colossal marble waterway. Jake looked up, looked at me, pointed toward the aqueduct, and said “We should follow it.” They were the first words that he had said to me the whole day, and they were good ones.

We began travelling. After about ten minutes of following the waterway and appreciating the scenery, a city appeared, just past a hill that had been keeping it hidden in the distance.

I looked at Jake, he looked back at me. We both nodded, and kept walking in silence.

By the time we arrived at the outskirts of the city, the sun had dipped, obscuring itself behind the city we were heading toward. From where we were facing, the sun was a deep orange, almost red. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, my stomach was grumbling hard enough to distract me, and I couldn’t focus.

We had been walking for the better part of three hours, and I was both bored and starving. The heavy armor I was wearing made every step difficult, and I was pretty sure I had gotten dehydrated. Jake looked none the worse for our journey, but again, it was hard to tell underneath the mask and the robe.

We reached a large, open, wrought-iron gate. Two guards, wearing similar clothes to what I had on were stationed in front of it. They were both wearing short scarf-cape things that draped over one shoulder. One of them yelled out something that I didn’t understand.

Right, Latin. It had completely slipped my mind that the people wouldn’t speak English here. I kept my mouth shut.

As I was worrying about what to do, Jake stepped forward and said something that sounded similar to what the guard had shouted. In the midst of the language I heard him say my name and gesture at me. The guards nodded and stepped aside, lowering their spears. Jake stepped through, and I followed.

“What was that!” I hissed at him when I caught up, matching my pace to his. He kept walking briskly, forcing me to half-skip, half jog in order to keep speed with him.

“I’ve got an earpiece connected up to a translator,” Jake whispered back at me, his voice muffled slightly beneath the mask, “It hears what they’re saying and tells me what to say.” He stopped for a second and cocked his head slightly to the left. “Did you not get one?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t. I guess Siegfried or Dierdre or whoever only wanted one of us to be able to talk to them.”

“Well I agree with their decision.” Jake replied. “This way the person who has the translator will be able to take control of the mission in case anything goes wrong.”

I grumbled something about mutiny, but didn’t respond. Instead, I asked “So, what are we looking for, exactly? I wasn’t told, apart from that it’s pretty important.”

Jake was quiet for a minute, thinking to himself. Then; “I think it’d be better if I didn’t tell you right now. There’s no real reason that you need to know, and you might compromise the mission. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why you weren’t told what it was before now.”

“That’s bull. What, do you think I’m going to have some sort of objection to whatever it is we’re grabbing?” I asked, irate.

“Probably, yeah. Look, just wait a bit. You’ll figure out what it is soon enough. Meanwhile, we need to find somewhere to stay the night. We’ll get what we need tomorrow. Look around for an inn or something.”

“Alright. I need something to eat, too, I’m starving.” I said.

Soon after we found an inn and bought a room with money that Jake had in a pouch. Luckily for me, the inn also had a bar-type place, and when Jake went up to the room I ordered us two meals. I sat down at a table and waited.

The meal I got was the best I had ever eaten. It began with a large wooden bowl of stew, silky with large chunks of meat. I was also given a heel of bread to mop up the liquid with. The next course was just a large chunk of meat settled nicely on a plate next to a mound of crispy potatoes. I spent upwards of an hour eating that meal, and I heavily debated walking back to the office just to come back here and eat it again.

I was incredibly satisfied when I went to sleep that night.

Juncture 4.3

2015-12-24T07:12:00.004-08:00

“Sandra and Kenneth,

I’m leaving. I know that writing it like this isn’t such a good way to tell you, but I don’t want to have to deal with telling you. This is easier.

I know that I haven’t always been the best. I’m no good in school, and I don’t enjoy being at home. There’s no reason for me to stay here. I think I can do better somewhere else.

I’m taking all of my stuff, too.

So tell Ron that I said goodbye. I’m going to miss him.

Don’t look for me.

-Marc”
I finished writing the letter, folded it and left it on my bed. That left me with the issue of how to get out of the house without Sandra or Kenneth noticing. I could wait until they both fell asleep, but that could be hours from now.

I looked around the room for something that would facilitate my escape. I was greeted with the sight of exactly nothing useful. There was the normal crap that I had decided not to take, like the sheets on my bed, a pillow, and some really old coloring books.

I walked over to the closed window across the room from my bed. With some grunting, I managed to wrench it open. It squealed sharply as it rose and stuck in place. A fine mist started wafting into the room from outside, but it had apparently stopped raining. That was nice, at least I wouldn’t get soaked during my daring escape.

I looked down – the fall wasn’t that bad, maybe ten or fifteen feet to the ground. I took the bag I had, pushed it through the window’s small opening and held it above the ground.

I dropped it. As the bag slid from my fingers I realized that it might make a noise when it landed. I held my breath waiting to hear the impact-

-and there was a soft thud from the bag landing. I let my breath out in a soft hiss. I was next. I swung one leg up and through the window, then the other one right after it. Inside, I held myself up with my hands as my feet searched for a hold or grip anywhere on the side of the house.

Aha! My left foot had found a crack in the wall and managed to stick. I pushed down, supporting my weight on the crack. I grabbed the sill and slowly lowered myself until I was holding myself up by it entirely.

I looked down – somehow, the fall to the ground seemed longer than it was when I was inside. There wasn’t much that I could do about that now though. I prepared to let go when there was a snapping sound.

I dropped fast. Before I had time to react I hit the ground feet-first. My legs buckled and I fell backward, rolling for a good five feet. I laid on the ground for a couple of seconds, groaned, and got back up. If I had been inconspicuous before, someone was sure to have heard the sharp crack when I fell.

I grabbed the bag of stuff and started walking away as fast as possible. Every couple of seconds I looked back to see if someone had noticed. Nobody came out, and I turned down the street back to where the office was unnoticed.

It was unnerving, looking for the room. I couldn’t see it anywhere, I felt blind. When I got to the approximate location, I walked forward with my arm extended until I hit a hard surface. The office.

I knocked on the door. It swung open as soon as my clenched fist made contact with the metal surface. I walked inside, appreciating the warmth. As I crossed the threshold, it occurred to me that when the office was disconnected from headquarters it should also be disconnected from the central heating. That was moderately unnerving.

Major General Siegfried was sitting behind the desk, writing something on a large sheaf of papers with an ornate silver pen. He capped it and looked up with a knowing smile.

“Well, how did it go?” he asked.

I grimaced and shrugged, “It was probably the best that it could have gone, but it still wasn’t good. At least I’m done with it now. I left my foster parents a note.”

