Chapter 7

Max opened her eyes only to slam them shut again as the harsh light blinded her painfully. Her eyes streamed as she tried to get them to adjust to the harshness. She could hear a voice calling her but it sounded distant and far away. Her head was swimming in a way that reminded her of being trapped in Jefferson's darkroom and dosed repeatedly with drugs of varying kinds and in quantities that would probably see her failing job interview drug tests for over a decade. There was no doubt about it. Something was severely wrong in this frighteningly similar reality.

Eventually, her eyes adjusted enough that she could look around provided she kept her eyes only half-open. She couldn't shield them with her hands due to being tied to the chair she was sat on. This room looked very similar to the darkroom, but there were key differences. The photography lights had been replaced with guard lights and the computer and camera equipment had been switched out for a whole payload of wicked-looking tools and enough weaponry to perfectly round out the picture. It no longer looked like a secure apocalypse bunker and now more closely resembled a prepper's zombie apocalypse survival shed. The fact that Max knew back in her original reality there had been a side room full of tinned food didn't help with that mental image. Where was she? Just as she pondered that, the voice came into focus.

"Max? Are you a bit more with it now? Holy shit, you had me worried!"

"Chloe?" Max looked the taller girl over and noticed she looked totally different. Her blue hair was now its original brown but it was her outfit that proved the biggest shocker. It was an Arcadia Bay Police Department uniform. She looked down at herself and realised she was wearing one too.

"Okay, you're back!" Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. "Listen, he's trying to turn you against me using memory suppressants. Tell me everything you remember!" Max thought for a moment. She'd only just landed in this reality. She had no memories of it. There was nothing she could say. She didn't know where she was or what she was supposed to be doing in this timeline. It also didn't matter. She had bigger problems. But as if an angel whispered in her ear, she suddenly knew the perfect response.

"I'm Max Caulfield, you're Chloe Price and I'm never going to leave you." The breath that Chloe let out seemed to hold the weight of all the pent-up stress she'd evidently been holding in. Instantly, it seemed like her will to fight had flared into life and Max could see her working to try and come up with a plan. At that moment, there was a bang as the door opened. They heard footsteps coming down the hall and braced for whatever awaited them. That was when a sight Max least expected to see greeted them. Nathan Prescott and Warren Graham, both in Arcadia Bay PD uniforms and with guns drawn, bursting into the barn and clearing each side of the room to make sure no one was about to jump them.

"It's okay, he's not here!" Chloe called out. Instantly, they put their guns away and moved to free both girls to the chairs they were bound to. Nathan moved to work on Chloe as Warren checked Max over.

"Jesus, what happened?" he asked.

"That bastard tried to turn Max against us with memory suppressants!" Chloe glowered at the trolley full of hypodermic needles off to one side. This was closer to the Chloe Max new, she realised. The ones in the other realities had acted like Chloe, but had been weirdly docile. Was there a reason for it? Was it important? Her brain was too addled from the drugs to make sense of it. Or any of this, for that matter. What was Nathan doing as a cop? He was in league with Jefferson in all her other realities. If she left that unchecked, it could only lead to disaster.

"Chloe, watch out for Nathan!" Max called out to her as Nathan continued to furiously work on the ropes. "I think he's in league with Jefferson!"

"I wish you hadn't said that."

"Said what?" Nathan had been so focused on untying Chloe that he hadn't paid attention and looked to Warren to repeat what she'd said. A bullet in the brain was his only response and he hit the floor with a heavy crash as a cloud of red mist plumed from his forehead. Max's heart sank. Jefferson had been expecting her to call Nathan out, especially under the influence of drugs as she was in this moment, and so had deliberately aimed her here so that she'd be easy to sidestep.

"Oh, crap." The statement felt dead even to her own ears. She knew this Chloe wouldn't understand the true weight of her problems just then, but that wasn't what was important. What was important was the fact that Jefferson was possessing Warren's body and holding a gun to her head.

"Goodbye, Maxine." With that, he pulled the trigger. The world around Max was once again obliterated. The vortex of light enveloped her and left her facing off against Jefferson again. While the effects of the drugs were instantly gone from her senses to the degree that it was like they'd never been there, probably because that was just part of that specific reality, the effect was disorienting enough that Jefferson was easily able to gain the upper hand. Max struggled back furiously, but she couldn't match his driven determination and the fact that he'd been able to recover first. In the end, he managed to force her into another reality and, in doing so, a new form of torture.

The new reality she found herself in was an unfamiliar one. This one saw her at the Two Wales. That in itself was familiar, but looking down at what she was wearing was the biggest shock. She was in a waitress uniform. It wasn't an outfit she liked and she was starting to wonder if it was a joke when she heard Joyce's voice calling her from the kitchen.

"Max, it's time for your break, honey! One hour. I'll bring you some food out. I'm doing bacon omelette."

"Thanks, Joyce!" Max walked over to a free booth and sat down, contemplating where she was now and how to get out of it. She didn't know the answer to either. She didn't know what was going to happen if Jefferson succeeded in obliterating this reality too, or where she might end up after that. For now though, she had a quiet moment. Even if it was part of a narrative she was now being forced to follow, she decided to embrace it. She didn't know when she'd get another one.

She sat there taking in the view as Joyce put a plate down in front of her. She thanked her without looking up as she began eating. As she enjoyed the plate of eggs and bacon, its all-too-familiar taste reminding her of eating breakfast after all those sleepovers with Chloe. Even then, Max had known in the back of her mind that there was something special about Chloe. She was Max's best friend, of course. But there was always something else there. And how it had torn her up leaving for Seattle... The fact it was just after William's funeral hadn't helped, but the agony of leaving Chloe behind at all had been almost unbearable. By the time she'd finally been able to get over her grief, it had been so long since she'd left that it was too late to write without it seeming weird.

But that was just it. It would have only seemed weird. She realised now that if she'd just explained that she'd found Seattle hard to adjust to and wanted to settle in a bit before writing, she was sure Chloe would have accepted it. But she'd been so scared of what she might say that she'd cut herself off from her to the degree that she'd been the reason it was inevitable that Chloe would say those things. The only one driving Chloe away from her after she'd moved had been her. She knew that now. But if she didn't stop Jefferson soon, Chloe would continue to suffer across multiple universes and many realities. The knowledge that would happen was a torment Max couldn't bare and it was in that moment of clarity that she knew what she needed to do.

Just as that thought registered, Max felt herself sliding sideways as the poison in her food took effect. Jefferson must have been possessing Joyce. As she tasted blood in her mouth, she realised she was beyond the point of surprise. While the diners were looking her way with expressions of horror as this reality also began to fragment, she'd made up her mind. This was going to stop, one way or another.

This time, Max was ready. As soon as the vortex surrounded her and Jefferson again, she aimed herself at a reality she'd spotted that showed glimpses of her and Chloe standing by the lighthouse as the tornado raged towards Arcadia Bay. Perfect! If she played her cards right, she could wipe out both at once! Jefferson had been left some distance behind her because of Joyce being in the kitchen in the previous reality. His relative position left him far enough away that she was free to dive into the new one without him being able to stop her. Unfortunately, that meant he'd seen where she went. She knew he would be right behind her and she knew exactly who he'd possess. It made no difference. As she jumped into the reality, she felt the residual memories swimming around in it disjointedly. She knew exactly what point they were at even though she'd never been there before. From that moment, she knew her escape was guaranteed. But was she just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire?