Eve Bard and the three remaining Librarians tripped through the Back Door and into a room made entirely of marble in Florence, Italy. Fortunately, the area where they emerged was devoid of potential eyewitnesses, and as the team oriented themselves everyone except Eve was surprised to find the walls covered with slabs of stone bearing names and dates. In the distance they could hear the sounds of quiet sniffles, hushed conversations and the echoes of careful, respectful footsteps. Ezekiel took in their surroundings and then turned to Eve, a slightly concerned look wrinkling his smooth face.
"Um, where the hell are we, and, more importantly, why the hell are we here?" he stage whispered anxiously. Baird shot him a warning look.
"A cemetery," she answered quietly. "The mausoleum section." She waved her hands to bring them into a tight huddle. "And we're here because I know where we can find an artifact that can help us locate Jenkins and Cassandra! Come on!" As she broke from the huddle and began to stride confidently away, Flynn cocked his head, puzzled, then hurried off after the Guardian, waving at the other two to follow him.
Eve led them directly to a section facing a long wall of windows that provided a beautiful view of a garden outside. She slowed her steps as she ran her eyes along one row of crypts for a couple of minutes, while the men trailed after her.
"Ha!" she exclaimed quietly, then hurried to one particular crypt. As the others peered around her to see the name on the facing stone, Flynn gasped loudly behind her, then clapped his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide with astonishment.
Nicole Noone, 1543-1579
"Nicole!?" breathed Flynn behind his hands. Eve pressed her lips together for a moment before she pulled up the pant-leg on her right leg and drew a small pry-bar out of her boot.
"Don't worry, Flynn; it's not what it looks like. Stone, Jones—keep a look out!"
She inserted the end of the pry-bar into the seam of the facing stone and began to work it out of position. Jake looked back and saw what she was doing.
"What the hell, Baird!?" he hissed as he looked around frantically to make sure there was no one else around. "Since when did we become grave robbers?!"
"Relax, Stone," the Guardian murmured. She gave the stone one final wrench and it popped free. Flynn automatically raised his hands to catch it before it could crash to the marble flooring below. "No one's robbing anyone's grave! We're just going to 'borrow' something…"
While Flynn eased the facing stone to the floor, Eve reached into the crypt and began pulling out several metal boxes. The men were confused when they saw no coffin or urn inside.
"Nicole's immortal, remember?" Eve reminded them as she dug through the contents of the crypt. "I remember from the other timeline; she told me that she had false graves scattered all over the world containing magical artifacts that she had taken from the Library, just in case she needed them in an emergency." She peered into the dark cavity for a moment, then reached into the opening as far as her arm would go, grunting as she struggled to reach something deep inside the "grave". "I remembered one artifact in particular that she showed me in this grave in the other timeline, and I'm hoping that it's also here in this timeline!" She gritted her teeth and strained as she partially wedged her shoulder into the tight space to extend her reach.
"You never mentioned anything about that!" said Flynn accusingly. Eve shot him a quick grin and shrugged awkwardly.
"Must've slipped my mind!" she replied. She gasped suddenly as her fingers finally touched the object she sought. "Yes!" She slowly dragged it forward with her fingers, then grabbed it as soon as she could get her hand on it. Eve smiled triumphantly as she pulled one last old metal box out of the crypt and began to brush the dust and cobwebs off of it. She carried it over to a small stone bench and set the box in her lap to open it.
"What is it?" asked Flynn curiously as he sat down next to her, his irritation at being kept in the dark gone now. Baird opened the box and carefully lifted the artifact out of it: An ancient stone tablet with a matching stone stylus.
"The Tablet of Apollo!" she breathed, elated. "This can show us where Cass and Jenkins are!" She moved the metal box to the floor and laid the tablet on her lap, taking up the fat stone stylus in her hand.
"How does it work?" asked Stone as he drifted over to the pair, intrigued by the artifact. Eve glanced up sharply.
"Watch our back, Stone!" she ordered, and he backed up to his original position, glancing nervously for any potential interruptions. Eve turned back to the tablet. She raised the stylus and closed her eyes for moment, carefully forming her question. When she was ready, she opened her eyes and began to write on the blank surface of the stone, saying the question out loud for the benefit of Jake and Ezekiel.
