Chapter 5

Stunned silence echoed throughout the room. Chloe felt like she'd been slapped for the second time that day. The words seemed to hang there in thin air, invisible and accusatory. They were damning enough that it made Chloe feel like trying to swing a punch at him. Amazingly, she held off. She reminded herself that she loved Max more than she already hated this talking shadow.

"What did she do?" Alyssa asked. Her voice carried a worried note. Chloe didn't blame her. Whether she'd somehow managed to grasp all of this or she was just going with it and planning to try and take it all in later, Chloe didn't know. What she did know was that she wanted the answer to that one just as much as everyone else.

"I don't know. Not truly." Before she could stop herself, Chloe utterly flipped out.

"You fucking what? You come in here and tell me that she put herself in danger because of me and then tell me that you don't know?" She felt her hands begin to shake uncontrollably. It made it impossible to hold the phone still and she was relieved when Steph stepped up to take it. "You need to think very carefully about what you say next."

"I don't know." The Outsider shrugged and it only served to infuriate Chloe more. "She hopped realities somehow. I've seen her do it before through the photos. I've been around when she's done it in several realities. I don't know where she went. But when she came back, she was so full of rage and hate... It was like she was a different person. She was hurting so bad that the sheer power of it actually started distorting things around her. So she sealed herself away. She somehow sealed herself in an area outside of time itself. It's like a negative space. She thinks that when the energy gets too much for her to contain and gets released, the explosion will keep anyone else from dying. She's erased everyone's memories of her and hopes that it'll keep them safe. Actually, she's doing the opposite. She's damning us all."

"But how?" Warren asked. "I know I'm not as well versed in this sort of thing, but it sounds like the best approach to me. Assuming I'm not just having a really trippy dream and we are actually discussing this, she's sealing herself away from the timelines to make sure that she doesn't hurt anyone."

"Except that's not what she's actually doing." The Outsider countered. "She's in an area outside the timelines. That essentially means that far from being isolated, the blast will be unrestricted. It would be like Hiroshima in 1945 if the city went on forever and the nuke had an unlimited blast radius. Except instead of buildings, there are timelines and realities. Instead of people looking at the white light and knowing the instant they saw it that they weren't getting away from it, there are defenceless sheep who don't know they're walking into a slaughterhouse until it's too late. If she'd stayed where she was, the destruction would have been limited to just this reality."

"So it's a 'fat man on the train tracks' situation." Alyssa summarised. "Sacrifice ourselves or die anyway along with everyone else." Her words didn't exactly inspire confidence. Chloe could feel the panic rising in her own chest as she watched it register with everyone else, too. She knew she had to say something else before everyone freaked out and started trying to dig their own bomb shelter in her back garden.

"So I'm guessing you're here because you have a way to stop it." She looked over the top of the phone, choosing to fix her glare on The Outsider's barely visible form to show she really meant business.

"Potentially." His nonchalant shrug made her blood almost hit boiling point. "I can't really interact with anything as I am. In any reality I'm as invisible as a ghost. But in that negative space, I might be able to flicker in for long enough to do something. It would only be for a few seconds, though. That means you're going to have to get me in there, get past Max's protectors and get her worked up enough that the energy gets released early. And it has to be flawless. You have to pick just the right moment to call me in."

"We fuck up, we won't even have time to know we've fucked up." Warren muttered. He looked rather pale and Chloe wondered if it wasn't worth grabbing a bucket in case he worried himself to vomiting point.

"No one will." Dana shrugged. "In any reality." This had the potential to turn into doom and gloom talk. Chloe wasn't about to have any of that. She decided to nip it in the butt while she could.

"Yeah, but if we don't even try then the outcome's still going to be the same! What's the point of sitting on our asses just to die? If I'm going to die, I want to do it while trying to save my girlfriend! So, who's up for trying to stop the annihilation of the space-time continuum with me?" A beat passed. Then another. And another. It was long enough for Chloe to doubt that she'd got through to them. She knew that sometimes words weren't enough, but she had nothing else to use right now. Suddenly, when she was about to abandon all hope of having any company and start calling everyone else a coward, Steph stood up. So did Warren. They looked to each other for a second in silent agreement before turning back to her.

"We're with you." Steph assured her. As Chloe watched, Alyssa, Dana and Juliet all stood up to join her. There was no turning back. They were in it to the end now. Whatever end that was. With that in mind, Chloe turned back to her phone to speak to The Outsider.

"So how is Kate involved in this? She's missing too. Is that related?" She had a sneaking suspicion she already knew the answer, but she needed to hear it for herself. The Outsider seemed like a total fountain of wisdom, but that was to be expected if he truly had stood there and watched all this happen from afar.

"I don't know." Chloe felt her heart sink. "I expect she is involved in this somehow, though. I have a feeling that if we see this through to the end we'll see her somewhere along the way." As Chloe's mind raced, trying to process what that meant, Dana chimed in with another question that had been plaguing her and she hadn't got around to asking.

"You mentioned protection. What sort of thing are we dealing with?" she asked.

"Ever hear of a band based in Seattle called the High Seas?" The Outsider asked in a tone that told him they definitely had. In fact, a quick glance at everyone else told Chloe that she was the only one who hadn't.

"Max never really talked about her time in Seattle." Pieces were starting to slam in place in her mind and they were painting an ugly picture. "Are you trying to say that Max was close enough friends with them that she took them as her protectors and didn't ask me, the girl she's sleeping with?" Hot and furious tears sprang to her eyes. They burned in the worst way possible and she swiped them away quickly. The Outsider, on the other hand, seemed totally undisturbed by the fact Chloe was feeling like she was on the verge of a meltdown.

"That's for you to discuss with her." He shook his head dismissively. "I can no more explain the inner workings of that girl's mind than the mind of anything else that's vaguely female. What I do know, on the other hand, is that they've also been removed from history. Seriously. Google them. If you can stand to touch the keyboard with this glossy effect, that is." He was right. The glossiness that distorted everything made touching anything at all feel synthetic and wrong in the worst way possible. Chloe definitely wasn't about to go web browsing with her keyboard like that.

"So where do we start?" she asked.

"Well, she created the space she plans to die in as her own personal hell." The Outsider reasoned. "Her protectors are also her guards. They'll make sure she stays there until the last possible second before evacuating back to their own reality and their own personal salvation. Or at least, that's assuming they're not planning to die there with her. Little do they know, that's not going to matter. She's really not thought this through. I put that down to a mix of both inexperience and not having time to think things through. But panic makes things predicable. She created that space as her own personal hell. What place in Arcadia Bay would be hell on Earth for her?"

"Blackwell!" Warren piped up. "The way there was right under our noses the whole time!"

"No, that was me!" Chloe countered, gesturing to herself. "I hated Blackwell. Max loved it for some reason. I mean of course she did. She originally came back for the photography course in the first place. Then there was all that crap with Jefferson and-" She stopped abruptly. Everyone turned to look at her, curious and interested expressions on their faces. Chloe, on the other hand, couldn't hide the sense of creeping dread that travelled up her spine and made her feel ready to throw up. "Oh god, no!" She felt the colour drain from her face. "I know where we need to go."

Author's Note: I bet you have a few questions. Namely: "What's he doing updating on a Friday when he literally just told us the story would be updated on Tuesdays?" Well that's a very good question. And the very good answer would be: I've recently been told I'm going back to work as of next week and I work on a Tuesday. You know what they say about Best Laid Plans and I've now had to rethink my whole update schedule because of this. I don't mind too much since it also means I'm going back to work but I feel I have to apologise that the routine is going to have to change. From now on, I will be updating on days I don't work. I don't work on a Friday so that's when I'll be updating this story. Again, sorry for the sudden change. It's not a decision I made lightly but it's something I don't feel I can avoid.

Despite that, I hope you all enjoy the chapter. Next week is when the pace starts to pick up a lot, so that'll be something to look forward to. As always, please feel free to leave a review and let me know what you think. Your support is what inspires me to keep writing.