Living Large in Purgatory Bay

by Aerolumen

When Max returns to Arcadia Bay, her new photography teacher is dead and she's shocked to discover that her best friend from years before, Chloe Price, has died as well. Max had hoped to rekindle her friendship with Chloe, using her newfound power to rewind time as an icebreaker. Instead, she finds herself pulled into a mysterious alternate world, where only Arcadia Bay remains.

6. Chapter 6 - A Plan

I left the Prescott Estate and time-stepped to the junkyard. I couldn't be sure that Chloe would be there but it seemed like the best place to start.

As I walked towards Chloe's "lair," a bank of fog parted and I caught sight of the doe statue above Rachel's former grave. I stopped, pursed my lips to the side, and went over to see it. I dropped down enough to stare into the doe's stone eyes.

"Anything else you want to tell me?" I asked.

The statue remained silent.

I was about to turn around and leave when my eyes fell to the doe's chest: a cluster of thin cracks spidered out from the same spot as in my dream. I ran my fingertips over the cracks, sending sand-like pieces of stone drifting to the ground.

"Feeling up my ex?" came a voice.

I spun around to find Chloe standing a few steps away, hands in the pockets of her jacket and a grin on her face. The sight of her made my whole body relax and brought an easy smile to my face…and I realized in that moment that I hadn't truly relaxed at any point during my night with Maxine.

I said, "I suppose I am. But I didn't realize you dated her when she looked like this." I gestured at the doe.

Chloe laughed and then scrunched her nose, saying, "she's gone through a lot of forms. Like a hot Pokemon."

"Well, I'm never going to be able to get that idea out of my head," I said, "and, um, speaking of her different forms, have these cracks always been here?"

Chloe stepped forward and leaned down right next to me, close enough for me to smell the odd but incredibly comforting mix of pot, her shampoo, her deodorant (the same one she used back when she was fourteen, as far as I could tell), and the leather of her jacket.

"Huh," she said, reaching out and running her fingers along the cracks, "I don't think so but I guess I've never looked this close. Why?"

"I had a crazy dream last night and these cracks appeared in the same statue in the same place," I said.

Chloe raised her eyebrows and asked, "what kind of dream? Were you able to walk around in it and stuff?"

I raised my eyebrows too and said, "yeah."

She nodded and said, "Maxine had a really trippy dream back during the shit week where she was, um, what's the word? Where you can walk around and shit?"

"Lucid?"

"Yeah, that," Chloe said, "and yeah, while she was tripping out, I had to carry her all the way to where we were setting up the tablets." She chuckled. "In most universes, by the way, my heroic ass carried your skinny ass all the way up to the lighthouse."

"Impressive," I said.

"Thank you," she said, taking a bow, "so, um, how trippy was it? Your dream, I mean."

I pursed my lips to the side and said, "maybe I should start from the beginning."

Chloe gestured toward her lair and as we walked through spotlight-lit fog, she said, "I'm guessing this story is going to include salacious details of sweaty encounters with your other self?"

I blushed.

"Ah! You did do it!" Chloe said, slapping me on the back.

I coughed and asked, "and…and you're okay?"

She sighed and said, "honestly, not really."

"Chloe!" I said, stopping, "you told me to do it! I wouldn't have if you weren't okay with it!"

"Yeah, and if I'd told you that, you wouldn't've done it and you'd be way less safe right now. And admit it: after you guys fucked each other up and down and sideways, she told you stuff, didn't she?"

I frowned and said, "yes, yes she did. More than I thought she would, actually."

"See?" Chloe said, "and yeah, I'm kind of jealous and kind of weirded out and I'm not even sure how I really feel but that's kinda what we talked about already: we'll get through this, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

I reached out and took her hand and she smiled.

"I'm still yours, Chloe," I said, "you know that, right?"

"What I know is that you're a sappy hippy," she said. Then she squeezed my hand and said, "and yeah, I know."

I nodded and pulled her into a hug. A moment later, she laughed softly by my ear.

"What?" I asked.

"If nothing else, I will totally be okay because you, Max Caulfield, are actually the only person to have ever fucked herself," she said.

"You're terrible," I said.

"I know."

She backed away with a smile and, driven by sudden need, I grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her, hard. She let out a stifled cry of surprise before melting into the kiss. When I broke away a minute later, I put my forehead to hers.

"What was that for?" she asked, a smile in her voice.

"A reminder, for me and for you," I said.

"I like that kind of reminder," she said, "can you be my alarm clock?"

"Dork."

. . . . .

We sat on the couch in Chloe's lair and I retold everything that happened, from my findings at Principal Wells' house to my night with Maxine and the dream that followed. Chloe asked me questions throughout, her expression wide-eyed over the "creepy horror house," goofy as I gave a red-faced recount of the night, and with brow furrowed as I described the dream.

At the end, we sat silently for a few minutes as Chloe chewed on her bottom lip, thinking.

Finally, I said, "Chloe, there's something else: I…I think I came close to following Maxine. It didn't feel like it at the time but after experiencing that dream, I think it must be true."

Chloe nodded and said, "yeah, I get it."

"You do?"

She looked at me with an eyebrow raised, "yeah, Max, I followed her for two years, long after I started realizing that something creepy was going on and, you might've noticed, I'm still technically following her. But…I guess I didn't realize just how creepy things had gotten. The fuckin' bodies, man." She shuddered.

"I'm pretty sure I nearly had a heart attack when she showed up," I said, shaking my head, "I thought she was going to kill me and put me with the rest."

"And she was telling the truth? She didn't murder them?"

"If my Maxine lie detector is correct, she didn't lie to me even once yesterday," I said, "I think…I think it was cathartic for her to tell someone, to finally get that release."

Chloe grinned and said, "that's not the only kind of release she got last night."

"Oh, stop it," I said, smacking her with a throw pillow.

Chloe laughed and then her face went serious.

She said, "you know, Maxine was probably right: those dead versions of you probably were Rachel testing things out, making sure she could bring you here. And she's probably right that there's one or more dead Maxes out there past the Barrier." She gestured with her thumb. "And Rachel probably knew exactly where to put them where I wouldn't just wander by and notice." "It's so strange," I said, "to think of universes where I just…die."

"Now you know what it's like to be a multiverse-knowledgable Chloe Price," she said, placing the back of her hand on her forehead in dramatic fashion.

"Right, sorry," I said with a grimace.

"Don't worry about it," she said, "so now…what the fuck do we do? Can you, um, you know, freeze her or something? Since you're, um, stronger or whatever?"

I shook my head and said, "maybe, but I don't know how tightly she's tied in with Rachel and with any of the weird shit that keeps this place going. And I don't know enough yet to do the stuff that's keeping everyone alive. And the freeze might not work on her…and if it doesn't, her and I could end up fighting for who knows how long." I shrugged.

"So: bad idea," Chloe said.

"Not necessarily," I said, "just not workable yet."

"So then what?"

I tapped my finger on my chin.