Siegfried’s eyebrows furrowed. “Will they look for you?”

I put my bag down on the floor and flopped onto the soft plaid couch. “They’ll go through the motions, I think. But they won’t try too hard. It helps that I didn’t leave any trace.”

He nodded and tapped on his computer keyboard. “Well, that’s good then. I’ve been informed by Dierdre that you’re to have the rest of the day off. You have another mission tomorrow.”

“Another one?” I was surprised, “Where to?”

“Nowhere too bad. You’ll be going with Jake to obtain intelligence from the Roman Republic.”

“Rome?” I asked, “Like ancient Rome? That’s pretty neat.” Then it clicked. “With Jake? Why?”

Major General Siegfried picked up his pen and began scratching away at the paper. “He has skills that will be useful during your mission.”

I shifted my weight on the couch, ending up in a reclining position. “The teleporting thing, yeah?” He nodded. “Cool.”

The rest of the trip was spent in amicable silence. When we got back, I went straight to Avice’s field. Even though I was given the day off there was no way I could do nothing. Avice was there meditating, so I began running.

The field was beautiful. As I ran, I found the eponymous edge of the field. It turned out that the entire thing was the top of a grassy cliff. The edge overlooked a sparkling sea of glassy clear water. It was a refreshing run.

I got back to my quarters several hours later, showered, and went to sleep early in preparation for the mission tomorrow. I was certain that it was going to be difficult, if only because it was with Jake.

Juncture 4.2

2015-12-20T16:46:00.002-08:00

I moved my mouth in a fruitless attempt to respond, but no sound managed to escape. The situation was so absurd that I couldn’t put my thoughts into words.

Kenneth and Sandra both glared at me, waiting for a response. Sandra shifted Ron carefully over to her other shoulder, trying not to wake him.

“I…um.” Good start, dumbass. Several seconds passed before I regained my bearings, swallowed, and kept on talking. “I know. I wasn’t supposed to get detention again.”

Sandra exploded quietly, so as to not wake Ron. “Three! Three detentions in three days, Marc! How do you even accomplish that!?” She whispered in a harsh voice.

I could barely remember what I did to get in detention, so it took a few more tense seconds for me to recall it. Something to do with Simon, if I was remembering clearly. That seemed likely to be it, I was meaner than I should have been to him a lot of the time.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “It’d been a really long week, and I was tired.” It had been a really long day, at least all of the times after the first that I had cycled through it.

Kenneth was breathing deeply through his nostrils, trying to keep himself calm. He had some anger issues, they were obvious to anyone who knew him well enough. I looked at his hands. They were shaking, clenched into iron fists. He was clearly exerting all of his will toward not causing an outburst.

I continued. “I don’t have a good excuse. I know that.”

“You’d damn well better know that, you little punk!” Sandra hissed at me. “We took you in, and this is how you repay us? We haven’t had to talk to the school with any of the other kids we’ve taken in!” Her voice took on an icy quality, a crystalline hardness that threatened to shatter, “This attitude you have is belligerent, and rude, and selfish.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she swung her free hand sharply in front of me to cut me off. She kept talking, not breaking eye contact, continuing to glare, “If things continue like this, we’re not going to put up with it any more. I’m sure there are other foster homes where the parents would be willing to put up with your shit!”

I leaned backward as she leaned forward, almost spitting into my mouth as vitriol flew through her lips.

The sad thing was that these episodes weren’t all too unusual when I was living there. I would be on the taking end of a tongue-lashing at least once a week, often for a good reason, often for no reason at all. If she hadn’t had a good day at work, she would chew me out. If a stranger side-eyed her, she would take it out on me.

I had gotten used to it while I was there, but since the past few months (or apparent hours) my mental shields had weakened. I cringed as she yelled, but for the most part I didn’t respond. I kept looking toward Kenneth, to see if he was boiling over.

I wasn’t worried about Sandra. She was all bark and no bite. Kenneth was the one I needed to worry about. He looked really angry, but he was holding himself back. If he got to a point where he wasn’t able to do that anymore I would be in serious trouble.

Luckily for me he was pacing. It was one of the tricks he had learned over the years to deal with his temper.

Ron still hadn’t woken up. That was good for me. If things got too bad, I knew that I could make enough noise to wake him up, which would distract Sandra and Kenneth from me, and I might be able to slip away.

Sandra was looking at me expectantly. “Well? She asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I don’t really have anything to say,” I replied, “I don’t have a good excuse.”

I heard a strangled grunt, and Kenneth exited the room. Sandra gave me one last backward glance and left after him. I got up and closed the door, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have any trouble leaving. After I couldn’t hear any footsteps, I opened my closet, looking for the small overnight bag I kept in there. I put it on my bed and started packing.

I didn’t have much in the house that I wanted to keep, but there were a few things. I grabbed a couple of books that I had filled with sketches and shoved them into the bottom of the bag. They were cool, and I thought that I had some good ideas in there.

Next went a bag of small change that I had been saving for a couple of years. It probably wasn’t worth all that much, but there was no point in leaving it here. I also grabbed the battered Gameboy from my night stand, along with a few games.

That was it, then. I zipped the bag closed and searched my room for a pen and paper. I wasn’t going to disappear and leave Kenneth and Sandra without anything. As unlikeable as they were, they did take me in. And even after I had been a constant source of trouble, they had never followed through on their threats of giving me up.

I found a pen, and tore a piece of paper out of a nearby notebook. I crouched down in front of the night stand and began the tedious process of writing.

“Sandra and Kenneth…”

Juncture 4.1

2015-12-17T06:22:00.001-08:00

The smell of rain was the first thing I noticed; that soft, mossy scent. It was shortly followed by the consistent sound of a downpour; less of a pitter-patter and more a constant, oppressive flush of white noise.

I opened my eyes. I was greeted to the sight of wet darkness. My house was in front of me, blurred through the buckets of rain. It looked even more derelict than when I had left it earlier that morning. Or, from my perspective, several months ago.

I took in a deep breath and walked out of the office. Major General Siegfried had told me to wait in the rain, get well and truly soaked so I looked like I walked home. It was a good idea.

The rain was debilitatingly cold. After several seconds I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering.

After a minute I couldn’t stay out there any longer. I ran to the door of my house, swearing under my breath.

I tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked, so I walked in. I closed the door behind me, and the white noise of the rain was replaced with a steady drip-drip-drip of the leaky roof. I couldn’t tell if anyone was home. I took of my soaked jacket and put it in the front closet.

