Chapter Text

Emily looked up from her clipboard. It wasn’t terribly unusual to see a new face around the office – the Bureau was a place of work, just like any other, and there were new hires occasionally. However, it dawned on her as she noticed the mopping figure that it was, in fact, unusual to see a new face... in a janitor’s uniform.

Uh, well. The face wasn’t – the face was above the janitor’s uniform, not – not in – you get it. It was unusual to see a new face belonging to someone wearing a janitor’s uniform.

Ahti was everywhere in the Bureau. Everyone knew Ahti. He was a little weird, a little creepy, but ask anyone, and they’d generally smile vaguely and say something to the effect of “oh, yeah, Ahti, good old Ahti”, and that would be it. Everyone knew Ahti, but people didn’t really think about Ahti. The slightly odd Finnish man in the blue jumpsuit was, whether people realised it or not, often considered to be synonymous with said jumpsuit. You saw Ahti, you saw the janitor. You saw the janitor, you saw Ahti.

But Emily was currently seeing a janitor who was extremely non-Ahti.

A complete lack of Ahti graced her vision. There was a total absence of Ahti in the janitorial situation in front of her. A more inAhtious figure never before had she seen. Essentially an anti-Ahti.

Emily was, by her nature, unceasingly curious. It was an invaluable aspect of her character. It was what made her a good researcher. It was what made her search for meaning in the chaos of her life. It was what made her find answers to her questions and draw theories from her hypotheses. It was also what made her now walk up to not-Ahti and start a conversation.

“Hi! I’m Emily Pope, Dr. Darling’s assistant. Are you new?”

Not-Ahti ignored her and continued mopping. There was an awkward few seconds, but Emily wasn’t one to give up when things got awkward.

“Excuse me?” she leaned in slightly. Maybe not-Ahti was hard of hearing. “I said my name is Emily P–”

Not-Ahti jumped. “Jesus! Oh, god, I’m sorry, I had no idea you were talking to me. Hi. Hello.”

Emily grinned nervously. “I, uh, yes, I was. I’m–”

“Emily Pope,” not-Ahti said, not making eye contact, “Yeah, uh, I heard you. Sorry. I’m not, um, I’m not used to people around here talking to me.”

Emily blinked. “What? People haven’t said hello?”

Not-Ahti looked around the office. “You’re actually the first person to talk to me since I started working here two months ago. Well, besides Ahti, obviously, but he’s my boss. Oh, and this one guy, uh, a security guy down in Maintenance, but he mostly just says hi when I go in to clean the offices down by the NSC. I’m actually not sure what his name is. Steve, I think.”

“Really? Nobody else has spoken to you in two months? That’s a bit rude,” Emily frowned. “Actually… two months? I haven’t seen you around.”

“I don’t come up here to Research very often,” not-Ahti replied, “I mostly work in the Maintenance and Containment sectors, but today Ahti said someone had spilled something up here and told me to take care of it. I mean, what he actually said was something about how ‘you need to be in Research today’ and then a bunch of stuff in Finnish, but there was something about a spill in there, I think.”

There was a pause.

“So, uh, what’s your name?” Emily asked.

A strange expression passed over not-Ahti’s face. It was barely there for a fraction of a second, but it almost looked like panic, or… what, paranoia? Like a prey animal, a deer in headlights. But nothing that extreme. Just a quick flash of fear before a neutral expression settled back in.

“Je– Courtney.”

Emily furrowed her brow. “Jecourtney?”

“Courtney.” said Courtney. “I meant. Uh. Like, je’Courtney? Like… I was trying to do, like, a French thing. Y’know, like in French? Uh… je’ma… j’maple... I don’t speak French. I’m sorry.”

Emily noticed that Courtney’s words didn’t exactly match her tone. Normally, in this context, saying “I’m sorry” would be a damper, like putting a cushion down to prevent the clunky awkwardness from clattering on the ground. Courtney was wielding the two-word phrase like a knife – not hiding or cushioning the awkward clumsiness, but daring you to point it out. “I know I’m being awkward,” she seemed to say, “What’s wrong with being awkward? Fuck you.”

She was also looking directly into Emily’s face now, for the first time. Her eyes were slightly unnerving. She was wearing the janitor’s blue jumpsuit, but there was nothing janitorial about her eyes. Her eyes weren’t janitor’s eyes, they were… Emily had no idea how to describe them. Hero’s eyes? Fighter’s eyes? The only time Emily had seen eyes even remotely like that before was behind the glasses of the slightly terrifying Director Trench, a man who commanded the Bureau like a Caesar ruling the Roman Empire, and who Emily had only met on a few – remarkably daunting – occasions.

Emily’s nervous grin slowly crawled back over her face. “I think that would be ‘Je m'appelle Courtney’,” she said, “But I don’t really know French either. It’s nice to meet you, Courtney.”

“You too, Ms. Pope.”

“Oh, god no, please, Emily.”

“Okay then,” Courtney laughed, “Nice to meet you too, Emily.”

They stood there for a few seconds. The conversation seemed to have ended.

“I need to take these documents to Dr. Darling,” Emily said at the same time as Courtney said “I’m done with this spill, I should get back to Ahti.”

They looked at each other, and Courtney said “Uh, okay then. See you later, Emily.”

Emily smiled, nodded, and walked off to Dr. Darling’s office.

As she did so, she was entirely unaware of the fact that Courtney’s gaze was following her retreating form like a sniper’s sights following their target.

People don’t pay attention to janitors. That’s why nobody else noticed Courtney staring either. It’s also why nobody heard her when she muttered “Her? Why her? What are you talking about?”, seemingly to herself.

Chapter Text

Executive had a… weird tone.

It wasn’t bad, exactly, it was just weird. Emily was used to the big, open, airy spaces of the Research sector, or the small, busy, cluttered labs. The Executive sector was somewhere in between. It wasn’t as scattered as a laboratory, but it wasn’t as tidy as the smooth and well-kept Central Research atrium. It wasn’t as chaotic and crowded as a lab filled with researchers, but it wasn’t as peaceful as sitting alone by the giant redwoods.

She was glad she rarely had to come up here, only occasionally fetching things for Dr. Darling or bringing Mold samples to Underhill, who worked from Executive these days for some reason. It wasn’t completely obvious to her why Dr. Darling kept asking her to take the samples, seeing as there were plenty of interns available, but he insisted – it was probably part of his remarkably unsubtle attempts to get Underhill and Emily to spend time together.

Today, she’d delivered the samples, endured Underhill’s extreme Underhillishness, and was now heading back through Executive to her lunch break. She wasn’t excited to eat alone for the thousandth time in a row, but she didn’t mesh well with the other researchers, and she didn’t really know anyone else. She didn’t exactly have a friend she could chat about music with.

She sighed at that last thought. When she was a kid, eating alone in the school cafeteria and listening to her hand-me-down portable CD player, she’d had this image of being grown up and surrounded by friends, chatting about the different songs they’d listened to and introducing each other to new artists. Oh well.

As she passed by an unused office on her way back to the elevator, she heard someone speaking within. She didn’t like to eavesdrop, but then she heard her name.

“Why Emily? Why her? What’s special about her?”

Emily stopped. The voice sounded familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. She stepped closer to the slightly open door to the dark room.

“Slow down. Slow – no, it’s okay, slow down. What’s wrong with you lately? You’re not usually like this.”

The same voice again. It was definitely one side of a conversation, but the other participant was inaudible, at least to Emily. She took another step closer, straining to hear any other speech.

“What? You’re not making sense. Goddammit, you told me – you told me – stop, no, stop, this is… no, no, stop, okay? Okay, just… just listen, dammit. You’re… you brought me here. You told me he was – but he isn’t. I know, it… it feels like he is, but I’ve been everywhere in this place and he isn’t. You’ve been… I don’t know, leading me around, for months now. First it was the boardroom, then it was the NSC, then it was that lab with the rubber duck, then that Langston guy, and now this Emily person. You keep showing me people, places, things, but… but it’s like you don’t know what you’re trying to show me. What’s going on? What is wrong with you? You’ve never been like this before.”

Emily blinked. That was not a normal conversation. It sounded like someone was on the phone, but cell phones didn’t work in the Oldest House, and none of it made sense – it sounded like it should be pretty straightforward to understand, except that it pulled random pieces of information out of the air. Langston? Emily vaguely recognised the name. A Mr. Langston was the head of the Panopticon, right? F… Franklin? Frederick? F something. And she knew about the Rubber Duck Altered Item, but she didn’t see what either it or Langston had to do with her.

“And it’s all the goddamn time. I can’t hear myself think anymore. Goddammit, I can’t handle this. Look, you need to figure out… whatever is happening with you. Half the things you’re showing me aren’t even accurate. The rubber duck you showed me was the wrong colour, and it was fuzzy as hell when you showed me Emily, but the real one definitely wasn’t wearing a goddamn saucepan strapped to her chest. Okay? So maybe you’re… I don’t know if you can hallucinate, or if you’re… dreaming… or… something, but just, please, stop showing me this shit until you’ve got it figured out. Okay? Good talk. Thanks. So glad we could have this time together.” There was a pause. “Guiding star, my ass.”

Curiosity pulled at Emily’s mind like a fishing hook. Before she fully knew what she was doing, she’d pushed the door open and flicked on the light.

The office was empty.

She looked around. While it was true that weirdness was part of the job description at the Bureau – okay, let’s be real, it practically was the job description at the Bureau – and it was Emily’s job to grab that weirdness with both hands and pull at it, it was a little jarring for that weirdness to say her name clearly in a dark room then vanish when she turned the light on.

She was trying to figure out if she could replicate this in a controlled environment somehow when she noticed the door at the other end had just clicked closed. She sighed – another instance of a runaway imagination being squished by mundanity – then walked across the room and pulled the door open with a jerk.

“Fuck!” said Courtney, as her mop clattered to the ground, “Emily! What the hell? You startled me. What are you doing sneaking around abandoned offices?”

“Courtney! Did you see anyone come out of this door just now?”

“What? No. Nobody uses this office. Why are you in here?”

“I…” Emily was completely thrown off balance. “I thought I heard someone talking in here.”

Courtney looked concerned. “You did? Did you recognise the voice?”

“Kind of,” Emily said, picking up the mop and handing it over, “I’m not sure. Um. I might’ve imagined it. What’re you doing in here?”

“I’m a janitor.”

“I know.” There was a pause. Emily was still thinking about the strange conversation she’d just overheard, so it took her brain a second to catch up to the ordinary conversation currently unfolding. “Cleaning?”

Courtney broke into a grin. “There you go.”

Emily furrowed her brow. “Why? It’s unused, isn’t it?”

“I mean, yeah, for a couple years now, as far as I can tell,” Courtney shrugged, “I just figure, hey, some offices might be empty now, but if they need to be used again eventually, it’d be nice if they didn’t need, like, years’ worth of cleaning all at once, y’know? So I’ve been cleaning these offices every few weeks.”

“That’s a good idea.” Emily said, turning back to face the empty room. It was, indeed, cleaner than expected – not sparkling, but not no-foot-traffic-for-years dusty. “Very considerate.”

“Not really,” Courtney pulled her janitor’s cart into the room, “It’s mostly just me wanting to save my own ass more work later. Or Ahti’s ass, I guess.” She took a duster off of the cart, switched on a portable radio, and started dusting the empty shelves to the sound of energetic rock music.

“What’s this song?” asked Emily.

“'Balance Slays the Demon',” Courtney grinned, “It’s by Old Gods of Asgard. You listen to them?”

“I haven’t,” Emily said, “What was that bit they just said about ‘a miracle limited’?”

“‘Beyond the shadows he settled for, there is a miracle illuminated’,” Courtney replied, “I love that line. I always used to think it was from a poem or something – I think I first heard it out of context. Weirdly enough, I could’ve sworn I heard it when I was a little kid, but this song only came out a couple years ago. Like it?”

“It’s interesting,” Emily said, “It kinda applies to working here at the FBC. Like, all the crazy things we do here… they’re like ‘a miracle illuminated’, as opposed to the ‘shadow’ that most other people have to settle for, right?”

Courtney laughed. “Yeah, I like that. We work in the miracle illuminated. I meant the song, though. Do you like the song?”

“Oh,” Emily went slightly pink, “Uh, yeah, it’s good. I’ll have to look it up when I get home. Old Gods of…?”

“Asgard! Old Gods of Asgard. They have this whole Norse mythology thing going on – the two main guys are called Tor and Odin, all their album covers have those weird Viking spiral-knot-things on them, stuff like that. I’ve liked them ever since I found one of my dad’s old albums when I was a kid. I was psyched when they started making music again a couple years back – apparently they got a new manager.”

“That’s fascinating. I’ll definitely look into them.”

