I stared in astonishment at the row of obsidian blocks in front of me, penning us in. I couldn't believe we'd managed to be tricked that easily, but we had.
"No! What the hell!" Julia yelled. She pounded a fist against the pitch-black blocks, though she had to have known it wouldn't do any good. Nothing could break through obsidian but a diamond pickaxe, and though none of us were exactly low on supplies, that was one thing we didn't have.
I glanced between the obsidian wall, to Julia, to Radar's panicked face, back to the wall again. "I…think you were right, Lukas." I said quietly. "We appear to have just made a massive mistake."
There was a one-block tall gap in the obsidian, slightly above my eye level, that stretched from one end of the wall to the other. It was just enough that I could see the closed iron door we'd come through, but when Lukas tried to reach his hand through, he was stopped by an unseen force.
Barrier blocks. We really were stuck.
The iron door briefly opened, and the taller woman with the long black hair appeared. She still had the bandana over her mouth, but now that I had an idea of who she was, she seemed much more familiar, in that strange way that the other two Primes had been.
She leaned on the obsidian wall, peering into the new prison at us. Her expression was complicated, some strange mix of sympathy and authority. "Please, don't get the wrong idea. This really is for your own safety; my timeline is much more of a mess than any of you could understand."
Before I'd even fully processed what she'd said, she turned away again and went back out through the iron door. As she left, a man with crimson-red hair stood with his back to the door, apparently standing guard.
Julia and I exchanged a nervous look. Radar, on the other hand, was frowning thoughtfully.
"She really is the Prime." he murmured.
"I already said that." Lukas objected. Radar shook his head, then reached up and adjusted his glasses.
"Did you hear what she said? 'My timeline'. Not this timeline, or my world. I doubt she would've worded it like that if she wasn't the Prime."
Julia reached up and tugged on her braid. "Shit. This is bad."
"What does this mean?" I asked. "If Beacontown looks like this, but the Prime is still here…"
Lukas shook his head slowly, staring at the obsidian floor. "I don't know, I have no idea. And then who are said 'rebels'? Why do we not recognize the people who are apparently closest to the Prime? What the hell happened here?"
"…And how do we find any of that out?" Radar added.
I didn't say anything to that, because there was nothing to say. Like I'd realized earlier, if we really were in the hands of villains, we may not be able to figure out the truth. It's not like we could just ask them, 'hey, are you by any chance the villains in this crazy little adventure?'.
"On the other hand, what if this Prime really is on our side? I mean, I'm not saying I think she is, but what if she actually does just want to help us?" Lukas asked. I could tell by his expression that he didn't really believe his own words but was playing devil's advocate anyways.
Julia snorted. "Yeah, by locking us in an obsidian prison? If she really does have our best interests at heart, wouldn't she have just told us what was going on instead of locking us in here?"
Radar let out a nervous sigh. "Right. Then I guess it's safe to say that this Prime won't be too keen on helping us figure out the missing constant or telling us anything remotely helpful."
"See, what's bothering me the most is the fact that we don't know the other two people we saw. They should be in our timeline as well, right?" Lukas said, leaning back against the wall and gesturing vaguely to me.
"Maybe…but we don't know what actually happened here." Radar pointed out. "All we know is that we're three months in the future and this place isn't anything like our own Beacontown. We can't rule out the possibility that they're people we just haven't met yet."
I scowled. "I…don't know. You heard how that woman was talking; she made it seem like she'd been a Beacontown resident for a long time. But since none of us recognize her…it's too suspicious. I think there's something highly fishy going on."
"This is exactly why I didn't want to come to this timeline." Julia muttered. Lukas's eyes narrowed, but before he said anything, Julia turned around again and smacked a fist against the obsidian, hollering at the guard standing on the other side of the iron door. "Hey, you! Why the hell are we being kept in here? What does your creepy boss want from us?!"
The red-haired guard turned around to face her, glaring through the 'window' in the door. I reeled back in shock as I realized that, unlike the others we'd met, he wasn't a stranger. Far from it- he was none other than Romeo, the reformed Admin whom I'd banished back to the Underneath.
His voice was cold and detached- but still with the familiar lilt of his accent -as he said, "I can't and won't tell you anything. Essa told me to make sure you stayed in there, and that is what I'm doing. It's not up to me to answer any of your meaningless questions."
