Max fell from two hundred feet up. Dropped through a scattering, impossible mass of butterflies in the dark. Just before she hit the ground, everything stopped, reality slamming, vibrating, beating back and forth in a desaturated automatic perma-death rewind. She smiled. Backed up a few milliseconds and restarted her path through the universe. Her momentum cancelled in the stillness, she dropped a few inches to land on a dark, rocky plain.
She stretched.
Butterflies frittered off in all directions, unhurried, as the spherical wormhole they'd created to bring her here collapsed above.
Twin moons hung in the sky.
Michaels parked the tiny drones near the ceiling at the entrance to the hallway. They'd been leaving them like breadcrumbs along the hallway split-points on the way in. The team huddled outside what should have been Sophie's cell. Third in a line of four large rooms, sharing a common painted concrete corridor. This tunnel dead-ended beyond the fourth door, so once they had Sophie, there was only way to go - back the way they came in.
Despite Hector's power meltdown near the beginning, they'd arrived at the end without further incident. Clock was still ticking though. The first group they'd subdued and stashed in the dark hallway near the entrance could still be discovered at any moment. They seemed like a misplaced family eating dinner. An odd choice to co-mingle with jailers.
Given the confirmed presence of at least one teenager onsite, they voted to stick with less-than-lethal tactics if at all possible. No one wanted to take a chance that a stray bullet in these long concrete halls might find a child.
Jeremy tested the door. Massive steel hinges, bolts at various points around the perimeter into the surrounding concrete, and a modern electronic lock, centered. This seemed more like a safe than a cell. At least to Michaels.
Steve 2 was attempting to bypass the electronic lock, while Jeremy pulled half a dozen pre-formed copper clad linear shaped charges out of his 'bag of manly adventure'. The V-shaped charges were backup in case the bypass failed, or they ran into trouble in the hallway and needed to move more quickly. He taped them around the perimeter at the bolt locations, point-side in, pushing the detcord into the ends as he went. Once the C-4 filling was detonated, the copper sheath would act like an explosive knife, cutting the bolts instantly. Noisy. But very effective against steel and concrete for a fast open.
Downside, they didn't have a way to communicate with Sophie to tell her to take cover. Her talent seemed to be offline like Hector's, and since she could only hear sound through other people's minds, blowing the door would be a huge risk to her safety if she was anywhere in front of it.
Hector suddenly broke the huddle, ran over and put his hand on the cell door.
Sophie was beginning to adapt to the silence after these past weeks. She hated it, but she was more used to it. Her captors began to interact with her more from the second day forward. Bringing her meals, trips to the showers down the hall. Reading materials. Books mostly, in French and English. Rough clothing. They didn't ever mistreat her. Overly respectful, if anything. Careful. But they didn't communicate with her, and she couldn't find a way to break through to their minds. She only ever saw two of them.
They didn't seem like national operatives of any sort. They certainly weren't hunters. But she couldn't place her feeling about them.
It was still a surprise when it all came bursting back. Like hearing music again after an extended absence. The roar of a crowd. She could hear minds all around. She didn't know how long she'd have this break in the silence, so she took advantage.
But he was already here.
Hector!
Sophie! The split is back too…
John. Some of his team. Their minds were all familiar. The link was instinctive. She extended outward as well. Once she read her captors, and those around them, once she understood, she knew they were going to want help to get out of here. She reached out to her extended network, gave them everything she knew.
Chloe was exhausted in more ways than one, and feeling a lot of conflicting emotions. Max was okay. She vanished, but she'd be back. So Chloe had zero worries there, or about her own eventual fate. But she did worry about her Max. If she was right, and FutureMax just took over, what did that mean? Was her Max gone? Dead? Erased?
That thought terrified her.