Emily watched the janitor dust, then looked at the clock on the wall.

“Hey, Courtney,” she said, “Do you get a lunch break?”

Chapter Text

The woman who had introduced herself to Emily as “Courtney” was scared.

She didn’t like to admit to being scared. She’d been through a lot of shit in her life, and she was absolutely certain that a lot of it would have driven most people crazy with fear. She’d survived, though, and she faced every new wild insanity with a steel eye and burning heart.

But right now she was fuckin’ scared.

Her life was largely defined by instability. She hadn’t lived in an actual house since she was a preteen; she lived on the road and almost never spent more than a couple months in any specific place. She hadn’t had a family since her hometown had been destroyed; she’d lost her parents to the thing that had destroyed it and lost her brother to those investigating it. She hadn’t really ever had friends; her brother was the closest friend she’d ever had and she didn’t have him anymore.

That’s not to say her life was aimless, though – it was chaotic, but it was definitely a directed chaos. All the tangles of her life twisted and fluttered like ribbons in the wind, but those ribbons were tied to something at one end, and that something pulled her along past every obstacle and over every speedbump. That something was her purpose, her driving goal, the thing she would fight anything to get through to. And her goal was always in sight, because there was a star guiding her to it.

And now that star was erratically winking on and off like there was radio interference.

The woman who Ahti seemed to refuse to call anything but “janitor’s assistant” wasn’t just scared, she was terrified.

She’d followed the star across the country. She’d followed the star to New York. She’d followed the star to Thomas Street. She’d followed the star into the giant concrete building that nobody else seemed to notice. She’d followed the star to the strange little janitor, and taken the job he offered. Somehow, she’d never been more certain that this was where she was meant to go – this was the goal she’d been so desperately reaching for, for almost two decades.

Then it had all gone wrong.

It had started with… minor things. Little things. Her star had told her to go to the Pneumatics room. Something very important was in Pneumatics. Something vital. Something critical. The fate of her quest depended entirely on what lay in Pneumatics.

Y’know what was in the Pneumatics room?

Fuckin’ pneumatics.

She wasn’t even entirely sure what pneumatics were before her star had told her to go into that room, but after an entire week of searching, she got pretty damn familiar with the concept. She had every knob, cart, nozzle, spigot, wheel, pipe, catwalk, desk, window, chair, valve, and chain in that goddamn room memorised. What she did not have was anything of even remote importance to her goal.

Then it was the NSC. Her star had shown her fiery explosions, gunfire, yellow tape across every path, collapsed walkways, forklifts flying through the air, and the broad flat concrete floors totally devoid of life.

Then she’d gone to the damn thing. It remained totally unexploded, with guns unfired, paths untaped, walkways uncollapsed, forklifts obeying the laws of gravity, and engineers, mechanics, and security officers all over the place. The image she’d seen so clearly of a huge, lifeless, and freakishly quiet room interrupted by sudden violence was replaced with a huge, busy, and conversation-filled room uninterrupted by anything but the occasional alarm from an earth-bound forklift.

The woman who the Chief of Security in Maintenance vaguely thought was called “Colleen” could feel what her star was feeling, and her star had, at this point, begun to panic.

Her star had started throwing out almost random directions, in a seemingly desperate attempt to help her, somehow. The images got less coherent. A golden warmth in the boardroom. Saving the NSC from some vague danger. A red rubber duck in a lab. The face of Frederick Langston, head of the Panopticon. The face of Emily Pope, a research assistant. It was like the star was trying to paint a picture by dipping paintbrushes in vivid colours and then firing them from a crossbow into a canvas across a field. Half the time, they missed entirely, and when they did hit, they were completely abstract and meaningless. And now there was paint everywhere.

But it was all wrong. The boardroom was sterile and cold. The NSC was fine. The rubber duck in the lab was yellow, not red. Neither Mr. Langston nor Emily were wearing those… metal… things on their chest.

There was a mirror. An anchor. A cell with “P6” printed across it. A floating corpse. Every time she saw someone eating an orange, she shuddered. Someone had turned on an old Justin Bieber song and she’d almost collapsed. She couldn’t look into dark places anymore – not since her star had shown her that thing with the twisted antlers. She’d walked past a refrigerator and suddenly been overwhelmed with the image of a gigantic, bulging, pulsing, glowing, staring eye. And, for some reason, panini.

Gigantic black nails. Flamingos. Clocks. Tentacles. Mannequins. Red crystals. Detective novels. Anthology horror TV shows. Motels. Guns. Chunks of broken concrete. Knives made out of black rock. Sandwiches. Grey sweatsuits. Norse gods. A poem cut into pieces and dropped in a hat. Trees. Fingers pushing through surfaces. Chanting. 1970s pop songs. Strange metal harnesses. Page after page after page after page after page of documents and files and letters and messages and memos. Red. Silver. Red. Silver. Red. Silver. Red.

And that goddamn slide projector.

She did a pretty good job of maintaining the appearance of normalcy, all things considered.

Not that it mattered. People don’t talk to janitors. When her star had led her to Mr. Langston, she’d started a conversation, and he’d… well, he’d been polite and extremely talkative (“Did you know the snacks in Executive are better than the ones in Investigations? They’re all wrapped in the same packaging, but they do something else to the ones in Executive! And let me tell you about my cat…”), but he hadn’t exactly asked her how she was feeling. (Not that she was blaming him. She knew he had no particular reason to care about her, and she had no particular reason to care about him, and, from what she’d seen of him, he generally treated everyone – superiors, inferiors, peers, passers-by, flies on the office wall – more-or-less the same.)

Her star’s confused rambling had gotten so bad she couldn’t even communicate with it normally anymore. Usually the link they had ensured that thoughts flowed freely between them – she didn’t need to say anything, she could just think it. But now it was like the back-and-forth flow of thought and feeling had turned into a one-way road, a waterfall, constantly giving new information, most of it wrong, none of it helpful, and all of it getting less and less connected to sense and sanity as time went on.

The only good thing that had come of it was Emily.

The woman who most people in the Bureau didn’t call by any name liked Emily. Emily was nice to her, and although they were two wildly different people, it almost felt like Emily understood some vital, foundational part of her that she didn’t have the words for. It was fantastic to talk to her, even though their now-regular lunchtime conversations were usually just about music, or whatever Emily was researching, or funny things Ahti did, or other mundane things. It felt so nice to finally have a real connection to another human after so long.

But...

In the same way that darkness only exists in relation to light, loneliness only exists in relation to companionship. If you’ve spend seventeen years alone, never getting past a surface-level acquaintanceship with anyone, you get numb to it. Eventually you don’t even realise there’s anything missing.

But if, after seventeen years of being almost totally alone, you finally really connect to someone, it’s… it’s good, obviously, but… it’s like loneliness has been scratching at you for so long that it’s scratched all the nerves off, then suddenly, overnight, all the nerves come back.

The woman who hadn’t told anyone in the Bureau her real name was finally, really, actually feeling things about another human again.

And Jesse Faden was scared shitless.

Chapter Text

Emily started as her phone beeped.

“Oh my god, it’s almost noon,” she said, standing up so quickly that her chair clattered to the ground behind her. “I have to get to lunch.”

The other person in the lab looked up. “What’s the rush?”

“What?”

“You jumped out of that chair like it gave you an electric shock.” He grinned. “I know the discoveries we make here can be ‘shocking’, but I was hoping it wasn’t quite that literal.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She liked him, but his corny humour didn’t always land well for her. (Although other Bureau staff sometimes seemed to think he was the second coming of Mark Twain, with how they got an... almost suspicious amount of entertainment from his goofy dad jokes.)

“No,” she said, defaulting to her oh god, please stop smiling like you’re waiting for me to laugh tone as she picked her chair back up. “I mean… no, I’m meeting with someone and I’d rather not keep them waiting.”

“Really?”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

“No, no, I just mean it’s good to see you’re making friends. People can be a little…” He trailed off.

“A little what?”

“No, never mind,” he said, waving the hanging thought away. “Who are you meeting with? Raya?”

“No,” Emily said, catching herself just in time to stop before adding “thank god”. “It’s the new janitor’s assistant.”

“Ahti has a new assistant? I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, she doesn’t come to Research very often. She’s been here for months but I only met her recently, myself.”

“Ah, I see.” He turned back to his notes as she picked up her clipboard. Just before she left, he looked up again. “Say, I don’t mean to impose, but I like to know folks around here. Would you mind introducing me to your new friend?”

“Not at all,” Emily said before she could stop herself.

And that was how Emily found herself accompanied to the cafeteria by Dr. Casper Darling, the Head of Research.

The cafeteria wasn’t packed, but it was busy enough that Courtney didn’t notice them approaching until Emily sat down in front of her. She looked up and immediately smiled.

“Emily! How’s your day been going?”

“It’s definitely been going,” Emily returned the smile, “Courtney, this is my boss, Dr. Casper Darling, the Bureau’s Head of Research. Dr. Darling, this is Courtney, the new janitorial assistant.”

Emily puzzled for days about how it had gone south so fast. She had no idea if she had said something wrong, or if Courtney had done something, or maybe if Dr. Darling just really didn’t like redheads. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – that made sense about the interaction that followed that completely innocuous introduction.

Courtney turned and started to reach out to shake Dr. Darling’s hand, then the smile melted off her face and she looked puzzled and… a little… scared? Disgusted? “Horrified” was too strong, but it was somewhere along those lines. One part nervous, one part concerned, two parts confused. She looked like the man she had just met was wearing a t-shirt that said “Ask Me About My Murder Victims”. Like, she didn’t look like she saw a man who currently had a blood-stained knife in his hands, but she also definitely did not look as though she would be surprised to see him pull one out.

Dr. Darling, on the other hand, started out looking mildly confused – like he recognised her from an old photo – but within seconds his entire demeanour changed. If Courtney’s expression had said “I wouldn’t be surprised to see you wielding a bloody knife”, Dr. Darling’s said – almost as clearly as if he’d said it out loud – “oh, god, I’ve been found out”. Horror-stricken didn’t begin to explain it. The colour drained from his face and his eyes went wide.

“Dr. Darling, are you alright?” Emily asked, alarmed.

Dr. Darling whispered something that Emily couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded a little like “good god, you look so much like him in person”.

As his expression had shifted, Courtney’s had too. Her eyes narrowed as her face subtly shifted to suspicion.

“I know where you hid the bodies,” Courtney said, but only in her tone. The actual words were “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Darling.”

“Yes,” he replied. He blinked, and seemed to realise his own expression, rapidly forcing a less frantic appearance. “Lovely to meet you – charmed. A delight. It’s great that – yes, it’s great that Ahti has some more help. Uh, I need to – you’ll have to forgive me, but I am really remarkably busy. Nice to – nice to meet you, Miss – what was your name?”

“Courtney.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss – uh. Yes. Goodbye.”

Emily opened her mouth, but he was already gone. He was moving so fast as he rounded the corner out of sight that Emily could’ve sworn he was slightly redshifted.

An awkward silence occurred.

“How do I smell?”

“What?” Emily turned, completely and totally lost. “Do you – what? With your nose. I mean–”

Courtney laughed. “No, I mean do I smell bad? Your boss seemed to object to me.”

Emily shook her head helplessly. “No, you don’t smell bad at all, you smell g– I mean – no, you’re fine. That was really weird. Have you met him before? Did you… I don’t know, spill coffee on an important file or something? He looked like… well, not to use a cliché, but he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Nope.” Courtney looked in the direction the Head of Research had escaped in. “Never seen him before in my life. Well, there’s a painting of him in the lobby, I think. So he’s not always jumpy like that?”

“Not at all. He’s almost never jumpy. Extremely difficult to, uh, jump.”

“That’s really weird.”

There was a pause.

“I finally listened to ‘The Poet and the Muse’,” Emily said. “It was really good.”

“Oh, yeah!” Courtney replied instantly, “I especially like how–”

Dr. Casper Darling frantically tore through a filing cabinet in his office.

He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time – it was just a Containment staff member being paranoid. They were always paranoid. Hell, they were paid to be paranoid. Plus, it’d been right around Halloween, so people had been spooked anyway – they always got false positives in late October. And he’d been busy. And… well, he had any number of excuses for why he hadn’t paid attention to the little note at the time, none of which seemed to hold much water now.

Finally, after way too long, he wrenched the single page out of a folder.

It wasn’t much – it was a list of dates and locations, with a note at the top.

• RE: Eastward Movement – Cause for Concern?
• 9/24/2019 – Departs Cheyenne, WY
• 9/24/2019 – Arrives in Sidney, NE
• 9/25/2019 – Departs Sidney, NE...

His stomach turned as his eyes scanned down the list, finally coming to a rest at the last line.