"Well, I know what the tablet looks like, the one that can let everyone escape. I need to find it and figure out how to use it. And for that, I have a plan: every day, I'll time-step into Maxine's horror house and go through her journals; there must be some mention somewhere of what she did with the tablet. But what I haven't figured out are all of the other details: how do we get everyone in on a plan to leave and do it without alerting Maxine? And how do we distract Maxine enough to get everyone out? And what about Megan and Warren? There are a lot of pieces that we just don't know and it could take us a long time to figure them all out."

Chloe fidgeted with her fingers for a moment and then suddenly stood up. She walked over to one of the lair's doors and peered out. She crossed the room and peered out the other one, squinting into the misty dark. Then she walked over to a wall where she'd posted a copy of Maxine's schedule; she looked at her watch, at the paper, and nodded.

I watched her with raised eyebrows as she came back.

She sat very close to me and leaned in so that her lips were nearly touching my ear.

"Max," she whispered, "there's one place in Arcadia Bay where Maxine never goes. You can probably guess what it is and you can probably assume that some other people have figured it out too."

She backed away and gave me a meaningful look.

I furrowed my brow and then nodded as I realized the implication: Chloe and I weren't the only ones striving to escape this universe. There were others who could have the kinds of ideas, plans, and information that we didn't. And Chloe had, in essence, told me where I could find them; the challenge would be contacting them without making Maxine suspicious.

. . . . .

Within a few days, I settled into a rhythm.

Each morning, while Maxine was out on her rounds, I time-stepped into her library and pored through her journals, rewinding over and over until I got through about a dozen each time.

And in the afternoons, Maxine took a substantial chunk of time to train me. She showed me details and nuances in the piece-by-piece rewind, something that allowed me to refine my techniques. Down in the photo tunnels, she showed me how to use the tablet that could see into other universes. And in the offices that had once been Blackwell classrooms, she led me through the bureaucratic maze needed to meet the needs of Arcadia Bay's citizens and businesses. Over the span of several days, we visited nearly every store and warehouse around town, letting me practice long and specific rewinds on hundreds of items.

On the personal side of things, Chloe, Maxine, and I came to an unspoken agreement regarding my sleeping arrangements. My bed at Blackwell went unused as I spent every other night at Chloe's lumber mill pirate castle and the rest at Maxine's Prescott Estate. And the contrast between the two deepened with each swap…

At Maxine's, I was treated to gourmet meals each night, either by firelight in a cozy room in the house or at candlelit tables in otherwise empty restaurants, from the sushi place to Rue Altimore. Maxine brought me to art galleries, sculpture parks, and Blackwell's art studios, introducing me to bright-eyed and seemingly-sycophantic artists that gave me overenthusiastic thanks whenever I remarked on their work. Musicians performed at the Prescott Estate for us, sometimes as we dined and other times as we did things like playing chess or sitting in front of the fireplace in robes, eating chocolate-covered strawberries. All of it was, in a word, ridiculous. But at the same time, I could imagine some version of myself being utterly won over by the opulence, romance, and sheer artistry involved. And there were the physical comforts: luxurious clothes, more time in the hot tub, massages, walks through warm drifts of fog, and, of course, sex. Oh, so much sex. I felt a stab of guilt every time we began…but the ways that Maxine knew my body made her touch irresistible. And she wanted me. She desperately wanted me. And that in itself was intoxicating: even on the nights when we didn't have sex, her fingers or her toes or her lips were never away from my skin for long.

Without the contrast of my nights with Chloe, I imagine that Maxine would've taken over my entire life. And yes, I think it would've happened even though I had stark views of horrible potential futures, which came crashing back into my head at regular intervals. But I did have Chloe…

At Chloe's, we ate takeout or sandwiches. One time, Chloe tried to grill some steaks; the results were abysmal and we ate burgers at the Two Whales instead. We even went to Rue Altimore once; it wasn't empty and we laughed our way through far too many glasses of wine. We watched films, painted in the lumber mill, fired off a cannon that Chloe had somehow got her hands on, and "raided" the water park a few more times. We crashed a darts game at a dive bar near the shipyard and although the patrons treated us with suspicion at first, we soon had them betting on how I could use my power; the tricks I could pull with the darts eventually had them doubled over with laughter. We visited graffiti walls and different kinds of sculpture parks, where Chloe introduced me to artists that didn't really fit into Maxine and Stella's world. We dropped into a dance club, explored the cave where Maxine and Chloe had found the tablets, and strolled along the beach with ice cream while coming up with more and more elaborate insults to scream at the storm in the bay. Chloe would ask me to take photos and she made random little trinkets for me like she did when we were younger. And I gave her paints, old clothes, and random objects that I found when training with Maxine. I also brought her flowers; she'd always insisted that she was ambivalent over flowers and I'd always known that that was bullshit. All of it was, in a word, amazeballs. It was chill and relaxing and adventurous all at once. And it was all so romantic; I knew Chloe wouldn't call it that but every bit of it really was. With each night we spent together, the feelings between us grew deeper and wider. And yes, there were the comforts, too: warm blankets, drinks, playing with each other's hair, long walks through the woods, and, of course, sex. A lot of sex, especially after I shared Maxine's little anatomy-rewinding trick. Each time we began, I felt a jolt of surprise, as if I couldn't quite believe that Chloe and I had that kind of relationship. And although Chloe didn't share the same body as me, she knew it almost as well as Maxine did and I was quickly growing to learn hers just as well. And the way Chloe looked at me made her completely irresistible; like Maxine, she wanted me, and I wanted her just as much. But she didn't push herself into my personal space during every moment together. And she showed me how she felt with more than her hands and lips: she showed me with her eyes, with her laugh, with little nudges from an elbow or a foot, by tossing things at me, and with goofy little insults.

I realized that Chloe had, in a way, taken over my life. And I wasn't at all bothered by that.

And, of course, Chloe and I hadn't stopped working on our big, treasonous plan.

How far had we gotten, after a few weeks? To be honest, not very far.

I hadn't yet found anything more about the tablet we needed and Chloe's attempts to glean information on peoples' attitudes had yielded very little.

But I did have one important effort that finally paid off: every couple of days, I went on a long, meandering walk out of town, disappearing into the trees and fog for a few hours at a time. It took three such outings over the span of a couple of weeks before I got the result I was looking for: after tracing my way along the train tracks for much of the day, I returned to find Maxine in a state of near-panic.

"Maxine?" I asked.

She darted over to me, actually performing a time-step to cover the few feet between us in an instant.

"Max, oh, Max," she said, gripping my shoulders and breathing heavily.

"What's wrong?" I asked, "is everything okay?"

"I…I couldn't find you, precious Max," she said, "I thought something might have happened. That they…that something happened. Where were you?"

"Oh, I'm really sorry, Maxine," I said, placing my hands on her shoulders, "I went on a walk. I've been doing it every few days to clear my head. I, um, got the idea from Chloe's walks."

Her eyes widened and she asked, her voice going up an octave, "did you go outside the Barrier?"

"What? No, I wouldn't do that," I said, "I kind of like my limbs and stuff where they are."

