Laurie was gone before another hour had passed.

"Hey...I think I may have found something...Laurie?" Dan called out from Archie's open hatchway.

"Left," Rorschach said quietly from the shadows. "Took gun with her."

"What – and you didn't stop her?" Dan exclaimed.

"Didn't see her leave," Rorschach clarified. "Noticed her absence perhaps ten minutes ago -"

"And you didn't say anything?" Dan asked him, incredulous.

"Went looking for her. Found this."

Rorschach handed Dan a slip of paper – the same note, in fact, that the Comedian had left on the Owlship the day before. Written on the back, distinguishable from the Comedian's scrawl on the other side (the ink having partially bled through the paper) were the words,

"DAN,

I'M SORRY, I'VE GOTTEN YOU INTO ENOUGH TROUBLE ALREADY. I'M GOING TO GO SETTLE THIS MYSELF. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING. I'M SORRY THINGS ARE SO SCREWED UP.

I GUESS YOU SHOULD BURN THIS OR SOMETHING WHEN YOU FIND IT.

GOOD LUCK,

LAURIE."

"Oh god. I can't believe she..." Dan began, his words trailing off as he clenched his fists in worry. "Listen, I don't like any of our chances if we end up trying to take on the Comedian separately. It's why I wanted us to stay together, as a team. We...Rorschach, why did you say those things to her?" he demanded. "Why did you egg her on like that? She's done nothing but reach out to you and try to help you since this all started! You said it yourself, she could have given us up -"

"Already gave us up when she told Dr. Manhattan," Rorschach said flatly. "She's a distraction. We don't need her, Daniel."

"Goddammit man, she saved your life! If that isn't enough for you...oh geez. Look, we'll get the Comedian, I promise you that - but we need to stick together. I'm going to go look for her," he said, heading back towards the ship. "Are you coming or staying?"

"Cover more ground if we split up," Rorschach said after a moment.

"Are you kidding? Rorschach, you're in no condition to go out there by yourself!"

"Can't have gone far," Rorschach insisted stubbornly. "You take to the sky. I'll search on the ground. Still think this is pointless. Already wasted too much time."

"I still don't think....oh fine, whatever. Go ahead," Dan said resignedly. "We'll meet back here in...oh hell, my watch has stopped. We'll meet back here before dawn, okay?"

Rorschach gave no answer as he slipped out of the warehouse entrance.

*************

Jerry Cornelius released the Quantum La Gusta's ladder and plummeted the remaining ten feet to the rooftop beneath him, grinning wildly as the wind whipped his long hair into a black, unholy nimbus around his pale face. He and Shakey Mo had set right out from his Ladbroke Grove HQ after getting the call from Edward Blake.

Jerry had promised Ed they'd be Stateside inside of eight hours. Circumstances being what they were, they'd made it in five.

He'd have taken the Phantom V, but he'd been advised against it; there were too many in the States, particularly in New York, who might recognize the lavender airship if it were seen, Adrian Veidt being one of them. That would have been awkward, to say the least. They had false registration papers and a cover story prepared in case things started to go south, but Jerry didn't think they would. This was supposed to be a simple snatch-and-grab operation, after all.

Famous last words.

He hit the rooftop at a smooth roll and straightened up, pushing his airshipman's goggles up past the brim of his black military cap and making sure of his needler. It was still secure in its shoulder-holster beneath his black leather car-coat.

It had been way too long since it or he had seen any action.

Edward Blake melted out of the shadows right on cue as the Quantum sped off past the skyline. Shakey Mo had been instructed to keep out of sight, but he would still be in range if needed.

"She's already ditched the boys," Eddie was telling him. "Just give me a little while to clear some things up with her. After that, I don't care if you take her to the motherfucking Lower Devonian...just get her the hell out of here until all this shit blows over. I'll take care of the other two after that."

"Sounds like the Silk Spectre has the C.R.E.E.P.s in a bit of a flap." Jerry remarked. "I'd have thought you'd already be all over an assignment like this. Don't tell me you've gone gun-shy, Ed."

"She's my kid, Jerry. Mine and Sally's," Blake said. "Just do your part, and you'll get paid. And tell Mo to keep his goddamn hands off of her. I can't be held responsible for what'll happen otherwise. She's got my temper."

*************

It would be remembered that the first rupture opened up right in front of the Institute for Extraspatial studies, though nobody was ever able to pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. Those survivors who were willing to come forward after the fact would describe a loud roaring boom, like an explosion – and for several hours, this would be the official explanation for the calamity; that it was all part of an elaborate attack, explosions coordinated by disgruntled costumed-adventurers-turned-terrorists throughout the city.

The most vocal of the survivors by far was a local news vendor by the name of Bernard, who'd been giving his opinions regarding the most recent heated exchange of words between the Nixon Administration and the Kremlin to all and sundry ("Mark my words, one day it's all going to blow!") when it happened.

