Mobius went to bed and slept off the rest of his brain fog and nausea, enjoying the peace and quiet of his small, windowless agent's dorm when everyone else was gone. He'd quickly gotten bored when he woke up, though, and lost track of the time without anything to do. He watched the Null-time on his tempad, counting the seconds until Miss Minutes got him up for a new work day. He snuck a prized souvenir out of his desk drawer that he'd confiscated from a case from the late nineteen thirties: a first edition Action Comics #1, still as crisp and new as the day it was printed.

Mobius had gathered a sundry of souvenirs throughout the Null-units: priceless trinkets, useless knick knacks, and strangely sentimental baubles. He even had a piece of the Ishtar Gate, a beautiful blue-glazed stone with half of an aurochs' hoof still engraved on it. Most of the time, he'd just grab whatever shiny thing caught his eye in the field. Other times, it wasn't the shiny things that caught his eye, at all. It was something like that comic book, or a ripped up piece of an American flag that he'd found on a battlefield, or an oily old wrench with the word 'Craftsman' stamped on it, or of course, his priceless jet ski catalog. That was in his work desk, and so beaten up that the glue in the binding was starting to fail.

He was so attuned to Miss Minute's wake up call, that he knew instinctively seconds before she would be there. He put his comic back into his desk and was back in bed just as she appeared on his nightstand.

"Good morning, Mobius!"

"Morning already?" he asked, with a smirk. "Didn't even notice."

"Feelin' better today, hun?" she asked sweetly, a concerned look on her face.

"Yep, thanks."

"Now, don't you go rushin' off to work if you're not a hundred percent," she said gently. "I could have 'em whip up an extra-nutritional food block for your breakfast, if you'd like."

"Thanks, but no thanks," he replied. "I'll stick with cafeteria food." He remembered those blocks when he was just a hatchling, and wished he could forget them. They made you feel great, sure, but they tasted like greasy, salted garbage.

"You're sure, Mobius?"

Miss Minutes seemed to be studying him, still vaguely concerned. Her expression struck him as odd. Did she think he was lying? His memory from the day before yesterday, up until the vaccines, was still fuzzy, at best, but he didn't think a food block was going to help with that.

"Yes. One hundred percent sure."

Mobius stood and stretched, feeling a little greasy himself without a shower and shave.

"All right," she conceded. "You've got plenty of work to catch up on. Three different cases, all on different planets. Would you like me to send them to your tempad?"

"No, give me the physical files. Leave them on my desk."

"Sure thing! I'll get archives right on it."

With that, she was gone. Mobius showered, shaved, and dressed for the day, leaving his cozy room and making his way down the spiraling dormitory hallway. All the dormitories looked exactly the same, from the new trainees to the engineers and agents. Except for the judges, and the innovators too, he assumed. The only reason he knew was because Ravonna had shown him her spacious suite with a private elevator when she'd first gotten her judge's sash, too excited to keep it a secret.

He didn't mind having neighbors too much. If he couldn't stop by Jet's door every morning after an early breakfast, then his commute would be awfully boring. Mobius had taken his sweet time getting ready, so he knocked on the door labeled 'J-520' and waited. No answer. Perhaps he'd gotten a head start, though that was unlike him. He usually arrived at his desk as late as he could. Or… he was getting himself in trouble, flying by the seat of his pants again.

Mobius took the elevator, and, as he suspected they would, both Jet and Libby arrived when it stopped on the next floor: Libby's dorm. They rushed in and froze with surprise when they saw him. Mobius gave them a friendly smile.

"Late night?" he asked. "Working hard? Hardly working?"

Both of them stared at their feet and separated, going to opposite sides of the wall.

"Barely missed Miss Minutes that time," said Jet, with an uncomfortable chuckle.

Libby shushed him as she smoothed out her hair, but Jet only shrugged.

"What? You think Mobius is a snitch?"

Mobius shook his head. "She knows you're not in your room, Jet."

"Then the story is I woke up early. You're my witness."

"You guys, you're gonna get caught one of these days."

"We keep it clean," he scoffed. "There's no fluids to trace."

