Jeff Boyd drove his truck down the dark, paved road, a dense pine forest on either side of him. The only light on that starless, moonless night came from his bright headlights. Even then, the road ahead was barely visible, as if the night was trying its best to drown out any light it could touch. Jeff scratched his scruffy, blonde hair under his John Deere trucker hat as he sped twenty miles over the speed limit. He had to get home. He hadn't driven down that road… ever, to his knowledge, and the thick pine forest all around was giving him the creeps. The heating system on his brand new Ford F-150 was busted, too, sending out nothing but freezing cold air. He shuddered, unable to turn it off.

Suddenly, the paved road started showing cracks, then potholes, then before he knew it, it seemed to disintegrate into gravel and dirt. The kudzu covered pine trees grew even closer to the road, as if they were leaning in to ensnare him. Gravel flew up and plinked against the side of his truck and undercarriage, like a barrage of BB guns firing at him.

"Shit," he muttered, then took out a map of Georgia from the side pocket of his truck door without even slowing down. Jeff pressed the interior cabin light button and unfolded part of the map on his steering wheel. He had taken a different route to get home from work. He knew that much. He was heading northeast, towards Atlanta… but had he passed Palmetto, yet? He couldn't remember seeing a sign-

Jeff gasped and slammed on his brakes, tires skidding wildly against gravel, coming to a stop only about a foot away from a figure standing in the middle of the road. He got out of his truck and slammed the door.

"Hey, what the fuck do you think you're doing out here? Are you cra-"

Jeff stopped, staring at the man before him, who wore a wrinkled, brown suit jacket, a thin tie that hung loosely off his neck, like a noose, and scuffed leather shoes. He held a thick stack of manilla folders to his chest, defensively guarding them like a dragon hoarding its treasure. The man was… him… but older, with short, gray hair and a mustache. His blue eyes were crazed, darting about, then going back to Jeff, blinking, squinting in the bright lights of the truck.

"Jeff?" said older, crazy Jeff, hobbling towards him as papers started to slide out of his folders. "Are you Jeff Boyd?"

Jeff took a step back, tried the car handle. It was locked from the outside, still running.

"Who wants to know?" he answered.

The older version of him shook his head, licked his dry, cracked lips. "You need to get out of here. You can't be here. They'll hurt you if they see you. They'll kill you, do you understand?"

"Who will?"

"The TVA!" he whispered hoarsely, looking around, as if the trees could hear him. "They already killed you once! They'll kill you for good if they find you."

"The… Tennessee Valley Authority is gonna kill me?" He chuckled nervously to himself. "This is nuts. You're nuts. I don't know who you are but-"

"I'm what they turned you into, Jeff!" he blurted. The older Jeff started circling around him like a rabid dog. "But if they know we talked to each other… they took your freedom away, too, don't you remember? Don't let them interrogate us. Please. They won't just prune us if they find out, they'll kill us. Please, Mobius."

At that last word-that name-Jeff felt a chill go straight up his back. He seemed to finally absorb that he was truly in danger, that the primal, unknown terror that was hiding in the dark woods was the real enemy… not the madman stumbling around, murmuring to himself, trying to pick up pieces of paper from his files as they fell to the gravel.

Jeff turned to try his door handle again, only to find that the truck had disappeared entirely. Somehow, the headlights still gave off a pool of light, even though they'd ceased to exist.

"My-my truck!" he exclaimed, looking around for it. The older Jeff was gone now too. It was as if nothing had ever existed there. Even the road ahead was murky and uncertain, like it was slowly being replaced by trees. Jeff's heart pounded in his throat.

"Jeff?" he called out uncertainly. Silence. He swallowed, opened his mouth to call out again.

Before he could make a sound, an ice cold hand clamped down on his neck from behind, and something screamed.

"Whoa, whoa, Mobius, it's okay!"

Mobius stopped screaming abruptly as he heard someone's soothing voice. The gray-haired medic had both hands on his arm, gently holding him down on the padded exam table. He was lying on his back, the medic standing over him, with a relieved look on her face. Mobius knew her, to his surprise. She'd tended to him and his broken nose several times, all the way back when he was still young enough to fight. He shuddered violently once or twice, feeling chills zip up his spine and down his extremities, making his teeth chatter, until he realized the room wasn't even cold. A few deep, calm breaths finally brought him back to his senses. Instead of chills, the right side of his head started to pound with pain, his right ear feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.