I went to the kitchen. It was also empty. There was usually at least someone here at this time of day, but it was oddly empty. I went over to the refrigerator to see if there was anything to eat. There wasn’t much in the big box. A couple different bottles and cans of beer were strewn across the bottom shelf of the fridge.

Aha. A small carton of eggs was precariously balanced on the top shelf of the fridge door, right next to the mustard. I grabbed it. Two eggs were cracked and oozing onto the Styrofoam container, but there were two other ones that were mostly whole. I grabbed them and tossed the container into the overflowing trash bin next to the door.

Next, I checked under the sink for a frying pan. There was one there, but it looked like it needed a good scrubbing before I cooked on it. I lifted it up to put into the sink, saw what was already there, and chose otherwise. I grabbed a sponge and headed to the bathroom.

I turned the tap and waited for the water to run clear – there had been a rust problem in the pipes since before I had even moved in. I quickly learned to wait a few seconds before using it. I began scrubbing the pan.

I finished and went back into the kitchen. I lit the stove; it made a sharp hiss. I put some spray oil on the pan and cooked the eggs.

I slid the cooked eggs onto a plate and went in search of silverware while they cooled down. I found a small box of plastic cutlery, took a fork and knife, and sat down to eat.

While I mindlessly shoveled the slightly singed eggs into my mouth I thought about the reasons why I had come back. They seemed a lot less relevant now that I was actually at home, sitting in my kitchen.

I could have dealt with the loneliness. I had friends at OST headquarters. Or rather, I had good acquaintances there. But I didn’t have many more friends here. I sure as shit didn’t have any at home. No. As I thought about it, the reason I actually wanted to come back became clear. I wanted closure on this part of my life.

After everything I had been through, there was no way I could come back to this. I had gone time travelling. I had stopped (and also to a smaller extent participated in) a bank robbery. I had trained with who I assumed was quite possibly the most dangerous person in history, Avice.

Hell, I had died. Repeatedly. To the point where it was getting boring. I don’t think that there had ever been anyone else who could claim that they’d done that.

No, I couldn’t go back to the day-to-day drudgery of high school, shitty house, rinse, and repeat. I had gone to a completely different level of everyday life. I was doing things. Things that mattered on a scale I wouldn’t have even been able to fathom beforehand.

I finished eating, tossed my plate into the sink and my fork and knife into the trash. I went up the stairs to my bedroom. The towel I had left crumpled over my chair was still there. I grabbed it and went to the restroom. I turned on the shower and let it run as I got out of my soggy clothes. When the water was clear I got under it.

It was freezing for several seconds, but it warmed up to bearable temperatures after two minutes. I scrubbed my entire body, more for show than necessity – I had just woken up an hour and a half ago from my perspective, and I had showered before I went to bed.

I got out and went back to my bedroom. As I walked through the hall, I heard the front door open over the steady dripping sound. I slipped into a pair of pajamas that were a bit too small, and waited, sitting on my bed.

Sure enough, after several seconds of waiting, my door slammed open. My foster father, Kenneth, was standing in the doorway, his wife Sandra behind him. He was stick-thin and completely bald, even down to the eyebrows. She was hard to quantify. Depending on the day she could look twenty or fifty. Right now she just looked angry.

In fact, both of them looked angry. Sandra was holding one of my foster siblings, Ron, asleep with his head on her shoulder. Kenneth was holding his cell phone open, the screen illuminating the floor.

Even though it had been several months, I still felt a scarlet wave of guilt hit me.

“Detention, Marc? Really?”

Interlude 0.5

2015-12-13T09:00:00.001-08:00

It began with the dreams. Visions would swim past the surreal scenes, interrupting whatever nonsensical events were taking place therein. He would be dreaming of the past day’s events, and a scarred crag would take its place for a blink of a moment. Sometimes he would wake up, sweating, breathless. Other times he would keep dreaming. Over time, he stayed asleep through the visions more and more.

When he stayed asleep, the visions would flip past his vision faster and faster. Sometimes, it would seem as though he was seeing several at the same time. When he woke up, he had a headache.

Then they began happening while he was awake. He would be driving down a street, and suddenly he would be driving down a desolate, ruined highway. The streets cracked, the sun dark. Then he’d be back, only a little bit further down the same road he started on.

One time, he almost drove his car off of a bridge because of this. When he stopped, he couldn’t remember what he had seen, only that it terrified him.

The visions started out coming once a week, then twice, then every day. They kept increasing in regularity. Over the course of two years they were appearing multiple times a day, and his nights were full of visions.

It was the fateful day, a decade after the visions had begun, that it happened. He saw a vision. Then, another vision appeared overlaid above that. Then a third, and a fourth. They kept building up.

He could see everything. Everything that was, everything that is, and everything that could possibly ever be. All of it, all possible information from every possible universe poured into his head.

It was too much. He snapped. Living alone, it took five days before anyone found him gibbering and drooling, lying on his bedroom floor in his pajamas. He was sent to an asylum, where he was safe. When the visions prompted rabid panic attacks, he was given a straitjacket and put in a padded room with nothing but his thoughts, and of course the visions.

Over time, he learned to suppress them. To push all of the visions back into the deepest darkest recesses of his mind. Eventually, he managed to limit his focus down to just one vision, the one that he thought of as reality.

He was let out of the asylum after endless tests to ascertain his sanity. From the beginning, he had lost thirty-four years of his life to the visions. He was determined to get them back.

There weren’t any jobs open for a fifty-seven year old man who had spent the majority of his life in an asylum. During the first few months of his release, he was homeless. He worked, harder than he had ever done before, and he managed to negotiate himself a stint as a substitute teacher in a local school district.

He was finally able to support himself. He bought a crappy apartment off of a main street. The sounds of traffic reverberated throughout the night, but it didn’t bother him much. He didn’t sleep more than he absolutely had do if he could avoid it. The visions came back during his dreams, so he tried his best to stay awake.

He learned to use the visions as best he could. If he applied for a job, he checked to see if there was any universe in which he got it. If there wasn’t he wouldn’t even send in an application. Before he travelled, he always checked ahead to see if something would happen.

He grew to rely on them. He started to use them more and more often. Eventually, he lost his fear of them almost entirely. The one thing he was scared of was the visions of nothing. At times, he would call up visions of the future, to be greeted with an inky blackness over his vision. It was as if there was a fog across his eyes, but more so. He would flip through more possible futures – all the same. After seconds, minutes, or hours, it would clear and he would have access to all of his knowledge.