He remembered the bang, and everything suddenly going dark. It was as if a hole suddenly opened in reality, and bits of everything – concrete, cars, buildings, people - were all just being sucked through it to whatever void lay beyond.

Actually, this was a fairly tame description considering the viscerally atavistic horror that the event inspired in Bernard and everyone else at the scene. It was all he could do to hang onto his newsstand with one hand while trying to keep hold of one of his customers – a skinny, bespectacled black kid who sometimes hung around and read comics by the nearby electric hydrant – as he tried to get his mind around what he was seeing while he watched everything that had seemed solid and stable and real suddenly whisked away into nothingness.

Then there was a flash, and two people stood within the midst of the maelstrom. Nobody was really surprised to see Dr. Manhattan, but the well-dressed albino gentleman who accompanied him (holding his top hat jammed tightly to his skull in one hand and clutching a violin in the other) was something else entirely. Bernard recognized him immediately as the guy who'd been seen playing his violin in broad daylight on the roof of the Institute a few weeks before, before Security ran him off.

Somebody had informed him later that the mystery violinist's name was Count Zodiac, and that he was considered to be some sort of stage magician-turned-rock star in Europe. Bernard had joked that the name sounded like it should belong to "one of those costumed heroes."

He would later chalk this observation up to prescience.

Bernard could never remember exactly what it was they did, but nobody would ever forget the music, for as long as they lived. The wind soon stopped, like a stream of water being slowly cut off by a faucet as the window into blackness irised closed.

*************

The tachyons were nothing compared to this. Dr. Manhattan preferred to think of time as "an intricately structured jewel, one which humans insisted on viewing one facet at a time." Ever since his traumatic rebirth, he'd perceived only one timeline, one jewel, one structure in its flawless, finite perfection from beginning to end.

This was like walking into an entire chamber composed of an infinite number said jewels. The light from all the countless facets was blinding him, tiny details warring for his attention as he desperately attempted to cling to the one he knew. It was soon lost in the chaos, mutating beyond all recognition while he watched helplessly, unable to do anything to halt its transmutation.

Count Zodiac, on the other hand, seemed entirely within his element as he raised his bow to his violin. Before long, they managed to fulfill their self-appointed task of mending the rift before more lives were lost.

Then there was utter silence – for about ten seconds. The people who were left stared with wide eyes and shocked, gaping mouths at their two saviors. They were edged slowly closer at first, before thronging around the two heroes, terrified and desperate for answers.

"Everyone, please remain calm!" the superhumanly-magnified voice of Dr. Manhattan reverberated throughout the street. "We have the situation under control."

How he wished that were actually true! He felt their panic as acutely as he did his own.

"This is only the beginning," Count Zodiac reminded him. "Can you hold this area steady for now?"

"I believe so," he answered, certain that his anxiety was clear in his voice.

"Good man," he answered. Behind the lenses of his dark glasses, Count Zodiac's crimson eyes were sympathetic.

"I would advise you all to remain in this location for the time being," Count Zodiac announced to the crowd. "We hope to have the entire city stabilized before long."

There were the obligatory gasps as Dr. Manhattan multiplied himself, the copy accompanying Count Zodiac in a cerulean flash as they zipped away to the scene of the next disaster. The original waited, holding the atoms around them together as he was bombarded by thousands of scenes, countless possibilities that he had never even so much as glimpsed before. Generally, he only saw the things that he himself had witnessed throughout his own singular timeline.

It was all too much, too much for even him to take in at once -

(Somewhere, Laurie was screaming. Her cry was silenced as one of her father's hands wrapped around her throat; the other was crushing her wrist. Rorschach was only seconds away, and he was already seconds too late...)

He reminded himself that in his confusion, he didn't know if what he was seeing was even real, if it was actually happening in the timeline they now inhabited, if it was just another possibility that had not yet occurred, or if he was seeing a moment that had already gone by. He'd only ever been able to see events down his own timeline that he'd experienced personally before. Surely he was only imagining it. Surely...

All his life, all that Jon had ever known had been preordained, all of his steps planned for him, with everything set in stone. He did not see himself teleporting to the scene and rescuing her. Therefore, he remained where he was, the new and unfamiliar sense of uncertainty sending his mind into a tailspin. The moment whizzed by even as he examined it, Laurie's screams echoing and colliding with countless others as the structure of time pitched and buckled around him like tree branches tossed in the wind.

There was already so much suffering, so much death.

Faced with a choice, Jon stayed put and did what he was told.

*************

The city was screaming, and Laurie barely even noticed. She had the slight sense that something might be amiss when she she started seeing people fleeing the area, people who took no notice of her in their haste to depart. She hid from the helicopters as the buzzed overhead, and escaped the notice of the line of tanks that went by on the street below her as she made her painstaking way from rooftop to rooftop.