"Where is Cassandra Cillian Jenkins right now?"
As she wrote, the words appeared on the tablet's face, then disappeared, as if absorbed by the stone tablet. A moment later, dark lines began to appear, quickly connecting and spreading over the entire surface of the tablet as a picture began to form before their eyes, the image of a large building with a wide set of stairs leading up to its colonnaded facade. Flanking the entrance to the building were two massive lions, dozing lazily with their heads resting on their crossed paws.
"The Library!" gasped Flynn in a mixture of amazement and joy. "She's in the Library!" Jake pumped his fist and grinned as he mouth the word 'yes', just as relieved as Flynn, while Ezekiel merely closed his eyes and heaved a deep, quiet sigh. Eve could feel a lump begin to form in her throat. Cassandra made it to the Library; she's okay!
As if sensing that she wanted to ask another question, the line sketch of the Library faded back into the stone. Eve cast an anxious look at Flynn as she adjusted the stylus in her hand, then began to write a second time.
"Where is Jenkins right now?"
Again, the words faded. There was a much longer pause this time, as if the tablet was pondering on the question. Just as the Guardian was beginning to worry that they might not get an answer that they wanted to hear, one solid, thick line appeared and divided the tablet into two halves. After another pause, thinner lines appeared in both halves, frenetically drawing what eventually could be seen to be two completely different pictures. The top half again depicted the front of the Library. The bottom half, however, depicted a completely different building, this one with a distinctly European appearance. Eve looked over at her husband.
"Why are there two pictures?" she asked. Flynn's brow furrowed for a moment as he puzzled through the possibilities. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers.
"That's because Jenkins, right now, is in two different places!" he exclaimed. He lightly tapped the bottom picture. "Remember? In 1912, Jenkins spent most of his time in the London Annex! But right now, he's also in the Library—"
"Which means he made it off of the Titanic, too!" Eve said excitedly, her eyes shining at the thought that both of her friends were at least safe. The hesitancy in Flynn's eye, though, quickly dampened her joy. "What? What is it, Flynn?"
"We only know where he is; the tablet can't tell us if he's hurt or…" the Librarian's voice trailed off. He shrugged. "We don't even know for sure if Cassandra is alive, either, only that she's at the Library." Eve stared at him, her frustration mounting.
"Hey!" hissed Jacob loudly. "Incoming!" Eve jumped up and quickly replaced the tablet and stylus back into the metal box.
"Good pep talk, Flynn!" she growled sarcastically, then hurried to shove everything back into the crypt and seal it back up as fast as possible before they were caught.
Days turned into weeks. As Eve pondered on the situation, she became convinced that Jenkins would've seen to it that Cassandra made it off of the Titanic and to the safety of the Library. And if Cassandra had made it to the Library and she was physically able to do so, she would have made sure to leave her friends a message of some kind letting them know that she was at least alive and all right.
After Eve explained her hypothesis to the team, everyone racked their brains in an attempt to try and guess where the missing Librarian might have left such a message, but everywhere they looked, they came up empty-handed. Every member of the team went over every scrap of paper, every photograph, every recorded account of the sinking of the Titanic that the Library owned, time and again, and still nothing. They searched the suite of rooms Jenkins and Cassandra shared, thinking there might be something hidden there, but could find nothing. They searched the records of other institutions and historical societies with the slightest connection to the Titanic, but still they found nothing. It was if their friends had, indeed, simply disappeared from the face of the earth.
As much as they resisted it, everyday life in the Library insisted on continuing. The Clippings Book periodically rattled on its stand demandingly as new missions continued to come in on a regular basis. New threats continued to crop up all around the world, pulling them away from their desperate hunt for word from their missing friends. At first, one member would remain behind, dedicated to continuing the search while the others handled the new missions. But they were quickly forced to abandon that plan; the team was already short-handed and they couldn't cope with the workload unless everyone was on board. Flynn shook his head one day as he wondered to himself how on earth he'd been able to work alone for so long as the only Librarian, without even a Guardian for support.
