Two's company, three's a crowd
Jack could count the amount of times he'd felt his heart rip in half on one hand, on five fingers exactly. What he was witnessing right now added an extra hand.
"Crutchie!" He screamed. His throat was starting to ache, but he hardly noticed that over the phantom pain in his gut. Every time that Oscar and Morris rammed their feet into Crutchie's body, Jack felt it as if it were him lying helpless and bruised on the floor.
He tried to urge himself to move, but he felt frozen, as if his feet had been welded to the floor. When the cops had first arrived, Jack pushed Les back into the barrel they took to hiding him in for dangerous situations, dodged a few blows, then grabbed Crutchie's arm, the two rushing as fast as they could to the nearby scaffolding for safety.
Jack and Crutchie had been halfway up the stairs when Crutchie's crutch got stuck in the space between two steps. Jack paused, a couple steps higher than Crutchie.
"Y'alright?" He asked, voice raised above the ruckus.
"I'll be fine," Crutchie grunted in between attempts to dislodge the stick. "This has happened before, I should get it out in no time."
"You sure you don't need help?" Jack asked.
Crutchie nodded. "Keep going, I'll catch right up to ya."
Jack returned the nod, but not without hesitation. He started back up the stairs, a little slower than before as to make it easier for Crutchie to catch up, all while glancing back every step or so to see if Crutchie's progress. So far, he hadn't made any yet.
"Are you sure you don't want me to get that out?" Jack called.
"Yep," Crutchie replied, teeth gritted. He tugged especially hard, and the crutch – finally – moved a little further out of the jam.
"If you say so," Jack said. He was about to continue upwards when he spotted something that would make their trek to the second floor of the scaffolding about twenty times more stressful. "Uh… Crutchie? You might want'ta hurry that up."
"I know, but getting it out like this has always worked before. Why the heck isn't it working now?" Crutchie looked behind him, pausing as he registered what was coming towards them. His head whipped back around, his eyes wide as he spotted the two thuggish brothers hot on their trail. "Crap, so that's what you meant."
"Yeah, hurry!" Jack hissed, still on his step.
"I'm trying," Crutchie replied, tugging on his crutch with increasing intensity. The crutch was shaking violently in the gap between the stairs, but somehow was still stubbornly stuck.
"Come on-" Jack could probably see his heart thumping through his clothes if he had spared a glance downwards.
"I'm trying," Crutchie repeated, his voice breaking.
Jack cursed as he rushed down to his friend, joining him in trying to dislodge the crutch. Crutchie was practically hyperventilating, and Jack could barely get air any further down than the bottom of his throat at this point. With one last tug, the crutch finally, finally, freed itself from the staircase.
"It's out," Crutchie sighed. Relief washed over the two before Jack remembered the situation they were in.
"Let's hurry, they're almost here. F'we get to the second floor of this thing by the time they get to the bottom of these stairs, we should be able to regain the ground we lost, 'lright?"
Crutchie nodded rapidly as he and Jack began hurrying up the stairs again, Crutchie just a step or two behind Jack. The Delanceys were closer, Jack could hear them now.
He glanced back down and just about choked on air. Somehow, they were already at the steps and starting their way up.
Snyder was waiting at the bottom of the steps, grinning wickedly through his mustache. Jack didn't even know how he got there. "You can't run forever, now can you?" he sneered.
Jack swore, trying to reach to Crutchie to semi-drag him upwards. "Hurry!"
"I'm trying, Jack," Crutchie gasped, quickening his pace. The Delanceys were even closer, and they weren't even running. Oscar all but sauntered up the stairs, Morris close behind. Jack hurried up a few more steps, and Crutchie followed suit, still a step below Jack. Just one step too much.
By the time Jack had turned back around to see why Crutchie was screaming, his friend had already been dragged halfway back down the stairs.
"Crutchie!" He shouted, reaching out to him. He tried to run, but he felt frozen.
