Monday, October 7th , 2013. 1:10pm EDT
New York City
In the dark, musty stench of a disused basement, Max finally tracked down the Emergent she'd spent all day searching for. Barely two minutes remained before the explosion - the one everyone assumed he was the cause of - went off, taking the entire city with it.
"Davies." Max whispered into her earpiece. "I found him. Jesus Christ, it's just a kid."
She held her Splasher away from the boy, then reached out a hand. "Hey...hey it's okay. It's okay. No one's going to hurt you, alright? Uh...shit, do you speak English? Where's the translation mode on this thing?"
He whimpered, crawling away from her, crying out piteously...
"Mǔqīn!" he called out.
"MOTHER" flashed up on Max's HUD display.
"Hǎo tòng! Hǎo tòng!" he screamed, clutching at his head.
"IT HURTS/IS UNPLEASANT/PAINFUL"
"Max!" Davies called out over her earpiece. I need you to knock him out! Stun him, tranq him, put him in a sleeper hold, I don't care how, but do it now!"
She didn't ask questions. Max'd been trained well enough that if her commanding officer gave her a clear and direct instruction, she damn well followed it. She thumbed the Splasher, raised it up, took quick aim and fired.
The plastic membrane holding the aqueous solution ripped apart on impact, the powerful tranquilizer soaking quickly into the young boy's bloodstream. His eye's widened, and for a moment, and Max feared the worst; that in attempting to subdue him, she'd set him off, triggering the detonation.
Wouldn't that be something? What if my trying to stop the destruction is what caused it to happen, all along?
Every cell in her body prepared for annihilation; her mind froze up, so convinced was she was about to meet her end. That she failed her mission, and not only would she die, but so would millions of others. All of those deaths, that she now bore personal responsibility for.
But the savage nuclear fireball never came. The boy hugged himself, shuddering, struggling to stay awake, his efforts proving futile as consciousness melted away. His breathing slowed, along with his heartbeat, as all of his vital signs fell back into a far more normal state.
Max didn't realized she'd sunk down to the floor, onto her knees, until Davies began calling out her name.
"Max? Max, report! Are you alright? I know you're there. I know you did it. Max, please report."
She glanced over to the edge of her vision, where the local time was displayed.
1:13pm EDT
Oh...oh God. Did it. I did it. I did it!
"I - I'm here." she cleared her throat, and then spoke up, clambering back to her feet, "Situation's been contained. Like I said, it was just some kid, from Chinatown obviously. I could turn him over onto his back, maybe see if I can get facial recognition going on him?"
"Negative" Davies replied. "Max, the situation is still risky. I need you to watch over him, but don't try to move him. There's a DHS containment van coming, in about twenty minutes. It's got supplies onboard, enough to keep him in a medical coma for as long as we need."
"Uh - do you think he's going to be okay? Is it safe? Like, is he gonna to wake up and blow things to hell?
"Hard to say. Clearly, we're charting new territory, but if I had to guess, we will probably be fine if we keep him under, and get him far away from New York City. There's a oceanic research platform in the middle of the Pacific I believe we can commandeer. We'll transport him there, and after a couple of weeks, with the flare window good and past, we'll slowly wake him up...and hope for the best."
Max nodded, feeling foolish at having done so. She didn't realize she'd been crying until the first tears rolled off her cheeks.
"Max..." Davies inquired, her voice becoming far more maternal. "Are you okay? Your vitals are elevated, to put it mildly."
Her heart was still pounding, although she was focusing, working to get it to calm down, to something a bit more reasonable. Human, as opposed to humming bird.
Swallowing hard, she tried to chase the stress and fear from her voice, and said, "Yeah...I'm - I'm about as good as someone can be, sitting next to a human hydrogen bomb."
"Max...you did brilliantly. I realize for your first real field mission, we literally asked the world, or at least New York City, of you. And I'm really...I'm so proud of you. You ended up in a situation that was completely and utterly cocked up, operating solo out in the field, taking on responsibilities you weren't expecting. But you did it, Max, you came through. Flying colors and all that."