This must be how she felt every time she watched me die… I love my Max. She's mine. Goofy little dork. It's not that I don't appreciate FutureMax, but…she's so far ahead of me. Us. And she wasn't here. She didn't go through this shit with me. Wasn't part of us. She had a different past, with a different Chloe. If Max was right, and it really was hundreds of years, what's she gonna have in common with me now? Would she always see her own Chloe? Would I always see my Max? How the fuck would that even work? How could it work when I'm pretty sure we'd both know we were cheating…
I could handle my Max with flash-forwards. Those didn't change who she was. But I'm gonna lose my shit if Max, my Max, is really fucking gone.
She was feeling untethered again. Too much. The ups and downs since the false attack and rescue began. The bomb plot, and Max's…whatever spectacular fucking thing that was.
Learning on her way back to her cell that Nuria had taken her own life the night before. That hit her hard. Her one friend here.
I saw the signs. I should have done something to stop her…
She wasn't feeling good, either. Her wrist was killing her where she tore skin fighting the cuffs. Plus, the knots from the vitamin shots weren't going away like Nuri said they would. And her hand hurt where the butterfly did…whatever it did to her.
She was back to waiting. Pinwheeling. Feeling like she was on the wrong side of manic. Alone in her cell again. Margaret had been whisked away after Max vanished, more than a half hour ago. She hadn't seen anyone since.
She fell back onto her bed. Willing herself to fall asleep. But no…
Chloe?
Sophie?!
Chloe! Hi - I just wanted to see if you were okay. Where you were. Oh, my God. Holy…holy shit! Sorry, was just catching up with what happened to you, what you've experienced and what you saw. Hang on, I need to relay a few things to some people. Oh, fucking hell. I'll be right back. I promise.
Um… okay, uh… bye, Sophie?
And she was alone again.
…let me know if you…talk to…Max?
But she wasn't there.
Roland packed up his satchel. He hadn't brought much with him to the office, but everything he had was now in his bag. Time to go.
Others were doing the same. The missions were a bust. Calculated risk. Cascade failure. Didn't pan out. Now they had a bigger problem. Or rather, they had a bigger problem. This had gone far better than Roland dared to hope.
On his way out, he cornered one of the junior staffers. Put her in charge of relaying the orders to the security staff at the research facility where they had Chloe. She was to be terminated. Immediately, and if at all possible, painfully. Punishment for Max for fucking up the ops, he'd said.
And she might also warn those further up the chain that Max was probably headed there next.
Final pushes…
Time to go…
Sophie moved away from the door. They blew the bolts. No time.
She'd already pushed what she'd seen in Chloe's mind out to Hector, John's team, and the ones who loosely represented the opinions of the various unaffiliated talent factions on the outside. She received confirmation back from a few beyond these walls. It was all over the internet. Pictures, handheld video from camcorders and phones. Talking heads were already out with early rebuttals. One gaining traction was an entomologist with a prestigious national science museum, claiming it was a rare, but not unprecedented, behavior. Similar to the large gatherings and migrations of the monarch butterfly…
Blah blah blah.
Sophie couldn't find Max anywhere though. Nothing.
Her link died before she could reconnect with Chloe. Once the explosives blew, she felt her talents locked down again.
She knew who it was. She didn't know him, and she'd never connected to him before. But she understood once he released the blanket block the first time, and she'd finally been able to read him. He was two floors up, in a living space. She'd picked from his mind that a small group had colluded with Roland - the man from Chloe's memories - to keep Sophie on ice for the duration of what he had planned for Max. And for an entire city full of people… None of them knew the second part, of course. She got that from Chloe. All they knew was it was a shot to remove Max as a threat to anyone. And an opportunity to save Sophie's life. So they took it.
Stashed her here - just a safe house. A way-station for those in trouble. Unaffiliated talents. Most staying here were guests on their way to somewhere else, new lives, and had nothing to do with any of it. The suppression was played off as a necessary precaution for an extreme talent who didn't have full control yet. No one questioned much beyond that.