"Dr. Alltid?" he asked. He tried to sit up, but felt another wave of dizziness and laid back down again. "Ow."

"That's right Mobius," she said. "It's just me. I'm so glad you're awake. I was afraid if you didn't wake up soon, I was going to have to call an emergency medic squad in here."

"Wake up?" he asked, as she gently turned his head and waved her familiar cold laser healing device close to his face. It tingled as she moved it all over the side of his head, without touching the skin, the red pool of light visible from the corner of his eye.

"You don't remember what happened, do you?"

"Uh-uh."

"You went to the fights, and two trainees started going at it. God, one of them had a time baton. I've never seen anything like it. One of them, the one you brought, apparently punched you in the head."

"Punched me? Which one? Lucky or Six?"

"You brought two trainees?" she asked with surprise. "Jeez, Mobius, what's gotten into you?"

All of a sudden, Mobius remembered nearly everything: Lucky winning the last fight with Casey, Sarge jumping into the ring, and standing between Lucky and Sarge when he broke up their fight. He didn't remember the punch, though. Lucky wouldn't have sucker punched him like that for no reason. Even Six wouldn't have, though he remembered how unbelievably drunk she'd gotten. He chuckled low to himself, making Dr. Alltid raise an eyebrow.

"I don't know what's gotten into anyone lately, doc. I really don't. Those two are just a barrel of monkeys, and the monkeys got out, I guess."

"Keep your head right there, Mobius," she said, then went to the corner to fish something out of her medic cart. Seeing the cart gave him another start, strangely enough, as though he'd caught sight of a gigantic spider on the wall. The feeling was gone quickly, though, replaced by another of sudden revelation.

"The dream!" he blurted, out of nowhere.

"What was that?"

"I had a dream! There was a truck, and a bunch of woods, and a road that kept getting worse. I was driving… I think it was me. The rest of it's just kind of a blur…"

He trailed off as Dr. Alltid came back with a tube of quick healing gel that she slathered all over the side of Mobius' head. It heated itself instantly and made his right ear pop with relief.

"You're not making a lot of sense, Mobius," she muttered, wiping off the gel from his head and her hands, then typing something into her medical chart. "I don't want to have to keep you overnight, as that will be a lot of paperwork and even more alibis. You don't have a concussion, though, so that's good. Can you try standing now?"

He did so, glad to find that he could stand and walk without any difficulty at all.

"How's my face?"

"Nose is still broken, sorry," she said with a grin. "The bruise is healing. Swelling should be gone by tomorrow evening. I'd recommend a day off."

He groaned. "Can't. I used them up already."

"For what? I don't see a medic visit in here recently…" She frowned and swiped rapidly through her chart.

"I had some terrible nausea a few days ago. Still don't know what it was; food poisoning, caffeine overdose, a vaccine that-wait, what did you just say?"

"I said I can't find a medic visit in here," she answered. "Did you see a medic?"

"I didn't see a person, but I definitely got a vaccine of some kind."

"Hmm. Let's check there, then." Dr. Alltid swiped a few different directions in her chart, then after an uncomfortably long moment, spoke with a tinge of incredulousness to her voice.

"Well, I see something in your vaccination records… but that's awfully weird."

"What?"

"It doesn't even say what they gave you, Mobius."

"Could it be a glitch of some kind?"

She chuckled mirthlessly. "Absolutely not. The TVA keeps meticulous records of every single visit, shot, and dose of medicine… that is, if I put them in." She gave him a little wink. The few medics that were privy to fight night knew how to 'cook the charts'-so to speak-so there weren't any strange looking entries to deal with.

"You can't think of a reason they'd do that on purpose?"

She considered it a moment, then shook her head. "No. I was going to suggest perhaps it was an experimental vaccine, but I've seen those too. They still have names. There's just a blank spot here five days ago. Never seen anything like that."