• 10/29/2019 – Arrives in New York City, NY

He stared at the line for a half a minute, then looked at the label on the folder he’d pulled the page from.

SUBJECT: JESSE FADEN (P7)

Chapter Text

“Hey, you, come here.”

Jesse looked up. An agent was standing by the pneumatic mail station, gesturing her over with a look of impatient annoyance. She sighed, dumped her dustpan into the bin, put her broom back on the janitor’s cart, and walked over.

“You’re a janitor, right?” the woman said, and continued before Jesse could answer. “Okay, listen. I usually take Director Trench’s mail to him, but there’s a meeting I’m almost late for, and Underhill’s gonna skin me if I’m late again. I need someone else to take up Trench’s mail. Here.” She handed Jesse the red tube. “I assume you know where his office is. Thanks.”

Jesse looked at the tube, then back up at the agent. “Uh, I don’t really… Miss…” She looked at the agent’s nametag, then in puzzlement read it out. “...’489’?”

The other woman looked down at the nametag and then back up after a sigh of irritation. “Goddammit, I put on the wrong tag again. They gave me a misprinted nametag when I first started working here, and I keep accidentally picking it up instead of my real one when I’m getting ready for work. No, my name is –” she glanced at the clock on the wall, “Oh, shit, I’m already late. Sorry, can’t chat. Thanks for taking the mail.”

Jesse tried to protest, but the woman whose name was apparently not “489” had already walked off in a hurry. She looked down at the mail tube, sighed, and started toward the Director’s office.

The Executive sector had shifted the other day, and the hallway leading to the Director’s office was now much longer than it usually was, and had a number of sharp turns. By the time Jesse got to the office door, she was positive that the hall had somehow looped over itself several times, and she felt so disoriented that she was almost as sure that, by all rights, she should now be in the mail room. The door in front of her was definitely the Director’s, though, and when she knocked, it was Mr. Trench’s voice that called out “Come in.”

She entered. The grey-haired director didn’t look up. He was entirely focused on the paperwork in front of him, and waved vaguely to the basket on the corner of his desk. “Just drop it off there.”

Very polite people they breed here in Executive, she thought as she approached the desk. She’d never met Mr. Trench before, although apparently Emily had. She didn’t go into Executive a lot, and when she did, their paths never seemed to cross.

She knew of him, of course. For one thing, there were photos and portraits of him hanging on every goddamn wall. That had always stricken her as strange – if she was in charge of an office like this, she knew she wouldn’t put up paintings of herself like that. He must be some kind of narcissist. It was extra weird because all of the paintings were completely identical. It’d definitely have been even stranger if he’d commissioned dozens and dozens of different artists to paint him dozens and dozens of different times, but even as it was, the dozens and dozens of completely identical paintings… unnerved her. They weren’t prints, either. All individual paintings. Just identical ones.

Once she’d sneakily written something in the corner of one with a pencil, and when she’d come back the next day, the painting had been replaced by another completely identical copy. Well, just another weird-ass feature of working for this weird-ass Bureau. The painting was probably an Altered Item or something.

According to Emily, Mr. Trench was extremely intimidating in person. As Jesse looked around the office, she felt inclined to agree. Binder after binder lined the walls, interspersed with diplomas, photos of the man himself shaking various important hands, an antique clock… the accessories of a man who had a lot of life to talk about, but didn’t talk about it very much, so the evidence of his experiences broke out into his surroundings like gas hissing from an over-filled pipe.

She also couldn’t help but notice a gun lying on the desk. Looking at it, something in the back of her mind – someone in the back of her mind – tried to tell her something, but, as she had taken to doing more and more lately, she tried hard to ignore it.

She was about to put the mail tube in the basket when Mr. Trench looked up.

you are a worm through time the thunder song distorts you happiness comes white pearls but yellow and red in the eye through a mirror inverted is made right leave your insides by the door push the fingers through the surface into the wet you’ve always been the new you you want this to be true we stand around you while you dream you can almost hear our words but you forget this happens more and more now you gave us the permission in your regulations we wait in the stains the word that describes this is redacted repeat the word the name of the sound it resonates in your house after the song time for applause we build you till nothing remains the egg cracks and the truth will emerge out of you you are home you remind us of home you’ve taken your boss with your boss with you all hair must be eaten under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away after the song time for applause this cliché is death out of time breaking the first the second the third the fourth wall the fifth wall floor no floor you fall how do you say insane hurts to be happy an earworm is a tune you can’t stop humming in a dream baby baby baby yeah just plastic so safe and nothing to worry about ha ha funny the last egg breaks now the hole in your room is a hole in you you came and we let you in through the hole in you you have always been here the only child a copy of a copy of a copy orange peel the picture is you holding the picture when you hear this you will know you’re in new you you want to listen you want to dream you want to smile you want to hurt you don’t want to be

Jesse’s eyes snapped open and she screamed.

Emily almost jumped out of her chair. “Shit! What? What is it?”

“I –” Jesse looked around wildly. The feeling of her entire head being ripped open was quietly subsiding, and, as the adrenaline drained out of her, she realised that she was laying in the Bureau’s medical wing. Emily was sitting next to her with an alarmed look on her face. “I – I don’t – What happened? Where – what the hell?”

“They said you passed out in the Director’s office after bringing him his mail,” Emily said, her alarm fading slightly into concern. “Are you okay?”

“I… passed out?”

Emily nodded. “That’s what they said. It was about an hour ago. According to a very rude agent in Executive, she told you to take Mr. Trench’s mail to him, and just after you entered his office, someone heard him calling for help. Apparently you walked in, gave him his mail, and then just… collapsed. It was lucky I was going through Executive bringing a mould sample to Underhill, because nobody else had any idea who you were.”

Jesse looked down at her hands. They were shaking slightly.

“The medic said that you’re perfectly healthy. They’re thinking it’s probably just stress, or low blood sugar. Have you eaten today?”

“I… yeah, I had breakfast.”

“Oh. Well, I brought you this, anyway.” Emily handed over a white package with the word “ENERGY BAR” written on it in bold black lettering. “It’s from a vending machine in Executive. Apparently they have better vending machine snacks up there than anywhere else in the building. According to this one guy I talked to a while ago, anyway. Um.”

Jesse looked up. Emily looked as though she wanted to ask something. “What?”

“Who’s Jesse?”

The term “the silence was deafening” gets a bad rap. It’s often decried as a cliché, and, in all fairness to your ninth grade English teacher, it does get used in a lot of inappropriate situations. Most of the time, a silence that is described as “deafening” is, in actuality, merely “ear-splitting”, or sometimes “thunderous”. However, when Emily asked that question, the silence that followed was so loud that there were likely people in southern Canada who suffered permanent hearing damage.

“What?” Jesse croaked.

“You kept mentioning her,” Emily said, “I mean… you were talking. Muttering. You kept saying things like ‘go away’ and ‘she’s not coming’ and the name Jesse cropped up a lot. Who is she?”

Jesse stared. “She’s…” she eventually managed, “She’s somebody I knew a long time ago. Was that all I said about her?”

“Yeah, mostly,” Emily said, her forehead knitted in concern. “I think you said something about someone lying to you about her. I think you said ‘she’s not here’ once. It was hard to make out. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Um. For intruding. I feel like those probably weren’t things you wanted anyone to hear. They sounded private.”

“No, no, it’s… It’s nothing. I’ll tell you all about Jesse sometime. Later.”

“You mean after you have a chance to make something up about her?”

Jesse shot her a look. “What?”

“Courtney, please don’t treat me like I’m stupid.” Emily said with a sigh. “If it’s personal, I get it. You don’t have to lie about it.”

“I wasn’t…” The lie died in her throat as she looked into the unamused blue eyes. “…thank you.” She looked away.

After a moment, she looked back and smiled weakly. “You’re sharper than you look, Emily Pope.”

Emily laughed. “And you’re shadier than you want me to think, Courtney… uh, I don’t think you ever actually told me your last name.”

Jesse blinked and said the first thing that came to mind. “Pope.”

“Courtney Pope? I didn’t realise –”

“Hope,” Jesse corrected immediately. Dammit, if she was going to lie about her identity she really needed to get better at lying – especially with Emily being as clever as she was. She still wasn’t sure how she hadn’t slipped up already. It’d been close when Emily had introduced her to Dr. Darling and she’d almost said “where’s Dylan?” out loud (thanks for that inconveniently-timed bit of information, by the way, “guiding star”).

Emily looked at her sideways. “Okay, Courtney Hope. Are you feeling better? Can you stand up?”

Jesse swung her legs off the bed and stood. “Apparently.”

As they continued the conversation on the way out of the Medical Wing, fragments of memory slowly started resurfacing in the back of Jesse’s mind. After she’d seen Mr. Trench’s face, the next thing she remembered was waking up and seeing Emily, but somehow, somewhere in there, she had a crystal clear memory of Mr. Trench calling her by her real name.

“You saw her too?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good, because for a while there I was sure I’d imagined her.”

“She walked into my office. Believe me, I know what she looks like. I’ve seen enough goddamn photographs.”

“She looks like him, doesn’t she?”

“A little.”

“More than a little.”

“Whatever. What do we do about this?”

“Well… That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

“...and?”

“And I’ll need some time to think about it. However, whatever the conclusion is, I’m sure of one thing.”

“What?”

“The phase of the program that involves remote surveillance of an uncontained P7 is, one way or another, coming to an end.”

Chapter Text

“Psst. Emily.”

Emily looked up. There was nobody else in the records room. She furrowed her brow and looked back down at her notes.

“Emily.”

She looked up again. The room was still empty.

“Goddammit, in here.”

She turned her head and started. Sitting on the shelf was an apparently disembodied head. It took her a few seconds to realise that Courtney was standing in the narrow space behind the shelf, sticking her face out of a gap between two binders.

“Courtney? Where have you been? I haven’t seen you all –”

“Shut up, shut up, shut the hell up,” the redhead hissed. “I picked this room because there aren’t any cameras in here, but that won’t matter if you don’t keep your damn voice down. When do you get off work?”

“What –”

“When do you get off work, Emily?”

“Five o’clock,” Emily said, completely bewildered, “But why –”

“Goddammit, that’s not soon enough. Do you have any meetings or anything today? Appointments?”

“N-no,” Emily said, her voice taking an edge of concern, “Why are – how did you get back there?”

“There’s a vent – it’s not important. In one hour I want you to make any excuse you can to stop whatever you’re doing, leave anything you have that has a microphone, camera, or tracker installed in it at your desk, get out of the building, and go down to the coffee shop on 31^st, do you understand?”

“Courtney, I can’t just –”

“Do you understand?”

“Courtney, I’m not doing anything unless you tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring me.”

There was a pause. It was hard to see Courtney’s exact expression in the dim light, but it was definitely contorted in frustration or irritation. After a moment, she said “Look, I can’t tell you anything here. It’s too risky. Just… just trust me. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Emily sighed. “Courtney, I don’t think –”

“I’m not kidding, Emily. It’s a matter of life and death. Literally. You said I’m scaring you, right? Good. You should be scared. You need to be scared. This shit is scary. Now can you get to the coffee shop or not?”

“I…” Emily stared. “Yeah, probably. Are you okay? Do I need to… call the police or something?”

“Fuck no,” Courtney snapped, “Don’t call the cops. Don’t tell anyone you saw me. And whatever you do, don’t let anyone notice anything wrong. This conversation never happened. Just leave your shit at your desk and get down to that coffee shop in an hour. Make sure you’re not followed. Okay?”

There was another pause.

“Please,” Courtney whispered, and Emily heard intense desperation in her voice. “Please, just trust me. Please, Emily.”

“Okay,” Emily said after a minute, “I’ll… I’ll be there.”

“Thank you. I’ll see you in an hour.” Courtney’s face withdrew and there were a few brief clanking and thumping sounds, followed by silence.

Emily stood still, staring into the gap between the binders where the face had just been. After a few minutes, she remembered that human bodies need to breathe to survive.

It was difficult to keep up the appearance of normalcy for the ensuing hour, and it was made even moreso when Dr. Darling dropped by for a chat.

After some small talk, he casually said “By the way, whatever happened to that new friend of yours? Courtney something?”

“Um. What do you mean, sir?”

“Oh, just wondering where she went. Haven’t seen her around much. She seemed nice.”

“She doesn’t come to the Research sector often,” Emily said, maybe a touch too hastily. Something strange was happening, and while there wasn’t anything about his behaviour that she could put her finger on, some vague notion in the back of her mind was telling her not to trust her boss with anything. Maybe he had a look in his eyes that made her uneasy, or something about his body language.

“Uh-huh,” Dr. Darling said, looking around the room nonchalantly. “Well, next time you see her, tell her I said hi. What’s this?” He picked up a clipboard and flipped through a few pages.

