A thirteen year old Max stood with a smile on her face, she had finally done it. She delayed William just enough that he survived his ordeal and had returned safely with Mrs. Price. Max attempted to use her powers to return to the point in time she had traveled from, but nothing happened. She reached out her hand but she went nowhere. Her nose felt like it might start to bleed if she tried again, but her focus was interrupted by a knock at the door.
William answered it and an unknown man stood in front of the doorway. He wore a grey suit was holding a shiny badge. William called for Max, the strange man said he was here to speak with her.
"Good morning, Miss Caulfield. I'm with a minor branch of the FBI. I am here to privately discuss certain matters with you. I believe I would be correct to assume that the Prices wouldn't allow you to ride away with a stranger and without consent of your parents before we have our discussion. But I'm sure you can understand that the subject of what we need to discuss is not something you are ready to explain to everyone. Rest assured Mr. Price, no one is in any trouble or danger right now. This is just to speak with her about a gift she has we have learned about, and to discuss some options for her future. I'm sure you understand that given my department, the discussion will be classified, but you are not under arrest, subpoena, or any such legal complication."
The adult Prices were unsure how to respond but Max walked forward and motioned for the man to bend over so she could whisper to him.
"Is this about my powers?"
"Yes, this is a preventative discussion so that my department and I can begin preventing multiple events for the benefit of you and those around you."
She spoke aloud, "Its ok, I know what I'm doing. William, can you drive me home so he can talk to my parents before I go talk to him? I already know what this is about and its something I really don't think I can talk about to anyone else. I just need you to trust me."
No one knew what to do, so William, Joyce, Max, and Chloe got in Wiliams car. They drove to Max's home with the man and his stereotypical black 4 door sedan which one would expect of any government agent. When they got to Max's house, she called for her parents and explained that she needed to go talk with the agent about something secret she couldn't tell them about just yet. Again she asked everyone to trust her that she knew what she was doing. Her parents signed the release he pulled from inside his jacket to clear her to speak to him without supervision.
"Mrs. and Mr. Caulfield, I want you to know that you are welcome to follow me to my office. You will be permitted for Max to be finished with our discussion and then she will be free to go with you, no questions asked and no strings attached. You just will not be permitted to sit in on the discussion, nor to be aware of anything discussed unless Max decides to have you or others informed by my department, or to do it herself. Under normal circumstances she would be bound to classified secrecy about the discussion, but given the nature of the situation, we will be permitting her to make choices about what to divulge."
Chloe and her family returned home, and the Caulfields climbed into their mini van to follow the man in grey. They arrived at a small office building about an hour away, they checked in at the front desk, and Max followed the man into what she expected to be some form of interrogation room but seemed more like a business conference room.
"Well Max. I want you to know that this is the end of the road. This is my very last stop in your case. My organization, and every member in it including myself, have similar abilities as you have experienced. I need to make one thing very clear- whenever you attempt to use your ability, it works. It may seem like it doesn't, but it does. You just have to finish living out this timeline while a new you with all your current memories lives out a new timeline you have created."
He began what felt like a tiredly rehearsed and repeated explanation of how her powers functioned, and how he and his colleagues had been "cleaning up her mess". However it was obvious that there were many details he was leaving out. He never mentioned Rachel Amber, which she just knew was somehow involved in everything which was happening to her. He didn't discuss Nathan Prescott much except what she already knew.
"Do you have any questions? I need you to understand that there are answers I will be hesitant to give, and some answers you probably will be better off never knowing."
Too many questions, but one stuck out from earlier. "You said that I have a choice about who I tell about all this. Does that mean I can tell people I have powers? I get that you don't want me to use them ever again, but can I at least tell people I have them?"
"I would highly discourage doing so, but I will tell you that this one time we are allowing it. Max. This is what we are calling your 'happy ending'. This is the farthest back your timeline goes that we can interfere in. And frankly this is the timeline I'm effectively retiring in. This is the one that I'm going to stay in and safeguard. There are things coming in the future which you probably don't want to know about because this version of you will never have to experience them. I want you to live your life happy. I want you to stay friends with Chloe. I'm going to break just about every rule my organization normally has just to give you the happiest timeline possible because of how much you have seen and lived through in every other line. Frankly this line is as much about my satisfaction as it is about your happiness."
