Mobius adjusted the lamp on the desk in his room so he could examine the little, black box. He turned it over and over again in his hand, felt around the solid edges, looking for some way to get inside the thing. Except for the stripped wire that had connected it to the rest of the robot, there seemed to be no other openings. Zeit had seemed to know precisely what the little memory bank was capable of. Too bad he couldn't ask him where the data port was, or if it even had one. Mobius had simply assumed that it would be compatible with his tempad, somehow, but he'd already tried scanning it, to no avail.
He rummaged around in his box of treasures and brought out a palm sized, convex hunk of polished diamond: a magnifying glass, given to him as a gift from an unnamed tribe of pre-civilized humanoids on an untamed planet. He looked through the magnifying glass and studied the memory bank carefully, but still couldn't find as much as a seam on the edge of the box.
Just when Mobius thought he should give up, for now, he noticed the tiniest little hole on the narrow end of the memory bank. It was literally the only opening on the whole thing, perhaps not even a millimeter wide. What could he possibly use that would be small enough to stick in there? It seemed to be too small even for the tip of his pen.
He got up from his desk and went to the bathroom, examined the bristles on his toothbrush closely. A couple of bristles could work, if they were strong enough. With some effort, he was able to rip off a few of them with his teeth. While awkwardly holding the magnifying glass, the memory bank, and the tiny bristles at the same time, he was able to carefully thread the bristles into the hole.
It worked. A completely hidden hole popped open next to the smaller hole, still very small and flat, but just big enough for a plug of some kind. He congratulated himself, his excitement growing, and switched to the universal port/plug function on his tempad. It was an insanely handy little application, one that had saved his ass once or twice out on the timeline. It had a female data port, which could conform itself to, and accept, any kind of data plug; it also had a male plug, which similarly could change itself to fit into any port. He took the little wired plug out of the side of his tempad, then let it scan the port on the memory bank. It shrunk itself down to the perfect size, and Mobius plugged it in.
After a moment of waiting, his tempad went blank, then yellow script populated the screen, scrolling by rapidly. He swiped back up to the top, held his breath, and read.
MEMORY ACTIVATED DAY 274 03:38:06
ROBOT K838.468-3 SEQUENCE 94-B INITIATED DAY 274 03:39:02
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
ORGANIC OBJECT(S) FOUND DAY 274 03:51:44
SECTOR J4N-9.6
ONE (1) MOUSE IDENTIFIED; ALIVE
COMMON OBJECT; NOT OF INTEREST
ORGANIC LIFE ELIMINATED SUCCESSFULLY
SEARCHING…
ORGANIC AND INORGANIC OBJECT(S) FOUND DAY 274 04:01:32
SECTOR NP2-2.9
ONE (1) SANDWICH IDENTIFIED: HAM
ORIGIN: TVA
ORGANIC OBJECT LOGGED
ORGANIC OBJECT ELIMINATED SUCCESSFULLY
THREE (3) ALUMINUM CANS IDENTIFIED; INORGANIC
FURTHER IDENTIFICATION INITIATED…
ORIGIN PLANET: ETH
PERIOD: 1995 A.D.
TYPE: PEPSI CO. JOSTA ENERGY DRINK
INORGANIC OBJECTS OF HEIGHTENED INTEREST
INORGANIC OBJECTS LOGGED
INORGANIC OBJECTS ELIMINATED SUCCESSFULLY
Mobius grunted to himself. That shapeshifting asshole. It had left his drinks in the air ducts, inextricably tying Mobius to the TVA's suspicions. The robot hadn't even kept them, either. If it had, he'd bet the Skrull wouldn't have been able to perfectly replicate his fingerprints. Well, at least whoever it was had to be miserable up there, trying to eat a ham sandwich in the dark and dust where you couldn't even bend your elbows all the way. He scrolled down and read on.