The words only partially sunk into my brain, since I was still a little stuck on the fact that the former Admin was standing right there. Based on the stunned expressions that Lukas and Radar wore, I wasn't the only one.
Romeo turned back around and continued ignoring us, while Julia bemusedly examined our surprised faces. "What? Yeah, he was a jerk, but that's not really…"
I shook my head. "Julia, that's…that's Romeo. The Admin."
She spun around to stare at him again, though now all that could be seen was the back of his head. "He's what? How?!"
"This Prime not only saved him, but allowed him to stay in Beacontown? That seems…strangely softhearted." Lukas commented. Julia gave him a baffled look.
"Saved him? But…he died! He lost his powers, and the Prismarine Colossus came after him, and he's dead!" she exclaimed, looking thoroughly alarmed.
Shaking his head, Lukas told her, "Not in our timeline. Jess brought him with us." He gave me a look that bordered on judgmental, but I ignored it.
"But…t-the Colossus…" Julia stammered.
Radar puffed out his chest. "I led that giant Enderman into the Terminal Space, and the two of them duked it out."
"Still kinda wish I could've seen who won that fight." I added, and Radar flashed me a brief grin.
Julia rubbed her forehead. "This is so confusing. Why in the Overworld do there have to be so many freaking deviations."
Lukas let out a disdainful huff. "Julia, if we knew that, this entire quest would be over already."
It was more than an hour before anyone paid any attention to the four new prisoners in the obsidian cell. We talked idly for a while, theorizing about the timelines in general and the strangeness of this particular dimension, but eventually settled into a nervous, uncomfortable silence.
We heard more noises from above, the certain sounds of a fierce battle. At one point I could've sworn I heard Jack's voice, shouting something in a voice full of rage and fear, but we were deep enough underground that I couldn't be sure.
I was aware of the sounds of other people moving through the tunnels as well. There seemed to be quite a number of others down here, all loyal to the woman we assumed was the Prime.
Romeo had said he took orders from someone named 'Essa'…but was that the Prime? I doubted it, since the rest of the Primes' names, including mine, started with a J. Maybe Essa was the brown-haired woman, since she seemed to hold a position of power as well.
Finally, after the aboveground noises had quieted, two people appeared through the iron door after dismissing Romeo. I was not surprised to see that it was the elegant brown-haired woman and the scarred man.
The man still had the kerchief over his mouth and looked significantly scruffier than earlier. I assumed he'd been part of the fight above, especially since he was in the process of bandaging a bloody cut on his arm when he walked in.
The woman, on the other hand, looked just the same as before, if a bit more smug. I studied her face carefully, trying to figure out if I knew her and she'd simply slipped my memory. But no luck- there was nothing about her that seemed distinctly familiar, not her faintly-purple eyes or the galaxy of freckles dotting her cheeks.
Julia immediately lunged forward, putting her face right up to the gap in the obsidian. "Who are you, and what do you want with us?!" she demanded.
The man hung back in the shadows, but the brown-haired woman stepped closer, giving her a coolly unruffled look. "What we want is for you to stay out of our way." she said, apparently ignoring the first half of the question.
"Out of your way for what? What were we doing that qualified as getting in the way?" Lukas asked, significantly more calmly than Julia.
The scarred man let out a hostile noise that sounded almost like a growl. "Fucking around with the timelines, that's what."
"We're not messing with them! We're trying to fix them!" Radar objected, not even questioning why or how they knew about the timelines.
The woman grinned predatorily. "That's the point, kiddo. My word, but it's been a long time since I've seen you properly. You've certainly gotten tall."
Radar stepped back. "You know me?" he asked in a voice that, to his credit, quavered only slightly.
She inclined her head, the smile fading a little. "Well, this timeline's version of you, anyways. Who has apparently made some…very different choices, it seems."
"What do you mean?" Lukas asked.
Again, it was the scarred man who answered him. "She means that our version of him turned on us and disappeared, only to go and join the rebels. Essa was not pleased."
The reappearance of the name Essa seemed to imply that it did, in fact, belong to the Prime and not the brown-haired woman, but I was temporarily distracted by the man's voice. I knew that voice, I was sure of it. It was still muffled by the bandana and sounded a little angrier and coarser than I knew it to be, but his tone matched that of someone I'd spoken to recently.
