Archive of Our Own ^beta

The thin white lace curtains neatly hanging over the paneling dance in the gentle warm breeze of early spring. Dappled shade falls on Mobius’ face, the light turning his eyes aglow as he glimpses out the window and away from the kitchen sink every few seconds to check on the kids playing in the yard.

“Dad, come on! It’s almost five already, you promised!” Kevin yells out to him.

“Yeah, we can’t build the fort without you!” Sean echoes back.

“Alright, I’m coming! Just give me a sec,” Mobius answers. I did promise, he chuckles to himself as he dries the last washed plate and stacks it with the rest in the cupboard to his left.

“Okay boys, did ya find a good spot for it?” he asks them, nonchalantly throwing the little towel over his shoulder as he steps out into the yard, leaving the front door open behind him.

The boys run to him, talking over each other, both trying their best to get his attention. Their babble fades into the background as the sudden shriek of the old landline from inside the house interrupts the afternoon calm. In an effort to ignore distractions and hear what the kids are saying Mobius leans down toward them, scrunching his face into a confused grimace. But it’s no use. He can’t hear them at all anymore and the ringing is only getting louder and louder until…
_________________________________________________________________________

Mobius suddenly wakes, startled by the sound of the telephone still ringing a few feet away from him. He quickly sits up. Shaken with confusion, he takes a moment to orient himself by looking around the premises — messy piles of documents and photographs fill the splotchy gray room, along with some dirty laundry and empty glass bottles. Underneath the still loud ringing of the phone he hears the pitter patter of raindrops against glass and a constant low humming from not too far away. He turns to his right, opening the dusty half bent shades of the window by his bedside and he sees it — the neon red motel sign right across, blinking in and out of color under the pouring rain. Right, he remembers.

The phone is still persistently ringing. Right, Mobius repeats almost like a mantra as he props himself up and off the bed. He nearly trips over some files that fall off the bed sheets along with him. Only then does he catch a glimpse of his own reflection in the broken TV opposite his bed. His hair's longer, strands of it low enough to graze his cheekbones and hide his glazed over eyes. A trimmed beard covers the rest of his face. He's still in his clothes from earlier today – his trusted pair of boots, navy trousers, light gray shirt and Loki’s sword holster, which he wears every day as a most precious reminder. He caresses the sides of it, feeling where the black leather left wrinkles in the cotton shirt, reminiscing. It's the only thing he has left of Loki, his Loki… He takes a beat, then rushes to answer the phone on the small table next to the broken TV.

“Finally!” a voice exclaims over the telephone — half annoyed, half relieved. “Detective Mobius?”

“Right,” he remembers.

“Detective Mobius, is everything alright? We’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”

Mobius pauses, looking down at his wrinkled clothes and back at the bed covered in files and folders instead of blankets. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep, sorry. What did I miss?” he answers solemnly.

“This is Nurse Sheryl Hopkins from Lago General. I’m sorry to inform you that Dr. Joan Madrox passed away tonight. We did all we could to resuscitate her but in the end the disease took its toll.”

“Dr. Madrox?” Mobius repeats in confusion, still trying to find his footing.

“Yes, sir. Normally we don’t inform anyone other than the next of kin but, as your client, she insisted you be the first to know.”

Mobius turns away from the bed and faces the wall above the telephone – a cork board filled with clippings, photos and file print outs all containing the name James Madrox stares back at him. Right, he remembers.

“Thank you for telling me. Um, does the family…”

“Since you took so long to answer, yes, we’ve informed them by now. They arranged the funeral for tomorrow morning already,” the nurse answers.

As if by instinct, Mobius reaches down to the side of his belt for his TemPad, it’s still there. He opens it to check — 10:32pm, November 21st, 1990, branched timeline 1229b. The “b” in that designation catches his eye — the TVA only ever uses numbers for the timeline naming system he contemplates but recalls the bigger issue at hand and quickly closes the TemPad.

“Okay, I’ll speak to them first thing tomorrow then. Thank you,” Mobius attempts to close with his usual cheeriness but it falls flat as he hangs up the phone.

He glares at his case board above the phone again. His shoulders drop down in exhaustion as he lets out a loud sigh. After the brief interlude of that peaceful dream, now faced with the brutal harshness of his present reality, his eyes well up with tears. For the Madrox family, for Loki, for himself…

Before he can cry out, however, he’s interrupted again. This time by a knock on the front door.

Through the window he can barely make out the shadow of a person holding an umbrella but nothing more. The knocking repeats with greater haste. From the chair by the table he grabs his long dark blue coat by its deep green inner lining and throws it on quickly. He opens the door to find a woman there — early 40s, pale, dark eyes, dark hair peeking through her hat, shivering in her winter coat — and before he can say a word, she breaks out in tears.

“Detective, please you have to help me! My little girl—” she chokes on her words.

“Hey hey, It’s okay! Take a breath. Look, why don’t we sit over here by the vending machines? Get you something hot to drink, yeah?” Mobius rushes to say as he instantly defaults back to his kind and caring self without a second thought.

He searches his pocket for change as he shepherds the woman to a small green couch in the rundown motel walkway, barely kept dry under the thin awning. After sitting her down he puts a few coins in the one coffee machine lined up there that doesn’t have the “out of order” sign taped to the front.

“I think I used up all the coffee in this one already. Is hot chocolate okay?” he asks with a guilty smile. The woman quietly nods as she tries to compose herself again. He presses the button on the old rusty machine and it starts buzzing loudly, echoing in the empty hallway as it struggles to prepare the hot drink. Mobius sits down next to the woman on the couch.

“So, how can I help you, Miss…”

“Mrs. Cross. My name is Sarah Cross. My daughter Rebecca, she’s fifteen and she’s been missing two days now,” she says as she rushes to take a photo out of an already prepared folder in her bag. She hands it to Mobius. It’s a group photo with some of her friends but Rebecca is easy to spot — the girl clearly takes after her mother — she’s wearing blue jeans and a pink sweater, a matching pink scrunchie keeping her hair up in a ponytail. “That’s her, she took the photo herself the day she disappeared. She always loved to take pictures…”

Mobius gently hands her back the photo, she pauses to stare at it again.

“The police haven’t found anything, everyone keeps telling me she just ran away and she’ll be back, but—”

“Mrs. Cross, I know it’s hard to just sit at home waiting, but this is absolutely something the police can handle,” Mobius tries to reassure her.

“Please, detective...” she scoffs. “Half the station are my husband’s drinking buddies. Where do you think they are now instead of looking for my little girl? How do you think I came here all by myself so late!?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. But I’m not sure I can really help either.”

“You’re a PI, aren’t you? Missing persons cases — the Johnsons, the Hawthorns, that little kid from Connecticut? You’re the best in the state, let alone Lago!”

“Cold cases, ma’am,” Mobius tries to interject.

“I can’t afford to wait that long,” the woman cuts him off, her resolve holding back her tears. “I need my daughter back home, alive and well, by the end of the week. Name your price, I’ll double it.”

The coffee machine in the back finally stops buzzing.

Mobius looks her in the eye, sighs, and goes up to the machine. Her gaze carefully follows his every move in anticipation of his answer. He sits back down, handing her the hot cocoa.

“Okay, Mrs. Cross. Tell me everything you know.”
__________________________________________________________________________

The sounds of a revving engine fill the now quiet motel parking lot. Shielding himself from the pouring rain with nothing but the coat on his back, Mobius runs back to the dry shelter of the canopy with a folder in his hand as Mrs.Cross drives away in her car.

A door creaks behind him, some muffled laughter pouring out of the room inside. He recognizes it — Lyle, the motel manager, and Stu, the janitor. Must be midnight, Mobius mutters to himself, as that’s usually how long their weekly poker nights run.

He starts to walk back down the hallway to his room when he hears their conversation more clearly and slows down to listen in.

“Yeah man, that’s the kinda shit you see on the regular when you live on the edge of town. Ridiculous!” Stu says in his distinctly raspy voice, damaged by years of breathing in chemicals. “Now, just last night I swear I saw somebody lighting fires in the old abandoned farmhouse right across from me.”

“The Madrox estate? No shit,” Lyle says as he puts out the nth cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on the table. “Was it Svenson ice fishing again?”

“Nah, crazy old bat’s out of town. Asked me to keep an eye on his place. I reckon it’s them kids again,” Stu shuffles the cards for another game.

“Fourth of July freaks?” Lyle asks as he lights another cigarette.

“Mhm, their little fireworks display nearly burned the whole farm down this summer. Fucking brats, that’s what you get when there’s no parents around to discipline them,” Stu grumbles, passing the cards to Lyle.

“Tell me about it,” Lyle shakes his head as he starts dealing anew.

Mobius has heard enough. He walks back to his room, clears some space on the cork board with the James Madrox case and puts up two new pictures — one of Rebecca Cross from the new folder and another of the old farmhouse from the Madrox case. He zeroes in on the two other kids in the photo with Rebecca — they’re holding lighters. Breadcrumbs, he mumbles.
________________________________________________________________________

The tires of Mobius’ car make a dent in the cold half frozen gravel outside the old abandoned farmhouse. Tiny sticks of grass peeking through the cracks of the asphalt in the driveway, each stretching up and out to catch a ray of sunlight before the dew freezes over in the early morning hours.

Mobius shuts the engine off and steps out of the car. He tries to take in the whole estate in one glance but the property stretches so far, he can’t even see the opposite end of the farmhouse from here. He’s parked southside opposite Stu’s home so he can begin his search for clues where the last potential sighting happened.

The fence has long fallen apart, so he just needs one proper push to prop the door open and he’s in. The sunlight coming through the holes in the half burnt wooden ceiling catches his eye immediately, a cloud of his warm breath illuminated by the sunbeams up above. He nearly slips on some fallen timber covered by a blanket of ash on the floor and clutches the side of the wall for balance but finds his feet on his own. Turning to the wall he was about to grab and sees a faint handprint there, smaller than his own and fairly recent looking. He smiles.

Mobius quietly makes his way through what by all accounts used to be the main entrance hallway, looking around into all corners of the open floor area. She might still be here hiding away, he thinks. Approaching the kitchen island, he spots the remains of what once was a small fire. He crouches down to inspect it and notices something small and bright concealed under all the ashes. With the pen from his coat pocket he digs in the dirt and picks it up — a pink scrunchie, identical to the one Rebecca Cross was wearing the day she disappeared.

Before he can get up to celebrate, however, he hears the faint sound of footsteps somewhere on the other side of the kitchen island, not too far to his right, and then a second pair of footsteps following close by. He slowly raises his head up to the corner of the countertop and sees two women — one further away, with her back turned to him, leaning on the open door frame towards the yard, and another just a few feet behind her, facing him. She sees him immediately but before either of them can react, Mobius pushes one of the kitchen island drawers by mistake, making a loud noise. The woman by the door frame turns toward them, pulls out a small handgun and starts shooting — Mobius ducks beneath the kitchen island to avoid the first bullet, then jumps to his left tackling the other woman to the ground, saving her from the following bullets.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, concerned and out of breath.

“Ah, shit!” the woman exclaims as she rushes to get up and run out after the other.

Mobius slowly rises, carefully minding his surroundings this time. He walks to the doorframe where the shooter was standing and looks out into the yard — no trace of her in sight. He looks down at his feet, already searching for the bullet shell casings and he spots one, but the model isn’t a standard one he recognizes. Next to it he sees a fallen uniform patch with a logo on it — I.G.H. That he recognizes. Putting both in his pocket, he hurries back inside as he hears one of the women walking back towards him.

“Thanks a lot, McClane! You just cost me my best lead,” she yells out unceremoniously as she dusts the gray ashes off of herself. That’s when Mobius first gets a proper look at her — blue jeans, white top under a gray scarf and a set of boots and leather jacket to match her pitch black hair, the strands of it grazing her fair white skin.

“It’s Mobius actually. Detective. And you are?” he tries to de-escalate.

“Detective? Could’ve fooled me,” she replies in an unmistakable New York accent, looking him up and down condescendingly as she walks past.

“You mind tellin’ me what a proud New Yorker is doing slummin’ it up here with the rest of us in Lago, getting shot at at 7am?” Mobius fires back with no small amount of sass.

She stops and turns back around to face him, the look of annoyance impossible to wash off of her face.

“I saved your life, least you could do is tell me your name,” Mobius insists.

“Jessica Jones, Alias Investigations,” she sighs as she hands him her card. “And you didn’t save me, you just slowed me down.”

Now she’s close enough for him to see her piercing green eyes staring back at him in anger. Their shade so warm and familiar, it forces a smile out of him instantly.

“Huh,” Mobius chuckles. “And who were you chasing out here, Ms. Jones?”

“Not you. But if you ever need help investigating your totally real case, feel free to never call!” she snaps back and walks off toward the northern entrance of the farmhouse. “Asshole…” she mumbles just loud enough for him to hear from a distance.

As soon as she’s out of sight Mobius takes out his TemPad and checks her name in the database - a fair few files available on her from the Sacred Timeline records but nothing from the other branches like this one. A thankless job, he remembers, thinking about all the new sets of records the TVA struggles to keep from every new branch now. It’s nearly impossible to keep them all cataloged—easy for one to slip through the cracks unnoticed. Ravonna would have had them working ‘round the clock to prune them all. Mobius shudders at the memory, feeling that odd mix of sadness and relief when he thinks of her lost to the Void. Mobius shakes his head and returns to the present, glancing over the files on Jessica Jones. He’ll need to make do with what they have so he starts downloading the available files. The bar shows it will clearly take hours so he closes the TemPad, letting the download run in the background while he sets off after her.

He reaches the northern entrance where Jones has apparently parked her car. Through the crack of the door he sees her get in and try to start it but it won’t budge. She checks the engine only to find cut wires and hoses under the hood. Unintelligible swearing proceeds.

The other woman must have sabotaged her for a sure fire escape, that’s clever, Mobius laughs to himself as he walks back to his own car parked on the opposite side of the building. He finally dusts himself off of all the ash and ember and sits down to start the car. As he turns the key, the door on his other side slams shut and he finds Jones sitting beside him.

“Look, I’m sure you’re late for a very important dumpster fire but my car’s busted, I need you to drive me back into town,” she delivers in an unamused monotone.

“You’re the one wearing fingerless gloves, not me,” Mobius says without missing a beat.

“You’re right, I should just throw you out and steal it instead.” She lunges toward the wheel but in a moment of quick thinking Mobius takes the key from the ignition and throws it out his already open window into the field nearby.

“Real mature…” she sighs walking out of the car to look for the keys in the tall grass. Mobius steps out after her.

“I’ll drive you back into town if you just answer my question,” he calls out, leaning on the side of his car.

“I already told you my name, man! You just cost me my lead, my car and now you wanna waste my time too?” she yells, digging angrily into the grass.

“I’ve got the spare right here,” Mobius calmly replies, dangling the keys in his left hand. “All I wanna know is what case dragged you all the way out here and almost got us killed.”

“Fine!” she gets up and approaches, blowing the hair out of her face. “I was hired to track down a missing teen from the projects a couple days ago. Clues led me to a potential suspect working for the government, who I traced here overnight. I was hoping I’d find the kid, a contact, a hide out, something... Instead I got you, contaminating a potential crime scene,” she forces out a fake smile..

She’s lying, Mobius can already tell. Or at least omitting some of the truth, he thinks to himself. That’s why he opts for the opposite tactic in an attempt to gain trust and learn more.

“Au contraire,” he counters, pulling out the pink scrunchie from his pocket with one hand and the photo of Rebecca Cross with the other. “My case, three days since the disappearance, last spotted here in the estate owned by the family of my previous missing person’s case… and now I have proof.”

Jones grabs the photo and evidence out of his hands, visibly intrigued.

“Think there might be a connection, detective?” he grins. And there it is – the look on her face as she finally takes him seriously and absorbs the gravity of the problem.

“We need to get back into town,” she says, resolute. “I’m driving.”

“Not a chance!” he exclaims, ducking back into the car. “I’ve seen you New Yorkers drive.” He starts it up, letting the engine turn over. “And we’ll go back to town. Just need to make one stop first.”
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The car passes a small but generously decorated Catholic church, circles around it and stops in the parking lot by the graveyard entrance. People head-to-toe in black huddle together in small groups all over, leaving barely any room for all the cars around. The priest is already there as well – short, pudgy and somehow sweating in the freezing cold. He’s hovering around the groups, talking with a bible in hand, but his eyes are firmly planted on Jones as if he sees her in the car. Arms crossing, leg shaking – Mobius notices how uneasy the priest’s stare instantly makes her feel and how hard she tries to play it off as nothing.

“Whoever they were, I hope they were this popular while they were still alive. Anyone I should know about?” Jones asks as the two exit the car.

“Dr. Joan Madrox, nuclear researcher, well respected here. She’s the owner of that abandoned farmhouse we left, she’s also the late mother to James Madrox, my last case,” Mobius explains. He tries to lock up the car but the keys shake in his hands. It’s not just the cold getting to him.

“When she got her diagnosis she hired me to find out what happened to her son all those years ago.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“Detective Mobius!” a man calls out to him from behind the black cast iron gates of the graveyard right across the parking lot. Mobius nods back at him. It’s Ethan Owens, childhood best friend to James, Dr. Joan Madrox's son. Of course he’s here, Mobius remarks – the guy had a habit of staying close to both the case and the family, sometimes too close for Mobius’ taste.

Taking a deep breath, he suddenly feels how freezing it is outside as the cold air pierces his lungs and a lump forms in his throat. He takes a beat to ready himself and goes up to the man already walking down towards him. Jones stays close behind, carefully watching.

“Ethan! My sympathies...” Mobius shakes his hand.

“Thank you. I wish we were speaking again under better circumstances.”