Maxine finally calmed herself and brought her breathing back under control. Her iron grip on my arms loosened.

"I'm sorry, Max," she said, "I got so worried. I didn't realize…I just…come with me, I need to make sure that you'll be safe."

To my surprise, she led me up to the lighthouse and, under the spinning beam and the glow of the tornado, she tested my powers. She tossed rocks and sticks in my direction to see how fast I could freeze time or rewind, measuring how far her projectiles went before I could stop them. After half an hour of the tests, I finally asked why we were doing it. She just told me that some people are fast with a needle and faster with a gun. Then she explained that if someone tried to hurt me, I'd feel a tingle in the front of my head and to immediately freeze time to find the threat. After running me through a few more scenarios, my reaction time must have been acceptable to her: she gave me her approval to go on more long walks by myself.

When I left, giving her reassurances that I'd be quick with my powers, I smiled to myself: being able to disappear for hours at a time without Maxine getting suspicious or worried was exactly what I needed for my next steps.

. . . . .

I waited more than a week before moving forward with the plan. The extra time allowed me to increase Maxine's confidence that I could wander off on my own and to dig further into her journals.

My exploration of those journals didn't exactly improve my evaluation of Maxine's mental state. My feelings of disquiet and pity grew as I read more and more of her rationalizations and obsessions. But I did find something useful and surprising: detailed plans on relocating Arcadia Bay's population through a portal. It looked as if Maxine had nearly torn out those pages (and some had been taped back in) but must have felt it necessary to keep them as a backup plan. When Maxine mentioned that she'd considered an evacuation, I assumed that she'd spent a few hours thinking about it before rejecting it. But her plans for relocation were intense: routes, how she'd arrange people, which of the town's resources to bring…the details took up most of a journal and it had clearly been her number one project for at least a month.

And she'd spent long hours poring through different universes, looking for the right one. My plan had been to send everyone to the universe labeled 47, the one where everyone but Max and Chloe had been killed and the destruction was so severe that no bodies were ever recovered…but Maxine had found a different one, labeled 1176, in which the destruction had been severe enough to wipe the town utterly off of the map (including most bodies) but where those that survived matched up closely with those who had died in this separated universe. She must have assumed that her and Chloe would remain behind in this micro-universe since Universe 1176 had its own surviving Max and Chloe, who would undoubtedly be shocked and confused by the arrival of almost everyone who had just died.

As for the portal tablet, I still hadn't found any clues to its location or fate. But I wasn't worried yet, especially because I had another next step to be nervous about…

. . . . .

I approached the barn from a thick section of woods, picking my way around bushes and branches in the dark. Chloe's cryptic clue about where to go had been obvious after thinking about it for a few seconds: Maxine's worst experience in Arcadia Bay had happened in the bunker under a remote, Prescott-owned barn.

To avoid painful memories, Maxine never came here.

Never.

So if someone wanted to avoid her, the barn was the perfect place to set up camp. I didn't know if Chloe knew for certain that they were here since she didn't want to speak openly about those opposed to Maxine in more than a cursory way, even when protected by her dense places. So maybe I was about to make a fool of myself wandering around an empty barn and I'd have to find some other way to contact them. But this was the best lead and I had to give it a try.

The thinning trees gave way to a flat expanse of mud and grass, where pools of water reflected white with flashes of lightning. The barn loomed up out of the darkness, with dozens of boards and slats missing from its walls and roof.

I paused for a moment, surveying the area: it looked like no one had been there in years. But if what Maxine and Chloe had said about Kate's powers was true, that's exactly what it would look like if they were here.

With a shrug, I proceeded, climbing over a rotting wooden fence and starting across the yard towards a door that yawned open. My boots squelched in the mud and I'd wonder later if that covered up the sounds that I should've heard.

Instead, I only felt the barest whisper of motion next to me…but before I could do more than slow down and start to furrow my brow, a sharp point pricked into my neck.

I gasped and raised my hand, trying to freeze time or rewind. The world around me flickered and I could momentarily see the fractured fabric of space and time. But then it vanished and my arm went numb. My vision darkened around the edges and I lost the feeling in my legs. I vaguely felt my knees drop to the ground.

Next to me, a familiar voice said, "got you, you bitch."

Before I passed out completely, I had the mildly comforting thought that since I hadn't felt the warning tingle that Maxine described, the people who got me must not have wanted to harm me. Not yet, at least.

Then everything went dark.

. . . . .

Blurry light and muffled voices, those were the first things I recognized as I slipped back into consciousness. After another minute or so, I figured out that I was sitting down and that my wrists and ankles were strapped to a chair. For some reason, that made me remember that for most other Maxes, who experienced being held captive by Jefferson, such restraints would be horrific. But for me, it was just mildly uncomfortable.

After a short while, I began to understand the words being spoken.

"For all we know, she is Maxine," came a sharp voice.

"I don't think so," came a softer voice, "she didn't walk like Maxine."

"Walk like Maxine?" said the sharper voice, "are you fucking kidding me right now?"

"No," said the softer voice.

A sigh.

"Fine," came the sharper voice, "but if we end up royally fucked, it's on you."

"I know, Victoria, I know," said the softer voice.

I felt a presence come closer.

"Max?" the soft voice asked.

It was Kate. Of course it was Kate.

I tried to say something but I couldn't be sure if anything actually came out.

"I'm sorry, Max," Kate said, "it should wear off really soon."

"I'm not sorry," came Victoria's voice.

"Hush," Kate said away from me.

"It's…," I managed to get out.

I felt a warm hand on mine and the room began to become clearer: warm lights, grey walls, a pale face. Then it all came into focus: I was in a bunker. I'd never been into Jefferson's bunker, the one where he took those he kidnapped, but I'd seen enough pictures to recognize it. Still, it looked different: someone had covered the harsh fluorescent lights with pieces of paper that gave the light a soft yellow color. Shelves along the walls were stacked with canned goods and notebooks. Kate knelt in front of me, wearing a big sweater; her blonde hair hung down loose over her shoulders. Behind her, Victoria stood with her arms cross tightly over a t-shirt. I couldn't think of a time where I'd seen her wearing something so pedestrian…but she still managed to make it look like high fashion.

"H…hi, Kate," I managed.

She gave me a small smile and backed away a few steps to sit on a stool; Victoria continued to glare at me.

"Hi, Max," Kate said, "I'm assuming you're the Max that arrived…somewhat recently?"

"Y…yeah, that's me," I said, my throat scratchy.

"Oh, sorry, hold on," Kate said.

She scurried away and came back with a cup of water. She held it to my lips and I took a few sips.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome," Kate said.

"What are you doing here?" Victoria asked, her voice like a whip.

Right to business; I fully expected that from Victoria and I'd prepared for it.

"We need your help," I said.

Kate opened her mouth but Victoria spoke first…

"With what?"

"With getting everyone out," I said, "out of this universe."

Kate's eyes widened but Victoria let out a derisive bark of a laugh.

