Closing the Cases
The storm raged on, the twister nearly touching the shore of Arcadia Bay. Max stood at the edge of the lighthouse cliff, butterfly picture in her hands, with Chloe watching from behind.
Nothing happened.
Max looked at the picture and knew the feeling of using her powers as she did so, but nothing was happening. She turned around to Chloe just as a man she'd never seen before came running up the path towards them.
"Stop, stop with the picture, don't use your rewind again. I need to to listen to me Miss Caulfield."
"What the fuck is going on, why aren't my powers working, how do you know about my powers, and who in the HELL are you?"
The man caught his breath at the top of the hill. He was wearing a grey suit with a white button up dress shirt underneath and shoes which appeared a cross between dress shoes and boots.
Breathing heavily, he spoke through heavy inhales after his run up the very long hill through the storm.
"Man I'm tired of this speech but it should be the last one. Maxine Caulfield, my name is of no consequence as we're required to give a generic pseudonym anyway. I am with an organization which has similar abilities as you have, but significantly greater understanding and mastery. It is our job to address people with these anomalous abilities and rectify their mistakes. I am here to inform you- ok this is way too loud out here, can we actually get into this lighthouse?"
The man walked around the building, found a door, and found it locked. He pulled out a set of lockpicks and in moments the door was open.
"If you ladies don't mind, I would much rather finish up this case in some kind of shelter and this is about all we've got right now."
"Ok mister time cop, if you know anything about what is going on here, you should know damn well that we're not going anywhere with any crazy stranger." Chloe yelled, standing between Max and the strange man.
"Miss Price, it has been one hell of a week cleaning up your friend's mess. I just want to get this done as cleanly as I can and go home. If you recall, every single bad thing which has happened to you in the past week, or in Miss Caulfield's case several weeks, has happened because of someone you personally knew and frequently interacted with, not because of strangers. Strangers seem to have been the only people who DIDN'T cause any problems. Now please if not for my sake than for your own, it is pouring down rain and you aren't going anywhere, your powers don't work like that even though you think they do. Just come out of the rain and I'll explain."
The two girls looked at each other with concern, but Max walked into the lighthouse past the man followed by Chloe who didn't take her eyes off of him.
The man closed the door behind them but did not lock it. There was not much inside, a bench and a plaque on a wall with the history of the light house.
"Ladies, you might as well sit down. This shouldn't take too long to explain since there isn't any more work I can really do here."
The man lit a cigarette, offered one to Chloe who declined, and continued his explanation.
"Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm here to inform you that your powers are creating disturbances in the Time-Space continuum and it is in yours and everyone else in existence's well being if you cease using them altogether. They do not go away, you do not erase the timelines that you rewind out of, and every time you use your powers you create a new tangent timeline which continues on with you and the consequences of your actions in it. More specific to your situation, your powers are not the cause of this storm, the solar eclipse, the snow, or the dying animals, which I expect will be a relief to you but will raise just as many questions. I assure you one of our associate departments of unnatural phenomena is looking into it, they will be visiting you in a similar manner that I have and am currently doing and will inform you of any explanation they find. I have had to give you these explanations so many times and answered so many of the same questions, I'll just put the ball in your court. What questions do you have right now, I'll answer them as well as I can but I make no guarantee you'll be happy with what you hear, so be careful not to ask anything you can't handle the truth of."
"God, um. Why didn't my powers work out there?" Max asked.
"They did. I hope that was the last tangent universe we have to deal with. When you use your powers, you more or less copy your brain at the time, jump to a newly created timeline and implement your current knowledge to that past event. It doesn't erase the line you were in, in each line you had a similar issue asking why your power didn't work. You had to live out that timeline as though you didn't have powers anymore. You aren't changing anything in that timeline, just creating a new one. And from the file I've been putting together you've got hundreds of tangents. By the way, I don't want to come off like I'm mad at you. You haven't done anything wrong, you're not in trouble, and at least right now in this timeline you're not in any danger. You just used your ability a lot more than other people and happen to have been in the single most disturbing and traumatic set of experiences I have ever had to clean up after. I know from a lot of speaking with you and those around you that you always tried your best to help people and to do the right thing. Though there are also a lot of timelines where people are not happy with the choices you made. But most of the time you're an honest hero Miss Caulfield."
"Max, just call me Max."
"You usually do say that. But like I said, you were constantly at least trying to help others, we wish you could have succeeded more often than you failed, but no one could blame you being in a situation you didn't know what would happen doing your best to be be helpful."
"So, like, there are times people died even though I saved them?"
"Are you sure you want this answer?"
Max thought a few moments. Chloe, Kate, Mr. Madson, all the people during the storm, even herself. She'd failed to save so many people though she tried over and over again to do so. If what the man said was true, she had actually created more deaths than saves, some people dying multiple times before she could manage to save them once.
She shook her head, she didn't want to hear what she already knew.
"Are there any timelines where I actually saved everyone?"
The man put out his finished cigarette.
"You, no. Me, yes, as least as far as we could. Time is a chaotic thing and we can't control everything. Every timeline where you went back to before Mr. Price's death except the one where he survived and Chloe got hurt, relatively few as they were, we stopped him from getting in the car, and were able to inform the police about Mr. Jefferson far before he ever came close to Blackwell. In theory we saved a lot of people thanks to you in those lines. All the girls he hurt, Kate, Rachel, even Nathan ended up better off because we knew about his situation before things got too bad. Those are your silent hero lines, where you didn't have to do anything but live a happier life. We can't know for sure what happened, but we left our people in those lines long enough to ensure Jefferson was captured and prosecuted, Nathan got real help away from his family, and even Frank Bowers got locked up before he could poison the school. We can only speculate what happened after our jobs were wrapped up."
