Chapter 10: Cause and Effect

"Alex, take my hand!" I shouted as I held out my hand to her.

She stepped back, shaking her head. "No."

"Take it! Now!" I barked.

A whine escaped her throat, but she thrust out her arm, her fingers wrapping around my hand. As soon as her hand was in mine, I reached the other hand out and rewound. The world raced backward. Kristen's car drove in reverse to stop in the spot where we left it. There, a man got out. He went back to Kristen, and she fell up into his arms and he put her back behind the wheel. The car door closed. The man pulled out a gun and the shot went back into the weapon.

In that moment, I felt a great relief. The pressure in my head was getting worse, but I was able to go back far enough to prevent her from getting shot. Time marched backward further.

The man put the gun back, and it looked like he was talking to Kristen. Then, the window rolled up. He knocked on the window. Finally, he started to walk back, but I could barely get him ten feet away from the car before I hit my limit.

I grabbed my aching skull, a sea of disorientation washing over me. When I looked up, Alex was halfway to the car, and she dumped the backpack. "Alex!"

She didn't seem to hear me, because she didn't hesitate. The guy had just made it to the car, and Alex slammed into him. Unlike the nurse, this impact looked painful as he bounced off the car's hood. The instant he hit the ground, Alex was punching his face. He only held up one hand to protect himself. The other hand…

"Alex! The gun!" I shouted, only at that moment realizing that I'd been paralyzed, rooted to the spot on my porch. I started her way as the fight continued.

He pointed the gun at Alex, and I held out my arm to rewind. Alex twisted, grabbing his arm just as the weapon went off. I heard Alex scream, but she didn't stop struggling. Both of her hands grabbed his arm, and she wrenched the gun away from herself. There, I saw it, a seeping red on the side of Alex's shirt. She'd been hit.

Just as I reached for time, she actually pried the gun out of his hand. They rolled over, then another gunshot rang out. The guy stopped struggling. Alex stood, one hand clutching her side. The other held the gun. She pointed it down at his unmoving form.

"Don't!" I cried out.

Alex shot him. And shot him again. And again, and again. After several shots, the gun stopped as the slide stayed back, exposing the chamber.

I just stared, not wanting to believe what I just saw. Then, Alex sunk to her knees as she brought the hand with the gun to her side. She collapsed to the ground.

Shit!

In the heat of the moment, I'd forgotten she'd taken a bullet herself. I rushed over. Blood gushed from the side of her stomach. I put a hand there in a vain attempt to stem the bleeding.

"Did it go all the way through?" Kristen asked.

At some point, she must've gotten out and rushed to the scene, too. "No," I said, looking at Alex's other side. I wasn't going to save her this way.

My eyes fixated on the gun, still clutched tightly in Alex's hand. "Give me the gun," I said, reaching for the firearm.

Alex didn't put up a fight. "I'll be okay," she said as she handed me the gun. "Just let me be me."

"It'll be okay. I've got you," I said, taking a couple of big steps back. In the distance, the sounds of sirens reached my ears. "I promise."

I held out my hand, and time danced backward again. The whole gruesome scene played in reverse. I was easily able to rewind past Alex getting shot. The pressure started to build quickly, but I got Alex back away from the guy. She went back to where the backpack was on her again. Just before she took my phantasmal doppelganger's hand, I reached my limit.

"Fuck," I muttered, holding my head. I looked up, and the guy was just a few feet from me. "Back the fuck up!" I barked at him, brandishing his own piece against him.

"Where the fuck did you come from!" he shouted, taking a big step back as his hands went up.

To him, it must've looked like I appeared out of thin air. I looked over, Alex was standing still, halfway between us and the house. "Alex, grab the duffel bag and get in the car," I said.

"Okay, Spots!" Alex replied.

Keeping the gun pointed at the guy, I rounded the car. I felt for the handle and opened the door by feel alone so I could keep that asshole in my sight the whole time. He shot Kristen and Alex. I couldn't take any chances. Pulling the gun down, I ducked into the car, shouting, "Go, go!"

Kristen peeled out, pulling onto the road. "What the fuck was that?" she asked, glancing over at me.

It didn't occur to me until that very moment just how hard my heart was hammering in my chest or how I was gasping for air. "Sh-shit," I muttered, staring at the pistol in my trembling hand. "That guy shot you."

"And me," Alex said. "Did I kill him?"

"Yes… and yes," I said. "Did Abby tell you that?"

Alex nodded. "Yes."

"What do you mean, shot me?" Kristen asked, again tearing her sight from the road to cast a glance my way.

"I think he was carjacking you? We heard the shot from inside the house. When we came out the car was gone and you were… I had to use a couple of rewinds." I turned, glaring back at Alex, "And I told you not to do that! I screamed it!"

Alex's head tilted to the side. "Not to do what?"

I sighed. On the one hand, she absolutely executed that guy with obscene overkill. There was a decent chance he was already dead when she started unloading into him, but still, I begged her to not do that. On the other hand, I rewound that. Alex might hear about it from Abby, but there was no way she could actually remember what she did. "We need to have another talk about your violence."

"Didn't I save her?" Alex asked.

