xxXxx

"So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men."

xxXxx

Helena

To say I am surprised to appear in front of Claudia, Pete, and Myka inside a cold storage room just after (in my oddly distorted perception) Myka said goodbye to me in the Warehouse, is an understatement. There is a somewhat exciting unpredictability to this existence, that is for sure.

This small flicker of wonder is quickly put out, however, when the details of my body's new existence is revealed. I am quite sure I would have been better off not knowing.

"Living with a cat, in Wyoming?"

"Also, you have an American accent, and a really girly scream." Pete supplies helpfully.

Outrageous.

In an obvious attempt to smooth things over, Myka says, "and your students love you..."

Well, at least I am not making a complete fool out of myself. Or my body is not making a fool out of myself, or my mind or… Oh, bollocks. This is ridiculous enough without digging myself an identity crisis-shaped hole.

Latching onto a substantial and rather upsetting piece of information, I respond, "But a cat!?"

Wolcott had owned three impossibly large cats of undeterminable colour and temperament. I shudder at the memory of their unpredictable bursts of pure evil. Even in their happy purring moments, they had been secretly out to get me with their beady eyes and sharp claws. I will never understand why people defer to cats as if they are our masters. Then again, I owned two pet rats as a child. These unusual companions were the cause of much admiration and envy among my friends, not least because I had managed to talk my father into saving them from a gruesome fate in the betting pit.

Oh well, perhaps this is not the time to delve into my harboured resentment for felines.

"But what does this Mr Sykes want from me?"

"We…were kind of hoping you could tell us", Claudia says.

"I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea."

This is obviously not the answer they were looking for.

After conferring with Artie over the Farnsworth, orders are for the agents to bring me, that is, the Janus coin, back to the Warehouse before Sykes finds me.

What can possibly go wrong, I think half-sarcastically before disintegrating.

xxXxx

So when Claudia next activates the orb with the most serious expression I have ever seen on her youthful face, explaining that Pete wants to destroy the Janus coin, I am not surprised, though unexpectedly shaken by the thought of becoming irrevocably severed from my body. Erased. Gone.

To think that moments before I was complaining about my body's new penchant for cats…

But never have I known Pete to present a more logical conclusion. Sykes wants the Janus coin. As long as he does, the Warehouse and its people are in danger. No coin, no danger. At least not from me. And have I not wished to prove to them once and for all that I regret my past actions as deeply as humanely possible? Do I not wish to prove myself to them by any means necessary? Do I not wish to prove myself to Myka?

It is always about Myka.

Our time seems to have come and gone – too short, but perhaps it is always so. Perhaps death would not be so unwelcome. Perhaps it would leave both Myka and I with a peace, more final and ultimately restful than we could ever attain in this life.

Perhaps my end has come at last.

I feel a painful sort of relief.

"I cannot, I will not, destroy H. G. Wells."

Myka has her back to me, but I can see the tension in her shoulders, and picture the firm set of her jaw. Her voice is full of absolute determination and a fierce protectiveness that for a second (or forever) throws me off the thoughts of choosing death for the greater good. HG Wells, a martyr? I, who am as far from noble as they come.

I need to be strong for Myka. I need to let her know that this terribly wrong thing is right – that it will be right in the end. Nothing hurts me more than hurting this woman and yet I convince my projection to soften its features, discarding the furrowed brows and sorrowful eyes, and step closer.

"May I offer an opinion?"

Myka swirls around on the spot. Her eyes are large, dark, and terribly full of pain. I want to take it away.

"I figured she should be part of this discussion", Claudia says by means of explanation.

"There is no discussion", Myka responds firmly.

"Agreed." I take a breath in a futile attempt to ready myself for the storm. "If you truly want to protect the Warehouse, you must destroy the coin."

Her eyes widen, disbelief colouring her eyes an even darker shade of green.

I go on despite being pulled violently in the other direction by the whisper of tears in Myka's eyes. "Destroy the coin and whatever Sykes wants from me will be lost with it."

She looks questioningly at me, almost confused as if the matter is all too hard to comprehend. Her voice is small when she finally finds it, "But you'd be gone. You be…dead."

I nod, trying to smile as if that would make things easier.

She turns away from me and I want to run after her. Speaking with her back turned, the love her words hold breaks and heals me a thousand times in the blink of an eye.

"The price is too high."

I have never met anyone who loves and supports me the way Myka does. How can I ask her to let me go?

I look to Pete for help, and he says, "What about Emily Lake? If Sykes thinks he can put her back together…she's in a lot of danger."

Myka's eyes are full of tears when she faces us again. I scream inside while speaking the next words, because as true as they are, they also mean the end. There can be no new chapters, no epilogue, no sequel taking place in our future.

"Destroy me and she'll be of no value to him."

I realise that I am standing too close to her, too close to ignore the play of unguarded emotions across her face. But turning back now would be choosing her – myself, us – above the safety of a great many people, perhaps even the whole world. There is no way to justify that, as I have so painfully learnt in the past.

"Myka, you say she's a teacher, and her students love her." She nods. "Then let me live on through her."

"We can rescue Emily Lake. I can promise you that." Pete says valiantly.

I feel like embracing him and showing him away all at once. And suddenly it is too much to fight back the tears, the photons, or whatever they are.

I swallow hard and force the words past my lips, "I have every confidence that you will."

And then I turn to Myka, dropping the rest of my walls because that might be the only thing that will convince her.

"Myka, we have to think rationally, not emotionally. And quickly, before I remember that I'm not this noble."