Every free moment they had, they all continued to search for a message from Jenkins and Cassandra, though those times were becoming less and less frequent. Eve, Flynn and Ezekiel still felt pangs of guilt for not being able to bring them home. They felt powerless, and now they were beginning to feel like traitors for letting little bits of "normality" slip back into their lives—going to bed early or sleeping in late rather than spending the time going over the Titanic's passenger lists one more time; cracking a joke or laughing at one instead of going through the mathematics texts for any coded messages from Cassandra; each of them catching himself or herself thinking about something else totally unrelated to the Library or to Jenkins or Cassandra.
Jake, on the other hand, continued to doggedly search for any clues from his friends, growing more moody and frustrated with each passing day, often withdrawing from the others for hours at a time. He would never admit it to anyone, but over the years he had grown to love Jenkins like a father. He loved Cassandra, too, as a friend and a colleague, but it was the loss of Jenkins and the idea that he might never see the old man again that was tearing him up inside. As a way to cope with his feelings of helplessness in the situation, he channeled them into taking up the day to day care of Franklin, "Just 'til Jenkins gets back", coaxing him to eat and even going so far as to drape the forlorn little dragon over his own shoulders while he worked, just as Jenkins always did.
Finally, one day, a little over two months after the two were taken, Flynn called the others together for a meeting.
"I think it's time we faced reality here," he said bluntly, looking around at the tiny group. "Jenkins and Cassandra aren't coming back." Jacob immediately pounded his fist on the table as he jumped up and jabbed his finger at the Librarian.
"No!" he shouted, glaring angrily. "No! We're not havin' this argument again! I'm not gonna abandon them! They're dependin' on us to bring 'em home!"
"Maybe...maybe Flynn's right," said Ezekiel quietly. "We've tried everything, we've looked everywhere. How can we bring them home if we're not even sure they're alive?" Jake whirled around to glare at the thief.
"I don't believe you, man!" he spat, disgusted. "You're just gonna give up on 'em, just like that? What if it was you that got taken, Jones, huh? Would you want the rest of us to give up lookin' for you? Would you want us to just give up tryin' to bring you back home?"
"Yeah, I would!" Ezekiel shot back defiantly, stung by his friend's words. "I wouldn't want any of you to waste your lives on my account trying to do the impossible! And what else are we supposed to do, Stone? We've looked everywhere! We've tried everything! For weeks we've been looking, and we're no closer to finding anything from them or to bringing them back to our Library now than when we started! Just what the hell else are we supposed to bloody do now?!"
"There's nothing else we can do," said Flynn, his voice calm as he anxiously rubbed his hands over his tired-looking face. "Jones is right; we've done everything we can. We've just...failed. That's all; we've just failed. I think we have to accept the fact that we've failed, and move on." His shoulders slumped as he took a deep breath.
"We're Librarians," he continued doggedly, trying hard to keep his voice emotionless. "Librarians are lost all the time. Librarians are lost. Librarians…die." He dropped his head for a moment, then pulled it back up with deep intake of air. "But the Library continues. And so do we. I think maybe it's time we...held a memorial service of some kind..."
As Flynn spoke, Jake turned and paced next to the table in agitation, his fists clenching and unclenching. The moment he heard the word "memorial", he spun around and stared daggers at Carsen, raising his hand and jabbing his finger in the older man's direction again.
"Don't you say that word to me!" he growled, his voice low and threatening at the beginning, but rising in volume as he spoke until he was practically shouting. "Don't you even think it, you traitor, or so help me God I'll rip your tongue out of your head and shove it so far down your throat that you'll be able to taste my boot-leather as I kick your weak ass all the way to the Gates of Hell!"
"Jacob!" gasped Eve, stunned.
"Stone, I understand that you're upset," said Flynn, frustration creeping into his voice. "But we can't just live in denial about this, we have to accept..."
"I don't have to accept nuthin'!" bellowed the historian, his eyes growing misty and his voice beginning to crack slightly. "You can take your 'acceptance' and you can just go fuck yourself with it! 'Cause I'm not givin' up on 'em, you hear me? Huh? You hear me, Carsen?! 'Cause that's what real family does—they don't give up on each other! Not now, not ever!"