I had to take another deep breath to center myself. "Yes, you did, but we don't know that what you did was the only way. Just us being there might've been enough for him to think twice about trying to steal Kristen's car."

"So, so back up. That guy was going to carjack me, and he shot me?" Kristen asked.

"Yes," Alex and I answered in unison.

"Are you shitting me? I got shot? Did I like…" she trailed off, falling into silence a couple of seconds. Then she pulled over, resting her head on the steering wheel. "Did he k-kill me?"

I put a hand on her shoulder. "I, uh, I don't really know. My rewinds can only go back so far. When I saw you like that, I just knew I had to rewind as quickly as possible before too much time passed."

"Yeah, no. I get it. Just… what the fuck, Max?" She looked over at me, cheeks wet with tears. "How can you just talk about this shit like it's nothing? I… I got shot!"

My hand slipped away as I hunched a bit. "I guess normal for me has gotten pretty fucked up. I mean, Chloe got shot three times and hit by a train. Kate jumped off a building. Victoria and Nathan were murdered by a psychopath." I gave a bitter chuckle. Brushing my hair away from my face, I did wonder how my life had gotten to this level of screwed up. "I guess you could say this isn't my first rodeo."

"Big Sis says it doesn't matter what happened. Because of Spots, it didn't happen," Alex said.

"Yeah, and because of that, all of Seattle could be in danger," I turned back to glare at Alex. "We might've been able to get away with just one rewind if you'd kept yourself in control!"

"I don't… understand," Alex said, bowing her head to duck my gaze.

I let out a frustrated groan as I sat back in my seat. "Before I rewound the second time, you went after that guy and just started attacking him." I held up the gun. "That's how you got shot. He could have killed you, Alex!"

Alex didn't say anything for a moment. She just fidgeted there as she kept her gaze away from mine. Finally, eyes looking out the window, she said, "Your ability will protect me. I just have to protect you."

Getting through to her seemed more and more like something that was truly impossible. Instead, I turned my attention back to Kristen, still holding herself up with the steering wheel. "You okay?"

"Last night… you said a girl had been dead six months. Is that… what you do now? Just, raise the fucking dead?"

Her words cut through me, giving me pause. "I don't… raise the dead," I said, my voice little more than a whisper. "I make sure they don't die in the first place. And… yeah. The reason I don't remember the last six months like I should is because I made sure a girl, Rachel Amber, didn't get murdered. Changing just that one event saved a thousand lives, Kristen. It saved Chloe."

Kristen sat back, rubbing her face with both hands. "This… this is just too fucked up, Max."

"Yeah," I agreed, fidgeting with the gun until I figured out how to get the bullets out. "I swear, it's like I'm cursed. Bad shit seems to follow me ever since I got my power." I held up the gun in one hand, the magazine of bullets in the other. "What do we do with these?"

Kristen pointed past me at a trashcan on the sidewalk. "Get rid of that shit."

She didn't have to tell me twice. I got out, dumped them in the can, and ran back into the car. I barely got my seatbelt on before Kristen pulled away from the curb. "Are you okay?" I asked, stealing glances over at her.

Kristen's fingers extended and flexed on the wheel several times before she spoke, "My, whole life. My whole goddamned life I've lived in this city, and not once have I had someone pull a weapon on me. I feel… violated. Like I'm not safe in my own goddamned backyard."

She didn't have to tell me about feeling violated. Whether or not I'd be able to rekindle my passion for photography was an open question. And like hell was I ever going to meet one of my heroes again. "I'm sorry, Kristen. It's probably my fault, anyway."

"The fuck?" she asked, glancing over at me. "You saved my life!"

My stomach churned, twisting into knots. "You said it yourself," I muttered, my lips playing out the horrors tearing through my mind. "You spent your whole life here and nothing bad happened. It's not until… not until I started using my power around you. Maybe my power doesn't just cause catastrophic events! What if it makes bad little things happen, too? Maybe Kate never would've jumped, even if Chloe didn't get shot. I mean, so much bad shit happened to Chloe, almost at once—only after I started abusing the shit of this power! Maybe Jefferson wasn't a serial killer. What if my power changed reality to make that happen and—"

"Max!" Kristen snapped at me, stopping my tirade. "You're rambling, and I don't get most of this shit you're talking about."

I took a deep breath, though it did little to ease the pressure in my chest or the anxiety in my mind. "I think… I had an epiphany," I said. It took a minute for me to calm down enough so that my head wasn't spinning. "My power makes bad things happen. And not just city-destroying storms either. Just… unfortunate, bad shit." I hunched over, grabbing the sides of my head. "It's all my fault! Was Rachel even dead before I started fucking with time?"

"If you do not get your shit together, I'm turning this car around and dropping you off at the hospital," Kristen shouted over at me. "I don't pretend to know a fucking thing about what's going on. But you saved my life, Max. Don't stress about it."

Just how much did it cost? Two more rewinds…

An icy chill seized my body. Ten. I did ten rewinds since this jump. It wasn't just a counter, slowing tipping the cosmic scales to a mega-disaster. Each time I twisted time, it recoiled, making something bad happen, past, present, or future.

What have I done?