"Jack!" Crutchie stretched his hand out, reaching back towards Jack, but yelped painfully as Oscar swatted his hand down, Crutchie's arm hitting the wooden stair.
"Shut up, crip," Oscar sneered at the boy. Jack could hear almost nothing but the blood rushing in his ears. "Move," Oscar demanded, glancing at his brother, who nodded. Crutchie's body made a thunking noise as Morris dragged him down the steps. Jack called out Crutchie's name again. Then came the kicking.
"Crutchie!" Jack felt like doubling over.
"Jack, help," Crutchie cried, voice knocked out of his body from the foot currently buried in his stomach. Snyder just stood by, smiling. Behind Snyder, there were two policemen, standing by. Doing nothing.
"Why aren't you doing anything?" Jack shouted desperately to them. The most response he got from them was a sniff from the one on the left. The square was mostly empty now, with the larger part of the newsies having fled or been dragged away by the cops.
He tried to force his legs to move again, which finally worked. He raced down the stairs, only to be blocked and thrown back by Snyder's thick arm. He felt the air rush out of his body as his back hit the edge of a step, and watched, pained, as Snyder walked towards Crutchie.
"Don't hurt him," Jack tried, but the plea left his lips so feebly that he was sure no one heard him.
Whether Snyder did or didn't, it was clear that it didn't matter. He reached down and, to Jack's complete horror, pulled the crutch from the boy's weakening grasp.
"Don't hurt him," Jack pleaded again, louder this time. Unlike last time, Snyder clearly heard Jack. Like last time, though, Snyder chose to ignore him.
When the crutch made contact with Crutchie's body for the first time, Jack heard exactly two things: one was the sound of wood splintering. The other was Crutchie's broken sob as he curled further in on himself.
"Stop it!" Jack's voice was hoarse, but what did he care?
Snyder brought the crutch down again. Jack heard the wood splinter again. Although Morris jumped slightly at the noise, Oscar cackled, head thrown back like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.
"Please, Jack, help me," Crutchie forced out, reaching his arm out as much as he could through the pain. He didn't get it out very far, though, since the crutch came down on his arm this time. He let out a strangled noise.
Jack, who had some breath in him now, forced himself to his feet and lunged forward, colliding with Snyder's back and sending the older man stumbling forward.
"What the-" Snyder started.
"Get off of him," Jack spat, his voice ragged. Using some of his remaining strength, he rammed himself into Snyder a second time, making him stumble again, crutch flying from his grasp. Jack picked it up and held it before him like a sword. His entire life, he had run away from fights. Today would end that pattern.
Oscar, who had stopped any roughhousing, eyed the crutch warily. "The hell are you playing at, Kelly?"
Jack thrust the crutch further in front of him. He would have poked Oscar in the chest had he not taken a step back. "I'm not playing at anything. I'm not going to repeat this again – get. The hell. Off. Of. Crutchie."
Morris subtly tugged on Oscar's sleeve, almost like a little kid. Jack would have laughed at the pathetic gesture had the situation not been as dire. Oscar's brows furrowed imperceptibly, then, after a moment, he nudged his brother.
"Lets go," he grumbled, turning around. At Morris's hesitation, he whipped back around, his face a mask of anger. "I said, let's go!" At this, Morris scampered away behind his brother, and, with one final scowl, disappeared into an alleyway.
Jack sighed, looking down at Crutchie. However, Crutchie did not sport the same expression of relief as Jack – instead, he just barely lifted a trembling finger behind Jack, mouthing something that Jack couldn't make out.
"What is it, Crutchie?" Jack asked, turning around and in doing so, narrowly evading Snyder's attempt at grabbing him.
Jack winced, swinging the crutch and hitting Snyder square in the side. Snyder gasped, clutching where he had been struck. In that slim window of time, Jack leaned down to Crutchie. This gave him a better look at the other boy: although his face was mostly unscathed, his body was undoubtedly littered with cuts and bruises, with red staining his clothes in certain places.