Mobius took a deep breath, feeling somewhere between horrified and vindicated. "Well, doc, if you can think of something, or find out a reason, I'd really love to know," he said. "I think… I think I've been losing large tracts of time lately."
"And this started, when?" Dr. Alltid was suddenly all business. She took out a touch pen to write down his symptoms into her electronic chart, to his chagrin.

"Can we keep this off the record?" he asked. "Do you mind?"

"This is kind of a big deal, I don't think it's appropriate-"

"I know it's a big deal, and that's exactly why I want it off the record. I'm honestly afraid I might get a demotion if I let on that something's wrong with me."

Dr. Alltid chuckled in surprise. "Mobius, good gracious."

"Well, I have one anecdotal story of it happening to a superior of a colleague of mine. He was demoted all the way to maintenance because he insisted he had to go home and feed his dog."

"Do you think you have a dog?"

"No."

"Then you're fine."

With that, she pushed the two ends of the thin chart together, squishing it into a sticklike shape, like an extraordinarily thin scroll.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to go to work tomorrow with a slightly swollen head. I'd suggest telling everyone you got into a hive of bees. Maybe got slightly clobbered by a Hulk variant. I don't know, use your imagination."

"Thanks, doc," he said. "Just like old times, huh?"

She gave him one last smile and tapped him on the arm with her rolled up chart before depositing it in her coat pocket.

"Just like old times. I'll let you know if I find anything, all right?"

He nodded, then left the exam room, hoping he didn't look so awful that people were going to comment on him even before he got back to his dorm. He checked his watch: 26:34. Close to curfew, but not close enough to hurry. He took his time down the dimmed hallways, thankfully passing no one.

He was more than a little worried about that blank spot in his vaccination record, even more than getting punched in the face by a trainee he thought he trusted. It nagged at him, along with the missing Josta and other moved objects that he was sure he hadn't touched. There was a much stronger possibility that they were all connected, now, but who, or what, would possibly corroborate a theory that couldn't even be researched?

Mobius smiled as he got off the elevator to his dorm. He'd told Six himself that if no one knew the answer to a question, then you should ask other questions until you got the answer you needed. He should start following his own advice.

That brought his mind back to those two impetuous hatchlings. He'd thought Lucky might perhaps stir up trouble, but Six getting stone drunk and wailing on another trainee was just too much. Surely she had more sense, out of the two of them. Really though, he had no one to blame but himself. He should have kept his mouth shut, not just at the bowling alley, but as he'd been giving them a tongue-lashing. He remembered telling them he wished he'd never seen them. Mobius sucked in air through his teeth, ashamed. But that couldn't have been why Lucky punched him. He wasn't insane, like Sarge apparently was. Seriously, what were they putting in the pods nowadays? Amphetamines?

The next morning went by suspiciously quietly, as they always seemed to go after fight nights, but especially after that one. Everyone involved were as tight lipped as nuns, and as surreptitious as mice. On the first breakfast after the fight, Mobius went to the cafeteria with, as he predicted, a horrible swelling next to his bruised eye. The bruise made the bee excuse untenable. Mobius had gone with another explanation for Miss Minutes, telling her he'd gotten into a scrap with a Skrull. They were notorious bastards, and they always popped up on agents' desks, due to their shapeshifting capabilities. She'd accepted that, thankfully.

Mobius sat with a terribly hungover Jet and Libby, who both looked like they wanted to die. G., surprisingly, didn't ask questions to any of his colleagues, but sat and quietly ate his waffle, as if everything was completely normal.

Sarge sat by himself at a corner table, doing no more than picking at his food. D-132 sat with a large table of her girlfriends, looking just as forlorn. Lucky was nowhere to be seen, which worried Mobius greatly. He knew the zero-tolerance attendance policy for trainees, and if he couldn't give an alibi to Miss Minutes…

Six's blonde hair caught the corner of his eye. She was already done with her meal and stood from her lonely seat by a window. Lucky wasn't with her, either.

"Hey Six! Six!" Mobius called out to her, but she only put her head down and scurried past him to the trash receptacle, then nearly ran to the exit. He was worried, now, afraid that something bad had happened to Lucky… and if something bad had happened to Lucky, then something bad could happen to any of them. Unfortunately, he didn't know which dorm they lived in, or if the other hatchlings lived in the same dorm or not. Otherwise he'd be inclined to check on him.