SEARCHING…
INORGANIC OBJECT(S) FOUND DAY 274 4:01:59
SECTOR NP2-2.8
ONE (1) SECTION VARIANT FILM IDENTIFIED
ORIGIN: TVA
UNABLE TO IDENTIFY FURTHER
INORGANIC OBJECT OF EXTREME INTEREST
INORGANIC OBJECT LOGGED AS EVIDENCE
And that, of course, had to be where the bit of film Mobius had in his breast pocket had come from, found not far away from the sandwich and drinks, according to the time log. Why would the shapeshifter take anything from the film archives, though? The woman in the film was definitely human, or at least looked to be. The shapeshifter cut out that specific section of film for a reason, though Mobius couldn't think of a good one, for the life of him.
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
AURAL SENSORS ACTIVATED DAY 274 7:03:12
IDENTIFICATION INITIATED…
ORGANIC OBJECT(S) FOUND DAY 274 7:03:34
SECTOR NP2-?.?
SIX (6) HUMANOID BEINGS IDENTIFIED; ALIVE
ORIGIN: TVA
ID: MAINTENANCE E-362
ID: INNOVATOR H-90
ID: MAINTENANCE Z-165
ID: AGENT G-77
ID: HUNTER B-15
ID: AGENT J-888
ORGANIC OBJECTS OF EXTREME INTEREST
ORGANIC OBJECTS LOGGED AS EVIDENCE
Mobius' heart pumped hard in his chest, seeing everyone's employee numbers pop up on his screen, with the robot giving no more consideration to them than it had given the poor mouse it had chewed to pieces. He was glad he'd taken the bank before anyone found it. He continued to the end.
TVA EMPLOYEE AGENT J-888 SELECTED FOR ELIMINATION
TVA EMPLOYEE HUNTER B-15 SELECTED FOR ELIMINATION
RECALIBRATING…
TVA EMPLOYEE AGENT J-888 SELECTED FOR ELIMINATION
WARNING: HEAVY DAMAGE TO ROTORS
TVA EMPLOYEE MAINTENANCE Z-165 SELECTED FOR ELIMINATION
WARNING: HEAVY DAMAGE TO BODY
WARNING: FATAL DAMAGE
ORGANIC OBJECT ELIMINATION UNSUCCESSFUL
…
…
ROBOT K838.468-3 OFFLINE
TRACKING SEQUENCE INITIATED…
Mobius froze, suddenly terrified. At the very last line of the memory log, the ellipses were still blinking steadily. The memory bank was still active, and it was sending out a tracking signal for someone to come and find it.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
Mobius hurriedly unplugged his tempad from the memory bank, deleted every word of the log as quickly as he could, then jumped out of his chair and threw the box on the ground, like it was full of spiders. He paced for a moment in pure panic, trying to think of what to do, where to put the thing. He should have simply let Zeit destroy it in the first place. His patent leather shoe slamming down on shag carpet didn't do any damage to the black box at all, no matter how much weight Mobius put into his stomp. Instead, he took the hunk of diamond magnifying glass, knelt down over it and smashed it as hard as he could, like an ape crushing a nut open with a rock. It took several hits until the memory bank started to dent, but it finally cracked, then split open at the narrow edge, revealing the wires inside.
Just like Zeit had, and for good measure, Mobius split it open further, reached inside, and ripped out as much wiring as he could. It actually sparked a bit as he disconnected them from the motherboard. Good. The more damage the better.
After breaking the bank apart, tearing all the components out of it as best he could, he flushed everything down his toilet, hoping it could handle solid metal pieces. It did, thankfully, and he felt like he could breathe again.
Mobius washed his hands at the sink. More of a reflex than anything, to make sure he didn't have any kind of oil or mechanical residue left on his hands. He was safe. For now. Probably.
Still, it must have been tracking him from the moment the robot was destroyed. It had been a while since then. Plenty of time to send a signal out to whoever, or whatever, was in charge of finding it. He found his magnifying glass, not even scratched, sat down at his desk, rubbed his damp hands on his pants, and tried as hard as he could not to worry about it. He'd done all he could by getting rid of the evidence. The water and sewage would take care of any fingerprints or DNA evidence, if they could ever even find it down there. He took one more deep breath. They would have come for him, by now.