The group who collaborated believed this was the only way to save Sophie's life. Probably correctly. Roland was clear that he planned to kill her otherwise. Which still didn't make any fucking sense. What he was, who he was - why hesitate? She was nothing to him. Killing her made a lot more sense than going out of his way to keep her alive, but neutralized.
The suppression ended once the time period Roland had prescribed had passed. That was the deal.
Until the blast. After that, it was clearly back as a defensive shutdown.
It would work both ways, no talent in the field of influence would be able to exert powers of any sort against them. Downside was that there were only a handful of 'jailers', but everyone here would feel under attack. It didn't matter that John and his group were working for Max. It was almost as bad as their other employers to a lot of them. And they were as far back in the mountain as they could get.
The door fell outward. She couldn't hear it, but she could feel it through the soles of her feet on the floor.
Hector rushed in first. She met him halfway in a fierce hug, tucking her head in under his chin.
John and the others were through the door, as flashes of weapons fire filled the hallway behind them.
Max noticed the moons almost immediately. One appeared about the same size in the sky as Earth's moon. The other occupied a space roughly four times larger. What that meant, she wasn't sure. She didn't have a sense of their distance, or any other cues that would lend real scale to what she was seeing. They were both round, and very bright.
Clearly not home then.
"Where did you bring me, weirdo?"
What did you want to show me?
It'll be nearby, whatever it is.
She wouldn't want me wandering off and getting lost…
Billions of butterflies still filled the sky, spreading outward and away, some landed, but many others continued their unconcerned paths to parts unknown.
She stretched out her body, just a quick check. Then she stretched out her mind. Exploring her memories, recall. A quick mental census, cataloging her past to make sure it was all there, but without lingering too long.
Satisfied for now, she noted that the…planet? …moon? …whatever she was on seemed barren. Where she was, at least, far as she could tell. There were no plants above ground around here, and nothing aside from her and her fluttery entourage that seemed remotely alive.
Microscopic life, perhaps. Then again, if she'd found herself suddenly in the middle of the Sahara, she'd likely think the same of Earth as a whole. And even beneath the desiccated Sahara, strange bacteria lived inside the rocks more than seven miles down. They could live for thousands of years each.
Here, there was oxygen. Soil. Rock. Gravity was definitely lower. She could see clouds at the horizon, lit from above by the strong moonlight. Terrain, valleys, a river might have cut through here once. It was dark now, but she didn't know if there would be a day. Some exoplanets were tidally locked. Less likely with the moons, she remembered.
"Time to look around." she said, wondering if words of any kind had ever been spoken here before.
Once the small sun came up over the horizon, it didn't take her long to see it. Cave entrance in the side of the ravine. By the time she got down there, the distant star was a quarter of the way across the sky. And a second sun, larger, came up over the edge of the world. Fast rotation. Finally, a third.
Stable orbit around a trinary star system… Rare.
Even with all three suns in the sky, the temperature was warm without feeling hot. She said goodbye to the suns, walked through the entrance to the cave. After a short passage, she emerged into a large open space. Practically a twin to the cavern in China. Size, shape. She couldn't see very well at first. But unlike the other cave, this one had a small crack near the apex, open to the sky, allowing multiple slow-moving streams of light, each a slightly different color, to shine through. Once her eyes adjusted, she confirmed her suspicions.
The entire right wall loomed, covered with faded, muted paintings of fantastical creatures. A hand's width each, they stretched as far as she could see. She couldn't tell if there was differentiation between plants, or animals, or whatever the analogues were. Some plant-like things were clear. Others less so. A few differences seemed to dominate the designs. A mix of bilateral and radial symmetry in the body forms, with six limbs as the apparent standard, rather than four. Tens of thousands of individual lifeforms at least. So many variations. They'd been painted with the same levels of detail and care as those at home. But these were neglected. Possibly far older. Fading away. And no sign outside the cave that anything had ever lived here at all.
Remembering her smoky figures on the opposite wall in China, and her brief flash of the forms that tore her apart in spaces between, she turned around to examine the opposite wall.