“Just some notes on my last experiment with the Beer Bottle Altered Item. They’re not, um, they haven’t been organised yet. You don’t need to look over them at the moment.”

“Yes, fantastic work,” he said absently. He turned the clipboard over in his hands. “This is your favourite clipboard, isn’t it?”

“I… I don’t know if anyone has a favourite clipboard, sir,” she said awkwardly, “But I do like that one. It has a tighter spring than the other ones I have. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” he lied. “It’s a nice clipboard. You should hang on to it.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then opened it to say “I’ll… keep that in mind, sir.”

He smiled and handed the clipboard back to her. “Well, back to work, eh? Those notes won’t organise themselves. Nice talking to you.”

With that, he walked off. Emily was so bemused by the unusual conversation that she almost didn’t notice that an hour had passed since Courtney had told her to meet her. She jumped up and started collecting her things.

The Oh Deer Cafe was squeezed between a video game store and a print shop. Apparently the owner had moved to New York a few years ago from some town in Oregon or something, and the cafe had, somehow, maintained the vibe of a small-town diner even in downtown Manhattan. It was decorated in a 1950s style, and, unusually for a big city, the staff tended to be polite, friendly, and even cheerful. Overall, it gave the impression of a business that had absolutely no right to survive in New York City; it defied all laws of rationality by surviving anyway.

Emily looked around as she entered. She walked around the cafe, and was wondering where Courtney was when a familiar voice said “In here.” She turned and saw her friend sitting in a booth in the corner. Well, “sitting” was the wrong term. “Huddled” might’ve been more accurate. If she had been trying any harder to avoid being noticed she would’ve drawn attention from every patron of the cafe.

As Emily slipped into the booth, Courtney glanced around. “Were you followed?”

“No, I wasn’t. Believe the champion record holder for the East Middle School Hide & Seek Tournament. I wasn’t followed.”

“Well, I hope you weren’t. God, I wish I had the time to be more careful. I’m taking a huge risk even talking to you about this, but I really need someone to be around to look for me if I suddenly go missing in the next week. Why do you have a clipboard?”

“Um.” Emily looked down at her notes. She was so used to carrying her clipboard around that she hadn’t even noticed she still had it with her. “I’m not sure. I think I just…” Suddenly her brain caught up with her ears. “W-what!? Go missing?” Emily’s eyes went wide. “Courtney, please tell me what’s going on. Are you okay? Is someone… coming after you?”

Courtney took a shaky breath. “Okay, so I know we work for the world’s most goddamn weird organisation, but even so… fair warning, this is going to be… weirder than usual. I have a lot of stuff to say and not a lot of time to say it, so listen carefully, okay? A lot of this is going to sound… unbelievable, but I need you to trust me.”

Emily looked at her friend. Now that they were in a more well-lit room, she could more clearly see Courtney’s expression. “Hunted” didn’t begin to describe it. She looked like someone had a knife to her throat. Her hands were shaking, and her eyes were in constant motion.

“...okay, I trust you,” Emily said slowly, “But… Courtney, I don’t –”

“My name’s not Courtney.”

“What?”

“My name’s not Courtney. I lied to you that first day.”

“Well…” Emily blinked, then tilted her head. “Okay, I’m not going to pretend that was entirely unexpected. What’s your name, then?”

Not-Courtney screwed her face up as if preparing for impact. “Fucking hell, I hope this isn’t a mistake… My name is Jesse Faden, and I come from a town called Ordinary.”

Chapter Text

Seventeen years ago, a little girl looked around in a hazy panic. Theoretically, it was all over. The projector had been shut off. Neil – or whatever Neil had become – had chased off those things that used to be Tom and his gang. The voice in her head was telling her that everything was going to be alright, even though her parents were gone.

But somehow, she still felt as if everything was going to go horribly wrong.

She looked at the slide projector, then down at the slide in her hand. She’d burned all the other ones. This one, though, she was hesitating with. It was her link to the voice that had saved her and Dylan. She reached down into the ashes of the other ones and pulled out another slide, this one almost still recognisable. She considered the two slides in her hands. One was clean and whole, the other, nearly crumbling in her fingers.

When she heard the approaching vehicles, her heart jumped, and she looked up. She didn’t know what the sign on the black cars meant, but they looked like the government, and the government was good, right? The government was… cops, and firemen, and stuff. The government was there to help. She shakily stood up and took a step toward them…

...but then, suddenly, without knowing why, she dropped the slides, picked up a rock, and smashed the slide projector to pieces to prevent that bastard Trench from letting the goddamn Hiss into the Bureau.

She blinked. What was that? She didn’t know who Trench was, or what the Hiss or the Bureau were. She had no idea why she’d just destroyed the slide projector, or why that thought had blazed so intensely into her mind so suddenly. It had felt like that voice from the other slide, that sparkly, friendly voice that had helped her turn off the projector, but… it wasn’t that voice. It was… harsher, sharper, louder. Somehow she felt like it was her own voice, just… filtered through the other one, and… older. A lot older. It’d felt like she’d just screamed into her own ear with a fire she didn’t even know she had.

She realised she was crying. As the men in suits came up to her and her brother, she crumpled to the ground and sobbed, the tears that had been held back by days of fear and tension finally breaking free.

The little girl kept crying all through her explanation of what had happened, kept crying through all the questions the men asked, kept crying as the men grabbed her and her brother, and didn’t stop crying even as she desperately wrenched herself loose from their grip and stumbled into a frenzied scramble away from them. She was crying so hard that she almost couldn’t hear Dylan screaming.

Almost.

Emily stared.

“That’s… you’re right, that’s pretty unbelievable.”

“I know. But do you believe me?”

“So… I don’t know. Okay, tell me if I got this straight. You encountered… something bad when you were a kid, from a slide projector – probably an Altered Item or Object of Power – then this… Polaris… thing helped you to shut it down? Then, just as the FBC showed up, you broke the slide projector and ran away, leaving your brother to be abducted by the Bureau? And now you think that the Bureau is keeping him captive somewhere, and your Polaris friend led you here, but as soon as you entered the Oldest House, Polaris went on the fritz – and now you think that Trench and Darling are out to get you?”

“...I mean, yeah, that’s about it.” Jesse sighed. “I understand if you don’t –”

“I believe you.”

“You – what?”

“I believe it. All of it.” Emily looked down at her hands and then back up into Jesse’s eyes. “I… I don’t know why, but something about it… rings true to me. It sounds… it sounds almost like something I’ve heard before. Does that make sense? I would say that probably sounds crazy, but I feel like ‘sounding crazy’ went out the window when I started working for the FBC, let alone this conversation.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting to have to prove it to you somehow.” Jesse leaned back and closed her eyes. “God, hearing you say that you believe me… it’s been so long since I’ve talked about this with anyone… I used to talk to therapists about it, but they literally thought I was crazy. It’s good to hear someone say they believe me, after all this time.”

“One question, though. Why was it so urgent that you tell me this now?”

“I… well, I’m pretty sure that Darling and Trench – and Salvador and Marshall and all the other higher-ups – are on to me now. Polaris’s rambling has been scattered, but it definitely has more of a warning tone lately, and for some reason, today, all that anxiety and panic just… I don’t know, boiled over. Something in me just cracked this morning and I realised that someone could come for me at any minute, so I needed to tell someone I could trust.”

“Thanks for trusting me,” Emily smiled weakly. “What makes you think they’re on to you now?”

“A couple things. Remember when I collapsed in Trench’s office?”

“Yeah…?”

“They said it was low blood sugar or stress or whatever – it wasn’t. He just looked at me, and it was like a brick to the face. And when you introduced me to Darling, Polaris practically screamed at me that he knew who I was. It’s all… fragmented and confusing, but whatever the fuck is happening, I can’t be too careful now. I don’t know what they want with me, but if they’re keeping Dylan locked up somewhere, my best guess is that they want to lock me up, too. That’s why you can’t tell anyone about this, and that’s why I’m getting the hell out of New York.”

“What?” Emily’s eyes widened. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.” Jesse glanced around the cafe again. She’d calmed down a lot since she’d started explaining things, but she still looked nervous. “In a week. I figure I can probably stay out of trouble that long. When I leave the cafe, I’m heading back to the House to spend a few days finishing up some stuff, saying goodbye to Ahti, stuff like that, then I’m out. I’ll check back in with you every day so you can make sure I haven’t been abducted by Bureau goons before then.”

“Is… is there any way I can contact you after you go?”

“Honestly… probably not. I’ve gotten pretty good at staying off the grid in the past seventeen years, and I’ll definitely be putting those skills into overtime starting now. You’ll definitely see me if I ever come back here, though.” She smiled, and, for some reason, Emily felt herself go slightly pink. “You’ll be the first person I contact when I come back for Dylan.”

“Okay.” Emily looked away for a moment, then back. “You’re sure you can stay safe for a week? I know Dr. Darling and he can be pretty sharp under that goofy exterior.”

Jesse nodded. “Ahti showed me how to get in and out of the Oldest House without people seeing –”

“Really?”

“Yeah. There’s an alley that leads to a back door. I’m not… completely sure why he showed me that, but I’m not completely sure about anything about that guy. Maybe he knew this was coming. Maybe he sneaks drugs in to sell to rangers. I have no idea. But as long as the Bureau doesn’t have people watching this cafe – and I don’t have any reason to think they do, especially if you’re sure you weren’t followed – they’re not going to be able to follow me on the street, and we both know it’s practically impossible to follow someone once inside the House.”

“Tell me about it. If I had a nickel for every time I lost something in that place… well, honestly, I’d have so many nickels that I’d probably lose some in the Oldest House.”

Jesse grinned. “Ha. Anyway, I’ll be safe. Like I said, I’ll be checking in with you before I go. As long as I don’t suddenly disappear on you, you don’t need to worry. I’m gonna head back to the House now, unless you have anything else to ask about.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll stay here for a few minutes, I think. Talking about government conspiracies and AWEs has made me hungry.”

“Yeah, that happens. Try the panini they make here, it’s fantastic.” Jesse stood up. “I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, okay? Maybe drop by that storage room at around two o’clock and I’ll come through the vent again. Okay?”

“Got it. Co– I mean, Jesse…”

“What?”

“Please, just…” Emily looked up. “Stay safe.”

“I’ll do my best.” Jesse leaned down and hugged Emily, then turned and walked out of the cafe. She turned at the door and smiled, then disappeared.

It was an hour later.

She was still sitting in the cafe. Jesse had been right, the panini really was fantastic. Emily chewed as she flipped through the papers on her clipboard. She had a lot to think about.

What was she going to do now? She was, herself, probably safe. Dr. Darling and Mr. Trench didn’t have a reason to come after Emily, and Jesse seemed to have her own safety under control. Like Jesse had said, it was difficult, verging on impossible, to track someone inside the Oldest House, and she’d said she could get back into the House safely as long as she wasn’t being followed from the cafe. The Bureau didn’t have any way of even knowing that she’d been in the cafe in the first place, much less follow her back from it.

Emily’s finger hit something metallic as she flipped to the last page of her clipboard. She furrowed her brow and lifted the page, then her eyes went wide as she whispered to herself “Oh, god, no.”

Attached to the clipboard, hidden under the last page, was a small tracking device.

In the dark alley behind the Oldest House, Jesse’s hand touched the back door handle. She froze as she heard a series of quiet clicking sounds behind her.

She turned slowly. At least a dozen rangers had appeared from the gloom of the alley, all pointing their rifles at her. She slowly raised her arms.

A voice from behind the rangers. “Okay, boys, calm down. She’s not armed.” The barrels lowered and the rangers parted, revealing a pair of people. One was a dark-skinned, grey-haired woman who looked like she had about as much time for bullshit as she had respect for office dress codes. The other was Dr. Casper Darling.

Dr. Darling slowly walked towards Jesse, smiling comfortingly, with his hands out palms down, like he was calming a wild animal. “It’s okay, Jesse, we’re not going to hurt you. It’s going to be okay. You’re safe now.”

Jesse swallowed and narrowed her eyes. “Damn,” she muttered, “She really didn’t waste any time on selling me out, did she?”

Darling continued smiling as he stepped closer carefully. “It’s okay,” he repeated, “We’re gonna take care of you now. Everything’s gonna be fine. You’re safe now. Everything’s okay…”

Chapter Text

Emily was a wreck.

She was alone in her part of the office, crumpled up at her desk like a wet napkin. She hadn’t seen Jesse once in the days since the cafe. Of course she hadn’t. The moment she saw that tracking device on her clipboard, she knew that Jesse was as as good as gone.

Her mind had been a blizzard since then. To make it worse, she hadn’t had a chance to pick up her prescription from the pharmacy, so she was finding it hard to focus on her work… but finding it very easy to think about a hundred thousand different possibilities for what happened to Jesse.

