Samuel sipped his coffee. He held station at the far end of a large corporate conference table. The room's walls were glass, one side open to the familiar cloudy skyline a Los Angeles winter.

He began. "Thanks for joining everyone. Some of you may know each other, while others are new. Let's start off by going around the room; each of you, share a quick intro. Get to know you. Name, affiliations, what your area is, and then we'll proceed?"

Those seated around the conference table nodded, glanced at the others with the usual awkward shuffling typical of these kinds of intro rounds.

"I'll start. My name is Samuel Williams. I'm a contractor working with Exparity LLC as operational lead for this project. My background is military, special operations, agency and corporate." All part of the euphemistic common language around such tables.

Samuel, born with another name, was the cliché grey man. His appearance, persona, habits, and every aspect of his life were designed to be mundane, unmemorable, nondescript.

He was over six feet tall but appeared shorter. His build was tough but wiry; that of a professional operator, but hidden, minimized. His hair was dark brown; cut was average. His age read as somewhere in his forties. His dress was unremarkable. Business, but not flashy. No facial hair, no glasses. No scars, tattoos or birthmarks. Ethnicity was European, but fluid. His speaking voice was present but unthreatening.

He lived in an average residential neighborhood in an average beige stucco house south of LA, and his family did not know his real profession. His wife worked part-time at as a music tutor, drove a minivan with soccer stickers in the back window. His kids went to public schools. His phone was always one generation behind the latest, and he lived within the means of a man who made one-tenth his actual income.

He was designed, by training and continuous maintenance, to be the kind of person who would go unnoticed on a bus. The sort of person one might converse with for an hour on a plane without recalling a single distinguishing thing about him after. A person who could clear a room of armed opponents using everyday objects, or their weapons, or his hands.

He floated where his skills were needed, often at the intersection of military, government and corporate interests, usually by referral, and then only in cases where the degrees of difficulty or costs of failure were higher than standard. His mission profiles ranged from project management and espionage overseas to asset extraction or the occasional recruitment or rendition here at home.

Lately, his checks came from Exparity, one of a few dozen shell companies under some subsidiary conglomerate or another. The company would fold within a year, as new ones were constructed for these kinds of purposes. It was a small, nested world.

His current objective, their mission, was to evaluate the character and capabilities of an extraordinary young girl named Maxine. Once cataloged, they would likely recruit her. Or failing that, package and hand her off to another subsidiary company who would find a non-cooperative use for her. Or in the worst possible case, ensure that her talents couldn't be put to use against US interests. As he understood it, most talents volunteered when presented with a clear picture of the alternatives. It wasn't a terrible life.

They continued introductions around the table. Some, Samuel didn't know beyond their dossiers, including a few eager junior staffers, a couple of techs, two project managers. Also new to him were the team's DOD liaison - coordinating efforts and authority through DC, as well as their new domestic LE liaison, responsible for coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement.

Michaels, he knew from a few jobs they'd done together stateside and in the Middle East. Solid field lead. Impulsive at times, ruffled feathers. Smartass, but always landed the job right.

And Miss Margaret, their resident telepath. She was one of the first he'd recruited when he entered the private sector ten years ago. She was in her 50's at the time, working as a family therapist in Ohio. Recruited for whom was not a question he ever asked. It didn't matter. She worked for them, and they represented US interests in these ongoing cold wars.

Real talents were rare, with only a handful manifesting in any given region in any generation. The US had them. The Russians had them. Brits. French. Chinese. South Africans. Indians. Brazil. Anyone with a functioning society over thirty years old had some effort dedicated to locating or recruiting talents and harnessing their gifts for espionage, diplomacy, or silent warfare. Few, if any, were volunteers.

Introductions over, he pointed the way. "Okay - today is my first day on the clock. As a refresher, we have our roles and reporting structure. Accounting is online, per diem set. Our initial timeframe is a 6-month contract, assignment, or TDY depending on your home team. You all have credentials for physical access, secure comms, encryption, and collaboration platforms. We have whiteboards, flat-screens, unlimited sticky notes, and some brilliant teams in the public and private sectors getting their briefings and assignments outside these walls today - which we'll all be coordinating and managing shortly."

He continued, "We need actionable intel, we need a workable plan, and we need to carry out that plan to its successful completion. Getting that young lady on board or off the board are the only two outcomes. We're all briefed and up to speed on the goose chase in Seattle yesterday. So let's begin. What did we learn?"

