Mobius smiled to himself, with every single one of his suit jackets strewn around the room, hanging on anything he could find, laying on his bed, his desk, the floor. He knew he wasn't insane. Well, at any rate, he'd been pretty sure.
He'd carefully checked all of his suits to see if any of them had missing buttons, even his pants, for good measure. Not a single one was missing. Even the spare buttons sewn onto the side of his identical jackets were all there. The button that he held in his hand at that moment, the one he'd found in the vents, matched the ones on an agent's outfit… but it wasn't his.
No other career wore the same kind of fitted brown suit jackets that the agents did, and none of them had those jackets' unique buttons: large, brown, plastic, and molded with the TVA's logo.
Why in the world, though, would an agent be crawling around up there? Mobius started to pick up his jackets and hang them back in his closet as he pondered. It didn't take long. The answer seemed obvious, one that he should have thought of before.
"A shapeshifter!" he said to himself, then slapped himself on the forehead. "Of course!"
There was a Skrull variant, or some other sneaky shapeshifting species, who'd escaped, disguised itself as a TVA agent, and was living in the vents. That would be the only safe place to sleep, since all the dorms were occupied and occasionally checked by Miss Minutes. Everything seemed to fit together, but the more he thought about it, the more disturbing questions came to light. Was it the same variant who Jet had seen coming out of his room? It was obviously the same one who'd stolen his Josta.
It would have been enough for the culprit just to disguise itself as an agent while walking around the TVA. Why did it want his energy drink? The cafeteria was open from wake-up til curfew, and it served unlimited coffee. Was it just an extra flair, for authenticity?
Or was the variant targeting him, specifically? How else would it know where his desk was and what was inside?
That thought gave him the creeps. He hoped it wasn't some kind of twisted revenge for an arrest he'd made, and already forgotten about. He had taken in quite a few Skrulls that hunters and other agents couldn't catch.
He shook his head before his train of thought went too far in that direction, and continued to hang up the rest of his jackets. The motive may have been a little murky, but the suspect was crystal clear.
Mobius expected Jet and Libby to be in the cafeteria eating a late breakfast together, but he didn't see either of them. That was a little strange. It was well past Miss Minutes' wake up call, but they normally would still be there at that time.
He gathered a small plate of breakfast to take with him, then walked down the hall to the cluster of agent's cubicles. He could tell already by how close G.'s chair was to his desk that he wasn't there, probably on an assignment already. However, his own rolling chair had been pushed way out, like someone had sat there, then took off in a hurry. Mobius never left his chair in the middle of the hall like that.
Someone's been sleeping in my bed, eating my porridge, he thought mirthlessly.
A gut instinct told him to check the drawer. Lo and behold, three more Jostas were missing, leaving him with only two cans.
"Motherfucker," he whispered to himself, taking a bite of sausage. At least his jet ski magazine was safe, although no one at all would understand what it meant to him, anyway.
He was pondering the feasibility of having a lock installed on his desk, when he heard a familiar voice.
"Mobius! I mean, Agent Mobius, sir?"
He lifted his head to see B-15 standing in front of him, a deeply concerned expression on her face. She wore no helmet, held no weapons, which meant she hadn't gone in the timeline recently, and wasn't preparing to.
"What's up, B-15?" he asked, shutting his drawer and scooting his chair in.
"Permission to speak freely? And… in private?"
"Sure," he said, rather unsurely. He followed her down the hall as she made a couple of twists and turns, then he stopped, very surprised at the door she was about to go through.
"Uh, B-15?" he said. "This is the men's bathroom…"
"Yeah. I know."
She ducked inside, leaving Mobius in the hall.
"B-15?" he whispered through the door, glancing around him to see if anyone else was about to barge in, "This is kind of inappropriate-"
"Oh, come on!"
She swung open the door and pulled him through by the lapel. Thankfully the bathroom was empty, but it didn't make Mobius any less uneasy. B-15 stood next to a urinal, her arms folded across her chest.
"What is it? And why do we have to talk about it here?"
"I know a lot has gone down in the past thirty six hours," she said, "but there's even more, and it keeps getting worse, and weirder-"
"Wait, what has gone down? What are you talking about?"
Her eyes went wide. "You mean, Miss Minutes didn't bust you?"
"For what?"
"Fight night!" she exclaimed. "I heard a whole bunch of people got caught."
Mobius' heart skipped a beat and he groaned miserably.
"Ugh. Damn it. Who was it? Casey?"
She shook her head. "That's what I assumed too, but he swore up and down that he didn't give any names, even when I threatened him." A tiny smirk turned up the corner of her mouth. Threatening people was her favorite pastime, if she had an excuse-variant and employee alike. "You know that coward would have told me everything, if he'd done it. He can beat me up on fight night, but the second he's in his uniform, he's a little bitch."
"Miss Minutes didn't give me a demerit, or even talk to me."
"That's weird," she responded, shaking her head. "Who do you think snitched, then?"
"Could have been one of the trainees," he grumbled. "Sarge, I bet. What a maniac."
"Was that the one who started a fight with a time baton, or the one that punched you straight in the head?" she asked sardonically.
"No, I don't think it would have been Lucky, or Six. I mean, god, I hope not." He thought about it for a few more seconds, the possibility sinking in. He couldn't keep the grimace off of his face, and B-15 definitely noticed. "I mean… probably not. I think."