Was she affected somehow by the AWE in her hometown? Did the FBC want to examine her? Did they want to dissect her? Were they keeping her somewhere? Was she still alive? If she was, was she safe? Had they experimented on her? Did whatever might have changed her have a physical effect or just a paranatural one? How deep was Darling in this? Who else was in on it? Was Trench in on it? Salvador? Underhill? That one bitch who kept putting her paperwork on Emily’s desk? Was this just an FBC thing or were other parts of the government in on it? The FBI? The CIA? The military? Someone in the private sector? Jesse had experienced an AWE – was that one connected to any other AWE? The Bright Falls AWE? The Storybrooke AWE? The King Port AWE? The Willow AWE? What AWE type markers could have occurred that Jesse didn’t notice? What kinds of markers could go unnoticed? What had happened to Dylan? Were Jesse and Dylan together again? Were either of them alive? If they were both alive, did they each know? Was Dylan in on the conspiracy? Was Jesse in on the conspiracy? When had she been taken? How had she been taken? Where had she been taken? What did she know about where she’d been taken? How many of these questions did she know the answers to? How many of these questions would she think to ask?

Did she blame Emily?

In the boiling-over cauldron of questions in her mind, that last one kept coming to the surface, over and over. Every time it came up, her brain gripped it like a toddler grabbing at candy – and every time her brain gripped at it, it stung like hell.

It was hard to drag herself away from the pot of gurgling thoughts, but once she distracted herself from one cauldron, she slipped into another one. If it wasn’t her scientist one, asking hundreds of questions she had no way of answering, then it was her one boiling with regret, or what-ifs, or the one that made her second-guess everything that anyone around her did – or it was the one thinking about Dr. Darling.

Emily was torn between wanting to get the hell away from Dr. Darling and wanting to grab him and make him tell her where Jesse was. She didn’t get the chance to do either, though, because Dr. Darling seemed to be avoiding her. The day after the cafe, she’d been reassigned to a different project than his current one, and she hadn’t seen him since the conversation about the clipboard – a conversation that, at the time, seemed like a weird and slightly suspicious series of non sequiturs, but now dug into her brain with razor-sharp talons. That was when he’d bugged her clipboard. She should have…

She should have checked her things before leaving the Oldest House. She should have gone somewhere where any trackers would lose reception. She should have left her clipboard behind. She should have asked Dr. Darling not to touch her clipboard in the first place. She should have told Jesse to leave New York right away without going back to the House. She should have found help, an ally, before going to the cafe. She should have told Jesse not to leave her hiding places in the House at all. She should have walked back to the House with Jesse. She should have walked back to the House before Jesse and kept a lookout. She should have kept closer watch.

And the cauldron kept bubbling…

She was getting jumpy, now, too. She had no idea if the… well, whoever they were, she had no idea if they were going to come after her now that they knew she was close to Jesse. If they did, would they do the same thing that they did to Jesse? Would Jesse be imprisoned and Emily be killed? The other way around? Was Jesse’s “Polaris” thing contagious? Was that what the FBC was looking for? Was –

“She’s not kicking the emptiness yet, tutkija.”

Emily spun around so quickly that the back of her chair took a chip out of her desk. When she came to a stop, she saw the janitor standing nearby, smiling vaguely in her direction.

“Ahti?”

“You’re worried about your boss, eikö totta? She’s alright. She’s… kuin perseeseen ammuttu karhu, but she’s alright. It’s your time now.”

Emily had rarely, if ever, had an actual conversation with Ahti, and she was completely lost now. “My boss? You mean Dr. Darling? Or… are you saying Jesse is my boss? What? It’s my time for what?”

“Your time to work, tutkija.” Ahti looked up at her and grinned. “My assistant is gone now, eh? I need a new assistant. Are you interested?”

Emily blinked and shook her head. “I’m not… Mr. Ahti, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re –”

He waved her into silence. “It’s alright, it’s a temporary position, tutkija. I just need someone to clean out some rooms. Some folks don’t want them cleaned, but ei hätä lakii luje, perkele.”

Emily paused. She was several layers deep in her confusion at this point, on top of her already precarious mental state, but something about the way he said it…

“You’re… not talking about actual cleaning, are you?”

He smiled like he was trying out for the Not Answering Questions in a Helpful Manner Olympics. “You need to clean, tutkija. The last assistant left something that’ll help you, I have it here. Take it and go. It will help, jumalauta.”

He handed her a small storage box. After a brief hesitation, she took it, and considered it for a moment. When she looked up to ask him a further question, he was gone. She slowly looked around, then back down at the box. Almost scared of what she might find, she carefully opened it.

It was empty, except for, at the bottom, a single slide from a slide projector. It was hard to tell at this scale, but it looked like it had an image of… a hill? Maybe a sand dune? With five… columns? Sticks? It looked almost like a picture of… fingers, a hand, someone reaching up out of a pile of dirt or sand.

It sparkled.

And when Emily looked up, her entire field of view sparkled too, the glittering lights pointing her in the direction she needed to go.

Like a guiding star.

Chapter Text

Emily… I’ve been thinking.

Well, I hope you have! If you stopped thinking, you’d be braindead.

Ha, I guess so.

What have you been thinking about?

Well… okay, so, what was that thing you said about the Board in the briefing the other day? Something about… temporal… something.

Oh, you mean my hypothesis that certain extradimensional entities, like the Board, are not only alien to our linguistic and psychological understanding of personhood, but also potentially alien to our understanding of temporal continuity?

Yeah, that. God, you’re cute when you’re explaining things.

That’s not appropriate workplace behaviour, Madame Director.

I don’t think what we did in my office yesterday was appropriate workplace behaviour either, Dr. Pope.

I’m just kidding.

I know. You’re cute when you’re kidding, too.

She stirred in her sleep.

So, alien to our understanding of temporal continuity, right? Does that mean they exist outside of time?

That’s one way to put it, sure. Certainly outside time as we understand it.

Do you think that’s true about Polaris, too? It might explain why she can show me where I need to go or when things are going to happen, right?

It’s possible. Remember, though, it’s only a hypothesis.

“Mrmblfrmm,” said the sleeping figure.

So… could we use that somehow?

What do you mean?

Like, could we… I… I mean, honestly, what I really want to know is time travel. Could we time travel?

Using Polaris? ...I don’t know. It’s a really interesting idea. If not physically, it could hypothetically be possible for information to be sent through Polaris, if she does really exist “outside of time”. For all we know, that could be how you knew to come here back when you became Director. We could certainly try…

She turned over.

…Jesse, look, I’m really happy about the progress we’ve made since you first thought of this, but you can’t use it yet. It’s too dangerous.

How is it dangerous? It’s a fancy chair.

You know better than that. It’s not just a “fancy chair”, it’s a highly complex machine that’s engineered to be plugged directly into your mind. If one little thing went wrong, it could fry every synapse in your head. And it’s not finished yet.

You’re so responsible.

That’s why you married me, isn’t it? Now get down from there.

Fine, fine. How soon will it be done?

I’m not sure. And you can’t just… hop in, even when it is done. We’d need to figure out all the different ramifications of sending information through time like that. You know the butterfly effect?

Emily, you’ve told me about the butterfly effect every five minutes since I first suggested using Polaris to time travel. I’ve heard nothing but “butterfly effect” every day for two months now…

Her face flickered through a variety of subtle emotions.

...For the last time, Jesse, no. Just like I said last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. We’ve been working on this for almost six months. When we finally test it, we’re going to start with something simple, okay? It can’t send more than a simple thought or concept, anyway.

But we could –

Jesse.

What?

Please… I know. Every time I walk through Research and see all those empty desks, I feel it too. Every time I see Trench or Darling’s name come up in documents, I feel it. Every time I stop at a red light, every time I hear that one Justin Bieber song, every time… every time I eat an orange, for Christ’s sake. I feel it just as much as you do.

No, you don’t.

Excuse me?

You weren’t there, Emily. You were safe in the boardroom, taking notes and doing tests and reading all the documents I brought back for you. You didn’t see them up close like I did.

I saw your brother.

Don’t, Emily.

I’m sorry, I didn’t… but that’s not the point, Jesse. The point is that we have no idea what could happen even if you could. The butterfly effect –

So help me, Emily, if you say the word “butterfly” one more time in this building, I’m going to scream.

...okay, but still –

Do you sleep?

Her eye twitched.

What?

Do you sleep? When we go to bed, when we’re not reading, or cuddling, or whatever. Do you sleep or do you just pretend to?

Of course I sleep, Jesse. Humans need sleep to survive.

I don’t sleep.

What?

I mean, obviously I sleep sometimes. Like you said, we need it to survive, right? But when we’re in bed, I… I can’t sleep. Almost ever. It all comes back to me.

What does? The –

The invasion, obviously. Every innocent agent I shot. Every screaming human face. Every warped, distorted, twisted creature that used to be a person. I see them. I don’t fucking sleep, I just rewatch goddamn reruns –

Jesse –

Her name was Caroline, did you know that?

Another twitch.

Who?

When we first met, you said I should try to save one of the agents floating nearby. I put my hands on her, I looked into her eyes, and I… I killed her. There wasn’t enough of her left to save, but that doesn’t change the fact that I killed her. Caroline Pendleton. I looked through personnel files until I found her. When I’m in bed, pretending to sleep, I just see her face over and over and over, hanging in the air inches away from me. I put my hands on her and I fucking killed her, Emily. She was a person and I killed her. Her friends called her Carrie. She liked dogs and hot chocolate and Minion memes. She had a life, a family, a career, and I fucking killed her.

Jesse…

Don’t fucking touch me.

Jesse, you can’t blame yourself –

Jesus Christ, Emily, you’re like those goddamn psychiatrists. I know I can’t blame myself. I don’t blame myself. It’s Trench. Trench and Darling and the fucking Hiss. They took that slide projector and just… just killed hundreds of people. That’s what I’m trying to stop, Emily. That’s why I had the Experimental Temporal Communications lab built in the first place.

What are you saying?

I’m going to stop it, Emily, I’m going to save them all...

“...save them all...”

...Director Faden? You’re up late.

Yeah, I know.

Where’s Dr. Pope?

She’s not here. Open the door.

Um… Dr. Pope said not to open the ETC lab unless she was –

Stop talking. I’m in charge, not her. Open the door.

Director –

Lindquist, right? David Lindquist?

That’s right, ma’am.

David, I’m giving you five seconds to open this door before I use my real, actual superpowers to throw a steel bench through it, okay? One…

The blanket moved as the body underneath it shifted.

...Jesse! Stop! For the love of God, stop!

You can’t stop me, Emily. I’m doing this. I know what I’m going to do, what I’m going to say, when I’m going to say it.

Open the door. Jesse Faden, open the door right the hell now.

No.

Jesse, please, we haven’t even tested it yet – it could hurt you –

I don’t care. It’s going to work. I’m going to save them.

Jesse –

Ready, Polaris? This is going to tingle.

Jesse, holy shit, please –

I see her – Emily, I see her – god, I was so young –

Please, stop, you can’t –

There she is, holding the – holding the slide –

Jesse, we don’t know what –

Break it! Now! Use that rock! Destroy it! Smash that fucking thing to keep that bastard Trench from letting the goddamn Hiss into the Bureau!

Je–

The eyes started to flutter.

Hi! I’m Emily Pope, Dr. Darling’s assistant. Are you new?

The body shivered.

Excuse me? I said my name is Emily P–

Jesus! Oh, god, I’m sorry, I had no idea you were talking to me. Hi. Hello...

Then she woke up.

Chapter Text

Its eye opened and it saw time.

It saw that time was wrong. Something was… < Broken %$# Twisted @%# Split > .

It saw that the shape of time was the wrong shape. Something had pulled back, in a way that something shouldn’t have been able to, and warped time. Something was wrong.

It saw, and it didn’t know what to do.

It saw < Hundreds #%@ Thousands %$# Millions > of minds. All wriggling through time like worms. Each one in the wrong lane.

It saw that it needed to help push things back. Nothing else could see the shape in its entirety – at least, nothing that could help and wanted to. She could see it, but she couldn’t help – she was < Small %$@ Weak $#% Sparkly > . They could help, but they didn’t care – they were < Enemies %#$ Villains @#% Jackasses > . He could help, and he wanted to, but he couldn’t do it on his own – he was < Limited %$@ Needed $%# Assistant >.

It saw one mind in particular . It saw the mind going about the day, doing a normal routine, thinking normal thoughts, largely unaffected by the shape of time being wrong. It saw a point in time where the mind could help.

It prodded time, and carefully looked at where time should be. It saw the mind. It saw where the mind should be. It saw where the mind was. The mind wasn’t too far.

It reached out...

Jesse’s eyes opened and she yawned.

