I had the dream every night: the broken doe statue in the sunny meadow followed by Maxine's laugh as screaming animals poured out of photos. And as the planned date of our escape drew closer, my anxiety rose: Rachel was trying to tell me something important but I couldn't tell what it was.
And I had another issue: Chloe and I hadn't talked about any of our plans beyond the town's evacuation, and that included what we'd do about Maxine. I think we didn't really want to talk about it: there was a good chance that her and I would have to stay behind to keep Maxine at bay. In the only conversation we'd had on the matter, I tried to insist that Chloe go with the rest but she flat-out refused to leave either Maxine or I.
"And besides," she said, "there's already a Chloe where everyone else is going."
I still wanted to invite Chloe to come to my universe, where there was no Chloe. But I hadn't raised the courage to do it and I wasn't sure why. Her and I were basically in a relationship: we'd told each other how much we loved one another and how important we were to one another. But both of us still had attachments to Maxine. And both of us had attachments to different universes.
And time was running out. Because even though Kate said we would delay the evacuation if I wasn't ready, any delay would increase the chances that Maxine would discover what we were up to.
. . . . .
I finally decided to seek help from others to decipher Rachel's message.
Chloe and I spent an entire evening in front of a whiteboard in our underwear (Chloe insisted that being mostly undressed helped her think) trying to figure out what the dreams meant. We got nowhere (well, we did get somewhere but it had very little to do with the dream dilemma). The next day, I sat down with Kate for a couple of hours out in the woods and we talked it through. We got nowhere. Then I endured an hour of Victoria grilling me on the subject to try to knock it around and come at it from different angles. We got nowhere.
I briefly considered telling Maxine about the dreams…but she might figure out exactly what they meant and it could go very badly for us. But it ended up being Maxine that led me to the answer.
One of my nights with Maxine began with us painting along with a Bob Ross video while having pedicures (I'd started to wonder if Maxine drew words out of a hat to determine what we'd do together). We then had a picnic of cheese, fruit, and bread, sitting in the lattice cage of Arcadia Bay's power tower and surrounded by shuddering arcs of lightning. And we ended the night splayed out atop Maxine's enormous bed, fingers intertwined as we fell asleep with cool air wafting over sweaty skin.
I woke up with a jolt after having the dream. This time, it felt very real: I could smell the flowers in the meadow and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. And in the photo hallway, the screams of the animals coming out of the photos sounded oddly human.
Next to me, Maxine lay on her side, facing away. My eyes traced the curve of her hip and up to her shoulder, which moved up and down with her deep breaths.
I silently rolled out of bed and pulled on one of the silky robes that Maxine kept hanging behind the door. I snuck out, tip-toed down to the entry, and slipped my feet into my shoes.
Outside, I breathed in the cool, moist air, and walked out through a bank of fog. My watch told me that it was only 2am. And with streetlights casting halos through the mist and with dark clouds roiling overhead, it was one of those times where my brain agreed with the clock.
I passed by Rachel's house, its windows dark. It looked entirely dead and abandoned but Kate and Victoria's people had been preparing it for days: behind Kate's shroud, it was a hive of activity. They hadn't yet moved my paper portal tablet in but they'd set up where it would go: a doorway right off of the garage, which would allow people to file in from three different directions and provide enough space to wheel the heavier physical items through. And most of those physical items were already prepared: the yard of the next house over held an armada of shopping carts, wheelbarrows, and handcarts, all full of goods and cloaked under Kate's powers.
I continued on, strolling through more mist and fog to reach my destination.
When I slipped into the intersection that held Rachel's statue, I found it deserted (which made sense, given the hour) and I chose a spot out in front. I looked up, my eyes lingering for a moment on the red glow at her chest before I stared at the statue's closed eyes. The giant figure looked so lifelike that I could imagine that it was actually her, blown up to enormous size and peacefully standing in a moment of stillness, waiting for the right moment to open her eyes and smile.
"What are you trying to tell me, Rachel?" I whispered.
She gave no response.
I sighed and bit my lip; why had I even bothered to come here? I nearly stepped away when the briefest of shifts in the air warned me that I was about to have company.
Maxine popped out of the air, still fastening a robe around her waist. She looked around with wide eyes until she caught sight of me; her shoulders relaxed and she stepped over.
"Precious Max," she said, standing close and grabbing my hand, "is something wrong?"
I nearly said 'no' but shook my head and said, "I felt like I needed to come here."
Maxine looked up at Rachel's statue and nodded.
"I do too, sometimes," she said.
"Do you know why?" I asked.
"Rachel is, in many ways, the heart of this town," she said, pointing up to the red glow, "this whole place depends on that heart. And so do I, Max. So do we. Rachel and I are linked. Her powers and my powers are melded together. To what extent, I do not know. And I don't know how she relates to you, Max. It's something we will have to explore and uncover together. So perhaps that is why: Arcadia Bay, Rachel, and I are all one. One organism, in a way: the body, the heart, and the hand, I suppose."
She hadn't just made that up: I recognized those exact words from one of her journals. She'd referred to Arcadia Bay as the body, Rachel as the heart, and herself as the hand.
"Which one is the brain?" I asked.
I felt kind of dumb asking it, given that Maxine was stretching the metaphor already. But Maxine laughed.
"Both Rachel and I," she said, "like a left brain and a right brain. She would be the right brain and I've become the left brain, as it were. Information gets shared across the two to make this place work."
She shrugged and then took a step to the side, tugging on my arm.
"Would you come back to bed with me? The fire is warm but not as warm as my precious Max," she said.
But I was barely listening: what Maxine just said, about information shared across the two parts of the brain, unlocked what I'd been trying to uncover. It unlocked the dream.
"Oh, um, yeah," I said, giving Maxine a quick smile, "I think I'll just stay here for a few more minutes. I'll come soon, I promise."
"Perhaps you will," she said with a wink.
She vanished into a time-step before I could process her joke.
I turned back to Rachel, a cold fist clenching at my heart.
The meaning of the dream had become clear: even if we all escaped, the escape wouldn't be permanent. Why? Because Maxine would, through her bond with Rachel and Arcadia Bay, eventually discover the power that Rachel used to bring me here from another universe. And with that power, she could pluck us all back into this one. She could pluck anyone from any universe into this one. Maxine would never escape the trap of this place because she would feed it for all eternity.