“Me too, me too. I’m sorry I didn’t manage to-”

“Actually, about that – I’d like you to stay on the case,” Ethan interjects. ”I’ll pick up the tab so long as you solve it. It’s a shame she couldn’t get her answer but maybe you can still give Mr. Madrox some peace?”

“I don’t know what to say, I-” Mobius sighs. His eyes wander for a second until he finds Daniel Madrox in the distance, sitting motionless and frail in his wheelchair, covered in blankets on the cold morning. “I don’t think I can even walk up to him and apologize now.”

“Please, Joan really respected you. Daniel wouldn’t blame you for any of this now even if he wanted to,” Ethan tries to reassure him but Mobius freezes up, going quiet. Jones notices and takes the opportunity to step in.

“Jessica Jones, PI. I’m sorry for your loss,” she follows up with a handshake as she sizes up the thin well-dressed, yet average looking young man.

“Appreciate that! Ethan Owens, friend of the family,” he goes on. “Are you consulting on the case with detective-”

“I am, actually,” Jones hurries to answer before Mobius could, snapping him out of his daze. “Friend called in a favor from out of town and I couldn’t say no.”

“Right…” Mobius plays along.

“Well that’s the best news I’ve heard today. Will you be staying for the full service at home as well?” Ethan asks.

“Oh, no!” the two answer all at once but with comically opposing tones.

“A lot to follow up on today, we better get to it,” Mobius excuses himself.

“Understood, we’ll catch up tomorrow then!” Ethan hurries back to the procession. Mobius nods back at him with a stifled smile.

Jones follows Ethan with her gaze, watching him push Daniel Madrox’ wheelchair toward the burial site - the old man seems to barely be aware of his surroundings, let alone the passing of his wife. As they move out of sight, the priest is there in the background again. His black beady eyes staring back at Jones suspiciously once more.

“Hey, what did old man Madrox do for a living?” she asks.

“Nuclear research along with his wife. It’s how they met. Two of them kept the local plant working and supplying power to the area for thirty years,” Mobius explains, unlocking the car.

“Took its toll,” she sounds almost mournful.

“Yeah,” Mobius sighs. They sit back down inside. “But we’ve got another family to worry about now.”
___________________________________________________________________________

Mobius knocks on the door of the Cross family home. Gray brick chimneys loom over the asymmetrical facade of the entrance, complete with a polished spruce door at the center and sash windows on each side of it – a typical English-style suburban house, through and through. Mobius and Jones stand outside waiting impatiently for someone to answer.

“Listen, if you’re gonna tag along on my case, you need to tell me everything about yours too,” he whispers. “It’ll help us both work faster if we work as a team.”

“I don’t do teams,” Jones replies, the words dripping with sarcasm. “Think of me as your out-of-town consultant. Just passing through.”

“Well if you’re not gonna share, neither am I,” he chuckles as he takes the car keys out of his coat pocket and hands them to her.

She snatches them out of his hand. “What are you gonna do? Throw me out of someone else’s house?”

The door finally opens – the expression of relief on Sarah Cross’ face when seeing Mobius quickly shifts into one of shock and anger upon noticing Jones next to him. “You!?” she exhales. “You dare show up here now? After you refused to take my daughter’s case? Get off my property!”

Before Jones can get her bearings Mobius interjects with his quick thinking and calming approach. “Mrs. Cross, please! I’m sorry to spring this on you like this but Detective Jones is working on another related case. That’s why I asked her to come along.”

Sarah’s face relaxes again as she focuses to hear him. Jones stares, almost impressed, as she listens to Mobius spin his story on the fly.

“I know I should have checked with you first before turning up like this but I didn’t wanna disturb you. Did you manage to get any sleep?”

“No, no and I don’t want her in my house!”

“Mrs. Cross, I’m sorry for turning down your case. If I’d known the implications sooner…” Jones plays along, appearing almost sincere.

“What implications?” Sarah’s face drops in horror.
__________________________________________________________________________

“God, I was already worried but this…” Sarah sighs as she hands Mobius a second cup of black tea. She offers one to Jones as well.

“No thank you,” she says with barely restrained disgust as the drink brings back painful memories. Jones sits next to Mobius on the floral couch in the middle of the living room.

Sarah sits down in the matching armchair opposite them. Her older sister Katherine, her exact likeness just with longer hair dyed blonde and grungier style, stands right next to her, offering a comforting hand on Sarah’s shoulder.

“Oh please!” Katherine exclaims. “I like a government conspiracy as much as the next person but ninety-nine percent of the time these sort of things trace back to someone in the family. It’s always the father.”

“Katherine!” Sarah tries to shush her.

“Do you have reason to suspect your husband?” Mobius leans forward, putting the tea away.

“No.”

“Yes!” Katherine disagrees. “He cheats on the regular, everyone knows about it too, but my sister would rather turn a blind eye.”

“Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone–” Sarah says.

“Oh, you can quote scripture all you like, doesn’t change the fact that he’s unfaithful,” Katherine interrupts her sister. In a desperate attempt to distract herself Sarah closes her eyes, continuing to mutter prayers under her breath.

“Last time we knew of it was with his barely legal secretary at work. And I’ve seen the way he stares during those high school theater shows Rebecca invites us to. He’s not looking at the sets, I can tell you that much,” Katherine goes on. “And with Rebecca growing prettier by the day….”

Sarah storms off and hides in the next room over, still praying quietly to herself all the way. Mobius fights his instinct to comfort her and stays firmly planted on the couch to hear more.

Jones feels the scent of the tea getting stronger and stronger as the tension in the room rises, her breathing becomes labored.

“That’s why we called you first” Katherine turns to Jones. “Read your profile in the New York Bulletin a while back. Quite the story, figured you’d at least have some sympathy for a victim like this when you’ve been-”

“Don’t!” Jones stands up, her hands ever so visibly shaking. Mobius’ face turns pale in concern.

The smell of black tea is now suffocating.

“I guess I misjudged you, detective,” Katherine condescends, knowing she’s hit a soft spot.

“You can get the rest of the statement. I’ll wait for you in the car,” Jones tells Mobius, not breaking eye contact with Katherine all the while, then walks out.

A pregnant pause fills the room. For the first time the space is quiet enough for Mobius to notice the ticking of the antique grandfather clock buried in the corner of the room. Each second it counts off echoes ever louder in Mobius’ head as he struggles to get his bearings and soldier on with the interview alone.

Katherine, still standing opposite him, doesn’t seem to mind the awkwardness. She picks up a cigarette from the open pack conveniently thrown atop the pile of missing person’s flyers on the small wooden coffee table and lights it. She sits down in Sarah’s armchair.

“So, apart from the incident with the, um, secretary… Do you have any other proof Mr. Cross could have abducted or abused his daughter?” Mobius breaks the silence, trying his best to hide his worry and focus on the sister.

“Why do you think my sister and I turned to PIs behind his back? Local authorities are doing fuck all to find Rebecca and I’m sure he’s behind it.”

A look of confusion crosses Mobius’s face.

“He works for the mayor’s office, he’s tight with the DA and a whole bunch of cops. They gotta be helping him cover it up just like they did with that Lee girl a few months ago.”

“What girl?” Mobius stands up intrigued.
___________________________________________________________________________

Jones shuts the front door behind her, her pulse racing.

“Birch Street…” she struggles to say aloud. “Higgins Drive… Cobalt Lane,” she mutters as she leans on the wall to her side to catch her breath. Noticing the English facade of the house again, she pulls away disgusted and quickly heads to Mobius’ parked car right across.

She sits in the driver’s seat and puts the key in the ignition, ready to drive off and leave Mobius there along with this whole case. But she knows she can’t. Jones sighs and leans back on the headrest. I need a drink, she thinks to herself as she starts rummaging through Mobius’ car for a sip of anything.

She finds no emergency kit, spare tire or tools in the trunk. Nothing in the backseat but old bags of take out food. No ID or personal documents anywhere either. Finally in the glove compartment she scores a small bottle of whiskey with just a few sips left in it. A few other empty ones surround it, along with papers – rental documents for the car and lunch receipts mostly. Well he’s clearly just passing through town, Jones mutters to herself. Then she finds a document with a familiar logo on it. She opens it up and sees a printed out CCTV still of James Madrox, alone, entering I.G.H. headquarters in New York.

She tries to look for any more clues in the photo but right then out of the corner of her eye she sees Mobius come out of the house. Jones quickly folds up the paper, hides it in her jacket pocket and moves to the passenger seat. Mobius sits down beside her.

“You okay?” he checks in with her.

“Fine, just needed some air,” she stares out the window, avoiding his gaze.

“I know you don’t know me and you probably don’t wanna talk about it but-”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Jones interrupts.

“But if there’s anything I can do to help-”

“Some asshole hurt me years ago, he died for it and I’m still here. There’s nothing to help!” she fires back confidently, sounding almost proud.

“Look, she didn’t mention those suspicions about the husband when she first came to me,” Mobius tries to apologize. “If I’d known about him, about you refusing the case and the reason why-”

“That’s not why I refused the case,” Jones countered defensively. “I just talked to them on the phone, they only said to look into the dad first like every other paranoid parent. Thought it was just another small town kid running away to the big city for a weekend so I turned them down.”

Mobius lets out a big sigh. He scratches his nose with his thumb in his usual nervous tick.

“Besides, I already had enough shit to deal with on my open case, couldn’t take on anything else,” she explains.

“So why are you taking on mine then?” he turns to her, gripping the steering wheel.

“Because they are connected, everything Mrs. Cross just told us proves it – packed bag, disappearing right after school, close relatives with jobs in government, it’s just like my missing kid case!” Jones replies.

“What about your mystery woman?” Mobius asks, his eyes narrowing in on her face as if waiting for a tell to reveal itself. Jones keeps her expression guarded.

“I’m not gonna find her out here on foot, I don’t have a car anymore,” she rolls her eyes. “If I stay on this trail, it will lead me right to her.”

“The trail leads us to the police station now,” Mobius resigns. “We have another potential link, a young Ms. Lee from the same high school as Rebecca disappeared the same way four months ago.”

“Friend of hers?” Jones lights up with curiosity.

“Family doesn’t know. Apparently no one ever looked too hard for her cause she’s an orphan, barely even made local news,” he says. “But the case should still be an open investigation in the local precinct.”
___________________________________________________________________________

“It’s not,” Officer Jeffreys declares without even looking away from the paperwork on his cluttered second hand desk. His cup of coffee growing ever colder but no less aromatic, sits neglected by his right hand side. Mobius and Jones stand across from him, dodging the passing by officers carrying in box loads of paperwork for digitizing.

“Case was handed over to the NYPD back in August. All records were shipped to them so if you wanna know anything, it’s under their jurisdiction now. Out of my hands,” he shrugs and goes back to writing his report.

“Well you gotta keep some copies here or at the orphanage, it’s regulation for cases of-” Mobius objects.

“Nope, she was an emancipated minor. And orders came from high up, everything we had is there now. All that’s left is this photo and a description of her.” Jeffreys slides the two items over the desk to Jones.

“What about the officers who worked the case?” she asks, taking the photo in hand. “We could talk to some of them?”

“Yeah, yeah. Gibson was on missing persons cases, right? Where is he?” Mobius follows up.

“On leave this month.”

“What about Masters from homicide?” Mobius pushes, towering over the officer’s desk.

“Training out of town.”

“The chief then!” he insists.

“Like I said, Mobius, I can’t help you,” Jeffreys delivers with a fake smile, almost gloating.

“Thanks a lot,” Mobius huffs, grabbing the photo and description before walking off.

Jones goes after him. “Maybe if you led with your charm next time…”

“Think you can do better?”

“I don’t know, is the chief a philanderer too?” she jokes. Mobius pauses, still annoyed but wanting to laugh.

The TemPad buzzes alerting him the files on Jones’ life from the Sacred Timeline have been downloaded. He reaches for it by force of habit but remembers he can’t open it around her and stops himself. That’s when she first notices it sitting on his belt.

“Giant ass pager,” she remarks. “If you’re gonna carry around something that big, might as well get a cell phone like me,” Jones pulls out a second generation Nokia out of her jacket pocket, the ones with antennas on them. For a moment there Mobius almost looks like he’s restraining a laugh.

“You know what, since you’re from the big city, why don’t you use that to pull some strings and get us more info on this Lee girl from NYPD,” Mobius suggests as he writes something down with a pen and paper from his pocket. “Here’s her full name, age, school and last known address. Have it all faxed to my machine, I’ll take a look when I’m back home,” he points to the number at the bottom of the paper.

Jones snatches the paper out of his hand and starts dialing. He walks out of the station.

“Alias Investigations!” a voice answers the phone. Jones moves away from the entrance to a quieter corner by one of the police desks.

“Malcolm, hey, I need you to do some digging on someone.”

From another desk nearby she can overhear some faint gossip behind her. “Fucking PIs, hate it when they start snooping here…” one cop murmurs to another.

“Tell me about it, that piece of shit Mobius is the worst of them. Been picking away at old wounds in this town for years and never around to pick up the pieces after,” the other echoes.

“Actually, two someones,” Jones says.
__________________________________________________________________________

Waiting for Jones outside the precinct, Mobius sits on a creaky bench with the TemPad in hand, half a mind to open it, half to toss it in the rusty metal trash can by his side. In an effort to calm his racing mind he shuts his eyes, listens in on the chatter coming from people walking around as it becomes a low hum far in the background of the soundscape. He takes a deep breath in, the strong scent of gasoline from the parked police cars nearby forces his eyes open suddenly and he sees them – right across the street a couple walk out of a tailor's hand in hand. The man turns to face her, his smile glowing ever wider across his face as the woman leans in to fix his tie before giving him a gentle kiss. They walk off into the distance, hands still tightly locked.

Focus, Mobius struggles to remind himself as he feels the cold metal corners of the TemPad in his hand. He opens the downloaded folder on Jessica Jones and sees seventeen long case files. No time right now, he whispers, closing them for the time being. He quickly starts a second download of all files from the Sacred Timeline about Lee to use for cross reference with whatever information Jones finds him, then closes the TemPad.

“Okay, my contact’s on it. We’ll have everything he finds within a day,” Jones calls out to him as she walks out of the precinct. “School’s out by now, we can try the kids from their class next.”

“No, we don’t know enough to question them yet.”

“Trust me, when it comes to teenage girls, parents are just as clueless as orphanages. You’re not gonna find any more answers there. The friends are our best bet.”

“The high school’s the connection…” Mobius whispers in a daze.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“No, James Madrox, Rebecca Cross and now this girl, they all went to the same high school but in different years. There has to be some common link between them, a friend, a teacher or someone from outside the school who frequents some annual event there…”

“Government organized maybe?” Jones follows his train of thought.

He nods excitedly. “School’s closed for the day but I think I know someone else who can help us in the meantime,” Mobius announces as they head for the car.
___________________________________________________________________________

Puddle after puddle, the rims of the car get splashed with layer after layer of mud on the town's patchy roads. Mobius is driving, about to turn right past the mayor’s office when he suddenly breaks left and goes back to the office parking lot.

“That’s him,” he says.

“Who? Your source?” Jones shouts bracing to not hit the front shield at the sudden left turn.

“Nope, the philandering father,” he answers spiritedly. “And you should really put on your seatbelt.”

“Whatever,” she scoffs.”You actually think he’s a potential suspect?”

“No, but I’ll rest easier knowing I crossed him off the list.”

He parks right next to the dark haired middle aged man in an off-the-rack suit as he’s putting his briefcase in the trunk of his car. Mobius and Jones step out, stopping him just as he’s about to get in and drive away.

“Edward Cross? I’m Detective Mobius, this is PI Jones. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter’s disappearance,” Mobius introduces them.

“Oh Jesus, PIs? Really? I told that woman to relax and wait, instead she sends detectives after me. Unbelievable!” the man exclaims.

“Mr. Cross-” Mobius tries to interrupt.

“Listen, I’m sorry she wasted your time but there’s really no need for this. My daughter will be back home in a few days when she gets a taste of what life is like without mommy and daddy. If not, my buddies at the precinct can handle it,” Edward confidently talks over him, leaning on his car. “Here’s a little something for your trouble. Maybe you could afford to take your assistant out on a proper date now,” he says while pushing a small stack of cash into Mobius’ coat pocket, creepily looking Jones up and down as he does it.

“Oh, she’s-” Mobius tries to explain as he quickly takes the cash out of his pocket.

“In case you didn’t hear, I’m private investigator Jessica Jones and unlike you and your boys in blue, I can do more than push paper,” Jones loudly states as she walks up in front of Mobius and towers over Edward. “Your daughter’s disappearance is more serious than you think.”

“Why? What have you found?” Finally, they get a real reaction out of him.

“Well for one thing, that you cheat on your wife often and regularly, with women young enough to be your daughter. Literally…” Mobius keeps his calm as he counts up the bills Edward just handed him.

“What!?” he exclaims, horrified at the accusation.

“Even under all that cologne, you reek of cherry blossoms, I wouldn’t bother denying it,” Jones snaps back, waving her hand in the air in an attempt to get rid of the scent.

“And now we know how much you’re willing to pay to keep that quiet,” Mobius adds, holding up the dollar bills. “One grand is pretty cheap even by Lago standards, Mr. Cross,” he frowns.

“Now, hold on a second. I never said-”

“It’s also completely pointless, everyone in town already knows your secret. Might as well burn your money,” she interjects.

“Wait, I’ve never-”

“Relax, your wife doesn’t care if you cheat.”

“But she might if you’re kidnapping and abusing minors,” Mobius pushes him.

“Jesus, are you insane!? You think I’d ever lay a hand on my own daughter?” Edward yells out outraged. “Where are you getting this from, huh? Katherine?”

They say nothing.

“Pff, ever since she got cheated on by her lady friend, she’s been on this crusade against me. Crazy cat lady’s vindictive! I’d never hurt Rebecca!”