"Jet, ew," said Libby, scrunching her face while working a tangle out of her hair.

"If you say so," mumbled Mobius as the elevator doors opened again, several more agents filing in. He wondered, sometimes, if being a straight shooter and playing by the rules was even worth it, if Jet and Libby could get away with stuff like that. On the other hand, it wasn't as if he'd never done anything below the radar, either. He smiled to himself, remembering his good old days as a brand new analyst. The gray in his hair hadn't come in yet, and he had energy to blow off that officially sanctioned TVA recreation just wouldn't quench.

Those days were long gone, though. He was older, slower, his stomach padded slightly with a lower metabolism and a sedentary lifestyle. Nothing wrong with growing older. He had plenty of life left in him, just not enough to risk his position that he'd worked so hard for.

Mobius stopped by the cafeteria and grabbed himself a small plate of scrambled eggs and toast to take back to his desk. His assigned cubicle area was an open-air room off to the side of the hallway, with a nice view of the center of the TVA. His cubicle was a soothing, chartreuse color, with a little gray, square computer off to the corner and three fat files piled up in his 'incoming' work tray. He pulled something out of his secret stash on the bottom drawer of his desk-a can of Josta, to wake him up-then took a cursory glance at the files. The bottom two read, 'Grigori Rasputin: ETH G92270' and 'Bragmir Nilkison: JTM B6305'. The file on top had a red tag on the corner: first priority. That was the Xandarian general Ravonna had been talking about… Irani Rael, variant number I3481, planet code XDR. It apparently couldn't wait any longer. He flipped through her pages, then saw the variant briefing listing with a small, printed diagram of a branching timeline, and temporal coordinates next to it.

'I3481 will be kept in a general position in the Kree-Nova war instead of promoted to Nova Prime as in the sacred timeline, and will force the Kree to surrender approximately one Xandarian century [43 Null-units] before the Kree-Nova peace treaty should have been enacted. High priority. Superhuman durability, no magical abilities.'

Mobius took out his tempad and typed the variant number and coordinates into his planner. He'd get on it right after breakfast; get a hunter team together, gather all the mounds of paperwork that would have to be filed after a successful pruning… et. cetera, et. cetera.

As Mobius logged on to his computer for another long slog of a day, G. strolled up behind him, taking his place at his yellow, but otherwise identical cubicle across the walkway.

"Morning," said Mobius absently, without turning around.

"Uh… good morning."

G.'s reply was even more reserved than usual. Mobius stole a glance behind him to see G. slouched over his desk, studiously getting right to work and not looking at Mobius. The atmosphere felt a little… tense.

"Did'ja miss me?" Mobius asked, with a smile, and G. took several uncomfortable seconds to reply.

"I heard you got sick."

"Yeah. Had an allergic reaction to a vaccine, I think. Or the lasagna was bad."

"Mmm."

They spent a few more moments typing quietly at their desks. G. wasn't the most chatty person who'd ever lived, but he'd normally have spit out a few more sentences by now, even if it was only about mundane work stuff.

"Anything exciting land on your desk?"

"No."

G.'s curt reply sounded more than a little annoyed. Before Mobius could ask a few more probing questions, though, G. turned his swivel chair around and sighed deeply.

"I'm sorry about how I acted the other day, Mobius."

Mobius turned in his own chair to face him. He was drawing a blank. G. hadn't said or done anything incendiary… ever, actually, as far as Mobius knew.

"Care to elaborate?" he said.

G. shifted in his seat. "You know… when I said you didn't have any ambition? Then I stormed off, like an asshole? Remember?"

Mobius just blinked at him.

"Libby let me know that she let the cat out of the bag, after that. So, I guess you know now."

"Know what?"

G. tilted his head slightly, giving Mobius the same look that Casey had given him after he'd run out of the exam room and thrown up… when he'd asked about the variants he'd caught, the ones he couldn't remember existing.

G. scooted in closer, glancing around the room, seemingly embarrassed by what he was about to tell him.

"She said she told you I'd worked in maintenance before," he whispered to Mobius. He rolled his chair back and shrugged. "It's true. I did. And I guess I'm a little sensitive about the topic. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone else."