And Rachel's dream had also shown how to prevent that eventuality: break the heart of the statue to release Rachel's spirit (or whatever it was).
But that wasn't all there was to it: I knew from Maxine's journals that Rachel's statue had been destroyed before but Maxine had rewound the event before Rachel could vanish.
And suddenly, I knew exactly why Rachel had brought me here: I had to stop Maxine from repairing the statue. And that meant that I either had to convince Maxine to allow her paradise to crumble or I had to remain here and hold Maxine at bay until it did. And if the latter, both her and I would almost certainly die.
"Well, fuck," I mumbled.
. . . . .
I did return to the Prescott Estate and slipped back into bed with a grinning Maxine. If anything, the revelation of how far her obsession could take her and how deep this place had rooted itself in her mind and soul made me feel for her even more.
Before, such feelings had nearly led me to share her goals. But now, they gave me a rock-solid determination to help her escape. Not only because I had to but because I had, in some odd way, fallen in love with this weird, crazy, and psychotic version of myself. I needed to save her.
For a few rewind cycles, I treated her with more affection and tenderness than I ever had, finally having the space in my head to acknowledge that nothing would be the same after the next few days. One way or another, my bizarre relationship with Maxine would be ending. And it was both practical and emotional for me to make sure that that ending had a strong foundation of affection. Would that make my betrayal of her worse? Perhaps, but I was certain I wouldn't be able to influence Maxine's decisions at all without this connection. And if I was perfectly honest with myself, a big part of me would miss Maxine.
After Maxine left for the day, I went and found Chloe. With just a look, I communicated to her that I'd discovered something important and we time-stepped to the junkyard.
Once ensconced in her cinderblock lair, I took a deep breath.
"I found out what Rachel's been trying to tell me in her dreams," I said.
Chloe's eyes went wide and she sat down.
"Tell me," she said.
"Both Maxine and Rachel present a problem: if we leave here without dealing with them, Maxine will eventually learn the power to bring people here from other universes. And when she does, she can bring back everyone who escapes. Or she can pick an entirely new group of people and bring them here. The cycle will just keep repeating. All of those people will be trapped and I can't even comprehend what it'll do to Maxine."
I knew that that last part would land on deaf ears with someone like Victoria. But for Chloe, it made her expression soften.
"Well, that's fucked but I guess it doesn't actually change much," Chloe said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"One way or another, we have to confront her," Chloe said. She sighed and leaned back, rubbing her temples before continuing, "Max, I didn't tell you this because we've been avoiding the topic but I was planning on offering to stay with Maxine. Just her and me, here with Rachel's ghost or whatever."
I nodded and said, "I was thinking of offering to stay as well."
Chloe sat up and said, "no, Max, you have a home. You should go there."
"You should come with me," I blurted out.
Chloe looked at me with an open mouth and then said, "you'd…you'd want me there?"
I tilted my head and said, "of course I'd want you there, Chloe. Why wouldn't I?"
"I…I dunno," she said, scratching her head, "because I'm still kind of a fuck up and because it would be weird as fuck since your Chloe is dead and shit, which means bullshit legal stuff or whatever. And, you know, I went along with Maxine's shit for a long time, which makes me kind of an asshole."
"Chloe, I love you," I said, taking her hand, "this place has been really weird but the time with you has been more amazing than anything I'd imagined."
"That's…that's kind of ironic to hear, actually," she said, tears building in her eyes.
"Why?"
"Because I said almost the exact same thing to Maxine back when we weren't sure those fucking tablets would work and we thought we were about to die," she said with a sniff.
I squeezed her hand.
"So…this wasn't just an interdimensional fling for you, Max?" she asked.
"No," I said.
She laughed as a couple of tears rolled down her cheeks.
"You know, I guess even after all of this time, I still think that everyone will abandon me," she said, "I guess I just assumed that you and I were having fun and that it would just…end. I mean, it still might, I guess, but…if you want me and if we can do it, can I come with you? To your world?"
"My world is way less badass without you, Chloe," I said, "I really hope you can come with me."
She nodded.
"Okay," she said, sniffing again, "okay. I just, wait a second…" She furrowed her brow. "...if I don't stay, then how do we get Maxine to not take everyone back someday? We're not…we're not going to kill her, are we?"
"No," I said, "but we do have to break Rachel's heart."
Chloe snorted and said, "now there's some karma."
"I mean that literally," I said.
"Yeah, I figured," she said, "and I guess I get it now: we break Rachel, this whole place starts to come down, Maxine tries to fix it, you're the only one who can stop her, and then you and I have to try to talk her down. And if not…"
We looked at each other. I opened my mouth but Chloe spoke first…
"Stop," she said, "I know what you're going to say. If you have to stay here to stop Maxine from fixing that statue, I'm not leaving. I don't care if you find some perfect universe for me or whatever. If I'm not going with you, I'm not going. And, honestly, I'm not going to abandon Maxine like that, either."
"But, Chloe…," I started.
"Nope," she said, holding up a hand, "if I know one thing about you fucking Maxes, it's that you'll do almost anything to keep my ass from dying. If I stand there and tell you both to shove it and Maxine realizes I'm going to get whacked just as much as she is, it might snap her out of it."
"It might take more than that," I said quietly.
"Doesn't change my answer," she said.
I squeezed her hand again, smiled, and pulled her into a hug.
"Oh, and I love you too, Max," she said into my ear.
. . . . .
When we told Kate and Victoria about the new elements in our plan, Kate's reaction was pretty much as I expected: she tried to get us to promise we'd escape. She came very close to outright saying that she'd rather have all of us brought back into Maxine's pocket universe than let any of us get killed. Both Chloe and I had to be kind but firm with her: it was our choice and we'd do everything we could to escape, but the freedom of everyone else meant more to us than our own lives. When we put it that way, it seemed to resonate with her; she hugged us both and wandered off to think on it, tears in her eyes.
Victoria's reaction was far more surprising.
She stared at us and waited until Kate left before sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose.
"I agree with Kate," she said, "you should get the hell out."
"Didn't you hear the part about Maxine dragging us all back?" Chloe asked.
"Of course I did," she snapped, "but if any of us still have our powers, we'll be ready for it."