“Then why aren’t you looking for her?” Jones presses.

“Means you either know where she is or you’re just a sociopath,” Mobius questions him.

“And since you’re clearly too stupid to be a sociopath…” she adds immediately.

“Alright, I get it!” he yells out offended. “I’d see her hanging around town with this boy after school sometimes, figured he was her boyfriend or something but she never brought him up at home so I never pushed. And I told Sarah this, I told her our girl’s probably just out with this kid somewhere and she’ll be back in a few days.”

Edward turns and slams his car door shut with a frustrated grunt.

“She needs to give the girl some space, let her do her own thing, make some mistakes. Her acting out like this, it’s normal teenager stuff. I told my wife but she doesn’t listen. She’s choking the life out of the kid with all her fucking rules and religion! Drags us all to mass every week on purpose, it’s a goddamn nightmare,” Edward shakes his head.

“This the boy?” Mobius asks, handing him the photo of Rebecca with her friends that the mother gave him the night before.

“Yeah that’s him there on her left, goth kid,” he starts to calm down.

“And what about this girl?” Jones asks, pulling out the photo of the other missing girl she took from the station.

“Never seen her before. She another one of Rebecca’s friends?”

“We were hoping you’d know,” Mobius replies.

“She is your type after all,” Jones crowds him again.

“For God’s sake, we’ve been over this!” he lashes out. “Yes, I cheat but I’m no pedophile.” he whispers out that second part, beads of sweat clearly forming on his face now. “I have no idea who she is!”

The uncomfortable pause lingers. The fear and confusion in his eyes grow ever more obvious.

“Well, at least you still have some shame,” Mobius finally breaks the tension. Jones follows suit and backs away from Edward. He sighs in relief.

“What about your friends in office? Any organized events at the school they ever attended?”

“What? No,” he shakes his head, still trying to get his bearings.

“Annual ones from the last few years?” she insists, ever more serious.

“No, no. I mean, there’s this charity fundraiser that the mayor’s aid’s been organizing there the last decade but she’s an old widow retiring this year. She’s no predator,” Edwards explains.

“Hmm,” Mobius processes. “Well, thank you for your time!” he steps away and back into his car. Jones grabs the stack of cash from Mobius’ hand and walks up close to Edward again.

“Such a pleasure!” she forces out a smile without breaking eye contact as she unfurls the rolled up notes and throws them into traffic on the busy street to their left. Jones then gets back into the car, driving off with Mobius.

Edward stands there alone by his car, left to dwell in the moment of losing one grand to the wind.

“Shit!” he shouts out.
__________________________________________________________________________

The large beautifully carved wooden doors to the entrance of the public library open with a loud creak. Mobius and Jones walk through with a quick pace, the warm light of golden hour shining behind them bathes the space in shades of orange for a moment or two before the doors slowly slam shut behind them.

“Hey, I was thinking,” Mobius exclaims, walking up to the librarian’s desk. “What’s the longest word in the dictionary?”

“Uh…” Jones buffers, trying to decipher where he’s going with this.

“Smiles!” the librarian shouts back, her voice echoing in the empty quiet halls of the building. “Because there’s a mile between each S,” she giggles, putting down her newspaper.

“Oh, so you knew that one too, huh?” Mobius chuckles, approaching her desk. “Next time I’m getting a joke book from somewhere else.”

“Don’t you dare!” She puts down her reading glasses and leans into the light of the reading lamp in front, allowing Jones a better look at her – late 40s, slender, well dressed with her auburn hair pulled up in a neat bun and a small port-wine stain embellishing the side of her cheek.

“Hey, Betty! How are ya?” Mobius smiles at her.

“Mobius!” she lets out excitedly. “Back again so soon? And with company...” her excitement dissipates once she finally notices Jones next to him.

“Oh yeah, Betty, this is Jessica Jones. She’s another PI working the case with me today.”

“Hi,” Jones delivers in a monotone as she shakes the librarian’s hand firmly from across the desk. “Bethany Morrison, nice to meet you,” begrudgingly, the librarian plays along.

“Listen, Betty, all that archival footage you found me on the plant was amazing!” Mobius tries to distract her again, sensing the chill between the two women. “I’m gonna need you to work your magic again and give me everything you have on Fillmore High School from the last 5 years at least.”

“No, Mobius, it’s less than an hour before closing! There’s no way-”

“I know, I know, it’s late but the case just got a lot more complicated. There’s at least three disappearances in town connected to that place. Kids, Betty…” he stares at her with pleading eyes. “The link between them all is somewhere in your archives, I’m sure of it. I just can’t find the needle in the haystack without your help,” Mobius whispers in his ever so sincere tone.

Betty pauses, feigning annoyance with her arms crossed in front of her. “Fine!” she closes her eyes letting out a deep sigh. “I’ll give you the keys again overnight but you’re dealing with the new guard in the morning. He doesn’t do night shifts, Mobius!”

“Yes! Thank you, I owe you one!” Mobius celebrates.

“Mhm, start at the back with the microfiche from 85’ and I’ll show your partner where we keep the public school records,” Betty explains, uncrossing her arms to lean over the desk, closer to him.

“Betty, you’re a lifesaver!” he yells out as he hurries to the opposite corner of the library. She smiles to herself, almost forgetting Jones is there again.

“So this happens a lot, huh?” Jones raises an eyebrow at her.

“If the case requires it, yes, I’ve let him stay over to research a few times before,” Betty puts her reading glasses back on almost like a piece of armor and returns to her business as usual demeanor. She picks up a few folders and a set of keys from the desk.

“Follow me,” she leads Jones away from the desk through a narrow path squeezed between tall rows of bookshelves stacking almost as high as the ceiling. That’s when Jones notices the muted warm lighting in the library is not artificial – it’s just the last rays of daylight dripping over the space through the large glass roof above her. Particles of fine dust are swept up from the bookshelves by the gust of her movement as she passes through. They fly through the air around her in an erratic dance, illuminated by what little sunshine is left peeking through, before they spin down and descend onto the marble floor, left waiting for the next gust of wind.

While looking to find the right section, Jones catches how the librarian keeps checking her wristwatch. Must be closing time already, Jones guesses. They speed up their pace.

“So, since when has he been coming here to research?” Jones copies her tone, an unmistakable hint of sarcasm in it..

“He’s been visiting the library since before I started working here, about three years ago, if that’s what you’re asking,” Betty snipes back.

“And in all that time you’re telling me you two never made it past book puns and work favors?”

The librarian stops.

“I’m sorry, detective, are you researching me or the school?”

“I’m just trying to understand what kind of person I’m working with here,” Jones backs off. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“The good kind,” Betty is quick to defend him. “Hardworking, dedicated, helped more families in this town than most, I promise you,” she continues walking down the narrow path, Jones behind her. “A pity what happened to his own...”

“What do you mean?” Jones closes in on her to hear her better.

“He’s divorced. Lost custody of the kids too. He never gets to see them, it’s so sad,” Betty sighs, stopping to kneel down and pull out some boxes from the lowest row of shelves. “But I guess that’s what makes him so good at this job, no distractions.”

“A pity for you.”

“These are the documents we have on Fillmore High from January ‘85. Each following month is a row above. The ladder’s over there,” Betty stands back up, pointing to an old wooden ladder on the other end of the bookshelf. “I’ll leave the keys on my desk, you can lock up when you’re done,” she delivers in a cold monotone, walking away.

“Great…” Jones mutters under her breath as she sits down on the floor, takes off her jacket and turns the first box upside down, emptying its contents on the floor.
__________________________________________________________________________

On the other side of the library, behind piles of boxes with albums and yearbooks stacked on top of them, Mobius sits behind the microfilm reader in the dark corner of the archival section. He looks around to make sure the place is actually as empty as it seems and turns on the reader. He pretends to flip through the microfiche while he actually opens up his TemPad to read. The records on Lee are still downloading so he starts reading through the files he already has on Jones – orphaned as a child when her closest relatives were killed in a car crash, adopted by a dysfunctional family, very close with her adopted sister Trish Walker and definitely a disruptive influence who doesn’t fit in anywhere she goes. Of course, Mobius chuckles to himself. His shoulders drop and his head falls back in a sudden release of tension. You did that on purpose, he whispers playfully, pointing up at the barely visible stars in the glass ceiling overhead. A small meteor paints the dusky skies green in the blink of an eye, almost as if to call out “Yes!” right back to him. Mobius grins, shaking his head. Oh, Loki…

Those little reminders that Loki was still watching over him had been happening more and more often lately, or at least it felt like it since that day he last saw Sylvie in Broxton. Maybe Loki had been there too, subtly watching them from above. Always a relief even on the worst of days knowing that Loki is still here in some way bu t— his eyes fall down, staring off into the distance — what he wouldn’t give for Loki to be here with him. Mobius’ smile leaves him as he remembers his reality again. “I might need your help again before all this is over… I always do” he lets out almost like a prayer.

“Anytime!” Betty calls out to him from a few rows ahead, startling him. She’s dressed in her coat and scarf, clearly ready to leave for the night. “Sorry I can’t stick around to help you through the piles right now, it’s just that it’s my sister’s birthday tonight.”

“Oh no, that’s fine. You helped plenty, Betty, thank you!” Mobius snaps out of it and saves himself.

“Well as much as I’d like to, I hope I don’t find you still here again in the morning!”

“No promises!” Mobius yells out with a nervous laugh. She nods back, smiling, and walks out the door.

Right, he remembers as he turns his gaze back onto the TemPad and continues reading through Jessica Jones’ dossier – good friends with Peter Parker in high school, interned at the same newspaper as him a decade ago but switched careers and became an investigator. He speeds through all of her pages but finds no trace of a man in her past who abused her in the sacred timeline files though, and no mention of I.G.H. either. In fact, no mention of I.G.H. anywhere on the sacred timeline, he double checks. Some blanks to fill in, he thinks to himself. He almost finds himself wishing Ravonna were here again. She would know how to help him, how to solve the case — she was always such a force to be reckoned with. But she’s not here, Mobius remembers with a frown, she chose her side and I chose mine. Alright, back to the main case, Mobius mutters under his breath as he shuffles off to find Jones on the other side of the library.

He discovers her half asleep, lying down on her jacket with a folder covering her face, surrounded from all sides by boxes and piles of documents. “Nice nap?”

“You still wearing that thing? It’s boiling in here,” she points at Mobius’ coat, peeking under the folder atop her face.

“Find anything?” he distracts her with another question.

“Nothing useful so far,” she exhales as she sits up. “I mean, what are we even looking for? This is worse than a needle in a haystack,” Jones complains, gesturing to all the rows of unopened boxes sitting threateningly on the rows above her.

“Any common point between Lee, Madrox and Cross. Her father mentioned the mayor’s aid organized charity at the school-”

“You’re not still thinking the dad’s involved?”

“Of course not but there has to be a government tie in somehow,” Mobius explains. “The Madroxes, they’re a wealthy family, maybe they contributed to that charity event somehow? Maybe one of their rich friends with connections attended and…”

“Why are you still on the Madroxes? The mom’s dead, the dad’s dying and the son’s as good as dead. We’ve got other real cases, people we can actually help now, more important than some college dropout that disappeared five years ago,” Jones frowns.

“Three years ago,” Mobius corrects her.

“Whatever!” Jones stands up. “You think cause they meant something to this town decades ago, you have some obligation? Why are you not focusing on the last clues?” she raises her voice, moving closer to him.

“Fine, let’s focus on the woman who nearly shot you this morning,” Mobius calmly deflects.

Jones holds her tongue, her nostrils flaring in anger as she clenches her fists.

“See, there it is! You can keep hiding whatever it is you’re still not telling me but I’m not walking into any more interrogations with you tomorrow. Not like this.”

She sighs and turns away from him to hide her reaction.

“You have personal stakes in this, don’t you?” Mobius exclaims in an epiphany. “That’s why you’re rushing to solve this faster, you feel the clock ticking.”

“Oh please! Just cause you’re used to working at a geriatric pace,” Jones tries to deflect.

“You know one of the kids personally? Is that it?” Mobius moves closer, gets louder. “The kid from New York?”

“No, he’s-”

“Then what is it?” he interrupts.

“It’s I.G.H!” Jones yells out.

Mobius steps back. A pause follows.

“Don’t act surprised,” she reaches into her pocket and hands him the folded up photo of James Madrox entering a building with the I.G.H. logo on it. “Found this in your car. That’s why you’re staying on the Madrox case. That's why you’re pushing for this government connection angle.”

“Yes,” Mobius sighs. “And this is where you tracked your mystery woman from last night, isn’t it?” he shows her the I.G.H. uniform patch he picked up at the Madrox estate. “Fell off her this morning when you chased her.”

Jones starts shifting nervously again.

“So what aren’t you telling me?” Mobius pushes again.

“What do you actually know about I.G.H?” she finally asks.

“Too little,” Mobius begrudgingly admits, putting both the photo and the uniform patch back into his coat pocket. “Just know that they’re government owned.”

“Well they weren’t always,” Jones follows up. “They started off overseas as some rich Japanese sadist’s passion project to extend his life. Big shocker, they failed. But whatever biochemical research they did over there must have been worth it cause when that asshole died, the U.S. government bought everything out.”

“Biochemical?”

“Ever heard of the Montauk project?”

“Yes…” he shudders, remembering the horrors he read went on in that island in the 60s.

“Well this takes it to the next level. They merged I.G.H. with some other covert ops and set up shop right here in New York state – their very own human experimentation torture chambers,” Jones says tracing Mobius’ horrified expression.

“How do you know all this?” he asks, visibly shaken.

“Trusted sources.”

“Same sources that led you to your mystery woman?”

“She’s a ghost story. I barely found her once here. You lose her trail, better chance she’ll find you next,” Jones sighs out.

“Well, thanks for turning me into a walking target!” Mobius jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“You wouldn’t be if you hadn’t tried to play the hero,” she quips back. “I didn’t need your help back there.”

“What, are you bulletproof?”

Jones squints her eyes at him disapprovingly. “Your turn,” she says. “Cards on the table.”

“Alright…” he breathes out. “I’m not sticking to the Madrox case just out of obligation. I’m staying on it because, as of today, my client and my main suspect are the same person.”

“The scrawny kid? From the graveyard?”

“Ethan Owens, James’ best friend from high school. That kid went from rags to riches almost overnight after James vanished. With him gone, he cozied up to the parents, they got him scored away with a good job and proper connections, now he has his own business,” Mobius explains.

Jones sighs in disbelief.

“A business that scored record profits last quarter, just after Lee went missing,” he continues handing her a newspaper clipping about Owens’ company from his other pocket. “And after 9 weeks of slum at the market, guess who’s stocks just went up 5 points out of nowhere right when Rebecca Cross disappeared?”

“Owens International,” she reads off the paper with a smirk.

“After Daniel Madrox passes away, he’s gonna inherit everything the family has left. Can’t let that happen if he’s guilty.” Mobius leans against one of the bookshelves in exhaustion.

“If he’s guilty?”

“I don’t have actual proof connecting the disappearances with his finances, okay?” he resigns. “If we can’t tie him to your mystery woman and I.G.H. somehow, he walks free.”

Another pause follows.

“Unless you beat a confession out of him,” she blurts out half joking, half not. Mobius looks at her out of the corner of his eye, not sure what to make of her.

“But if he’s guilty, why’s he keeping you on the case? Much easier to just let it rest.”

“I don’t know,” Mobius admits. “Maybe it’s his way of throwing me off the trail...”

He stands up straight, looking around frustrated. He turns and focuses up on the rows of bookshelves with files on the Fillmore high school overhead.

“Or maybe there’s something else I’m missing.”

“Well…” Jones sits back down with her piles of files on the floor. “Pick a box!”

Mobius sighs in defeat.
____________________________________________________________________________

A pot of hot coffee pours into a big mug. “Would you like anything else with that, miss? Cream or sugar?” the heavy set man behind the diner counter asks in a soft friendly tone.

“No, thanks,” Jones replies in a rush to step out of the line formed behind her.

“And for you, sir?”

“I’ll have the key lime, thanks Paul!” Mobius says with a smile, his eyes landing on the polished employee of the month name tag attached to the pocket of the man’s striped blue shirt.

“You’re in luck, our last slice this morning,” Paul declares, preparing Mobius’ order.

“Awwww, I wanted key lime too,” a child’s voice calls out from somewhere behind.

Jones turns and sees a little girl, no older than 8, standing in line behind him, clutching the hands of both her parents. “It’s okay, sweetie, you can have some next time. We can get you pancakes instead! You love those, right?” the mom tries to calm her.

“Actually,” Mobius calls out to the little girl. “You can have the last slice, on me!”

The father tries to interject but Mobius insists.

“The pie’s yours, my treat” he turns back to Paul. “And I think I’ll have the pancakes instead. With a cup of hot cocoa.”

Paul nods and starts preparing the food. Jones grabs her fresh coffee off the cold stainless steel countertop and exits the queue with Mobius.

“Generous of you” she’s quick to point out.

“Well, all kids gotta be spoiled from time to time.”

They make their way to the seating area across the tiled black and white floor of the obviously repurposed old barber shop. They sit down at a wobbly table by the window overlooking the parking lot, not too far from the entrance, the golden glow of sunrise warming up their seats for them.

The waitress brings Mobius his hot chocolate and he’s quick to hide behind it, taking in big gulps. Jones keeps staring at him, still trying to decipher the gesture to the family in the queue.

“You have kids of your own?” she finally asks.

“Two boys,” Mobius admits. “Though I don’t see much of them anymore.”

“Divorced?”

“Yeah, long time now. But it’s for the best,” he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, not Jones. “They’re well looked after…” he delivers without looking up at her, eyes firmly planted on the mug between his hands.