She gulped another lungful of air, brushing back the hair from her face. and hugged herself tightly, arms wrapping protectively around her body.
"C-cool. Great. Uh. Think I'm just gonna stand here, and wait until the team gets here." she said in a faraway tone.
The basement was the last place she wanted to be in. She was still on edge, still flinching with every perceived hitch in breath or shift of movement from the young boy.
Get a hold of yourself, girl. He's down. You're okay. You're okay, he's not going to blow up. You're okay, okay? You're not going to die, I promise. You're...you're great. You did it. You saved everyone. Like a real superhero!
Except Max was absolutely certain neither Batman nor Wonder Woman ever felt as scared as she did now. She took a few more deep calming breaths, spending the next few minutes trying to zone out, to still her mind. It took a while, but she was relieved to feel the overwhelming sense of dread leave her body.
Until the boy suddenly gave a groan, and tried and roll over onto his back.
"D-Davies?!" Max hissed. "Uh-uh-I think - how close until they get here! He's waking up!"
"What?! Not possible. I designed that anesthetic agent myself. If anything, I was worried about the risk of - hold on. Wait a moment."
Max felt a fresh, sickening wave of adrenaline flood her body. She held up her Splasher with shaking hands, leveling it at the child.
"Bloody hell! I should have anticipated this. Technically he's Emerged now, and literally anything is possible as Reality works to try and figure out what do with with him. And right now, his body is fighting the effects of the chemicals in his bloodstream."
"Wha - wait! What happens if he wakes up? Cammie, what should I do?!" Max asked, in a fearful tone of voice.
"I need you to focus. Remember your training and stay calm. I'm tracking the containment van now. ETA is seven minutes. You just need to keep him under until they get to you. They've got much stronger agents with them, things enough to keep an entire barnyard full of raging bulls asleep for at least a week, and that's just the crude chemical options. Hit him again with the standard dose, and see what happens."
Max narrowed her eyes, doing her best to try and ignore everything that was screaming at her, reminding her that she was just a kid herself, really. Maybe she was eighteen now, but what the hell did she know? She didn't sign up for this, to track down and then stand next to something that still potentially spelled death for her.
That was when she realized the terrible truth: there were worlds of difference between all the training exercises and how the real world operated.
She shot the boy, and though he passed back out into full unconsciousness again, it did little to reassure her.
"There." Davies said. "He's slipping back down. I'm sure you've got more than enough ammunition left, that even if you had to keep doing that every couple of minutes, it wouldn't be a problem at all. It's almost over, Max. I promise."
Max paced, muttering and keeping her side of the channel closed as she did.
"Keepittogether,keepittogether,keepittogether. You're fine, you're fine, you're okay, Max. What's the worst that happens? What's the worst? You rewind back, back and back and you, you tell Cammie what happened. You get all the drugs in the world. You keep this kid under. You are in control Max. Act like it!"
She'd managed to successfully talk herself down from her latest panic attack, an almost overwhelming and giddy sense of relief swept over her. She did it. Her first trial by fire, worse than anyone could have expected, and she did it. Everything was going to be okay...
And they're gonna be so impressed with what I did. I'm a big damn hero! And maybe now, maybe now they'll finally treat me like a normal part of the team. Have the same kinda freedom like everyone else. I mean, they have to! They just have to! Look at what I did for them!
She was so wrapped up in her train of thought that she didn't immediately notice the problem. But once she did, her fragile bravado completely shattered.
She couldn't feel her power.
A quick spot check, trying to rewind back thirty seconds confirmed the worst.
"Davies!" Max cried out. "I'm - I'm being nulled! I can't rewind!"
There was silence on the other end.
"C-Cammie?" Max squeaked.
"Sorry! Had to check on - oh. Max, I'm seeing a lot of quantum-level instability coming from the boy. There's usually some of that in the first few minutes, of course. I mean...I mean theoretically of course. To be honest, this is perhaps only the second time in history that an Emergence has ever been studied in such detail as it's happening. But it's quite likely that he's doing it to you. Unintentionally of course."
Max clawed at her arms, and then the side of her face, heart pounding hard in her chest, trying to keep herself calm.