Max and Chloe both felt huge reliefs.
Chloe spoke up emphatically. "So you're saying there is at least a chance at one timeline where me, Rachel, and Max are all ok and hella best buds all bound for stardom? Maybe where I didn't end up a vegetable or a trainwreck?"
"We can hope but unfortunately I can't make any guarantee."
"We'll take it. So much shit must have gone down in those other times these little victories are the only silver lining." Chloe was incredibly relieved just to think that in a few realities, Rachel was ok and the scum of the town got what they deserved.
"Um, what. What causes people to get these powers? I thought I got mine in order to save Chloe, but it doesn't sound like there was anything like fate giving it to me. It just kind of made everything worse," Max quietly asked.
"The day I have an answer for that and we find a way to stop it is the day my whole department gets to quit this job and live a normal life. I really haven't the faintest clue, it just happens. We do know that trauma sets it off, we think the powers already exist in people and don't appear until something forces it out. For you it was Chloe being shot, for me it was just falling off a ladder. Wouldn't have been too rough of a cleanup if you only did it once and let it go. Once we got the call about your case, we got back to that first timeline, stabilized Chloe, captured Bowers, Jefferson, and Prescott, even got Kate's video taken down and helped you connect with her. Easy and clean. But you got that hero thing in your brain and it really took off. Again, no blame on you, you couldn't have known. You ask me I say you did what was right most of the time even if some of the more self centered members of our team wish you'd just stopped playing detective."
"So what happens now? The storm is still going on out there, isn't there anything we can do to stop it? Or maybe save some people?"
"We already saved everyone we could. We tapped into this line as soon as you came into this timeline and started a full region evacuation. We can confirm at the very least Chloe's parents, all your schoolmates, and most of the people you've met are being relocated inland right now. The Bay will probably be leveled, but at least people are alive. Can always rebuild or move, can't bring back the dead once they're dead. You know, you've tried."
"I want to know about Jefferson, you said you caught him in a bunch of the timelines. What happens to him." Max was angry thinking about him, especially knowing there were a lot of timelines where he either severely hurt or killed her.
"Figured you'd ask. I don't know for sure how you'll take it but I would guess you'd be happy to hear it. My organization lives outside of normal jurisdictions. Wouldn't say we have the right to do some of the things we do, but we do them anyway. Most of the time that sick son of a bitch is dead. The world doesn't have any need for someone who has to kidnap and torture people in the name of art, everyone is better off without him and removes the innocent until proven guilty crap that lets guys like him walk free."
"What about in this timeline? Is he dead or at least in jail?"
The man hesitated but told them the truth. "He should be, as long as my partners got their part of the job done before the storm hit. We'll know soon enough. I'd have done it myself but my job is to be here explaining the situation to you. This line and the last one you just made are the two worst, where you've experienced everything of your trauma. We wanted to make sure you wouldn't have any more problems from this situation. You've seen enough for more lifetimes than you created."
"So what happens now? Sure you said the people are safe, but the town is probably gone. Should we just keep living here? Should we go live somewhere else?" Chloe asked.
"I'd say you should call your parents, Max, let them know you're ok. Leave out the obvious stuff, more trouble than it's worth, believe me. I can drive you guys to the evac point once this storm dies down and we can reconnect to your mom and Mr. Madsen. What you all choose to do is up to you for the most part. But I do have one final thing, basically an offer for you Max."
"Let me guess, join your time unit thing?"
"That's the long and short of it. We'd need to explain everything a lot more and train you to understand the impacts your powers make on each timeline you enter and how to use them without hurting yourself or making things worse. It's not much, it's a job. Its an emotional one, pay isn't great, but it's enough to get you by in each reality you step in. You can live whatever life you want in each reality, maybe change it up knowing you're a scientist in one life, an artist in another. There will always be timeline jumpers, might as well make use of them to fix the new ones' problems. If you're interested we can answer any more questions later. If not, just for the love of all existence never use your powers again so I don't have to open your file again."
Chloe narrowed her eyes and glared at the man. "Why shouldn't she get use her powers? Its part of her body, it's up to her what she does with it. What are you gonna do if she wants to use them to have fun now that the crazy is over?"
The man in the suit looked straight at Chloe with a stone face. "I believe I mentioned something about not asking questions you don't want to hear the truth to."
"Chloe, calm down. I'll consider the offer. For now, I just want everything to be over and try to do something normal with my life. I just want to see everyone is ok."
"Sounds like that storm may finally be gone, so we can-" the man looked outside the door, "Nope. We'll be here a while, second half of the storm is just hitting the bay now. I guess now might be a time for more questions or any ideas to lighten the mood while we wait it out."
"For everything that doesn't make sense, there's still something that hasn't had any answer for now. You said none of the natural stuff, not even this storm, had anything to do with my powers. So why did I see the storm in a vision before I ever used my powers?"
The man spun around from the door with a face in shock. "You what now?"
Closing the case suddenly just turned into a long night. In his head he thought "That's paranormal science for you, always something new you didn't know was real."