Then someone said, “Stop. Just… stop.”
Jack squinted in the light. An avuncular hand rested on Will’s shoulder, briefly, before the third person stepped forward: unmarked urban fatigues, broad-shouldered, hair in a buzz-cut. Military type.
This was wrong. This was terribly wrong. Jack was washed through with the nauseating chill of déjà vu.
The figure stepped into the light.
“Paul?”
Jack’s lifelong friend emerged from the shadows, familiar features traced with unfamiliar new details: worry lines now creased Paul’s forehead, and his hair had stippled salt-and-pepper at the temples. His build was no longer that of a project coordinator; his was the economically muscled body of a career soldier.
Paul Serene, the passionate idealist, had been replaced by an older man. Excitability did not vibrate beneath this lean individual’s skin, gone was the easy smile. This man’s form was his function, and his function was the imposition of a will that glittered sharply and certainly from behind clear eyes.
This couldn’t be real.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said, and vanished. A hard cannonball of pain impacted the small of Jack’s back, collapsing him to his knees. Will, thoughtless of his own safety, broke free and dashed forward to protect his brother.
Space buckled around Will. Within that depression time inverted and snapped. A stutter popped into existence around him, immobilizing Jack’s brother in a posture of panic.
Jack was numb, body and mind. Paul was alive. Here. Older. And…
Paul looked down at him. “I’m sorry, Jack. Tonight’s events were not to my taste. But they were to my orders.” Cold words uttered in a warm voice from a young friend now very much Jack’s elder.
Jack got to his feet. Paul turned, unconcerned, and strolled closer to Will.
Jack couldn’t accept it. What had happened to transform the change-the-world idealist he had known into this?
“It was meant to be a two-minute hop to the future,” Paul said. “What I got was a ride to the end of the world. The world I killed, when I activated the machine.”
“The world doesn’t look that killed, Paul.”
Paul faced Jack, tucking his hands into the pockets of his fatigues. The adolescent gesture took ten years off him for a moment.
“When the end comes years of escalating horror will build to a moment of perfect, unimaginable insanity and then… that moment never ends. Ever. That’s what the end of time is. But I found a way out,” Paul said gently. “I knew I had to do something, Jack. That’s what kept me alive there.”
He took an earnest step toward his friend.
“I traveled back as far as I could. To 1999.”
“You told me the machine can’t take a person back beyond the moment it was first activated.”
“I just told you I found a way out. Now listen to me, and understand: I wanted as much time as possible to build something that would help us defy the end of the world-the end of time-by surviving it.” His face lit up at this, clearly expecting a stronger reaction from Jack.
“Paul,” Jack said. “It’s good to see you. I was worried.” Then, pointedly: “Can we have this conversation without an assault rifle pointed at my brother’s head?”
Paul chose to ignore the request. “I’ve done seventeen years of living since I saw you last, Jack, but I still remember what you were like.” Paul spoke with a warm smile, but taking no pleasure in what he said. “If you were a reasonable man, a level-headed man, my actions now would be very different.” Paul held out a gloved hand to one of the troopers. Obediently the soldier unclipped a Taser from his belt and placed it in Paul’s hand. “I can’t take risks, Jack. I’m sorry.”
Rage.
The world slammed forward, taking Jack with it as he shouldered into the trooper on the right. Fully armored, the yellow-faced killer flew across the length of the archives, met the wall hard, and dropped ten feet to the floor.
The air pressure pulsed as Paul manifested before Jack. “Stop.”
Jack’s boot came down hard for Paul’s knee. Paul sidestepped it.
“Let us go,” Jack hissed. “Whatever the fuck happened to you, let us go.”
“I can’t. Will knows too much, and now you’re too dangerous.”
Jack looped an arm for Paul’s head. It didn’t work.
“Will’s too valuable, and you’re my friend.”
“Let us go!”
Paul dodged another punch with a flick of his head. “Jack.”
“What’s Monarch to you? Why are all those kids out there… why are they… why did you…?”
Paul drew a line under this exchange with a short intake of breath. “Now’s not the time. We can talk later.” Paul smiled, a familiar detail. He had smiled like that at bad jokes, little victories, and Team Outland.
Déjà vu.
Paul’s shoulder flinched, snapping his fist into Jack’s face. Jack’s senses had an argument. Nothing made sense. Then all was darkness.
Stone, cold and wet and flat against his face. Skull-ache, as if someone had taken a screwdriver to a bone suture and twisted. Blood in his mouth, like old dirt.
Somewhere in a hidden corner of the room Will was pleading in frustration. “We can’t let this happen!”
Black tile. White tile. He raised his face from the lobby floor and the unpleasantly adhesive spill his cheek was resting in. He spat blood and dust and lifted his ringing head.
Jack was still in the library.
Forty feet away Will was frantic, desperate for understanding and out of ideas. Paul stood over him with no intention of engaging.
“I can stop this event! I have the data, I’ve done the research…!”
“No risks. No-”
Paul winced, abruptly and painfully, tight lips pulled back from white teeth. His face flushed red, every cord in his neck standing out, and then… the spasm passed. Faded. Paul breathed.
Whatever had happened inside him had hit hard-his voice was a rasp. “No chances,” he said. “We both know what’s coming, Will. We both know too well that it can’t be changed, negotiated with, or avoided.” He took a deep drink of air, tightly muscled chest expanding beneath the uniform. “Now, Will, for the final time, as your friend: come with me, help us to survive what’s coming, or this has to end here.”
Jack heaved himself upright. His inner ear was failing to distinguish up from down, left from right. Heavy headed, he watched the room slide sideways. He sensed Paul’s hand as a brotherly weight on his shoulder, before it pushed him to his knees.
Will processed. “You’re threatening me?”
“Would you risk the universe by leaving one problem unattended? I can’t have you running loose, Will. Come with me. We need your expertise.”
“You’re wrong. This can be fixed. I can fix it.”
“William. You babysat me when I was eight. Please, don’t make me-”
“I can fix it!”
Paul’s silence communicated everything.
Jack shot to his feet, and this time Paul shoved him to the dirt without love or care. The exertion seemed to trigger something within him and Paul screamed, the space about his frame trembling for a second and then snapping fractal-a distortion field, glittering and crazed, sheathing him for half a moment. Then it was gone.
Paul gasped like a man with a perforated lung.
Jack had no clue what had just happened. The distortion was similar to the effect that had emanated from the time machine. The two had to be connected.
Paul appeared suddenly very old to Jack, very frail.
“I can’t bring myself to shoot you, Will.” Paul drew a reassuring breath, spine straightening. “It took me years to understand what has to be done…” He was recovering quickly, far quicker than Jack was. “But we don’t have years for you to come to the same conclusion. We have moments.” Pressing a finger to his ear, Paul intoned, “Monarch Actual. This is your Consultant. Trigger.”