"What kind of stuff aren't you telling me? Did you ever find Rachel? What is going to happen to Mr. Madsen if he doesn't marry Joyce? And what about that psycho Nathan? Is he the one behind Rachel disappearing?"
"Take this as your only warning. If you want me to tell you, I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything. Even things you would never have known because the events of your situation extend years before you ever discovered your powers. But I promise you that you will not like what you hear. You will probably get sick, cry, and beg me to stop, which of course I will as soon as you ask. I'll take the kid gloves off and hit you with truth like the worst timeline you've ever experienced didn't learn. And if you want, I'll even tell you what I'm going to do after this meeting concludes." He leaned back in his chair and awaited her answer. Either way he had a lot of work to do in the next few months to prevent tragedies he knew could come, and even more work to monitor everything and everyone in the Bay to ensure that no tragedy befell his final project.
Max thought for a short while about the way the man had explained this. "Do it. Fuck me up, sir. Don't hold back."
The man cracked his knuckles, pulled out a note pad from his jacket, and laid down an astonishing tale.
- How saving William and using her powers led to Chloe's accident in another timeline, leading Chloe to beg Max to kill her.
- How the events of that caused her to return to this very day to ensure William did die.
- Explained how in this timeline it may be necessary for her to intentionally ignore Chloe if she wanted to minimize the changes of events in this timeline- to ensure the meeting of and bonding with Rachel Amber as it had in near all alternate timelines.
- Explained how Chloe came to become the woman Max knew from her older years, how she connected with Rachel. Explained the drama of Rachel's birth mother, the woman's kidnapping and Chloe's attempted rescue, even how Frank Bowers rescued both Chloe and the woman from a man Max had never heard of.
- Detailed the interactions of Chloe's life and friends which Max never even heard about.
- Explained how David fit into everything in the Chloe's accident timeline as well as all other times when he married Joyce, painting him generally as a good person with poor decision making.
- Explained that Nathan was a product of his father and teacher. He was not acting in the way that the boy could have if his upbringing had been healthy.
Max sat mostly quietly through everything until this point. Something about this didn't seem right.
"What teacher, sir? You never mentioned anything about that."
"Oh boy, this is the big one. Um. One moment." He stood up, pulled a small garbage can over to where Max sat, and sat himself again.
"At the end of the chain of blame, your teacher Mr. Jefferson is the cause of much of the problem. What happened to Rachel is an accident made by Nathan, but only because of Jefferson."
"What are you talking about? Sure he didn't help Kate much when she went to him, but he's not a bad guy or anything."
"That's something you would have found out if you returned the next day when you returned. The thursday of that week, you find where Rachel is buried. Yes, she's already dead in your main time, overdosed on a drug that Nathan gives her which I will explain." He hesitated for a bit but decided to continue. "As soon as you find her buried corpse, Jefferson shoots Chloe in the head, drugs you, and then the nightmare really starts."
"Bullshit, he would never do that to us!" She stood up slamming the table with her open hands.
"Everything I'm telling you is 100% fact Miss Caulfield. The day after you return, you and Chloe are able to trace clues until you find a barn owned by the Prescotts. You two go there and find an underground storm shelter, wherein you find camera equipment and binders of women who have been drugged and photographed, one of which is the binder of Rachel Amber."
Max dry heaved a bit and pulled the bin up to her lap, but coughed words out telling him to 'finish it'.
"Mr Jefferson had been abducting women for years, photographing them in states of helplessness, drugging them to keep them from knowing what was happening or remembering the incidents, and releasing them back otherwise unharmed into society. He was doing this for years. He never dated anything or wrote incriminating notes so with the best research we have been able to do, his crimes date back to about 1 year from now. He has to our knowledge not yet started his crimes, but we will be preventing them from ever occurring."
"What about Nathan? You said he killed Rachel."
"Mr Jefferson was using him. He recognized that the child was being abused in many ways by his father, and took the boy under his wing. He became a mentor to Nathan and manipulated him and his family to create the Dark Room where he taught Nathan about taking the photos down there. If anything you can have some peace that to all our records none of the women were violated beyond being kidnapped, drugged, and posed. One night Nathan tried to do the process on his own with Rachel, but he gave her too much of the drug and it killed her. Jefferson found out and they hid the body together. Where you found it is something I refuse to tell you under any circumstances. You will never be able to find out. It will never happen in your current lifetime."