"Are you finished with your little display of bravado, now?" asked Carsen snidely. "Can the rest of us get down the business of facing reality and putting this behind us?"
"Put this behind you, ya son of a bitch!" Jake spat and rushed toward Flynn, his fist raised, while Carsen snatched an artifact from the table and held it like a baseball bat, ready to defend himself.
"Enough!" yelled Eve as she jumped up from her chair and held her arms out to keep the two separated. "Stop it, both of you!" Jake pulled up and lowered his fist, though he refused to stop staring angrily at Flynn. The older Librarian lowered his weapon and dropped it back onto the table. Eve looked back and forth between the two would-be combatants.
"Now, as the Guardian of this Library, I'm telling you all that no one is going to beat anyone else here up," she declared, looking sternly at Jacob until he finally dropped his gaze and went submissively back to his seat and sat down. Flynn smiled in triumph.
"And as the Tethered Guardian of this Library, I'm telling you that we aren't giving up on anyone, ever!" she said, turning her withering gaze onto Carsen. Flynn opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off.
"We are not giving up on them!" she repeated firmly. "I'm a soldier, Flynn, and soldiers don't leave a man behind! We don't just write them off and move on, ever. We keep looking for them, no matter how long it takes or how the search ends, and that's what we're going to do now. If it takes the rest of our lives, we're going to keep looking for a way to bring Jenkins and Cassandra home. Period." Flynn looked at the two younger Librarians and saw that it was Jacob now who wore a triumphant grin. He looked back at his Guardian wife, then raised his arms and let them fall limply to his sides in a gesture of helplessness.
"So what do we do now, Eve?" he demanded. "We've looked everywhere we can think of for a way to bring them back, we've tried thinking outside and inside and above and below and beside the box, and we've come up empty. There's nowhere else to look!" He dropped into his chair and rubbed his face with both hands. "And if they could've communicated with us, they would've done it and we would've found that by now. But we haven't. Jenkins is immortal, he'll eventually return to 2019 by the long way, but Cassandra..."
"Who says they didn't let us know?" interjected Eve suddenly, her body tensing as she looked around the table at the others. "Just because we haven't found anything, that doesn't mean that they didn't; it only means that we haven't found it yet!" Jake stared intently at the Guardian, instantly picking up on something in her tone of voice.
"You think they did send us a message, like Flynn sent himself a message about Shakespeare's broken staff from the Sixteenth Century," he said, excitement in having an ally coloring his voice.
"But where?" asked Ezekiel, frustrated. "There's nothing in any of the records we've seen so far." Eve walked slowly around the table.
"Let's think about this," she said, musing aloud. "A message over a century old, meant to be found, but not until the correct time. Where would Cassandra or Jenkins hide that message?"
As the desultory group sat in the center of the room and wondered what to do next, Ezekiel suddenly reached out and slapped Stone's arm.
"What?" snapped Jake irritably, turning to glare at the thief. He was surprised to see a wide grin on the Australian's face as he stared at something in front of him. "What're you lookin' at?"
"First rule of thievery—you want to hide something, hide it plain sight!" Jones said. He looked over at Flynn. "How many cards total are there in that card catalog, mate?" Carsen's eyes lit up.
"Thousands!" he said excitedly. "Tens of thousands!"
"And what're the odds of someone accidentally coming across one single card that's not really supposed to be there?" Jones asked, his black eyes sweeping around the group.
"Millions to one," answered Flynn, slapping his hands together with glee. "Tens of millions! Hundreds, even!"
"It's gotta be in there!" agreed Stone eagerly. "The only question now is, which drawer do we look in?"
"Divide and conquer," said Eve, looking at the two younger Librarians. "We'll start with the most obvious and go from there. Pull the drawers for 'C' and 'J' and we'll start by looking under their names!"
"Dammit! I was so sure we'd find something!" Eve groaned in disappointment five hours later. She shoved the "G" drawer across the table in disgust, then rubbed her tired eyes.
"I thought so, too," muttered Jacob. "It makes perfect sense! Maybe we're just not lookin' in the right drawer?"