Four minutes. I just have to hold out for four minutes. Right? Just gotta hold it together!
She turned around, and found the boy, awake and sitting up, looking extremely confused.
She shrieked, wildly firing two tranq rounds into his chest. He wavered, not falling back all the way. She shot him a third time, panting hard and staring at him intently, unable to move until she he passed out anew.
"Max! What's going on!? Did you just fire on that child three times?" Davies demanded.
"I - had to. He woke up. He woke up, Davies! The stuff is...it's barely working anymore. He's getting used to it, fighting it off, adapting or something and...and..."
"I've heard enough." a male voice sharply cut in. "Davies, instruct the agent to terminate the threat."
It was Martinet.
Max knew Camilla long enough to know when she was livid, even though she usually did such a good job of keeping her emotions bottled up.
"Sir! This is a breach of protocol! We have the situation contained. The boy is in a state of agitated quantum flux, but I'm no longer detecting the energetic build-up that we were seeing before he was initially incapacitated. I believe we're past the worst of it. We just need to get through the next three minutes, and the containment van will be on site. They can take over, and believe me, they have far stronger methods at their disposal.
"I've been monitoring the situation for the last half hour, and I was content to let you and your team handle this, but it's obvious that things have gotten out of hand. What happens if the target continuously adapts to all the pacification methods?" Martinet asked. "I'm not about to let - to let it continue to put the city at risk. There's no need to draw this out."
Max's mouth went dry, and she could feel her awareness narrow into a thin pinprick. She felt herself withdraw into herself, the voices angrily arguing somewhere..outside of herself.
"Max! Do not kill that boy! I'm begging you. The containment team is almost there! You have to give them a cha-"
There was a burst of static.
And then only Martinet's voice remained. He spoke, a thin veneer of calm barely containing his frustration.
"Agent, you have your order. Terminate the target."
Her hand instinctively lifted the gun. The frisson of having acted mindlessly was enough to shock her mostly back to her senses.
"Sir. It's just a little kid! He's barely awake. It's - it's not...right." she protested.
But he was already stirring again, working his way out from a dose of tranquilizer that, if Max were in the proper mindset to consider the full ramifications, could have killed him already.
"Terminate the target." Martinet repeated, insistently. There was a rising edge of fear in his otherwise steely, controlling tone of voice.
"J-just give them another minute or two. Please. Van-van's almost here..."
"I'm giving you a direct order, Agent! Carry it out."
"...No." Max whimpered.
Like a switch being thrown, like a coiled spring being released, Martinet ordered, "I swear, if you disobey my direct order, you will never be let out of the base again! Do you understand me? Do you understand? I will take away what little freedom you've been given! Assuming you even survive this mission, the one you're about to fail. The one you're putting millions of lives in jeopardy over!"
Her vision whited out, and the metallic tang of panic was all she could taste on her tongue.
Max wasn't safe. She'd never be safe again.
Everything she ever wanted, her freedom, the decency to have even basic control over her life...the feeling that things were getting better, that she might be able to build a life of her own? It was all a fairytale illusion.
It was so clear to her now.
But at the moment, she was stuck in New York, torn between wanting to do the right thing, the moral, the just thing, and a desperate need to escape this crisis of survival. One which threatened to end her life in more ways than one. She wanted to be anywhere but here. But most important of all, she wanted to be home. Her real home. Arcadia Bay. With her parents. And Chloe.
Chloe would know what to do. Chloe would...
There was a gunshot somewhere. It sounded so far off, hollow, and distant. It wasn't until her vision cleared that she realized where it came from.
She'd dropped the Splasher apparently, then drawn the Glock from her spine holster. She had no memory of doing it, but there was no denying it. The boy lay splayed out against the concrete, shot in the middle of his forehead; blood was pooling from the back of his head, and collecting on the oilcloth beneath him.
Martinet's voice returned over the comm link.
"Alright. That was...you did the right thing, Max. I understand that was difficult for you, but I'm glad to see you made the right choice when it counted the most." There was a long, uncomfortable silence, before he continued. "Remain where you are. You'll be collected shortly, and immediately debriefed." Another pause. "Thank you, Agent. Several million New Yorkers owe their lives to you.
