Mobius' stomach grumbled loudly, from normal hunger or the extra can of Josta, he couldn't be sure. Either way, it was loud enough that he knew G. could hear it from across the aisle. G., thankfully, wasn't the kind of guy to comment openly on such a thing.

The Rasputin case he'd been looking through seemed pretty cut and dry, not something they normally needed an agent for, but the TVA had meddled several times in different parts of the Communist Revolution in twentieth century Russia, and it had usually ended badly. Revolutions were his least favorite situations: they were always confusing, messy, and it was hard to gauge which actions would create problems further down the line. An agent had once let one of the royal Romanov children escape their assassination, in order to ease the anti-royal sentiment for a completely different century, which created several nasty branches that affected the next few decades. They'd had to go back and fix their gaffe, then have a whole division-wide meeting about it. Perhaps the TVA had finally wised up and decided to handle revolutions with kid gloves, like he thought they should have been doing in the first place. This particular Rasputin should be an easy case. Just an angry, crazy mystic that had turned on the Romanov family instead of supporting them, like he was supposed to in the sacred timeline.

Mobius was supposed to be taking a half-day, though. Judge's orders. It made him feel utterly useless to not even solve one case in a day, but that's what he was going to have to do. Leaving work after lunch felt so… wrong. He could at least plan who would be on the team…

Mobius' stomach protested again, and he couldn't put it off any longer. He just had to drink that extra can of Josta earlier. He shut the file and logged off of his computer.

"Ready for lunch?" he asked G., though he was going to leave with or without him. G. turned and stood without a word, clicking a few keys on his computer to lock his screen.

Mobius and G. happened to catch Jet and Libby on the elevator, on their way to the cafeteria, as well.

"Hey, you're quick," said Jet to Mobius, though Mobius had no idea why. Before he could ask, Jet continued. "Do you happen to have that Irani file? I've got another case that ties to hers, and I figured they'd give that one to you."

"I do not," replied Mobius. "Afraid that had to go to someone else."

"So, you did have it?" asked Jet, with a twitch of his eyebrow.

Damn. Even though they were his friends, Mobius needed to remember that he was in an elevator full of agents. They were trained to pick up on every little thing.

"I was ordered to take two half-days off, after I got sick," he said, leaving out the crucial fact that he might be slowly going insane. "Ravonna reassigned the Irani case."

"Oof," said Jet, taking a step away from him. "It's not catching, right?"

"No, no. Don't worry. I feel fine. They just want to make sure there's no more side effects from the vaccine they gave me."

"Must have been a doozy," said Libby. "Which one was it?"

"Not sure," said Mobius. "Must be a new one."

He put that question away in the vast filing system of his mind, for later. He'd have to figure out how to find which vaccine they'd given him, see if anyone else got as sick as he did.

The elevator opened to the Division Nine cafeteria, where hundreds of people waited in neat orderly lines for food. Mixed in with the usual crowd were several groups of hatchlings, loudly chattering away: new trainees, obvious from their fresh, identical haircuts and bold orange-and-brown striped ties.

G.'s expression soured and he made a disgusted grunt.

"What?" Mobius asked as he grabbed himself a Caesar salad.

"I hate hatchlings."

"What? Why?" asked Jet, laughing. "I love 'em. They're so innocent."

"They're loud, they're obnoxious," G. grumbled as he picked out his lunch, "They take more than one dessert, without fail-"

"Oh, the TVA will never recover those pieces of pie," said Jet sarcastically.

"They don't follow the rules."

"They're brand new!" said Mobius. He couldn't help but chuckle at G.'s crabbiness, too. "They don't know any better."

"They should."

"You were a hatchling once, you know," Libby chided him as they made their way to the desserts, which had indeed been picked clean of the best stuff. The only dish left was cut up cantaloupe, which Mobius took. He needed to lose a few pounds, anyway.

As they took their trays to their usual seats next to the window, G.'s face went from an annoyed frown to a downright scowl.

"They took our spot!" he said indignantly.

"Wow," answered Mobius, shaking his head at him. "Grow up, G., really. We can sit next to them."