Nothing. Just a flat, empty wall. No smoky patterns, no greasy hints at malevolent forces. No shapes jutting out as though escaping the rock. Standing in the middle, watching light beams play across the space, the lesson here felt different. This was no longer a battleground. There was no dark and light playing out through participants in the space between. Only ghosts, and a memorial.
This once had been a vibrant celebration of life.
Now it was a gravestone. A marker of something beautiful that had been forever lost to the universe.
She glanced again at the empty wall behind.
She knew why she was here - this was obviously intended as a caution. A warning. But this couldn't be all. Chloe wouldn't have gone to all of this trouble, these energies, brought her this far, just to show her loss, death, and extinction on another world. They'd seen enough of that on Earth to know that it was real. Coming. She carried that knowledge, specifically about the future of her home, already.
The various stages of eco-collapse that Chloe had fought to undo. Eighty years of continuous development, eventually joined by hundreds, then thousands of others. Finding fragments of the lost, hidden across the world. Rebuilding their patterns. With only a few complete DNA samples for some species, her techniques created enough individual diversity in the initial population to sustain future growth and critical mass in the wild, and without introducing harmful mutations. She wasn't alone in making it real, Max had even helped by accelerating local time in the spaces around some of her experiments. But Chloe was certainly the augmented brain that made it all work. And it was working. Only one of her passions, but she'd nearly single handedly turned things around. Turned back the clock…
Obviously something of her, something of that spirit continued. Somewhere. Somewhen. Max had just been reborn, carried here by the evidence.
But why here? Why now?
Max left the cave. There was nothing more for her in there. It was a depressing space. As she stepped out into the sunlight, she saw one of her butterflies on the ground. Its purpose done, its life ended, this one had fallen. On instinct, she kneeled, scooped a handful of soil, carefully lifted and placed the butterfly within, covering it gently. A small honor for the monumental gift it brought her.
She wouldn't bring me here just for this.
There's got to be something more. Aside from the cave, the world seemed empty. So there was only Max herself, and the butterflies… On a hunch, she did as she had for Chloe in the lab - and accelerated the flow of time in a small area around the butterfly's tiny grave. Only thing I can think of…
Hours. Days. A month… Without warning, a blue-green fibrous sprout shot up through the ground, its round green lattice like a dandelion puff at the top. She stopped. Considered.
Nothing wasted. Always layers…
That's more like it.
She went back into the cave before light faded. After a few minutes of searching, she found it. One of the paintings. That same lattice puff. Nothing on the wall indicated differences in scale, but she knew it belonged now.
Alright Chloe…
Let's see what you've done.
She suspected.
She climbed up out of the ravine. A few other butterflies had come down to rest.
She addressed them all silently. Thank you small friends.
Now let's see if we can't give you new life… a new home…
She stopped the whole of the universe. Extended a protective bubble of real-time around herself.
Arms out, palms up, she lifted off with it into the sky above. The rock she'd been standing on split at the boundary, lending her a flat platform on which to stand. She rose a few thousand feet over the surface, the light of three suns and two moons reflecting off the inner boundary of her shell. The dead world spread out below her.
She isolated the planet in its own bubble of space-time, up through the highest atmosphere. She could feel its circumference was half that of Earth. She gave a push, accelerating this small world, rotating it beneath her, around her. Her bubble nestled inside the planet's bubble, both inside a frozen reality. Each in its own frame of time. Like body, like universe…
She accelerated the planet in time, watching changes below.
An hour, a day, a month…
Plants began to grow where the butterflies fell. A small patch of blue-green on a grey-brown world, at the edge of a large ocean.
A year, a decade, a century…
The patch grew, spread, flashing by with each turn of the axis.
Spinning the world into fast forward, universe frozen, her in her bubble, floating, watching…
A thousand, a million, a hundred million, a smooth blur… The grey-brown became green, with flashes of red and yellow and orange and blue. Three hundred million. Stop.