If only I could figure out who.
"But is that…a deviation, or something that just happens later?" Julia asked quietly, seeming like she hadn't mean to say it aloud.
The brown-haired woman's mouth turned up again. "That, my friend, is an excellent question."
Now it was Julia's turn to let out an angry huff. "That's pretty rich; locking us up in an obsidian prison cell and then calling us friends."
The other woman nodded agreeably. "Maybe so, but I seem to be lacking a better word at the moment. Because although you may not see us as friends, that doesn't mean we need to be enemies."
She spread her arms in a benevolent sort of gesture. "I promise you; we are just trying to do what's best. Like Essa told you, this timeline is very, very different from either of yours. It's dangerous, especially since the events that changed this place haven't yet happened to yours."
Radar went very still. "You mean…all this insanity, the rebels and the destruction and everything…that is going to happen to our Beacontown?" he asked, voice cracking from nerves.
The woman nodded sagely. "Very soon, if I'm right."
"But there must be some way to stop it! We can't let our Beacontown become like this!" Radar exclaimed, looking worriedly at me.
"But we can't change it, either. That would just make more deviations and throw things even more out of balance." objected Lukas.
Another solemn nod from the chestnut-haired woman. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's quite the conundrum."
"Wait." I interjected. "How do any of you even know about the timelines? Why do you know so much about my timeline?"
The pair of violet-grey eyes assessed me for several moments before the woman spoke in a frigid and faintly haughty voice. "Essa, our Prime, has been studying the timelines for many years. I have been helping her. At this point, I believe there is little we don't know about them."
This seemed immediately suspicious to me, but I chose to keep my mouth shut. I got the feeling that this woman didn't trust me in particular, though I wasn't sure why. Perhaps because I was a Prime? But so was Julia, and she didn't seem to have any specific issue with her.
The scarred man stepped forward slightly, his green eyes still focused on Lukas. What I could see of his expression was strange, the look in his eyes hovering somewhere between confusion, sadness, and a faint flicker of what I think was hope.
"What I want to know…" he started. "Is how in the Overworld you managed to survive."
In contrast, Lukas took a step back. "How I…what?"
"Seven years ago, I saw you die. There was no time to even try to save you; you were gone the moment you hit the ground. I was there, and I saw it happen, and I want to know how this version of you escaped that fate."
Lukas's blue eyes were wide and startled. "I don't know what you mean. I've been through some near-death experiences, but I…I don't even know who you are."
The man watched him silently for several more moments, then ducked his head slightly, looking away. I stepped slightly closer to the gap, peering thoughtfully at him. This was going to kill me if I didn't figure out who he was soon.
The auburn-haired woman shot her companion a look that seemed to indicate some kind of warning, then looked at each of us in turn. "Trust me. For the moment, you are much better off in there, where there's nothing to meddle in and no danger to fall into. It is ultimately up to Essa to decide what to do with you, but until she reaches a verdict, I'm afraid you must remain where you are."
Her voice did not carry the sincere note of apology that the words suggested. If anything, she sounded decently smug. She pivoted away from us, and Romeo opened the iron door for her as she left.
The scarred man looked like he was going to follow, but he turned back to look at Lukas for a moment more, still with that same sorrowful hope in his eyes. Lukas suddenly sucked in a deep breath and leaned forward, staring back at the other man with an expression of shock-tinged wonder.
"…Aiden?" he inquired slowly.
The man lifted his head slightly, a nod of recognition cut in half.
Now I saw it. The scar, the shorter hair, and the disfigured nose had thrown me off, but it was undoubtedly him. I didn't know what to think of his presence here, why he would possibly be in Beacontown or why he was so close to the Prime.
This timeline's version of Aiden turned away, ducking his head again and walking briskly through the door. Lukas imitated Julia's motion earlier, thoughtlessly hitting the obsidian with a clenched fist.
"Wait, no! Aiden, come back! How are you here?! What's going on?" he hollered. "What did you mean about me being dead? Aiden!"
He gave up soon after it became clear his pleas weren't going to be acknowledged, leaving us again in that silent black cage with nothing but an endless array of unanswerable questions.