"Sure, sure," said Mobius, giving him a quick, reassuring grin, though the pit in his stomach was growing bigger by the second. "Could you just refresh my memory, though? When did all this happen?"

G.'s stare became wide eyed and deeply concerned.

"It was the day you caught those two variants. Mobius, are you okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

Mobius knew he couldn't keep the unease out of his voice or off his face, so he swiveled back around and tried to focus on his work. He regretted not eating a food block for breakfast, then. Even if it didn't bring his memory back, it would help with the anxiety starting to prickle at the nape of his neck. So it hadn't been just Casey being his absentminded self. He'd apparently had quite a bit of drama the day before yesterday, and couldn't remember any of it.

"Maybe you should go see a medic-"

A cold chill went down Mobius' spine, brief, but terrifying images flashing in his head.

Needles, clamps, 'wrong answer'-

"No! No medic," he blurted, surprising both G. and himself. "I mean… I feel fine. I think I'm just tired. That's it."

G. turned back around slowly, giving Mobius a nod.

"I think I'm gonna go get some coffee," he muttered, adjusting his suit jacket and leaving Mobius alone again.

What in the hell was that?

His hands were clammy, his heart raced in his chest. Deep breaths eventually calmed him down enough to actually start working on his cases, but his mind was far away. As quickly as those images had popped into his head, they were already gone. It could have been the remnants of some sort of dream, though he hadn't had any dreams since he was a new trainee, but it didn't explain the visceral terror that ripped through him at the mention of a medic.

Mobius quietly put the Irani variant's file to the side and searched through his tempad, looking back at all the cases he'd been assigned to in the past week. The variant numbers and mugshots loaded as he expected they would, one after the other as he scrolled through them, until he got to the day he'd gotten sick. Two variant numbers popped up on that day, but there were no mugshots above them. The numbers were grayed out. L4221 and L0205. Neither number rang a bell, and having no picture to refer to wasn't helping. He tapped on their names. The tempad let out a short double beep, and no information popped up on the screen. Tapping a few more times did nothing. He'd never seen that before. He had always been able to bring up any variant's information, whether he'd been the one to arrest them or not.

Mobius felt like he was losing his mind, a little. There had to be a good explanation, though. That's what he'd been trained to do, after all: get to the bottom of things that needed explanations… even if those answers freaked him out just as much as the questions that brought them about. He pressed a button on his tempad to call for Miss Minutes, and she appeared on his desk, sitting with her legs casually dangling over the edge.

"What can I help you with, Mobius?"

"I'd like the files on two variants brought in a couple of days ago, L4221 and L0205. Can you get them for me?"

She stood and began looking through a projected rolodex of files.

"Let's see… hmm… " she said, thoughtfully searching for what felt like half an hour. Mobius stuffed the toast in his mouth and waited.

"Not in there!"

The rolodex disappeared, replaced by an animated filing cabinet. She opened a drawer that extended nearly halfway across his table.

Mobius stifled an annoyed sigh. All of this was theater: a loading screen to take up time while the actual program searched literally zillions of files. If it had just happened two days ago, it shouldn't have been that hard to find.

"Ah! Well, they're here, but…"

She reached into the filing cabinet and brought out two manilla folders, glowing red instead of orange and locked with chains and padlocks.

"What's that?"

"These files are classified, Mobius."

She tossed them back in the cabinet and the drawer slammed shut, then the whole filing cabinet vanished.

"Classified? But wasn't I the one who brought those variants in?"

"Sorry hun," she said with a shrug. "They need top level clearance, now."

"But that's never-"

"Anything else I can do for you?" She grinned up at him and held her hands together innocently, rocking back and forth on her heels.

Mobius grunted at her and took a sip of Josta.

"No. Thank you."

She was gone again in an instant. Mobius tapped his pen on his desk rapidly, staring at the yellow words and numbers on his computer screen until they became meaningless. There wouldn't be a reason for him to go digging deeper, if he could just remember who those variants were and what had happened that day. Classified files were classified files, and none of his business if Miss Minutes said they weren't. The problem was that missing chunk of time.