Seas, land, skies, transformed.
A world.
Repaired.
Healed.
Evolved.
Always layers…
The acceleration ended.
Her gentle scouts. Her storm.
The seeds of life hidden within them, meant for this world, had taken hold.
Spread.
Thrived.
A new garden rose on the body of a murdered planet.
The living world, reborn…
Michaels knew they were boxed in. And everyone had a download from Sophie on the situation before she and Hector went back offline. Situations. A lot to process. Max and whatever the hell just happened there. Bomb stopped at least. Chloe's captivity, Roland and some rogue talents working together, Sam's betrayal, the many innocent talents above. One thing at a time.
They weren't facing organized professional soldiers. But with them firing AKs blindly down concrete halls, it didn't really matter. No way to tase them from here. The drones were swatted out of place as well, so they didn't have eyes, or relays past the rock for comms to their support team outside. They could easily kill them all, but that would mean killing them all.
Sophie had another way, so they just needed to hold, and dissuade anyone from entering the corridor.
Sophie didn't have to wait long for her gifts to return. Once the sounds came back, she reached out, felt them above. Henk. That was his name. She saw it right before a large fist hit him sideways on the jaw, and he lost consciousness.
A few old friends had stormed the castle. Or at least opened a few unlocked doors, snuck up from behind, and clocked the person keeping all of this going.
Nice one.
The idiots down the corridor were still popping off shots. She drew everyone into a link, including the shooters. She kindly suggested that they stop. Or face…consequences. Once they understood the depth of the situation, the bomb they would have been partly responsible for, how they appeared right now in the judgement of their peers, they threw down their weapons. Hector ran out, secured them, ensuring their weapons were cleared, safe and out of reach.
Sophie reached out, brought Chloe back into the link. Right after guards had stormed into Chloe's room and as they were dragging her kicking down the hallways…
Max lowered herself down to ground level near the cave, collapsed all three timescales into one. Normal forward rate. No time lost for the universe. Minutes for her. More than a quarter billion years for the planet.
Verdant. Lush. Flowing with life. She explored for a while. Taking time to get to know this new…old new…world. The ocean had moved closer as the land eroded. Some species she recognized from the cave. Some she didn't. There were so many, on that wall, and in the world now, it would take a lifetime. Plants, animals, other…things… of all shapes and sizes. A rich diversity of forests, undergrowth, plains, oceans, seas, rivers alive. Sky filled with bird-analogs with four wings each instead of two. Skittering cute fuzzy critters in the underbrush ran on six legs. The wind through trees and her hair. Myriad sounds of life calling out to other life. The oceans were brimming. It was peaceful. Beautiful.
A real living world.
She did this….
…we did this.
One final gift to each other, across timelines, across lives, across branches…
A garden world.
Orbiting three stars.
One for her.
One for Chloe.
One for Rachel.
They never forgot her.
Our secret place.
She made her way to where the cave entrance had been. The ravine was gone. No part of the terrain looked the same. Three-hundred million years of erosion, deposition, biological interaction… Hard to tell how far down it was. She felt for empty volumes of space below ground, but couldn't detect any. Of course. Would have gradually filled in from above.
It was okay. There was a rightness in burying the grave marker for this world, while life ran riot above…
She folded space, moved to where the land met the edge of the sea. A cliffside. Watched as three suns descended into the calm waters beyond the bay. Skies orange and red and yellow and purple… Flocks of 'birds' danced and flew, calling out, their happy shadows against the changing light.
Max took it all in. The enormity of it.
More like tens of thousands of years beyond where we were… at least…
"It's beautiful, Chloe. Thank you. For everything. I don't know where you are. If we'll ever meet again. But you know. I'll always love you dear. And I'll always remember you. forever…"
With that, she wiped away a tear, joy and sadness, uncertain if this was a goodbye.
Felt absently for a ring she'd worn for centuries, but hadn't worn in months.
But she felt loved. Always loved.