Max was lulled by the rhythmic clicking of the tracks, felt as much as heard through the thin padding of her vinyl bench seat.

As she rested her head against the warm window, her face reflected shades of morning sun.

There was something almost magical in the way eyes changed under direct light. The way it bent through the lens. The way otherwise invisible colors, structures in the iris pulled forward. Organic. Alive.

She defocused, let her gaze wander over the endless, undulating dunes. Fantastically large rope grids raced by, layered in the sand on each side of the track for miles on end. Anchors against the relentless desert tide.

She'd only been on the train for a couple hours, but the small oasis village where she'd spent the past two weeks already felt remote, distant. The villagers had no memory of her stay; she erased that timeline with her most recent jump back. She'd always remember their kindness, even if they didn't.

Her whole trip was an unplanned adventure, but probably necessary in hindsight. She needed Chloe to help figure some of it out.

Her hosts in the prior timeline lived in a brick, stone, and mud house that was possibly older than Oregon, but they were warm and helpful and took her in without hesitation. They asked nothing in return for the weeks she was there. They did have smartphones, which were invaluable for planning her trip back. Her command of Uyghur was terrible, but a few of the villagers spoke passable Mandarin, so were able to act as translators.

So fucking weird that Mandarin would be the bridge between us, but it makes sense now.

Her train sped toward Kashgar, perched at the western edge of the desert, where she hoped to make her way to the airport and stow-away on an Air China flight to Beijing. Repeating the process once there to connect to San Francisco.

She figured it would be easier to rewind at each stop along the way, so she didn't lose time or get too far ahead. She'd need to sleep eventually, and wasn't sure if she could rewind past that barrier. It hadn't come up at home, and she was reluctant to try on a moving vehicle, given her experience falling from her captor's van back in Seattle. Still aiming to hit the 'noon in two days' mark with Chloe, she wanted to land somewhere close, so neither would be left waiting too long. That kind of flight travel math, with half a world of time zones and actual time travel mixed in, gave her a headache.

Chloe could do this in her head without thinking about it.

The train was a little over half full, their faces a curious mix of almost everything except what she had always thought of as Chinese. She learned that the Uyghur were one of about fifty or so ethnic groups that lived in the region at the midpoint of the Silk Road, between Asia on one side and the Middle East and Europe on the other. Her hosts in the village behind her said they shared ancestry with the Turks, rather than the Han Chinese.

The mummies they told her about were neither Chinese nor Turks. They were red-haired Caucasians, by the look of them. They were found sticking out of the sand back in the 1980's. No one was certain, but they were believed to be part of a large settled group of misplaced Europeans who vanished between four and six thousand years ago.

Max took history classes like everyone else, but hers was a huge world, with a lot of different histories.

A bend in the track, and the sunlight flashed a new patch of blue in her reflection. She smiled. Hadn't even been her idea. A couple of the village children wanted to help the rewound timeline. She'd told them how she was lost and separated from her best friend with blue hair, so they tried to give her a little piece of home to carry with her. The village grew cotton for local trade, and some of the children found the organic blue thread dye in a workshop outbuilding.

Kids man.

She liked the way it made her feel. So, after losing the color in the jump, she reclaimed the pack of dye and reapplied before leaving. It was just a bit in front, maybe an inch wide and the length of her bangs.

This was the longest Max had been away from Chloe since they'd been back together. It would only be two days for Chloe, but it was weeks for Max. As silly as this dash of blue probably looked on her, it made her feel not quite so far away.

She needed to talk with Chloe about what she saw in the cave though, in the real version and the dream. As well as her visions. They only represented tiny fragments of what she suspected but were just as much about Chloe as Max.

Chloe lurched forward into a stall. The salesman cringed as the V12 ground to a halt.

Oof. Not a good start.

He sidled up, spoke over the passenger window, "You should put it in Sport and use the paddle shifters. Trust me - it's so much better. Don't even bother trying to drive it in automatic mode - ever - that's only there for European emissions tests."

"Fuckin' hippies," joked Chloe. He laughed.

She popped out the sapphire crystal key, reinserted it, restarting the car. The engine roared but settled back to a more refined burble. The subsonic growl vibrated through the quilted leather seat. Hit the glass 'S' button in the lacquered center dash, flipping the right paddle behind the steering wheel toward her, once for first gear, as he showed her. "Shit they don't tell you on Top Gear." She shrugged and waved as she peeled away.