An idea began building in his mind. Whenever he had an episode with the fog he always checked the news afterward. Sometimes there was nothing. Other times, something had taken place – something big. There was an assassination this time. Another time there was a plane crashing into government towers over in America.

Something was causing the fog. Sometimes these events were stopped before they could happen. Other times they were apparently inevitable. He could guess what that meant. Some force, some power in the world was working to prevent tragedies. To do this, they needed to have some source of information about when they were supposed to happen.

His conclusion was inevitable. There were people like him. People who, through no rhyme or reason, could see through the fabric of time and try to change it. His next move was just as inevitable. He had to – he needed to – find them. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he did find them, but he knew that it was the correct move.

His mission engulfed his life. He spent his days working to make enough money to live on, and the rest of his time was spent looking to the future and the past. He scanned for people at the sites of the attacks, and took note of when the mind-fog appeared. When it dispersed, he looked through those times as well.

It took a while, but he began noticing a pattern. Just a couple of people who showed up at different events. They always looked the same. They were always dressed according to where they were. They were always close to the same age, no matter when they were.

That clinched it. They were real. They could help him. They weren’t there when he spent two decades locked up for his own safety.

They would pay.

Juncture 3.9

2015-12-10T08:33:00.003-08:00

After my mission was completed, life went back to normal. Or, at least what had passed for normal ever since I had arrived at the OST. I got back on my daily training regimen, began sparring with Avice again, and I went back into otherwise almost total seclusion.

Don’t get me wrong, I still saw Derry occasionally over the next couple of weeks, and I talked to Siegfried once in a while – I even exchanged cold stares with Hans a few times, but I didn’t get to meaningfully spend time with any of them. Most of my day was spent wordlessly, breathlessly trying to not let Avice beat the crap out of me, or watching movies in my room.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t feel lonely per se. At least, not at the beginning. The seclusion was nice. Having a room to myself was nice. Not getting bothered or woken up in the middle of the night was nice. But I began to want to hang out with people, to just sit and relax and talk to friends.

I wasn’t going to get that here. Derry kept her distance, Siegfried was in charge of me, and from what I could tell, neither Avice nor Hans had any noticeable emotions. They were all hard to relate to. Plus I hadn’t seen Jake since we talked that night. From what I could tell, he was the closest in age to myself that I’d met.

I missed my friends from school, as distant as they felt when I was actually there. I wanted to sit next to Josie and let her doodle all over my hand. I wanted to mock Jock for his accent. Hell, I’d even hang out with Simon at this point, I was that bored.

Luckily, those types of thoughts only plagued me at night. I was too busy during the day to worry about loneliness or friendship. Avice’s training schedule kept me busy. Every time part of it got easier, she would make it more difficult to keep me struggling. I would be able to breathe after doing a set of push-ups, and she would add another mile to my runs. I wouldn’t have stitches in my side after running, and she wouldn’t hold back while fighting.

It was when I was alone in my room watching a movie, or in the cafeteria eating that I felt lonely. I threw myself into my training more so than ever. I started studying the material I was taught, even outside of the room with the monitor. The maneuvers and tactics used in the wars started to make sense. The politics I was learning; the rights of succession, the coups, the holy wars, all began to crystallize in my head.

When I managed to beat Avice in a spar I knew that I needed something else to do. She was clearly out of it that day, and I was trying my hardest, but even with that, there was no way that I should have been able to land a hit on her.

I remember it really well. We were fighting barefoot on the soft grass. Neither of us had weapons, and we were both tired from the day’s exercise. Avice swung at my left shoulder, and I ducked down to dodge, bringing my right arm up toward her chin in an uppercut. She danced back, light on her feet, and dropped into a sweep with her left leg. I jumped over it, just barely too slow.

She brought me down, hard. I turned my fall into a roll as best I could, and Avice managed to get back on her feet. I saw an opportunity – when I landed on my back I pushed my body up with my arms, flipping onto my stomach and sending my legs in flying arcs at Avice. One connected to her arm, the other hit her leg. When my legs connected to the ground I pushed down and used my body’s momentum to get back onto my feet.

After I recovered I saw Avice on the ground. She was getting up, slower than normal. I grabbed for her arm – missed. Grabbed again for her other arm, got it and twisted it back. She fell back onto the ground and struggled. Finally, after I held her down for what seemed like an eternity, she tapped the ground. Once, twice, and I let go.

She started to pull herself up with her arms, then snapped her legs apart, pushing my legs into a split. She hooked her feet around the back of my outstretched legs and snapped her legs forward, bringing me down onto my butt. I landed hard.

She stood up, scowling, her brow furrowed.

“You’re done for today.” She said. Before I could answer, or even stand, she stalked away. I got up painfully, and left the fields. I had a whole day all to myself. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but then an idea formed.

I walked in the direction of Major General Siegfried’s office. When I got there, I knocked on the door. Hans was there, so I asked him if Siegfried would be by anytime soon. Hans said that he should be back in about two minutes, so I could wait there.

Once Major General Siegfried got back, I asked him my question. He mulled it over and nodded. He said I would have to get the clothes I had when I arrived, but that shouldn’t be too difficult to do, so yes, I could. He then said to meet him back in his office in one hour to depart.

I went back to my room, excited. I decided I would take a quick shower before I left. I jumped in, finished in record time, and got back out. Sure enough, my grungy clothes from the day I had gotten stuck in the time loop were on my bed. I got dressed and walked back to Major General Siegfried’s office.

I was going to go back home.

Juncture 3.8

2015-12-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

“Jake!” I yelled, and began jog-walking down the hall toward him. I didn’t really know what I was going to say to him, but I was dead-set on at least attempting to apologize.

He didn’t react when I called his name. Either I was quieter than I thought, or he was acting really suspicious, confirming my idea that he hadn’t given me his actual name. I decided to try again, now that I’d halved the distance between us.

“Jake!” I shouted, a bit louder. His spine straightened, and he turned. I reached him, and stopped right in front of him.

I noted to myself that the jog over took barely any effort, as compared to just before I was taken to the OST. That was pretty cool.

I didn’t know what to say, but I started to talk anyway. “I-“. Jake raised his hand to stop me.

“You don’t need to apologize,” He said. It was difficult to hear him speak. His words were quiet, and he spoke abnormally slowly. “You were trying to stop a dangerous situation. I understand.” He touched his hand to his face, to where the bruise would have been from the beating I’d delivered. He continued to speak in his slow, numb manner. “All I ask is that you don’t ask me to apologize.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He thought that he was in the right? He held up a bank, and he apparently didn’t feel bad about it.

