A/N: Thank you wonderful people for continuing to follow this wild ride.
Joss accepts the shot Bennington drops onto the table. She knocks it down, blinks back tears as it burns, and straddles the chair across from him. She sets the glass on a wooden table marked by deep scratches.
"How did this happen?"
He shrugs. "Can't tell you everything, Champ, cause I don't know myself. I haven't a clue how I'm alive now, but I know I wasn't always."
She nods. "You died right in front of me. One second we heard the click and the next second you were just a vapor of blood."
She lifts her shirt. Her own scar etches deep into her side and snakes across her abdomen. It is the second scariest scar she owns. For a moment she feels the ghost of that fire scalding her skin and she shudders.
He nods. His voice becomes solemn. "Thanks by the way. I'm informed you were there for my mom. You always did know the right things to do."
Carter acknowledges his praise with a quick downturn of her head. She takes in the still broad shoulders and shaved head. The network of scars weaves across his big body, but she still sees the young man Bennington was before shining through. He is still the guy she trusted to have her back.
He stares."Kind of awkward, huh?"
"A little," she confirms. She looks around the enclosure they are in.
Cameras mount high on the walls, their necks crane to see every itch of the space below them. She sees the stands of the bright lights that blinded her earlier stooping in corners. Laptops and radios rest on tables. The number of tables and computers let Carter know this was an outpost for some kind of operation, but with Bennington the sole person here now, she suspects all the other people are gone.
He pours more whiskey into his glass before he gestures the bottle in her direction. She shakes her head. She needs to have clear thoughts for this. This living and dying and timeline thing is confusing as hell. She accepts the machine. She has no choice but to accept the time travel thing since she's been saved by it, but this "reviving people long dead" thing is new and overwhelming.
"Anything you can share?"
He gulps down his shot, bares his teeth when the stinging alcohol rushes down his throat. His glass clangs against the table. "It's called the Lazarus project. Fitting, really, given you and me, and whomever else this thing impacted. Government assigned some scientist to poke around with time travel, parallel dimensions. Don't know if you've heard of string theory or not, but supposedly it may be proof of parallel universes. Some Phillip K. Dick shit."
She squints her eyes. The name sounds familiar, but she can't place it.
He waves his hand around. "Minority Report, Total Recall, Blade Runner. That science fiction shit. Except maybe it isn't just fiction anymore. Guy said he cracked the code then he died. They found him stabbed to death in some shit hole motel in a seedy part of town that no high class scientist would be found in."
She skids her boots across the concrete floor and props her arms on the table. The table sways under her weight. She works to not wrinkle her nose. The smell of burning rubber permeates the air and makes breathing in unpleasant. "I still don't understand what this has to do with anything."
He nods. "Rumor is government killed him once he discovered they wanted to resurrect some unsavory characters?"
She snorts. "Resurrection now?"
His mouth twists into a frown. "Resurrection, revitalization, whatever the hell, if the machine gets into the wrong hands we can have all kinds of evil back into our lives. Right now we assume it can only go back so far in time, some kind of supposed wormhole limitations, but what happens if someone can reanimate Stalin or Countess Báthory or countless other evil fuckers?"
"I still don't understand what that has to do with you or me."
He shrugs again. "I'm dead. Was one of the best fighters, if I say so myself. I was only going to be taken out by an IED. I'm naturally picked as a guardian and no one expects me to be alive. And not like CIA dead, but literally dead. You, I'm afraid, have a more difficult task. One of the original backers of the Lazarus project was a man named Nathan Ingram. He provided some rudimentary groundwork for the machine."
The warm metal of the chair digs into the backs of her legs. She shifts in her seat waiting for more.
"Your Harold Finch was partnered with him. We haven't figured out a safe way to get Nathan back. His timeline impacts too many of the ones already altered and it impacts the creation of the machine. Could be we've already caused a butterfly effect with all the changes. We've had to use timelines aligning to his to access important puzzle pieces that connect. Ms. Groves proved to be instrumental at her task."
Carter skims her finger across the shot glass. Maybe she should have accepted more alcohol. The picture still isn't clear to her. Why was she saved? What was the purpose of this?
"How did you get access to the machine to do all this?"
"Again, Ms. Groves proved to be a priceless asset. She was able to use a virus injected by a previous CIA operative to access the machine's network."
Carter remains silent at this. She still needs more information.
"Your Harold Finch is the key to safeguarding the machine's time traveling capabilities. When you reconnect with him you will learn that he is actually time less. He is living with all the memories of the timelines altered around him. Very few people can do that."