Just as she’s about to counter, a loud thud from outside startles them both. They turn to their right and see the priest from yesterday putting up posters by the entrance of the diner. The letters are hard to make out reading it from all the way inside but two words stand out – “Satan” and “children”. The priest notices them staring and glares back at Jones with his beady black eyes again. He mumbles something under his breath and walks away.

“You know him?” Mobius asks.

“Never met him before,” she says as she watches the priest leave her sight. “But we should talk to him. He knows something.”

“The creepy preacher spreading satanic panic around? I wouldn’t bet on it” Mobius chuckles.

The waitress finally brings over the order of pancakes, neatly stacked one on top of the other, all generously covered in butter and maple syrup.

“Thank you!” he whispers to her.

“He was like this at the funeral yesterday too. Something’s making him real nervous” Jones counters.

“Chasing a hunch?” Mobius asks, chewing through his first pancake.

“Maybe,” she takes another sip of her boiling hot black coffee.

“Well, if you’re so sure, we can check him out after the school.”

“Still can’t believe we wasted a whole night researching that place and found nothing!”

“There was some overlap in teachers between the three kids,” Mobius says, trying to look on the bright side.

“And all of them dead or retired, so nothing.”

“Hey, one step at a time! Look, sometimes the answers aren’t all in the files but we’ll get there.”

“Just hope these kids are more useful,” she rolls her eyes.

The line at the counter’s cleared and Paul takes a second to turn on the TV mounted in the corner of the diner, opposite Mobius’ seat. He puts on the early morning news and a report on the 6 year anniversary of the attack on New York starts playing. The news anchors are quick to praise the X-Men for their heroic actions in saving the city from the alien invasion as they show clips of the destruction on the day and intercut it with footage from the restored present day New York, finally unveiling a newly erected statue of the X-Men proudly stepping over the dead bodies of their alien enemies, including the leader of the Invasion – Loki.

Mobius stops eating. The sorrow and anger on his face are unmistakable.

“Lose someone there?” Jones immediately picks up on the change in mood.

“Lost my appetite,” he deflects, getting out of his seat. He puts some folded bills down on the table and heads for the door. “I’ll bring the car around.”

Jones drinks up her coffee and scarfs down the last untouched pancake from his plate in a rush, watching the rest of the news report all the while.
___________________________________________________________________________

The car screeches to a halt in the half empty Fillmore high school parking lot covered in shade by the building looming over it. Mobius keeps his hands on the wheel and his gaze firmly forward. A noticeable tension still rests within his face.

“What are you thinking?” Jones asks.

“I’m thinking you’re right,” he resigns. “We wasted too much time yesterday, gotta pick up the pace.”

“Great, we’ll start with Rebecca’s boyfriend.”

“Alleged…”

“We’ll find out soon enough when he cracks,” Jones says excitedly.

“I don’t know, these kids today, they don’t scare so easily…”

“We pushed a G-man into confessing yesterday, how much harder could it be with one snotty brat?” she tries to cheer him up.

Mobius finally cracks a smile, unclenching his fists from the wheel. They step out of the car and head for the stairs at the school entrance, in a hurry to get in before the rush of the bell ring takes over the hallways.

“Jessica Jones!” a man calls out from the bottom of the stairs. His silhouette becomes clearer as they approach – a man in his 60s, dark complexion, average height and build with a full head of hair. He has a pair of reading glasses on and a small briefcase in his hand.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Jones exclaims, recognizing him.

“I was hoping I’d find you here,” he smiles.

“Really? You got nothing better to do so you chase me all the way down here?” She walks past him, making no effort to mask her annoyance. Mobius follows suit a few feet behind her, slowing down to commit the man’s face to memory. “Come on, Mobius, no time for paparazzi.”

The man stops Mobius before he can reach the steps.

“Ben Ulrich, New York Bulletin,” he introduces himself. “And you must be Detective Mobius, they mentioned you at the station!”

“I’m sure they painted quite a picture,” Mobius shakes his hand as they share a look of distrust.

“I do my own reporting,” Ben reassures him, easing the tension. “Currently I’m following the work of Ms. Jones and the eleven unsolved missing children’s cases in New York she’s taken on in the past year.”

Mobius freezes in shock.

“Yeah, that was my reaction as well when I heard she’s come all the way out here to help you with a similar case,” Ben exhales.

Mobius glares up at her, already at the top of the stairs. She avoids his gaze.

“Let me ask you honestly, exactly what kind of help do you think a PI like her can offer?” Ben goes on. “An alcoholic, who can barely keep the lights on at home and employs junkies with criminal records as research assistants?”

“Hey!” she runs down the steps toward the reporter. “How I live my life is none of your goddamn business!”

“Except it becomes everyone’s business when you fail to do your job!” Ben snaps back at her. “People deserve to know better than to trust you, especially with their childrens’ lives.”

“Really? One smear campaign wasn’t enough for you, now you want another?”

“You know me, I just report the facts.”

“What facts?” Mobius interjects.

“Don’t indulge him, Mobius, come on!” She tries to drag him away but Mobius won’t move a muscle.

“Eleven similar unsolved cases in the past year – instead of admitting you’re out of your league and passing them off to someone else, you actually refuse new work!” Ben calls out after her. “You’re digging your own grave, Jessica!”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” she yells out.

“You were declared mentally unfit for this job two years ago! But then your buddy Trish Walker helped fix up your paperwork, didn’t she?”

“Let’s go!” Jones grabs Mobius and pushes him up the stairs with an unanticipated amount of strength for someone her size.

“Just be careful who you partner up with, detective!” Ben says to Mobius. “Her last friend went into I.G.H. and never came out!”

The school bell rings and the front doors open with a bang as dozens of teenagers pour out of the classrooms and out into the yard, drowning out Mobius’ next words. The two struggle to swim upstream against the wall of students running toward them, pushing ahead one step at a time.

Once the crowd clears and they're left alone in the empty hallway, Mobius opens the nearest door and walks in with her, holding her arm firmly in his hand. The door closes behind them. The space is cramped and cluttered, her face almost pressed up against some janitorial equipment with the distinctively ugly “Aramark” logo printed on it.

“What the hell was that!?” Mobius exclaims in his unique whispery tone.

“Touch me like that again, I’ll punch you so hard I’ll fix your nose!” She quickly turns, loosening herself from his grip and pushing Mobius away.

He backs off some more, raising his hands in the air. “Well?

“Ulrich is just a has-been holding a grudge against me! Just cause I left his precious newspaper years ago…”

“Eleven cases? A friend in I.G.H.!?”

Jones scratches her head in frustration.

“You said cards on the table, that there was no personal angle, nothing else you’re keeping from me on this case and now!?”

“That’s eleven including the one I told you about,” Jones tries to excuse herself.

“Oh, that’s a relief,” he puts his hands on his hips. “This isn’t the place to purge yourself of past sins, Jones!”

“All these cases are connected, same as your three! That’s why I’m staying on them all!” she rushes to defend herself. “No one else sees the common thread between them and I.G.H. because they never leave shit behind!”

“Oh, yeah? So how’d you find it? Your friend who got killed for it?”

“She’s not dead. Her name is Maria Hill, she’s the one who nearly killed us yesterday,” Jones quiets down.

Mobius drops his head down in disbelief. He lifts up one of the empty buckets laying around, turns it over and sits on it, struggling to absorb what he just heard.

“We’ve known each other since we were ten. She was always stubborn, ambitious, overachieving but she stayed friends with me through all my screw ups... Anyway, she used to be part of S.H.I.E.L.D. but when she gained enough security clearance, she transferred to I.G.H. promising to help me find answers,” Jones elaborates. “She told me everything I told you about them last night, kept feeding me information until one day she cut all ties and disappeared. Until two days ago when I caught her leaving I.G.H. headquarters. Then I tracked her here.”

Mobius buries his head in his hands.

“Part of me wants to believe she’s gone deep cover but part of me…”

“How are you gonna face her if she’s turned?” Mobius finally speaks.

“I don’t know,” Jones pauses. “But I owe it to all these kids to solve this and shut down I.G.H. for good!”

The school bell rings again, marking the end of recess.

“We gotta talk to the boyfriend,” Jones tries to get back on track.

“Fine,” Mobius gets up and reaches to open the door. “But you follow my lead this time.”

She rolls her eyes, ultimately nodding in agreement.

“Sure hope this is the last of your secrets I find out about like this,” he scoffs as they exit the janitor closet.

“Me too,” she mutters under her breath.
__________________________________________________________________________

Spencer Black, 17, tall, skinny, redheaded, fair complexion, dressed in all black from head to toe, sits behind a desk in the middle of an empty classroom. He balances confidently on the one leg of his chair, swerving back and forth with one of his hands on the desk, his feet sticking out far around the desk. A small metal lighter dances between the fingers in his other hand all the while.

Mobius and Jones enter the room, walking past the mess all around them – a parade of abandoned backpacks and textbooks on the floor, jackets and sweatshirts casually thrown atop chairs and desks left and right and the inevitable doodles and curse words generously decorating the whiteboard.

“Spencer, thanks for sitting down with us today!” Mobius says, sitting down opposite the teenager. Jones stands a few feet to the side behind Mobius, leaning against the whiteboard with her arms crossed.

“Pff, anything to ditch Mrs. Alba’s useless class” he lets out nonchalantly, firmly focused on the lighter in his hands.

“Detective Jones and I just wanna ask you a few questions about-”

“Man, if this is about that sign in the Bernthals’ yard, I already apologized and paid for the damage. They don’t need to send cops to scare me.”

“We’re not cops,” Jones corrects him with no small amount of condescension. It finally gets him to look up at her, even cracks an arrogant smile back at her.

“And we’re here about Rebecca Cross,” Mobius calmly explains.

“What about her?”

“Your girlfriend’s been missing for three days, Spencer,” Jones pushes.

“Look, she’s pretty but she’s not my girlfriend. I’m not a one woman kind of guy,” he winks brazenly at Jones. She doesn’t react.

“So what was it, just friends?” Mobius stays on target.

“Yeah, you could say that. Her, Charlie and me hang out a lot.”

Mobius hands him the photo of Rebecca her mother gave him. He points to the third kid in the picture along with him and Rebecca. “That Charlie?”

Spencer nods.

“When you hung out, you ever see anyone else approach her? Teachers? Cops? Men in black types?” Mobius asks.

“No, nobody.”

“When’d you two last see her?” Jones follows up.

“Must have been when she took that group photo the other day, on our way home right after school,” the boy starts fidgeting with the lighter again, turning it on and off.

“And you never had contact with her again after? No notes, phone calls?” She steps closer. Spencer shakes his head unconvincingly.

“You know why she left? Bad grades, fights at school, problems with teachers?” Mobius redirects the conversation.

“Nah, man, she was cool the whole day. But if she really ran off like that, maybe it’s not that serious,” he leans in closer to Mobius as if to reveal something. “Maybe it’s just that time of the month, you know what I’m saying,” he chuckles to himself and taps Mobius on the shoulder in an effort to calm his nerves but gets no reaction. He looks down at the lighter and goes quiet again.

“What about her?” Mobius asks, sliding a photo of the other missing girl from Fillmore High. “She was in the year above Rebecca.”

“Oh, Jubilee! Damn, she was hot! R.I.P.” Spencer exclaims.

“Jubilee?” Jones looks at him confused.

“How do you know she’s dead? She’s still declared missing by the police” Mobius pushes.

“I don’t but it’s been months, you know. We all just assumed… If she’s not dead, she’s never coming back to this place. She hated it here. Hated us calling her Jubilee too, it was just a nickname,” Spencer laughs it off.

“Were you two close?” Jones steps forward.

“Yeah, you could say that” he answers in that arrogant tone again, fiddling with the lighter while staring down Jones. “But don’t be jealous, baby, like I said I’m not a one woman kinda guy.”

Jones lunges forward, snatching the lighter, almost breaking one of his fingers while doing it. She kicks the whole desk so hard, Spencer falls backwards out of his chair.

“Hey, hey, hold on! Let’s talk outside, yeah?” Mobius steps in to hold her back immediately. Jones raises her hands, turns and walks out on her own.

“Give us a sec, will you, Spencer?” he calls out to the boy as the door slams shut behind him.

“Sure, take all the time you need” he nods with a smile, almost pleased with the small cut on the side of his face from the fall.
__________________________________________________________________________

“What the shit are you doing!?” Mobius calls her out.

“He’s wasting our time!” She paces around him in the empty hallway as he stands in her way, guarding the door.

“You think assaulting a minor will help this go faster?”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t wanna punch out that piece of shit too,” Jones deflects.

“You’re just giving him what he wants, a reaction.” She sighs in defeat, knowing he’s right. “Just wait here and let me try instead, yeah?” he implores.

“What? No way, I gotta be in there!”

“Just trust me for once, okay? Can we do that?” he gestures, asking for her to give him the lighter she just took from the kid.

She hands it over. “What are you gonna do? Slow roast him over a candle flame?”

“More or less,” Mobius winks, disappearing behind the closed door.
__________________________________________________________________________

“Spencer, I get it,” Mobius starts, walking back into the room to find the teenager caressing his newly acquired scar with a smirk. “It’s more fun to keep skipping classes and pissing us off but I’ll be honest with you here – based on what you told us, you’re the only link between these two missing girls.”

The boy sits up in his chair. Mobius goes over to the whiteboard, his back turned, the lighter clicking open in his hands.

“Now, add that up with your pyromania and this Casanova bit you’re sticking to…” he goes on. “Things start to look less fun for someone who could be tried as an adult in just a few months.”

He closes the lighter. Spencer tenses up. In the utter quiet of the empty classroom Mobius can hear his breathing becoming labored.

“So why won’t you be honest with me now – you knew they were mutants, didn’t you?”

“What? I-”

“Yeah, you did,” he finally turns to face the kid – the wound on his face starts bleeding more intensely again as his blood pressure rises.

“It wasn’t about looks, was it? Their powers drew you to them. You wanted to be like them…” Mobius slowly approaches the desk again. “...to be stronger, to matter, to forget just how gray and empty you are inside.”

He stops just opposite Spencer. ”But they both rejected you, you couldn’t handle it so you sold them out as punishment.”

“That’s bullshit, man! I’d never out them like that!” he cries out, desperately trying to wipe the blood and sweat off of his face.

Mobius takes a beat and examines his reaction – the shaking hands, itching for the comfort of holding that missing lighter, the tensing eyebrows and jagged breaths, the tears building up in his eyes, threatening to roll down his cheeks, pale as a ghost.

“You know what… I believe you. You’re not a traitor,” Mobius agrees. “You’re just a coward.”

Spencer stops shaking.

“Rebecca was never your girlfriend but not because you’re the school playboy. Just because you never told her how you feel,” he leans on the desk, moving closer to the boy. “You waited and waited but the day never came… You never felt brave enough, worthy enough cause deep down you know you don’t deserve her, don’t you?”

The tear finally rolls down Spencer’s cheek. He says nothing.

“Did you love her?”

The boy shuts his eyes tightly, his falling lower in a painful sigh.

“Don’t look away,” Mobius’ tone shifts, turning heavy and unwavering. “Did you love her?”

Spencer turns his gaze back upon him, staring back with watery eyes that spell out the answer for him.

“Then why won’t you help me find her?”

“Fuck.” Spencer mutters under his breath. “Yes, alright, yes, I’d go to the old farmhouse with them and watch them practice. Sometimes for hours,” he wipes his tears on his sleeve. “Jubilee, she could turn little sparks into the biggest most beautiful fireworks you’ve ever seen but Rebecca… She could start anything from a candle flame to a raging fire just with her mind. It was incredible…”

“What happened to them?”

“Jubilee was gonna head out upstate to some school for the gifted or something, she never said more. When she vanished over the summer, I figured that’s where she went to start fresh so I just let it go.”

“Was Rebecca going there too?” Mobius stands back up, rushing to take out a pen and paper from his pocket to write down the information.

“I don’t know, I don’t think so. She never mentioned…” the boy says. “She didn’t have it easy at home with her parents, christian mom and all. She knew she’d have to keep her powers hidden from them forever. She joked sometimes about giving them up to be normal but…”

“She complained about her mom?”

“Yeah, going to mass was the worst part of her week,” Spencer exhales.

“She ever mention anything about the priest?”
________________________________________________________________________

Mobius bursts out the school entrance doors. The noon sun is now shining down up against him, dissolving the cool shadow that laid on this side of the building earlier and blinding him as he descends down the steps. He nearly pushes over a woman as she walks past him in the opposite direction. She drops her finely embroidered purple wool hat on the stairs and kneels to pick it up – Mobius beats her to it and hands it back to her.

“Sorry about that!” he apologizes in a rush without even looking her in the eye. He hurries down the steps toward his parked car where Jones is already waiting for him.

“You were right about the priest,” he’s out of breath. “The Cross family went to mass all the time and churches have outreach programmes for local orphanages like the one Lee was in.” Mobius throws her the keys from across the hood of the car.

“He’s our missing link!” Jones smiles, catching the keys.
__________________________________________________________________________

Mobius and Jones take the side entrance into the church. The meticulously decorated stained glass windows high up on every wall seem to be missing their glow as the sun hides behind a passing group of clouds, leaving the interiors shrouded in dark grays and browns. The space is only filled by the echoes of the few people chatting as they make their way out after the end of the procession. The priest indulges the chatter but the second he notices Mobius and Jones, he orders the altar boy to escort the people out quickly.

“Looking guiltier by the minute,” Mobius whispers to Jones as they approach the priest at the altar.

“Told ya, I don’t trust religious types,” she lets out with no effort to keep her voice down, staring at each man and woman walking past her on their way out. “The whole holier than through thing is just a smokescreen for all sorts of vile shit.”

“Mhm, no better place to hide a body than a graveyard too.”