"God, I'm sorry, Crutchie," Jack groaned, sliding his hands underneath Crutchie's body and making sure the crutch was hanging securely off of his elbow. "Im'ma pick you up, alright?"
Crutchie nodded, arching just a little bit so Jack could get a better grip. The two both grunted as Jack lifted Crutchie up and began to walk as fast as he could. He could hear Snyder threatening him from somewhere behind them, but he tuned it out and kept walking. He didn't know what happened to the cops and didn't care.
"Christ, m'so sorry," Jack repeated.
"It's fine, I'm… okay now, right?" Crutchie attempted a weak smile, but it faltered quickly. He let out a thin cough. "Are… are the others okay?"
Jack swallowed down a large lump in his throat. "Les should be okay, I saw Davey rush him out as soon as he was able… Romeo got hit by a bull but I think he made it out of the square. He had a few others with him. He…" Jack squinted, trying to remember through the mental haze. "I think most everyone escaped or got out. I saw some get hurt, I dunno how badly, but m'sure they escaped."
"Thank God," Crutchie breathed, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Yeah," Jack agreed. "Now hang in there, we're almost home."
No sooner than he said that did a blaring orange light appear from nowhere, and a large door the same color as the light expanded from nowhere.
"What the hell…" Crutchie murmured, squinting from the brightness. A tall, broad, plated being emerged from the door, marching forward and stopping directly in front of Jack. Behind it, about five other of the same plated beings followed suit, stopping in a line behind the first being.
"Are you Jack Kelly?" the being asked, voice gruff and authoritative. Jack blinked, getting a better look at the large thing. It wasn't a being at all – it was a human, a man, like him, only they were donning thick black plates on their body that Jack had never seen before. All those behind the first person, who all seemed to be humans too, were sporting the same outfits. Was it armor?
"Depends who's asking," Jack replied warily.
The armored man sighed. "Are you Jack Kelly?" He repeated, more exasperated this time.
"Why do you want to know?" Crutchie asked from Jack's arms. Although his voice was still weak, his intentions were firm and they showed.
The armored man glanced down at Crutchie, then back up at Jack. He harumphed decisively. "You are Jack Kelly," he said in a confirming manner.
"…so?" Jack looked at the other people behind the armored man. They all stood silently, like the bulls from earlier, only these people seemed to have more of a purpose to what they were doing.
"Variant identified," the man said under his breath.
"Excuse me-"
"You need to come with us. Now."
"Why?" Jack asked.
"On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Sacred Timeline." With those words, the row of people behind him lifted some kind of metallic sticks in unison, the tips glowing the same orange as the door.
"What're you going on about?"
The armored man didn't reply. "We are running out of time. Come with us now." He turned around before looking back over his shoulder. "And leave the boy."
"Leave the… wait, I'm not putting Crutchie down. What is going on?" He pulled Crutchie closer to his chest.
"You don't have a choice. Come with us. Now."
"No."
Before he could process what was going on, Crutchie was no longer in his arms. He let out a noise of anger and confusion as an armored woman from the end of the line carried Crutchie away from Jack and placed him on the ground. Crutchie let out a confused noise as well, but as far as Jack saw, no further damage was done to his friend.
"What on earth is going on?" Jack asked. The armored man replied by grabbing Jack by the arm and dragging him towards the orange door.
"Jack? Jack, what's happening?" Crutchie called from the floor, trying to move himself closer but hissing at the pain of doing so.
"I don't know, Crutch', I don't know," Jack responded, beginning to panic. They had just gotten out of one situation, and now they were in a brand new one. Jack felt a clamping sensation around his neck, then a jerk on his arm from the armored man. He shivered as the man began to pull him through the door. The feeling was alien and cold on his skin.
"Jack," Crutchie cried out, fear evident in his voice.
"Crutchie," Jack shouted back, reaching out towards his best friend. "Crutchie-"
With one last pull, he was all the way through the door and Crutchie had disappeared. In fact, the whole square had disappeared altogether, replaced by a foreign setting of an autumn-hued, circular room.
"Where are we?" Jack asked, gaze darting around wildly.
"You ask a lot of questions," the armored man grumbled, the grip on Jack's arm still as tight as ever. Jack grasped at his neck with his free hand, breath hitching in terror as he realized that the armored man had put a collar on him.
"Come on," the man grunted, pulling Jack towards what looked like an elevator and shoving him inside.
Jack blinked, barely having processed the last few seconds. "Wait – why am I-"
The door slid shut in his face, his last glimpse of the other side having been a dramatic eyeroll from the armored man.
Jack pounded on the metal door. "Let me out! I deserve some kind of explanation-"
A whirring noise made his words falter, and he cautiously turned around to find two mechanical arms nipping at his shirt.
"What the hell?" He breathed, eyes as wide as dinner plates. His mood now was closer to hysteria than confusion. The arms belonged to an odd artificial face, grinning eerily at him.
Hold still, please, was all it said before it pointed a beam in Jack's direction. Within less than a second, all of Jack's clothes were gone. All of them.
"What the hell?!" Jack repeated loudly, glancing down, all hysterical now. The mechanical face let out a tinny laugh and Jack heard the beam whir again. Jack was now in a dull grey jumpsuit. Before he had time to open his mouth, he was in a new room.
The process continued like this for the next few minutes. Questions were thrown from left and right, from can you confirm that this is everything you've ever said to to your knowledge, are you a robot. Finally, he found himself in yet another autumn-colored room with a strange leathery rope designating a line only one other person was it. Muted music blared from god-knows-where.
An armored woman to his left gestured to a small orange machine at the beginning of the leather rope. "Take a ticket."
"Uh… okay?" Jack pulled a ticket from the orange contraption, then started down the line. Could it even be considered a line? The other person who was there before was gone now. An orange clock drawled a greeting from a strange glowing box in the corner of the room, introducing herself as Miss Minutes, before launching into an explanation of something that Jack couldn't understand even if he tried.
In the blink of an eye, Jack was ushered from the line by the same armored man from before (how did he get there?) to a brand-new room with three stern and misshapen wooden faces staring down at him from the walls. Beneath those faces was a young woman with neatly tied-back hair and a smart suit the likes of which Jack had never seen before. She produced a gavel from out of nowhere – ah, so she was a judge, Jack thought – and pounded it once on the table.
"Next case," she called. The armored man led Jack forward.
The judge lifted up a paper and began to read. "Kelly. Variant J0819, AKA Jack Kelly, is charged with sequence violation…" she read off a list of numbers Jack barely retained. She looked up with him with raised eyebrows. "How do you plead?"
Jack blinked. He had never felt so lost in his life. "I'm sorry, but I don't know why I'm here. I was just in the square, helping my friend, and-"
"Actually, that's exactly it," the judge cut him off.
Jack squinted. "I'm sorry, what?"
"You helped your friend, Mr. Kelly," the judge said, "and that's why you're here."
"I… I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?"
"You helped…" the judge peered at the paper, "…Charlie Morris, otherwise known as Crutchie, by fighting off his attackers. That was not supposed to happen and was therefore a crime against the Sacred Timeline. That is why you're here."
"The sacred what now?"
The judge rolled her eyes. People seemed to roll their eyes a lot here, Jack thought. "Did you not listen to the PSA just a minute ago?"
"The what?"
"Miss Minutes? The talking clock?... ugh, never mind. The point is, your friend was supposed to be sent away to the Refuge, but you kept that from happening. This caused a… break in reality, if you will, and so we need to, um… erase that timeline from existence."
Jack paused to process. "Did you just say," he said slowly, "that I was just supposed to let Crutchie get beaten by those guys?"
"Um… yes."
"But… how is that fair?! I'm just supposed to just leave him there?"
The judge nodded.
"And all my friends are… disappearing from existence? Like, forever?"
The judge hummed with a sentiment Jack couldn't put his finger on. "In a sense, yes."
"How… how is that okay?!"
The judge's eyes were tightly shut, as if she were either ignoring what Jack was pleading out of exasperation or pity. She banged the gavel again. "The court finds you guilty, and I sentence you to be reset." She inhaled sharply. "Next case, please!"
"Wha-" Jack quickly found himself being dragged away by the armored man. "How is this fair?" He repeated. He struggled against the man's grip, managing to get free for just a second. He raced towards the judge, tears of desperation welling in his eyes. "I was just helping my friend- ach!"
He gaped at the orange hole in his chest created by that same metal rod from earlier. He whirled around. The armored man stared at him, stone-faced. The hole expanded, reaching to what used to be his arms. All that remained of him now was below the knees and above the collarbone.
"What did you do to me?" was all he had time to gasp before he was entirely gone.
Get up.
Get up.
"GET UP!"
Jack awoke with a start, shooting up. Above him was a short boy who seemed about his age, who immediately poked him with a stick he was holding in his hand. Jack scrambled backwards.
"Good, you're awake," the boy drawled.
"What the-"
"Keep your hair on, bud, I don't bite." The boy laughed under his breath. If Jack hadn't known any better he would have said the boy was disinterested. "At least not if you play nice," he added off-handedly.
"Who – who are you?" Jack stuttered.
"Who are you?" The boy asked, crouching down to Jack's level.
"Jack Kelly," he answered dumbly. He regretted not stopping to consider using an alias.
The boy's eyebrows briefly shot up. "Ah, another one," he mused.
Another one?
"'Kay, Jack, I'm Spot. Spot Conlon," the boy said, grabbing Jack's hand and pulling. "Now get up and move, we're wasting time."
"…Spot?" Jack gawked at the boy. "You're Spot Conlon?"
"Uh, yeah?" Spot's inflection was like a question, but he seemed to have been asked this exact question before, as he didn't appear confused or fazed in any way.
"But…"
Jack felt like his head was spinning in three different directions at once. The Spot Conlon he knew and… well, he wouldn't say loved, but the Spot Conlon he knew and, uh, respected, was brown-eyed, small and stocky, with thick dark hair cropped close to his head that was normally hidden under a cap. Most importantly, Spot never went anywhere without sporting an almost permanent scowl. The Spot Conlon, or the boy claiming to be Spot Conlon, that Jack was currently looking at, was small as well, but that was where the similarities ended. This boy was blue-eyed and lean, with much lighter and longer hair that was pushed back from his face, and a catlike quirk to his mouth at all times. Whereas the Spot Jack knew would normally settle for using his fists for defense, this Spot had a cane (so that's what that stick from earlier was, Jack thought) casually tucked into his suspenders.
Even the clothes were different, Jack noticed. His Spot often wore red shirts of varying patterns – Jack didn't know where he found such an abundance of them, it was a common topic of discussion among the other newsies – and brown suspenders, something that was much more commonplace than the red shirts. This Spot wore a plaid button-down (the checkers in the plaid were somehow of indeterminate color, Jack noticed), and his suspenders were red, probably not as faded as they should have been.
Jack finalized his thought process by vocalizing the obvious. "But you don't look like Spot."
The boy looked up at him, traces of amusement evident. the corner of his lips. "Well in my defense you don't exactly look like Jack Kelly either, now do you?"
"Huh?"
"You really don't get anything, do you?" Spot asked. "Different reality, different face, I suppose. Guess I've gotten used to it." He glanced upwards and cursed. "Come on, let's move."
"I don't understand though, what is going on? The entire time I've been… wherever this is-" Jack waved his hands around at the scenery – "there has been barely even one explanation for literally anything that has happened. Won't someone please just make the damn time to, oh, I don't know, tell me what in the hell is going on?!"