Chloe lusted after the black Aventador they saw on the website. But Max fell in love with the blue convertible Vanquish. Cause it matched Chloe's hair. Which it did. Max wasn't a car person, but she thought it was a bit more 'low key,' as if that was a meaningful distinction among exotics. So they compromised and got the Aston.

Yeah, that's not how compromise works.

But it was her call, and she chose the one she thought would make Max happiest.

Guess that's how love works, though.

I'm in so much trouble with this girl.

She took the onramp heading south, turned on the sound system and tapped a new playlist on her phone. Two sonic lenses rose majestically from the black leather dash, screaming guitars at her, while the subwoofers punched her hard in the back with drums. "That. Is. so. fucking. COOOOL!" she yelled over the music, pounding on the steering wheel with her fists.

No rocket launchers though. Have to work on that.

She wanted rocket launchers.

In the distant sky, sunlight reflected as the drone kept pace.

Max's train pulled into the station around three in the afternoon. Or five in the afternoon. Depended on who you asked. Near as she could tell, the act of setting time on a watch was a binary political statement. Loyal to the local region, or loyal to Beijing?

To an outsider, it only made schedules challenging to figure out, on top of the already plentiful language and cultural barriers. The people were amiable though. And damned if they didn't have some of the best noodles, kabobs, and pocket pot-pie type things she'd ever eaten. It was the most welcoming inhospitable land she'd visited. For all its quirks, she was sad to say goodbye.

But she was still a stranger here, without money, without much of anything beyond borrowed clothes, and her life was on the other side of the world. So she felt a certain urgency to get on with things and get home.

She hailed a cab at the train station, making note of the time. The driver's English was better than his Mandarin, so they went with that. He made small talk as they drove north out of the city, toward the airport. Pointing out this bit of history or that. It only took them 20 minutes, and when they arrived, she got out of the car, said goodbye and rewound 20 minutes. She hoped she left him in the right spot. She couldn't pay for the cab, but that was no reason to cause him inconvenience or waste his gas.

Least I could do.

She walked through the entrance.

It wasn't a large airport, but it was bright and clean, with comfy blue airport seats. There weren't terminals as such. The planes parked a short walk away, and ladder trucks provided the means for passengers to get on or off. The jets were all standard commercial planes, so she planned to sneak on and ride in the pressurized luggage compartment.

This is gonna be easier than I thought. I can wait until they've loaded luggage, freeze time, and walk right on.

She examined the schedule of departures on the board. Could either go back in time eight hours or wait two more to catch the twice-daily flight to Beijing. She decided to wait. Still had days of time between now and Chloe.

A growl of hunger reminded her she hadn't eaten. She had the little bit of money her hosts gave her for the trip. Enough for a couple of meals. She went to one of the food service areas, ordered an eclectic mix of lamb kabob, rice, bottled water and a side of soup dumplings, because…soup dumplings.

While she ate, waited for her plane, she thought back to the cave. Thought she understood the more memory-like dreams. Would have to enlist Chloe to help her figure out what, if anything, they might mean. But the cave thing…she couldn't get her head around that one yet.

She was introduced to the cave in dream form before she discovered the real one. It felt more vision than memory but still seemed pretty real. She remembered the whole thing after, but even with her voice narrating the dream within the dream while she was dreaming it, she found it difficult to follow or put the abstractions represented into words. She almost wished Chloe dreamed it instead. Would probably have understood it better.

When she became aware of entering the dream, she found herself at the entrance to a small river valley in darkness. She was cold and lost. A doe appeared around a shrub upriver, regarding her. Waiting. She'd played this game before, so did the sensible thing and followed. It led her to a small cave entrance in the canyon wall. Trees and shrubs had grown to cover the opening. A field of stars filled the area within the cave. Hole to another universe. Diagonal and inward to the stars, the background flow of time. It shifted as she changed perspective, as though looking through a spherical aperture. The doe laid down in the short grass, as if to wait for her, ears twitching.