He sat quietly, trying as best he could to remember anything at all from that day… a risky proposition. He knew firsthand how shaky memory evidence was, how much the mind wanted to fill in parts that were blank, even if what they filled it with was false.

G. came back to his desk, gingerly sipping a piping hot mug of coffee. Mobius supposed he didn't need to rely on just his own memory, not if he could back it up with an eyewitness account.

"Hey, G.," he said. "Did Jet say something about a promotion a few days ago?"

"Yeah," he replied slowly. "That's what my whole… outburst… was about. So I take it you're staying an agent?"

"Far as I know," Mobius shrugged. That corroborating evidence made him feel the slightest bit better. So, he must have done something to warrant a promotion. Something connected to those variants, perhaps?

He downed several more gulps of his soda and scooped the last bite of eggs in his mouth, then got hold of Ravonna on his com.

"What's up, Mobius?" she asked, her voice tinny and scratchy through the tempad.

"Do me a favor, will you?" he said, wiping his mustache with a napkin. "See if you can get files on variants L0205 and L4221. They need special clearance. Got those numbers, Ravonna?"

"Hold on, hold on," she said. He heard a shuffling noise as she grabbed a piece of paper. "L0205 and… what was the other one?"

"L4221."

"Got it," she said. "I need a reason to be looking them up, though."

"Well don't tell her it's 'cause I'm curious," he said, smirking. "Say you… want to know their pruning status, or something."

"Do you want to know their pruning status?"

He paused for a moment. Ravonna was the best friend he'd ever had. If he couldn't admit to her what he was going through, then there was no one he could tell. Of course, he couldn't just blurt out that he had amnesia while G. was right behind him.

"There's several things I want to know," he answered her. "How about I meet you somewhere? Your office?"

"It's my off-day. Come to my room."

"Oh," he said, vaguely embarrassed as G.'s chair squeaked. Mobius glanced behind him to see G. barely turn his head, now paying attention to the conversation.

"I'll be there soon," he said, then put the tempad back in his pocket.

G. swiveled around all the way and gave Mobius a sly little smirk. Before G. could say a word, Mobius grabbed the Irani file from his desk and put up his index finger in warning.

"Don't get any ideas," he said. "I mean it."

"Oh, I'm not the one getting ideas," said G., slowly turning around again to face his desk. "Perhaps Ravonna has one or two."

"Do not," Mobius muttered. "It's not like that. It's never been like that. I don't say things about you, you won't say things about me. Capeesh?"

"It's pronounced capiche. Ca-pi-keh." G. used a flourish of a hand gesture to accent the Italian.

"I was using colloquial Italian mobster language, not proper Italian, goombah."

Mobius shoved his chair under his desk and left for the elevators. He'd completely forgotten that it was one of Ravonna's off days. He hoped she wasn't too annoyed that he'd made her work instead of getting some well deserved R&R.

The judges' chambers were at the very, very top of the TVA, above the head of the Timekeeper's statue. The long elevator ride ended at a terminal with another large set of elevators, each one labeled with the name of a judge. Mobius pressed the button on Ravonna L. Renslayer's elevator and her voice came through the intercom under the button.

"Come on up, Mobius,"

Her private elevator took him on a much shorter trip, straight up, and the doors opened to Ravonna's roomy, gorgeous suite. The projection in her window, as always, was of a sunny, peaceful beach scene, with the air conditioning programmed to blow from the 'outside' inwards, making the curtains flutter lightly in the wind. Her room was furnished with wicker furniture, shells, candles, and dried-out plants with long stalks sitting in enormous vases. Her bed had a mosquito net around it, which almost made him burst out laughing. That was new, and completely unnecessary in the TVA's sterile environment. Ravonna sat on her wicker chaise lounge, dressed in a dark brown pair of silken pajamas, which complemented her lighter brown skin nicely, and a fluffy white robe. She even had her hair down, letting her tight, curly locks puff out and do whatever they pleased.

Mobius couldn't help his mind flashing to certain… scenarios… but he tamped down those thoughts quickly when she stood up and crossed the room to him, as official as if she'd never taken a day off in her life.

