Juncture 4.5

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

“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

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.