Jet stood slowly, having eaten barely any of his food. "See you later," he croaked.

Mobius nodded, and Libby left behind him, as usual, without saying a word.

After a long, awkward silence, with only G. and Mobius at the table, G. took a long, steady sip of his coffee, smacked his lips, and said, "You know that I know about the fights, right?"

Mobius tried not to gasp. "You… how?"

G.'s expression never changed as he spoke. "I didn't imagine you'd be fighting in them, though. That's a surprise."

"I wasn't," Mobius scoffed. "There was an accident, and… never mind, you're changing the subject. How do you know?"

"Everyone in maintenance knows about the… the you-know-whats," he said, as a group of people passed behind him. "I mean, there's no safe place to hold them, other than the Viscera."

"Have you ever been?"

"Oh no, no. Never. I had my eye set on leaving, eventually. The maintenance people that go to the fights are people who've given up on themselves, I think."

"How do you figure?"

"You have to have a spotless record to even be considered for promotion," he said. "You have to go above and beyond, in fact. Meet one hundred and twenty five percent of your quota every day, never raise your voice to a supervisor… never look at one of them sideways. You have to kiss ass, grovel, lick boots, whatever you have to do to get out of there. If you're caught at the fights, there's no way out. Ever."

"Jesus," Mobius whispered. "I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"Of course you didn't," said G., without malice, as he took another sip of his coffee.

"So, this ass-kissing behavior… was informing on others rewarded?"

G. took a long time before answering. "Yes," he said, simply.

Mobius swallowed and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He couldn't read anything on G.'s face.

G. put down his fork, laced his fingers together. "We were all in the same boat, though, so to speak. Have you heard the parable about the bucket of crabs?"

"No."

"If you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, piled high enough that they could simply climb over each other and help each other escape, they won't do that. Instead, when one crab reaches the edge of the bucket, another crab will pull it down. None of the crabs will escape the bucket, because they won't help each other."

"Well… say there's no way for the crabs to pile up," said Mobius. "Say there's no way to help each other, anyway. Wouldn't it be in their best interests to help themselves?"

G. didn't answer. They only furrowed their brows at each other across the table.

"You told me I didn't have ambition," he continued. "And you hate it when people break the rules. So why are you telling me this, G.?"

G. opened his eyes wide in genuine surprise. "You think I'd inform on you? God, no! I'm telling you because… well, after I knew that you knew about where I came from, I suppose…" G. fumbled around for words, a rare occurrence. He then gave a curt sigh and started gathering his utensils and napkin in his tray, to leave. "Excuse me for opening up, I guess. It won't happen again."

"G.," said Mobius, all of his discomfort turning to guilt. He put one hand on G.'s tray, holding it fast to the table. "I'm sorry. We've known each other a long time. There's no reason for us to turn into crabs now. Please forgive me."

G. stared at him, then sat back down and nodded.

"I wish I could tell you that genuine friendship always meant more to me than anything else, but I would be lying. If that was true, I would have kept the friends I made down there. But… that place does things to you. It makes you feel less and less like a person the longer you stay. I had to leave."

Mobius sat in silence, completely stunned for a long moment. It was almost as if G. had transformed before his eyes. G. had never admitted that he had friends before.

"I understand," he whispered. "Thank you for telling me. And it's completely confidential, of course. I won't tell a soul. I'm not a Libby."

He grinned: another, even rarer occurrence.

"Thank you."

Just then, Mobius' tempad buzzed in his pocket. He took it out. Yellow words scrolled across the tiny screen.

Mobius, it's Ravonna. Please come to my office.

He didn't like the blunt nature of that message one bit. Usually she would ask him over the com.

Mobius hoped against hope that someone hadn't ratted out all of the fight night participants. But who would have done that, if it meant they got in trouble, too? Maybe Lucky lost his nerve? Perhaps Six felt like it was the right thing to do? Maybe Sarge was crazier than he could have imagined? Or, god forbid, G. had just taken him for a fool?

