::End Of The Line – Time Pressure::
Okay, we're outta sight... what now?
Getting beneath the wooden desk, Wendy had no idea what her plan was. She'd gotten Ike in hopes that he'd have the passwords she needed to get into the computer terminals, but she hadn't gotten so much as the chance to ask him before Marie showed up. Thankfully he was able to read a room and understood exactly what kind of shit they were in- the kind that didn't lend itself well to snappy comments or sassy delays.
She could still hear Marie, somewhere in the space behind them, no doubt going through the process of strapping Kenny into that mechanical nightmare. Possibly searching him to make sure he hadn't tried to sneak any metallic objects up onto the platform. The woman was, for the moment, still distracted... but where would they go? The machine was near smack-center of the room, far from the walls and any doors they could pass through to break line of sight. There were more of these desks they could use for cover, but which way would be the best way to remain hidden? She had no idea where Marie was going to go or look when she was done with Kenny, and thus nothing to base any pathing decision on.
She could process information for days, but this was a situation with zero information.
Her nose was beginning to itch again. She quickly buried her face in her knees, pinching the bridge and holding her breath.
"Oh fuck, you're sick?"
Ike hissed next to her as her body experienced a number of muffled explosions. Holding her breath and trying to restrain the spasms was pretty effective, but she knew not actually letting her body sneeze would cause the reflex to occur more often... and she was out of tissues to blow her nose with. In lieu of that, she tipped her head back once the fit was over with and she'd wiped her face on her sleeve, trying to mitigate just how much gross drained out onto her upper lip.
Looking up, at the underside of the desk, she found something... improbable.
There was a piece of paper, taped to the under side of the desk that she and Ike had hidden under. It didn't look like it had been there for long; in fact, the sheet of paper was bright white and lacked any sign of age... and it had a sort of map drawn on it in what looked to be black sharpie marker. Nothing intensely detailed, but it had a circle in the middle with a capital 'M', and then a number of rectangular shapes around the circle. At the edge of the page was a squared off shape, hastily labeled 'cargo elevator' in a somewhat loose script that she found rather familiar.
Kenny. This was Kenny's handwriting... but not quite? Something was off. Kenny could write nice, but his general penmanship was sloppy. This was like that, but as if all his little tics had been... refined? Or maybe just made into habit?
Older. This was the handwriting of an adult.
Ike had noticed her craning neck by now; that she wasn't simply tipping her head back but actively shifting her body to continue looking up at the page taped above their heads, out of view from anyone who wasn't exactly where they were. There was more to the simple map than the local geography- a purple line had been drawn from the side of the circle with the 'M' in the middle of it- Wendy quickly assumed that was the machine. The purple line started at what she'd call the rear of the machine, closest to the cargo elevator, and circled around it before suddenly making a straight line to the squares arranged around the circle- the desks.
With the cargo elevator notated as a landmark, she realized the line went to the desk she and Ike were currently tucked beneath. The purple line was them- the path she'd taken once Marie had arrived, and where she and Ike had ended up to find this page.
"... oh my God it's a loop."
"What?"
Wendy didn't answer Ike's confusion at her gaping realization; she still had more of this map to understand. The purple line didn't stop at their hiding place. There was a circle drawn into it beneath the desk; a suggestion of a stopping point before it moved on. From there, it outlined a path through the other rectangles. First it crossed the aisle, to the right side of the path cleared from Containment, and had another circle drawn- this one with a number '1' in it. Then further to the right and back a few rows before another circle, labeled '2'. Then even further to the right, and on the outer-most edge of the desks, labeled '3'. Finally, a straight line pointing off the edge of the page with an arrow, labeled '4 – Utility B'
"... Utility B is a door over there." Ike muttered, reading the map along with her at this point. "So... what? Someone knew we were gonna be here and need a path out?"
"Or remembered." Wendy whispered back, reaching up to take the page from beneath the desk, carefully and quietly releasing the tape at the corners of the page. Pulling it down, she incidentally held it against the light rigs on the uppermost floor for a split second... and realized there was more writing on the back.
It was the numbers, arranged as a list, each associated with a word.
1 – Garage
2 - Rescue
3 - Anchors
4 – Existence
She blinked a few times, and then suddenly found herself refocusing on the sounds from the experimentation platform.
Kenny and Marie were still talking- the words were signals on when to move. The numbers weren't just steps on a linear path- they were timings!