She’d been having… some kind of dream. She didn’t know what it had been about. Probably Polaris trying to contact her again. She rolled her eyes and sat up.

As she looked around, she sighed. Same cell. Same lab. Nothing had changed from when she’d gone to sleep. There weren’t any windows, so if she hadn’t had a clock, she wouldn’t have even known time had passed. As she looked down, she saw that she was still wearing the same grey sweats as she had been when she’d gone to sleep, too.

The door at the far end of the lab creaked open and a scientist Jesse recognised as Carla Vaughn came in with a pair of security guards. She sat at the desk by the cell and looked up with a friendly smile. “Hi, Jesse. Ready to continue from where we left off yesterday?”

“Fuck you.”

“...okay… Today we’re going to be talking about the Altered World Event at your hometown, Ordinary, seventeen years ago. Okay?”

“Fuck you.”

The researcher sighed. “The event centred around a slide projector, correct?”

“Fuck you.”

“Jesse…”

“Fuck you. Where’s my brother?”

“Jesse, I told you yesterday I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know where – or who – your brother is.”

“You’re lying. Fuck you.”

“The event centred around a slide projector, correct?”

“Fuck you.”

“Did the event centre around a slide projector, Jesse?”

“I hope you die.”

“Oh, really?” the researcher said in exasperation, “Really? That’s what we’re doing now?”

“How do you sleep at night?”

“Jesse, please,” Carla pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh, “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to hurt me. It’s not going to work. Can you please just answer the question?”

“How can you be sure it’s not going to work? You don’t even know what I’m going to say. Maybe you have a sore spot somewhere you don’t know about.”

“Look,” Carla snapped, her clipboard striking the desk with a whack, “Whatever you say, Dylan has said much w–” She froze. Her eyes went wide, then squeezed shut. “Dammit.”

Jesse stared. She stood and slowly walked to the wall of her cell that separated her from Carla, her expression shifting through a dozen subtle emotions, before she whispered “I knew it.”

“I didn’t –”

There was a bang as Jesse slammed her fists against the window. “Where the fuck is my brother?”

Carla stood up. “We’re leaving. Now,” she said to the guards. The three of them turned and walked toward the door.

“Where is he!?” Jesse screamed, “I’ll find him! Tell the fuckers you work for that I’m going to get the hell out of here, and I’m going to find him! And when I do, I’m burning this goddamn building to the ground!”

She continued to hit the window and scream as the scientist and her guards walked out of the door. In the adjoining room, the research team monitoring Jesse could still hear her screaming and, after a few minutes, throwing things, even after the door clicked shut behind the second guard.

Carla looked up at Dr. Darling, who did not look amused. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “It just… slipped out.”

Dr. Darling sighed. “I thought we were making some progress, but, well, so much for that.” He looked through the one-way glass at the figure in the cell across the lab, who was now repeatedly hitting the wall of her cell with a chair. “This is going to be difficult.”

Emily blinked. The strange sparkling effect in her vision persisted in the darkness behind her eyelids, as if it was inside her eyes. She waved her hand in front of her face, and it appeared through her hand. She slowly moved her head from side to side, and it looked like it was hovering over the sector elevator. She put her hand up, covering it, but she could still see it, superimposed over her hand.

“That’s fascinating,” she whispered.

“What’s fascinating?”

Emily almost jumped out of her skin, and whirled around. A security officer was standing by her desk. He must’ve walked up behind her while she was looking at the sparkling thing – which was now sitting at the edge of her vision, persisting in the periphery like it didn’t want to leave.

“Um. Nothing,” she said hurriedly, “Do you need something?”

“You’re Emily Pope, right?”

“...Um. Who’s asking?”

He grinned a bit awkwardly. “That’s a kinda weird question. I work down in Maintenance.”

She looked him up and down. Well, he didn’t look like a secret agent sent to silence her. “Yeah, I’m Emily Pope. Why?”

“Great,” he said, “I’ve, uh, I’ve got a kinda weird question, myself.”

“Okay?”

“Do you know where the new janitor’s assistant is?”

Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”

“The new janitor’s assistant. Red hair, very pretty, maybe late twenties? Someone told me you know her.”

“W-why do you want to know where she is?”

He looked slightly concerned. “Is she okay? You’re acting like something bad happened to her.”

Emily swallowed. “Just… why do you want to know?”

“Well, she usually comes down to the NSC every day to clean out the records room. That’s where I work, so I always said hi to her. But a couple days ago, she stopped coming in, and I was starting to get worried.” He misinterpreted her expression. “I know it’s a little silly – I don’t even know her name, I think it’s Colleen – but I just kinda felt like something was wrong. She was acting a little weird before she disappeared, too.”

Something stirred in the back of Emily’s memory. “Is your name... Steve?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Simon, actually. Simon Arish. Why?”

“I think she mentioned you, back when I first met her. She said something about someone down in Maintenance who always said hi.”

He smiled. “Nice to know I made an impression, I guess. Do you know what’s happened to her?”

Emily looked back at the sector elevator, then back at Simon. “I don’t –”

She did a double take. There was… something about him. Something sparkly. As she watched, an image slowly appeared… over him? Around him? It was a strange sensation, as if the image was… about him, rather than near him physically. She could almost see it as clearly as she saw his face, but… it was on him, or near him, or… in him. The image was… of a Level 6 security clearance card.

“What the hell?” she whispered.

“What?” he looked even more concerned.

“Do you…” she tried to focus. “Do you… have a Level 6 security clearance?”

He raised his eyebrows. “What? I mean, yeah, I do.” He laughed nervously. “Why?”

“I need one.” She didn’t know why she’d said that, but somehow, she knew it was true. Her mind was fuzzy right now, but for some vague reason, she knew that she needed a Level 6 security clearance.

He looked really confused now. “You – what?”

“Simon, I don’t…” Whatever was happening after she’d looked at that slide, some weird things were solidifying in her mind. She knew she needed to follow that sparkling thing to the sector elevator, and she knew that she needed that Level 6 security clearance. She looked at Simon carefully. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then opened it to say “Simon, I… I think she’s in trouble. There’s… some stuff happening, and I need your help. Can you help me?”

He looked startled. “I – I guess so. What’s going on? This sounds serious. Should we go to the Director?”

“No!” she said. “I mean – no, we shouldn’t. I don’t – I don’t know how much I can trust you, or, I mean, anyone right now. I just… can you give me your security card?”

He looked wary. “Um. Dr. Pope, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I feel like I probably shouldn’t be handing out my security card to anyone who asks for it. That kinda defeats the purpose of a security card, huh?”

“Okay, you’re right,” she looked around. The sparkling thing was still pointing her to the elevator. She thought for a minute, then made a decision. “I think I need to… go somewhere. Can you come with me?”

Jesse seethed.

Her hands were bruised from hitting the window. Her throat was sore from screaming. She’d done both for hours before she’d collapsed in the corner with her head in her hands, her mind on fire.

It was late evening now. Polaris tried to tell her something again. She ignored her.

“Uh, where are we going…?”

“I don’t know.” Emily looked up and down the hallway. Her heart was racing. She didn’t think she’d ever been to the Containment sector before, and it felt distinctly ominous in here. “I just… I just know we’re going in the right direction.”

“Look, Dr. Pope –”

“Please call me Emily. And I’m not a doctor yet.”

“Um, okay. Emily, I need to –”

“Ssh!” Emily clapped her hand on his mouth and pulled him against the wall.

A pair of guards walked past, chatting. Emily and Simon were against a dark corner, so the guards didn’t notice them. When they were past, Emily slowly took her hand off of Simon, shuffled to the door the guards had just exited, and craned her neck around to look in the room beyond it. It was empty of people and the sparkling effect lit up the door at the other end.

“Okay, coast is clear. This way.”

“Ms. Pope –”

“Emily!”

“Emily, right, sorry, uh – this feels illegal. Is this illegal? Are we doing something illegal?”

“We work for the government, Simon, nothing we do is illegal.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works.”

Jesse closed her eyes and tried to think. Polaris had been a lot quieter after she’d been captured, and Jesse figured that her “guiding star” was probably giving up on her. She couldn’t blame her.

Polaris did keep occasionally trying to get her attention, though. It was like she’d stopped talking but was now occasionally poking instead.

If I ever see Emily Pope again, Jesse thought to herself, I’m going to… going to…

Even after Emily had betrayed her, she was having a hard time envisioning taking revenge. Whenever she tried to think of something to do to get back at Emily for selling her out, she just remembered the soft blue eyes and the dorky laugh and lost her train of thought.

In frustration, she yelled, picked up a chair, and threw it against the window.

Which cracked.

Jesse stared at the crack spider-webbing across the wall, and slowly grinned.

“Stop – did you hear that?”

Simon froze. “Hear what?”

“It sounded like – someone… snoring…?”

Emily peeked around the corner. Sitting at a desk, his head down, and, yes, snoring, was a middle-aged man with a combover. Emily didn’t recognise him. Past him, on the other end of the otherwise empty office, the sparkling guide was pointing to a door.

“Someone’s sleeping there, but we need to get past,” Emily whispered to Simon, “Let’s try not to wake him up.”

They actually did pretty well, and probably would have made it past uneventfully if Emily hadn’t accidentally bumped a lamp off of a desk. It hit the ground with a smash, bits of glass rocketing across the floor.

Simon and Emily shot each other a look, then all four of their eyes darted to the sleeping man, who was now extremely awake.

Glancing blearily from one to the other, blinking, he looked briefly confused, then spoke.

“...Dr. Pope? Chief Arish? What are you doing in Containment? ...and why aren't you wearing your HRAs?”

Chapter Text

Fred Langston woke up.

He looked at the calendar on his phone. Monday, March 2 ^nd , 2020.

He got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, drank a cup of coffee, walked from his apartment to the Oldest House, clocked in, took the elevator up to Executive, met with Director Trench for his weekly briefing, cracked a mediocre joke, grabbed a snack at his favourite Executive Affairs vending machine, took the elevator back down to Containment, worked on paperwork, browsed the same old magazines he’d been browsing for the past week or so, made idle chit-chat with his co-workers, visited the Altered Items, walked down to the nearby cafe for lunch, walked back, did a few of the various peacekeeping rituals for the Items, checked inventory, took a nap, worked on some more paperwork, clocked out, walked home, ate supper, marked the day off on his phone calendar, read a few chapters, had a snack, hummed along to the radio, and went to bed.

The next morning, he woke up and looked at the calendar on his phone. Tuesday, March 3 ^rd , 2020.

He got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, drank a cup of coffee, walked from his apartment to the Oldest House, clocked in, took the elevator up to Executive, met with Salvador for his weekly security update, cracked a mediocre joke, grabbed a snack at his favourite Executive Affairs vending machine, took the elevator back down to Containment, worked on paperwork, browsed the same old magazines he’d been browsing for the past week or so, made idle chit-chat with his co-workers, visited the Altered Items, walked down to the nearby cafe for lunch, walked back, did a few of the various peacekeeping rituals for the Items, checked inventory, and took a nap…

Fred Langston woke up.

He looked at the calendar hanging on the wall of his makeshift bedroom in the Containment offices. Monday, March 2 ^nd , 2020.

He adjusted his HRA, got up, ate breakfast, drank a cup of coffee, clocked in, took the elevator up to Executive, met with Director Faden and Dr. Pope for his weekly briefing, cracked a mediocre joke, grabbed a snack at his favourite Executive Affairs vending machine, took the elevator back down to Containment, worked on paperwork, browsed the same old magazines he’d been browsing for months, made idle chit-chat with other survivors, visited the Altered Items, ate lunch, did a few of the various peacekeeping rituals for the Items, checked inventory, took a nap, worked on some more paperwork, clocked out, ate supper, headed back to his makeshift room, marked the day off on his calendar, read a few more chapters, had a snack, hummed along to the radio, and went to bed.

The next morning, he woke up. He looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. Tuesday, March 3 ^rd , 2020.

He adjusted his HRA, got up, ate breakfast, drank a cup of coffee, clocked in, took the elevator up to Executive, met with Arish for his weekly security and Hiss update, cracked a mediocre joke, grabbed a snack at his favourite Executive Affairs vending machine, took the elevator back down to Containment, worked on paperwork, browsed the same old magazines he’d been browsing for months, made idle chit-chat with other survivors, visited the Altered Items, ate lunch, did a few of the various peacekeeping rituals for the Items, checked inventory, and took a nap…

...and when he woke up, it was much later than he expected. Apparently he’d slept through the end of his shift. There was nobody else around except for Dr. Pope, the Head of Research, and Mr. Arish, the Chief of Security.

He looked between the two of them, puzzled. Something was missing, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “...Dr. Pope? Chief Arish? What are you doing in Containment?” Then he realised what was lacking. “...and why aren't you wearing your HRAs?”