"And if she takes the people from a different universe?" I asked.
Victoria opened her mouth, probably to say something like, "that's their problem." But she stopped and bit her lip.
"Fine," she said, "but if you both bite it, don't expect me to vote on building fucking statues of either of you."
"We love you, too, Victoria," I said.
She raised her middle finger at me, grinned, and left to find Kate.
"Always a delight, that one," Chloe said.
"If we make it to my world, you'll have a leg up on my Victoria," I said.
"Oh, I will take so much advantage of that," she said.
. . . . .
The day arrived.
A tangible excitement buzzed through the town, apparent even as people went about their normal morning lives, walking through the mists to grab coffee and breakfast on their way to jobs or classes that they'd be abandoning within the next few hours.
Kate and Victoria's group had planned every last detail of the evacuation and already had all of the supplies loaded up, from Sean Prescott's secret stash of gold bars to boxes of peoples' belongings. In these matters, Maxine's aloofness served us well: she never noticed that peoples' houses had been stripped of their most precious belongings. And ironically, most of the evacuation was following Maxine's own plan.
Heaps of food supplies had also been transferred over, carefully selected based on the partner of Maxine's rewind rounds so that she wouldn't notice.
And by the time Maxine left for her lighthouse retreat, people had already started stepping through the portal into the chosen universe, using a photo I'd taken a couple of weeks before.
I could imagine the scene in my head and it almost made me laugh: another Max and Chloe, standing hand-in-hand by the lighthouse and looking down over the utterly devastated Arcadia Bay, shocked and alone. Then, suddenly, Evan (our chosen first traveler) steps out of a rip in space and explains to them that nearly a thousand people with carts and wheelbarrows full of goods are about to start rolling down the path. I smiled at the thought of the other Max and Chloe's expressions and, truth be told, I intended on seeing them for myself: Chloe had been wary over my decision but I'd made a paper copy of the tablet that Maxine used to look into other universes. I made it clear to Chloe and made a promise to myself that I wouldn't use it to do anything like what Maxine had done…but I wanted to make sure that the people of Purgatory Bay made it.
Of course, that would depend on Chloe and I surviving over the next several hours, something that was still very much up in the air.
When Maxine time-stepped away after giving me a long kiss, I waited ten seconds and then time-stepped to Chloe's pirate castle. She'd spent the night gathering the things most valuable to her, which took up a surprisingly small box. She'd packed a set of liquor bottles that took up far more space.
"What?" she asked when I raised an eyebrow at the bin full of booze.
"You're technically still nineteen," I said.
"I feel way older," she said.
"That doesn't count," I said.
"So we'll stash it by the swing and come back for it later," she said with a shrug.
"Alright, alright," I said.
We brought Chloe's stuff to Rachel's house and peeked in at the ongoing evacuation: people were stepping one-by-one through a shimmering doorway onto a sunlit path beyond. Most of them carried heavy backpacks and pushed a cart or wheelbarrow in front of them. The lines moved steadily and peoples' faces held smiles, anxiety, and relief in equal measures.
As we walked along, people thanked me in low whispers and it nearly overwhelmed me. I found it weird to think that these people had experienced two different Maxine Caulfields and considered us heroes in very different ways. I was just glad that I wouldn't be sticking around long enough to become something else, as my doppelganger had.
And Maxine's history with Purgatory Bay had led me to my most controversial decision and one of the tasks that had to wait until Maxine was away...
"Are you sure you want to do it?" Chloe asked as we exited Rachel's house and moved back out to the street, "it will definitely make the Max in their new universe freak out."
"She's already going to be freaked out," I said, "and I think it will be healing for people to see them. They're a historical record of their world, a lot of which they have no memory of."
"Do you think they'll tell people about it? Outside of the Bay?" Chloe asked.
"I don't know," I said, "if they do, people will say they're crazy, for sure. But I hope they do something to remember both the good and bad sides of Maxine."
"Hence this crazy idea of yours," she said.
I nodded and said, "I wish I could take the photos, too. But there are too many. Far too many. But we'll still get a bunch from Maxine's albums."
"Does that include some of the porn?"
I scrunched my nose and said, "she'd call them intimate portraits, not porn, but yes, some. That's why I'm having Stella take them and give them to their new Max first, along with any other people that show up in those photos. It will be up to them to decide what they share."
Chloe chuckled and said, "that's a big group. You and I sure get around in other universes."
I rolled my eyes and time-stepped us to Maxine's library in Principal Wells' old house, where we loaded Maxine's journals and photo albums into wheelbarrows. The entire time, Chloe looked around with wide eyes.
"This place is really fucking creepy," she whispered, more than once.
When we finished, Chloe glanced out the door toward the stairs.
"Let me guess: you're not going to show me the crazy rooms or the dead Maxes?" she asked.
"If you really want, I'll show you," I said, "but I think it would be really hard for you to see those things."
"I trust in you, Max," she said, "and yeah," she shivered, "I think I'd like my memories of Maxine to not include those things."
"They're a part of who she is," I said, "but it's a lot of darkness and despair. I'm glad I have better memories of her."
"It's also weird how old this place looks," Chloe said, "it's fucking ancient. It, um, makes me wonder about things that I kinda don't want the answers to."
"Me too," I said.
We pushed the wheelbarrows along a circuitous route out of the house, a route free from Maxine's alarms. I'd found the path during one of my explorations of the house and figured that Maxine had made it so that she could move things in and out without setting off her own alarms. And I couldn't blame her: she'd showed me once what her alarms felt like when set off, a gong-like vibration that sliced through my head like a hot knife.
Back at Rachel's house, we handed the wheelbarrows off to Stella before Chloe left for one of her last tasks: finding something very big and sharp. I time-stepped down to the beach for one of the tasks that I'd been looking forward to least.
. . . . .
Whenever Maxine went on her lighthouse retreats, her most loyal companions spent the day down at the beach. And sure enough, that's where I found them: Warren and Megan, sitting in lawn chairs out next to a crackling fire. They both sipped at bottles and tossed rocks out towards the surf.
I didn't want to confront both of them at the same time; I knew it would be far harder to convince them of the truth if they could feed off of one another's loyalty to Maxine. And I wanted to start with Warren: his devotion to Maxine came from romantic affection and shared interests. Compared to Megan seeing Maxine as a personal savior, Warren didn't have nearly the same depth of loyalty.