Jones stops and stands in front of Mobius, her back turned toward the priest. A horrified expression takes over her face.

“You think they’re already dead?” she whispers.

“Cross and Lee maybe not, but the ones from the older cases…”

In an effort to disguise her concern she averts her eyes away from him, trying her best to control her panicked breathing. Mobius says nothing, just puts his hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture. She looks back at him, the same resolve she carries stares back at her through his eyes. They nod at each other and turn toward the priest.

“Father Atwood, can we speak outside?” Mobius feigns a smile.
_________________________________________________________________________

“Yes, Rebecca, Sarah Cross’ kid. Lovely girl, takes after her mother. I go to pray with her every day now. Such a shame what happened,” the priest lets out, leaning against the side of the church wall in a desperate attempt to shield himself from the cold wind.

“Really? We’ve spoken to her a few times now and she’s never mentioned you,” Jones pushes for a reaction.

“Well, religion is a very private thing,” he deflects uneasily. “Important thing is Rebecca’s a good kid, nice christian family, she’s on the right track. When she comes back home, everything will be alright again, that’s what I keep telling Sarah. As long as she stops hanging out with the wrong type of people.”

“You mean these people?” Mobius hands him Rebecca’s last photo with her friends.

“Yeah, real piece of work. Keep spraying my posters all over town with graffiti, tearing up pamphlets…”

“You saw them do this?” Jones restrains a grin.

“I’m sure it was them! Punks, goths, metalheads… all Satan worshippers!” he exclaims, crossing his heart in a performative gesture. “They’re gonna destroy this town, all the good people that built it are already leaving us.”

“Yeah, you had Dr. Joan Madrox’ funeral here the other day,” Mobius tries to stay on track.

“That I did, God rest her soul. She didn’t have it easy with her son either but maybe it was for the best he was never found.”

“What do you mean?” Jones is quick to ask.

“Well yes, it’s a tragedy he disappeared but he was only ever trouble. School fights, skipping classes, dropping out of college...” the priest stands up and away from the wall. “Spent a whole summer here in the church on his parents’ orders but even I couldn’t straighten him out. How far the apple falls… ”

“You know anything else about his disappearance?” Mobius follows up.

The priest shakes his head.

“What about this girl?” they show him the photo of Jubilee.

“Ah, the orphan. You know what, I’m glad she’s gone,” he looks up at Mobius, full of pride and arrogance. “Rumor was she was one of those queers and a freak like the ones from New York too,” he stares at Jones with the same hateful eyes he had when she first saw him.

“The X-men?” she asks, genuinely confused.

“Yeah, abominations. And they’re praising them like heroes too now, it’s-”

“Are you sure you’re not in the wrong profession, father, spewing hate so easily at everyone?” Mobius raises his voice to interrupt him.

“I only have love for children of God, not spawns of Satan!” he steps closer to Mobius, fired up with anger, no longer able to feel the cold wind piercing through. Mobius doesn’t flinch.

“Actually, from what you’ve told us, you only seem to have love for Sarah Cross,” Jones interjects. “She’s the only one you didn’t insult. Is it because she alienated her husband and daughter to spend more time with you? Or is it the other way around?”

“How dare you!?” he tries to feign shock and repulsion but the guilt shines through on his face. “She’s a woman in grief right now!”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough, we need to search the grounds,” Mobius cuts him off unceremoniously.

“Absolutely not! This is a house of God and we will not tolerate such accusations!”

“Fine, have it your way – court order then!” Jones declares as she turns back to the car.

Mobius follows suit, shaking his head in disgust at the so-called priest. His fists clenching in barely restrained frustration.

“Unbelievable! Should have known to expect this from New Yorker scum like you!” the priest starts yelling after them. “You people made those filthy mutants into heroes just cause the devil descended on the city but guess what, they’re demons just like Loki was!”

Without a hint of a warning Mobius turns and punches out the priest, knocking him down to the ground in a single left hook.

Speechless, the priest glares back at him, his face already starting to swell from the hit. Jones falls silent watching it all play out from a few steps away.

“Your God would be ashamed of you…” Mobius whispers out just loud enough for the priest to hear.

He turns and makes for the car without looking back. Jones follows right after him.

“After that I’m not sure we’ll get a court order approval,” she says, visibly amused.

“Why? Don’t know any good lawyers?” he jokes in an attempt to ease the tension from his aching left hand as he struggles to unlock the car.

“Yeah, I know a few,” she declares proudly as she circles the car to open her door. “Which one do you think Father Atwood would hate more? Catholic guilt whore or queer adulterous whore?”

Mobius drops his keys. A genuine heartfelt laugh escapes him and echoes in the misty silence fallen around the church and surrounding graveyard.
He pauses to calm himself, leaning on the car. Jones cracks a smile.

“That was some punch, I admit, but we still gotta search this place. He’s hiding something.”

“I know,” Mobius sighs as he picks up the keys from the gravel beneath him and unlocks the car. “We’ll do it tonight.”

The two get back into the car, the doors slamming shut behind them in rhythmic fashion.
_________________________________________________________________________

Jones sits on the hood of the parked car, tapping her fingers impatiently over the navy paint peeling away to reveal spots of rust underneath. Mobius stands opposite her, leaning by the entrance of the newly renovated Lago Nursing Home, an appreciation plaque to Ethan Owens mounted to the side of the wall there. He’s quietly sifting through his missing persons case files on the TemPad, desperately trying to fight against the exhaustion, to focus.

“You gonna keep doing that?” he asks, almost defeated.

“We’re wasting time, where is he?”

“He’ll be here, relax! Nurses say every Thursday at 4:15pm he comes to visit.”

“Yeah, while you keep fidgeting with that big ass pager, I’m gonna go find a bathroom to pee in,” she announces casually as she slides off the hood of the car.

“Don’t do it.”

“You want me to go in your car instead?”

“He’s a sick old man, late stage Parkinson’s, his mind’s almost gone,” Mobius explains. “You’re not gonna get any answers out of Daniel Madrox.”

Jones glares at him.

“I saw you staring at him at the funeral. I know you wanted to talk to him then but it’s pointless, I’ve tried,” he admits.

“Well might as well try again while we wait for that twig to get here!” she calls out as she disappears behind the entrance doors. Mobius stays put waiting by the doors.
____________________________________________________________________________

Jones turns a corner at the end of the main entrance hallway, arriving at the common room. Newly renovated, the space is sleek and modern, decorated with plenty of plantlife, natural daylight and comfortable lounge chairs in calming natural tones but the distinct smell of an old person’s home mixed with undertones of strong medical detergents is impossible to polish over.

The place is filled with people as it’s visiting hours. Jones scans the area and finds Dr. Daniel Madrox sitting in his wheelchair, alone, right by one of the windows. He’s staring out into the distance in front of him. In his lap the same beige blanket he was holding at the funeral.

“Dr. Madrox?” Jones carefully approaches him. “Dr. Madrox, I’m sorry about your wife.”

The man doesn’t respond.

“Listen, I need to ask you something. It’s about your son James...” she keeps trying. “He was very special, wasn’t he? He could do things other people can’t…”

Daniel’s eyes flicker to the side and fixate on Jones, a silent fear behind them.

“It’s okay, I’m not…” she struggles to find the right words. She moves closer to him and whispers out. “I’m like him.”

Daniel blinks at her in confusion. Jones looks around frantically searching for something. She spots a metal cane propped up by one of the windows, grabs it and bends it into a flat circle without breaking a sweat.

“See?” She hands him the cane as proof. “I’m just like him.”

Instead of relief, worry washes over the old man’s face as he stares back at her again.

“You… work at the plant?” he barely manages to get the words out.

“No, I’m trying to find your son, James,” Jones crouches closer to him.

“Joan and I worked there,” he continues in a slow slurred speech. “The radiation… he was born different… we tried to help but he left… Joan was looking for him… Are they back home?”

“No, sir, they’re both gone. I’m sorry…”

“G-gone… they’re gone?” Daniel struggles to process the thought. His eyes well up with tears and his arms start shaking. His slurred speech turns to anguished screams. “G-gone? Gone! Gone!”

Two nurses close by notice and rush over to help him immediately. Jones backs away to give them space. She watches from afar as they wheel him out of the room, his shouting echoing out in the hallways. So it’s true, James Madrox is a mutant she takes a beat to process.
__________________________________________________________________________

A polished black sedan pulls up right by the Old Folks’ Home entrance and a tall man walks out.

“Ethan! I was hoping I’d run into you here,” Mobius puts away the TemPad.

“Good to see you again! Any progress?” Ethan removes his sunglasses and shakes Mobius’ hand.

“Yeah, that’s actually why I’m here,” he pulls Ethan away from the parking lot, behind the corner of the building and away from the entrance.

“I think I have it figured out, I just need to ask you one question…” Mobius pauses, taking a beat to read Ethan – his expression one of excitement and anticipation. “Did you sell your best friend out to the government for hush money?”

Ethan’s face drops, the excitement rolling into melancholy. Mobius takes it all in without a blink.

“Is that what you think happened? That I’d betray my only friend like that for money just because he’s-”

“A mutant? Yeah, I know what he was,” Mobius whispers out to him. “But please explain to me how someone with your background made it all the way to graduating from a top college, owning a thriving business and riding around in cars like this without cutting corners.”

“Yes, okay I admit I knew about his mutation,” Ethan explains, nervously looking over his shoulder to make sure no one else hears. “I’m not proud of it but it was actually super useful when we both flunked out of school and needed the spare cash – him being able to clone himself helped us rob a lot of places. Convenience stores, small gas stations, stuff like that but he always wanted to go bigger.”

“How so?”

“He kept making regular trips to NYC, more and more often. Said he found the ultimate cash cow. But every time he came back, he looked sicker, more frail…” Ethan lowers his head in shame, pauses. “It scared me, I tried talking him out of it but he just cut me off entirely. I thought he just got in with the wrong crowd, working himself to death robbing places but you’re saying the government is involved?”

“I’m saying it can’t be a coincidence your life got a thousand times better right when his got a thousand times worse,” Mobius pushes further.

“James disappearing like that was a wake up call for me!” Ethan gets defensive. “I stopped doing stupid things, went back to school and the Madroxes… They helped me cause they needed to have me around, they have no other kids.”

“Well that’s very convenient for you,” Mobius is quick to counter. “Is that why you kept me on the case? To convince me?”

“I kept you on the case out of respect for the family!” Ethan yells out, his voice breaking. He’s genuinely hurt, Mobius can tell.

“The Madroxes were good to me, made me what I am today…” he whispers, sounding sorrowful. “James’ mother didn’t get to find out what happened to him but his father still could! He deserves that peace.”

Mobius sighs in defeat.

“If you can’t give that to him, detective, then consider yourself off the case!”

With that, Ethan puts on his sunglasses and steps inside the Nursing Home.
__________________________________________________________________________

“Any luck with Madrox?” Mobius calls out as Jessica walks out of the building in a hurry

“No, you were right,” she lies but Mobius is too preoccupied to notice.

“Well…” he shrugs. “I’ll start the car then.”

“What about Owens? Did he show?” Jones yells out after him.

The sudden loud ringing of her mobile phone drowns out his words. She quickly pulls it out of her jacket pocket to make the noise stop.

“What?”

“It’s Malcolm. I faxed all the info on the missing girl from Lago, Jubilation Lee, to the machine number you gave me.”

“Good, I’ll get to that later. Anything else?” she rushes to hang up.

“Yeah, that guy you had me look up, Mobius? I found nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?”

“I mean actually nothing. I searched for his physical description and his full name internationally and got zero matches from the last 50 years – no birth or death certificate, no work or education history, no criminal record, no license plates, credit cards or IDs of any kind, no nothing!” he struggles to explain. “It’s not even a stolen identity case, this guy doesn’t exist.”

“Another ghost story…” Jones stares at Mobius getting into his car. And that’s when she finally notices it – the vague outline of Loki’s sword holster just barely visible under the thick lining of Mobius’ coat. “A gun, that’s why he never takes the coat off…”

“What? Jessica, is he armed? Are you safe!?”

“I will be, just need to find out who he’s working for.”

“You don’t think he’s I.G.H., do you?” Malcolm’s quick to ask.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. or I.G.H… It makes sense. Good at lying, manipulating, reading people, knew where to find me immediately after picking up the case I declined… Can put up a good fight too apparently.”

“Are you sure?”

“Either that or worse…” Jones gulps as she tries to suppress the memory.

“Killgrave? There’s no way. He’s-”

“Dead, I know. But if he did find a way to put people under his control permanently, then-”

“Stop. He’s gone, it’s over! Just breathe,” Malcolm tries to calm her, sensing her panic over the phone. “Do you need me to come over there? Back you up?”

“No, I need to follow this up alone. No telling what else he knows about me,” Jones exhales. “Just stay close to the phone tonight,” she hangs up and gets into the car.

“Anything?” Mobius asks as he starts up the engine.

“We got the fax with intel on Lee.”

“Good, we can go check it out now,” he drives out of the parking lot, heading for his motel. “By the time we’re done, it’ll be late enough to sneak into the church grounds like we planned. Your source mention anything else on Lee?”

“A girl with no family lost to the system, isn’t that bad enough?” Jones tries to steer the conversation to test how much Mobius really knows about her, seeing he’s distracted while driving. “I’m sure she blames herself for it, we all do...”

Mobius does a double take, surprised at her sudden vulnerability. “You shouldn’t though.”

“But I actually did kill them… My mother, my father, my brother – all dead because of me.”

“You were just a kid, can’t blame yourself for a car crash,” so focused on the road, Mobius defaults back to his comforting ways and doesn’t realize the mistake he made in confessing.

Jones fights back the urge to react and stays on topic. “Oh yeah, how many have you killed?” she prods further.
The car stops under a red light at an empty junction. The warm tones of the sunset reflect off of the road, still glistening from last night’s rain, and bathe the streets in deep orange.
Mobius turns still and silent, unable to meet Jones’ gaze.
“I don’t know...” he finally lets out, engulfed in deep sorrow and regret.
Jones’ eyes widen in horror at the admission. Before she manages to get a word out, however, the sound of sirens fills the air. Two ambulances and a fire truck speed past them at the junction, coloring the town in stark reds and blues everywhere they go.
Mobius and Jones turn to each other - a look is all they need to know they’re on the same page. Mobius quickly turns the car around and drives after the vehicles.
__________________________________________________________________________

The warm tones of the sunset give way to the darkness of night as the sun disappears behind the last hills at the edge of town. The street lights aren’t even on yet. All that illuminates the roads now are the shifting bright reds and blues of the first responder vehicles. Mobius is still on their tail.

As they turn a corner, their field of view fills with smoke, replacing the typical evening fog. The ambulances and fire truck slow down, careful not to hit anyone escaping the area. Mobius pulls over to the side of the road – he and Jones jump out of the car and run towards the source of the smoke. Another few feet and they see it – the bright LED lights of the vehicles are drowned out by the deep reds and yellows of a massive fire.

“That’s the church…” Mobius struggles to get out through his cough.

He moves towards the building. Firemen run past him all around, already prepping hoses to douse the fires. He approaches one of them standing by the truck, waiting for orders.

“What happened?” Mobius calls out to him from under the cover of his sleeve, desperately trying to protect himself from inhaling all the smoke and ash.

“We don’t know yet!” the fireman responds. “But I’ve seen church fires set off by candles before, they don’t spread like this.”

“When did it start?”

“No idea, we got the call from a passerby three minutes ago!”

“Make way! Make way, people!” a few men call out from behind them. Mobius backs away from the first responder vehicles to give them space. They’re rushing ahead to the ambulance parked nearby, carrying out someone on a stretcher. “There’s another one, make way!”

“How bad is it?” Jones runs up to them asking.

The firemen place the stretcher inside the ambulance and run back into the flames. The paramedics stay inside the vehicle, frantically assessing the damage of the burns all over the victim’s body.

“Second degree burns, internal bleeding, his vitals are dropping…” one of the paramedics says to the other one opposite him. “We need to get him out of here now!”

“Wait!” Jones tries to coax more information out of them.

“We were already too late for the altar boy, we’re not losing this one!” the paramedic cuts her off. “Let’s go!”

Jones steps back as the ambulance drives off in a hurry. She sees the men putting the lifeless body of the alter boy onto the other stretcher and carrying him towards the second ambulance.

She stands there silent, pulling her scarf over her face to breathe easier. If the preacher makes it, he’s gonna blame this on Mobius after what happened today, Jones realizes.

She turns to look for Mobius and just barely sees him through all the smoke, signaling her to get back to the car. Maybe he’s right to… Time to find out who this man really is, Jones mutters to herself as she waves back to him, setting off towards the car.
__________________________________________________________________________

Mobius throws his keys on the table beside the broken TV - the only decluttered surface in the entire room.

“Sorry about the mess…” Mobius apologizes, making his way toward the bathroom door on the left to the bottom of the room, picking up as much laundry as he can off of the floor with each step. “I don’t invite people in normally.’”

“Don’t worry about it…” Jones walks in right after him. The motel room slowly creaks shut behind her. She looks around, taking in the space – old carpeting, wallpaper peeling off the sides of the stained walls, bent plastic window blinds and clothes, files and empty glass bottles covering most of the space. “Reminds me of home.”

“Huh,” Mobius chuckles while washing the ash off of his hair and face over the shaky sink in the tiny bathroom, the door open so he can hear. “Shame we lost our prime suspect to that fire now. Potential evidence too probably.”

“I thought Ethan Owens was your prime suspect?”

“Oh no, I pushed him earlier at the Nursing Home, it’s not him.”

“And you didn’t think to mention that!?” Jones snaps, walking up to the open bathroom door.

“I told you by the car but then your phone rang and-”

“That’s great, so we’re screwed on leads!”