She turned her eyes to the heavens.
"Time to go home."
She was also there. Now.
She'd looped back for her.
Another chance to see her again.
Earlier in the timeline, but she was the same person.
And Max loved her with the same ferocity.
She held a memory in her mind. The cave of wonder on her home world.
The shortest distance between two points…is another point.
And with that thought, she folded herself, vanished from their new garden, emerged in a dusty, dark cave in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwestern China, on the edge of the Taklamakan desert. Three hundred and forty light years away.
"Hello old friends." She said, addressing the right hand wall of the cave. Bright. Colorful. Joyous celebration of life on Earth. Yep. Four legs. Mostly. She reached out and put her hand on a frog. Hi froggy. Hey emu. Hi binturong. Yes, I know what you are this time… She smiled, taking it all in.
She turned to the three dark stains on the opposite side, physically imposed herself between them and the wall of life at her back. "You and me… we're gonna have words at some point…"
She held there, let the anger rise.
Not anger that they'd attacked her.
She felt the anger - and certainty of purpose - of a mother defending her cubs from a group of predators.
…from a group of smaller predators.
She knew it wasn't really like that.
She was a child of Earth, like everything else on the wall.
But she'd seen two worlds depleted now.
And she felt that spirit of protectiveness toward life, all life, just the same.
Never. Again.
She turned, walked out of the cave entrance. Saw the small desert village where she'd stayed after her first encounter with her small blue friends this loop. She considered going back. They were sweet. And had amazing noodles. But they wouldn't remember her. She'd erased most of her time there before jumping back on her way to meet Chloe in San Francisco.
She felt a familiar voice in her head. Max?!
Hi Sophie.
Where did you come from? I've been searching for you… wait, what? You're not… Oh. Oh my God. You…are. You really are her…you…
Max smiled. This was the first time Sophie was reading her, all of her.
Max, we really…need to catch up. I can't begin to comprehend everything that I'm seeing right now in you, but I want to. No time. You need to know. They just grabbed Chloe - took her from her prison cell. We…we were connected.
How long ago?
Just now! Something happened though. She might be unconscious.
Where?
Namib Desert. Research complex under an airstrip, near an old uranium mine. You…can teleport? Like that?! Shit. I'll have John relay you a map then - hang on.
Max could see the map on John's phone through his eyes, courtesy of Sophie. The mine could be seen from space, an irregular black stain against the grey-red desert floor, with an up-thrust granite mountain range to the east. The airfield was a few miles west of the mine. A few buildings, a tower.
The South Atlantic was fifty miles to the west.
With her mind's eye on the mountain, she folded space, bypassing the bulk of the earth and a quarter of its circumference as she stepped from one vast desert to another.
The mine stood a few miles ahead. A gigantic scar in the earth. As soon as she took a step forward, her auto-rewind kicked in. Something from above. There was nothing else around.
She rewound. Slowly. Watching. Something went straight up. Burning like a meteor. Fast. Hyper-velocities. Which meant…railgun. Probably from a satellite.
Max knew she had a dozen easy ways to get to the airstrip unseen. Unsuspected.
But she hadn't forgotten what they'd done to Chloe.
What they'd done to her.
What they'd tried to do to millions more.
And what she was beginning to suspect they'd do to billions in the future, if left unchecked.
These things probably weren't unrelated.
Too many things lined up…
…later.
She could go stealth.
She could do clever.
But today cried out for a different kind of message.
Something 'subtle'. Something that said 'don't fuck with us'.
She wanted to be detected.
She wanted them watching.
They needed to understand.
Needed to be afraid.
But more than that, they needed to be dispirited.
She rewound further.
Unfroze the world.
The rail came down like a flaming spear at more than seven thousand miles per hour. She caught it a mile off the ground, left it frozen in place, sphere glistening. A second ran into the back of the first, absorbed into the event horizon of the bubble as a holographic suspension. She set the sphere into a lazy, miles wide orbit with her at the center. Pulled the satellite down out of the sky, on fire, to join them as a burnt husk.