The words flowed through her. All time is simultaneous, from an external point of view. But time was also relative. Like space. Like gravity. Aspects. Looking out the window of a moving train at the surrounding countryside, she saw the same view of time as an observer embedded in space, traveling through history in a linear direction. The world rushed by, relentlessly, unavoidably. But against the field of cave stars, she imagined a different view. Not of movement through space over time in a single small section, but of the whole of space-time existing at once. A multidimensional, clear, frozen, liquid object, irregular, expanding. Space, time, matter and energy were only people-words describing different behaviors of the same thing. She perceived patterns where currents and eddies of the whole universe appeared to flow like a visible thing as she moved around it, interacting with embedded density variations, sometimes spilling over, sometimes around, and sometimes flowing in circles and hyper-spheres in low-pressure pockets. Stars were born, migrated, lived and died, giving birth to new stars - the entire lifecycle visible at once.

If all time is simultaneous, then there is no disagreement between notions of fate and free will. Both are participants in the single whole, and all that shifts is a point of view. Beginning, or end. Free will is the absolute that shapes the universe. Fate is the shape of the universe when seen from the other end of time.

But what if the universe splits? Duplicates?

As Max imagined she understood the words she spoke aloud to herself in the dream, she exploded upward, outward and inward to yet another view. Of the whole whole show - bifurcating micro universes at each quantum state decay, zooming out to crystalline kaleidoscope duplications of multiverses spinning away, some folded back into the source like static, while others went on to expand into monolithic structures, forming part of the polymembrane hyper-structure, its surface covered in a foam of quantum escape and reabsorption. Gravity as pure geometry, distortions of density across expanding, commingled multi-verses. Mistaken for dark matter. Gravity bleeding between realities like thoughts, each brain a quantum trap for consciousness within a universe contemplating itself.

And Max, the observer, floated in her own bubble universe, navigating, duplicating herself, blending in, fading out, jumping collapsing branch points between newly fragmented prisms, stepping outside to slide from one thought to the next. Orbiting Chloe. Always Chloe. Max was anti-entropy, linked to a directive consciousness, and that consciousness had a priority, a goal. Her.

Time manipulation is but a symptom of your power. Wake, up Max.

Her third person self-narration stopped, and her head the dream.

Like a fucking omnidimensional balloon. Dream over. What the hell, head? Where does this shit even come from?

Her noggin began to hurt again.

This is why I should stick to photography and greeting small animals. My mind isn't designed to work this way. Like a stupid painful recursive möbius funhouse brainhurt. Ugh.

She imagined this is what Chloe experienced recreationally every time she was baked.

Michaels took the call. Day-before was mostly bringing everyone up to speed, getting their brains flexible, and working around the data and the problems. Almost all of that was out the window.

"Okay everybody - please stop what you're doing. The NSA vetted this. The intercept was pulled off an encrypted sat-phone in China, connected to the mobile phone of Max's companion, Chloe Price, yesterday morning. The intercept data linked with the open voice data from the local carrier, voice-rec matched up, and they flagged it for us."

"Who do they know in China?" asked one of the staffers.

"Max," said Michaels.

That turned some heads.

He put the audio file of the call through the room speakers.

"So I'm just gonna say this. According to the locals, I'm in a place called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwestern China"…"Been here for the past two weeks…well, past to me - still your future I guess."

A few raised eyebrows.

"…Kid took a picture of me with his phone when they found me. Jumped through that just now. Long story, but I had a few prophetic dreams…"

"What the hell Max? You were just here?"…"Last thing I remembered was waking up next to you in the middle of the night, last night for you, before going back to sleep."

…"I only learned this one about myself recently. Turns out I do speak Chinese."

"..tai chi. Which is how I was able to fight across boundaries of differential time, space and inertial frames of reference"…

"…It probably doesn't even matter how long it takes me to get there now that I think about it; I'll just clock back to noon, two days from now whenever I land, and we'll meet up then?"

Michaels hit stop. The room was still. Shared looks of stunned silence around the table.

A nervous laugh from one of the staffers. "She's messing with us. I mean, she knows we're on her, and she's just messing with us, right?"

From another, "We're not…we're not seriously thinking about this are we? Are we?"