“Hey, you wanted to waste time on old man Madrox instead of talking to Owens yourself,” Mobius counters as he walks past her and out of the bathroom.

“Even if your guy Owens is squeaky clean, that doesn’t make the priest a prime suspect,” Jones calls out after him. “Pure hatred is a weak motive, same with jealousy – it doesn’t unify all the cases.”

“Motive could still be money,” Mobius turns to explain. “Churches are tax exempt, no one knows how their earnings come and go, and that church was far too nice for a small town like Lago.”

“You’re saying I.G.H. saw us getting too close and torched the place to cover their tracks?”

“No evidence, no rat – killing two birds with one stone,” he shrugs as he walks past her, sitting down on one of the chairs by the table. “Just like your friend Maria Hill tried to do with us yesterday morning.”

“She wouldn’t, that’s just-” Jones takes a beat. “That was just her training kicking in.”

“Well it was either her setting the church on fire or those satanic panic kids,” he jokes as he invites her to sit down opposite him. “Either way, we gotta make up for lost time now with the files you had faxed over. The machine’s over there in the corner, whatever your guy sent us should be on top of the pile there.”

Jones takes a seat, buries her face in her hands with a loud exhale. He slows down.

“Okay, no rush, take a breather! Pour yourself a drink and make yourself at home. I gotta talk to Lyle, be back in a minute!” Mobius excuses himself as he steps out of the room to look for the motel manager.

Peeking through her fingers, Jones’ eyes follow Mobius through the window until he’s out of sight. She quickly gets up and flips through the faxed over files on Jubilation Lee to find what she’s looking for – an incident from fourth of July this year registered with the police, labeling her a mutant. Just like all my New York cases, what is I.G.H. up to? Mobius probably knows, she contemplates.

Jones starts sifting through the paperwork all over the room. She quickly scours every inch of the place, lifting beds, wardrobes and tables with ease, checking every drawer and cupboard in the room and bathroom in search of any guns or other weapons Mobius may have hidden there. She finds none.

So he only carries the one on his back and never takes it off… Just like that weird pager that’s always on him, Jones remembers.

“Shit,” she sighs. “Gotta play it safe then.”

She takes her gray scarf and black leather jacket off and throws them on one of the chairs. Finding one of the nearly full bottles of whiskey by the table, she grabs it, puts two of the somewhat clean glasses around on the table and pours generously into each. She then takes a big sip straight from the bottle.

Jones brings it with her into the bathroom and props it up on the side of the shaky sink. She dusts the ash out of her hair and clothes, then washes the soot off of her face, pausing to look at herself in the mirror.

“Shit!” she frowns in frustration as she chugs some more whiskey.

Jones makes her way back to the table, places the bottle on top, beside the two full glasses and sits down with her back to the entrance. She leans over the table, her head in her hands.

The door behind her creaks open and shut again. Mobius walks back in but she doesn’t acknowledge him.

“You alright?” he’s quick to ask.

“Yeah, just tired,” she mutters without moving a muscle.

“Well it’s been two days since I slept,” Mobius walks around her chair, trying to catch a glimpse of her expression. “And I’m guessing you got no rest the night you tracked Hill all the way out here either.”

She shakes her head ever so slightly.

“Look, I asked Lyle but he has no clean rooms ready at this hour so I’ll straighten the bed out for you and I’ll sleep in the car tonight. How’s that sound?” he asks as he walks to the corner of the room, taking off his coat to hang it up inside the small wardrobe facing the bathroom door. He starts to roll up his sleeves.

She raises her head to catch a glimpse of the weapon in the holster on his back but he’s still facing her, the holster out of sight.

“Just let me wash up a little and I’ll be out of your hair,” he delivers with a tired smile.

“Oh, come on! You gonna let me drink alone after the shit day we just had?” Jones pushes the chair opposite her out with her foot, inviting him to sit down. “I already poured you one anyway.”

Mobius sighs, hands on his hips, feigning annoyance in that familiar stance. He pulls the chair out and sits down across from her, his back leaning towards the wall, remaining obscured to her.

She raises her drink, he follows suit. The loud clink of the glasses reverberates around the room before it falls back into silence as they each take a sip of the whiskey.

“You take a look at the faxed over files yet?” Mobius asks, trying to dig into work again.

“Nah, doubt I could find them in the pile.”

“Ouch!” he chuckles, swirling the drink in his hand. “I know it’s a mess but there is a system to it.”

“Huh, this is nothing. You should see my place,” Jones fires back as she takes another sip. “Can barely keep all the walls and windows up all at the same time.”
Mobius laughs, putting his drink back down on the table. Jones immediately tops both their glasses up again.

“Still, it’s home,” she goes on. “Heard you’ve been here for years but you’re still living out of a runny motel room. Did your ex wife scare you out of settling down that bad?”

“You got me,” Mobius chuckles as he downs the full glass of whiskey this time. “Truth is I can’t cook or clean and this way it’s easier, I’m a cliché!”

Jones pulls her chair closer to his side and chugs her drink as well. Now he pours them both another glassful.

“That’s alright, I’m sure that librarian would be happy to do all that for you over at her place,” she leans closer, invading his personal space. Mobius does his best to hide behind his glass but he’s turning red and not just from the alcohol. Finally she’s caught him off guard.

“Unless you’ve already brought her here,” she pushes.

“I’m not-”

“Why not?” She stares him down, leaning in even closer, suddenly making him aware that in just a couple big sips she’s made her way from sitting opposite him across the table to sitting inches away from him on the same side.

“She’s clearly interested…” Jones keeps her gaze firmly planted on him, carefully brushing her hand against his leg.

It’s nothing, Mobius tries to ignore it, finishing his drink and clumsily putting it back on the table.

“...and you’ve done nothing to discourage her,” she goes on, slowly sliding her hand up his pant leg.

What is she thinking, his mind races as he sits stunned silent he turns his gaze downward at her hand – she leans in closer, confidently following his eyes with hers.

“Maybe she’s just not your type?”

Mobius breathes in deeply, looks up – her face inches away from his, their eyes meet again in an intense stare down. There it is again, he thinks, that shade of hypnotizing deep green staring back at him, so close, he could almost convince himself it’s Loki in front of him. Almost.

He blinks rapidly to shake the feeling. Mobius tries to break the tension yet again by grabbing the half empty bottle on the table but Jones snatches it out of his hand, straddling him on his chair. She downs the whole bottle in one and tosses it behind her.

“But maybe I am…” she says as she takes her white tank top off, revealing the black bra underneath.

Mobius stares up at her frozen still, unsure what to do.

Jones moves closer, placing her hands on his shoulders, sliding them down his back and finally onto the holster she’s been trying to get a hold of.

He shudders under the warmth of her touch, almost forgetting himself. She closes her eyes, leaning over to kiss him. There it is again, he drifts away in thought. The moment he’s been waiting for years now, the feeling he’s been chasing after ever since the day Loki… Loki, his name echoes out in Mobius’ mind. But it isn’t you, he remembers, leaning away from Jones at the last second.

“Jones…” he sighs, turning his head away.

She opens her eyes in a flash. Feeling no weapon attached to the holster on his back, she smiles. “Alright, let’s do this the hard way!” she whispers in his ear as she grabs Mobius, lifts him up with ease and throws him into the wall across the room.

He lands on his right shoulder. Before Mobius can even get his bearings, she pulls him up by his shirt collar.

“Where’s the gun!?” she yells in his face.

“What? I don’t have a gun!”

“Bullshit! Who carries a holster with no weapon in it!?” she slams him into the ground again. “Did he send you after me?”

“Who are y-”

“Killgrave! Did he order you to follow me here?”

“No idea who that is…” Mobius spits out blood, tries to sit up against the wall. “But I think I’d know if I was being mind controlled this time.”

“Then you’re spying on me for I.G.H.” she pushes her knee into the already tender spot on his right shoulder. “All these disappearances in Lago happened after you moved here. You’re the one selling mutants out to the government here!”

“Finally!” he cries out in pain. “The real reason this was personal to you – you’re one of them!”

“I’m not a mutant, asshole!” She throws a punch to his chest. “I’m just what I.G.H. made!”

“I’m not from I.G.H.!”

“S.H.I.E.L.D., I.G.H., what does it matter?” She aims to punch him again. “You’re all the same monsters.”

“I’m TVA!” he yells out stopping her.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“The Time Variance Authority,” he struggles to get the words out. “We’re not a part of any government. We watch over and protect every branch of the multiverse and all the people in it, including you.”

“I know you can lie better than that.”

“Look, it’s hard to explain but if you just let me…” he gestures at the TemPad still attached to the side of his belt. “If you just let me open up a timedoor, I can take you there and show you!”

“Let you page for reinforcements? I bet you already have this place surrounded!”

“Jessica!” he screams out frustrated. “Please, just trust me for once.”

She stares him down, unsure how to read him. Let’s see how this plays out, she nods quietly.

Mobius takes out the TemPad and tries to open up a timedoor. “You’re outta juice!” Miss Minutes’ voice calls out from the device. He keeps pushing the buttons but to no avail - his battery is too low to conjure the door.

He looks up at her to explain but before he can, he’s met with a hard right punch to the face. Jones knocks him out cold.
___________________________________________________________________________

Mobius slowly wakes, opening his eyes to find himself laying on his bed with his feet propped up high with pillows and an ice pack resting on his face. He scans the room and finds Jones sitting on one of the chairs across from him, so consumed by what she sees while rummaging through his TemPad that she doesn’t notice he’s up again.

“Appreciate this…” he gestures at the ice pack. “But you could have just gone easier on me.”

Her eyes shoot up and stare back in relief. She closes the TemPad and sits back in her chair.

“Can’t believe you were telling the truth…” Jones sighs. “Now I actually feel bad about that punch.”

“That’s the part you feel bad about?”

“Well you could have taken the easier way out if you just-” she jokes right back.

“Oh, come on…” Mobius tries to laugh but the ache in his cheek tenses him up again. “You put on a good show but we both know that wasn’t genuine.”

“No,” she’s quick to admit. “Would it have made a difference if it was?”

“No.”

“And your ex wife is not the reason why, is she?” Jones pushes again. “There’s more to this than you and your weird ass pager let on.”

Mobius grunts trying to sit up in bed. Jones goes to help him.

“I don’t get it. Why are you even here now?” she asks as she pulls him up, placing a pillow on the wall behind him. “If you could just easily puppeteer us all from the TVA, why don’t you-”

“We don’t do that anymore!” he interrupts her. “We just protect people now.”

“So why’d you leave then?”

“I only-” he pauses, searching for the right words. “My time there just ran its course, I can do more good here.”

“I thought this wasn’t the place to purge yourself of past sins,” she fires back at him.

The case, Mobius suddenly remembers. “What’s the time?” he asks.

“How can you still be on this small little case knowing all you know!?”

“This little case is overwhelming enough. You don’t want the big picture, trust me!” he’s quick to shut her down. “What time is it?”

“Just past 2am,” Jones finally answers. “You were out for a few hours.”

“We gotta figure out why I.G.H. is targeting all these kids,” Mobius rushes to get out of the bed. “All your missing cases, they were mutants too, right?”

“Yeah, just like Cross, Lee and Madrox,” she pushes him back down. “But they were all born mutants, I was just an experiment. That’s what I.G.H. used to do.”

“Well maybe they’re working their way backwards,” he tries to get past her again to no avail.

“Like a vaccine?”

“Maybe, enough people are scared of mutants, hate them. I’m sure the government does too.”

“No, they just want power…” Jones gets lost in thought for a moment. “That’s why they shut down our project, they couldn’t control us! But there was some secret soldier programme they merged with the I.G.H. division, Hill told me about it ages ago. What if they’re weaponizing their powers somehow?”

“Can you get a hold of Hill now? Honestly?”

“No, that part I never lied about.”

“Then we need to talk to the priest again,” Mobius insists, finally getting back up on his feet with a wobble. He slowly walks over to the pile of documents by the fax machine, still holding the ice pack to his face.

“You kiddin’? The guy’s in worse shape than you are right now,” she tries to reason with him. “We won’t get anything out of him before morning. Same with the church.”

Mobius keeps going through the files looking for something, not listening to a word she says.

“You need sleep, come on!” she gestures at the bed. “Fuck, I need sleep too!”

“You can have it. I’ll go read in the car,” he says, carrying a large stack of papers towards the door. She cuts him off before he can reach it.

“I know you’ve been living in this mess a while but there are actually two beds under here,” Jones lifts up one of the two beds pushed together with little to no effort and pulls it out, further away from the other one. All the files slide off of the bed covers.

“I’m used to not sleeping much,” Mobius resigns, dropping all the documents in his hands.

“Nightmares that bad, huh?” she teases him, making herself comfortable on one of the beds.

“It’s not the nightmares…” he sits down on the other bed, his head hanging heavy under the weight of his thoughts. “It’s the dreams.”

“What do you mean?

“Dreams show you the lives of your variant selves, every life you could have lived but will never get to…”

“Is that why you avoid sleeping?” she drops the jokes.

“Good night, Jones,” he turns off the lights.

“Night,” she sighs back.
___________________________________________________________________________

The early morning sunlight peeking through the gaps in the window blinds gently tickles Jones’ face. She covers her eyes with the bedding in an effort to squeeze in a few more minutes of sleep but it’s in vain. The loud noise of a revving engine mixed with the muffled sounds of coughing outside shocks her awake instantly. She sits up in the bed, letting out a loud exhausted sigh.

“Good, you’re up!” Mobius calls out to her as he steps out of the bathroom, already dressed and washed up. He starts shuffling around the room, searching for something. “Already checked, the firefighters are still clearing the church so we can start with the hospital first.”

Jones yawns, not registering anything he just said. She gets out of the bed and opens the blinds, trying her hardest to come to. She rubs her eyes and looks out the window in search of the loud annoying car that woke her up so violently and she sees it — a big red pick up truck with the words “Aramark” sprayed across on it. It jolts a memory.

“What kinda janitor firm uses pickup trucks?” Jones asks, walking towards the bathroom.

“Oh, that’s just Stu. He’s got a one man firm kinda situation, he cleans the motel sometimes,” Mobius explains as he puts on the sword holster he just found under a pile of documents on the floor. “He lives on the edge of town, right by that old abandoned farmhouse you found me in — hence the truck.”

“I guess he’s never been in here then,” she calls out to him from inside the bathroom, teasing him again about the mess.

“I don’t let people in during active investigations for a reason,” he chuckles.

Mobius throws on his coat and reaches for his TemPad on the night stand by his bed — it’s completely out of battery now and won’t turn on. Should’ve gone by the power plant to recharge it yesterday, he berates himself for forgetting. Still, he attaches it to the side of his belt to keep on him at all times. He looks out the window as he does, noticing Stu getting back into his pick up truck.

“How’d you know it was a janitor’s truck?” he asks.

“Saw the same logo on the janitorial equipment at the school yesterday,” Jones replies, stepping out of the bathroom.

Mobius turns to her, his face frozen still in shock. It’s him, he’s the missing link between the three cases, it finally dawns on him.

“Where’d you say he lived?” The realization hits Jones too.

The sounds of the loud engine echoe in the motel parking lot again. Stu’s leaving.

“Shit!” she exclaims, heading for the door.

“Get your phone and your jacket, let’s go!” Mobius reminds her. He grabs the car keys from the table and hurries out after Stu.
_________________________________________________________________________

Stu parks his truck right outside his house. There’s decades-old cracks in the pavement of his driveway, weeds long bursting through. The yard is as neglected as the house itself - paint peeling off the walls, roof visibly caving in, wooden window panes slowly decaying.

Stu steps out with a small gray duffle bag over his shoulder, locks the truck and goes inside. Moments after, unbeknownst to him, Mobius and Jones pull up to his home and quietly walk in after him.

As they step directly into the living room from the entrance, they notice a loud creaking sound coming from somewhere to their right. They follow it to find it’s coming from a room with two separate open doors. Peeking in from afar, they see Stu carefully ripping a couple floorboards open with some tools and emptying the duffle bag’s contents underneath — it’s stacks of cash.

“Hey there, Stu!” Mobius says, approaching him from the one entrance. “Nice piggy bank.”

Startled, Stu drops everything and heads for the other door where Jones is already waiting for him, leaning on the frame.

“Try me.” Jones winks at him.
_________________________________________________________________________

Stu huffs and puffs, struggling to break free of the bonds but he’s been firmly tied up to the main supporting column of the living room with rope and chain. Far to his right and out of sight, the creaking sound continues as Jones keeps tearing away the floorboards in the other room with her bare hands in search of all the hidden cash.

“Where’s the money from, Stu?” Mobius asks, towering over the man sitting on the floor.

“I ain’t sayin’ shit! I want a lawyer,” Stu lets out in between a series of coughs.

“Okay, no need to talk. Just nod if any of this sounds familiar,” Mobius calmly replies. “You got by just fine most of your life — no responsibilities, no family to support… But one day you woke up and you noticed you’re old and sick, and you’re only getting older and sicker with no one to take care of you. Your work’s killing you and your pension won’t be enough to save you if you even make it to retirement.”

Stu turns his gaze away, visibly offended but still feigning indifference.

“So what do you do? You start looking for alternatives,” Mobius continues. “But you know you can’t get rich fast without getting your hands dirty. So you agree to give up any mutant kids you spot in town to I.G.H. They agree to pay you in cash, a lot of cash. Tax free I bet too.”

The creaking from the other room gets louder. Stu tries to look over, to ignore Mobius by any means.

“Working at the school, living across the abandoned Madrox estate gave you unique access. I mean, you had every chance to find the right kids to sell out, didn’t you? And your day job was the perfect cover — no one even notices the janitor,” he steps closer, covering Stu in darkness with his shadow. “You saw them using their powers at the farmhouse, right? Jubilation Lee on the Fourth of July, then Rebecca Cross just a few days ago. And you sold them out… Do you even know what happens to them after?”