"We've looked in every bloody drawer that makes sense," shot back Ezekiel angrily, disappointed that his idea hadn't panned out. "We looked under both of their names, under all possible spellings and configurations; we looked under anything that has anything to do with math, physics, knighthood, the Dark and Middle Ages, Camelot, magic and science in general; we looked up every single card that even mentions the Titanic or her survivors—face it, Stone, I was wrong. There's squat in the card catalog!" He shoved the drawer he'd been working on so hard that it shot across the table and fell to the floor on the other side with a loud clatter, cards spilling across the wooden flooring.
"Okay, look, we're reached the end of the line for today. We're tired," sighed Eve. "Let's get something to eat, get Thistle and Franklin taken care of, and then get some sleep; we can try again fresh in the morning." The men stood up with her and, grumbling morosely at the day's failure, moved off to the kitchen to scrounge up some food before heading home. No one bothered to pick up any of the wreckage scattered on the tables and the floor of the workroom.
"Before I go..." said Charlene, and turned to the three somber young Librarians. "Jacob, Cassandra, Ezekiel—you all have such amazing gifts! I'm sure the Library will be in good hands!" She then turned her attention to Eve, coming to stand directly in front of her. Eve looked down into Charlene's bright blue eyes. She saw sadness there at having to leave them, leave Jenkins, the Library. But Eve also saw happiness and excitement at Charlene's coming reunion with the true love of her life.
"Guardian," said Charlene, and Eve nodded in acknowledgment.
"Guardian."
Charlene then stood on her toes to reach the much taller Guardian's ear, and began to whisper to Eve.
"'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells is my favorite book!"
Eve Baird eyes popped open and she sat up in bed with a gasp, her heart thudding rapidly in her chest. It took her a moment as she looked around the dark bedroom of her and Flynn's apartment to realize that she'd only been dreaming about Charlene and the day she passed through the mirror after saving the Monkey King and Shangri-La. Eve sucked in her breath and held it as she forced herself to recall details of the dream. She heard the former Guardian's final, mystifying words to her again.
'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells is my favorite book!
Baird gasped again, loudly, and her heart began to beat faster.
"FLYNN!" Eve grabbed the snoring form of her husband lying next to her and began shaking him frantically awake. With her other hand she grabbed her phone off of the nightstand to call Jacob and Ezekiel.
"FLYNN! Flynn! Wake up! I know where to find Cassandra and Jenkins's message!"
The Guardian looked around the small semi-circle of bleary-eyed Librarians as they stood in front of her in the Annex workroom. Everyone had clearly dressed hastily, and it looked as though no one had stopped long enough to even run a comb through his hair before heading off to the Annex. Franklin, still keeping his vigil from atop Jenkins's desk, had stirred for a moment when the Back Door activated, raising his head, eyes blinking excitedly as he watched the door closely. But as soon as he saw that it wasn't Jenkins or Cassandra coming it through it, the little reptile laid his head down again with soft thump, a sad whine sounding in his throat.
"So why are we all here at 0-dark-thirty?" grumbled Jones, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
"I had a dream," answered Eve, her voice urgent. Ezekiel stopped rubbing his eyes and stared back her, blinking rapidly as he tried to make them focus.
"You had a what?" he asked. "And if you say 'dream' again, I'm going to punch you in the throat, Guardian or not!"
"No, no—listen!" Eve hurried on. "I had a dream about Charlene, on the day she passed through the mirror. She whispered something in my ear, but at the time it didn't make any sense, and then I completely forgot about it. But in my dream, she whispered it to me again—and now I understand what she meant!" Three pairs of glazed eyes stared back at her blankly. Ezekiel made a show of slowly making a fist.
"Listen!" said Eve, rolling her eyes at the Australian. "When she was saying her goodbyes, she whispered something in my ear. It made absolutely no sense at the time, but I heard her say it again in my dream, and suddenly it just all fell into place!"
"So what'd she say?" asked Jacob, a look of uncertainty on his face.
"'The Time Machine' by H.G. Wells is my favorite book'," repeated Baird, her excitement mounting. The three men exchanged questioning sideways glances.