She shrugged. "Well, anyway, that's where things get worse. I thought for sure you'd been busted, too, because when she questioned me, she asked about you."
"Me? Why? What was she looking for?"
"No clue. She didn't seem to know either, like she was fishing, or something. Don't worry, I didn't tell her anything. But here's the bad part, Mobius…" she paused and took a deep breath. "She said she would waive my demerit if I agreed to spy on you."
"She asked you to spy on your superior? You didn't take that deal, right?"
B-15 scratched her head and looked away from him, the guiltiest look on her face he'd ever seen.
"Right?"
"I… listen…"
"What? But-but-" he stammered, "the whole entire point of fight night is that we can get together enough people who can trust each other! I can't believe you…"
"Mobius, calm down. I would never, ever actually snitch on you, after everything we've been through. You've always had my back, you've even saved my life once or twice, out on the timeline."
"Yeah," he muttered. "I see how much that meant to you."
"I had to take that deal. I got a demerit a few weeks ago for being out way past curfew, and another one three months ago for using 'excessive force' against a variant." She rolled her eyes. "She kept trying to stab me! I don't know how else they expected me to handle it. Anyway, three demerits in one Null-unit is an automatic demotion."
"I know, but… I'm still a little hurt."
"Come on, Mobius," she said. "You're the best partner anyone could ask for. The only thing I'm going to tell her is that you're the perfect paragon of innocence. If you got demoted, then I'd have to deal with someone else who isn't nearly as chill as you are."
"Yeah, well I'm starting to think I've been a little too chill lately. Maybe I should be putting the hunters through drills, or something." He gave her a wry glance, then squinted, confused. "None of that explains why you had to tell me this in a public men's bathroom."
"That's where it gets weird," she said. "I got up first thing this morning to tell you all of this, right? I went to your desk and I saw you there, rummaging through your drawer and… there was something off about you."
His breath caught in his throat, but he kept a poker face. The shapeshifter!
"What do you mean? Describe what was off."
She shook her head slowly. "I… I don't know. You just looked kind of haggard, or something. Tired. Like you hadn't shaved. I got close to your desk, and you saw me and froze for a second, then you took off. And I don't mean you walked away. It looked like you were about to sprint, like you were scared of me or something.
"I decided to follow you, and you took all kinds of turns up and down the hallways, until you went into this bathroom. I wasn't about to just bust in here so I waited outside the door… and I waited… and I waited. Mobius, I waited right outside for thirty minutes. You did not leave this room."
Mobius' heart was beating out of his chest. He had an eyewitness that corroborated everything he'd suspected.
"B-15?" he asked. "Could you do me a favor?"
"Yeah?"
"Give me a boost, so I can get up there." He pointed to a vent cover on the wall a few feet above them. B-15 tilted her head and squinted at him, dumbfounded.
"Just trust me," he said. He took off his jacket and flung it over the top of a stall, and rolled his sleeves all the way up to his elbows. Finally, with a shrug, B-15 did as he asked, holding his foot cradled in her hands, like a stirrup. She could hold his full weight without even grunting, and the foothold she'd made for him was solid. It would have taken quite a bit of exertion for someone to climb in by themselves, though if they could lift themselves up on top of the stall door closest to the wall, just below the vent, it was feasible.
The vent cover, of course, was extremely loose, held on only by the force of metal against metal, and he tugged it off. On the inside, a long string was tied to one of the horizontal slats. Carefully, Mobius lowered the vent down by its string until it came to rest on the ground. Then, he bounced a little on B-15's hand and tried lifting himself into the vent.
"What are you doing?!" B-15 exclaimed.
"Trust me," he repeated. "Lift me a little higher. That's it…"
She did so, starting to struggle, and Mobius was able to slide into the vent on his belly.
"Now, hand me the string," he told her.
He pulled the vent cover up, and with a bit of finagling, was able to pull it right back into place.
Clever bastard, he thought.
"Mobius, what in the hell-"
"How many times do I have to tell you to trust me before you actually do it?" he asked her, growing annoyed. He didn't hear a response from the bathroom. "Now, do me a favor and be on the lookout. I'll be back in a second."
With that, he began to crawl. It seemed impossible to do so quietly, but if he wriggled more than crawled, he could at least keep himself from banging his head and elbows against the sides of the vent. After crawling for a few minutes, he stopped to take a breath, getting a whiff of fresh air. He was close to another opening, and he was almost certain he knew where it was.
Mobius kept going until he saw dim, slatted light coming from the left. The vent cover was as loose as the one in the bathroom, and with a little shove, he found himself in the back of the film archives on the next floor up… the exact same place Lucky had found his Josta.
So, now he knew the shapeshifter's main exit route. He was probably making a circle from the archives to the bathroom, either staying in that small part of the vent to sleep, or crawling further down.
He didn't have a lot of time to explore, but he hadn't found out where the rest of the vent went to last time, either. His curiosity was insatiable.