With one last grumble of protest, G. rolled his eyes and followed everyone to a smaller table next to their usual place, but sat as far away from the hatchlings as he could and studiously ignored them. The group of ten trainees were stuffed close to each other like sardines at the round table, some of them with their trays stacked on top of each other to make room. One greedy trainee had even taken two lunches, and a dessert, though G. didn't comment.

Mobius was instantly distracted by the trainee with two lunches and the woman sitting next to him. The thin, dark haired man was sharing some of his grilled chicken with the blonde woman, cutting off part of it and letting her slide it onto her plate. The way they looked at each other…

Their eyes, pleading…

A sudden, intense headache forced Mobius to sit down. It radiated from the base of his spine all over his head, giving him a moment of excruciating tinnitus.

Jet noticed. "You all right, Mobius?"

"Ow," was all Mobius could say for a few moments. When he was able to hear again, he said, "I think I had too much caffeine today. That's all."

Jet sat next to him, but turned around to face the trainees. Mobius knew exactly what he was going to do. The only thing worse than G.'s irascibility, sometimes, was Jet's sense of 'humor'. Jet clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

"Fresh meat!" he said, loudly, startling the trainees. They turned and stared at him, totally uncomprehending.

Jet laughed, a booming noise that drowned out everything else for half a second.

"I'm just kidding!" he said, and most of the trainees giggled between themselves unsurely. "The name's Jet. I love seeing hatchlings in the cafeteria. It means we get to tell you all the stuff they don't teach you in class." He gave them all a wink.

That got their attention instantly. The ones not already facing him turned completely in their seats.

"Like what?" asked a gangly man with red hair and freckles.

"Surely you've noticed that almost everybody goes by a name instead of a number?"

They nodded, and Jet leaned in, like he was about to tell them the world's biggest secret.

"You get to choose that name yourself."

"How do you know what to name yourself?" asked the black haired man. Mobius tried his best not to stare at him, but something about him was so unnervingly familiar. The woman, though, seemed to be just as focused on Mobius as he'd been on her just a moment earlier. She broke her gaze and stuffed some key lime pie in her mouth.

"Well," Jet continued, "A lot of people make up their name based on their employee number. For example, mine is J-520. So, J, and the fifth letter of the alphabet is E, and the twentieth is T. J-E-T, Jet. And Mobius here did the same kind of thing, didn't you?"

Jet gave Mobius an incorrigible grin that Mobius really didn't need, at that moment. He forced himself to smile as he spoke to the trainees.

"Yeah, I did. My number is J-888, and the number 8 sort of looks like a mobius strip. Mobius M. Mobius."

The class broke into a cacophony of speculation about what their brand new names should be.

"S-10…" the red haired man counted on his fingers, "J… S.J.? Saj? No… oh, how about Sarge? D-132, do you like that name? What are you gonna make yours?"

The round-faced, olive-skinned woman next to him only shrugged.

"I don't know yet. I can't think of anything."

"Oh, you don't have to, yet," said Libby, chiming in. She gave Jet a knowing look. "I went by my number for the longest time until I met Jet. He trained me, and our first mission was in-"

"New York, New York!" said Jet bombastically.

"Yep!" she laughed at him and left her hand on his elbow for far too long. "We were chasing down someone from Manhattan in 1885, and I caught sight of the most amazing thing I've ever seen: the Statue of Liberty, brand new, in shining copper, the sunset hitting it just right."

"Was it cooler than the Timekeeper statue?" asked another woman at the far end of the table.

"It wasn't as big, but… yeah, I'd say it looked even cooler."

The table responded in a chorus of 'wow's.

"Long story short, I named myself Libby, after her." Her secret glance to Jet was uncharacteristically demure, and his smile, in turn, was sweet instead of foolish.

The black haired man noticed Mobius staring then, and the excited grin on his face vanished. Another shock wave went through Mobius, as if he'd sent electricity straight down his spine.

Mobius tried to calm himself down. Those feelings didn't make any logical sense. He'd never seen them before. It wasn't them making Mobius antsy, it couldn't be. It was the caffeine, or the shots. Something else, anything else. Still, Mobius' stomach gurgled angrily, threatening to get sick again right in front of the trainees, wherever the feeling was coming from.

"I have a question," said D-132 to Libby. "Why do you have stuff on your face?"