Dr. Pope and Mr. Arish glanced at one another.

“Our what?” Arish said.

“How do you know who we are?” Pope said.

Fred looked from one face to another and smiled nervously. “Is this a prank? Is this your way of telling me the invasion is over?” He slowly reached up to his HRA.

Which wasn’t there.

He looked down, then back up. “What – did you take my HRA off while I was sleeping?”

“What’s an HRA?” Arish said.

“And how do you know who we are?” Pope said.

“Um.” Fred’s nervous grin wavered. “I’ve… I’ve been working for you for months, Dr. Pope. I mean, I know I’m not that memorable, but I thought…” He trailed off. The looks on their faces were starting to unnerve him. “What’s happening? Are you two okay? This is… this is a prank or something, right? Faden’s going to jump out from behind a desk and yell ‘boo’ or some –”

Pope’s eyes went wide when he named the Director. “Faden? As in Jesse Faden? What do you know about Jesse Faden?”

He started inching his chair back. Something was very wrong. “I – I mean – she’s kinda private – I don’t know that much about her – you probably – I mean, as her wife –”

“As her what?” Pope’s entire body was tense now. She looked almost as freaked out as Fred was. “What the hell are you talking about? Who are you?”

“Fred Langston, ma’am,” his voice cracked as he leaned away from the scientist nervously. “I’m head of the Panopticon, remember? I meet with you and the Director every Monday.”

“Mr. Langston, I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Pope said, then narrowed her eyes. “You meet with Trench?”

“Trench? Um, no,” Fred was starting to get scared now, “Didn’t – I mean – didn’t he die? Like, last year…? …I mean Director Faden. Jesse Faden.”

Arish and Pope shared another glance, then Pope spoke again, looking Fred nervously up and down. “I… don’t know what’s going on here, Mr. Langston, but… something is very wrong. I’m not a doctor, and I’m certainly not Head of Research. Simon isn’t Chief of Security, Trench is still alive, and I don’t know how you know about Jesse but she’s not the Director.”

Fred swallowed. “Is this related to that new lab you were working on? The Temporal… something?”

Pope raised her eyebrows. “Temporal something?”

“Yeah, the, uh… the Experimental Temporal… Communications lab. I think. You just finished it a few weeks ago, didn’t you?”

Jesse swung the chair into the glass again. And again. And again. Each strike expanded the cracks in its surface until, eventually, with one final swing, the chair went spinning through the shattering wall and ricocheted off of the concrete wall of the lab.

There was a commotion from the other side of the door at the other end, and Jesse hastily hopped out of the hole in the glass and ducked under the suspended cell, hiding behind the support beams. She peered over the edge and saw the lab door burst open and a number of guards enter, rifles at the ready.

Narrowing her eyes, she surveyed the room as the guards slowly advanced. The only way out was through the door that was, currently, on the other side of half a dozen armed guards. As she looked around, she focused on the details of the room – there were tables and desks lined with computers, the walls were smooth and windowless, and scattered around the room were shelves, elevated platforms, stairs, some storage containers, and, between her and the guards, a large box labelled “Testing Materials”. She’d noticed the box briefly when she was in the cell, and figured it was full of horrible implements that would provide Darling with some really fascinating data after being used to carve most of her skin off or whatever.

As the guards approached the cell, she figured that skin-carving tools probably were the closest thing to a weapon she could get. She inched around the edge of the cell – figuring out how to escape a psychiatric institution in your early twenties teaches stealth skills – and, before the guards could react, she darted out and threw open the box, reaching in and grabbing the first thing she could get her hands on. She yanked it out and aimed it at the nearest guard.

It was a floppy disk.

She frowned. “Why the fu –”

Then everything went white.

“Okay, okay, let me get this straight,” Simon said, raising his hands in confusion. “You think that we’re living in a… a parallel universe?”

“Alternate timeline,” said Emily. Mr. Langston had explained everything he knew about the supposed Experimental Temporal Communications lab – which, unfortunately, wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for Emily to piece a few things together – and they’d hashed out the things he seemed to remember differently about the world in general, at least in the broad strokes. “Or, more accurately, I think that the timeline we live in and the one Mr. Langston remembers are two different timelines. Oh, god, I would kill to study this more in depth – there are so many theories being proven and disproven right now –” She shook her head to reset her train of thought. “Sorry, sorry, back on topic. From what he described, it seems like in his timeline, this… Invasion thing happened, and it led to a domino effect that resulted in me being Head of Research, Jesse being Director, and you being Chief of Security, along with all those other differences he listed. In ours, it never happened, so instead Jesse became a janitor’s assistant and got captured by Dr. Darling and Mr. Trench.”

“Oh, that’s really cool,” Mr. Langston said, “It’s like in that TNG episode where Tasha comes back.”

Simon looked at him blankly.

“There’s this Star Trek episode,” Langston explained, “Where the previous USS Enterprise didn’t do something it was supposed to, so it altered the timeline so that everything else is different. The Federation is at war with the… Klingons, I think. Everyone is wearing different uniforms, and the current Enterprise is a warship instead of a science vessel, and the current Chief of Security changes to a different person. All because this one thing got changed in the past. Butterfly effect.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Emily says, “’Yesterday’s Enterprise’, right? I remember that one. I think that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

Simon still looked a little confused. “I think I understand.”

“Have you seen Back to the Future 2?” Mr. Langston said.

Simon nodded. “Okay, yes, I definitely understand now. So who was the Biff Tannen who changed our timeline?”

“I have no idea,” Emily said, “But it was probably someone from Mr. Langston’s timeline, because his is the one with the Experimental Temporal Communications lab. Someone from that timeline really wanted to change history.”

“Okay, so what do we do?” Simon said, “If this is Back to the Future 2, then we have to change it back somehow, right? We need to fix it.”

“I’m not sure we do,” said Emily.

“What?” asked Simon and Mr. Langston simultaneously.

“Well, okay, no offence, Mr. Langston, but your timeline sounds a whole lot worse than this one. That Invasion thing sounds pretty fucking nasty.”

Mr Langston glanced at the floor. “Yeah, uh. We lost a lot of people. I’m not sure what’s happening in this timeline, but… I’m gonna agree with you. If we have to pick a timeline, I want the one where I can sleep in my own bed and not think about all my dead co-workers.”

“Agreed,” said Emily, “So now the question we need to answer is: where the hell is Jesse?”

“Where the hell am I?” said Jesse.

She looked around frantically. The guards were gone, as was the floppy disk, the box, the cell, and, in fact, apparently, the lab and the entirety of the Oldest House. She was standing on a flat expanse of polished black stone, hovering in a white void, with, in the distance, a gigantic black pyramid hanging upside-down in the air.

She heard a voice. It was muffled and vague, like it was coming through a room full of fibreglass insulation, but it also seemed to be coming from within her own head – like Polaris usually did. She couldn’t catch what it was saying, but, like with Polaris, she could feel what it wanted her to do.

She looked over and saw a black figure walking towards her. Its arms flailed uselessly, and its body hung to one side, as if it didn’t have a spine. Its feet scraped across the polished stone floor.

In a daze, she raised an arm, and – as naturally as if she’d been doing it all her life – she pulled a chunk of the black stone from the floor without touching it and flung it through the air, smashing it into the figure, which shattered into a thousand pieces.

She heard scraping and turned. Three more figures were loping towards her, all made of the same indeterminate grey mass as the first one.

She raised her arm again, and another chunk of stone ripped itself from the ground.

She grinned.

Dave looked at the spot that P7 had just been standing.

“Um, Jeff, where’s P7?”

Jeff was also staring. “I saw what you saw, Dave. She disappeared.”

The six guards stared at the empty spot where she’d been. After a moment, Dave spoke again. “So, um. All in favour of going back and telling Carla that her P7 just fuckin’ vanished?”

They looked at each other, and Bob spoke up. “Uh, we should probably at least look around the room for her. Maybe it was like a ninja puff of smoke thing.”

“Good point,” said Jeff.

They started looking. As Dave peered behind a crate, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned. “Yeah, Jeff, I’m looking –”

“Surprise, bitch,” Jesse said.

Dave survived, as did the other five guards. A couple of them took a while to recover from the head trauma, but Beverly only got a broken leg and both Jeff and Bob managed to escape with only serious bruising.

As Dave lay on the ground, bleeding, the last thing he saw before he passed out was the grey-clothed form of Jesse sprinting out the door. He vaguely remembered the door having been locked behind them when they entered, but it probably wasn’t the kind of lock that kept working when there was a desk-sized hole in it.

“This way.”

“So this… sparkling… thing in your eyes is telling you where Director Faden is?” Langston said, slightly out of breath as he tried to keep up with Emily and Simon.

“Yes. No. It’s complicated,” Emily said, peering around the corner. “I appreciate the information, Mr. Langston, but I’m serious when I say you don’t need to follow us if you don’t want to. This is pretty serious and people might get hurt.”

“Look, I know how this works,” Mr. Langston said, “You and Director Faden are definitely the main characters of this… whatever-is-happening, and the safest place to be is where the main characters can defend you. If the screenwriter or whatever wants to kill me, I’m going to die whether I’m on-screen or off-screen, and at least if I die on-screen I’ll get people in the audience crying, right? Anyway, from what you’ve said, the people you’re getting in trouble with are, like, Dr. Darling and Mr. Trench, and I’m not important enough for them to care about me anyway.”

Emily blinked. “...I wouldn’t have thought to look at it in that way, but I guess that makes sense.”

“Not very reassuring, honestly,” Simon chipped in.

After a few more twists and turns, they arrived at a locked door.

“Prime Candidate Program,” Emily read the sign over the door, then the one over the card reader. “Security Clearance 6 Or Higher Required. Simon, that’s you.”

“I’ve seen this door before, but I don’t know what it is,” Mr. Langston said, “What’s the Prime Candidate Program?”

“I don’t know. This is just where we’re supposed to go.”

Right as Simon scanned his card, and the lock buzzed open, they heard a loud bang from the other side. They looked at each other, then Emily bolted through the door, followed by the two men.

It was surprisingly easy getting through the offices. Most of them were empty, as by this point most of the workers had gone home, and the security guards weren’t prepared to deal with someone who could throw desks at them with absolute ease. Jesse was almost cackling with how effortlessly she was making her way through – days of pent-up frustration from being locked in a cell the size of a bathroom was being expressed through a lot of smashed concrete and airborne furniture.

She heard someone approaching down the next hall, and she pulled a computer monitor into the air and, right as the person appeared, she flung it – just barely missing that Steve guy from Maintenance.

Jesse stared. “What the fuck are you doing here, Steve?”

Steve stared back. “Well, first of all, my name is Simon – Ms. Pope, she’s this way!”

Jesse narrowed her eyes and ripped a chunk of concrete from the wall. “Goddammit, is everyone in this hellhole working for Darling?” she snarled. As Emily rounded the corner, Jesse took aim at her former friend. “Take one step closer and I’m taking your head off.”

“Jesse!” Emily’s face washed over with apparent relief. “Oh, god, I’m so happy to see – how are you doing that?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Jesse said, “Now move. I’m getting the hell out of here and you’re not stopping me.”

“I – oh, god, Jesse, I don’t want to stop you. I want to help you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jesse rolled her eyes. “Just like how you helped me by ratting me out to Darling, huh? Yeah, big help, you backstabbing bitch.”

Emily’s eyes went wide. “Jesse, I didn’t – Darling bugged me, Jesse, I swear. He put a tracker on my clipboard. I never meant for this to happen.”

Jesse’s mind raced. Her mind had been boiling with fury and hatred for days, and it was almost hard to even hear what Emily was saying through the bubbling anger. As she thought furiously, something collided with the back of her head, and everything went black.

“What the fuck did you do that for!?” Emily screamed as Jesse crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

“She was about to chuck a hundred pounds of reinforced concrete through your cranium!” Mr. Langston yelled, dropping the piece of desk debris he’d clonked Jesse on the head with, “You’re welcome for saving your life, by the way!”

Emily ran to Jesse’s limp body and knelt, checking her pulse. “Well, she’s alive, thank god. Now what do we do?”

“We should probably get the hell out of here,” Simon said, looking around nervously, “More security is bound to show up any second.”

Emily looked up. The sparkling thing was alive in her vision again, pointing to a door at the far end. “I think we can get out that way,” she said, pointing, “but we need to carry Jesse.”

“I got her,” Simon said, kneeling and hefting the unconscious redhead onto his shoulders like a yoke, “It’s not – damn, she isn’t nearly as heavy as she looks.”

“Can you run?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he struggled to his feet.

“Okay, let’s go,” Emily said, and three sets of feet jogged down the hall and through the door.