My mind went through the ethical and moral arguments against attempted murder and the sacrifice of innocent human lives, and formulated the best response to what he was saying.

My mouth didn’t get the message, and all that I said was “Huh?”

“I’m not going to apologize.” He repeated, “I never actually planned to blow up the dynamite. I would die too, why would I want to do that? I needed the money, and this was the easiest way to get it.”

It clicked that if I kept him talking, I would be able to get more information from him.

“Why did you need the money?” I asked.

He leaned against the wall. “I owed a lot of money. Like a lot a lot.”

“How much?”

He grinned – or it was possibly a grimace. I couldn’t tell.

“Around thirty thousand dollars. That was more than I would ever be able to make in one lifetime, so I had to find a way of getting it. This seemed like a good plan.”

Thirty thousand didn’t sound like that much to me. Then I remembered that he was talking about the fifties. Thirty thousand was probably a huge amount of cash back then. Still, I wasn’t fully convinced that he wasn’t lying.

“Why did you owe that much? How could one person get that far in debt?” I asked.

“Hospital bills, dumbass. Look at me,” He gestured at his face, “That much money just barely kept me alive. My entire childhood was one huge process of nearly dying, and my parents took the first chance they could to ditch me. I don’t blame them. I was dead weight. They probably changed their names, moved away. I was saddled with the debt.”

He stopped, breathing heavily. Talking this much was clearly an effort on his part, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook now. I had to know.

“And?” I asked.

“And when I was fifteen, it just… stopped. I wasn’t sick anymore. I mean, I looked awful, couldn’t use half of my face, and could barely walk from being in bed for so long, but I wasn’t sick. I didn’t pass out for days or weeks at a time. I didn’t have any more seizures, or strokes. I could leave the hospital. But I was homeless.”

“I managed to get a job doing menial, easy labor. I could survive, but it wasn’t fun. The money I owed kept piling up, bigger and bigger. So I robbed a bank.”

He was done. He leaned down, taking deep breaths, sucking in air hard, then letting it out in slow hisses.

“Okay. I’m not going to ask you to apologize. You seem like you know that you were wrong, and anyway, nobody got hurt. Well, you got hurt, but nobody innocent got hurt.”

We stood there in awkward silence for several seconds.

“I am going to ask you what your actual name is though.” I said.

He didn’t answer for several seconds. Then: “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who any of you are. I don’t trust you. So call me Jake.”

“Fine,” I said, “But you will have to tell us who you are at some point or another if you’re going to join us.”

“I don’t know if I’m joining you just yet.” Jake said, “Like I said, I don’t trust any of you just yet. Besides, I don’t have anything I can give you guys, so I’m pretty sure that you’re just keeping me prisoner here.”

“Bull. I saw you teleport that dynamite. I don’t know how you did it, but I know that you did. That’s what we’re interested in.” I changed tactics to something that I knew worked. “And of course, you’re free to leave at any time. You’re not a prisoner. If you want to leave, you can go on your way. But since this facility is secret, you’ll have to undergo a procedure to make sure that you don’t remember anything about this.”

His eyes widened marginally. He opened his mouth to protest, but I talked over him. “Don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. Well, not too dangerous. Worst comes to worst, you forget some stuff.”

“Some stuff?” He asked.

“Well, all of the stuff. But don’t worry, it probably won’t happen.” I answered.

“Uh, no. I’ll stay for now,” was Jake’s reply. It worked. I clapped my hands together. “Great! So I’m gonna head back to sleep, but I’ll see you around!” I gave him a thumbs up and started walking to my room. When I got to the door, I looked where we were standing. Jake had left. I went back to bed.

Interlude 0.4

2015-12-03T07:09:00.004-08:00

Cameron was in the hospital again. It was the third time in as many days. The second time, one of his doctors joked that they should just rent the room out to him. They weren’t joking anymore.

Harold sat in a chair next to his son. He looked across his body at the machines; he didn’t have the energy left to look directly at him. It was too much, to see his son lying there helplessly.

The doctors had left recently, just after Cameron’s seizures had stopped. They had made sure he was stable, then abandoned him there. His chest wasn’t rising or falling, but the grey-green monitors held a steady beat.

None of them knew what Cameron’s issue was. For the past two years, he had been plagued by seizures, strokes, and heart attacks. There was no rhyme or reason behind it, he was perfectly healthy before then. He was even going to try out for little league.

That wasn’t going to happen now. Cameron had been severely deformed by whatever was plaguing him. His muscles had deteriorated down to where he needed to be pushed in a wheelchair. For a while, Harold and Helen were forced to help him go to the bathroom. A couple of months in, they had decided to get the surgeries done to attach bags for his excretions.

Harold pulled in a breath, and let it out in a shaky sigh. He looked at Cameron’s face. Half of it was just loose skin at this point, he had lost control of them during one of his earlier seizures, and it only deteriorated from there on.

He was smaller than he had been at eight, barely making a bump under the starchy, light blue hospital sheets. His bones were clearly visible under his skin, in his arms and neck; and he could no longer move his limbs of his own volition.

It had gotten to the point where the doctors would fix whatever issue came up, send him home, and expected him to show up the next day.

Cameron hadn’t been conscious for the last week. The doctors said he was almost definitely in a permanent state of unconsciousness. In other words, Cameron Carter was in a coma.

Yesterday, the doctors had brought up the possibility of taking him off of his life-preserving machines. Harold had immediately denied them, saying that it was unthinkable. He was thinking about it a lot now.

On one hand, it made sense. Cameron’s treatments had drained Harold and Helen’s bank accounts. They were functionally bankrupt, with huge debts. Harold had lost his job; his boss had grown sick of his constant begging for leave, and in response gave him two month’s severance. Helen took on another job, so she was never able to be at home or with Cameron. Plus, this desiccated husk of a child? This body? It wasn’t his son.

On the other hand… On the other hand, Harold couldn’t think of any reason not to. Of course, he went through all of the moral hoops, how could he do this, it’s his own son, et cetera. None of them impacted him, not even a little bit. The body on the bed wasn’t Cameron anymore. He hadn’t been lucid in months, hadn’t been awake in weeks. His son died ages ago.

He was going to do it. Once the next doctor came in he would tell him, get the requisite form, and be rid of this burden.

As if he was listening, Cameron started twitching on the bed, and one of the various monitors began to beep. After a few seconds, a doctor and two nurses barged into the room, bringing a cart with them.