She reached behind her, froze the mountain range to the east.
A fifteen-mile wide region of suspended time.
The shell descended a third of the way through the crust of the earth.
She lifted it whole, the peaks rising eight miles into the sky in seconds.
The top of the bubble a quarter of the way to space.
The ground level of the mountain range was at the equator of the sphere, with seven miles of sky above it, and seven miles of previously dark rock curving away below, the lower third of that still glowing dull orange from the heat of the mantle, another fifteen miles down.
Like a snow-globe.
On fire.
She slowly pulled it toward her, set it to rotate at one revolution per minute in a flat-spin as it crossed above the plains. The bottom more than a mile off the ground.
The shadow fell in a massive circle, more than seven miles to each side.
A perfect umbrella for a walk in the desert.
A perfect shield against attack from above.
And a casual display of power, should anyone be paying attention.
Centered above her now, she began to walk forward to the airstrip.
Reached into her bag, pulled out a pack of string cheese.
Opened it.
Bit the end off.
The mountain kept pace.
Max didn't have to wait long. She had to give the pilots their due. It took serious balls to fly a jet under a rotating mountain range, and to fire a missile at the girl, tiny in the shadow below, holding it all up at the whim of her mind.
She bubbled the missiles and the jets, sent them into lazy tumbling orbits around the mountain range above.
Took another sip of water before putting the cap back on and returning it to her bag.
Rather than try to walk around the mine, looming ahead like a vast ugly pit, she decided to go over it. Quickly. Fast enough to ignite the air, not quick enough to deepen the crater. Should look interesting when the caldera exploded upward behind her as she continued her walk toward the airfield. The leading edge of the orb above had already cast her destination in shadow.
She built up a little speed by shifting the world, her personal timescale and her mind clock around, pushed off the edge at fifty-thousand miles per hour, while it all unfolded to her in slow motion. She stepped onto the other rim, losing no altitude to gravity between sides, slowed and continued in the freeze to get clear of the blast. The mountain above continued to rotate, along with a few more caught rails, some captured bursts of high intensity laser light, the jets, a burnt satellite, and a few missiles.
She couldn't tell if it looked cool. She didn't want to be seen looking back over her shoulder.
Total Michael Bay move, she knew.
Whatever.
As she got closer, she passed through a defensive grouping of modern tanks, transports, and other machines obviously intended to keep her away. Spread out over a quarter mile. Abandoned. She kept going. They rusted into the sand, dissolved as she passed between them.
By the time she got to the airstrip, it was clear that anyone above ground had already fled.
She parked her small planet and orbiting moonlets above the runway.
Feeling into the ground below, she followed the air-gaps up to a door on the side of the three-story ATC tower. Locked. The door crumbled into nothing as she rolled it forward a century.
She walked through. Considered walking the twenty flights of stairs. Sophie said Chloe was that far down. Instead, she stepped over the side of the railing, dropped through the center. Auto-saved to cancel her momentum at the bottom, dropped a couple of inches to the floor. Steel door ahead. She froze it in time, pushed the bubble forward, dropped it. Door fell flat. She stepped through the circular opening in the wall. Kept moving forward.
There were people still down here. Some noticed the door, got curious. But once she was out of line of sight of the stairwell, people continued like it was business as usual. Labs. Cells. Workspaces. Living spaces. Conference rooms.
After five minutes of wandering halls, she saw lights flicker farther down.
She could hear Chloe!
And she sounded pissed.
"You messed with the wrong girl, motherfuckers!" Something smashed hard against a wall.
She kept walking. She saw a couple of large armed men hiding behind a sofa in the middle of the hallway. Another around the corner of a wall. A stapler went by over their heads.
"What? Poke your head out again, bitch! I will fuck you up!"