"Really?" she asked, "you've been fucking the time goddess, our lord and savior, for the past few weeks and you expect us to believe you'd break her precious little kingdom?"

Kate winced and I locked my eyes on Victoria.

"No, I don't expect you to believe it," I said, "but we need your help anyways. Maxine was lying when she said there wasn't a way out of here. And this isn't some kind of charity thing: I want to go home."

"You want to go home? Really? To a place where your pet bitch Chloe is dead? If you stay here, you can live forever, never growing old and spending all of your time eating sushi and fucking both your twin, which is fucking weird, by the way, and your multiverse girlfriend. So why should we believe you'd want to leave?" she asked.

"Victoria…," Kate started.

Victoria held up her hand but I spoke before she could continue.

"This is why we need your help," I said, "you know a lot, a lot of details about this town and the people in it. You know far more than we do and we need that if we're going to make this work without alerting Maxine."

"Or," Victoria said, "you answer my fucking question. Why leave when you get to be co-goddess?"

I took a breath to push down a rising ball of anger and asked, "Victoria, how many times do you think Maxine has rewound this whole thing?"

She furrowed her brow and said, "what does that have to do with anything?"

"Humor me," I said.

She shared a glance with Kate and shrugged.

"Fuck if I know," she said, "a few times? Five? Eight?"

"I'm guessing twenty to thirty times, maybe more," I said, "based on the journals of hers that I've been secretly reading for days."

Victoria's eyebrows shot up and Kate tilted her head at me.

"That's not possible," Victoria said.

"It is," Kate said, "we've always known that."

"Okay, fine, so she's been redoing this whole thing over and over, what does that have to do with answering my fucking questions, Max?"

"Maxine always loses," I said, "eventually, everyone turns against her. Even Chloe."

They shared another look.

I continued, "she's attached to this place because she believes that it's meant to be. To think otherwise would be to admit that maybe destroying your entire world might've been nothing more than a terrible accident, one that she's responsible for. Look, you guys, she's messed up. She wants peace and wants everyone to be okay and happy but can't reconcile that that's not possible here. And if I just go with the flow, I might become like her. And I don't want that to happen. I've seen what her dark place looks like and I don't want that to be mine, too. It's terrifying. Does that answer your fucking question, Victoria?"

She narrowed her eyes at me.

"Maybe," she said, "I don't trust you but I'll hear you out."

"Alright, here's the deal…," I began.

"Hold on," Kate said.

She reached forward and before Victoria could do more than gasp, she released the restraints on my arms.

"Are you fucking insane?" Victoria hissed, rapidly backing up.

Kate met my eyes and I nodded at her; she nodded back with a smile.

"A little bit, Victoria," she said, "but I think I'm right."

"She is," I said, rubbing my wrists, "I'm not going to freeze you, Victoria."

"Maybe you're just waiting to find out everyone we work with and then you'll freeze us," she said.

"No, I don't care who you've got on your side right now because eventually, it's going to be pretty much everyone," I said, "so, here's the deal: Maxine has a tablet hidden somewhere that can be used to create a portal to another universe. Any universe. And she thought about doing it. She thought about it so much that she found a perfect universe to send everyone to, wrote up a detailed plan on how to do it, and then shoved it away. I found the plan but I haven't found the tablet. That's what Chloe and I are working on: the tablet and how we deal with Maxine. What we don't have a good handle on is how to get everyone ready to leave, how to deal with people like Warren and Megan or anyone else loyal to Maxine, and the details of how we get everyone out under Maxine's nose."

"That's a lot you don't know," Victoria said

"Yes," I said, "but it's our best shot."

"But it's not our only shot," Victoria said.

"Victoria, our current plans have a lot of unknowns, too," Kate said softly.

"For now," Victoria said, "but maybe 'precious' Max here can help us instead of getting us to help with some bullshit idea that isn't even a plan."

"You know," I said, a hot streak of anger slicing into my head, "how the fuck is it that you've been listening in on me and Maxine all the time but haven't caught any of the stuff between Chloe and I that would, you know, confirm that I'm fucking serious about all of this."

"Because, dumbass, my super eavesdropping shit doesn't work in the places where Chloe hangs out," she said.

"Oh," I said, furrowing my brow.

"It does make sense that Chloe would only talk to Max about such things in those places, Victoria," Kate said.

"Or, Kate, Chloe's still on Maxine's side and this whole thing is just meant to catch all of us."

I said, "look, I'm pretty sure Rachel grabbed me into this universe to…"

"Really, Max?" Victoria said, "you're going to trust Rachel Amber to have your best interests at heart? To prioritize anyone's interests but hers? Much less her fucking ghost?"

"I think she wants to get out of here too, to end this," I said, "and because I have the rewind too, I'm probably the only one that can make sure it happens."

"Ah, that classic Maxine Caulfield humility," Victoria said, rolling her eyes, "we'll just end up trading one of you for two of you and Maxine will freeze our asses within the next couple of days, tops."

I suddenly remembered something from one of the journals.

"Wait," I said, "no, Maxine wouldn't do that."

Kate raised an eyebrow and Victoria laughed.

"Are you fucking serious, Max?" Victoria said, "of course she'd freeze our asses if she had the chance."

"No, because there's a timeline where she did that," I said.

Both of them went still and quiet.

"There was a performance of some kind, a play or something, that Maxine attended," I said, "it was in the earliest timeline where she had that performing arts center built and you had a whole thing set up: um, someone with a hunting rifle up in a balcony or something and then the two of you, I think, with syringes. You nearly got her but she was too fast; her and I have this thing where we can sense it if someone's about to harm us…"

I expected Victoria to interrupt at that point with something about how she'd captured me but both her and Kate had their mouths open and their eyes wide.

"...and, um, she caught all of you…apparently, you all had some kind of timer that went off and she was able to freeze time and swing it back and forth over the span of less than a second to wander around and find all of you. Something about the timer or the actions you were taking made the invisibility waver enough for her to get through it. After she captured you, she did a big show trial and you all got stuck in the creepy freeze jail. But, maybe you guys don't know this but the two of you must mean a lot to people in Arcadia Bay. I mean, everyone talks about Maxine being the hero but the two of you were a big part of saving the town, too. And when Maxine put you away, the people revolted. Big time. The revolt normally happens after ten years or more but it happened earlier that time. So now, she just doesn't go to the event and does this thing where she almost catches you to scare you off."

I stopped and looked back and forth between Victoria and Kate. They looked at each other and Kate cleared her throat.

"You…basically just described the plan that we've been working on," she said.

"Oh," I said.

"Well, fuck," Victoria said, pinching the bridge of her nose, "that's months of fucking work down the toilet."

Kate furrowed her brow and then smiled.

"In that case, Max, let's hear more of what you have to say and then we'll make a new plan," she said.

Victoria rolled her eyes and Kate waved her hand: suddenly, about two dozen people appeared in the room: students and teachers and townspeople. Some of them looked at me with sharp eyes and frowns but most looked curious; some smiled.

I smiled at Kate.

"Thanks for trusting me, Kate," I said before turning to the others, "and all of you. I'm going to tell you everything, okay? Ask me any questions and I'll do my best to answer. You're trusting me…mostly," I glanced at Victoria and she rolled her eyes again, "so I'm going to trust you, too. This is our chance for all of you to go to a real world again, for me to go home, and to break Maxine and Rachel out of this craziness."

"Go on, Max," Kate said with a smile.

I took a deep breath and began.

. . . . .

Did I convince them? Perhaps, perhaps not (certainly not Victoria, who walked away as soon as I finished speaking). But they were willing to try and that's what mattered. And I could feel a bit of what Maxine must have felt every day for as long as she'd been here: I didn't want them to distrust me; I really just wanted to fade into the background and have them think very little about me at all. Quite suddenly, many of Maxine's aloof behaviors made sense: her retreat into art, work, sex, and solitary or small activities meant that she didn't have to face the opinions of Arcadia Bay's people. And that meant that she'd been missing something big…

"Almost everyone in Arcadia Bay wants to leave," Kate told me as she took me on a tour of their hideaway, which had been set up with little cabins and bunks inside of the barn, all hidden by Kate's power.

"Already?" I asked, "Maxine's journals said that it would be years more before they all revolt."

"It takes a long time for feelings like those to build enough to overcome fear," Kate said.

"Yeah, I can understand that," I said, remembering Maxine's time jail.

"We get information from all over town," she said, "and we have contact with essentially everyone. Some people refuse to take part and we don't push it. But we can get messages out to everyone. We've done it before and Maxine hasn't noticed. Even Juliet hasn't noticed; her staff is with us. And I suspect that Juliet herself turns a blind eye."

"Wait," I said, "if people in Maxine's inner circle are sympathetic, who does Maxine even have on her side?"

Kate shrugged and said, "we assumed Chloe. And we all saw what just Maxine and Chloe can do together. But if what you've said is true, Maxine really only has Warren and Megan."

"What about Alyssa and Stella?"

"Alyssa doesn't care," Kate said, "she'll go where the river leads, as it were. And Stella? All we know is that she grumbles a lot about how little control she has over the arts, even though Maxine ostensibly gave her authority. For all we know, maybe she wants to stay here if it means she'd get to run things."

"I can find out," I said.

"Are you sure?" Kate asked, stopping and turning to me.

"Yes," I said, "I can poke her in a million different ways with the rewind."

"And Maxine won't know?" Kate asked.

"I don't think so," I said, "I've seen some evidence of when Maxine rewinds and I can sort of see it if I'm there with her but if I get Stella alone and away from Maxine, I can work my magic and there should be no evidence of it."

Kate nodded and began walking again.

"Alright, Max," she said after a few moments, "we'll develop an evacuation plan. And to help form it, we'll want to see what Maxine came up with."

I nodded and said, "I'll get that to you."

"And we'll want to consult with both you and Chloe. Obviously, this will have to stay very quiet. And, I hate to put the pressure on you but this does all hinge on you finding that tablet."

"Yes," I said, "and I will. And thank you for doing this, Kate."

Kate stopped again and held up a hand. She glanced around and lowered her voice.

"Max, I'm not guaranteeing that we'll go through with this. For a long time now, I've been good cop and Victoria has been bad cop…but she has a point: we've only just met you and our freedom and lives are on the line. I hope you can understand why we don't fully trust you."

"Yes, I do," I said, "but, um, why are you saying this so quietly?"

She smiled and said, "because Victoria is absolutely insufferable if she catches me agreeing with her after I've disagreed with her."

I laughed and said, "yeah, that sounds about right."

"Did you know your Victoria well?" she asked.

I raised my eyebrows and said, "kind of, I guess. She was…kind of awful to me, honestly. But when I really needed some help, she just…helped."

"And me?"

"You and I have been really good friends," I said, "you helped me out a lot too, when I found out Chloe was dead."

A sharp pang my heart at that: I hadn't thought of Chloe's death in my world for what felt like a very long time.

Kate nodded and said, "I miss that. I miss you, Max. You and I used to be very close here."

I raised an eyebrow and she laughed.

"No, not like that, Max," she said, "I mean that we helped each other a lot, with what happened, well, there." She gestured back to the bunker entrance.

"I'm sorry, Kate," I said, "that's…I can't begin to understand what either of you went through."

"I'm just glad that the version of me in your world didn't have to experience that and that you didn't have to experience it either," she said, taking a deep breath, "it's been…a lot. And I still haven't been able to find forgiveness."

"Wait, for Jefferson?"

She nodded and my mouth fell open.

"But…why?"

"It's what I believe, Max," she said, "someday, I'll find it. Or maybe not." She paused. "It is strange to find out that he's still alive. And that he's in pain. Victoria says he deserves it. I'm not so sure."

"He thinks he deserves it," I said, "he told Maxine that it's poetic justice."

"Perhaps it is," Kate said, "but not my kind of justice."

"What is your kind of justice?" I asked.

"The kind that can't be dolled out by me or by any of us," she said, "maybe it's God's justice. Maybe it's something else. Do you think, if we manage this, that Maxine will keep them here? Or kill them?"

"No," I said, shaking my head, "if it's in her power, she won't."

"Then perhaps you don't believe in dolling out your own justice either," she said, "after all, Maxine only freezes people; they're stuck in time, completely unaware that they've been jailed. And I could see that even that pained her. That's one of the reasons I tend to believe you, Max. You see that in her: you want to help us escape but you want to free Maxine as well. You see in her what few others see."

"I just hope I'm right about her," I said.

. . . . .

Before I left, Kate asked me to help out by healing a handful of small injuries and by replenishing some supplies, the kinds of tasks that Maxine would handle in Arcadia Bay proper. I was more than happy to help and there were plenty of smiles as I made my way out of the bunker.

At the barn door, Kate gave me a tight hug and then, after I'd trudged over the muddy yard and nearly reached the fence, Victoria approached out of the shadows.

I sighed and said, "hi, Victoria."

"Listen, Max," she said with a voice like knives, stopping in front of me to block my way, "you may have everyone else in there eating out of your hand but I know what you're capable of. I know what you can become. What you can still become." She jabbed a finger at my chest. "And if you turn on us, I swear…"

Anger bubbled up inside of me and I took a step forward, letting her finger slam into my sternum.

"You swear what, Victoria?" I hissed, "don't you get it? I hold all the cards here. And the only other person with even close to the same hand is fucking Maxine. If I want to fuck you over, I can do it with a snap of my fingers. And I'm not going to fucking do it, Victoria. I'm not going to repeat what I said earlier because I know you heard all of it perfectly well. I get it, you hate what Maxine put you through and you hate what she's still putting you through. I'm not her. I'm on your side and if you don't believe it until you're through a portal to another universe, I'm fine with that. I've got my own Victoria to go back to and get snarked at. So fuck you, Victoria. I'm going to help save your ass whether you want it or not and if you want to make that more likely to happen, you'll help too."

My heart pounded and my breath came heavy.

Victoria stared at me wide-eyed and then smirked and withdrew her finger.