My plan was to ask Warren for some help with something to get him away. But it turned out that I didn't need to: he got up, patted Megan on the head, and walked away towards the boardwalk, unzipping his pants.
I changed my direction and caught up with him right as he finished.
"Oh, shit, Max," he said, jumping and quickly zipping up his pants, "sorry, I didn't see you. How's it hanging?"
"It's actually a pretty difficult day, Warren," I said, keeping my voice soft, "and we need to talk…"
. . . . .
It took four rewinds to keep Warren from outright rejecting me, another five to convince him that Maxine had been lying, and another eight to get him on our side.
Oddly enough, the key was Brooke. It turned out that he'd been visiting her frozen form on a daily basis for years, talking to her about his doubts and sharing ideas that he couldn't talk to Maxine or Megan about. He'd been lonely in Maxine's inner circle, unable to have real conversations with anyone outside of it. It probably would've taken far longer for me to leverage the Brooke angle had it not been for a brief mention in one of Maxine's journals that Warren, in one timeline, had whispered Brooke's name as he lay dying during a revolt.
In the final version of our talk, Warren cried and I hugged him close. I told him that I'd be freeing Brooke and the others soon. He asked me what would happen to Maxine and I told him that I didn't know, but that Chloe and I would either help her escape this cycle or stay with her.
With tears still in his eyes, Warren nodded and accompanied me over to the fire to talk to Megan.
Megan grinned as we approached and then her face went deadly serious when she saw my expression and Warren's tears.
"What's going on? What's happened?" she asked, pushing herself to her feet.
I took a deep breath; this would certainly be one of the hardest parts of the day.
. . . . .
It was damn difficult.
If not for my quick reaction times, I would've easily been punched in the face, slashed with a broken bottle, and tackled, among other things. As it was, I barely froze time fast enough to avoid those outbursts. The problem was that even the idea that Maxine had lied and needed to be stopped sent Megan into a rage. At several points, as I languished in a rewind, I seriously considered just freezing Megan and dumping her ass through the portal. But I kept at it…
It took nearly a hundred rewinds. And if Warren hadn't been there to say a few key things, it could've taken a thousand.
In the end, convincing Megan required me to start with a sympathetic approach to Maxine: I described her struggles, her worries, and her state of mind. I had to build the narrative slowly, taking dozens of rewinds to find a pace at which I could reveal all of the details without hitting the point where Megan would throw her walls up. As I assembled the correct sequence of conversation, Megan's attitude progressed from confusion to sadness to horror…and eventually to anger.
That took me by surprise, the anger. In Maxine's journals, there had been no hint of what hid under the surface of Megan's life. And when Warren and I guided Megan into realizing for herself that Maxine had lied to her and trapped her here, her anger became like an avalanche.
She threw things, kicked at the fire, screamed, and tossed the chairs aside. I didn't mind too much since she finally wasn't trying to do those things to me.
It took some more coaxing to reveal the roots of Megan's rage: she had an older brother, a beloved grandmother, and a best friend that had all been outside of Arcadia Bay when the rest of the world was destroyed or cut off. Her relationships with those people, which had been at the center of her life, had decayed in the aftermath of her kidnapping by Jefferson, when she didn't know what had happened and had been consumed by depression. And after the storm, under Maxine's guidance, she accepted the fact that she'd never get to see those people again. She painfully accepted that she'd never be able to rebuild the relationships she'd once had…that she'd lost them forever. She'd gone all-in with Maxine instead.
But Maxine lied. There was a way for Megan to be with those people again and to bring back what she'd lost. And that enraged Megan because Maxine had encouraged her to let go of her old world and to embrace the new one as part of her healing process.
I hated the pain that I could see in Megan's eyes and hated that I'd brought it out. But it worked: Megan accepted what we told her and wanted to leave immediately, to cut in line and get out of "Maxine's cursed playground."
Warren and I held her back and convinced her to sit with her feelings for a while. Warren quietly promised me that he'd use his power to jump to me right away if Megan tried to do anything rash. And then he sat with her by the fire and they talked.
As for me, I had one big task left before the wait would begin…
. . . . .
"Look at this thing!" Chloe cried out as I approached Rachel's statue.
She grinned at me from over a rusty metal spike that was as long as she was tall.
"Where did you find that?" I asked.
"Junkyard," she said, with a satisfied grin, "I found it a few days ago but wanted to wait to show you."
I grinned back and said, "you're going to have fun with this, aren't you?"
"Yep yep," she said, "so, um, how'd it go?"
I sighed and said, "I just took a few rewind naps, if that tells you."
She grimaced.
I continued, "it didn't take a ton of rewinds to convince Warren but it took a lot to convince Megan. And now she's really pissed; Warren's staying with her to make sure she doesn't go try to stab Maxine or something."
"Damn," Chloe said, her eyes wide, "it's been a long time since Megan and I were actually, you know, real friends but yeah, she always had one fucking hell of a temper."
I nodded.
"So, time to do the other thing?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said with a wince.
"Hey, this is going to be way more uncomfortable for me than for you," she said.
"I know. But still, they're all going to think I'm Maxine. So…just keep David from trying to kill me before we can explain," I said.
. . . . .
At Maxine's time-jail, we stood in front of David Madsen and I swallowed at his grim expression.
"You know, we could just leave him here," Chloe said.
I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Are you cereal?"
She snorted and said, "no, the guy's a fucking douchebag but I wouldn't do that." She sighed. "Alright, let's get it over with."
With a flick of my hand, I unfroze him.
He blinked and shifted his weight back and forth before his eyes found me; his face instantly hardened.
"You," he said with a growl.
"Mr. Madsen, wait," I said, "I'm not Maxine."
"Don't try to fuck around with me…," he started, his voice going low and dangerous.
"Hey," Chloe snapped, drawing David's eyes, "I'm going to say this real fast because I don't want to say it but David, I'm sorry. I fucked up. Maxine lied to all of us and you guys were right. You were fucking stupid to do what you did but you were right. And this isn't Maxine." She jerked a thumb at me. "It's a different Max."
David's brow furrowed and he stood up straight, looking back and forth between us.
"Somebody better explain this," he said.