He stopped his wildly chugging train of thought and put it back on the right track. All he could do was go to Ravonna's office and find out.

Her office was on the second-to-the-top floor of Division Nine, just under the judge's bedrooms. Just like the terminal with each judge's name next to their elevator, the long hallway of judge's offices had named plaques next to each door… nice bronze ones, not the little plastic tabs that went next to everyone else's doors. Mobius knocked quietly, and the door slid open.

Ravonna sat at her slightly elevated desk, which was covered in small stacks of paperwork, and looked up at Mobius expectantly. There were a few curly stray hairs out of place in her normally impeccable bun. Her face was full of frustration, her mouth pursed. No bottle of fine whiskey or kettle of tea waited for him on the coffee table in the middle of the room, like there usually was when he came to visit. Not a good sign.

Her eyes went wide as she caught sight of the bruise on his face.

"What the hell happened, Mobius? Are you okay?"

"Oh, it was just a Skrull," he lied casually, with a shrug. "No big deal."

She shook her head, then leaned back in her swivel chair, pressed a button on her desk, and the shades of her curved window slowly closed themselves, leaving them with the low, warm light of the lamps above. That was definitely not a good sign.

Mobius began to take a seat at one of the small couches surrounding the coffee table, but she stopped him.

"Why don't you take a seat up here, for a change?" she said, gesturing to a chair directly in front of her desk.

"Sure," he whispered, with an uncomfortable cough. He tried to keep his expression friendly, though he was starting to sweat, his heart thumping in his chest. "What's up, Ravonna?"

She closed her eyes and let out a little sigh. "Mobius… before I say anything, I want to let you know that I did what I could to help your case before it came to this point."

"Uh-huh."

"But there wasn't much I could do, once it became apparent that part of this was my fault."

"I… what?"

"Do you remember those variants' cases you asked me to look up a few days ago?"

Mobius nodded, not sure whether he was in even hotter water than he thought.

"A day after looking them up, I got an official inquiry, asking me exactly why I needed to look at those cases. Official inquiries are… not good, Mobius. For a judge, that's a step below an interrogation."

"Who gave it to you?"

She mirthlessly pointed to the statue at her back… a miniature, carved granite version of the Timekeeper statue, still taller than two people. Mobius was stunned into silence for a second.

"He talks to the judges?"

She rolled her eyes a little at him. "He sends written inquiries, he doesn't just… call us over the com, or something. I answered the inquiry, telling him that I wanted to see if they had gone through interrogation or not. He didn't buy it, apparently, and I started to get all of these." Ravonna gestured to the paperwork littering her desk. "He wanted to know exactly when I had looked up the information, if I had spoken to them beforehand, just an avalanche of inquiries, Mobius. It started to interfere with my work, I was getting so many."

"Oh, jeez…"

"Eventually, your name came into the equation," she said, her eyes darting away from his. An admission of guilt. Mobius' stomach sank. He could tell where this was going. "I told him all that I knew about your end of the case. Technically, this was supposed to be a formal interrogation."

Mobius nearly gasped. "What? All I wanted to know was why I couldn't look up a couple of variants that I caught."

"The information was classified," she responded, all business, lacing her fingers together and placing them on top of her desk. "Trying to look up any information past 'no' was going to cause some investigation."

Mobius shook his head, bewildered. "Why all the secrecy, do you think?"

"I don't know," she cut him off almost before he'd finished his sentence. "And I absolutely don't want to, at this point."

Now, that was an interesting development. Ravonna loved a good mystery… the more risk involved, the better. If this was enough to make her put her tail between her legs and run, it had to be very serious.

She closed her eyes once more before continuing. "I'm afraid I was ordered to issue you a demerit, Mobius."

He did gasp, then. "But… but I…"

"If it makes you feel any better, I got one too," she said, to his amazement. "Do you know how many demerits a judge is allowed to get per Null-unit?" He shook his head, and she held up one finger. "This is mine. Any more and I could get demoted. So, neither of us are going to ask any more questions about those variants, right?"

Mobius could do nothing but shrug hopelessly. "I haven't gotten a demerit in fifteen Null-units."