"Good," she said with a nod.

"Huh?" I said.

"You didn't try to fuck around with me," she said, "so even if you do screw us over, at least I'll have some fucking respect for you. And by the way, just so you know, no one's ever spoken to Maxine like that. We all walked on eggshells with her when she was blaming herself for destroying the world and shit and by the time any of us were legit pissed at her, we weren't in a place, literally, to call her out on her shit. Maybe she needs someone to bust her balls."

"She doesn't have balls," I said.

"You'd know, wouldn't you?"

I groaned.

"Nice talking to you, Max," she said, stepping around me, "now don't fuck things up. I guess we're counting on you, as terrifying as that is."

"Fuck you very much, Victoria," I said.

She raised a middle finger over her shoulder and said, "fuck you, too, Max. And good luck."

"You too," I said.

. . . . .

Word spread fast: I'd barely finished telling an excited Chloe about my encounter with Kate and Victoria before I started seeing the signs.

Everywhere I went, I saw the secret, extended-pinky sign of Kate from passers-by (as long as I wasn't with Maxine, that is). I received messages, written in cryptic ways, from takeout counters, artists, warehouse workers, construction workers, and even Joyce. The messages provided progress reports and instructions. I used the first set of instructions to drop off a copy of Maxine's evacuation plan.

A buzz of excitement thrummed through the town, palpable even to me. Naturally, that made me nervous that Maxine would notice. And she did notice, but attributed it to something entirely different…

During one of my evenings with her, while sitting together in the steamy heat of the Prescotts' sauna, Maxine put a hand on my leg and brought the subject up.

"Have you seen how excited everyone's getting?" she asked with a grin.

"Um, yeah," I said, trying to keep my heart from pounding.

"The dome is nearly complete," she said with a nod, "this time around, it's bigger and has far more powerful lights. It should really feel like a sunny day in there. I think they'll love it."

I had to stop myself from breathing a sigh of relief.

"It sounds amazing," I said. I then leaned in and dropped my voice, even though no one else was around, and asked, "but do you think it will be enough?"

Maxine glanced away and sighed.

"Maybe," she said, "it could be a start. The last time I did sun chambers, it did extend things by about a month or so. If this extends things further, it might be the start of a permanent solution. Some day, perhaps we can encase all of Arcadia Bay in a dome, letting us bring back day and night. It could finally be the answer, Max."

I nodded with a forced smile: Maxine still didn't understand (or refused to understand) that people missed more than just the sun. There were some things that none of us would ever able to fix.

. . . . .

Every night I spent at Maxine's, I experienced echoes of the strange dream I'd had before. Flashes of the original images would dance through my mind but there were two new scenes that repeated each time in sharp clarity.

The first one took place in a peaceful meadow filled with flowers and the sound of chirping birds: the doe statue, its chest cracked (I'd started to think of it as a broken heart), lay on the ground, broken and covered in moss.

The second one took place inside one of Maxine's photo tunnels: the doe statue stood next to me, its chest intact, as animals…squirrels, raccoons, birds, even a bear…fell out of the photos on the walls. The animals made an enormous racket but over all of it, I could hear Maxine's laugh: a laugh of triumph.

. . . . .

I managed to schedule another in-person meeting with Kate and Victoria, this time with Chloe. When we arrived at a shadowy clearing but before any of us could say anything, Kate and Chloe ran to one another and shared a hug, crying and laughing as they spun in a circle. Victoria looked on with a scowl until they stopped.

When we got down to business, Kate and Victoria outlined the basics of their plan...

Once we decided where and when we'd be sending the town's people through to another world, they'd spread the word. They estimated that all but around twenty of Arcadia Bay's residents were in their network, which was close enough to everyone for our purposes. Kate would use her powers to shield our evacuation point and we'd move everyone out as fast as we could.

Then we came to the matter of physical goods: Maxine had generated a thorough list of what to take along to another world and Kate and Victoria planned on following that list to the letter. We'd be raiding Arcadia Bay's banks, empty households, and Sean Prescott's secret bunkers for gold, certain piles of cash (which, according to Maxine's notes, would match up with cash destroyed in our target universe's Arcadia Bay), valuables, and supplies. Since those were all non-perishable goods that had very little use in this universe, Maxine had been ignoring them for years, which would allow us to gather them in advance without being noticed.

And then we began discussing where we'd place our evacuation portal.

"It needs to be somewhere big enough for about a thousand people to fit," Kate said, biting her lip.

"And somewhere convenient for people to access quickly," Victoria said, "and without drawing attention from certain individuals." She glanced at me and at Chloe.

"My place is big enough," Chloe said.

Victoria sighed and said, "did you not hear me or were you just not paying attention? It needs to be convenient and easy to access. Your sad punk hideout is really fucking far away. How do you think it would look to Maxine if she saw a line of a thousand people walking through the woods to your derelict of a home?"

"It's fog and forest most of the way, asshole," Chloe said.

"One hundred percent of the way?" Victoria asked.

"Well, no, but…," Chloe started.

"Exactly," Victoria said, "so it needs to be in town or very close by."

"The Blackwell pool?" Kate asked.

I shook my head and said, "no, Maxine has a lot of…pieces of time set up in patterns around there. If that many people came in or around Blackwell, she might notice."

"Might?" Victoria asked.

"Might," I said, "which, as far as we're concerned, means yes."

Victoria rolled her eyes.

"Hey," Chloe said, "so Victoria shat all over my idea but what about other places that have that whole, um, density thing?"

We all raised our eyebrows.

"Chloe might be on to something," Kate said, "I'm not sure I can conceal a really big building in the middle of town fast enough. But if everyone's going to a place Maxine can't observe already, that would be much safer."

"So where are the dense places?" Victoria asked, crossing her arms.

Chloe cleared her throat and said, "my sad punk castle, my sad junkyard, your sad barn, some places at Blackwell, which is just sad, plus a sad fuckin' spot at Overlook Park, and, um, Rachel's house."

"How the fuck do you know them?" Victoria asked, "you're the only one of us who can't sense those spots when you get close. Except for Kate, I guess."

Chloe shrugged and said, "I figured out the pattern then got Maxine to visit them over a few months and boom, she confirmed it for me without really catching on."

"And the pattern?" Victoria asked.

Chloe bit her lip and didn't look like she wanted to say anything so I spoke up…

"They're places that were important to Chloe and Rachel," I said, "um, except for the barn."

Victoria let out a sharp laugh and said, "damn, that bitch."

"What the fuck, Victoria?" Chloe said, her eyes hard.

"Oh, calm down," Victoria said, "I'm just reluctantly admitting that your ex-girlfriend or whatever is really fucking bold. Come on: that's basically her telling Maxine…and me too, by the way, to fuck off from her territory. How else do you explain that pattern? And how Chloe's powers work in those places but not the rest of ours? Except for Kate, I guess."

"I never met Rachel," Kate said softly.

"Sure you did," Chloe said, "just, you know, not when she was alive."