As much to distract himself as anything else, he took the bit of film out of his breast pocket. If he put it up very close to the light of his lamp, pointing it down on a piece of white notebook paper, Mobius found he could make a little projection. The TVA's variant films were specially made, not of normal celluloid, but of a multi-layered material that could project something close to a three dimensional image. When he turned the film cell, the scene tilted, too, giving him slightly different angles to examine. The woman's face, half hidden, was almost completely visible if he tilted it all the way to the right. Overtanned. Eyeliner or mascara that she hadn't washed away. A red bikini top that tied in the back, covered by a head of hairsprayed, bottle blonde hair.
A bright white object in the background caught his eye, too, floating in what looked to be an ocean, or a lake. Too small, from his perspective, to be an upturned boat, but fairly large, anyway. He squinted, thinking, staring, wondering if it could possibly be what he thought it was. Well, it fit the planet and time period, judging from the woman's species and clothes. It looked just like an overturned jet ski.
Stealing Josta. Finding bits of film with jet skis in them. The shapeshifter knew him, somehow, really knew him. Maybe better than he knew parts of himself.
Something stirred deep in him, like he was being watched again, even though he knew, this time, that no one was there. Like there was a curtain around him, fluttering, with who knew what on the other side. It was a sensation he wasn't sure he'd ever had before.
On the edge of the film, he noticed something else of interest. There was some kind of script beyond the edge of the actual picture, printed into the black part of the film, close to the holes where the projection rig would feed the film through. It was too small to read, so he focused on it with his magnifying glass. Even then, he could just barely make it out.
It read, 'J81573'. A variant number, obviously. But whose?
Mobius looked up the number in his tempad. A mugshot and a name popped up, one that made that odd feeling flutter wildly in his brain, like he was about to lose control of himself.
'J81573. Name: Jep Boyth. Planet Code: ETH. Captured on Null-unit 337.27, Day 40, Hour 21:44:09. Nexus Event: ran over visiting Sakaar Grandmaster with automobile, resulting in death. Verdict: Guilty. Status: Pruned. Attention! Physical record reported missing. Film record reported missing. Please contact archives for more information.'
The human man in the mugshot looked squirrely, his big, blue eyes bugging out of his head in fear, his Adam's apple pointed at an awkward angle, like a tiny elbow coming out of his throat. He looked nearly emaciated, his cheeks hollow and skin sickly pale, but his eyes… the shape of his face and brow and chin… Mobius caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the magnifying glass, then quickly stood up and paced around the tiny room again, just to make sure he wasn't going to keel over. Why did they look so similar? The feeling jittering around inside of him was beyond anxiety, ten times worse than a panic attack. The room seemed to spin, to melt, to deform, unless he concentrated on something solid and real. He stared at one of his posters, a map of Earth, while rocking back and forth ever so slightly, reading the tiny city names out loud so he could get a grip on himself.
"Paris… Lyon… Bordeaux…" he swallowed bile, continuing even though the feeling was getting worse, not better, "Barcelona… Valencia…" Mobius wiped cold sweat from his brow. What the hell was going on?
He sat down again, took one more glance at the woman in the film, staring back at him, the look in her eye and the grin on her face almost flirtatious-
Just then, a horrible shock of cold zipped up Mobius' back, making him gasp with fear, making him go blind and deaf for a second, his eyes registering nothing but gray. Gulping down huge breaths, he tried to stand, feeling woozy and unsteady on his feet.
Tempad, he thought to himself. I need a medic. I need-
Suddenly, his thoughts stopped cold, taken over by something else entirely.
"Joanne, come on," said Jeff dismissively, even though his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend was staring at him like she was about to gut him. "Just calm the hell down, okay?"