Spot let out a humorless laugh as something rumbled behind them. "In due time, man. But for the time being, you don't need an explanation to run, so move."
The boy calling himself Spot poked Jack with his cane again, sending him stumbling forward, then began to run. Come on, he called. Jack, at this point feeling like he had no other choice, followed suit.
Jack didn't know how long they had been running for. Hell, he didn't even know what he was running from – every time he attempted to glance over his shoulder at whatever rumbling might have been following him, Spot would hit him with his cane and shout that it wasn't important, and to just keep moving.
Jack could feel his feet starting to ache. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the pain out, and subsequently collided with what felt like a metal wall.
"Ow-" he opened his eyes as he ogled at the thing before him.
Spot, who had continued ahead for a few paces, paused and whirled around with a confused expression. "What are you doing, Kelly? We don't have time for –" His eyes widened. "Never mind, this is actually perfect."
"What do you mean?" Jack asked, looking at the large metal box. It was probably lime green at one point, but now it was more rust than anything. It had two rubber wheels on each side, and several glass panes built into the box in different areas as windows. It was unlike anything Jack had ever seen.
"You just ran into an opportunity," Spot smirked, patting the top of the rusty thing like it was their key to salvation. "Come on, get in."
"You mean we get in this thing?"
Spot snorted. "Right, cars don't look the same in eighteen-ninety-nine. Stupid me."
"This is a car?!"
"Yeah, this is basically what they evolved into, like, one-hundred years in the future." Spot snorted again and opened what looked like a door on the side of the box – well, car, apparently – and slid inside. "Get in," he called from the inside.
"I..." Jack flailed his arms, trying to find the way to open the door. He quickly (thank god) found the handle and flung the door open, sitting inside and closing the door like he saw Spot do.
"Uh…" Jack squinted at a little sticker at the corner of the pane of glass at the front of the car. "…what does 'fasten your seatbelt' mean?"
"Nothing that matters to us," Spot said, slamming his foot on a lever on his side of the car and sending the vehicle speeding forward.
"Sweet mother of-" Jack yelled, gripping the edge of his seat to keep from flying through the car's roof, as Spot drove like a madman away from the thing behind them. Said thing made a particularly animalistic growl, and the car jolted to the left.
"What was that?" Jack shouted the question.
"Alioth," Spot answered through his teeth as he gripped the steering wheel with whitening knuckles. "Damn cloud doesn't know how to take a hint, no matter how much you run."
"Alioth? Is that what we were running from earlier?" Jack asked. Spot gave a single nod, not looking away from the impromptu road in front of him. Despite all his instincts, Jack looked over his shoulder, hoping to at least get a glimpse of what they were trying so desperately to evade.
Holy. Crap.
A purple cloud with a canine face was right on their tail. Within the smoke, Jack could see little lighting storms raging inside of the creature, and he could hear faint thunderclaps from through the car's windows. Behind the dog face, the cloud extended beyond Jack's sight, disappearing on the horizon on either side. It growled as lighting flashed through its teeth, and a decrepit chair abandoned by the side of the hill they were driving on was swallowed by the fog.
Jack gaped. "Sweet lord, that's actually terrifying."
"What were you expecting, a stuffed bear?" Spot called.
"Honestly, from how you were talking, I was expecting Snyder," Jack replied.
Spot let out a cackling laugh. "Now that I think of it, I don't know who's worse, that old geezer or this purple nightmare cloud."
"I'll have to wait a little before telling you my opinion on that… honestly, with how this thing – Alioth, right? – looks, no wonder you were telling me to keep looking forward. It's probably one of the scariest things I've ever seen."
"Still is for me, and I've been down here just about longer than anyone else," Spot answered.
"'Anyone else'? There are others down here?"
"Yeah, quite a few of us. It's hard to explain so I'll just tell you when we get there."