"Well, before we get into mushy history lessons," Victoria said, "it sounds like the best place would be Rachel's house. It's over near Nathan's house, right?"

"Yeah, but…," Chloe started.

"Then it's right in that woody neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from the center of town. And it comes with Rachel's fuck-you shield," Victoria said.

"But it's not very big," Chloe said, "I mean, it's big like, you know: rich-people-house big but not thousand-people big."

"I'm familiar with the neighborhood, Chloe," Victoria said, crossing her arms, "we obviously can't fit everyone in that one house. But the woods behind those houses would let Kate make a bunch of smaller hidden pockets, which are easier than trying to do one really big building, right?"

Kate nodded.

"And," Victoria continued, "the houses on either side can give us cover, too." She turned to Kate. "You think you can cover the other houses, too?"

"We'll go take a look later so that I can be sure," Kate said, "but I think so."

"Okay," Chloe said, "so we'll have a place with Rachel's fuck-you shield, Kate's cloaking device, and easy access to the town. So all we need is the exit."

They all turned to me.

"Um…," I started.

"You don't have it," Victoria said.

"Not yet," I admitted, "I think Maxine may have destroyed the journal pages where she wrote down where she hid it."

"Could she have destroyed the tablet?" Kate asked.

I shook my head and said, "she could have but I don't think she did. She clearly wanted to keep it as an emergency option so it isn't something she'd throw away. So she either hid it very well or destroyed it in one spot where she could rewind it back. Either way, I can find it."

"Yeah, well, hurry the fuck up," Victoria said.

"I'm not going to rush this, Victoria," I said, "if I start scrambling around and acting weird, Maxine could figure out that something's up."

"You know, that actually brings up a really good fucking question," Victoria said, "why don't we just go out into the open? This Max," she gestured at me, "has the rewind. And if Maxine's getting brain-old or whatever, why not just take her head on?"

Chloe, Kate, and I looked at each other.

"Victoria, we can't openly defy her until we find the tablet," I said, "otherwise she might get to it first and make it pretty much impossible to find. And even then, we don't know the full extent of her connection to this place; if we lose the element of surprise, we could find ourselves in a much worse place. And…I think there's something we're missing."

Kate furrowed her brow, Chloe raised an eyebrow, and Victoria asked, "What's missing?"

"I'm not sure," I said, "but I keep having the same dream: the doe statue with the broken heart, laying in the sunlight, followed by Maxine's photos with animals coming out of them."

"So? Stop doing weird shit before bed," Victoria asked.

"I think these images are from Rachel," I said.

"Perhaps we can try to interpret the dream," Kate said, "with more perspectives, perhaps we can uncover the meaning."

"Or, and this is an infinitely better idea: Max can find the fucking tablet and then we can worry about Rachel's bullshit," Victoria said.

"Dude, chill out," Chloe said, "all of this weird shit means something."

"Sure, and we can figure it out when it matters," Victoria said, "or Rachel can stop being fucking useless and just tell us what she means."

"I don't think she can do that, Victoria," Chloe said.

The two of them started arguing and Kate leaned over to me.

"Can you describe those dream scenes in detail?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said.

As Chloe and Victoria continued to verbally snipe at one another, I explained the dream. When I finished, Kate squinted and chewed at her bottom lip before speaking.

"I'll think about those images, Max," she said, "and I think you should too, whenever you have time. We'll figure it out." She smiled and patted my hand.

"Thanks, Kate, and I won't stop looking for the tablet," I said, "and now I'd better get Chloe out of here before her and Victoria try to kill each other."

The volume of Chloe and Victoria's voices continued to increase and Kate winced.

"Yeah," she said, "well, it was nice to see you again, Max."

"You too, Kate," I said.

. . . . .

I found the tablet five days later.

I'd love to say that I tricked Maxine into revealing its location through some clever wordplay…or that I used some Sherlock Holmes-level deduction to track it down. But it was far more mundane than that: while practicing my listening skills through Arcadia Bay's web of spacetime, I followed Maxine around from a distance and happened to catch a snippet of her conversation…

"No, Warren, I don't keep any of the old stuff with me. I store it all at my old house," she said.

Warren said something I didn't catch.

"No, trust me, no one gets in there without me knowing," Maxine said, "and no, the previous owners aren't complaining: I gave them that giant place across from the Prescott Estate."

I dropped the connection, my eyes wide: if Maxine had secured her version of our childhood home with her spacetime alarms, perhaps it was exactly where I needed to search.

I waited until Maxine was busy on the other side of town before time-stepping to my old neighborhood. I found it kind of funny as I stood on the sidewalk and stared up at the familiar door: I'd never even thought to visit this place since coming back to Arcadia Bay…and it still hadn't crossed my mind since I'd arrived in Purgatory Bay.

Having seen plenty of Maxine's alarm systems by then, I knew exactly what to look for. And the house had all of her bells and whistles: a maze of compressed slices of time wrapped around the outside and blocks of the same scattered throughout the inside of the house. Maxine's really clever trick was there too: strings of compressed time leading from door hinges down into the ground (which was how she'd detected when I'd entered the basement room with the dead Maxes, as I'd found out later).

I time-stepped into a safe spot in the house and it gave me a sense of tilted nostalgia as I looked around familiar rooms populated with unfamiliar furniture. I found a bunch of tablets almost immediately, all stacked in my dad's old office. I slipped past some time-slice alarms and looked through them: the portal one wasn't there.

I ascended to my old room, which someone had repainted forest green. Against one wall, Maxine had piled old photo albums, books, and decorations.

Still no special tablet.

Then I arrived at my mom and dad's old room.

I stumbled to a halt and said, "whoa."

The entire inside of the room contained a solid block of compressed space-time leading to a dozen different strands shooting up into the sky. It was the Maxine equivalent of Fort Knox…and right in the center of the empty room sat a tablet, face-down. I went down to the living room, right below the tablet, hoping that Maxine had left a gap where I could, perhaps, slip the tablet out of the room. But no, the block of spacetime extended down through the ceiling above.

I pursed my lips to the side: I had a strong feeling that the tablet above my head was exactly the one I was looking for. But I had to be sure before taking any more risks…

Using the time-view, I moved around a looked up through the fractures of space and time. It took an agonizing amount of time to get the view right but I finally got an angle that allowed me to see through the ceiling and to the surface of the tablet. It was the portal tablet; I knew it as soon as my eyes traced over a raised square in the center. I'd found it…but I had no way to get it out.

. . . . .

Chloe took my finding as a huge win. She waved away the problems and poured me a drink. I let her draw me into a celebration, something that resulted in a very pleasant evening. And when we told Kate and Victoria, Kate was ecstatic while Victoria…wasn't.

"What the fuck use is it if we can't get it?" Victoria snapped.

"We're a big step closer, Victoria," Kate said, "we'll figure something out."

Victoria rolled her eyes and though I agreed out loud with Kate and Chloe, I couldn't help but feel that things were closer to Victoria's perspective: I had no idea how to get past Maxine's alarms without her noticing.