"How about we let this be a learning experience for the both of us?" she said while signing some of the stacks of papers. When she was done, she placed them all on top of each other in one neat pile. She handed him her fancy fountain pen and spoke flat and quick, like she'd memorized a script.

"Please sign on all the dotted lines, confirming that all the information contained herein is true, to the best of your knowledge."

Mobius scoffed as he took her pen and began to sign the stack.

"Making me sign all this bureaucratic nonsense," he muttered while flipping through the pages, "Like I'm going through processing or something-"

He stopped mid signature. A tiny, impossible, intrusive thought shot through his brain like a needle, and stuck there. There had been two variants whose files were locked and guarded. He'd met two trainees that had given him a panic attack for seemingly no reason.

He'd already put in the agent recommendations for Lucky and Six. Was he waving a red flag?

No. It was a coincidence. There was no supporting evidence for something that off-the-wall, besides his awful reaction, which could have been from-

The vaccine. The unnamed 'vaccine' that he'd gotten on the same day he'd caught the variants.

There was a string connecting all of those things together, as fine as spider's silk, but the web it was attempting to build simply didn't make sense. The holes were still much too wide to hold any of it together in a meaningful way… sort of like how his memory seemed to be leaking out of his ears, lately.

"Something wrong?"

He quietly filed his thoughts to the back of his mind and gave Ravonna the slightest grin.

"Sorry. Couldn't find the line on the damned paper. Do you remember about the caffeine thing? I've been cutting back recently, and I've definitely started feeling better."

She nodded, satisfied. "I knew that was it."

"You were right, as always," he replied. "I'm just glad I'm not going to end up like that agent that went nuts. What's-his-name."

"Agent Zeit," she said, then took a sip from a glass of water. Mobius kept a poker face, forcing himself not to give away even the slightest bit of astonishment.

"That's it. Zeit. Is this the last of it?" He'd made it to the bottom of the stack. Ravonna took it from him, flipped through it casually, then placed it all to the side.

"There's just one more thing, Mobius," she said, bringing out a single sheet of paper from the far side of her desk. She seemed less serious now, but no less concerned. "There was some unusual activity on your badge swipes recently."

Oh, shit. Mobius felt his stomach drop again.

She squinted at the paper as she spoke, confused. "It says here you've gone to the film archives seventeen times in the past week? Is that right?"

Mobius let his mouth hang open idiotically, completely blindsided.

"I… no!" he blurted. He couldn't help but laugh. "Why in the world would I go to the film archives seventeen times? Why would I even go there once?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"Ravonna, come on."

She was totally serious, to his dismay. He shrugged and threw his hands in the air helplessly.

"I can confirm to the best of my knowledge that I have not been to the film archives in the past week. Happy?"

"Perhaps you've been letting someone else use your badge?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. He rolled his eyes. "Mobius, I'm trying to help you out, here."

"I haven't, though! I don't have a clue what-" Suddenly, an idea sprang into his mind. He snapped his fingers. "I've got a theory. Maybe when they programmed someone's badge, the signature was identical to mine? Maybe a new archivist?"

She only stared at him for a moment, but then tilted her head just slightly, considering.

"That… could be a possibility. I haven't heard of it happening, but that sounds plausible. I'll look into that," she said, jotting down a note on the paper.

"Are we all good, now?"

"You're dismissed," she said, still writing, not looking up at him. He felt almost as if he should crack a joke, lighten the mood before he left, but Ravonna didn't seem to be in the spirit for that. He left quietly, letting the door slide shut behind him.

So, he'd tricked Ravonna into giving him the name of a real lead. Now all he needed was the time to research it, and a way to meet Zeit again without making anyone suspicious. The next fight night wouldn't be for a few months, at least. It would be tough to make it to the Viscera beforehand, if they were watching his badge swipes like a hawk, now. Not to mention he still had his back loaded cases to manage, which took up nearly every minute of each day.

He was intrigued and concerned by whoever had swiped into the film archives seventeen times, too. That sounded like quite a bit, even for an archivist.

Mobius took off down the hallway again, trying not to walk too fast. He was eager to get to the bottom of everything, but work came first… as it always had to.