"Calm down?!" she screeched like a wild bobcat, a new batch of tears falling down her face. She obviously didn't give a shit that their neighbors were about to know all of their business. "You tell me who you slept with, you-you-"
"It don't matter! It was just a one time thing! I'm sorry! It ain't gonna happen again, all right?"
She rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah. How stupid do you think I am, Jeff? I'm not gonna forgive you over and over and over, just so you can get pussy from some other woman. Tell me!"
Jeff scratched his scruffy, unshaved chin, clicked his tongue once. He knew the answer would drive her batshit crazy.
"You ain't gonna like it…" he muttered.
"Tell me!" She stamped her foot so hard it made the whole house shake.
"You want to know? It was Barb, okay? You happy?"
She blinked once or twice, let her mouth hang open.
"You… you fucked my best friend?" she whispered.
"In my defense, I didn't think she was your best friend..."
That tipped her over the line. The scream that came out of her didn't even sound human. To his surprise, she took one of the antique wooden kitchen chairs and threw it against the full-length mirror that hung on the wall next to the bathroom, smashing the mirror into shards. She'd broken one of the legs off the chair, too.
"What the fuck, Joanne?" he yelled, throwing his hands in the air. "Those chairs came from my parents' house, you can't just-"
"This is my house, Jeff, not yours! I pay for it."
"Both our names are on the lease."
"I pay the god damned rent, so it's my house!"
She looked around the room, searching for something else to destroy. She took a lamp off of a side desk, one that his mother had given her for her birthday, glazed like a vase and painted with antique roses. She gripped it so tightly it looked like she could break it with her bare hand alone.
"Hey, come on, now," Jeff put up his hands defensively. "My mama would be heartbroken if you smashed up her present."
"I don't know how a nice lady like Mary could give birth to such a piece of shit like you."
"I ain't the one tearing up the house, am I? Just put the lamp back and calm your ass down."
"No! You know what?"
"What?" he sighed.
There was a nasty gleam in her eye now, a smirk forming on her lip.
"I should have listened to your daddy about you."
That lit a fire in him. She knew better than to bring him up.
"You better watch it, Joanne…"
"I thought he was just being drunk when he started talking about you to everybody at the bar that one night." She weaved her head around as she spoke, like she knew everything better than everyone else. He hated her when she did that. "Oh yeah. He had plenty of shit to say, and everyone heard it. He said you were always good-for-nothin', never gave a shit about anyone else your whole life. Never had a real job. I should have seen that one coming a mile away. You still ain't got a job-"
"I said I was gonna get one!" he fumed.
"When? I make better money waiting tables than you ever will."
Jeff scoffed, covering up his hurt pride. Not like he cared that much about money… but his dad certainly did. No one was a real man to him unless he'd been miserable his whole life in a job he hated. He shrugged and shook his head, trying to change the subject, even though Joanne still had a death-grip on the lamp.
"We all know how this is gonna end," he said quietly, with a roll of his eyes. "Same thing happens every time we fight. You're gonna be mad for a couple days, then you're gonna call me, cryin', begging me to come home, that you didn't mean it. And you never do mean it. You love me, you know it. We always come back together."
The crazed look in her eyes didn't dissipate in the slightest. She let out a shuddering breath, and with a high-pitched roar, flung the lamp at him with all her might. It came flying at his head and crashed into the wall behind him. Joanne scowled at him, tears and mascara streaming down her face.
"The fuck is your problem?" he yelled. "I apologized, ain't that good enough for you?"
"You think you can fucking cheat on me and get away with it?" she screeched, grabbing a mug and tossing it at him. It narrowly missed his arm, shattering against the door. "You piece of shit! Get out of my house!"
Jeff grunted, more than a little disgusted. Maybe this was really it, this time. He wasn't going to act desperate in front of her, even though the thought of crawling back to his parents house once again, tail between his legs, made him want to puke.
He opened the door, but took one last look at her.
"You know what, Joanne? I should have cheated on you sooner!"
She screamed, then found another ceramic tchotchke and flung it straight for his head.