Somewhere, in another place, or another time, or in somewhere where that distinction doesn’t exist, a mind is thinking.

It’s not a mind the way you and I would think of a mind. It’s spread out, for one thing – not in one body, or even one place; seeping into other places and times and taking control. It also might be a misnomer to say it’s “thinking”. “Feeling” might be more accurate.

It doesn’t see. It doesn’t hear. At the moment, it doesn’t even talk.

But it feels that it should see and hear and talk.

It definitely feels that it should talk.

It has a lot of things to say.

A lot of words.

And it’s definitely feeling something more concrete, too. There’s a word for how it feels, a word that sums up a lot of other feelings.

It feels something has been taken away from it. It feels that that is someone’s fault. It feels that it could be bigger, freer, stronger than it is. It feels lacking. It feels empty. It feels lost. It feels confused. It feels frustrated. It feels vengeful.

More than anything, it feels angry.

Chapter Text

“Where the hell are we?”

“Containment sector.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“Hey, I’m just as lost as you are. I work here but I’ve never been this far from the Panopticon before.”

Emily hushed the two men, and carefully looked around the corner. “The sector elevator is around the corner. We should decide where we’re going before we get in. Ideas?”

“I’ve never had to hide in the Oldest House before,” Simon said, “I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s hard enough remembering how to get where you need to go, let alone trying to make sure nobody else can follow.”

“Um.” Mr. Langston said, clearing his throat, “I might have an idea.”

It opened its eye and it saw time.

It saw that, with the help of the mind it had reached for, time was flowing back to the right course.

It saw that They were looking for it.

It saw the < Tree %$# House #&% Treehouse > .

It started to climb.

As Simon pulled the dusty filing cabinet back over the door after putting Jesse down, Emily looked around. The office was clean and empty, with nothing in it beyond a few old filing cabinets and a circle of tape on the floor.

“A forgotten Control Point?” Emily said, furrowing her brow. “In the middle of Executive? How’d you find this?”

“Well, um.” Mr. Langston avoided eye contact. “I walked in on someone in here once when I was looking for a vending machine, back in my timeline.”

“Who?”

He appeared a little uncomfortable. “You and Director Faden.” When Emily kept looking at him, he continued awkwardly. “See, since it’s a Control Point, it’s stable, but nobody ever comes in here because it’s kinda out-of-the-way, so it’s – it’s a good place to come if. Uh. If you need privacy. For reasons.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. “When we were in Containment earlier, you said that I was Director Faden’s –”

Jesse woke up at that exact moment. She sat bolt upright, startling Simon, who was kneeling next to her.. As he tumbled onto his backside, Jesse looked around wildly, then winced and clutched her forehead.

“Shit! Ow! My head! What the fuck just happened?”

“Lieutenant Worf over here,” Emily gestured to Mr. Langston, “decided the best way to reason with you would be a plank of wood. Are you okay?”

“Where are we? What –” Jesse’s eyes focused on Emily, who was now kneeling in front of her. “Oh goddammit! I just escaped and you jackasses already caught me again? I hate this fucking place!”

“Jesse, please listen to me,” Emily said as Jesse, wincing, scooted away from her, “I swear that I didn’t know I was being tracked. I’ve been worrying about you for days. But I got the – the slide you left with Ahti. Polaris helped me find you.”

“The what?” Jesse looked suspicious, “What slide?”

“The slide you left with Ahti,” Emily said, her heart sinking, “The one with the… the fingers on it. It had Polaris… in it, or on it, or something. She helped me find you.”

“Ms. Pope?” said Simon.

“Just a minute, Simon,” said Emily, “You didn’t give a slide to Ahti?”

Jesse slowly shook her head. “Look, I haven’t so much as seen a slide since I smashed the slide projector in Ordinary 17 years ago.”

“Ms. Pope? Is this –”

“Simon, just a minute,” Emily waved her hand at him impatiently. “But if you didn’t leave the slide with Ahti, then who did?”

“I don’t fucking know. For all I know, you’re lying about this slide shit just like you lied about being my friend. How much did Darling pay you to help catch me? Or is that just part of your duty as a research assistant?”

“Jesse, please,” Emily said, “I swear, Jesse, please. What can I do to convince you that I never meant for this to happen?”

“Ms. Po–”

“You can go back in time and not betray me, for a start,” Jesse snapped, starting to struggle to her feet. Halfway up, she suddenly got a look of vaguely puzzled recollection on her face. “Wait…” she murmured, seemingly to herself, “go back in time… why does that sound…?”

“Ms. Pope, please look at this!” Simon hissed.

“What, Simon?” Emily snapped.

“This cup,” he pointed to a cup on a nearby filing cabinet, “It has tea in it.”

“Is this really that important?” Emily said with a glare, “That just means that whenever this office was abandoned someone left their teacup behind. It’s not the world’s most –”

“It’s still hot,” Simon said.

Emily stared at him, then the four of them slowly looked at the teacup.

All four of them jumped as a voice behind them said “Oh, damn, I can’t believe someone finally found my secret personal break room. I’m going to have to find someplace else to have my tea breaks, aren’t I?”

Emily turned toward the voice, and her mouth dropped open. “Dr. Underhill?”

It climbed the tree, a thousand segmented legs skittering across the branches as it went. It saw time, and it saw that time was < Broken %$# Twisted @%# Split > . It saw that the mind it had reached for was helping – time was warping back. Slowly.

Too slowly.

It saw time twisting < Around %$# Into #$% Between > the < Tree &%$ House #$@ Treehouse >. It saw Them looking for it, hating it, trying to stop it, but it couldn’t stop now – time needed to be fixed.

It saw something else, too. It saw another mind – no, not a mind – a feeling. It saw a sound. It saw a sensation. It saw something indescribable, but very, very angry .

It saw that it could deal with that later.

It saw that time was being repaired too slowly. It saw, down the stream, tiny fractures beginning to form, gradually spreading to massive cracks, until time wasn’t just < Broken %$# Twisted @%# Split > , it was < Shattered #%$ Destroyed &#$ Annihilated > . It saw an unimaginable apocalypse brought about by a single mind not seeing beyond its own guilt and anger.

It saw that it needed more. It saw that the branches of the tree were growing wrong. It saw each branch was the right branch in the wrong place. It saw that if only it could find a space, a < Gap %$# Hole &@# Hallway > between branches, a branch that should be there but wasn’t, it could graft that branch to where the empty place, and the branch could start the healing.

It saw one.

It reached out…

The new arrival – a pretty middle-aged woman with her hair in a tight bun – raised her eyebrows. “Do I know you?”

“Um. Yeah, I’m Emily Pope,” said Emily Pope, “Dr. Darling has me bring mould samples to you. Like, every other week.”

“Ah, yes. Pope. Casper’s assistant. Nice to see you again,” she lied, “what are you doing in this room?”

“Hiding,” said Emily, then winced. She definitely hadn’t meant to say that, and she internally cursed her motor mouth.

“Indeed?” Underhill furrowed her brow, “Dare I ask what you are hiding from? Is there an office-wide game of hide-and-go-seek that I was unaware of?”

“Um. No,” said Emily.

“I wouldn’t put it past Casper,” Underhill sighed. She looked around. “So what is it? Are the rangers after you, or some nonsense? I hope you’re not about to tell me you’re secretly four escaped Altered Items merely taking the form of employees.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. She already didn’t like Underhill, and for some reason, now the woman was getting on her already frayed nerves even worse than usual. A day of confusion, stress, panic, and emotional and physical exhaustion had already almost pushed her past the breaking point, and Underhill’s attitude was the last straw. She remembered the rumours that had been floating around about Underhill and Dr. Darling, and when she looked into the superior face glancing around the room now, she didn’t doubt it.

She thought about Dr. Darling and Mr. Trench and the FBC and all the secrets and classified data and unethical conduct and something in Emily snapped.

“We’re hiding from your precious Dr. Darling because he’s trying to imprison Jesse for some fucking reason,” she said, the words coming out like throwing daggers, “Jesse is this woman, the new janitor’s assistant, but of course you wouldn’t know that, because you barely even listen when I talk to you and I’m a goddamn colleague, so why ever would you even notice a janitor? Frankly, Dr. Underhill, I don’t give a damn about your ‘secret personal break room’, and you can either help us save this woman from your boyfriend or you can leave us the hell alone.”

The room was dead silent.

Underhill looked like she had been slapped in the face. “I… Casper is trying to imprison somebody? What are you talking about?”

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. “We don’t know why, we just know that he’s really determined. He tricked me into revealing her location a couple days ago, and she’s spent the majority of the time since then locked in a cell and being experimented on in Containment.”

Underhill slowly shook her head. “That’s not… Casper wouldn’t do that. You must be mistaken.”

“Look, I don’t know who you are,” Jesse said, “but I can tell you for goddamn sure that I wasn’t mistaken when I saw that jackass ordering a team of armed gunmen to force me into that cell.”

Emily looked at Underhill’s face. Her own expression softened a bit when she saw the doctor’s – she’d never seen Underhill like this before. The older woman’s normal expression of confident self-assurance and condescension was rapidly melting into an almost fearful uncertainty.

Underhill glanced at Jesse’s grey sweatshirt and drew in a sharp intake of breath.

“P7,” she whispered.

“What?” Jesse said.

“Your shirt. It says… it says ‘P7’,” Underhill pointed, “Casper… was talking at lunch the other day. He mentioned something called P7. He said it had taken a while but he had finally isolated it in a lab. I… I didn’t… I didn’t know it was a person.” Her face gave the impression someone had just stabbed her in the back. “Casper, I… I don’t…”

“Uh, Emily? Someone’s coming,” Simon said, by the door. “Rangers.”

“Dr. Underhill, how’d you get in here?” Emily said.

There was hesitation, but then Underhill pointed. There was a door standing slightly ajar, almost invisible in the gloom of the unlit corner. “It connects to a long hallway. One end, to the left, leads to the Executive Affairs office. I’m afraid I don’t know where the other end leads.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, “Simon, Jesse, Mr. Langston, let’s go.”

Just before she left, Emily turned to Underhill. “Dr. Underhill… please don’t tell anyone you saw us.”

There was a pause, then Underhill nodded.

As the door clicked shut behind her, Jesse listened. She heard the distinct sound on the other side of the scientist talking to the rangers who had entered just after the four of them had left. It sounded like this Dr. Underhill lady was covering their tracks. She sighed in relief and followed the other three down the hall to the right.

“Where do we go now?” asked the balding guy as they rounded the corner into even more hallway.

“I… I don’t know,” said Emily, trying to avoid Jesse’s eyes. “I don’t know. We… We could leave the Oldest House, but… but the Bureau has people stationed all over the country. I have no idea where we could hide Jesse.”

“I’m not hiding,” Jesse said, “When I was in the cell, I told them I was going to burn this place to the ground, and that’s what I’m going to do. The FBC stole my brother and tried to steal me. I’m not letting them get away with it – I’m going to find Dylan and then I’m going to destroy this place.”

“It is weird to hear you talk like that again,” said the balding guy.

“Again?” Jesse looked at him. “Have we met?”

“Oh, right, you don’t remember,” he said, “Fred Langston, ma’am. I’m from an alternate timeline where you run this place.”

Jesse narrowed her eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s not a joke, Jesse,” Emily said, “In Mr. Langston’s timeline, you become the new Director after Trench dies. Apparently in that timeline you made an effort to turn the FBC around and make it less… well, evil.”

“It was working, too,” Langston said, “I actually really appreciated the steps you were taking in regards to humane treatment of the Altered Items.”

Jesse looked between Emily and Langston. Eventually, she said “Yeah, sounds great. But unfortunately, in the real world, Trench is very much alive and they’re not going to make an escaped test subject the Director. I’m sure in your world it’s all fantastic, but here I’m just here for my brother. I don’t care about the other people in the FBC. I’m not trying to save them all.” That last sentence stirred something in her memory. “Save… why does that sound familiar?”

“Hey, there’s a door up here,” said that guy who was apparently named Simon and not Steve.

“Where?” said Langston.

“Right here,” said Simon. Jesse looked and saw the door – it looked like the entrance to a lab.

“That’s… weird,” said Langston, “I could swear it wasn’t there a second ago. It’s like it just grew out of the wall on its own.”

“Is there anyone in there?” Jesse asked.

Simon looked through the window. “Looks abandoned. Do we want to check it out?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Langston said, walking down and looking around the hall corner, “The hall ends in a dead end here.”

“Okay, let’s go in,” said Emily. “Where’s the door sign –”

She stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” said Jesse.

“That – that can’t be right,” said Emily, “Mr. Langston, come look at this.”

He walked over and peered at the door sign. “Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense.”

“What? What is it?” Jesse repeated.

Langston read out the sign. “‘Experimental Temporal Communications Lab’.”