A minute or two later, the car jolted to a halt, something in the back – the engine? Jack guessed – sputtering.
"Come on, we're here, get out of the car," Spot said, practically barreling his door open. Once Jack had followed suit, Spot grabbed his arm and pointed to a manhole not too far away. "We're going in there," he said, voice raised above Alioth's howling. "I'll be going in first, so make sure you close the cover behind you. I'm serious about this."
Jack nodded. "Okay."
"Alright," Spot said, pulling his cane from his suspenders, "let's move."
Another difference between Jack's Spot Conlon and this Spot Conlon: this Spot was way faster. He made it over to the manhole in a flash, lifting the cover and wedging his cane between it and the ground to keep it up in an incredibly practiced manner.
"Come on," he shouted, and disappeared into the hole in the ground. Jack, who made it to the manhole a few seconds after Spot vanished down it, slid in rather ungracefully, narrowly missing a ladder rung (which would have serious consequences on his back) and slamming the cover shut with a loud clang that hurt his ears.
"I guess that means you're in," Jack heard Spot drawl from somewhere below him.
Jack grunted in reply as he descended the ladder. He realized that, to his dismay, he had lost his cap sometime between when he appeared in this strange place and he entered the manhole. Once he reached the bottom of the ladder, he took a long deep breath.
"Sorry, can I have a second? All of this is really confusing," he said, turning around towards the rest of the room, which was surprisingly large for being underground. He was greeted by a boy who, like Spot, seemed about his age but, unlike Spot, was several inches taller than himself. Behind the boy, Jack spotted about twenty other people minding their own business. The majority seemed to be about or at least close to his age, although a few were younger and a few were much older.
The taller boy directly in front of Jack squinted, seeming to inspect him. "You new?"
"…yeah?"
The taller boy sniffed, but not dismissively, adjusting a red bandana he had tied around his neck before sticking his hand out in an offer to shake. "Alright, I'm Jack. Nice to meet ya."
Jack? Jack shook the boy's hand, feeling an immense sense of déja vu as he did so. "My name's Jack too, actually."
The other boy, Jack apparently, nodded. "Mhm."
"You… you sure?"
"I'm pretty sure that's my name, yeah," 'Jack' said. As the shake ended but neither broke contact, the beginnings of an amused smile grew on Jack's face. "Lemme guess. Your last name is Kelly."
Jack nodded, incredibly bemused. "Yes, actually."
"Great," 'Jack' said, chuckling. "That makes us twins."
"Wait –" Jack shook his head in an attempt to clear it. "Was that last part a joke? Because I really don't think I can handle that kind of thing right now."
'Jack' chuckled again, a little louder this time. "Sorry, bud. Basically, I'm you and you're me. We're the same person from different realities."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
'Jack' shrugged. "Yeah, I know, it's weird at first. Did Spot explain anything to you?"
Jack shook his head. "In his defense he said we didn't have enough time. We were running from… uh… Goliath, or whatever."
"Alioth," 'Jack' corrected. "And yeah, he wasn't wrong to wait. That thing eats you alive if it gets to you."
"Eat you…" Jack blinked, with what felt like a small brick plopping down smack in the center of his stomach. "Why wasn't that something he brought up earlier?"
"Either he just forgot or decided not to bring it up so you don't get too spooked," 'Jack' replied casually. "Probably the last one. He may seem pretty tough but he actually really cares about whether everyone's okay."
Someone called 'Jack' from the other side of the bunker, and 'Jack' turned to leave, but turned around at the last second to tell Jack one more thing. "I know this is all really confusing right now, and it's possible it might make even less sense before it starts making more sense, but things'll likely get sorted out, so just remember you'll be alright, okay?" He patted Jack on the shoulder. "Oh, and since we're kind of the same person, if it's weird calling me Jack, just call me Cowboy."
Then he was gone in the crowd of all the others. Jack concluded that someone had a lot of explaining to do.