"That's called makeup!" she answered. "You don't get any issued to you, you kind of have to find it when you go out on the field… or you might be able to trade something for it."

"It looks so pretty!" D-132 murmured, smiling to herself.

Suddenly, the blonde woman turned to her sharply, scowling as she spoke.

"I have an actual, important question," she said, speaking as much to D-132 as the agents. D-132 shrank away from her. The blonde turned all the way around in her seat, her stare so intense that Mobius had to look away.

"Did you know that they let people get hurt in maintenance?"

Both tables stopped everything they were doing, utterly shocked. G. quit chewing and froze completely in the middle of stabbing another piece of broccoli, his fingers white-knuckled around the fork. He simply blinked at the rest of his food on the plate. Even fast-talking Jet was left speechless.

"Did you?" she repeated. No one dared say a word.

"L-63…" the dark haired man whispered to her, but her gaze never left the agents.

"We saw a woman get her hand burned-"

"L-63!" The man seemed panicked now, but she was relentless.

"Why shouldn't they know, L-7?" she asked.

The newly coined Sarge chimed in, sneering. "What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? Who cares?"

That caused an explosion of chatter at the trainee table, everyone arguing and recounting the apparently horrible things they'd seen when Miss Minutes had shown them the Viscera. Just as quickly as it had started, G. spoke up, to Mobius' surprise.

"People do get hurt," he said curtly, and everyone quieted back down again. He met L-63's eyes with equal intensity, which seemed to satisfy her. "Accidents happen. It's inevitable. Don't dwell on things like that, or you'll never be able to… move on." G. seemed to stumble over the last few words, then stuffed the broccoli in his mouth and chewed ferociously.

"Speaking of moving on," said Jet, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, "Anyone else have any other questions for us?"

"I have another," said L-63. Sarge snorted and shook his head, but L-63 barreled forward. "Why doesn't everyone look the same?"

"I'm sorry… what?" said Libby, trying to keep a smile off of her face. Poor L-63 looked upset enough as it was.

"We were all made in pods the same way, right? So why did the Timekeeper decide to make us look and act differently when he didn't have to? It would be easier to make us if we were all exactly the same. He could have just made us the way we needed to be for the different jobs, instead of having to figure out where we fit."

The agents were silent, while the trainees muttered to each other, hands over their mouths to shield their words. Sarge still wore a smirk, as if he was waiting for the right moment to strike, and L-7 looked utterly humiliated.

"That's… um… an interesting…" Libby looked to Jet for help, who shrugged and took a sip from his cup before answering coolly.

"If we were all made to look the same, then how would we be able to tell each other apart?"

After a brief moment of contemplation, Sarge burst into laughter, making L-63 whip her head around to glare at him.

"You're such a dumbass!" he chortled. "Why are your questions so stupid?"

L-7 slammed his hand down, sending what was left of his lunch flying across the table, then stood, his face even redder than Sarge's. The entire cafeteria went silent, watching the spectacle.

"She's not stupid. You're stupid!" he thundered, leaning over L-63 to scream directly in Sarge's face. Sarge pushed away his tray and stood as well, and the two men looked ready to come to blows at any second.

"Come on, now," said Mobius firmly, "There's no need for that."

He got up and crossed to them, putting his hand on L-7's shoulder. L-7 shrugged him away, at first, then turned back around to face him. They locked eyes, and Mobius felt as if the back of his brain had caught on fire.

"You look sick," said L-7, the anger draining out of him. "Are you okay?"

Mobius sat down again, shaking, his coworkers eyeing him with concern.

"I'm-I'm fine," he stuttered, swallowing bile. He took a single sip of water, but it didn't stay down. Mobius covered his mouth and forced himself to swallow what had come back up again. The half of his mind that was on fire felt as if he was dying, slowly tearing itself apart, while the other half was completely out of the loop and wondering what was wrong just as much as everyone else staring at him.

"Actually, I… uh…" Mobius got up and stumbled away from the table without finishing his sentence. He wandered into a nearby empty bathroom and grabbed the sink for balance, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He did look awful: his skin was pale, almost gray, and he was sweating, the moisture seeping through his button-down shirt. He sank slowly to the tile floor and rested on his knees.