"I'm serious!" said Eve. "I didn't understand at the time why she would say something like that, I thought it was just some kind of weird 'Guardian humor' or something, and then I forgot all about it when the stuff with Apep happened, and then all the stuff with Nicole Noone…"
"But…it…makes perfect sense to you now?" asked Ezekiel, not even trying to hide his disdain. Baird looked around at the confused Librarians.
"Don't you guys get it?" she exclaimed, waving her hands in frustration. "She was giving me a message!" Flynn's eyes suddenly went wide and a startled look came to his face as understanding suddenly struck him.
"OH!" he shouted. "Of course! Why didn't I think of it earlier?!" He turned and looked at Jake and Ezekiel, and seeing their bewilderment, almost screamed his revelation. "Judson and Charlene were in the Library in 1912!"
"They were in the Library in 1912!" echoed Jake, understanding now downing on him as well. He turned to look at Jones. "They were in the Library when the Titanic sank!"
"So if Cassandra and Jenkins made if off the ship, Judson and Charlene would've known all this time about it," said the Australian cautiously as he followed their line of thought. "But why didn't Charlene just come out and tell us what was going to happen?"
"It would've been a violation of the Law of Causality," answered Flynn as he rubbed his chin. "But when she realized that she was going to have to…leave the Library, she knew we would still need the information she carried, so she entrusted it to another Guardian." He nudged Stone standing next to him.
"Go to the catalog and look up 'The Time Machine'," he instructed the historian. Jake instantly bounded over to the card catalog and began searching through the "T" drawer. Flynn looked at Eve and Ezekiel, a huge grin rejuvenating his face.
"I think there just might be something we can do on our end, after all!" the Librarian said with glee, slapping his hands together and rubbing them briskly.
There only one single card in the catalog, which meant there was only one single book in the whole of the Library entitled "The Time Machine". The moment Jake had the location of Charlene's book written down, the team ran through the Library as fast as they could, each of them anxiously hoping that they might finally have something concrete that they could do to help their lost friends return safely home again. Ezekiel was the fastest runner of the group, and he led them through the dizzying maze of corridors and aisles until he finally skidded to a halt at the end of one particular range of books.
"Here!" he called to the others. "It should be here!" As Stone ran up to him, he dug the scrap of paper out of his pocket.
"Section GK, row 27, shelf t8," he read, checking the identifying range plate on the massive section of shelving. He then darted between two ranges, his head swiveling back and forth as he sought the appropriate row, then the shelf, the others trailing along excitedly behind him. He almost caused a small pile-up when he suddenly stopped in his tracks.
"Here!" he barked a second time. He reached out and plucked a small book from the shelf. It was barely bigger than his hand, bound in a plain, cheap-looking cloth binding of faded blue. Pasted onto the cover of the book was a browning, hand-printed paper label that read "The Time Machine". Jacob's heart sank.
"Wait...this can't be it!" he said, incredulous, as he checked the call number on its minute spine against what he'd written down on the scrap of paper. "There's no way this is Wells' 'Time Machine', it's too small!" He looked up from the paper. "But the numbers match; I musta written it down wrong or somethin'…"
"That's because it's not H.G. Wells' 'Time Machine', Stone," said Eve breathlessly as an idea struck her. "It's Charlene's 'Time Machine! Charlene is the one who left us a message, not Cassandra or Jenkins!" She gripped the historian's shoulders tightly.
"What's it say on the inside?" Eve prodded. "Charlene must've written something inside!" Jacob's trembling fingers fumbled to open the small book, the others crowding around him to see what was inside of it. On the crumbling yellowed flyleaf was a single line, written in Charlene's distinctive hand.
"Midnight, November 4, 2019—Portland, Oregon Annex Workroom"
The four people looked up from the book and looked around at each other. All had a look of shock on their faces.
"What does that mean?" said Ezekiel, puzzled.
"Cassandra!" gasped Eve softly. "She's telling us when Cassandra and Jenkins are coming home—via a time machine!"
"Why didn't Charlene just say that, then, why isn't her name in the book?" growled Jake, wanting to believe, but clearly wary.