They were all familiar with the limited pantheon of true talents in the world, each fantastic in their own right. Telepaths could synchronize with other people's brainwaves. Precognitives could synchronize with their own brain waves, if slightly offset in time. Both were essentially readers. The whisperers could push thoughts or visions or ideas into other people's heads; like telepaths with transmitters instead of receivers. Telekinetics were rare. Only a couple were known to have ever existed. None in the modern age, so they didn't have any scientific idea of what they were doing. Firebugs could excite molecules. Freezers could slow them down. Usually at a small scale. Teleporters were also rare, but not unheard of. They could move without moving, at great exhaustive effort, and only along lines of sight. They didn't have any in the US, but they knew the Russians had at least one, primarily used him for assassinations. There were also healers - and decayers, who were healers who used their abilities to damage organs and tissue.

Then there were the minor talents - people who could find objects, people who could draw locations where others were, that sort of thing. The big ones were rare. The minor talents were just as rare, but marginally more common than the majors. All of them had an underlying genetic component, rare in the general population. And of those, very few with markers ever manifested in any way. That was pretty much it. Far as any of them knew, that had been the playing field for as long as this game has been played. Maybe a hundred to a hundred-fifty people total over the past century. None were known to fall outside those boxes. Zero.

"No, but seriously - we're not considering this, right?"

"She's a goddamn time traveler." Michaels collapsed into his chair.

"Fuck."

Silence.

Samuel spoke up, his voice low, cadence even. "Doesn't change a thing. Not yet. If she's messing with the taps, it doesn't mean anything. If she's telling the truth, she's self-diagnosing, and she doesn't seem in control. We can't take her at her word, even if she believes it. Let's get back to facts, people. Proofs. Not intercept hearsay."

And with that short refocusing, everyone snapped back to the puzzle pieces.

"So was the sat-phone a relay, or was she really in China?"

"Do we have eyes in the area? Can we independently confirm? The Chinese government won't want to cooperate on this without a good reason."

"If we tell them what she might be, we'll never see her again."

"Or we might. We don't know her."

"Okay - If she's in China, did she time travel or teleport?"

"How would the two look different? How could we tell?"

"I don't think a person can teleport through an entire planet. The ones we know can barely push a couple of miles through open air," laughing nervously.

"What about drone data - what did the thermal in Seattle show overnight, before the call?"

"We'll get on that sir."

"I'm curious to see if we've made any progress understanding her blood work yet?"

"Nothing yet sir - we haven't been able to evaluate her for the markers - her cells aren't reacting as the lab guys expect. I wasn't going to bring this up until now cause it sounded a little crazy, but the astro guys said, in their analysis of the optical data, that even new photos of her blood and tissue cells were showing signs of uh, gravitational lensing - like you'd see out in space when a massive object like a galaxy or black hole bends light around and magnifies it."

"There's no way. That's just speculation!"

"They haven't been able to break apart the cells for sequencing. That's not speculation. The lensing exists in the photos - although the 'why' is unknown. It's repeatable."

"Woah."

"She said she's coming back into the US to meet Miss Price - how would she do that under the various scenarios proposed? And what's Miss Price up to?"

"Can you play that part back about 'prophetic dreams' or whatever she said? We're still back at square one I think with this - if you follow her words, she's a precog time traveler with teleportation behaviors. None of which makes sense."

"Do we have any records of her learning Chinese? Or martial arts of any kind at any point in her life?"

"Have we heard any proof that she speaks Chinese now? She said she did, but did we hear any in the recordings?"

"Price speaks English, so not surprising?"

"Sir - I know we're technically in a black hole here, but how secure are our identities as participants in all of this - in the distant future I mean? Is there any risk of FOIA requests, future declassification, so on? I only ask in case she is a time traveler and we piss her off at some point; I don't want her finding out I was here, going back in time and killing my grandfather, so I'm never born…"

"How do you know you aren't here as a result of her doing that to the last guy who had your job in another reality?"

"…fuck you, Michaels. That's not funny."

"It's going to be a long night."

"Coffee anyone?"

Chloe was somewhere in southern Oregon.

Straight, parallel ribbons of highway cut up and down the hills, through oaks and dried golden grass, as far forward as the eye could see. The California border wasn't far ahead. It rained all afternoon, so she put the top up. Grey skies. Pleh. It was nice to have windshield wipers that worked for a change. The minor luxuries.

She had a day and a half to play with the car on the drive down. Felt like she had a sense of it now. So much different than driving her truck. Way more put-together. Lower. Faster. Meaner. But settled right down when she wanted it to. Civilized and batshit crazy. Sounds familiar.