"We're living in the matrix?" Sarcasm creeps into her voice.
He grins. "No, Carter, it's not a virtual reality, but a parallel one."
"So I'm still dead in another universe?"
"You, me, everyone. We're all dead in some universe."
She sighs. "What's the point of this then?"
"What happens if we become dead in all universes?"
She sits up abruptly and gulps down air. "That's possible?"
"Government thinks so. Wish I knew how, but they're adamant about saving this machine."
"You're dead already, right? They could have dispatched you."
He glides his tongue across his teeth. His fingers ball into a fist. "They tried."
One of her eyebrows rises. "Did it not work?"
"It worked just fine. I just decided that I was on the wrong mission."
She tilts her head at him. Confusion settles into the lines of her face.
"The government is interested in locking up the machine. I'm interested in releasing the machine."
Her mouth drops open. "What? Why?"
"I can't think of a single thing good about keeping this machine. Either we gain the ability to bring back dead people or we gain the ability to alter entire universes, possibly annihilating them all. Sounds like a lose-lose to me."
"You all could have done this without me?"
He shakes his head. "We couldn't. John, Harold, Sameen, me: we're all dead, but you're not. We saved you before the timeline made you like us."
She folds her hands at this. "Lionel then."
"Lionel doesn't have the clearance you have. I know you still have access to high-level reports. Also, the FBI is in cahoots with the CIA to track down this information. You are the only one who can accept the position to look into locating the machine. Some things we can't change, Carter."
"Who are "we" anyway?"
He grins. "A group of concerned time travelers."
"So Doctor Who?"
He laughs so loud that his shirt rises with the motion. "Keeping up on your pop culture."
"I have my moments." She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms across her chest. "Not sure why you think I will get involved in this."
"You will, Carter. One thing those assholes got right about you back in the day is that you are a goody good. You wish to do whatever is right to help people. It's always been your strength. Looking at how you died, it's your weakness too. In this case, you'll take on the task. It's what you do."
She purses her lips together. "Okay. What would I need if I decided to go on this mission?"
He stands up and walks over to one of the rusting tables to his left. He fiddles with the chords on one of the computers. Thick fingers gently place the laptop and a USB he fishes from his pocket onto the table in front of her.
"You have your team and you will need them. Give this to Harold. He will know what you will need."
He looks down at her. "Don't trust anyone but them. I hate to get all Superhero on you, but the universe is in your hands."
She eyes the machine before she pockets the drive. "Anything else?"
He leans into her and whispers in her ear. Her eyes widen at the words.
A moment later, she staggers out of the concealed building. Her body shakes at the implications Bennington states.
All of the booby traps to get to the building are disengaged now and she lifts tired limbs over smoldering metal and rock to safety.
"Carter? Carter? Joss? Are you okay?"
She hears the panic in John's voice. She's been out of communication for over an hour now.
"I'm fine," she announces.
"What's wrong?"
She winces. John can always tell her moods by just the timber of her tone.
She doesn't lie. "Everything."
She makes it into the safety of Harold's car and John's tender embrace before the sky once again lights up like the fourth of July.
Bennington is gone. Another sacrifice for the machine. Another sacrifice for this fight she just signed up for.
A/N: Next chapter will be Careese heavy (finally, right?!) with a nice dash of more WTF is going on here. I cut this chapter short cause there's a lot of exposition to swallow.
Some additional notes about this chapter in particular: Clearly, we are far into the realm of bad science here, but some of these things are real. String theory/[Superstring theory/M-Theory] is a real theory and some physicists believe it may prove that there are other dimensions. Wormholes are suggested as making the ability to time travel possible. Of course the butterfly effect, the theory that changing one thing can cause huge ripples, comes into play here and so does the grandfather paradox, which is the idea that if you go back in time, kill your grandfather then you kill yourself and therefore make it impossible for you to go back in time to kill your grandfather in the first place. HEH. Then we get into many-worlds interpretation, which is the theory I'm working with most. It says that you can have tons of parallel universes that diverge from different points and that another you could come into this universe and kill off your grandfather and not alter this universe's you. There are other theories that apply, but universes and timelines will be explained more here in coming chapters.
Some things that influenced this chapter are the Philip K. Dick and H.G. Wells episodes of Prophets of Science Fiction. There is a rudimentary explanation of string theory in the Philip K. Dick episode and a brief mention of wormholes and time travel in the H.G. Wells episode. I've kinda been fascinated with String Theory since PBS showed The Elegant Universe special and I would advise that as something to check out too.