Continuing to crawl along on his belly, he was really starting to sweat. When he thought he wouldn't be able to keep going any further, a low, mechanical growl reached his ears. A few dozen more feet ahead of him, and another light shone through the side of the vent… but it was moving. The alternating light and shadow could only be made by a slowly spinning fan. A peek through there showed gray metal walls, with nothing but pipes and bare lightbulbs for decoration. It led into parts of the Viscera, too, it seemed. So, maybe there were even more places for the shapeshifter to sneak into and out of. The air ducts were a ready-made gopher hole, with lots of escape routes and entrances. That, unfortunately, broadened his possible places to capture this guy instead of narrowing them down.
Now that he was in a slightly wider area of the air duct, he turned around and headed back to the bathroom. Getting out was an even bigger ordeal than going in. He had to figure out how to land safely while crawling face first out of the hole. B-15 offered to help, but he shook his head.
"No, I need to figure out how he did it," he grunted. He grabbed onto the top of the stall, then, groaning heavily, he was able to drag himself out and lower himself down while gripping onto the stall for dear life. He felt relief the second his feet touched the floor. B-15 started dusting him off, coughing as dust flew into the air.
"Should I even ask?"
"You're asking now, so I might as well tell you," he said, putting his jacket back on. "There's a shapeshifter on the loose. An escaped variant, probably. And I'm his disguise."
B-15's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"That's a hell of a security breach… but I can totally see it happening." Her tone turned serious once again. "So, how do we catch this guy, Mobius?"
"We?"
"Yeah. I'd like nothing better than to see the look on that Skrull bastard's face when we apprehend him."
He grunted. "I don't know, B-15, don't you have to-"
"Oh, come on," she interrupted. "You'll need some muscle against a Skrull. They can turn into anybody." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Do you think the variant is why Miss Minutes was suspicious in the first place?"
"Gotta be. Who knows what trouble he's been-"
Just then, an idea popped into his head, one that threw a huge monkey wrench into his seemingly watertight theory.
"Shit. The badge."
"Badge?"
"He has a badge, and it's somehow identical to mine."
"How do you know that?"
"Because Ravonna asked me why I had swiped into the archives seventeen times. The badge has a unique signature." He held up his own badge to her, with his number and face on it. "We only get one, and I have mine. How in the hell could he have one, too?"
They both stood there in silence. His mind went blank, no matter how hard he racked it. He hated that feeling, of being so close to an easy answer that Occam's razor could have sliced right through, and then having it slip away again. He felt he couldn't present his theory to a higher-up… or Miss Minutes… until he had undeniable physical proof. A single button wasn't enough.
Oh well. That was why he was an agent. After the initial sting of being wrong, he'd find some other clue that would lead him down another rabbit hole. He still thought the shapeshifting variant explanation was the most plausible one. But a Skrull that could somehow program its own badge? That was a terrifying thought. If it could do that, imagine what else it could do with the TVA's computer systems? It was no longer just his own safety on the line. It was the whole institution.
Mobius' tempad buzzed in his pocket. It was a page from Hal. The yellow letters scrolled by slowly.
Found what you were looking for. It's not good. Meet me downstairs.
Well, that certainly didn't sound ominous at all, but he knew precisely what-rather, who-the thing was that Hal was talking about. He tapped his tempad against his hand like one would with a package of cigarettes, a very rough plan forming in his mind.
"B-15, are you free right now?"
"Sure. I'm not scheduled to go anywhere for a few hours."
"Great. Come with me."
He took off for the bathroom door, but someone opened it and smacked him square in the chest.
"Oops, sorry!" said the unknown technician, before catching sight of B-15. His face went blank, glancing between her and Mobius. "Uh…"
B-15 gave him a quick, tight grin. "Wrong bathroom," she said, then pushed Mobius roughly out the door.
They walked quickly and close, looking like they were on very important, official business: the best way to appear totally unsuspicious in the TVA. People were more likely to question someone being slow than someone who looked like they had somewhere to be.
"Where are we going, Mobius?" asked B-15 as they boarded an elevator.
"The Viscera. I have someone I need to talk to."
"A witness?"
"Not exactly. It's…" He let out a curt sigh. He may as well ask now. If she was lying to him, and was actually going to squeal to Miss Minutes and spy on him, then he wouldn't be able to stop her, anyway.
"What?"
"B-15, I've been meaning to ask you something. About a week and a half ago, I had some kind of… episode. I got violently ill, threw up, started getting sick randomly. I forgot a huge chunk of that day, too, and I still can't remember what happened. The sickness only seemed to last a day or two, but it was really upsetting. Have you ever felt anything like that?"
Her face turned an ashy color, her eyes wide. Suddenly, she blinked and turned away.
"I… I'm not sure…"
"Really?"
After a long pause, she spoke again. "When did you say that happened?" she asked.
"Twelve, maybe thirteen days ago now, I think."
B-15 looked as if she might get sick right there on the elevator. She swallowed and breathed deeply. Even if she continued to deny it up and down, it was obvious that they'd been through the same thing.
"Something like that did happen to me. I thought maybe I caught a bug from being out in the timeline. I vaguely remember going to an exam room, but… everything is just kind of a blur. I kept trying to muscle through that day, but Cobr-C-20-" she corrected herself, "convinced me to stay in my room and get some sleep. The only thing I remember, for sure, is the dream I had."
"Dream?"
"Yeah. Have you ever had a dream that feels so real, that you're sure that it's going to be real when you wake up?"
"I can't say I have."