She was sad about all the admittedly gorgeous leather but told herself it was more respectful to use all of the animal than to throw parts away - if it was to die anyway. At least that's how she justified it in her head. She'd eaten her fair share of burgers. She knew she was a hypocrite. Didn't make it easier. But at least I'm self-aware. It does feel amazing.

The car was probably the second or third nicest thing she'd ever touched.

Speaking of—

She hadn't heard from Max since her first call home.

Hope she's okay.

Chloe had an uncomfortable time picturing her Max wandering around by herself across a hostile desert with who knew what temptations or dangers. Which was stupid. Max could take care of herself. She'd shown that time and time again.

She's been rescuing your raggedy ass since literally the moment she laid eyes on you.

Still felt like she needed to protect Max from the world.

I am a year older. And taller.

As though those facts had any bearing at all.

It wasn't that she felt useless, exactly. But if she was honest with herself, she felt useless. Max didn't need protecting. And it's not like Chloe could do any of that protection if faced with the necessity anyway. She was a liability in a fight.

Max needed help with answers. But Chloe didn't have any to give. She was a dropout. Technically, so was Max, but it wasn't the same. Max never gave up. Max was still growing, changing, advancing. In many ways, Max was quite literally passing her by, and that scared Chloe more than a little. She didn't want to be 'Chloe in jeopardy' all the time. But she wasn't a competent sidekick yet either. Staying home, out of the way, wasn't helping Max, but anything she did would slow Max down, get in her way, or put her in more danger.

Chloe refused to be useless.

But wasn't sure how to be useful.

She lit a cigarette. Hadn't had one in a while. She didn't want to smoke as much around Max.

Remember to air out the car in SF.

It's not like Max ever give her shit about smoking, but she always had gum if Chloe wanted some. Which she usually did before kissing Max.

Max. For all our talk of forever, sometimes I'm terrified I'll lose you. I won't be able to keep up. I won't be interesting to you anymore. I know I'm not good enough for you - not really. I hoped I could find a way. But I'm…I'm not seeing it.

Chloe tried to shake it off. Long stretches of alone time weren't always good for her. Got too much in her head, thinking in knots. Second guesses, doubts came back. The old fears. The weed used to help when she got like this back home. But staying at Max's parents, pot didn't seem like the thing to do. And she never felt this way when Max was around.

Fuck. It's only been a day. I miss her.

On the bright side, I'm strapped to a six hundred horsepower car capable of more than 200 mph; it's an open road, no cops around. And I have no unresolved emotional issues to worry about.

She smiled, rolled her eyes.

All else fails - punch it!

The mix of noise, adrenaline, and nicotine lifted her part-way out of her mood.

Max cleared her table, checked the clock. 30 minutes to go. The airport clearly ran on Beijing time.

Waiting.

Why can't I speed forward?

What's Chloe up to?

She took one of the blue chairs by the window, near the planes. The mountain ranges stretched to the haze beyond their wings.

She could still taste the dumplings.

Waiting. Pondering. Remembering beauty.

I wish Chlo could have seen it. Maybe we'll come back someday.

In comparison to her dream cave, the actual cave was far more mundane. Except for the part about there actually being an actual cave, but she wasn't too surprised by that anymore. It was still amazing inside, for all its two and three-dimensional simplicity.

She only had to walk ten minutes from her host family's house to find it. It was probably the reason she was brought here. Or came here. Or whatever.

The cave was known locally but kept hidden from outsiders. She wasn't sure why they shared it with her, other than she'd appeared out of thin air, and upon awakening, told them she'd dreamed of that exact cave.

On second thought, that was probably the reason. She laughed to herself.

When she found her way in, it was large inside, maybe thirty feet across and sixty feet long, the ceiling rose three floors up. Her borrowed flashlight couldn't penetrate the dark to illuminate the whole space at once, so she walked a large circle, taking it in. The air was colder but just as dry as the desert air, and the paintings were well preserved. She didn't know how long they'd been here, but her hosts believed they predated people.

Someone had to paint them.

On the right wall, there were paintings of animals, plants, insects, fish, life of every imaginable description. Each was no more than hand-sized but finely detailed. Tens of thousands of them. They began just beyond the entrance, where the light from outside faded, and continued floor to ceiling, front to back. Some were partially hidden below ground-level. She wondered how far down they went? The style and artistry were incredible.