"... get ready." She told Ike quietly.
"I was here before, y'know." Kenny was practically boasting at this point. Maybe he was trying to throw Marie off her game to slow her down... or maybe he had accepted death and stopped giving a fuck. It didn't matter. Wendy was less listening to the content of the conversation as much as she was listening for key words. "When you brought the machine here from the garage."
Garage- "Go!" Wendy hissed at Ike, pushing him along for them to quickly cross the aisle of desks to the one on the right side of the cleared lane. The younger boy didn't argue with her, ducking low and moving quickly. As they crossed, she stole a glance upwards to the machine.
Marie's back was turned to them, and the woman appeared to be focused entirely on Kenny, maybe with a touch of shock. She was on her knees, securing him to the metal chair atop the device with straps made out of some kind of... black mesh. Carbon fiber? Maybe...
No time to process. A second later, she and Ike were ducked below the first desk on their path, and listening for the next word. She'd already committed the keywords to memory, and actually handed the page to him to navigate and get them to their next hiding place accurately. He took it without a sound.
"You set the fire." Marie murmured. "And Eric- you took him. Where did he end up?"
"We took him home." Kenny responded. "He's probably still locked in the basement, if you care to go rescue him."
Marie scoffed. "Rescue him? There'll be no need for that when it's over. I choose him as my assistant to punish him. I trusted him, and he betrayed me- if he were still here, I would have shot him once the experiment was underway."
Ike pulled her this time, moving with certainty as they zig-zagged between desks before arriving at the designated place for their next stop. She didn't dare raise her head above level to look, but she had to assume their movements were synchronized with Marie looking away, or being otherwise too distracted to notice their movement being different than the dozens of drones in the room, going about their jobs. The further away they got, the less worrisome the noise of their steps were- just a little more, and they'd be home free.
Though... the page neglected to say why they were heading for a utility room. She had to assume there was something of use there, even if that use was a secure hiding spot until Marie was gone.
"Shot him? Wouldn't that cause problems? The timeline..."
Marie actually let out a faint laugh. "You really don't understand it, do you? My timeline, Haley's timeline, our histories are about to become utterly irrelevant- I'm going to cut Alyssa free from us, and our mistakes. I don't expect you to understand the temporal mechanics at work, but that's alright... you don't have to."
Alyssa? … does she mean Dee?
"I understand you and the Doc are anchors."
Another path followed- this time all the way to the back row of the desks and then around to the last one before another, narrow aisle was cleared from the sides of the machine. The two walkways created a sort of cross-hairs that the machine was in the middle of, Wendy noticed... and, tucked beneath their third-step desk, they were simply waiting for the last word on the list, and straining to hear it across the distance they'd gained from Marie and Kenny.
"... always just a step or two ahead of the curve, aren't you? You're full of surprises, Kenny- I underestimated you in this timeline. In mine, you and I never really became friends. At first because I was uninterested in you, and later because you were wary of me. Haley, too, kept her distance as a child when she ended up in South Park. Closer than me, but still... distant. You're more important to Alyssa. She's foolish enough to trust you."
"... who the fuck is Alyssa?" Ike questioned.
"Shh!" Wendy hissed.
"... I've been around a long time, Kenny, and you know what I've learned? Anchors are an aberration- they weren't part of how things were supposed to function. Time travel isn't something humans are supposed to do, we're not made for it. It's a mutation, like the cancers that spawn from radiation exposure- a natural consequence of so many temporal jumps, not because it's the way of the universe or any of that fatalistic nonsense, but because we're sick... and we break things wherever and whenever we go. We can no longer flow with the universe, so the universe flows around us... and if we stress it too far? Things fail. Time fails. Reality fails. Existence fails."
Existence. That was their last word, and the stairs were right in front of them to head up to the middle floor. Beyond that, a door for Utility B... but Marie was still talking.
"I came here to stop Alyssa from becoming one of us before it's too late. It's why I went after her when she was so young- if she never becomes an anchor, she'll shift with her own universe. And then, when I cut away everything that tethers her to my mistakes, to my failures? She'll float free."
They'd made it to the door. Ike had pushed it open, half-way through, but Wendy had hesitated. She hadn't originally been paying attention to the conversation itself, but now she was too invested to know what exactly Marie was saying.
Was she saying she planned to kill herself once this was over?
"... and you think that'll work?" Kenny asked.