"I got that info for you, Mobius," she said with a grin. It always surprised him when she spoke to him with her hair not in its usual neat bun. It felt like she was a different person, almost.

"Great," he said, glancing at the tables in the room. "Where are the files?"

"She couldn't give me the physical files," she said, "but she told me about them."

"She… told you? Why?" That was highly unusual. If a judge needed files, they should be able to get them, no matter what. "You have clearance for them, right?"

"That is top level clearance, apparently," she said with a shrug. She took out a drink mix and some crushed ice out of her little mini fridge, then put them in a shaker and poured it into a martini glass. She offered the watermelon-pink concoction to Mobius.

"Ravonna, it's way too early to drink," he laughed.

"It's non alcoholic. Promise."

He shook his head and she took a sip.

"Anyway, they're locked because it's an internal case now, involving a couple of guards."

"What happened?" he said, taking a seat on a wicker chair.

"There was a scuffle as they were being taken away to be incarcerated, and the variants got violent and nearly escaped. Instead of pruning them, though, the guards… well, they exterminated them."

Mobius grunted. Outright killing of a variant without proper protocol was severely unprofessional behavior. It completely undermined the principles of the TVA. He would have chewed the hell out of any hunter who'd done something like that, had it happened on his watch.

"I couldn't even see their mugshots on my tempad, though," he said.

"Privacy," she replied, taking another sip. "Respect for the dead, I guess. I wasn't allowed to see their mugshots, or look up the guards who did it, either. That case is going to the high court, with an elder judge."

"And you don't know which one?"

She shook her head, then swirled her drink around with one hand, making the quickly melting ice tumble around in the glass.

"Why are you interested in them again, Mobius? Did you think they had more info?"

Mobius put his Irani file to the side and squeezed his hands together, looking down at his shiny, leather shoes.

"Pardon the pun, but… please don't judge me for this…"

Her expression didn't change. She knew when he wasn't joking.

"I actually don't remember bringing them in. I don't remember most of what happened that day."

The tinkling of the ice stopped abruptly. Ravonna put down her glass and sat on a matching wicker chair across from him, scooting it close.

"Please don't tell me to go to a medic," he said, feeling a little woozy just from bringing up the topic. "I… I don't know what it is."

"Mobius," said Ravonna, her face full of worry. She squeezed his upper arm gently, and wouldn't let go.

They spent a long moment just looking at each other, with the cry of fake seagulls and roar of a fake beach the only sounds in her room, until finally Mobius broke his gaze away.

"You know, you seemed a little off after interviewing them," she said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs. "I heard they put up quite a fight in the field, too."

"Were you there? Did you see them?"

She shook her head.

"Were there any other agents with me? Any hunters?"

"During the capture, yes, there was a whole team of hunters, but not during the interview. It was just you and them. I got a glimpse of their mugshots, but I never saw them in person. My point is, I think they really got under your skin. Maybe they said something you wished you could forget."

"Well, I wish I could remember what I wish I'd forgotten," he chuckled. "It would make me feel a lot better."

"I've been working you too hard," she said suddenly, sighing. She bounced her leg up and down nervously. "I wish you'd told me you were so stressed out."

"I didn't feel stressed out, I swear!" he said. "I've been doing my job just fine, I think, until a few days ago."

She stared out the window in silence, then turned to face him again.

"I need to tell you a story, Mobius." She picked at a fraying bit of wicker on the arm of her chair as she spoke. "When I was a hunter, I worked with an agent to catch a variant of someone trying to assassinate Vlad Draculea. Have you heard of him?"

"No. Don't think so."

A wry grin twitched at the corner of her mouth.

"If there was a definition of evil, I think they'd use his picture. He was a leader of a tiny territory called Wallachia, Earth, Middle Ages. His nickname was Vlad the Impaler. This guy killed his own people, put them up on stakes, murdered his political rivals by locking them in a room and setting the room on fire. Killed Ottoman diplomats by nailing their own turbans to their heads."

Mobius made a face, but she continued.

"He was so brutal that centuries later, someone wrote a fictional book about him and turned him into a vampire. Not just any vampire… the most popular vampire in Earth history."