"That's how this felt to me." As she recalled her dream, her eyes began to fill with tears, though her expression stayed stoic and level. "I was in this little shop, wearing a striped dress, and I was sitting at an old sewing machine. Like, the kind made out of solid iron, where you pump the pedal with your foot. And then-" her voice seized for a moment and she swallowed. "Then, this little human baby started to crawl up to me. About one year old. He crawled up to a basket of fabric I had next to the sewing machine table and started pulling things out, and I tried to stop him… and then he pulled out this bit of lace and-"
She couldn't hold back any longer. Her face twisted into a pained grimace, and the tears broke from her like a dam exploding. Mobius was stunned. He'd never, ever seen her cry.
"It was the way he looked up at me. I don't know. He had this big smile, like he was so proud of himself…"
B-15 couldn't get any more words out as the sobs overwhelmed her. Mobius moved closer and laid his hand on her shoulder, ready to shield her from anyone else who might board with them. It didn't take long for her to regain her composure.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," she groaned as she wiped the last of her tears away with a sigh. "It still hurts to think about that dream, for some reason. It's silly. It doesn't make any sense, crying over something that's not real."
"Don't feel bad. I'm sure everything's all right," he reassured her, though the butterflies were starting to flutter around in his stomach again. There could be no doubt: he and B-15 had witnessed something that the TVA didn't want them to remember, and they had potentially done something to their minds, too.
B-15 was back to normal by the time they got to floor NP2. They made their way to the sub basement door, but before he could knock, Hal opened the door for them from the inside.
"That was quick," Hal whispered to Mobius, before noticing B-15 right behind him. He shot Mobius a surprised look.
"It's okay, Hal," he said with a nod. "She's coming with me."
They silently followed Hal down the hallway, not towards the empty storage room they used for fight night, but straight ahead and down a flight of stairs. Those led to another gray hallway, with gray doors every twenty feet or so. If the halls of the TVA upstairs were identical and confusing, this felt like some kind of twisted mind game. Topside felt like a spring field full of daisies compared to those dim, mono-colored walls. Not to mention it was claustrophobic, too. The three of them couldn't walk together side by side without scraping the walls.
He could already see what G. meant when he said the Viscera made you feel less like a person the longer you stayed. He'd been there a minute and wanted to leave.
They stopped abruptly, and Hal knocked twice on one of the many, seemingly identical doors.
"It's us," said Hal, and Evette opened the door for them. Sitting on a stool in the corner was a huge, muscular man, Zeit-formerly Agent Zeit-looking especially forlorn, his eyebrows scrunched together above eyes nearly as blue as Mobius'.
Mobius noticed a tattoo on the back of Evette's hand, a black 'x' between her thumb and first finger.
"Is that new, or have I just not noticed it before?" he asked as the three of them entered the small, closetlike room. Both Evette and Hal looked instantly uncomfortable, as if he'd said something wrong.
"It's new," she said, rubbing it as if she could scrub it away like a bit of dirt. "It means I can't be promoted back into the rest of the TVA."
His heart fell for her, and Hal too. If he knew Hal, he must have been devastated when he'd found out. Hal moved closer to her and laced his fingers with hers.
"I assume you got a demerit too, Mobius?" asked Hal.
"No. Not even a slap on the wrist."
Evette scoffed slightly. "Lucky you."
"And so I have to assume that everyone in this room did get in trouble?" said Mobius. B-15 and Hal nodded-Evette and Zeit did not.
"It was… worse… for them," said Hal, jerking his head at the maintenance workers.
"Worse? How?"
"Well, we can't exactly get demoted any further," said Evette wryly. "Until a little while ago, I thought what happened to me last night was an accident. Now… I don't think so."
"Is that when you were marked with that tattoo?"
"No. That happened before. It all makes sense, in a horrifying way. I can't go any lower, so why wouldn't they-" she stopped herself and swallowed hard, and Hal wrapped his arm around her, attempting to soothe her.
"Come on, baby," he said gently, "you have to tell him."
She nodded. Mobius wasn't planning on doing so many interviews that day, but he was all ears.
"My supervisor sent me to do the absolute worst job there is: cleaning out a clog in the sewage vat."
Both Mobius and B-15 made a face, but she kept going.
"That's not the bad part. When we go into the sewage, we have to wear a pressurized suit, with an air hose and a tether to bring us back up. It's like a scuba suit-"
"But for poop," B-15 finished, grimacing.
Evette shrugged. "I mean, yeah, that's exactly what it is. Anyway, they sent me down, and as soon as I got to the very bottom, my suit failed. I suddenly couldn't breathe. I pulled on the tether to signal them to bring me back up, but it was loose… like there was no one on the other side."
"But you made it out alive," said Mobius. "How?"
"Sheer luck, and the ability to swim through solid waste," she answered with a shudder. "I asked them what had happened, and they just sort of shrugged it off, like me almost dying was no big deal."
"What kind of person could act that way?" asked Mobius.
She smirked. "The supervisors aren't people here, Mobius. They're robots. I had a feeling before that they barely cared about keeping us alive. Now I know."
Mobius blinked and shook his head, baffled and disgusted. He'd met literal slaves out on the timeline that were treated better than that.