Mobius jolted awake, absolutely certain that the ceramic figurine had smashed against his head, that he was bleeding. A cursory touch of his forehead with a clammy hand proved that there was no blood at all. He was, however, face up on the floor of his room, staring into the fluorescent lighting.
The shag carpet had padded his fall, slightly, but he still felt a dull ache in the back of his skull. He groaned as he unsteadily pulled himself upright and tried to gather his broken, scattered thoughts before they slipped away.
There had been a woman; Joanne. And she was angry as hell. Angry at him.
No. Angry at Jeff.
Who the fuck was Jeff?
His delicate frame of mind shattered again as a loud rapping came at his door. Instinctively, he scrambled backwards, hitting his back against his bed, hard.
They'd found it. They'd come for him.
"Hey, Mobius?" It was Ravonna's voice, which made him even more paranoid instead of less. "Mobius, are you in there? I need to talk to you."
Mobius shakily got to his feet and checked his tempad. She hadn't sent him any messages.
Another knock, a little louder. "Mobius? Are you okay? Can I come in?"
"I… uh…" he muttered, checking himself in the mirror. He looked awful. Dark circles had formed under his eyes, his skin had gone wan and pale. Slowly, though, his senses were coming back to him. He could stand and walk all right, and his stomach wasn't roiling anymore. He snatched the bit of film off of his desk and stuck it in his breast pocket again, too scared to look at it.
"Give me a minute," he said with a cough. There was no time to recover from whatever had just happened. He took a deep breath, tried to get his heart rate back to normal before he faced her.
The second he opened the door, he knew he hadn't done a good enough job. Her eyes went wide with surprise.
"Mobius!" she gasped. "You look awful! Are you all right?"
"Uh… no… not feeling great," he said, deciding to change tactics. He leaned slightly against the door frame. "I don't know, Ravonna… I think a variant I took in had the flu, or something."
"Maybe you'd feel better if you ate a little."
He nodded weakly. "Yeah, maybe. I'll ask Miss Minutes for a food block-"
"No, I meant you should come with me and get some lunch, maybe?"
Mobius paused. She was trying to seem friendly, but there was something else on her face that he couldn't quite read, something anxious… and he didn't like it one bit.
He knew, without her saying anything, that she would insist that he leave his room, no matter how sick he acted. It might be better not to resist, in this case. He wasn't sure he was ready to see what was behind his friend's mask.
"Just something small and light, like a salad?" she suggested with a tight smile.
With only a nod, he left his room and started to follow her down his hallway, when a strange noise from Jet's room made him stop. It sounded like muffled crying, like Jet sobbing. He lifted a hand to knock at his door, but Ravonna's voice from down the hallway stopped him.
"Mobius?" she called out. She was already in the elevator terminal. When he got to her, she had boarded an elevator and was holding the door open for him with her foot. She jerked her head at him to hurry up.
She pressed the Main Terminal button, and Mobius hoped to whatever deity that cared enough to intervene that she wasn't just taking him straight to a courtroom. Every second felt like some kind of dazed dream, like his strange vision had been real, and Mobius himself was nothing more than a subconscious afterthought.
Thankfully, after the abnormally silent elevator ride, they did actually head to the cafeteria, which was bustling with the early lunch crowd. She grabbed a veggie burger, and he, as per her suggestion, picked out a small garden salad. They sat together next to a window, not touching their food for a good, long moment. Finally, Ravonna seemed to shake off whatever was clinging to her conscience and took a big bite of her burger.
"So, um, how are things going?" she asked, still chewing.
He rolled a cherry tomato around on the top of his dressing-less salad.
"Great," he answered, unable to feign enthusiasm. He couldn't even bring himself to smile at her. "Things are… going. Like usual."
"You're sure?" she asked, once again uninterested in her meal. "You haven't been feeling sick this whole time, have you?"
"Which whole time?"
"Since I last saw you. When I had to give you a demerit." She tapped her fingers on the table absentmindedly, as an anxious tic, not to make a point. "You do remember that, right?"
