“You should be so lucky. She can do far worse than merely kill you. She can erase you. And will, if she deems it necessary for the good of continuity.” Jay was as grim as I could ever recall seeing him. “To save the timestream, if she has to, she’ll see that you’re expunged.”
I stared at him, logic warring with feeling—though really, the two weren’t mutually exclusive. “I…but, how can she—What about everything I’ve done? If I’m erased, what happens to the things I’ve changed?”
“She fills in the gaps, fixes them herself. It wouldn’t be you who did those things, it’d be her or someone else. She can do it,” he assured me, seeing my disbelief. “And like I said, if she thinks it’s best for the future that you were never in the past, she will.”
I couldn’t argue with that, but I sure as hell wanted to. After struggling for a moment and coming up blank, I pushed it aside and moved on.
“So what do I do now?”
“Go back home. Back to Base. Sit and wait.”
I just stared at him. The seconds stretched on, until he chuckled.
“Didn’t think you’d go for that. But you should go back home, at least long enough to see if they’ve found anything.”
“What about Acacia?”
“She’s a Tim
e Agent. If it’s fated for you to see her again, you will.”
“But—”
It was too late; the conversation was over. I don’t know if Hue shifted the focus of his lensing ability, or if Jay did it himself, but his image shimmered like oil on water and then was gone.
I felt, rather abruptly, like sitting down. So I did, half sitting and half collapsing onto the ground. I looked about, marveling once again at how everything seemed exactly the same. Even the scuffs from where I’d dragged Jay’s bleeding body were still there. I winced at the thought and looked away.
Something odd struck me then, and, much as I didn’t want to, I looked back at those marks. Everything was as I’d remembered it, except for one thing.
There was no blood.
I remembered, all too vividly, dragging Jay, encased in his silver suit which covered him completely, save the huge holes that had been left by the gyradon’s daggerlike teeth. Blood had gushed out, violently at first, then in slower, weaker gouts, as his heart had slowed and his veins and arteries emptied. There had been enough, I remembered, to turn a large patch of the dusty ground to dark, viscous mud.
None of that remained.
The sun, I thought, it must’ve—
But there was no sun—just that swirling van Gogh sky.
I jumped to my feet. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Hue was hovering anxiously in front of me, pulsing colors and patterns like a supercharged kaleidoscope.
I felt something—a presence—behind me…a breeze—or a breath?—on the back of my neck. Images flashed through my head of slitted red eyes and gleaming yellow teeth. I had yet, in all my travels and missions, to come across anything as terrifying as the leader of HEX, and he still featured prominently in my dreams and moments like these, when I was sure there was something just behind me….
Fast as I could, I Walked.
I may not have come away from that conversation completely enlightened, but I’d certainly learned enough to give me a start on things. Now, if only fate would hurry itself up and let me see Acacia again, I could learn a bit more.
I’d like to be able to say that what happened then was the call of my name in a familiar voice. I’d like to tell you that I heard it the moment I stepped into the In-Between, turned, and there she was. I’d like to tell you that, because not only would it have meant I got to see Acacia that much sooner, it would have hurt far less.
What actually happened was that I got shot by a laser.
I’ve mentioned the noise in the In-Between, so it won’t come as much of a shock that I didn’t hear the thing fire. It’s like when you brush your hand against something really hot when you aren’t looking—there’s a shock of pain and a sense of wrong, but for an instant you’re not even sure where it came from. It hurts so much that at first you can’t even tell where it hurts.
It took a moment for my brain to sort everything out, but even before that, I’d thrown myself to the right, off the little ledge of candy-striped sand I’d been standing on. I got a single glimpse of a humanoid figure before the psychedelic chaos of the In-Between surrounded me and I whooshed, in a more-or-less controlled fall, down to a patch of grass about the size of a Volkswagen. The left side of my chest and inside upper arm were burned, and there was a hole clear through the sling covering my shoulder.
I dropped into a defensive stance, keeping an eye out above me. Whatever or whoever had shot me had to come from the same direction. Basic teleportation didn’t work in the In-Between; it was too chaotic, had too many things interfering with it.
I heard it, this time—a kind of zwipp sound, but it was coming from behind me. And right before the sound, a nagging tug on my mind, something I recognized, a feeling as familiar as the beat of my heart…