"Thank you, Evette. I'll keep everything you told me in mind. But he's the man I needed to see." He nodded towards Zeit, still sitting silently in the corner. Mobius pulled up a chair in front of him, then held out his hand. "Zeit, I presume? I'm Agent Mobius. I've seen you at the fights. Betted on you a few times."
Zeit, glancing warily at Hal and Evette, eventually took Mobius' hand for a weak handshake. Normally, while conducting an interview, he would want it to be on a one-on-one basis, to let whoever he was talking to come to trust him, but he couldn't simply ask everyone to wait outside in the sardine-can hallway.
Before Mobius could sit down, Evette came up to him and shook her head.
"You can't question him, Mobius."
His mouth fell open, surprised. "How do you expect me to get answers if we can't talk?"
"I'm sure he would, if he was able-"
"There's nothing stopping him, right? We can all trust each other here."
"Mobius," she said, her expression pained. "He can't. He can't talk."
Bewildered, Mobius glanced at Zeit, whose eyes were pooling with tears. He grabbed at the pants of his jumpsuit, white-knuckled, then clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle a tortured groan.
"Christ," Mobius whispered. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Was it always like this?" he asked Evette.
She shook her head hopelessly. "He could speak yesterday. Now he can't."
"And no one has any idea how it happened?"
"No."
Mobius sank down into his chair, going numb with horror and desperation. Whatever had happened to Zeit and Evette, they were too conveniently timed to be coincidental. It was the TVA's doing. The idea that Mobius had ever trusted the TVA implicitly with his well being was starting to make him sick. There might not be a way to connect the dots of truth together if he didn't get testimony from someone who'd gone through something similar to him and B-15. He felt himself about to crash into a brick wall. There had to be a way to communicate.
"Zeit? You still understand me?"
Zeit gave him a single nod, sniffling and wiping his nose with his sleeve.
"Good. Now, I understand that you used to be an agent, correct?"
Another nod. There might be a sliver of hope, then. Agents were trained in forms of communication other than talking. If there was a disconnect between his brain and mouth, there could be a way to circumvent it.
In a flurry of hand gestures, Mobius signed, "Can you still speak sign language?"
Zeit put up his hands, stared at them, flexed them unsurely, then gave up, letting his arms fall to his sides. He shook his head.
Mobius started to tap his finger on the metal seat of his chair. It spelled out, "Can you do Morse Code?"
Zeit shook his head again. The sliver of hope was closing quickly. How horrifying it must be, to know everything said in nearly any language, and be utterly mute.
He tried one more admittedly desperate tactic. He put his fingers in his mouth and started to whistle loudly in the tiny room, making everyone cover their ears.
"Damn, Mobius, what are you doing?" said Hal.
Mobius had whistled, "What about Chinantec?", only to be met with another silent shake of the head.
Then, an idea came to him, so simple that it should have been the first thing he'd thought of. He took out his tempad and popped out the stylus, then switched to the drawing pad function.
"Here. Try writing something."
Zeit took the stylus and gingerly started to draw. It was very shaky, but it looked like an 'o'... or maybe a 'Q'... actually it seemed like more of an 'a'. As he went on, scribbling excruciatingly slowly, Mobius's hopes sank. Whatever he'd scratched on the pad made no sense, just a jumble of marks and circles and dots, worse than a four-year-old trying to write their name. Zeit knew it too. He threw the stylus to the ground with all his might and growled, grabbing his head and doubling over. It didn't take language for Mobius to see how humiliated he was.
"It's all right," he reassured him, picking up his stylus and sliding it back into the tempad. "We'll just have to stick to yes or no questions, I guess. Zeit, do you remember what happened to you yesterday?"
Zeit took another wary glance at everyone standing around, staring back at him. Those circumstances weren't ideal, but there was no more room, and very little time. Finally, he nodded.
"Were you taken to an exam room?"
A nod.
"Was there a medic there?"
A head shake.
"Okay… was Miss Minutes there?"
Another affirmative. Zeit's eyes were growing wide. Mobius didn't want to rattle Zeit's nerves any more than they already had been, but he had to know.
"Zeit, were you given a shot of some kind? An inoculation, a vaccine?"
Zeit paused, holding his breath, then nodded vigorously. He mimed one shot in the arm… then another… and another… and another. He pretended to give himself injections all up and down his arms. B-15 held her arms crossed tightly at her chest, looking ashy again.
"Have you ever experienced… thoughts that felt like memories, that you couldn't explain?"
Zeit seemed to freeze solid. Just when Mobius thought he might not have worded his question well enough for Zeit to understand, he nodded. Then, to Mobius' surprise, he started to work his mouth. He was trying, with all his might, to say something.
"T… t-t… te… t…" He stammered with his eyes shut tight, so tight that it looked like it hurt just to make a single sound, then stopped.
"Keep going," urged Mobius. "You almost had something. Go on."
"T… Te.. eh… rr…" he stuttered, then, in an outburst, he shouted, "Terry!"
Zeit stared at him, imploringly, as if that name was supposed to answer everything. It was Mobius' turn to be speechless.
"Terry?" he asked. "Who's Terry?"
The light went out of Zeit's eyes and he slumped against the wall. All the effort it took him to say a single name, and there was no way to know what it meant.
Unless…
"Zeit," whispered Mobius, leaning in, "is Terry the name of your dog?"