"It has to."
"Wendy!" Ike was pulling on her, desperate for her to cross the threshold. She'd looked back, at the platform atop the machine, and could see Kenny with Marie. It was hard to read expressions at this distance, but Marie seemed... pained.
Remorseful.
She gave into Ike's pulling, passing through the door.
"Kyle says you're the smart one, what the fuck was that?!"
Safely on the other side of the door, with it closed and blocking both sight and sound, Ike quickly rounded on her.
"You'll excuse me for listening when they're talking about frying two of my friends out there!" Wendy snapped back in short order, barely processing the room they'd stepped into. She was aware it was pretty small, no larger than her bedroom at home, with a number of exposed pipes, valves, conduits, and otherwise running through the space along the walls.
"The whole town has been brainwashed!" Ike threw back at her. "I haven't seen my brother or my parents since this morning! I don't know if anyone I care about is safe- do you see me freezing up like a fuckin' deer in the headlights? What kind of bitch ass genius are you supposed to be if you can't keep your shit together?!"
"Now, now... that's hardly a way to speak to a lady, Ike."
They both froze. Their argument, born of tension and confusion, was put on hold when a third voice in the room made itself known.
Wendy had no idea how she'd missed him. In a glance, she'd somehow failed to see that there was another person in the room. An adult, no less.
An adult in a disturbingly familiar costume.
"Oh... my God." She murmured.
"What...? No, no fuckin' way..." Ike echoed.
The figure stood in the corner of the room, somehow blended into a series of pipes. Beneath the single light in the ceiling, his face was shadowed by a hood and left them with only the dim impression of a faint smirk. He was of mildly above-average height, and thin as a rail, dressed in muted lavender and accented in gray-green.
"I see you two got my note." He said to them. "Are you ready for the next step?"
"Wait, wait, wait- what are you doing here?" Wendy gaped, taking a step forward. It couldn't be, and yet she was staring right at him.
They'd just left Kenny behind, strapped into what was very possibly his doom... and here before them stood Mysterion himself- all grown up and very much not dead.
"Securing a loop." He informed her. "Just like the others- performing remembered tasks, placing remembered items... and making remembered changes."
His hands appeared from behind his back; a motion that made her realize that his cowl no longer included a long cape. Held within them were a pair of little pocket notebooks, already turned to pages filled with values. Both were thrust out, insistent on being taken quickly. Ike reached out for his without objection, and Wendy followed suit with only a faint stumble of hesitation.
"There's no time to explain. Marie will conduct the test faster than she should. Wendy, your notebook is for terminal thirteen, just outside this door and to the left. Ike, yours is to the right and three monitors down; number sixteen. Passwords at the top of the page; you'll be adjusting the machine's operation cycle in real time. Don't worry about the other workers; their passwords were altered, and they're locked out of the system. Marie didn't have time to check all the gathering areas before things got started."
"... you changed our info sheets." Ike muttered. "Wait- the things I was checking- those were crossed out and changed, too-!"
"The panel needed to be open." Mysterion confirmed. "Everything needs to be just so. If the experiment isn't modified properly, both me and my partner are going to die, and this loop will collapse. Possibly this entire chain of existence. Wait to a count of thirty after Marie announces the test, and then you'll be safe to leave."
Jesus, no fucking pressure.
"When is she going to announce the test?" Ike quested, asking what seemed the most relevant question in the sea of anything else he could have asked about what the fucking fuck was going on.
Outside their door, the PA system squawked.
"All work crews, prepare test run protocols. All work crews, prepare test run protocols. Clear danger areas, report to comms channel zero-one when secure."
"Start counting." Was his response, taking a step back. It was only at that point that Wendy realized there was another way out of the room- a hatch in the ceiling that he had just centered himself beneath.
"Wait- where are you going?!" She demanded. "Can't you help us more than this?"
"We are." He responded simply. "Someone has to break the dam."
In an instant, he disappeared upwards, using pipes as easily as one did a ladder.
"... Ike, you got the count?"
"Twenty-two." He responded. "Going down."
She nodded shortly, picking up that count-down with him while turning back towards the door, notebook in hand.
::The Author's Corner::
And here I thought this story would end up closer to 'regular' length... instead, here we are at fuckin' chapter twenty.
Ah well, it's the finale and the last one was a lil short. Guess it all works out.
ONWARDS!
-Buttlord