Mobius crouches down to look him in the eye but Stu avoids him still. He gulps, trying to keep the guilt down.

“Despite what you’ve put them through, they might still be alive,” Mobius continues, his voice softer. An accomplice to kidnapping is better than an accomplice to murder…”

Stu remains quiet.

“Look, I know you can’t account for all the cash stacked under there, not legally, and that alone is enough to put you away for whatever’s left of your life. The IRS is no joke.”

Finally Stu stares back, realizing the gravity of the situation.

“That’s right, the government gave you all that money, they’ll be happy to take it back,” Mobius says. “They’ll walk free and pin it all on you, spin you as the small town creep who kidnapped and murdered children — the papers will run with it even if the court doesn't. So even if you ever get out of jail for this, you’ll never know peace again wherever you go,” Mobius whispers to him, letting the thought linger in Stu’s mind.

Another loud creak from the other room tears the silence and breaks Stu’s concentration.

“Now, I’m no lawyer but I can promise you one thing,.” Mobius stays close and focused on him. “If you want a shot at the nice and quiet retirement of your dreams, your only chance is to start talking.”

“Shit.” Stu coughs out. “What do you wanna know?”

“James Madrox, was he the first?” Mobius asks.

“What? No, he volunteered.”

Mobius stands back up, buries his hands in his pockets in a confused stance.

“I caught him crashing at the farmhouse more and more after he dropped out. He wasn’t doing good,” Stu starts. “At one point, I see him all dressed up, new car and everything so I ask where he gets his money from cause I knew him and his parents weren’t talking back then. He tells me he’s part of some study outta town but nothing else. So one day I followed him there…”

“To I.G.H. headquarters in New York?”

Stu nods. “They almost threw me out when I went in but when they saw what my job was, they said I could be useful, make some good money on the side, they said I could be important…” He gets lost in his own thoughts, looking almost mournful as he does. “Look, I didn’t know, they told me it was all for some vaccine!”

“You convincing yourself or me?” Mobius shows no sympathy. “You knew exactly what you were doing and you knew it was wrong. But you did it anyway...”

Stu’s head drops down from his shoulders, trying to hide his shame.

“What happened to Madrox?”

He coughs again. “They told me he left the country with all the money they gave him, that’s all,” Stu admits.

“What about the two girls, Lee and Cross?” Mobius pushes him.

“I don’t know, I don’t know…” he keeps hiding his face but the distress in his voice is noticeable. “I just tell them where and when to find them. Then I collect the cash, that’s all I do.”

The creaking finally stops.

“Tell who? Same contact every time?” Mobius presses on.

“Yeah.” Stu nods gently. “Some tall woman, short hair, military type. Never got her name.”

Jones walks in to join them in the living room. Some broken off plywood still in her hand. “At least 100K in that bedroom, probably more hidden around the house.”

“Yeah, well the police can handle that,” Mobius declares. “They’re gonna search every square inch of this place anyway and you’ll give them a proper description of that woman and anyone else you’ve met from I.G.H. for a composite,” he says towards Stu before he turns back to Jones.“Call them up and let’s go, we still gotta talk to the priest!”

“About what? We got our confession right here,” she opposes.

“Maybe you were right about the church fire. What if it wasn’t Hill? What if it was Rebecca?”

Jones pauses to process, throws the piece of plywood on the ground. “So you wanna just leave him here then? With all that cash lying around!?”

“You tied him up well, he’s not going anywhere,” Mobius calms her as he makes his way out the door. “And no one’s coming to visit either. Make the call, I’ll wait in the car.”

Jones is left alone with Stu. She aims for the phone in her jacket pocket but then stops and crouches down next to him instead.

“Your contact, the woman… Brunette, blue eyes, cut in her eyebrow from an old scar?”

“You know her.” Stu sees the disappointment in Jones’ eyes. “Personally. Or you thought you did.”

Jones glares at him with barely restrained anger.

“Money changes people,” he coughs out.

“She’s nothing like you.”

“Or maybe she is. Get desperate enough, it’s everything to gain and nothing to lose-”

Jones picks up the leftover plywood from off the ground and breaks it over Stu’s head, knocking him out cold.

“She’s got plenty to lose,” she walks out of the house, slamming the door shut behind her.
__________________________________________________________________________

The privacy curtains pull open to reveal Sarah Cross sitting by the priest’s bedside in the ICU. She’s praying, her makeup smeared from all the crying as he lies there heavily medicated and unconscious. He’s on a respirator to keep him breathing while he’s out from the painkillers. The burns cover most of his body except for his hands, which Mrs. Cross rushes to let go of when she sees Mobius and Jones enter.

“Detective!” Mrs. Cross stands up in anticipation. “Any news?”

“Yes!” Mobius plays along. “Actually, can we talk outside?”

Mrs. Cross is quick to follow as Mobius shepherds her away from the priest and out of the room, leaving Jones there alone. Mobius turns to Jones with a knowing look in his eye. She nods back and closes the curtains again.

Jones checks the IV drips the priest is on, then turns to the nearby crash cart and starts rummaging through it — finally she finds what she’s looking for, a small vial of Naloxone, a drug neutralizing agent. Thank you, Malcolm, Jones laughs to herself, remembering the hard lessons she learned when saving her assistant from a drug overdose all those years ago.

With a syringe she injects the Naloxone into the abbocath on the priest’s hand, then sits down beside him and waits.

Moments later he wakes, dizzy and unaware, looking around to orient himself.

“You were in a fire, you’re in the hospital now. You’ve got tubes in, don’t try to talk,” Jones is quick to explain. “Pain’s gonna get worse so answer fast — one blink for yes, two for no. Do you understand?”
The priest looks directly at her. He blinks once for yes.

“Good. We know now you don’t have anything to do with the missing kids but we still can’t find them. Be honest, have you seen Jubilation Lee since she disappeared?”

He grunts, starting to sense the rush of pain from the burns. He blinks twice for no.

“What about Rebecca Cross? Did she come to the church?”

The priest starts shaking and gulping, the pain taking over.

“Focus! Was she at the church?” Jones raises her voice.

Barely able to keep still enough to look her in the eye, he blinks once for yes.

“Did she set the place on fire?” she whispers.

A tear rolls down the priest’s cheek. He blinks once.

“On purpose?”

He shuts his eyes as more tears follow. His pulse oximeter starts beeping louder and faster as his heart rate increases and his breathing becomes more labored. The grunting gets louder and turns into muffled screaming as he shakes uncontrollably in pain.

A nurse and a doctor pull the curtains open and rush in to stabilize him. Jones runs out of there.
___________________________________________________________________________

She bursts through the entrance of the hospital to find Mobius pacing around a bench just outside, a still full cup of hot chocolate in his hand.

“Well?” he asks. “What’d he say? Did he wake up?”

“Where’s the mom?”

“Sent her home, nothing she can do here.”

“What’d you tell her?” Jones pushes.

“That we have an accomplice confessional and we’re close to finding her daughter!” Mobius blurts out in anxious anticipation. “Now what-”

“We are close,” Jones calms him. “Rebecca burned down the church, he confirmed it.”

“Was it an accident?”

“Don’t know, could have been self defense. If she went there to hide and there was someone else in there after her-”

“No, no chance anyone but Rebecca survived that. Firemen found no other bodies in the area. I checked with them this morning.”

“Then that means-”

“Detective Jones!” Ben Ulrich calls out to her as he slowly approaches them by the entrance. “This might be my last time calling you that so enjoy it.”

“Excuse you?” she snaps back at him.

“You and your childhood buddy, Maria Hill, are quite the double act. No families, dangerous jobs, addictions, psych problems…” Ben explains. “It just sounds tragic until you add up your shared history with I.G.H. and then all these missing kids — everywhere I look on these cases your name and hers keep popping up.”

Jones glares at him silently.

“Couldn’t figure out why you’d torpedo your career by taking on all these cases you can’t solve till I realized you must be getting something in return — Hill tracks and takes the kids, you cover her and make sure they’re never found, then I.G.H pays you both. You tell me how that sounds.”

She bursts out with laughter. Mobius stands in the back quietly assessing the situation.

“I’m finishing up the piece tonight, we’ll see who’s laughing tomorrow when we go to print,” Ben sighs, adjusting his glasses.

“It is hilarious…” Jones tries to calm herself enough to speak, “...that you found so many clues and still came to the wrong conclusion.” She turns to Mobius “Are there razzies for journalism cause I think we have a contender this year?”

Ben tips his hat to her and turns to leave.

“Wait!” Mobius stops him, grabbing his arm. “You’re on the right track but you don’t have all your facts right. You wanna let people know the truth, expose those responsible? We can give you an exclusive on the whole story with I.G.H. as it is. We have the proof, we’ll share everything from the whole investigation! We can even-”

“Not you too,” Ben pushes away Mobius’ hand. “I thought the cops disliking you was just idle curiosity but you’re actually standing up for her. Still?”

“Because I know you’re wrong.”

“You allegedly punched out a priest yesterday, I don’t think you can really argue right and wrong.”

Mobius freezes again, going silent. Jones takes the opportunity to step in again.

“Fine, you want proof? You got two options.” She steals a pen and paper out of Ben’s jacket pocket and quickly scribbles something on it. “You can either go to this address right now and call it in to the police, be a hero, and publish your half ass story to the Bulletin or you can wait for the man tied up there to wake up, ask him about the hundreds of thousands of dollars stored under his house and where he got it and maybe you’ll get half the real story.”

Ben stares in confusion, desperately trying to process what he just heard, as she shoves the pen and paper back into his jacket pocket.

“The rest of the truth you can get from us tomorrow in an exclusive, like he said. We just need 24 hours to crack the case.”

“How would you-” Ben tries to ask.

“We’re close, Ulrich! These kids might still be alive and out there, we still have a chance to find them! We just need one more day,” Jones interrupts him to explain. “And if we fail or you’re not convinced, you can still print your own shitty story on me after. You’ll only lose a day.”

Ben pauses to consider it, carefully studying Jones’ face for any hint of deception but he sees none. Finally he nods in agreement.

“Good!” She throws him her cellphone. “While you wait for the janitor to come to, you can call up my druggie employee, Malcolm! He’ll catch you up on where we’re at so far.”

Jones walks away from him, heading for the car.

Ben starts fidgeting with the phone, trying to figure out how to operate it. Mobius approaches him slowly, still trying to get his bearings.

“How’d you know?” he wonders.

“Huh?” Ben’s too preoccupied with the phone.

“That I punched out the priest, no one else was there to see it.”

“Apparently not. I dropped by the station again this morning to ask about the church fire last night,” Ben goes on. “Overheard a woman there mention it. She was looking for you, sounded real concerned.”

“Pale, thin, port-wine stain on her face?” Mobius asks, guessing it was Betty the librarian.

“No, she was Black, gorgeous hair, had this long coat and purple-

“Purple wool hat,” Mobius takes the words out of his mouth.

“Yeah…”

“Shit.” Mobius lets out. Ravonna, he realizes. It was her I bumped into at the school yesterday, how did I not notice before, his mind starts racing.

He reaches for the TemPad on his belt to check — it’s still on him and still out of battery. She must have tracked me to this branch, he starts putting the pieces together, but she can’t find me now when the TemPad is off, that’s why she’s asking around for me.

“Shit!” Mobius exclaims again, running towards the car where Jones is waiting for him.

“Hey, how do you work this thing?” Ben calls out after him, holding up Jones’ cellphone.

“No time, sorry! Talk to you tomorrow!” Mobius shouts back as he gets into the car and drives off in a hurry.
___________________________________________________________________________

“We gotta solve this fast,” Mobius exhales, clutching the steering wheel tightly as he drives through the streets at speed.

“Relax, we bought ourselves 24 hours!” Jones tries to reason with him. “Whatever we find at the church will lead us to Rebecca and then everyone else.”

“We may have less time than that.”

Jones looks at him questioningly.

“Someone from the TVA is looking for me,” he sighs.

“Good, we can use the help!”

The car stops suddenly at a red light, Mobius almost misses it.

“No, you don’t understand,” he stumbles on his words. “She was thrown out for a reason, she’s not a friend. Not anymore… If she’s after me, it can’t be good.”

“And you’re only telling me now!?” Jones suddenly snaps.

“I didn’t realize until now!” Mobius gets defensive.

The cars behind them start honking in unison — the light’s turned green.

“What about you and Stu then?” Mobius revs the engine and takes off again. “You were supposed to call the cops on him, instead you left him to Ulrich!”

“Ulrich’s not gonna risk his swan song leaking through the cops first, he’ll wait,” Jones declares, completely reassured.

“You didn’t know that when we left Stu’s house!” Mobius counters. “Why’d you really do it? Because he mentioned Hill?”

Jones goes quiet, averts her eyes.

Mobius sighs. He slows down the car as they approach the parking lot by the church.

“I get that you’re trying to protect her,” he whispers out. “And I don’t blame you for having hope but if she’s really involved in all this, you’re gonna have to-”

“Cross that bridge when we get there. Let’s just check out the church.”
__________________________________________________________________________

A safety perimeter is set up all around the ruins of the church, ten feet in every direction from it. Mobius walks up to it first, cautiously looks around and pulls up the yellow tape, then crouches under it to get in. Jones follows after him. She just walks through the Do Not Cross line, tearing it in two, and keeps going through the yard.

“Why’d Rebecca come here in the first place?” Mobius wonders.

“Refuge?” Jones ponders aloud. “Church is not a bad place to hide if you’re on the run.”

“Doubt it, she knew the priest hated mutants.”

“Maybe that’s why she came,” she suggests.

“What? To kill him on purpose? Just for that?”

“You swung at him in less than five minutes,” Jones reminds him.

“She’s not like me.”

“You’re right, a teenager is much better adjusted!” she jokes.

“The boyfriend said she even considered taking a cure just to be accepted by her family,” Mobius stops by the church doors, squinting up to get a better look. “This doesn’t make sense...”
Jones pushes the jammed doors open and they step into the nave. The gray stone walls are almost completely charred on all sides. The few remaining seats there are burnt black, the rest already ash. The floor is covered in gravel, melted wax and cinder. With every step they take further inward, more dust rises from the ground beneath them, clouding their vision.
Two of the supporting beams have fallen apart, causing the roof to partially concave in. Through the holes left in it a few small songbirds fly in and out, their chirping echoing in the empty remains of the church.

Mobius looks up to them only to find himself standing dead center in the hall, opposite the cross itself — it’s burnt up but mostly whole, just the top part of it chipped off making it look like a T instead. The overcast daylight coming through the beautifully colored stained glass windows facing west bathes the cross in warm oranges and yellows. Mobius pauses to stare. Jones notices.

“So I didn’t ask yesterday cause I assumed not but…” she hesitates for a moment. “Are you religious?”

His eyes fall down to the rubble again. He turns slowly.

“I mean, since you’d know, are there actually any gods to believe in?” Jones keeps pushing.

Before he can retort, some debris falls from the ceiling on their left and crashes down onto the ground with a loud boom. Something catches Mobius' eye in that direction — a stained glass window of the devil dressed in green sits up on the wall to his left, a familiar rendering. He averts his eyes quickly to keep the memories from flooding back.

“Let's just focus on the clues right now. I'll check for anything outside,” he clumsily excuses himself and walks out as quickly as he can.

The doors slam shut behind him with a thunder. He barely makes it five steps outside before stopping under the dappled shade of the century old oak trees in the churchyard. He tries to measure his breath but it only grows heavier in his lungs. His pulse is banging like a hammer inside his head, getting faster, louder. He shuts his eyes. Fists clenched tightly on either side. Tears well up in his eyes, threatening to run down his cheeks.

He tries again to calm himself — listens in on those songbirds chirping around, takes in the smell of the rainy moss in the air carried by the wind, feels his body relax more and more with each deep breath. He opens his eyes, letting the tears roll down his face before swiftly wiping them off. Mobius looks up to the cloudy sky from beneath the trees. He tries to push out a smile but is unable to. He sighs.

As the winds rise and push the clouds apart, the sun suddenly shines down again. Something to the side starts irritating Mobius' eye — a bright light reflecting off of something far to his right. He walks over to the source, crouching down to inspect it - pieces of shattered glass from the stained glass windows on the west wall.

He looks up and instantly spots the small almost circular breaking point. It’s high up towards the ceiling, at a downward angle. He turns in the opposite direction and squints at something in the distant hills over the forest, then stares down again at the shattered glass, shaking his head.

“Show-off,” Mobius mumbles under his breath, looking up at the skies. He finally smiles.

He starts pacing around the evidence with his hands on his hips. “You know, I could easily solve cases too if I was omnipotent!”

“So that's a yes on the religious thing?” Jones interrupts him.

He turns back, startled, caught off guard again.

“Find anything inside?” Mobius does his best to play it off.

“A whole lotta garbage and a bloodied backpack next to a tourniquet,” Jones approaches him. “This was inside.”

She throws Mobius a worn out notebook. Property of Rebecca Cross written on the cover. The pages are filled with detailed notes, sketches and polaroids. He flips through quickly and finds one he recognizes — a shot of him, Jones and the priest talking outside the church, taken from a high vantage point, through the colored tint of a stained glass window.

“She saw us here yesterday?”

“Maybe she heard us too,” Jones suggests. “If she was willing to lose her powers to keep her family, imagine what she’d do to the priest trying to break her parents up…”

Mobius shakes his head in disbelief. “So she was hiding up on the rafters and biding her time until the church was empty and she could escape at night.”

“She was injured. Blood trail would have washed out by now but something in here might tell us where she went,” Jones says as she rummages through the bloodied backpack again.

“No need.”