"Was he one?"

"Nope. Just a regular old tyrant with some particularly bloody techniques. He had to live, though, because his horrifying reputation kept the entire Ottoman empire at bay for years. Without him, Europe would speak Turkish. Our ends justified his means.

"Anyway, the TVA was tasked to find the guy who would have killed Vlad. He was a boyar, kind of like a feudal lord. Vlad had ordered his wife and child impaled to punish him for something. He was… understandably upset, but we had to stop him, nonetheless. The agent tasked to the assignment was tough, grizzled… at least I thought he was. He'd seen bloody battles before, death, destruction, but none of us had seen anything like…"

She trailed off for a moment, staring into space, before taking another swallow of her drink and continuing.

"We went into the field, which unfortunately happened to be a fresh mass impalement. The bodies hadn't even stopped twitching yet. The agent couldn't handle it. I remember him just standing there, crying, shaking. He wouldn't even move. I had to lead the rest of the hunters to catch the guy. I brought everyone back, the agent and the variant and the team, everything went smoothly. Except that the agent never recovered. He'd gone completely nuts, couldn't work. He kept talking about how he needed to go home and feed his dog. That mission was what got me promoted to agent."

"And the other agent?"

"They had to demote him all the way to maintenance," she answered, shaking her head ruefully. "Poor guy wasn't good for anything else. Whenever you tried to talk to him, you couldn't get more than a few words out of him, and it was usually about how much he missed a dog he'd made up.

"My point, Mobius, is that I can't ever let that happen to you," she said, putting her drink down again and placing her hand on his shoulder. "You need to tell me if something's too much for you to handle. I know I give you the toughest cases-"

"I swear I've felt just fine, up until a couple days ago," he reassured her, taking her hand off his shoulder. He squeezed it quickly by accident, and let go, though she didn't even seem to notice. "Maybe it was the vaccines they gave me."

"Vaccines?"

"Yeah. I had a really awful reaction to them. Maybe it messed with my head, too?"

She frowned. "Doesn't sound like something a shot would do."

He sighed and shrugged. "No, it doesn't. I don't have any other leads, though."

"This case is a lot simpler than you think it is, Mobius," she told him with a smile, warmer than any he'd seen in a long time. She plucked the Irani file off of the chair. "It's stress. And probably too much caffeine. Lay off the Josta."

"Come on," he said, reaching for the file, but she held it away from him. "I'm not a hatchling. I can take care of myself. Give it back."

"This can go to someone else. You can work on those other two cases, they'll be a piece of cake for you."

He huffed and leaned back in his chair. "I don't want cake," he mumbled. "I want to get to the bottom of this and then get back to work."

"I think you need another day off, too."

He opened his eyes wide in surprise.

"Ravonna, I'm only allowed two sick days every half Null-unit. I don't want to waste my other sick day being bored in my room."

"I can cheat it, a little," she said with a shrug.

"You? Cheat?" He put a hand over his heart, grabbing at imaginary pearls, which made her laugh.

"I can give you two half-days. Let you cool down a little, relax without getting too bored. How does that sound?"

"Well, if you're forcing me, then I suppose I'll accept that."

Satisfied, she got up, flipping through the Irani file.

"Good then. You're dismissed, agent," she said, playfully sarcastic.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, with a totally unnecessary salute.

As he got up and went back into her private elevator, she clutched the file in front of her, giving him one last look, the smile gone from her face. It struck something deep in him. It was a look of innocence, almost, a look of vague wonder mixed with fear.

"Take care," she said quietly, and Mobius responded with a nod before the elevator doors closed.

Mobius arrived back at his desk, not feeling much better about the whole thing. He had his answer, though. The variants were dead. He was stressed out. Case closed.

Something deep inside wouldn't leave him alone, even though the conclusion seemed cut and dry. But with no other leads, no witnesses to the interview he'd apparently conducted with variants who were now six feet under, there wasn't anything else he could do.

Mobius opened the Grigori Rasputin file, took one more sip of flat soda, and did his very best to concentrate instead of feeling the unease working its way up his spine again.