Harold watched them work, waiting patiently. They calmed Cameron’s body with a small syringe applied to the side of his neck. One of the nurses half-heartedly held his weak arms down, the other held his head in place. He soon calmed, and Harold stood and tapped the doctor on his shoulder.

The man turned. He pulled the mask over his face down. “Yes?”

Harold took in a breath. “I want to take him off of support.”

The doctor nodded. “I’ll get you the papers.”

…

…

…

Cameron woke up with a start. It was dark in the room. He didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t remember anything coherent. Images passed back and forth in front of his vision, and phantom sounds played back. One thing stood out. His father, stubble growing over his normally clean-shaven looking down at him. Closing his eyes. Saying goodbye.

He tried to lift his head, but was unable to. He managed to flop his head to the side. His eyes came to rest on the machine. The monitors were black, turned off. He traced the wires down to the floor, then as far as he could back up again. He saw one out of the corner of his eye, connected to his arm.

A man came into the room, shining white fluorescent light for a brief second. He picked up Cameron, placing him onto his wheelchair, gently removing the wires connected to his body. He kept the catheter in. He began to wheel him out of the room.

The halls of the hospital wing were abandoned. Nobody came to try and stop the man. Cameron was scared. He was crying, but no tears came out of his eyes. He heard one of the wheels creak, and the wheelchair stopped. Maybe he wasn’t going to be kidnapped. He couldn’t lift his head up to look.

A breeze hit him. The man had just gone to open a door. He came back to the wheelchair, and they resumed walking. Cameron could only look at the floor. He saw black tar for a while, which meant that they were on pavement. Then dirt and grass. A forest? A field? He couldn’t tell; it was too dark out. Then, there was a bright orange light, and they were indoors again.

Juncture 3.7

2015-11-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

Several hours later, I was waiting inside of the man’s hospital room for him to wake up. Derry had performed her usual treatment, and his breaks and bruises were gone. However his face was still drooping in weird places, his eyelids bent downward and half of his mouth was open. Derry told Siegfried and me that she couldn’t fix it, as it had happened too long ago.

Our best guess was that he had suffered from strokes - and possibly seizures as a child. I know it was shallow, but it was hard to look at. You couldn’t even tell how old he was looking at him. I didn’t think it would get any easier to view when he woke up either.

For safety reasons, we had removed everything that could either be used as a weapon, or that could help him facilitate an escape. We didn’t know the limits of his teleportation, so we had to be careful. So the only things that were in the room were his bed (which was nailed down), my chair (which was also nailed down), and his IV rack. There was a communication device strapped to my wrist in case he could do anything we didn’t know about and I needed to call for help.

So far, he hadn’t moved, aside from some twists and turns. The only noise that escaped him was the occasional groan or grunt.

Major General Siegfried had commanded me to stay in here to apologize when the guy woke up. I agreed easily, seeing how I beat him within an inch of his life. I felt pretty guilty about the whole affair.

I heard a grunt from the guy on the bed, and looked down at him. His eyes opened a little bit, and when he registered who was there, they widened more. He gasped, and the right side of his mouth opened. It was a little bit startling to see. I help up my hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He calmed down a little bit, but he was still visibly wary.

“Where am I?” was what he asked first. He had that same hoarse tone that he had in the bank, and it still sounded somewhat muffled. I had thought that it was the scarf that made it sound like that, but apparently it was how he always sounded.

“I… can’t tell you that right now. I don’t have the clearance,” I answered. That was a lie, but I didn’t really know where we were either. “What’s your name?”

He waited a second, his eyes flickering up and down, then took a deep breath. “Jake. Jake Smith.”

He was lying. I didn’t know for certain, but I had a strong feeling in my gut. The name sounded fake. I wouldn’t call him out on it now, that could wait.

“Okay Jake. I,” I took a bit to find the right words. They weren’t coming to me fast. “I need to apologize.” Jake looked confused.

“I know it’s weird. You were holding me up with dynamite. Not cool, by the way. Anyway, I used far too much force apprehending you, and I’m sorry.” He nodded.

“Um… I’m not sure how to respond,” He said. “Is there anyone else I can talk to?”

Ouch. That kinda stung. Logically, I knew he had a good reason to want to talk to literally anybody else, but it still hurt.

“Yeah, someone else will be in here soon.” I raised the communicator on my wrist up to my mouth and switched it on by pushing a small button.

“Send in the Major General at his earliest convenience. Over.” The line was silent for several seconds. Then; “Will do. Over.”

I looked over ‘Jake’ one more time. He didn’t look like he was going to do anything rash, so I left. I closed the door behind me and immediately bumped into the Major General.

“Did you do it?” He asked.

“Yep. I don’t think he accepted it, but I apologized.” I scratched the communicator; it chafed. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Well, the same thing I did with you,” He said, “I’m going to recruit him.”

“Actually? He tried to blow up a bank!” I was outraged, to put it mildly. “He tried to blow us up!”

“He didn’t try to blow us up specifically. He tried to blow you up when you were punching him. He’s spirited.”

Spirited? More like dangerous. I didn’t trust the guy, especially since he gave a fake name. But I didn’t have a choice but to listen to him. I was still new here.

“Fine. Am I free to go?” the Major General left, and I headed to the cafeteria. I was starving, and by the time I got there I was famished. The room was empty. I grabbed a plate of food and a cup of water and sat down to eat a quick meal. Since I didn’t have to talk to anyone, I finished quickly and headed back to my room.

I stripped, showered, turned off the light, and got in bed. I put on The Black Panther, and it resumed from where I was watching it the last night. I couldn’t focus on it, my eyes kept losing focus and I was missing snippets of dialogue. I turned it off after five minutes.

I thought about what had happened today. I had gone back to the fifties, I had almost exploded. I nearly beat a defenseless man to death. I looked down at my hand – it was shaking. Even seven relative hours after the fact, I was still full of adrenaline.

I tossed and turned, but didn’t fall asleep. After far too long, I got up out of my bed. I wasn’t going to fall asleep any time soon, so I may as well go for a walk. I slipped on a pair of shoes and left the room. I closed the door and saw Jake down the hall.

Juncture 3.6

2015-11-26T06:16:00.002-08:00

My leap took me onto the man with the dynamite, bringing us both down to the ground. He fell easier than I expected him to. I thought that he would have put up at least a little bit of resistance, but he appeared to be weaker than I gave him credit for.

As we fell on the floor in a tangled mess, I scrabbled to get ahold of the arm that was holding the lighter. I knew that I couldn’t simply take the lighter away, so my next best hope was to separate his hands and pin them down. I managed to wrap my hand around his wrist – it was thin, and I slammed it onto the hard, cold marble.