"We're leaving," I said, "going to another universe. There's a portal open at Rachel Amber's house. Maxine is off at the lighthouse for a few hours and we're using the time to get everyone out. Probably half the town has already gone through. I'm here to unfreeze all of you and get you out too."
David's eyes widened and he said, "have you secured sufficient supplies and scouted the…"
"Yeah, dude," Chloe interrupted, "this has all been planned out for weeks. There's food and money and belongings and all that shit. We even made sure your shit's there, too. And theirs." She gestured at the crowd of frozen people.
David worked his mouth for a few moments and then nodded.
"Assuming this isn't all some setup, what do you need me to do?" he asked.
"I'm going to unfreeze everyone," I said, "and I need you with me so they don't immediately think I'm Maxine and do something, um, murderous. Then we need you to lead everyone to Rachel's house."
"Is Joyce there?" David said, his voice strained.
"Yeah," Chloe said, "she's there. And look, when you go to this other universe, I'm not going to be there, okay? It's going to be a different Chloe there and a different Max so don't be a dick, alright? They won't know anything about what happened here."
David frowned but nodded.
"Alright," I said, "let's do this."
. . . . .
Chloe and I arrived at Rachel's house at the tail end of the crowd of ex-prisoners. We saw plenty of tearful reunions as the people who had been frozen for years found friends and family among the evacuees. When we found Joyce, I stood off to the side as Chloe said goodbye.
When Joyce gestured for me to come over, I felt like I was intruding…but Joyce pulled me into a hug.
"You take care of her, Max," she said, "keep her safe."
"I will," I said, unsure if that would end up being a lie.
Joyce joined the nearest line with David, who pushed a wheelbarrow and stared around wide-eyed, clearly shocked at the enormous effort underway.
After saying a few words to some of the former prisoners, Chloe and I left: neither of us had any more deep connections with the people of Purgatory Bay. They'd come to like us, for sure, given that we were helping them escape. But with me from another world and Chloe having spent years in the lonely gray area at the periphery of Maxine's inner circle, there wasn't much for us to say.
We did share a brief goodbye with Kate and Victoria, who continued to direct people through the portal. Kate looked like she wanted to say something else at the end but just gave us hugs and wished us luck.
And with that, we'd reached the end.
. . . . .
Chloe and I sat on the toes of Rachel's statue, staring out over the fog-bound expanse of Arcadia Bay. The storm swirled silently in the bay and lightning arced out through the dark clouds, lighting up the lattice of steel at the waterfront.
Lights twinkled from empty buildings gave the mists an orange glow; everyone had kept their lights on to make the town look as normal as possible: if Maxine looked out over the town from her vantage point, she hopefully wouldn't suspect a thing.
I checked my watch.
"When does she normally finish her thing?" I asked.
"Never before lunch," Chloe said, taking a bite out of a club sandwich she'd brought along, one of the last meals (if not the last meal) that would ever be made or consumed in this universe.
I didn't have nearly enough of an appetite to eat anything.
"So," Chloe said, "how d'you think this is gonna go down?"
I shrugged and said, "I don't know. In other timelines, Maxine kind of gets a resigned feeling, gives up on doing anything, and sort of lets things happen until a point of no return before she rewinds. But this will be different. People have never been able to leave before and as far as she knows right now, there's no way for her to bring them back. She'll be shocked and angry. And me betraying her plans is going to hit really hard. I can't predict how she'll respond to that."
Chloe nodded, took another bite, and asked, "so when do you want me to stab Rachel here?"
"Let's wait," I said, "we want Maxine to come straight to us here but we don't want to trigger that so early that there are still a bunch of people left. It should be about another half-hour before everyone's through."
"Alright then, you want a piece of sandwich?" she asked.
"You know, I think I will," I said.
. . . . .
A red laser light flickered three times on the knee of Rachel's statue: the evacuation was complete.
"You ready?" Chloe asked, standing up and stretching.
"Not really," I said, standing up with her, "but I guess it would be a little messed up if I was."
Chloe snorted and said, "good point."
She flexed her hands and stepped over to her big metal spike before glancing at me with a raised eyebrow; I nodded. She grinned and lifted her hands: the spike stuttered on the ground before rising into the air. Chloe bit her tongue and squinted as she moved her hands, lifting the spike and rotating it so that the tip pointed right at the statue's glowing heart.
"Okay, Max," Chloe said, "say the word and I'll get this party started."
I took a deep breath.
"Go," I said.
Chloe grimaced up at the statue's face and said, "sorry, Rachel, I hope this doesn't hurt too much."
With a grunt, she heaved her hands back, swinging the floating spike out so far that it partially vanished into a bank of fog. She then swung her hands forward and the spike slammed into the statue, sending shards of stone exploding out over our heads. We both waited, staring up at the spike embedded in the statue; nothing happened.
"Again," I said.
Chloe grunted again and swung the spike back out.
This time, the spike struck something else: along with more pieces of stone flying out, a sound like breaking glass echoed off of the buildings around us. Chloe and I looked at each other.
"Was that…?" I began.
A sudden wave of pressure rolled over us and we stumbled, catching ourselves on the statue. All around us, the invisible wave swept the clouds of fog and mist away. My ears popped and the sounds of wind and thunder broke through, followed by heavy, warm drops of rain that splattered down on us. We'd snapped the eerie silence of Purgatory Bay. And suddenly, the entire town was visible, including the monstrous tornado, which began inching toward the shore.
I clenched my jaw and looked out at the lighthouse, watching the beam of light cut through the darkness.
Then she arrived.
With an almost inaudible pop, Maxine appeared a few feet in front of us, her eyes wide and her hair already wet from the rain.
"What happened?" she called out.
She looked between Chloe and I, took in our expressions, and then took two unsteady steps back, holding her hands up toward us.
"No, no," she said, "no, not already. Not…not you, not you, precious Max."
She stared at me with tearful eyes and trembling lips.
"Why?" she asked, "why?"
For this conversation, there would be no rewinds, no do-overs, and no chances to take anything back.
I took a few steps closer to her, almost close enough to reach out and touch her.
"Because I love you, Maxine," I said, "and I love Chloe and I love the people here too much to let this cycle continue…and because Rachel brought me here to do this."
Her eyes went very wide.