His eyes lit up, tears once again filling them, and he nodded.
Mobius was amazed. The thought of having a beloved pet was so strong, so deeply ingrained, that it had broken through whatever awful procedure had disconnected his brain from his ability to speak.
Then perhaps, just maybe, it wasn't only a thought. Maybe B-15's dream wasn't just a dream. He couldn't imagine why the TVA would plant false memories, or scramble one's brains so badly that they believed in something that had never happened, or why that procedure seemed to cause such a specific psychosis.
The door squeaked open behind him. Evette gasped, startling him from his thoughts, and the entire company followed suit.
"Who are you?" shouted Hal. "How did you-"
"Mobius?"
He recognized the voice instantly. He stood immediately and turned around. Standing there, to his horror, was G., looking at everyone with just as much terror in his eyes as there was in theirs.
G.'s terror melted quickly, replaced by a look of confusion and mild disgust.
"You're sicker than I thought. What is this?"
With three broad steps, Mobius was directly in front of G. He grabbed G. by the lapels of his jacket, pulled him inside, and slammed him against the steel wall.
"You son of a bitch!" he snarled. "It started with you, didn't it? Admit it!" Mobius shook G. by his jacket as hard as he could, and G. put up little resistance, more frightened than angry.
"Let me go! I'm not trying to hurt you, Mobius! No one is trying to hurt you."
A hand on Mobius' shoulder dampened his anger. B-15 pulled him back gently, the look on her face so concerning that the rest of his rage drained out of him. If B-15 thought he was going too far…
Evette quickly pulled the door shut. Mobius finally let go of his lapel, now wrinkled, which G. straightened out the best he could.
"All that bullshit about the bucket of crabs," he sneered, shaking his head. "I should have known."
"You suddenly believe I'm the bad guy?"
Mobius' voice came out in a growl, startling even himself. "Why the hell wouldn't I?! You know what I've been doing. You followed me down here! You had something to do with all of this. It wasn't an accident."
G. opened his mouth momentarily, as if he was genuinely stunned. With a shrug, he said, "Mobius, this isn't like you at all. You're getting worse. Think about it, would I open the door if I was trying to spy on you? This is a misunderstanding. If I tell you the truth, do you promise not to beat me up?"
Mobius glanced at B-15, who wore a no-nonsense expression on her face. Well, if he lost it again, B-15 would make sure to hold him back.
"I knew something was wrong," he began, "when you freaked out after I asked if you'd seen a medic. And then the panic attack in the cafeteria. I asked Jet about him meeting you next to your room, you know, when he said you'd run away from him. He said it sounded like you were shuffling things around in your room, you were talking out loud to yourself."
"What did I say?" Mobius asked, not caring how insane it made him sound.
"That's what I'm talking about! Every other time I see you, it's like you can't remember the last thing that's happened. You're not okay."
"Answer my question, G.," said Mobius. "What did I say?"
"Jet said that it sounded like you were saying, 'I can't believe it works,' or something to that effect."
Mobius smirked. That might have been the counterfeit badge the shapeshifter was talking about.
"You really don't seem as concerned about this as you should be, Mobius."
"I know exactly how concerned I should be, G.," he retorted. "I'll tell you what I know, once you finish telling me what you think you know."
He sighed deeply, then began again. "Your behavior kept getting more erratic. I'd see you in the cafeteria more than three times a day, and it seemed like half of the time I tried to talk to you, you didn't know who I was. And then the other half of the time, you were totally fine. It got to the point where I felt like I had to intervene."
"What did you do?" asked Mobius, his voice low and serious.
"I… I told Miss Minutes about your strange behavior."
Mobius wiped a hand across his mustache, started to pace the tiny room. B-15 was going to have to hold him back, after all.
"G., you did what?" he rasped, trying to keep himself from shouting. "How could you fucking do that? You don't understand the kind of trouble you've gotten me into. Unless," he said, shoving a finger straight into G.'s chest, "unless you know exactly what kind of trouble you got me into."
"Mobius, what-"
"You worked down here. Surely you've met a few people who went crazy, who got sent down here for 'erratic behavior', or whatever you told Miss Minutes. Judas!"
B-15 grabbed his arm again, apparently afraid he might lunge. Mobius certainly felt like it.
"Mobius," said G. looking completely befuddled, "I don't know what you're talking about. I really don't. I didn't tell her about the… the fights," he stammered, giving a quick glance to Zeit and Evette, "I swear on my life, I didn't. I was just concerned. You kept refusing to see a medic. I told her because I didn't want you to become a danger to yourself."
Mobius took a step away from G., leaned over with his hands on his knees. He felt weak, like he was going to dry heave.
"You fucked me over," he groaned. "G., you fucked me over…"
"I told you everything," he said. "Now you tell me what you know. If there's a logical explanation for all of this, I'll go right back to Miss Minutes and-"
Mobius stood up straight and shushed him. For some reason, he had a strange, gut feeling that something in the atmosphere had changed. He'd been an agent long enough to know to trust that instinct.
"Wh-"
"Shh!" he hissed again. A few seconds later, and they all heard it: a whirring noise coming from the vents.
"What is that?" he whispered.
Evette came closer to the vent opening and listened carefully.
"Could be they're cleaning the vents again."
"You guys clean the vents?"