Moving with slow, almost mechanical motions, she removed the earpiece and the eye-glass computer, letting them carelessly drop at her feet. Then she smoothly holstered the pistol, and kneeled down next to the slowly cooling corpse in front of her.
She stared down at the body for a minute...a day, a year. Her face was placid, insensate. Whatever roiling agony boiled away on the inside touched only her eyes.
"S-sorry." she stammed out. "Sorry." She repeated, her voice splintering into a choked sob.
She could go back. She already went back. She was going back now.
Try again. Try to...to...
"Holy shit! Tilson, did you see that? Did that rabbit just keel over and die? What the fuck?!"
Where was the voice coming from? Flashes...memories. Things she remembered, but couldn't remember remembering.
There was Jenkowitz, and there was Tilson and there were rabbits...alive, and then dead. Both?
Max looked down at the boy, open eyes staring upward into the ceiling, shock and surprise forever frozen on his face.
Confusion seized her mind, shredded everything into a fine powder. Where was she? What was she doing? There was something wrong. Something she'd done, something that needed to be fixed, but she couldn't understand why, or how, or...
Home.
She blinked. It wasn't a word, it wasn't a thought, so much as an overriding, all-powerful instinct.
Home.
Chloe.
Chloe?
Maybe? Maybe she'd know what happened. What Max needed to do. She was always so smart!
But...
Oh no. She's dead now. Right now, right this instant. And she will be dead, and she was dead already. No. No no no, that's not good. That's not right. This will require a change in narrative authority.
Max blinks.
What, who was she again? Was she even real? Is she telling the story, or simply a character in it?
Max wrapped the body up in the oilcloth it was laying upon, as if enshrouding it for burial. Which will happen. Has happened. Is happening now.
"Just like the rabbits." she whispered.
Rabbits? What rabbits? There were no rabbits. No dead ones. Except that there were. And then there weren't, but really there were.
Oh dear.
Well, he meant well, certainly.
Memories, false, true, and in-between, play tug of war, with her sanity as the rope.
She doesn't understand the mistake she is about to make, and is at the same time fully cognizant of what she's doing. Too many things to do all at once, and she doesn't have time to figure it out. Except that she does.
"Just like the rabbits."
She gathers up the bundle in her arms. She can fix this. She can end this. She can...
She rewinds back. She won't stop. She'll never stop. At least, until she does.
Chloe?
The impulse echos in her mind as she rewinds back past 1:10 pm. And as before, she crosses into a terrible wound, a place where time and space have been twisted beyond recognition; she shatters into a million fragments. A quantum wind gathers up the pieces and blows them out somewhere else.
Tuesday, October 8th, 4:35 pm
New York City
A hush had fallen over the makeshift command tent, as Camilla Davies and her team, both from Damocles and the sciences division, watched the last few 'timeline ghosts' play out.
There were six of them left when they began recording, an hour ago. Then five...four...three
They all told roughly the same tale, though some of the details were different, to be sure. Sometimes Max went for the Desert Eagle instead of the Glock. Sometimes she swapped the Splasher to kill mode, and emptied the clip into the boy. Once, she even fell upon and strangled the life out of him.
Only one echo remained. Once the last story was told, once Max rewound back, it was over.
They'd seen it all. They'd heard it all; the ghosts recreated photonic readings at all levels. Thus, not only were the visuals replayed, but so were the radio broadcasts.
It was Jenkowitz who spoke first.
"Wh-what did she say? In the end. Couldn't quite make that out.". The look on his face suggested that he had a damn good idea what the answer would be.
"Just like the rabbits." Davies intoned, ignoring the vaguely sheepish expression this produced in the overweight scientist.
What a bloody fucking mess! And who the hell does Martinet think he is?!
No one spoke up at first, not until Nicole asked, "Where do we go now, bosslady?"