"Oh, don't worry. I remember," he said, finally able to give her a grin. "I remember things just fine now. Just some weird illnesses-and Skrull fistfights-all one after the other. A whole lot of rotten luck, I guess."
"Well, I'm-"
She cut herself off abruptly when her tempad buzzed in her pocket. She scrambled to take it out, stared at the screen, then let out what seemed to be a sigh of relief… or possibly irritation. Placing it back in her pocket, she stared straight through him, her mind seemingly miles away. Something was very off, and she was very bad at hiding it.
"Ravonna?" he asked, and she snapped back to attention. "You were talking."
"Right," she said, with a cough. "I was saying, I'm not sure you're telling the truth."
Mobius suppressed mirthless laughter as he pecked at his meal with his fork. She certainly was one to make that accusation.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because, you haven't been keeping up with your work, lately. And after I decreased your caseload, too. You remember that Grigori Rasputin case, right?"
"Er… I'm afraid not."
She grunted, annoyed, and went back to tapping her finger on the table, so fast it looked like she was sending out a telegraph.
"I thought you said you remembered things fine, now, Mobius," she said incredulously.
"Refresh my memory. It's been a while."
"It's been sitting in your inbox for a long time. Way too long."
Was that the real reason she was talking to him, then? He started to relax a little bit, but didn't let down his guard. He gently placed the flat end of his fork on her nervous fingertips, and Ravonna quickly thrust her hand back under the table.
"Sorry," she grumbled. "Anyway, you've been slipping, lately. We've been friends for-who knows how long-but as your supervisor-"
"I know, I know. I'll get right on it."
Ravonna's voice wasn't more than a whisper, and she refused to look at him as she spoke. "I don't think you get it, Mobius."
He tensed again. Waited. The lively cafeteria went on without them, ignoring them as they sat there, frozen in time.
"Why did you want to know about Zeit?" she asked.
Mobius felt himself go numb. He forced himself to pick up his fork again, stabbed a tomato, watched it slip from the prongs and errantly bounce off the side of his bowl, like a red rubber ball. He should have known.
"Who?" he asked.
"Don't. You know."
"I don't know."
"I didn't realize I'd said his name until several minutes after you'd left. You wanted his name, specifically, didn't you?"
He squirmed uncomfortably in his chair and shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I was just making conversation." Playing dumb might save his life… or it could get him thrown in a timecell. Or worse. Much worse.
"Mobius, if you confess before-"
"Confess to what?"
"-Before someone finds out-then I might be able to do something for you. But if you don't-"
Just then, her tempad buzzed in her pocket again. She paused, almost as if she was afraid to take it out, this time. She blinked, then reached in her pocket and put the tempad face-up on the table.
Miss Minutes appeared, projecting herself out of Ravonna's tempad screen. Her big, concerned, cartoon eyes flickered over to Mobius for a moment. She was hiding something, obviously. They both were.
"Ravonna," she said, "I'm afraid I couldn't find that… file." Miss Minutes shrugged, attempting to look innocent.
It astounded him that a computer program had learned to look so lifelike that it could not only feign emotion, but hide those artificial feelings, too. She'd had to feign plenty of things, if the theory solidifying in his mind was true.
"Really?" asked Ravonna. Her wide shoulderpads drooped, like a weight had been lifted from her, but her eyebrows were still scrunched together in confusion.
"I'm afraid it just wasn't there, sugar," she answered. "I'll have to try somewhere else."
The three of them sat there in awkward silence for several seconds until Miss Minutes coughed and jerked her head just slightly in Ravonna's direction.
"Um… Judge Ravonna?" she asked gently.
Ravonna came to, then shook the daze out of her head.
"Right. Thanks, Miss Minutes."
"Anytime, hun."
With that, Miss Minutes vanished again. Ravonna tilted her head at Mobius, studied his expression carefully. Mobius felt the blood come back to his face, which he kept carefully even. He dared to give her a tiny, harmless grin. Miss Minutes had searched his room for the memory bank, but she didn't have jack or shit to incriminate him with. He thanked god that he'd had the sense to put the piece of film back into his pocket. Mobius finally stabbed the tomato and popped it in his mouth.