Deep breaths, he told himself. Everything's fine. Deep breaths…

Everything wasn't fine, though. Even as he started to readjust back to normal, his mind wouldn't let that feeling go.

Finally, after about a minute, he felt the blood start to go back to his brain, his shaking hands became steady, if still wet and clammy. With the more logical part of his brain back in commission, he searched through his mind, calmly, quietly trying to find those green eyes somewhere. He came up empty, just as he should, since they were brand new hatchlings. It didn't make him feel better, but he knew the longer he kept thinking about it, the more likely his mind was to make up things that had never happened.

Just then, Jet burst into the bathroom, G. peeking in curiously behind him.

"Oh my god, Mobius!" Jet crossed over to him and picked him up, supporting him under the armpits. "Let's go buddy. Can you stand?"

Mobius felt himself go a little woozy as Jet helped him up. Jet leaned on the sink, the laid-back, jolly expression gone from his face and replaced with complete seriousness, as if he'd never cracked a joke in his life.

"Man," said Jet, running a hand through his sparse hair. "I knew you weren't okay when I saw you earlier."

Mobius narrowed his eyes, confused.

"Do you mean on the elevator this morning? I felt fine then. Or when we met for lunch?"

"No, when I saw you leave your room."

"We… we didn't see each other in our dorm today, remember? You were in L-" He stopped himself from outing Jet and Libby's rendezvous, as G. was standing right there.

Jet narrowed his eyes, too, and paused for a very long time before answering.

"I had forgotten my tie in my room, but I didn't realize until right before lunch, so I went back to get it, and you were just leaving your room. I tried to talk to you, but you kind of just… ran off. It was weird. You looked a little freaked out, then."

Mobius felt his anxiety creeping up his spine again, but did his very best not to show it, though he had to grip the sink as hard as he could to keep himself upright. He hadn't gone back to his room that day, at all. He knew he hadn't.

"You're sure it was me?" he whispered.

"I was right next to you, Mobius. We were as far apart as we are now. It was you."

"Do you need to sit down again, Mobius?" asked G. "I can get a medic."

"N-no," said Mobius, using every shred of his sanity to keep himself together. "You know, I think my half-day off should start now. I'm gonna go back to my room and… take a nap. Or something."

With that, Mobius left the bathroom and power-walked to the elevator. He was the only one on the elevator car, so he pressed the button for his dorm and leaned heavily on the handrail, hoping nobody else who boarded would comment on how sick he looked. He racked his brain for the slightest possibility that he could have gone back to his room that day and simply forgotten, but that couldn't be. He was perfectly lucid all day. He could remember every hour he'd spent, from the moment he woke up, to meeting Ravonna in her room, to just before lunch. Nothing was missing.

Something had to be missing, though. Instead of filling in pieces of a puzzle, he was losing the pieces that were already there, which was much more disconcerting.

He arrived at his dorm and went to his room, taking off his shoes and sitting on the edge of his nice, soft bed. As he wiped his sweaty forehead with his arm, a flash of green and yellow caught his eye. Laying on his desk was the Action Comic that he'd taken out earlier, when he was waiting for Miss Minutes to announce the new day. It didn't set off any alarms as he picked it up to put it back in the drawer, until he remembered, clearly, that he'd put it away before Miss Minutes had arrived and hadn't touched it since.

Mobius sank into his bed and groaned helplessly into his pillow. Being distressed at something so small made him angry at himself, all the same. He wasn't insane. He could do his job just fine. He just couldn't remember doing small, insignificant things. Surely that was normal, for someone under a lot of stress.

Stifling a sniffle, he called for Miss Minutes on his tempad.

"What can I do for you, Mobius?" she said, appearing on the edge of her desk with a smile that quickly faded away. "Oh my. Still not feeling well?"

"No," he croaked. "I couldn't eat lunch. Can I get a food block, please?"

"Of course, hun!" she said. "Coming right up!"

She disappeared, and a plate with a block of green, spongy, greasy foodstuff landed neatly on his desk. Mobius took a bite. The musty, salty flavor brought him right back to his first day. As gross as it tasted, it was still a comforting memory.

Knowing the food block would do its job soon made Mobius relax just as much as the vitamins themselves would. He rested his red, puffy eyes, and took a much needed nap.