"Guys!" interjected Ezekiel. "In case you haven't noticed, tomorrow is November 4, 2019!"
"Correction!" said Flynn, pulling his gold watch from his pocket and opening it. "It's now 12:02 am; today is November 4, 2019!"
The Librarians and their Guardian looked around at each other, almost too afraid to believe. Suddenly, as though everyone had the same thought at the same time, all four turned as one and ran back to the workroom as fast as they could. With Jacob leading the way, they poured into the large room and skidded to a stop just inside the door, just in time to see a blinding flash of light and a deafening thunder-like clap, the air crackling, saturated with static electricity. Franklin screeched in terror and scrambled wildly from Jenkins's desk to the floor, then shot beneath the map cabinet in the alcove behind the Caretaker's desk.
Everyone instinctively turned their heads away and covered their eyes with their hands or arms. As the light dimmed, they heard a mechanical, high-pitched grinding sound that gradually lowered in pitch. Turning around and blinking rapidly as their eyes readjusted to the normal lighting in the workroom, they hardly noticed the large, flamboyantly garish steampunk-looking contraption that had just appeared in the middle of their Annex; their attention was focused, instead, on the thin, pale, redheaded woman in Edwardian garb perched stiffly in the machine's control chair, her eyes tightly shut, her teeth clenched. In one hand she clutched a small black box incised with magical symbols, while her other hand had a death-grip on the frame of the time machine itself.
"Cassandra?!" breathed Eve, her heart racing with excitement. Cassandra was alive! The moment she heard her name called, the young Librarian opened her mouth and wailed like a mournful banshee.
"NO! GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE! PLEASE!"
Before anyone could react or say anything, Cassandra screamed as if she was in terrible pain. She brought the hand holding onto the box across her chest, and with all her strength she flung the box as far away from her as possible. At the same moment, the time machine began to snap and spark angrily as various overloaded components blew themselves apart and circuits began to short out, sending shards of glass and metal flying in all directions. Smoke and flames appeared from behind Cassandra, dangerously close to the skirts of her clothing. Most alarming of all, however, was that she and the machine were beginning to fade in and out of existence.
"Cassandra!" shouted Eve. Without a moment's hesitation, the Guardian ran forward and seized the Librarian by her arm and tried to pull her off of the disintegrating time machine. But, Cassandra, still stunned by her terrifying trip through Time on the unstable prototype, unconsciously tightened her grip on the frame, still not aware that she had actually reached her destination.
"NO!" the Librarian shrieked in panic. "Leave me alone! Go away!"
"Cassandra! Let go!" screamed Baird, pulling on Cassandra's arm as hard as she could, but the terrified woman, fueled by adrenaline, held on.
"I need help!" the Guardian shouted. Before the sentence was finished, she felt a strong pair of hands next to hers, prying the frozen Librarian's fingers free of the time machine.
"I gotcha!" Jake yelled over the increasingly ominous whine of the machine. Suddenly Cassandra's hand was free of the framing, and all three of them tumbled to the floor in a heap. A split-second later, a blinding ball of light engulfed the time machine and hid it from view. A blast concussion blew outward from where the machine had sat, knocking everyone and everything in the workroom to the ground and pushing the heavy tables and desks across the room to slam into the walls. Papers, books and artifacts flew everywhere.
For several seconds after the blast, nothing moved in the suddenly still, acrid air. Then, as sheets of paper drifted to the floor around them, Flynn, Ezekiel, Jake and Eve began to sit upright. Baird looked down, and to her tremendous relief, there was Cassandra, shaken and confused, but otherwise she appeared to be unharmed.
"Cassandra?!" said Eve, gently pulling the younger woman upright and quickly scanning her for injuries while the men scrambled to gather anxiously around the two women. "Are you all right?!"
The Librarian slowly opened her eyes and looked around at the familiar, worried faces. A faint smile of recognition began to slowly spread across her face and tears of joy pooled in her blue eyes.
"Hey, guys; I'm back," she whispered, half-raising her free hand to wave at them weakly. "Did you miss me?"
Cassandra then turned quickly away and vomited all over the floor.