"No, Max, no, it's not right," she said, "you can't…this place is meant to be. We have to rewind right now before Rachel dies. Her spirit can't survive out here. If she dies, everything will be destroyed, Max, everything. We can't let that happen."
"Yes, Maxine, we can," I said.
She laughed aloud and said, "no, no, Max, you don't understand. Everyone here will die. The Barrier is collapsing, the storm will come and whatever the storm doesn't destroy will be consumed by the darkness, the empty darkness from outside."
"Maxine," Chloe said, "everyone's already gone."
"What? That's not possible, you're lying," she said, turning a burning gaze at Chloe.
Then she looked at me, imploring, and I nodded.
"No," she said, "you couldn't…the tablet…I, I just checked yesterday and it's still there."
"How doesn't matter right now," I said, "but it's true. Everyone is gone. They went to the universe you picked, Maxine. They used the plans that you came up with. You saved them once already and now you've saved them all again."
She screamed with such sudden force that I took an involuntary step back.
"You fools," she shouted, "you've killed them! They'll all die! They've left eternity. How could you?"
"Because this isn't life, Maxine!" Chloe shouted. She shook water out of her hair and took a few steps forward. "Maxine, this place is amazing for about a year or two and then it becomes a prison."
"You've said that before, Chloe," Maxine said, locking her eyes on Chloe's, "you've said it many times before." She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them, looking up at the roiling sky. "It doesn't matter. I'll just repeat it all. I'll go back and I'll find a way to bring my family home. I'll go back to just before you arrive, Max." She looked at me, a wide smile on her face. "I'll take you in and it will be just you and me. Together, we'll share the love of this place. We'll plumb the depths of the universes and find out how to bring them all back. Without the others to poison your mind, Max, you'll be mine. And then we'll rewind for all eternity until we find the way to make them happy, all of them. None of them will hurt, none of them will die. We'll make it happen, Max. And you, Chloe," she snapped her head towards Chloe, "you will help us bring our family back. You'll help us over and over until we get it right. You'll help us bring them back into our love and you will love us too. Forever."
"You're crazy," Chloe said.
Maxine giggled and said, "of course I'm crazy, Chloe. I've been doing this for seven hundred and sixty two years." She giggled again. "And I will do it for millions more. Eternity!" She laughed.
Chloe and I looked at each other and I saw my own horror reflected in her eyes. Seven hundred and sixty-two years?
Then Max raised her hand, a manic grin on her face.
"Time to rewind," she said, "see you in the past, precious Max."
I raised my hand and as Maxine started to roll time back, I stopped her. Time outside of a bubble around us stood frozen. For a moment, Maxine looked at her hand with a confused expression and then looked at me.
"No," she said, her voice quiet.
"No!" she screamed.
Her eyes darted up to the statue, where glowing red wisps of…something had started to flow out of the cracked hole in the statue's chest. They were now frozen in place but the sight made Maxine tremble. She dropped to her knees, her hand still out and pushing on the fabric of time against me.
"Please, Max, please," she cried out, "we can't let this happen. This place must remain. It's meant to be. If we let it go, it will all have been for nothing. This whole world will be gone. All of it."
I glanced over Maxine's shoulder: the tornado had already reached the beach, cutting a furrow through the sand. And the roofs of the waterfront warehouses had been torn away, frozen in a swirling mass of wood and metal.
My rapid evaluation of the situation wasn't good: if I tried to expand our bubble of moving time to include those red wisps of Rachel, Maxine could stop me. She was putting every ounce of effort into pushing backwards and I was barely holding her at bay. It looked like we'd hit our worst case scenario: being stuck with Maxine in a frozen standoff.
"Maxine," Chloe said, wiping raindrops from her face, "look, neither Max or I are going anywhere. We're staying with you. And that means that if you don't let go of this fucking place, we're all gonna bite it. You, Max, and me. Boom, dead."
I watched Maxine's face carefully: her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. It nearly got to her, I could tell: her face seemed to relax and open and she blinked several times. She looked back and forth between us. But then her lips tightened and she stared off into space. She shook her head.
"No, we won't die," she said, "none of us, no one. We'll live forever, you'll see. It's fate."
"Fucking hell, Maxine," Chloe said, stomping her foot, "we can't just sit here forever."
"Oh, but we can, Chloe," Maxine said, staring at her, "but if we do die…" A twitch flashed across her face before she smiled. "...we'll die together."
Chloe's shoulders drooped and her entire face basically said, well, shit.
I bit my lip as Maxine started to sway back and forth and cry. This standoff could potentially last for hours, days, or even longer; it might even be possible for us to sit there for years. There had to be something that could dislodge Maxine from her delusion. Then I remembered what Victoria had said: no one had ever spoken to Maxine directly about their world being destroyed…
"Maxine," I said, my voice sharp enough to snap her out of a wail, "listen to me. This place isn't some kind of cosmic destiny, it's a cosmic accident. You feel responsible for the destruction of your world and so you latched onto this idea, the idea that this was all meant to be. And you did it to avoid an avalanche of guilt. It's understandable, Maxine, but it's fake: this place wasn't meant to be."
She looked up at me, her mouth open.
"No," she said, "you don't understand."
"No, I do understand," I said, "and this is what you need to hear: you destroyed the world, Maxine. That's on you. You took a gamble to save this town and you succeeded…but the cost was everything else."
She buried her head into the crook of her elbow and screamed.
I dropped down in front of her and put my free hand on her shoulder.
"Maxine!" I shouted, drawing her head up, "you accidentally destroyed the world! You have to accept that. You have to accept that this was all an accident. And you have to forgive yourself."
Teary eyes shone out of her rain-splattered face and she shook her head.
"I can't," she said, "I can't forgive myself."
I opened my mouth but another voice cut in.
"I forgave you," it said.
Kate appeared out of thin air, crouching down right next to us. Maxine's eyes went wide and she scooted back, her shoes squeaking on the wet concrete.
"Y…you," she said, "no, no, you can't say that. You don't know what I've done. You can't forgive. You can't."
"Yes, I can, Maxine," she said, "because I've been reading your journals for almost two years."
My eyebrows shot up.
"How?" Maxine asked.
Kate smiled and leaned closer, setting a hand on Maxine's arm.