"Yeah, once every Null-unit. But I swear we already did it a few months ago."
As they spoke, the whirring quickly got louder, and closer. It almost sounded like it was scraping the air ducts, rather than brushing them clean.
"It's awfully loud, though," she said, "and it's moving really fast."
Evette, and the whole company, stepped as far away from the vent as they could as the grinding, scraping noise became worryingly loud. The aluminum ducts actually shook slightly as whatever it was moved through them. Then, it stopped abruptly in the middle of the vent above them, leaving them in eerie silence.
"I bet the brush is stuck," said Evette. "Zeit, you think you can open the vent cover and get it going again?"
Zeit nodded, then took Mobius' folding chair and stood on it, and pulled the vent cover off. As he reached inside, suddenly, the thing sprang back to life, scaring the wits out of everyone. Zeit yelped and fell off the chair.
It moved so fast through the air that it was almost impossible to see what it actually was. The cylindrical, armless, legless robot thrashed around wildly, pointing its 'head' from one person to the other. As it flicked over to him, Mobius saw a flash of steel blades, set in concentric circles, twisting against each other, like the teeth of some sort of horrible metal worm. In the middle of the spinning blades was a red, laser eye, focused on him.
It wasn't a duct brush at all. It was made to kill.
Just when he thought it would come for him, movement from a few feet away distracted it yet again. Like a snake striking its prey, it threw itself to the right, towards the last thing that had dared to move. That thing happened to be B-15. She reached instinctively for her empty holster, grasped at air where a time baton would have been.
Everyone screamed for their lives and leapt out of the way as it cornered B-15.
"Hey!" Mobius yelled, and it turned toward him once again.
He grabbed Zeit's stool and put it between himself and the homicidal robot, like a lion tamer. The robot struck with full force. Mobius was pushed backward, knocked to the ground, smashed against the wall. The blades caught and bent and broke on the steel legs of the stool, but the machine kept pushing, trying as hard as it could to get to him. It crushed him against the wall, smashing his ribcage so he could barely breathe as everyone else continued to scream. Even the stool legs were starting to bend under the pressure. Mobius opened his mouth, tried to scream too, but the robot crushed every last bit of breath out of him, like an anaconda constricting his lungs.
Just as one of the stool legs gave way, and Mobius was certain he was going to be shredded to pulp, Zeit let out a mighty, guttural yell and hit the robot with Mobius' folding chair. The robot rounded on Zeit like a rabid wolf, but Zeit put the seat of the chair in front of him just in time. Its broken blades jammed themselves into the aluminum seat and got firmly stuck on it. Grappling with it momentarily, Zeit raised the chair high over his head and brought it down on the steel floor with all his might. Blades and bits of metal went flying. Zeit stomped on the chair over and over and over, flattening the robot until its casing cracked like a lobster shell. The red eye flickered, then slowly faded, until it went completely and utterly silent.
Everyone stood around, breathing heavily, whimpering, whispering to themselves. Hal held on tightly to Evette as she sobbed. G. and B-15, after a few stunned moments, had the sense to help Mobius out of the tangle of stool legs and up to his feet.
"What was that?" whispered G.
"They know someone's in the vents," sighed Mobius. He wiped his sweaty, shaking hands on his pants. It seemed like a miracle that he hadn't gotten a single cut.
"The-the vents?" stammered G. "What the everloving hell is going on here, Mobius?"
Zeit, for some reason, continued to crack the robot open with his bare hands. He fished around until he pulled out a small, black rectangle, about half the length and width of a stack of playing cards, tugged it free of its wiring, and tossed it on the floor.
"What's that?" asked B-15.
"M-mm-" Zeit tried to speak, out of habit, but then jerked his head to the side, frustrated, remembering that he couldn't. Mobius had never felt more grateful to, or sorry for, anyone in his life.
"Zeit, is that a memory bank?" he asked, and Zeit's eyebrows shot up as he nodded. Then, to Mobius' terror, he raised up the heel of his foot high over the thing, as if he meant to curb stomp it into bits.
"Wait, no!" cried Mobius, and Zeit clumsily let his foot fall back into place. "Why would you do that?"
"Probably so whatever comes looking for the wreckage won't know we were here," answered Hal. Zeit nodded and pointed to Hal, who'd apparently won that round of charades.
"Let me keep it," said Mobius, picking it up before anyone gave him permission to, anyway. "I need to see what's on…"
He drifted off as something else on the floor caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a tiny piece of film, a single cell that had been sliced in half by the robot's blades. The picture on the little bit of film was almost too hard to make out, even when he held it up to the light and squinted, but he could see a slender young woman, long hair falling over her shoulders, wearing a bikini, her back to the 'camera', or whoever's point of view was looking at her. Her head was turned to the person, leaning back while sitting down… somewhere. The rest was much too tiny to make out.
He put the bit of film and the memory bank in his breast pocket.
"We've got to get out of here," whispered Evette, no longer crying, all business once again. "There's no way no one heard all that commotion. Someone will come looking."
"Right." Hal agreed. "Let's go."
"Wait, but…"
G.'s voice fell on deaf ears as everyone flooded out the door, Evette and Zeit leaving further down the hallway, B-15 and Hal towards the way they'd come, to the exit. That left only G. and Mobius alone in the room. G.'s mouth hung open and he silently shook his head, staring at the dilapidated hunk of metal on the floor.