Max vomited into the can and screamed "It was the junkyard wasn't it. Right where everything keeps happening to me and Chloe. That god damed junkyard!"
"Well, that's that then, you'll just have to deal with that knowledge now."
She cried a while and the man sat silently. When she could no longer throw up anymore, she asked him about the things he planed to do now.
"Unfortunately that's not the end, so unless you ask me to stop explaining I have a few more things to tell you."
Her eyes widened and her stomach quivered in pain from the wretching, but she decided against her instincts. "Do it. I think I know whats coming and if you can promise me that I'll never have to experience it for real, I'll take it."
This girl had a fortitude he hadn't expected. So she would have it her way. "I'll spare you some of the details which frankly don't matter at all, but I'll tell you this- your powers led to your death a lot. I mean a lot. Until you found a way to survive. And actually its David who ends up saving you. He finds you and Chloe's board in her room and follows it to the Dark Room and after, well a few failed attempts which don't end well for you or him, he finally managed to get the best of Jefferson with your help. There are a few timelines where David kills Jefferson for killing Chloe. Frankly I don't blame him for those timelines, nor do I blame you for creating them, going back in time just to see that bastard die over and over."
She sat there stone faced now, like she was just hearing but no longer able to react. If 'shocked' ran on actual electricity, then her batteries were completely drained.
"Well after that you either got to see your town destroyed and dealt with the fallout, went back to new timelines to try to save the town which never go very well, and one final decision. For some reason you got it in your head that you needed to either sacrifice Chloe by going back and letting her be shot or sacrificing Arcadia Bay by staying with her. That last decision is the timeline I just came from. It was your last timeline you used you powers. So now we're just at this one. The one where William lived and none of the bad has happened yet."
"So what," she gagged a bit, "what are you going to do now? And what should I do?"
"Now I do some dirty work. I need to find Sera and get her cleaned up early, maybe let her be a bigger part of Rachel's life at some point. Gotta figure out how that's gonna go. I'm gonna remove Damon Merrick from any and all equations. Legally would be ideal but whatever has to be done at this point. I need to find out how to rehabilitate Bowers into a good citizen since he's already a decent person real deep down. Jefferson is never going to get a single victim if I can get to him in time. I think he's priority one just in case. Other than that, its up to you, kid. Rachel will move here in a few years, you can all get to know her early on. I can try to get her mom in the picture. Get the drugs and violence off the streets of Arcadia Bay. Oh yeah, I need to get rid of Mr. Prescott as soon as I can. I'm sure I'll find something on him to get him put away. Find a way to get Nathan into a good home where he can grow up to be a decent person. I don't recommend telling anyone any of what you know. Not even a therapist. I'll be in and around the Bay probably until some day when you three girls decide to move away from this little patch of hell. So once I set up, you'll be welcome to stop by my office any time you need to talk, with your parents permission of course. You can take this knowledge and get the three of you together early. You can stay in touch with them when you move away or maybe even convince your parents to let you stay in the bay since you'll have the Prices to stay with, or maybe even the Ambers. Choices are yours, just don't cause any problems and don't get in too much danger. And do NOT under Any circumstances ever use your powers again. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal, sir. I trust you. Do what you need to do, and I'll try not to cause you any trouble. I just want everyone to be happy and safe, and I think you do too."
"Well, now you do have an idea how badly I want that. To the point that I'm risking the fabric of time and space just to see you three grow up and survive to be old enough to drink."
Max stood up and apologized for the mess in the can, but the man waved it off as expected. She and the man left the room, he shook her parents' hands and said that she would be just fine and no one had anything to worry about, he just believed Max had a bright future ahead of her, especially if her family could get her a decent camera, though he didn't explain why.
That was the last time she ever saw the man, at least up close. She never felt the need to go to him, never saw what he did in the background. But she did get to meet Rachel two years later when she moved to Arcadia Bay, got to meet Sera when she came to meet Rachel for the first time. She saw the news articles for Mr. Jefferson and for Damon Merrick's arrests about a year apart from each other- somehow entangled in a mutual drug running scandal which she knew from the man's description never existed. And she got to know Frank who worked alongside David Madsen as the security guards for Blackwell Academy, for which all three girls had scholarships paid for by an anonymous donor.
Once in a while she would see the man on a street, at the Two Whales, at a school function. He was always watching, but letting them have their lives. She never waived, never said anything, she just lived her life and that was all he wanted.