Mobius signals Jones to take a look at the shattered glass down at his feet — she follows his gaze. “Bullets are easier to trace…” He then points up at the hole in the window above them and traces the likely trajectory with his arm towards a barely visible cabin far over in the distant hills up west. “And no one ever looks for bullet holes in a collapsing ruin.”

“Much less a church,” Jones adds.

“Exactly,” he hands her back the notebook and polaroids. “We gotta go check it out before it gets dark.”

Jones throws the backpack over her shoulder and follows Mobius out of the churchyard. They head for the cabin up in the hills.
__________________________________________________________________________

The trees all around still have their crowns but the forest floor is covered in wet moss, pinecones and fallen leaves — reds, yellows and browns color the scenery under the light of the falling sun.
As Mobius and Jones walk through, their footsteps just barely trickle out in the quiet of the woods. Only the occasional squirrel or woodpecker high up in the trees disturb the silence fallen over the place.

“So, you never answered my question,” Jones opens.

“What? Is there a god?”

“Nope, you already gave that away. I meant about the kiss you dodged last night.”

“Oh, this again,” Mobius sighs. “Why’d you even care?”

“Mysteries bug me. I gotta know.”

Mobius rolls his eyes. He takes a few bigger steps to get ahead and keeps on walking in front of her to avoid her gaze.

“I know it’s not because of your ex-wife,” she goes on. “Anything to do with this ex-TVA chick chasing you?”

“No, I told you. We gotta move faster or she’ll track us-”

“What about that god you’re always talking to?”

Mobius looks back at her over his shoulder, visibly annoyed.

“What? You said it aloud,” she defends herself. “First I thought you were just talking to someone you lost, someone you miss but then you said omni-”

“I do miss him…” Mobius stops. “Always.”

Jones walks up to him, stands by his side.

“You ever truly know someone and let them know you? I mean fully,” he looks at her, eyes full of sorrow and regret.

“Yes,” Jones admits, staring him right back with sincere understanding.

“Did you love them?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

“His name’s Luke,” she shuts her eyes.

“What happened?” Mobius asks earnestly.

“I took too long to say things-” she takes a deep breath. “Things I should have said at the beginning… And he left me. I screwed it up.”

“Me too.”

A loud scream suddenly shakes the woods. Shocked awake, Mobius and Jones start looking around frantically.

Another scream follows, the sound piercing through the air, causing all animals to scatter away from it. The two turn to the source — it sounds like it’s just up ahead, close by. They start running.

“Help!” a female voice calls out again.

“It’s Rebecca!” Mobius yells after Jones. She’s speeding ahead.

“Over there!” she exclaims, finally noticing the small wooden cabin tucked away in the woods.

“Help me! Please!” The shrieking intensifies.

Jones gains momentum and bursts through the rickety wooden door in a flash. But there’s no one there. Just a few dusty old pieces of furniture in a dark little room. Another scream from inside the cabin. She turns to her right and sees it — a cassette tape playing on a boombox set up just by the single window pane.

“Where is she?” Mobius finally catches up to her, stepping inside.

Jones turns to face him. Distracted by the boombox, Mobius doesn’t notice the gun pointing at him from the far corner of the room. But Jones does.

Shots fire — it’s Maria Hill. Jones leaps in front of Mobius, pushing him down behind a couch for cover. She signals him to run out the door on three and kicks the couch so hard, it slides over to the corner of the room where Hill’s hiding. She stops shooting to roll out of the way, providing that precious window of time that allows Mobius to escape and Jones to leap at her full strength.

Hill ducks, avoiding the punch that puts a hole through the floor of the cabin. She tries to shoot again but Jones snatches the gun from her and crushes it in her hand.

“Hill!” Jones tries to reach her.

Hill doesn’t respond. She lands a few punches and kicks, gaining some safe distance from Jones but she’s hardly affected, keeps coming at her strong.

“Hill, snap out of it!” Jones yells out louder but to no avail.

Hill tries to get past her and escape but Jones notices the two large bookshelves leaning on the wall by the entrance. She knocks them over to block the exit.

Hill doesn’t manage to get out of the way in time and they collapse on top of her.

“Maria!” Jones cries out.

She rushes to lift up the bookshelves — Hill lies there, motionless, her head bruised and bloodied. Her breathing is labored and erratic.

“Maria, are you okay? Talk to me!”

“Jessica?” She opens her eyes.

“Yes, it’s me!” Jones holds her hand. “I’m here, I’m here.”

“I’m s-sorry,” Hill struggles to let the words out.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t you!”

“The kids… they made me take them t-”

“Just breathe, where did you take them? Where’s Rebecca?”

“T-trucks took her away… hours ago,” Hill wheezes out. “They made me t-tie up loose ends… The Super Soldier Program made me… they needed mutants.”

“Shh, it’s okay, I know it wasn’t you,” Jones tries to calm her. “What about James Madrox? Jubilee?”

“D-dead, he’s dead and she… she escaped.”

“The twelve kids from New York? Did they escape too?”

“I’m sorry, Jess…” Hill’s eyes well up with tears. “I’m so s-sorry, it’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not!” Jones cries out. “They made you this. They controlled you!”

“But I did it-t”

“No, you had no choice! Your mind wasn’t your own!”

“I did it,” Hill keeps repeating, almost in a daze. Her breathing grows weaker and weaker.

“It wasn’t you, Hill,” Jones squeezes Hill’s hand tighter in hers. “Trust me, I’ve been there! I know what it’s like to be unmade, forced to do terrible things for someone else…”

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes again. “Please forgive m-me!”

“It wasn’t you, Hill. I forgive you!” Jones squeezes her hand again and holds Hill’s face with her other hand. “They forgive you!”

“I’m s-sorry.” Hill cries out for the last time. Her face turns pale and her body still. She’s gone.

“It wasn’t you…” Jones whispers out in a final goodbye.

She slowly stands up, wiping the tears and smeared makeup off of her face with her jacket sleeve. She turns around to see Mobius standing quietly right behind her, just outside the cabin, by the door. His eyes are red with tears too. He heard it all. He needed to hear it.

“Jessica…” he goes to say but she nearly collapses in front of him.

He rushes to hold her up, putting one of her arms over his shoulder and the other under her waist. Right as he touches it, he feels it on his hand — blood. Jones grunts in pain.

“She shot you!” Mobius exclaims.

“No shit,” Jones resigns.

“Healing’s not one of your powers, is it?” he tries to distract her with a joke.

“Nice try,” she lets out a stifled chuckle.

“Hold on, let me set you down here,” he says, guiding her a few steps forward and carefully setting her down on the grass with her head leaning against some moss covered rocks. “Keep pressing down on it, we gotta slow the bleeding!”

He sets her hands over the wound, then gets up and rushes back into the cabin.

“There’s gotta be a first aid kit in here somewhere!” he yells out in frustration, rummaging through the mess left behind inside.

Mobius runs out with a dusty glass bottle and some dry rags in hand. He kneels down by Jones’ side and lifts up her hands and jacket to see the wound — it’s in the abdominal area, small, bullet sized but still bleeding profusely.

“You ready?” he asks her first. She nods, biting down on the sleeve of her leather jacket.

Mobius pours the leftover alcohol from the glass bottle onto the wound to sanitize it. Jones groans out in pain again. He hurries to bandage her up with the rags he found, tying them up as tightly as possible but she’s already lost a lot of blood. She starts shivering.

He takes off his coat and gently covers her with it to keep her warm, the adrenaline rush allowing him to ignore the November cold as he sits there in nothing but a shirt, pants and his beloved sword holster still strapped on to his back. He reaches for his TemPad but it’s still out of battery and there’s no energy source to charge it nearby.

“We gotta call for help but there’s no phone in there,” he says, pointing to the cabin. “Do you have yours on you?”

“No, I gave it to Ulrich,” she coughs.

“Shit,” Mobius whispers out. “What about Hill? She got here faster than us somehow. She mentioned trucks, maybe there’s still-”

“Mobius!” Jones yells out. “Come on, you know damn well they left hours ago. Unless you can fly, perform surgery or do miracles, you can’t get me out of this. Not in time.”

“Now who’s playing the hero?” Mobius tries to cheer her up again.

“Technically I’m playing the martyr,” she snipes back.

“Not on my watch,” Mobius smiles, unwavering resolve gleaming in his eyes. “It’s-”

He’s about to stand up when he senses something. Not a gust of wind or a shaking in the ground, not the drops of rain from the clouds above or the final rays of sunlight stretching over the hills in front of him, but something else. Something deeper, something stronger. A presence so tactile he can almost feel it reaching out to him.

Mobius slowly turns his head to look over his shoulder. He squints his eyes, carefully scanning the landscape behind him but sees nothing and no one.
“Mobius?” Jones whispers out, trying to understand. He turns his gaze back onto her.

A flock of crows caws out in unison, their voices raising from all around in the surrounding woods, echoing endlessly. They fly up into the sky all at once, leaving the tree crowns almost completely barren. The birds huddle together in quick formation and soar up and away towards the sunset.

That’s when it happens — a sudden burst of green light shines down on Jones’ face, so bright she covers her eyes with both her hands to protect them. As the light slowly diminishes to a softer radiance, the sound of footsteps follows. Then a voice, so warm and inviting in its tone, it’s unmistakable.

“Mobius?”

No, it can’t be, Mobius denies it, staying still on the ground with his eyes shut and his back turned to the light. He can’t come back, I know it, he tries to convince himself, not for me, not like this.

“Mobius…” the voice calls out to him again, desperately imploring. The sound rings in Mobius’ ears — softer than a whisper, louder than a scream. He can feel the cold sweat forming on his brow and his heart beating ever more loudly in his chest.

He clenches his fist, tries to still his breathing as he gets up and slowly turns around to face whatever awaits him.

And there he is, Loki. His Loki, standing just a few feet away, staring back at him for the first time in what feels like forever. He hasn’t changed a bit, Mobius thinks to himself, yet he’s more beautiful than I remember — his hair flowing down his back, curling gently away from his ears, his skin so soft and smooth, almost glowing from the inside out, his cheeks flushed pink, his eyes bluer than the skies above, twinkling under the light of the setting sun. He’s still wearing those same flowy green robes and gold speckled black crown Mobius last saw him in but that smile, the kind that forces his eyes almost completely shut, that he wears best.

“Loki?” Mobius exhales in disbelief.

Loki’s eyes well up with tears. He stands there, bathed in the glow of green and golden light emitting from the still open portal just behind him. His arms stretch out toward Mobius, inviting him in for a long overdue hug.

Buzzing with excitement, Mobius takes a wavering first step. And then another. His knees shake under the weight of his own overwhelming emotions. It feels like learning to walk for the first time again, he realizes. But he keeps going, determined as ever to reach Loki.

He’s just a few more steps away. Loki extends his hand to him. Mobius reaches for him but just before they touch, another hand stretches out and grabs Mobius by the collar of his shirt, pulling him backwards.

The cold metal of the TVA timestick presses up against his face. It’s Ravonna, she found him.

“Not one word, variant!” she screams at Loki. “Or Mobius gets it!”

Loki steps back quietly. The smile on his face disappears, giving way to furrowed brows. His eyes now bloodshot red with rage.

“And before you even think of trying anything, you should know this isn’t your standard timestick here,” Ravonna explains. “This one I made myself! A new and improved version that actually destroys matter cross-temporally instead of just transferring it to the Void.”

Mobius’ face drops. His nervous excitement just seconds ago now mulls over into dread. He and Loki share a look of horror.

“That’s right, prune anyone with this, they won’t just die, they’ll never have existed!” She sounds almost gleeful in her joy as she talks to Loki. “You won’t be able to bring your precious friend back and you can’t replace him either, no other variant could and you know it.”

Loki’s nostrils flare with anger, his breathing intensifies. But he can’t lift a finger to help without risking Mobius’ life. Forever.

Jones watches on from a few feet away, stunned silent, leaning closer.

“Why are you here?” Mobius finally dares to ask her, fighting against the weapon pressed up against his cheek.

“To thank you!” she declares proudly, pushing the timestick closer to Mobius’ face with her right hand while she tightens her grip on his throat with her left. “If you hadn't banished me to the Void, I’d never have found Allioth and made this.”

Ravonna tries her hardest to restrain her smile but she’s enjoying the moment too much to properly hide it.

Jones crawls a few steps closer to her, just out of sight.

“And to think all those Kangs hiding out there believed they could defeat you by striking at the source of power, an attack at the end of time… Just like He Who Remains and that mess he made with Sylvie, they’re all idiots who fail to grasp the obvious — the source is right here,” she gestures at Mobius with her armed hand, staring down Loki all the while. “I knew it the moment you two met before me and I know now you’ll do anything to protect him.”

“What do you want from me?” Loki finally speaks, his voice booming, shaking the very foundations of the ground they stand on.

“I want you to restore the TVA back to what it was before you showed up!” she yells back at him, clutching Mobius tighter in her death grip. “But erase He Who Remains and all his variants from existence and put me in charge instead! Otherwise…”

Loki pauses to process the thought.

“Oh, please, don’t pretend. I know He Who Remains already made you choose between one life and all others once. I’m just staking the right life this time!”

Jones is now on the ground just behind her and Mobius, inches away, lying in wait. Loki notices.

“So what’ll it be?” Ravonna pushes.

Loki says nothing. He shares a knowing look with Mobius. And in an instant, Loki conjures a spell — his dagger materializes inside the sword holster still on Mobius’ back.

That’s all the signal Jones needs — she grabs Ravonna’s foot in an effort to distract her. She turns to see and tries to kick Jones back but Ravonna’s guard is lowered.

With his left hand Mobius reaches back and swiftly pulls the dagger out from the sword holster. He aims and, with all his strength, he stabs Ravonna right in the chest.
In the shock of the moment, she drops her timestick onto the ground, right by Jones’ side.

Mobius hurries to free himself from her grasp but with her left hand still around his shoulder, she pulls him close again and, in the blink of an eye, she pulls out the dagger from her chest and buries it inside Mobius’. His feet give out.

“No!” Loki cries out, rushing to catch him before he falls. His black horned crown topples to the ground instead.
Even bleeding out, Ravonna tries to stand up straight with her head held high in pride. But she notices all too late her weapon is now in Jones’ hands. She switches it on and prunes Ravonna out of existence in an instant.

Jones lies back down on her back in exhaustion, the momentary adrenaline fading away and the rush of pain from her wound kicking back in. She passes out.

“Mobius, I’m so sorry!” Loki whispers in his ear, cradling him in his arms. “I’m so sorry it came to this, I’d never let you suffer like this if I had the choice but there was just no other way…”

“No other way?” Mobius lets out, gasping for breath as blood drips out of his mouth.

“Yes, the multiversal war-” Loki chokes on his words. “There was no other way we could win. I had to split your timeline into two separate ones, coexisting in parallel.”

“1229a and 1229b…” even now Mobius catches on quickly.

“Yes, exactly,” Loki almost allows himself a smile, being reminded of Mobius’ sharp mind in the flesh again. The same mind he admired from the day they met. “I knew you’d notice!”

“When did y-”

“The day you last saw Sylvie on that branch, that’s when I split your timeline.”

Mobius reaches out for Loki’s right hand, finally holding him like he’d waited to for ages. Loki squeezes his hand tightly into his own.

“We didn’t stand a chance against the Kangs otherwise, I’m sorry. Ravonna was too much of a threat and the other Mobius…” Loki hesitates to go on. “The other you, he could never grow strong enough to help me defeat them as long as you lived… As long as this timeline lived.”

The trees all around suddenly turn aglow in golden yellows before growing black as night and fading into nothingness. Then it happens again — to the birds in the sky, the hills in the far distance, to Jones lying unconscious in the grass just steps away and even to the drops of blood seeping out from Mobius’ chest where the dagger struck his heart.

“All transpired as it should and now this timeline is falling apart so the other may live and then all others could live once the war is won.” Loki fights back the tears in his eyes, pulling Mobius closer. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Is it true?” Mobius breathes out, one hand holding Loki tightly, the other clutching the dagger plunged into his chest. “What Ravonna said? Was I your strength all this time?”

“Of course you were!” Loki caresses Mobius’ cheek with his hand. He smiles through tears. “You always have been and you always will be.”

“As you were mine,” Mobius smiles back.

His legs turn aglow in gold, slowly fading into black. He’s almost out of time.

“Even if you never forgive me for this, I’ll still need you!” Loki panics, feeling his Mobius slipping away and out of his reach again. “This was hard enough to pull through without you but what comes next… I’m not losing you again!”

“There’s nothing to forgive…” Mobius coughs out. “I always believed you’d do the right thing. I still do.”

Loki shuts his eyes, bursting into tears. His head drops from his shoulders, letting his hair fall down to cover his face almost entirely. He rests his chin on Mobius’ forehead, pushing him against his chest into a tight hug.

Mobius looks up at him for one final glance. He reaches out and tucks those few loose curls back behind his ear again. With his thumb he gently wipes away the tears streaming down Loki’s cheek. Loki shudders at the touch. He pauses to savor the moment.

He opens his eyes again to find Mobius’ pleading gaze staring back at him.

“I love you.” Mobius whispers out with his last breath.

“I love you.” Loki whispers back, leaning in closer to finally share in a kiss.

But the moment’s passed.

The last ray of sunshine has faded away into black nothingness and with it Mobius too.

All that still shines down on Loki is the golden green light coming from his own portal.

And all that’s left in Loki’s hands is his own dagger, the one he conjured, the one that pierced Mobius’ heart open. Polished to perfection, with not a trace of Mobius’ blood on it anymore, Loki’s own reflection in it stares back at him. Mournful. Heartbroken.

He turns to his side — his crown still lies there beside him. He picks it up and tucks the dagger away under his robes.

Loki stands up. Wiping away the tears, he places the crown back upon his head. The pain in his eyes gives way to resolve. He turns and walks back through the portal. It closes behind him.