It was a tapestry in stone honoring living matter, rendered with love and color.

She even found her blue butterfly. It was only one of the thousands of different types of butterflies represented elsewhere on the wall, but it was there. An exact replica, wing markings and all. She would have been disappointed if she hadn't seen it. A few feet away, she found her doe, lying in grass. Hi there. Next to it was a gecko. Did geckoes ever live near here? It was all so beautiful though. How had this been missed by anthropologists or archaeologists or modern science in general?

It was a cathedral, and she was in awe of its beauty.

She stayed for hours, taking it all in.

Hi, squirrel. Hi, frog. Hi, emu. Hi, thing that I don't know what you are.

At first pass, she thought the other wall was blank, unpainted. As though fires were lit on that side to illuminate the paintings on the first wall. But when she stood near the center and looked hard, she made out the vague shapes, formed perhaps by intentional charcoal or smoke stains. Three large, indistinct darknesses took up the far wall. Each shape was defined by massive outcroppings and protuberances in the stone as much as by rubbed soot. Half shape, half smoke, and half shadow.

Not ominous at all.

Once she could pick out the shapes, she thought they must have been intentionally created to appear three dimensional, using the rock to give the impression they were emerging from within, not content to be merely painted on it.

The overall message she took away was as old as the oldest myths. Life against not life. Light against dark. Harmony against dissonance. Creation against destruction. And people in the space between. Making choices.

It was a compelling art installation. All the more amazing that its message resonated ages after its artists had passed on. She wasn't sure why she needed to see this, but was glad she had.

And of course, she didn't have a camera.

Chloe sat outside the international terminal on one of the stone benches. Noon. She arrived in San Francisco a few hours before but spent most of her time napping in the parking garage. Still felt on-and-off shitty about things.

Too much Chloe alone time. Not enough Max & Chloe time.

Wasn't sure when to expect Max. Or where. The terminal was pretty big, with people everywhere and multiple ways in or out. She was going to check the arrival boards, but realized that landing times didn't particularly matter - Max would appear when she wanted to appear - even if the plane she arrived on wasn't due for another couple hours. She could already be here, wandering around. Like a fucking wizard.

Wait.

There.

She's here.

Chloe wasn't sure what mechanism or change alerted her to Max's presence. But one second there was no Max. The next, she felt…Max. It was hard to describe the feeling as anything other than 'Max.' It was the way everything was when she was there, which was different from the way everything was when she wasn't there.

Huh.

Max.

That's all she could come up with. It was the feeling of Max. And when she was there, things were better. Luminous. Vivid. Happy. Reality was more possible. Life seemed in positive focus. More even. When she wasn't there, things were…diminished somehow. It was a physical, emotional, visceral sensation. They hadn't been apart at all since reuniting all those weeks ago. She hadn't noticed this sense until it was gone and reappeared. The contrast. Whatever she called the feeling, she knew it was in response to something real. She knew something she couldn't know. And she knew it.

Holy shit. I have a Max detector? She laughed as she thought about it. But she wasn't wrong. And she knew with certainty that they'd find each other in a minute or two.

She looked around. It did seem brighter and more colorful in the terminal.

Until everything went black.

Two hands covered her eyes.

"Max?!"

Softly from behind her, "Hi baby."

Chloe turned to see her there. "MAX!" Those eyes. Her smile. A new flash of blue in her hair? Awww. Cute! Chloe screamed, picked her up in a happy spinning cliché airport twirl and kissed her smack on the lips.

"Hotel?" Chloe put Max down but didn't let her go.

"Hotel." Max nodded. "I want to hear of your adventures young Price. And I'll tell you mine. But not til tomorrow on our way to LA."

"Why not til tomorrow?" Chloe led Max to the parking garage, stumble-hugging the whole way.

"Because I need a proper shower. I need room service. And I need you naked in my bed until morning." Max smiled, without shyness or hesitation. "Not necessarily in that order, if you want to help me with the shower."

"I volunteer as tribute!" Chloe yelled enthusiastically, arm up. She opened the passenger door for Max with a flourish, swinging it out and up, then closed it once she was safely seated.

Chloe started to the driver's side, stopped, spun back. She opened the passenger door, leaned in, held Max's cheek in her hand, gave her a long, deep kiss. "Just in case anything happens on my way to the driver's side."

Max giggled. "I've missed you too Chlo."