Her gaze pierces right through my soul, full of an overwhelming sadness but still tinted by her refusal to accept this turn of events.

"It's the right thing to do, Myka. You know that, don't you?" Pete presses on.

Myka does not respond.

That is the closest we come to an agreement, and after asking Pete to be the one ending my life (oh how macabre), he thanks me for everything, which I find rather gracious considering I caused a hoard of troubles for them all. I smile at him.

I turn to Claudia and remember our 'tinker-y evenings', as she called them, and I regret that it is over. I regret that I will not see her reach her destiny.

And then, all too soon, it is time to say goodbye to Myka. With eyes full of tears I turn to meet another pair in the same state. And I dive right in, not because I want to, but because I want it to be over so I do not have to keep watching her being torn apart. Perhaps that is a selfish thought, but to see someone you love being so full of anguish is perhaps the most brutal of punishments.

"How do you say goodbye to the one person who knows you better than everyone else?"

She responds as I knew she would, "I wish I knew."

And I wish we had realised everything sooner.

As I spend the last seconds of my life looking up at the sky, I let well-guarded memories of a smiling Christina and a playful Myka come forward and with me to the coming darkness.

xxXxx

"In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

xxXxx

Emily Lake

They are pulling me into another room where they push me down on a couch. The man in the wheelchair rolls closer, smiling creepily at me. Am I finally going to get an explanation for why I am here? What are they going to do with me?

He carefully holds up a golden coin between purple-gloved fingers.

"Let's see if this really works, huh?"

"What are you doing, what is that?"

"The end of Emily Lake."

"No…" I breathe out. I cannot tell why, but I can feel that this really is the end. How an innocent-looking coin can kill me is incomprehensible, but the way the man says it tells me it is a fact.

I am going to die.

It feels like I have just started this life, this wonderful, magical life. I finally have a sense of self again after the accident, ready to live to the fullest in many years to come. What can I possibly have done to deserve this?

Before I can think of a way out, he grabs my hand and places the coin in my palm.

"Now just remember. Just relax and remember."

The coin is burning my palm and I start crying from pain and fear. Suddenly there is a wild rush of emotions flowing through my body, distinctive from my own. And then a flood of memories are attacking my senses, so many memories that seem familiar and that I instinctively know can explain who I was before. But I feel myself slipping away, being consumed by those memories, forgetting my own…

xxXxx

Helena

Life has a tendency to twist and turn into something you would never expect, and instead of opening my arms to my daughter in the next life, I wake up sitting on a sofa with the Janus coin in my outstretched hand, and a man in a wheelchair in front of me. I am breathing, I am feeling the flow of life through my body in a way I have never felt before, and my chest is tight from the tears I can feel drying on my cheeks. I close my hand and enjoy the sensation of the coin cutting into my palm.

"H. G. Wells?" A young man asks from the doorway. I look up at him, then back to the man in front of me.

"It would appear you got to the coin before Pete could destroy it. You must be Mr Sykes."

"Mhm. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

He hands me a glass of water. I hesitate, but then grab hold of it. The cold glass feels peculiar in my warm hand. I take a sip and relish the feeling of water running down my throat. It is a curious thing how such an ordinary sensation becomes extraordinary when taken away. I am myself again. I am whole. I live. And I had no idea how much I valued my life until this moment.

Without any weapons or means of contacting the Warehouse, there is little I can do in the short moments I am left alone when Mr Sykes leaves to "take care of some business". And my plan to use some well-chosen kempo moves are thwarted when the man returns with a riding crop artefact that bends my body to his will.

How very irritating.

He forces me out of the room and into a hangar where an aeroplane awaits us. As I enter it, I notice that the man from the doorway and the dark-haired one is missing. The boy is there, however, and Mr Sykes himself. He releases the crop's hold on me when I have settled down in a chair.

"Care to tell me where we're going?" I say, not expecting an answer.

"Hong Kong. I think you're going to like it."

"I'm sure I will. And why are you taking me there?"

"You'll see."

I snort. Oh, marvellous. What, fifteen or so hours on a plane with people that have an unknown but certainly evil agenda that I am somehow connected to, and I do not even have a book with me. I wonder if anyone is feeding Dickens.

What.

Dickens? I am suddenly aware of him being a cat, my cat. But I do not have a cat, nor do I like them. Dickens is quite charming though.

Well this is odd.

We are perhaps halfway through the flight when I find myself planning an English grammar lesson while staring absently at the beautiful cloud formations outside the window.

Emily Lake was a teacher.

And then everything starts falling into place. I start remembering things that happened to my body, to Emily, slowly at first but then those memories hit me faster and faster until I have to close my eyes to keep from fainting from the dizzying sensation of it all.

When it eventually slows down again I am left with the highly disturbing feeling of having two recollections of the same moment, a violation against the very definition of linear time. This is going to take some time getting used to.

The final memory to return is the moment just before Emily got the Janus coin in her – my – hand. I remember her fear, the fact that her captors offered no rational explanation for why she was there, the strange feeling of half-truth when they insisted on her being H. G. Wells when she was just Emily, and I am suddenly thankful for having her memories. Emily spent her last moments in fear of the end as she knew it, and the least I can do is letting her live on through me.

I smile at the irony.

When the pilot announces that he will start the descent, I take a deep breath and try to ready myself for what is to come. Which is quite hard since I am kept in the dark about our destination, and frequently distracted by memories I have-but-not-quite lived.

I can think of a very long list of realities I would rather have woken up to. On the upside, though, I am not dead.