I noticed that I was angrier than I first thought. All of the pent-up fear of the past twenty or so minutes, the specter of death, the fucking threat of being blown up by dynamite. Red-hot rage poured through my body, bubbling over. Spots appeared in my vision.

I’m not proud of what I did next.

I lifted up the arm I was holding, and slammed it against the ground again, harder this time. He didn’t stop struggling, so I did it again. This time I heard a loud crack, and a thrill went through my body.

The guy grunted loudly, and kept on struggling, but he didn’t move that arm any more. I dropped the arm, and swung it back, then pulled forward in a hook. It connected solidly with the left side of his jaw. He grunted again and dropped the dynamite to put his hand in front of his face.

I took the opportunity to grab at his scarf, taking ahold of both of the ends. It was tied in a manner so that when I grabbed it, the part that was around his neck tightened. I pulled. He let out a gasping noise, and his non-broken hand grasped for my wrist.

I punched him in the face again with my other hand, as hard as I did the first time. His glasses cracked as I hit them, and the edge of the frame snapped and slid across his brow, leaving a long jagged line. I didn’t register what his face looked like, but I could tell that he was having trouble breathing. There was a peculiar buzzing in my ears.

I pulled back, punched again, pulled the scarf tighter. His hand dropped off of my wrist, and I pulled back to punch again when something grabbed my arm and yanked. I was pulled off of the man and the scarf slid out of my grip. I skidded across the floor, grasped for any grip I could get. I managed to pull myself up onto one knee, and charged for the man again.

Major General Siegfried blocked me. I slammed into him, and the force of my momentum bounced me off of him back onto the floor. I laid there for a little, breathing heavily. The buzzing noise had ceased.

I sat back up, no longer as angry as I had been. I looked over to where the man laid, beaten into the ground. I flinched.

His face was a mixture of red and purple blotches, and his nose was clearly broken. There was blood pouring out of one nostril, and a similar pool was forming under the man’s jaw. His eyes looked weird – like they were drooping downward, and the gash on his temple was dripping slow, thick blood onto the floor.

It wasn’t a pretty sight to look at. He was gasping, spit and blood bubbling from his mouth. But he wasn’t conscious. I had made plenty certain of that when I was pummeling him.

As I calmed down, details made themselves more apparent than they had been. Major General Siegfried was showing the mass of scared people a small object that looked absolutely tiny in his enormous hand. I listened to what he was saying.

“…take them into custody, and deal with it there. Again, I’m very sorry.” So the Major General was lying his ass off, pretending to be a police officer. Well, if anybody could pull off that lie, it would be him.

The crowd around the bloody pulp of a man bleeding all over the floor dispersed somewhat, and Major General Siegfried took the opportunity to walk over to me. He extended a hand, and I took it.

“Sorry about this,” He whispered, and twisted my arm behind my back. “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can – and will – be held against you in a court of law.” As he read me my rights, he pulled out a pair of cuffs from his belt and locked them against my wrists.

He held my arms behind my back tightly. I was walked over to where the other guy was. He looked even worse close up. Some of the blood was caking, clumping up into darker clots. Major General Siegfried hooked his arm underneath him, and in one smooth motion, lifted the man over his shoulder.

We walked out of the building. It seemed colder than it was before. I was shivering.

“That was irresponsible, Marc. You almost ruined the mission. Twice, in fact.” Major General Siegfried berated me.

“I-I’m sorry, I know I fucked up,” was what I managed to get out first. Then I managed to pull together the strength to keep going. “I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You nearly beat him to death. He was on the ground, passed out. You just kept screaming, punching him. You can’t do that.”

I was screaming? Maybe that's what that weird buzzing sound.

“I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to him when he wakes up.” I said.

Major General Siegfried gave me a harsh glance. “Well, you’d better. We’re trying to recruit him, not kill him. There’s a pretty big difference there. Imagine if you had been beaten senseless when I rescued you.”

I chose not to mention the broken –well, everything – that I had gotten from Siegfried.

“I know. I’ll apologize. I’m sorry.” I said.

We walked into the office building.

Juncture 3.5

2015-11-22T07:38:00.005-08:00

I had no idea what to do. Siegfried and I were here to recruit this guy, and he was planning on robbing this bank, not with a gun, but with freaking dynamite. He was looking at me, waiting for me to talk for him. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, apparently, so I just swallowed and did it.

“Excuse me, can I please have your attention,” I began, “Um, so this is kind of weird. You see this guy here?” People began looking in my direction, and the guy waved the hand that he wasn’t holding behind his back.

“Yeah, so he gave me a note and told me to talk for him. He’s, um… well, he’s robbing the bank. He has dynamite behind his back.” At this, the man pulled out his hand, revealing five sticks of dynamite tied into a bundle, with the fuses attached at the top as well. His other hand reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter.

I heard a man scream from way in the front of the building. There were some gasps of terror.

The man in the scarf and hat leaned next to me and whispered in my ear. His voice was raspy, even through the scarf, and the combination of that and the fact that he was whispering made it so that I could barely understand what he was saying.

“Tell them…get on the ground. They won’t get hurt.” I gulped and nodded.

“He said, if you just get on the ground, you won’t get hurt. Please do it.” The people in the bank acquiesced, some laying down with their hands above their heads, some sitting, others simply falling and landing on their butts, wanting to do what I was saying as fast as possible. Even Siegfried got on the ground. As he was descending onto his knees, he looked at me, as if to say “you know what to do.”

The man grabbed the neck of my jacket with the hand holding the lighter and dragged me up to the desk. He whispered to me again.

“He said that he needs you to open the vault. And if you don’t, dynamite. He also said that if you call the cops, he’ll blow up everyone in here.” Repeating what he said was terrifying, but I tried my damnedest to stay calm and not let my voice waver.

The tellers looked shocked, but kept composed remarkably well. One of them walked and opened the entrance to the booth. The guy walked in, and dragged me with him.

We were led by the teller into a back room. The room seemed small and claustrophobic, since it was surrounded by enormous safes. The guy whispered in my ear again.

“He’s looking for unmarked bills,” I said. The teller nodded, and walked over to one of the large safes. He spent several tense moments unlocking it. The guy next to me was flicking the lighter on and off absentmindedly.

The teller stood back and swung open the heavy safe door, then stood behind it, as if to protect himself. Inside the room were stacks of bills on wooden pallets, reaching up to the ceiling. There was more money than I had ever seen. The guy shoved his lighter into his pocket and jogged inside, leaving me behind to gawk.