Without any other options, I took to visiting my old home's living room on an almost daily basis, searching and searching for some weakness in Maxine's vault. And in those detailed, minute, and insanely close-in examinations of every fraction of an inch of the room above me, I discovered something…

With my time-view, I could see the details of the tablet: I could make out every little contour and see the etchings of symbols on its surface. In other words, I could see the tablet and its contents as if it were right in front of me. For a few days, I didn't think much of that; after all, I'd seen some of the tablet's symbols recorded in Maxine's journals already. What did it matter that I could now see the whole thing if I couldn't actually get to it?

But then an idea crept into my head: what if I didn't need the tablet? What if I just needed the symbols?

When the full potential of that idea hit me, my eyes went wide and I nearly tripped over three separate boxes as I twisted around to time-step away.

. . . . .

I burst into Chloe's lair, out of breath, and startled Chloe: she let out a yelp and spilled a mug of something all over her lap.

"Fuck!" she said, darting up, "Max, what's wrong?"

"Nothing…wrong," I said, leaning against the wall, "it's…wait, is that…tea?"

"Yeah, I mean no…I mean…Max, why are you out of breath?"

I held up a finger, took a few deep breaths, and steadied myself.

I finally said, "I ran really really fast from the front of the junkyard to here. I guess the exercises Maxine has me doing don't necessarily help with sprinting."

"Yeah, you should do some cardio," Chloe said with a nod, "so, what's up?"

"First, is that tea or not?"

"Yeah, fine, it's tea," she said, "it kinda fucks with my punk image but you and Kate got me drinking it, like, years ago now and I actually like it."

"That's adorable," I said.

"Okay, yeah, maybe. But seriously, what's going on?"

"Does a tablet have to be a tablet?" I asked.

"What?"

"Does a tablet, one of those stone magic tablet things: does it have to actually be a tablet?"

"Max, are you high?"

"No, I'm not high," I said, "I'm asking if they have to be a stone tablet to work. As in, if I wrote out the symbols from a tablet onto a piece of paper, would the paper version work?"

Chloe opened her mouth, closed it, frowned, and furrowed her brow.

"I…don't know," she said, "I don't think any of us ever considered that."

"So no one's tried it?" I asked.

Chloe shrugged and said, "we didn't really use the tablets after the whole, you know, world-ending shit, so no one really dug into it. And Maxine only ever uses her multiverse voyeurism one so no, I don't think anyone's tried it. Why?"

"Because I can see the tablet we want," I said, "so if it doesn't have to be a tablet…"

"Holy shitballs," Chloe said, her eyes going wide, "then we wouldn't need to steal the actual fucking tablet."

"Exactly," I said.

. . . . .

I had to be very careful testing this idea; if Maxine discovered what I was doing and had even the tiniest inkling that it could work, she'd likely destroy the tablet.

So I took a piece of sketchbook paper and, during one of Maxine's rounds of rewinding, I found her Voyeur-Tablet, as Chloe called it, in the photo tunnels. I used a pen to copy the tablet's symbols as exactly as I could into a sketchbook. Then I ripped the page out, folded it up, and put it in my pocket.

I time-stepped back to Chloe's pirate castle and found a quiet spot outside of its power-dampening dense zone.

With a deep breath, I unfolded the paper and used my power as I would on the real tablet.

I didn't expect it to work; there was something mystical about the old stone tablets that made them feel like they could perform supernatural feats.

But when I dialed in a particular universe, an image appeared in my little hand-drawn square at the center of the paper: versions of Chloe, Rachel, and I sitting on the edge of a dock with our feet in the water. It was the exact image I intended to find. I gasped, losing my concentration and making the image vanish.

It worked.

And that meant that it was all about the symbols. And that meant that I could steal Maxine's portal tablet without ever touching it.

. . . . .

Three days later, I tested my paper version of the portal tablet at an old shack outside of town, putting the paper tablet up against an old doorframe. For the test case, I brought a photo of a particularly odd universe, one in which Arcadia Bay had been hit by a meteor instead of a storm. The town had been thoroughly wiped off the map, replaced by a half-mile-wide crater and filled in by the ocean.

When I placed the photo on the paper portal tablet with a piece of tape, the doorframe hummed and groaned before a rippling scar opened up in the air and filled out to the splintered wood edges. I looked through: several feet below, gentle waves moved slowly over the ocean surface. I picked up a rock and tossed it through the portal; the rock sailed down and fell into the water with a plunk.

I nodded to myself and closed the portal.

. . . . .

"Here," I said, handing a rolled-up paper to Kate, "this is the portal tablet in paper form. It works, I've tested it."

Kate took it with fingers that trembled slightly.

"Why…why are you giving it to us?" she asked.

I glanced at Victoria, who stared at the paper with open shock, before I answered.

"There's no truly secure place where Chloe and I can hide it," I said. "Even at Chloe's house or the junkyard, Maxine could potentially sneak in when I'm not there and loop rewinds until she searches every little nook and cranny. And I can't keep it with me all the time…that would mean bringing it to her place and that's too big of a risk."

"What's to stop us from just using it?" Victoria asked, "we could get our asses out of here without you."

"You could," I said, "but that would mean leaving almost everyone else behind and I can't imagine either of you doing that."

Victoria just nodded in response.

"So now what?" Chloe asked, fidgeting.

"This was the last piece of the puzzle," Kate said, "so now we just need to decide when we do it." She looked to Chloe.

Chloe said, "Maxine's next retreat is in two weeks."

It was common knowledge in Purgatory Bay that Maxine took occasional trips by herself up to the lighthouse, where she'd stay for hours at a time. According to Chloe, Maxine would sit on the bench up there and stare out at the tornado, lost in thought. And because of her critical role in the town, Maxine planned those retreats in advance. We'd decided weeks before that one of Maxine's retreats would be the best opportunity for the town to slip away undetected.

Kate nodded and said, "then two weeks is when we'll go. Are you all in?"

"Yes," said Victoria.

Chloe nodded.

They all looked at me; I had my brow furrowed.

"You'd better not be having second thoughts," Victoria said.

"I'm not," I said, "it's just…I still feel like we're missing something."

"Well, you have two weeks to figure it out," Victoria said.

Kate put a hand on my shoulder and said, "and Max, if you're not confident, we can delay it. I'd rather us do it with confidence later than do it faster without."

Victoria opened her mouth but Chloe gave her a look and Victoria, surprisingly, closed her mouth.

I took another deep breath and said, "let's plan on two weeks. I'll think it over and if it feels wrong, I'll let you know, okay?"

"Okay, Max," Kate said.

After a few more minutes spent confirming our plans, Kate stepped away and Chloe started for the exit. I moved to follow but felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Victoria standing there, biting her lip.

"Look, Max, don't make a big deal out of this but I'm sorry, okay?" she said. "I'm sorry for not trusting you. You're trusting us not to screw you over even though we could, so now I can say that I trust you to not do the same."

"Thanks, Victoria," I said, "that means a lot."

"Oh, I know," she said with a smirk.

I smiled back and went to join Chloe.