"Is there an explanation for any of this, or am I going crazy, too?" he asked dryly.
"Come on, quick."
Mobius led him by the sleeve, out the door and through the hallway. G. tugged his arm away, but walked next to him at a brisk pace. Just before they got to the exit, Mobius stopped and turned to G., feeling the weight of the entire TVA bearing down on him.
"G., you're not dumb enough to tell anyone what just happened, are you?"
Instead of being insulted, G. simply shook his head.
"Listen carefully, then. There is a shapeshifter wandering free around the TVA. I have no idea how, or why, or even what species they are, but it could potentially turn into an enormous problem, not just for me, but for the entire company."
"That's what the robot was after?" asked G.
"I don't know if that robot knew what it was looking for, besides a life form in the air ducts to chew up. But if it had found someone who looked like me, I would be labeled certifiably insane and-"
"Now, that's not exactly-"
"Doesn't matter," Mobius cut him off. "That's what Miss Minutes thinks. Anyone acting that crazy apparently doesn't get a chance to explain themselves."
"Good god," whispered G., running his fingers through his short, curly hair. "Mobius, you're sure they would do that to you, or someone who they think is you, anyway? You're one of the best agents in the division."
Mobius blinked and squinted at him, trying to read his face, finding nothing malicious or deceitful hidden underneath.
"You really don't know what they do to people who start acting 'off', do you?"
He shrugged. "I… assumed they'd get help. Especially if they were valuable to the company."
"The man I was talking to in there, Zeit? He was an agent too. They stuck him down in maintenance because of erratic behavior, no questions asked. A lot less erratic than what you saw that shapeshifter doing." He let his shoulders slump, disillusioned, coming to terms that everything he'd trusted to be right, was wrong. "And then, I assume in retaliation for fight night… they… they took away his ability to speak. They muted him. And I think they nearly killed Evette."
G. gasped. "Christ," he mumbled, "What did they do to everyone else?"
"Everyone topside just got a demerit. They can't do anything that horrible out in the open. I was the only one I know who didn't, which made me wonder if they'd had different suspicions about me. Now I know."
G. perked up as an idea came to him. "Wait a minute, though. If you just let them find the guy in the vents, they'll figure out he's an alien, then your name will be cleared. Problem solved."
"If they find the shapeshifter before I do, then they're going to destroy some valuable intel."
"Such as?"
"Such as how the hell it got hold of a badge and programmed it to match mine."
"It has a badge?"
Mobius nodded. "They can get into anywhere in the TVA: archives, records, hell, maybe even into the computers. I don't know. But the TVA apparently believes in chewing people to bits now and asking questions later."
"So, tell Miss Minutes your theory."
"Right after everyone but me gets busted for fight night, and a killer robot mysteriously gets smashed to bits, and they can't retrieve the memory bank, and I have basically no evidence to back up my theory? No. I want to find this shapeshifter myself, or get good enough evidence to prove that they're real. Plus, just letting them get straight up murdered that way feels… I don't know, inhumane."
G. scoffed. "If it's a Skrull, then they've done worse."
"Even if it is a Skrull, it's a horrifying way to go."
G. only shrugged in response. Mobius started to nervously pace the small entrance space.
"I need a plan to catch this guy, or girl, or whatever, but they seem to know a hell of a lot about me. They've obviously been watching my patterns. They know how to avoid me…"
He spun on his heel and snapped a finger at G.
"What is the most un-Mobius-like thing you can imagine me doing right now?"
G. stared at him, eyebrows squished together in utter confusion.
"What?"
"What would I absolutely not be doing right now?"
"Crawling around in the vents, for one…"
"No, no, no. Imagine the complete opposite of me, except I know everything that I just told you. What course of action would I absolutely not take?"
G. paused for a long moment, thinking, then shrugged and said, "Well, I guess the opposite of you would… leave all of this alone. Pretend everything was fine."
The corner of Mobius' mustache twitched upward. "Yeah… that is what I wouldn't do. Okay then. They expect me to be right on their heels. I do the opposite."
"But you just said you needed to catch them-"
"Oh, I will, don't worry," Mobius responded. "But I need to throw them off, first. Let them come to me, let them think I don't know anything. I think I have everything I need already."
Mobius opened the door and let both of them out to the rest of the TVA. The light and space and color felt merciful, after being in those cramped, gray, steel hallways. G. walked next to him, his hands shoved into his pockets.
"Mobius, if I had any idea… I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to-"
"I know that now, G." he replied as they passed a small group of judges. "Sorry I came close to punching your lights out."
"You know, that had been third on my list of un-Mobius-like things…"
Mobius glanced over to G., who wore the slightest smirk on his face. Sometimes, it was hard to tell between G.'s sense of nihilism and his sense of humor. Actually, half of the time, they were one in the same.
G. went straight on down the hallway, to their desks, but Mobius made an abrupt left turn down a side hallway.
"Mobius?" G. called out, turning back to catch up with him, "where are you going?"
"Just gotta take care of something, first," he answered over his shoulder.
G. stared at him unsurely for a moment, then headed back the way he'd been going before, and Mobius made for the main terminal elevators. There was one more thing Mobius had to do before he could pretend not to care.