He skidded onto his knees in front of the piles of cash, and began shoving wads of bills into his now empty backpack. The dynamite laid behind him, apparently forgotten. This would probably be my best chance.

I ran into the vault, grabbed the dynamite from the ground, then turned around and ran as fast as I could. I heard a loud, raspy “Hey!” behind me from the robber, and suddenly the dynamite in my hand was gone. I slid to a stop, turned around.

What the hell?

He was standing next to his half-full bag, gripping the dynamite with both hands. He shook his head.

He could teleport things, or something like that. Probably not necessarily teleporting directly, but some variant. Something to do with time travel.

“Don’t try that again,” he rasped, “you’ll only make me angry.”

He put the dynamite down again, and began shoveling money into his bag. I could only watch in despair as he was getting away with it. He finished, stood back up, slung the bag over his shoulders and walked back toward me. He looked at me and pointed at the safe door, to where the teller was. I got it, he was telling me to get the door locked.

I walked up to the door, until I could see the teller. He was terrified.

“Is he gone?” he whispered? I shook my head.

“No, but he’s leaving. He wants you to close the door. Please just do it.” The teller nodded, and began moving the heavy steel door back into its closed position.

I walked back over to the guy. He had pulled out the little lighter again, and was holding it close to the wrapped fuses of the red dynamite. We walked back out of the bank, him leading the way.

The room was emptier. Some smarter people had taken the opportunity to run from the bank as soon as we had went into the back room of the building. Others, not so smart, had stood up again, and as they saw us slowly got back on the ground. A third category of people hadn’t gotten up since we had been in there. Major General Siegfried was in this group, still sitting on the ground with his hands above his head.

He looked at me, and I looked at him. He was mouthing something, but I couldn’t make it out. He tilted his head toward the guy in the scarf and made a quick jabbing motion with his elbow.

He wanted me to attack the man. Okay, I could do that. I just had to hope that he couldn’t teleport me as well as object.

I pounced.

Juncture 3.4

2015-11-19T07:15:00.003-08:00

The air was an even temperature as we walked out of Siegfried’s office, the kind of weather where leaves were just beginning to grow again after a harsh winter. As I was subjected to some cold breezes, I was thankful that I had the leather jacket on.

“So… what are we looking for?” I asked Siegfried, as we walked down the sidewalk next to a large street.

“Well, there’s a person we’re looking for somewhere near here, in a bank near here.” Was his reply.

“Okay. How do you know he’s going to be there?” was my next question. He looked at me with a vague, blank expression, like it boggled his mind that I was missing something.

“Time, Marc,” he breathed out in a sigh, “we have full access to the timeline. We know where and when almosteverything happens.”

“Oh, right,” I said with a sheepish grin.

Almost?

We kept walking down the street. A few moments passed.

“Turn left,” Siegfried said. I did so, and he followed immediately after. In front of me down the intersection of the street was a large, regal-looking bank. A sign on top of the entrance proclaimed the building to be the First Bank of America. We walked through the glass doors, and into a long, garish hallway.

Everything inside was white marble. The floor was marble, the pillars lining the walls were marble, and the ceiling was marble. There was a line of people waiting, starting at the far end of the room, and ending close to where we were. We joined it at the very end.

“So do you know how long this is going to take?” I asked. I looked up at Major General Siegfried; his face was screwed up and his eyes were closed.

Right, he was using his TA to check. It was several more seconds before he opened his eyes.

“Well, we have… quite a while, unfortunately. Nothing interesting is going to happen here for a bit. Nothing that causes any large emotional shifts.”

“Do you know how long?”

“At least fifteen minutes.” Siegfried answered.

Dammit, that’s long.

I didn’t have the attention span to just stand here and do nothing for that long. Before Siegfried had even finished speaking I felt myself begin to get twitchy. After a minute, I was slapping my hand against my thigh.

“I’m going to wait outside for a little bit, look around for anything suspicious.” I said. Siegfried nodded and I walked back outside of the grandiose building. I paced for a couple minutes, scanning the area for anything weird. There weren’t very many other people, the street was practically abandoned.

A gang of guys passed down the far side of the street, all wearing the exact same outfit that I was. They couldn’t have looked more stereotypical if they were all snapping simultaneously as they walked.

Closer to me, a woman wearing scarily high heels tottered into a shop building, and a bell jingled.

I walked down to the other end of the street, scanning from side to side as I walked. Aside from the huge bank, there were several smaller shops lining the street. There were groceries, coffee shops, and restaurants. Most didn’t have very many people inside.

I walked back up the street, and decided to go inside one of the restaurants, called The Grillerie. The moderately fancy façade did not belie the oddly cheap interior. There were several folding chairs nailed to the floor around small tables, also nailed down. The tables still had scraps from the people who had been eating here before.

The only person aside from me in the building was a balding man who I took to be the cook. He was standing behind the register, wearing a red apron and an askew chef’s hat. He was smoking a large cigar, and looking at me with a droll expression on his face.

I quickly walked out. The man grunted as I left. I walked back up to the bank, through the swinging doors, and back up to Major General Siegfried. He had moved up around a foot and a half since I had left.

I stood next to him, and asked, “Anything yet?”

“Not yet. Give it time,” was his reply, “It won’t be long now.”

I stood next to him for a bit. That didn’t work. Then I walked horizontally all the way to one pillar on the left side of the room. That didn’t work either. I walked from there to the matching pillar on the opposite side of the room. I stayed there for a bit, a window was open next to me and there was a breeze.

The door opened, and a man walked in. He was wearing a baseball cap down over his brow. Underneath that was a pair of overly-large sunglasses. Underneath that was a scarf. He was also carrying a backpack in one hand, with the zipper half open underneath his other hand.

General conclusion: he looked shifty as hell.

He got in line behind us and began fumbling with his bag. He was trying to pull something large out. I pretended to not see him, following Major General Siegfried’s lead. He was audibly having trouble pulling whatever object was in his bag out, but after several seconds he persevered and the rifling noise stopped.

There was a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around and saw that the man was holding out a slip of paper in one gloved hand, and he held the other one behind his back. I took the paper, and tried to decipher it.

“Hello.

I am in the process of robbing this bank.

Do not yell. I have dynamite behind my back.

You are going to announce this to the rest of the people here, and accompany me to the back, where you will be my liaison.

As compensation, nobody here will be harmed.

Thanks.”

After several seconds, I read the message in its entirety. I felt the blood rush from my face as I was reading it. We were being held up at dynamite-point.

Oh, fuck.