"I watched you, Maxine," she said, "I watched you a lot. I saw you move some things in and out of Principal Wells' house so I knew what path to take. I expected to get caught but I didn't. So I read and read and read some more. I know what you did, Maxine, more than even Max and Chloe, I'm sure. But either way, I forgive you."
"But…why?" Maxine asked.
"Because you were my friend, Maxine," Kate said, "and you have a good heart. You got lost, and I don't believe in letting a lost person go."
Chloe knelt down with us.
"I'm sorry, Maxine," she said, "Kate's right. I forgive you too; I only hope you can forgive me."
Maxine stared at Chloe and then started to laugh. She threw her head back and laughed toward the sky, tears streaming from her eyes. She laughed so loud and at such a high pitch that it sounded almost like a scream.
I looked frantically from Chloe to Kate but they both watched Maxine with confused and worried faces.
Then Maxine looked up at Rachel's statue and her laughter slowed to hiccups.
"You bitch," she said, her eyes unblinking, "you did it. You actually did it." She giggled. "You probably thought I forgot about it, don't you. Tell me the truth, Rachel, tell me the truth. It's what I asked. It's what I demanded." She laughed again. "I thought you'd abandoned me, left me alone to wallow in my miseries, those centuries ago. Then I thought you'd forgotten. So was that a shade of the truth, your silence? Could you just not tell? Not then? Did you not know?"
The red mist above remained frozen, the statue remained still, and no apparition of Rachel or a doe appeared.
"So this is it, isn't it?" Maxine asked towards the statue, "the truth. The truth I demanded: we fucked up. We let it go on for too long. And I…I became what I despised, didn't I?" She laughed again and tears rolled down her cheeks. "You've probably been trying to tell me for a long time. And I ignored every sign. Every sign." She sighed.
She turned to Chloe, Kate, and I, her eyes widening as if she'd forgotten we were there. She fixed her eyes on Chloe and reached out, tracing her fingertips on Chloe's cheek.
"I love you, Chloe," she said, "I…I think I forgot that."
I squeezed Maxine's hand and she looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Maxine," I said.
She stared at me, her face going through several shifting expressions before her entire body went limp and she slumped down.
"No," Maxine said, "you're right, all of you. A long, long time ago, I asked Rachel to tell me the truth about this place. She didn't. Maybe she couldn't…or maybe she hadn't figured out how. Or maybe I wouldn't have accepted it then. And now she's sent you…all of you, in a way." She looked at Kate. "You're right, Kate, I'm lost. I lost sight of…of everything. And now I'm broken. I'm broken in ways that none of you can understand. I don't even understand them myself. I…I need to let go. There's…comfort, I think, in knowing that the people from here will survive and thrive somewhere else. I just wish that some tangible pieces of this place could survive."
"Actually, we thought of that," I said, "we, um, kind of stole all of your journals and photo albums and sent them through."
She raised her eyebrows.
"You did?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "I'm sorry we couldn't save all of the photos you took. Trying to do that might have…alerted you that we were up to something."
"It would have," she said with a small smile, "so…there will be more than just memoires. That's…that's good."
"Will you come with us?" Kate asked.
Maxine shook her head.
"No," she said, "it pains me more than I could ever put into words but I will help you make sure that Rachel leaves the statue, before I have a chance to change my mind or before my mind has a chance to change me. But I have two conditions: first, all three of you will depart as soon as this place is doomed. None of you will stay. Go to whatever universes you picked. And second, unless you knew and already took them, Sean Prescott and Jefferson are alive and they must remain here. I cannot allow them to escape into some other world. There are already enough of both of them out there."
I shared a glance with the others.
"Um, we did know they were alive but I think we kind of forgot that they were here," I said with a wince.
"Wait, wait, wait," Chloe said, holding her hands out, "Maxine, we're not leaving you here to die. You need to come with one of us or pick some other universe to go to."
Maxine laughed and said, "I'm sorry, Chloe, but that's one of the conditions. I'm staying here. I'm…tired, very tired. And it's time. Besides, I have a couple of promises to keep."
Chloe opened her mouth to object but Maxine raised a hand.
"Remember, I've been alive for more than seven hundred years, Chloe," she said, "and I feel it. No matter what world I picked, I would bring too much baggage. Too much insanity, really." She chuckled. "So no, I stay. It's poetic justice."
We all opened our mouths.
"Stop," she said, "I've forgiven myself as much as I can. But I've been extending my life for as long as this place has existed. That's my condition: you leave me here. Or you risk dying yourselves. Or you leave before Rachel's done…and if you do that, I can't guarantee that I won't lose what little sanity I have left and fuck the whole thing up."
Kate looked aghast but Chloe slowly nodded.
"Alright, Maxine," she said, "I accept. I don't like it but I haven't lived in your really, really old shoes."
Maxine managed a tiny smile.
"Let's do this now," she said, her voice like cold iron.
We all stood up.
Maxine and I nodded at each other and raised our hands. Our bubble of time expanded out and the wispy pieces of Rachel's spirit began moving again. They poured out of the hole in the statue like wind-driven mist, pulling into a roiling pink and red sphere before spinning into a blur and fading away into nothingness.
In the last moment, I could swear I heard a whispered, "thank you."
Then it was done.
Maxine dropped her arm and sighed, closing her eyes and hanging her head.
"Alright," she said, "when Max and I release everything, the Barrier will be gone and the storm will come. Nothing can stop it now. The quanta will start fusing and you won't be able to time-step if you're heading anywhere into the town. So if you forgot anything, leave it. But…maybe don't forget about me."
"No way, Maxine," Chloe said.
"Not a chance," Kate said.
I shook my head.
Maxine cautiously approached Kate and Kate held her arms out; they hugged.
"I've missed you, Kate," Maxine said.
"I've missed you, too, Maxine," Kate said.
"Are you going somewhere where there will be a Max?" she asked.
"Yes, it's the place you picked for us," she said.
"Good," Maxine said, "make sure she treats you right and buys you a lot of tea."
"I will," Kate said.
Maxine approached Chloe and they shared several whispers. They touched their foreheads together briefly and then Maxine came over to me, leaving Chloe with tears in her eyes. She looked at me with tired eyes, her face lined with resignation…but also relief: a queen reluctant to put down her crown but ultimately glad to do so. She grabbed my hands; hers were cold and wet.