She had no idea if moments, hours, or whole days had already gone by since she'd left the warehouse, and she didn't care. Finding the Comedian was the only thing that mattered. Everything else could go to hell and burn.

Looking back, Laurie figured she should have known it was a set-up. It was too perfect. There was the Comedian – masked, standing out in the open three rooftops over – and her with the AK she'd swiped from the guard back at the Rockefeller base. It was almost too good to be true.

Which was probably why it failed.

She looked down, considering the weapon in her hands. She was familiar enough with small arms, but she'd never fired anything larger than a 45-caliber Desert Eagle. Should she kneel like a sniper, or would she be able to hold it steady while standing up?

Oh hell. She took aim -

And saw him looking straight back at her through the gun's targeting scope.

Oh shi -

He was already clearing the distance between them in the time it took her to pull the trigger, the bullet speeding off uselessly into the rapidly darkening sky.

"Hi," he said, stopping only inches away, his hands closing on the weapon and yanking it away from her before she had time to think.

"Rule number one," he said jovially, "Never point a weapon unless you know how to use it." He tossed the gun over the side of the building.

"Rule number two....respect your elders," he said, charging her. She dodged to the side, and rolled - and her heart nearly stopped as his hands closed on her hair.

"Rule three...you should probably do something about that hair," he said, using it to pull her down to the gravel beneath them. She turned, and with a grunt of frustration she rolled before he could get a knee on her back, attempting to dislodge him with a foot swipe. She saw him grin behind the mask, as he gave her hair a painful yank - before releasing it and backing away, his hands outstretched in a gesture that would have seemed comical in other circumstances. The look in his eyes – amusement mixed with that same pain she'd seen in the alleyway, at the party after she'd thrown the scotch, as her mother was driving her away after the failed Crimebusters meeting - almost stopped her. Almost.

"We can play this your way, or we can play it my way," he said. "Which way is it gonna be, kid?"

She charged him with a roar, with hot tears on her cheeks that she barely felt...and felt him grab her arm, felt her feet leave the ground as he swung her up...

...it could almost be a game....

...and then bruisingly down, to the rooftop.

"There's all the bullshit about 'spare the rod,' I guess," the Comedian said as stars danced before her eyes, and she fought to get her wind back. "That's one thing my old man never had much of a problem with."

You had your old man. At least he was there, the thought was through her mind and gone before she even knew she was having it.

"Well? Is that all you got?" he asked her mockingly.

Murder in her eyes, she launched upwards, pushing with her feet and turning her ascent into a roll that knocked the Comedian off-balance. He had it back quickly, and maneuvered himself a few feet away, and into a fighting stance.

He wasn't even winded.

"You're not even gonna say anything?" he asked.

"What do you want me to say?" she shouted. "That you're a rapist bastard who tortures people for fun? That you're everything that's wrong with this country and that you and Nixon, and Ford, and Kissinger, and Liddy, and...and the whole sordid bunch of you ought to be shot out into space without helmets? What else is there to say?" she demanded.

"Hell, you've been living on their nickel since you and the Doc hooked up. Let me guess, they give you an allowance? An expense account? Don't see you complaining about that. It's must be great to be able to feel so superior while you're taking their money," he said.

His words stung so soon after Rorschach's own criticism, and rang so true with the misgivings she'd had for years that it stopped her in her tracks.

"Shut UP -" she interjected.

"Oh, don't kid yourself. You're just as much of a whore to this administration as I am," he told her. "I just don't lie to myself about it to make myself feel better. You're just as much of an expendable commodity....why'd you think Jonny boy never offered to tie the knot, huh? You just wait. You'll go the same way as Janey Slater, provided he even keeps an interest in us lesser beings long enough for that to happen."

"Shut your face! You don't know Jon like I do -"

"Oh, I don't? Do you mean to tell me you haven't noticed that he's turning more and more into a particle and less of a person with each passing day? I worked with the guy. I know," he said. "What are you going to do when he ditches you? I heard they offered you a deal. You shoulda taken it."

"What, so I can end up like you?" she spat.

"You already are like me," he said. "They want me to kill you. I could've done so at any point, I already tracked the three of you down to your little clubhouse."

"How -"

"Please. I grew up on these docks," he said. "You have two choices. You can come back with me and tell 'em you're sorry, that you'll give them Rorschach and Dreiberg, and that you'll do whatever it is they want you to do for however long they want you to do it. Option two - I beat the ever-living shit out of you, princess; and you wind up on an airship bound for God-knows-where, where you get to spend the rest of your life knowing that you're on Uncle Sam's shit list. Your choice, right now. Pick one."

"I think I'd rather die," she said.

"Have it your way," he said simply, charging her.