"So, what were we talking about?" he asked as he chewed.
Her mouth became small and pursed, the way it did when she was pissed and couldn't show it.
"Don't treat this like a game," she whispered. "Please. I'm begging you. Leave whatever it is alone."
He swallowed the juicy little tomato and shrugged, trying as best he could not to look too triumphant. It was hard, though.
"Ravonna, why are you acting so paranoid?"
"I am trying to protect you," she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes grew misty for a second, wiping the grin off of his face. "Back off, all right?"
Mobius couldn't speak. He was genuinely stunned. Still, though, he had to cling to his innocence like the last lifeboat on the Titanic.
"Am I getting another demerit for being slow, or-?"
She cut him off with a grunt so loud it sounded like a growl, then stood, pushing the chair out behind her with a squeak. Without finishing her burger or saying goodbye, she turned on her heel and left him alone at the table.
Not knowing what else to do, Mobius slowly finished his plain salad. She'd left him with much more to chew on than lettuce and spinach. Obviously, Miss Minutes couldn't be trusted… and now his oldest friend, too.
When he finished, he left for the elevators, still feeling numb even though he'd narrowly averted disaster. He didn't doubt her when she'd said she was trying to protect him. That was most likely true. But his numbness came from knowing he couldn't look at her the same way, ever again. She was a suspect, holding secrets, who'd given her loyalty to the TVA and no one else. Or maybe… maybe there was someone else.
She'd said during the meeting where she'd given him a demerit, that the Timekeeper himself had sent her inquiries. Why else did she seem to know more than she had before, unless she was truly that good of a liar? There seemed like a good chance that she was still talking to him, and he could be doing more than just asking questions.
Still, it was all conjecture. Just like his supervisor had nothing to incriminate him with, he had nothing to prove her connection to the Timekeeper.
Mobius left the elevator and walked down the hallway to his room, but something made him stop before he opened his door. Jet had been crying before, when Ravonna had come, but he'd gone silent now. Mobius gingerly knocked on Jet's door. After a moment, Jet opened it, his eyes and face red and puffy, sniffling.
"Jet?" asked Mobius gently, surprised at his normally jolly friend's face. "Can I come in?"
Wordlessly, Jet moved out of the way and let Mobius enter. Jet made his way, sullenly, to the edge of his bed, sat down, and rested his face in his hands with a groan.
Mobius was almost too afraid to ask what was wrong. It didn't take long, though, for Jet to answer his unspoken question.
"Libby," he muttered into his hands. "They… demoted her. All the way to maintenance."
Mobius held in a gasp. "But-why? For fight night? Pretty much everyone else that got busted only got a demerit. Did she reach her limit, or what? Even then, she'd just go back to being an analyst."
Jet lifted his wet face from his hands, stared blankly ahead of him as he spoke.
"I had to beg Ravonna to tell me what happened. I couldn't find Libby anywhere. She wasn't in her room, at her desk. Nobody else in our cubicle cluster had seen her. Ravonna told me-" Jet's voice broke, but he kept going, voice straining, "-she told me that she admitted to more than fight night. She admitted to… to us."
Mobius' heart sank to his feet. He sat down on the bed next to Jet, staring at the wall just as blankly as his friend.
"Are you getting demoted, too?" he whispered.
Jet shook his head, mouth pursed into a small, wavering line.
"No. I got two demerits, one for fight night, and one for intimate fraternization. I don't understand… I don't understand why…"
Jet couldn't hold it in anymore. Tears burst out of him, and he leaned over his knees, hugging himself tightly across his belly.
"Mobius! I don't understand!" he wailed, over and over. Without asking, or hesitating, Mobius hugged Jet tightly and let himself cry, too, but in silence, letting Jet sob freely. They'd both cruelly, inexplicably lost their friends that day. The question of 'why' would have to wait.