Davies busied herself for a few moments, transferring data from the terminal to her personal data tablet. Then turned and said, "You're in charge of the operation from here, Wright. This is going to sound strange, but I believe you should start by canvassing Chinatown, calling up police records. Ah - er...that is...look for a boy. Chinese, about eleven? Try running a facial recognition algorithm on the playback. See if there are any reports of someone matching his description suddenly disappearing or mysteriously dropping dead in the last twenty-four hours."
"No offense, jefa, but what's that gonna tell us?" Rodriguez asked.
Davies smirked for a moment, sighed and answered, "It will, I believe, give us an idea of how far back in time Max went. It's a start."
Rodriguez nodded, her face suddenly going pale as she made the connection.
"If the rest of you will excuse me, I have a plane to Seattle I must catch. It seems that the Director and I have a lot to talk about."
Camilla was finishing off a lovely bit of chateaubriand, which she'd paired with a particularly nice glass of Medoc Rouge by the time Martinet contacted her after she submitted her most recent report. Chartering the private jet cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it, by her estimation, especially when she wasn't footing the bill. After the events of the past forty-eight hours, she felt she'd earned at least one nice meal before the rest of the week rose up to meet her.
It promised to be gruelling, with the potential to leave only one of them standing. Professionally, possibly otherwise.
"Davies."
"Director." Camilla took a measured sip of her wine.
"I've just gone over the video files you've sent me, along with your initial analysis. I'd appreciate it if you walked me through the final minutes of the final...how did you put it? Ghost?"
"Virtual photonic quantum echo phenomena. Yes. And with all due respect, I thought my report should have explained it all in laborious detail."
Martinet didn't immediately rise up to her bait, his tone still calm, albeit tight. "Why don't you give it your personal spin. In terms a layman can understand."
"Are you giving me leave to speak freely, then?"
"...I wouldn't have it any other way."
Camilla suppressed a snort, "I'd think the video would be worth several thousand words, Director. The situation was initially contained. It ran into some complications, but you forcibly injected yourself into the matter..."
"I have every right to get personally involved in an operation if I so chose..." he interrupted testily.
"Oh yes! Of course you do! Never mind the fact that it is a horrible breach of working protocol. Honestly, Paul, I know you and I just barely get along, but never have you shown such blatant disrespect for me, for my abilities, and for my team! If you have so little faith in my abilities, you should have asked me to tender my resignation well before today!"
The line went silent for a few seconds, before Marinet responded, "Don't you think you're taking this far too personally? We're talking about a...an alternate timeline. You have no way of knowing that this is what happened. How events played out."
"No sir, not one-hundred percent, but given what I do know, what the sensors have told us, I'm willing to make a damn-well-educated guess!"
"I hardly think..."
"You cut me off from a member of my team, under my direct command!" Davies shot back. "You took a girl that I repeatedly and officially warned you was an ill-fit for field duty on a psychological level. I begged you to let her seek some therapy, have time to adjust! Honestly, not everyone in the world is equipped for this line of work! But you just had to push it, didn't you? And yet despite all that, she exceeded everyone's expectations. She saved the day. But we asked too much...and you demanded far more!"
"You were letting the situation get out of hand! If what I've seen is true, then I clearly made the right call. If this boy was actually the cause of a nuclear holocaust destroying New York City in a previous timeline, then...then I would have pulled the trigger myself!"
"Oh how courageous of you! Instead you mentally abused and blackmailed the young girl you've been tormenting for the past half decade into doing it on your behalf!" Camilla spat out.
"And I'd do it again!" Marinet fell silent, before continuing. "Alright. Perhaps I resorted to extreme measures, but damnit, Camilla! You made a bad call! Trying to save the boy. Putting millions of lives needlessly at risk!"
"You weren't there!" she quietly roared. "You didn't have full recognizance of the situation, you didn't have real time access to the data feeds that I did! You panicked, Paul! You panicked, and you used Max to carry out your fear-driven agenda. And now we've got a young woman who never should have been given a clean bill of mental health and shoved out into the field in an obvious fugue state, and out there...scared, alone. God knows where."
She tried to tamp down her anger, when her thoughts turned to Reese. He couldn't have known that somehow, he left a ticking mental time bomb that would go off like this. At least, that was the best theory Camilla was able to come up with. That the manipulation of her memories created a minor mental instability, a catalyst to trigger the rest of the chain reaction.