"Max," she said, "I kind of hate you, to be honest."
"I understand," I said.
"But I love you, too," she said, "perhaps more now than before. You've set me free; forced me out of the cage I built for myself. I suppose I should thank you."
I pulled her closer and said, "I'm sorry, Maxine, I wish it could have worked out the way you wanted it to and I wish I could've spent more time with you…but I don't think that was ever going to happen."
She sighed and said, "I think part of me knew that, Max. But I think that part of me had accepted the endless struggle as a penance for what I'd done to this world. A lifetime sentence for a life that would never end."
"And now?"
She smiled and said, "and now you've come from another universe to release me. I guess I should thank Rachel, too."
I nodded, starting to feel a growing strain in my mind as I continued to hold time frozen…it hadn't felt difficult before and the sensation surprised me.
"Do you feel it?" Maxine asked, "the fusing? The ease of it slipping away?"
"Yes, but why?" I asked.
"Time doesn't work the same here, remember," she said, "and with the Barrier gone, everything is moving, even in frozen time. And that means it's time to say goodbye."
"Maxine," I said, gripping her hands tight, "are you sure you won't come with one of us? Isn't there a universe you can go?"
She laughed and said, "I found thousands of different universes where I could retire to, as it were. But no, I have a promise to keep here and then I'm done. Done with universes and time and all of it."
"But you'll die," I said.
"So will you, someday," she said, "and in the end, I'll have had a longer lifespan than anyone; I'm not sure I can recommend it. Now, no more delays. You have to go. It's time for us to let go and allow this purgatory to be consumed."
"Okay," I said.
I breathed out as both Maxine and I let go: time rushed forward and heavy drops of rain lashed at us once more. The roar of the storm came upon us again, rising up among claps of thunder. Maxine smiled and looked up.
"It'll be something, to see the end of a universe," she said; then she turned to me, "now, get the fuck out of here."
She began to step away, her hands sliding out of mine. But I lunged forward and pressed my lips to hers for a long moment before letting her go.
"Goodbye, Maxine," I said.
She smiled, spun around, and walked off into the rain towards Blackwell.
I turned to Chloe and Kate; both of them stared back at me, their clothes and hair already drenched again.
"You know," Chloe said, almost in a shout, "that'll never be not weird, you making out with yourself."
"I know," I said, feeling my cheeks heat up.
"It's sweet…in a strange way," Kate said, furrowing her brow.
"Alright, as much as I love making fun of the weird shit Max does, I think we're gonna get our asses shredded unless we go right now," Chloe said, gesturing at the storm.
I looked out at the bay: the tornado had crawled fully onto the beach, spewing sand into a lethal cloud of grit and sending pieces of docks and warehouses flying inland. One such piece, a long shard of metal siding, flew over our heads and embedded itself in the stomach of Rachel's statue.
Without another word, we ran.
In rain that came at us sideways, we rushed down streets littered with debris and ducked down as pieces of buildings tumbled overhead. Chloe reached Rachel's house first and yanked the door open. Inside, the wind howled and the walls creaked and groaned. Lights flickered and then died. The Ambers' furniture had been shoved off to the sides to make room for the lines of evacuees, and those evacuees had left crumbs, wrappers, tissues, and all sorts of detritus on the hardwood floors.
"Come on!" Kate yelled, pointing at the door to the garage.
"One second!" both Chloe and I called back.
Her and I ran upstairs and ducked into Rachel's room. Chloe and I had placed our most valuable items (not that I had many) into backpacks there. We pulled them on and hurried for the stairs. Chloe paused for a brief moment to touch her fingertips to a board by the door; she'd already taken the photos that had been posted there but it was where Rachel and her had pinned photos of their future dreams together. As we started down the stairs, a deafening rip shook the house and part of the roof above our heads tore away. We both screamed and hurled ourselves down the stairs as shingles and rain poured into the hallway behind us.
In the garage, Kate stood next to the portal, which showed a path on the other side still crowded with Arcadia Bay's residents, all working their way down the hill towards the destroyed town. My breath caught in my throat as I caught sight of that universe's Max and Chloe, looking wet and disheveled and utterly taken aback at the influx of people that had, only a few hours before, been dead in their world.
"Alright, Kate, we're here, get going," I said.
"Thank you, both of you," she said, "none of us will ever forget you."
We shared brief hugs before she ran through the doorway, pulling a suitcase behind her.
"You think there's anyone else?" Chloe asked, raising her voice above the din of the storm.
"If there are, they're screwed," I said, crouching down at the paper portal tablet.
With one last glance into the sunny universe in the doorway, I yanked the photo out of the square on the paper and the portal flickered and vanished, showing a closed door behind it. Behind me, Chloe yanked a tarp off of a pair of wheelbarrows and rolled one over. I fished in my pocket and pulled out a photo of my home universe: the swing in the clearing, only a couple of minutes after I'd been pulled away.
"Chloe," I said, "this is the last chance to go anywhere else. Are you sure you're okay coming with me?"
"Okay?" she asked with a laugh, "it's exactly what I want, Max. You still sure you want me there?"
"Of course, Chloe," I said over my shoulder.
I focused in on the paper symbols, stuck the Polaroid in the square with a piece of tape, and raised my hand. The doorframe next to the paper rippled and the portal opened, showing the tree and the swing, peaceful and quiet under the sun.
In our current universe, pieces of houses clattered on the road outside as the wind picked up.
"Go!" I shouted.
Chloe didn't argue. She heaved her wheelbarrow up and pushed it through the doorway, vanishing into my world. I hurried to the other wheelbarrow, heaved it up, and ran for the portal. The roar of the wind flared as the roof of the garage rattled and began to fall apart. A glance up through a new gap in the roof showed the swirling mass of the tornado, with flashes of blue lightning tearing throught the sky. The entire garage seemed to tilt and sway and I screamed as I hurled myself through the portal.
. . . . .
On the other side, my scream suddenly felt incredibly loud and I choked it off. Chloe sat on the ground by the tree, her arm on her knee as she caught her breath. She grinned at me and started laughing.
I grinned back and looked over my shoulder: the rectangle of the portal shuddered and then vanished as pieces of wood and concrete flew past.
I dropped down onto the grass next to Chloe and started to laugh with her: we made it.