Max smiled. Chloe. She went through a side door. Aged a section of wall to dust as she passed casually through the space where it had been and into the adjoining room. Chloe was in an office without an outlet. Across a dead-end hall from the one Max passed into.
With a smile, Max called out loudly "Marco…"
After a second, Chloe answered "Polo."
Max gave it a beat, continued on. "There you are…"
"Dude. You're hella late."
"Traffic."
"Lame."
Max walked through the hall between the rooms. One of the men fired a few shots as she passed. She didn't bother. Rolled her eyes as the rounds missed anyway. Chloe was sitting behind a desk in an office chair, feet on top.
"You look just like her." said Chloe.
"Who?"
"My Max."
Max laughed a little as she answered, almost hurt, "Chloe - I've always been your Max…"
"Okay then. What movie did we watch at your parents' house the first night back in Seattle?"
"Really Chlo? You're gonna make me do this?"
Chloe didn't say anything, just kept her eyebrows raised, shifted her weight in the chair, waiting for the answer.
Max sighed. "Paul didn't stop being Paul just cause he took in the spice, dork-bat."
Chloe's whole face changed. "Max? Is that for real you?"
"It's always been me. For always and ever. And always for you…"
"Okay - now you're just mis-quoting lyrics…"
"Busted. But it doesn't make them not true." Max stood there for about a second before Chloe leapt up out of her chair and they were both in each other's arms. Holding, touching, breathy whispers of missing, while kissing deeply, as if trying to make up for far too much lost time.
One of the men leaned around the corner of the door, low, and fired a few fast shots at Max's back. The sound was deafeningly loud. Each bullet ended in a small bubble a foot from from them… Without letting go, or pulling away from Chloe in the least, Max pushed him forward in time sixty years. Not enough to kill him. But enough to take away most of his life. Dick move, shooting a girl in the back like that, she thought. He crawled back down the hall an elderly man.
After a minute or so, they broke their kiss. Forehead to forehead, Chloe's eyes met Max's, and she said quietly, "So…butterflies, huh?"
Max stumbled over thoughts, distracted by the view. "Even after all this time… yeah, totally. Oh, you mean… right. Yeah, no… something like that. I'll…I'll fill you in once we're out of here."
Chloe laughed, kissed Max playfully on the nose. "You're so cute. So fun fact… Um. I can do this now." She turned them a little. The chair she'd been sitting in rolled along the ground, out to the hall. Lifted up a foot into the air, then rocketed down the hallway out of sight. Max heard a crash, a thump, and a cry of pain from somewhere behind the sofa.
"We're gonna have to have a serious story time later…" said Max, eyes wide.
Chloe smiled, eyes twinkling with mischief. "Definitely. So you ready to fight our way out?"
"I mean, I had a different idea, if that's okay? Take my hand."
"Now you're just teasing." Chloe slipped her hand into Max's, interlocking fingers.
Max folded space around them, shifting their position approximately two-hundred feet upward.
Chloe startled as the scene changed. She lifted Max's hand to her lips, twisted, gave the back a quick kiss. "Story time… Defin…" Chloe's face went blank as blood drained out. She noticed the shadow halfway to all horizons. The dark orange and black circle rotating above them. Jets and things orbiting, tumbling like toy marbles… Her hands went into her hair as she leaned back, trying to take it all in. "Holy fuck. Max. This… is this you?"
Max nodded, sheepishly.
"And…you've been holding it all up there…this whole time? Oh my fucking god." She crouched to one knee for a moment. "Now…now you're just showing off… Shit. And…I thought I was so goddamn cool down there with my little chair throwing trick… What am I… I…can't even…"
"No. No - I was really impressed Chloe. It's super cool!"
Chloe didn't take her eyes off the mass above, but sat back on her butt, unsteadily, hands on her head, slowly twisting to try to see it all.
"No, I'm serious! It's really awesome that you have a superpower now!"
Chloe looked up again, eyes wide, face incredulous. Just held her arms out and up in a surrender, slowly shaking her head.