How could he have foreseen this situation? God knows, he'd tormented himself enough over what he'd done.
And in the strangest of ways, it might have potentially done them all a favor.
Martinet sounded as if he were speaking through gritted teeth. "Well, I see you've provided a copy of the report to the audit team, who are already on the base and going through the records. After the near disastrous end of this mission, it seems I'm justified in having your fitness to continue on as Head of Operations re-evaluated."
"Certainly, Director." Camilla said, her voice immediately chill. "And now, perhaps my fitness isn't the only thing they'll be evaluating."
"Oh please!" he burst out. "If anything, I expect I'll be receiving a commendation for salvaging the situation!" He immediately shifted tracks. "At any rate, this'll soon be resolved. An hour ago, we received visual confirmation of Agent Caulfield attempting to cross the Canadian border. She was acting...strange enough to draw attention to herself, but still managed to slip away. She must have succeeded somehow, because she just attempted to withdraw cash from an ATM in Trois-Rivieres in Quebec. I'm already in communication with the RCMP. The Harper Administration has been extremely cooperative in the past, so I can't imagine we'll have trouble getting permission to go in after her. I've sent Wright and her team out already. It won't be long now before we have our rogue agent in custody."
"So it would appear." Camilla drawled. "I'll be back at HQ in less than eight hours. I imagine the remainder of the week should be both exciting and eventful all of us."
"Yes. Report to me personally when you arrive. Martinet out." He said, with a peevish edge in his voice before cutting the channel.
Leaning back and swirling the wine in her goblet, Camilla mused to herself, as she considered the news about Max.
Curious. Seems sloppy, even for her. She was trained a damn sight better than that, I should know. Either she's gone completely barmy, acting mostly on instinct or...
She smirked to herself. She may not know exactly where Max was - God knows she had some ideas - but she was fairly certain that the girl was nowhere near Quebec.
What are you playing at now, Shimiko?
A/N: Hey! It's Black Swan Saturday, and holy crap. I don't know about you, but that seemed like a loooong week.
So I warned you last week that this might be the final chapter of the arc, and yup. It is. Upon further reflection, it feels like chapter 26 is more of an arc opener, and less an arc ender, soooo...I'm afraid this is the point where I tell you all that after eight weeks of flawless publishing, we're taking a six week "mid season hiatus". I need a break, Cory needs a break, I'm only two chapters written into the Wednesday arc. Definitely need time to rest and then write. However, I do not think that any arc is going to be as long as Tuesday. I mean wow, what an eventful day that was, right? I'm anticipating that Wednesday might only be five chapters long (although I'm always saying shit like that, I'm always underestimating the word counts *laugh*) and Thursday will be certainly no longer than that, either. I mean, it's funny, I figure we're more than halfway done through the story, but we might not be wrapped up until July or August.
Anyhow, I hope you don't forget us while we're away, and come back on April 2nd. Something tells me that Wednesday might be the day all the Chloe and Max les yay finally comes to it's obvious peak :-D
A couple of quick recommendations before I wrap up for a while:
1) If you have Hulu, definitely check out 11.22.63. James Franco is surprisingly underrated as an actor, and it's one of the few Steven King novels that I've read in full. I'm glad they are doing it as an 8 part mini series, and not trying to rush it as a movie. The book was definitely one of the biggest influences, along with The Butterfly Effect and Donnie Darko, in shaping what I've written with Black Swan. Although my portrayal of the nature of time is not nearly as creepy and menacing as King's.
2) My OTHER writing-sistah-from-another-mistah, NuQueerWarhead , recently put out a story called The Precious Gifts I Refuse to Regret, which is the sequel to her original awesome piece, which takes place from the POV of AltMaxine, as she struggles to come to terms with AltChloe, her condition, and their feelings for each other. She does some things quite unlike anything I've seen done in this fandom, and you owe it to yourself to check it out. Also, she is pretty much the Godmother of Black Swan, having patiently listened to my initial - and initially quite different! - pitch for the story and told me what worked and what didn't.
Have a great one, guys!