Deception in the Depths

I

A False Start

SPOTS.

PAIN.

WAKE UP.

***

The smell of frying eggs woke me from my dream. I couldn’t quite remember what it had been about. I thought it involved a wedding. Not sure why my brain decided that should be the setting for my nighttime travels. I hadn’t been to a wedding in… three years? I didn’t know, I don’t keep track of those things. Also, I’m bad with dates. But my point stands—it’s weird my brain was thinking about weddings.

I tried to sift through my thoughts to get an answer. Too late. The memory of the dream had slipped away. I was seriously tempted to just roll over and try to fall back into peaceful oblivion. But the smell of breakfast won out.

I drowsily pulled myself from my bed. I was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, but I made no move to change them. Food first. Always food first.

I slumped down the stairs to the main floor of our comfy suburban home. I could just make out the sizzling frying pan over the blaring music. I followed the sound into the kitchen, my eyes still heavy. Ryan was cooking, of course. Ryan, my oldest brother, looked a lot like me. He had the same dark blue eyes and pitch-black hair. The big difference was that he could make his work for him. Okay, maybe it looked just a bit greasy the way that he slicked it back, but it worked with his style. Even now, in an old white T-shirt and thin gold necklace, he was pulling it off. In contrast, my bristly hair could never be managed into anything remotely fashionable, so I just gave in, cut it short, and let it stand on end.

Ryan turned over the omelet. He had been awake for a while, it seemed. But he was always up first. And he made it his personal mission to cook breakfast every day. It wasn’t just that he liked to cook, he had some weird, demented attitude towards mornings. He liked them.

“Morning, Blake,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

I mumbled a reply. It was the best I could do given the hour.

“What’s that? I didn’t quite catch you,” he said sarcastically.

“Then you need to turn the music down,” I retorted.

He chuckled but made no move to turn the knob on the stereo. As usual, Ryan had classic rock belting from the speakers. His taste in music was at least a generation behind, not that he cared what others thought of it.

“Get it while it’s hot,” Ryan said as he set a plate on the table. “Most important meal of the day,” he emphasized with another cliché. He seemed to like those in the morning. Saying them was his birdsong.

I scarfed down my omelet in seconds. I barely caught a snippet of Tanya’s “how can you even taste it?” as she sauntered into the kitchen. My mouth was too stuffed to explain that I was merely concentrating the flavor into a single, intense experience—multiplying the yumminess factor—before Carter and Riley trickled in and completed the Anthony sibling reunion.

We were a perfect statistical set—a series of coin flips. Ryan, the oldest, was male. Then our parents had their first girl, Tanya. Then another boy with Carter, a girl with Riley, and finally, me. Shockingly even. You know, if you ignored the fact that we were an odd number in total.

Sometimes Tanya joked that the only reason mom put her career on pause long enough to have this many kids was to make sure there were enough siblings to raise each other. Mom was a software designer, and Dad a legal consultant, both working for large firms, and both had left the house before even Ryan was up. Often, it wouldn’t be until after dinner that they would make it home. It was a good thing Ryan could cook.

I had missed the crew. This last year, the house had felt oddly empty. Coming home to finally have some privacy was really nice at first, but it got dull fast. Kennedy’s frequent search for anywhere else to be besides home staved off a lot of the loneliness.

I wrapped up that last thought as the volume hit its peak. In one corner, Tanya was observing that Ryan’s breakfast was yet again too high in cholesterol, and he loudly protested “the dictatorship of nutritional facts.” Meanwhile, Carter was informing… someone (whoever he had been talking to had stopped listening) about how important his upcoming year in law school was going to be. And Riley was apologizing to someone on the other end of the phone for the “atrocious muzak” in the background.

I just barely heard the doorbell over the commotion, probably on its second or third ring.

“Blake, help a guy out, would ya?” Ryan called over Tanya chewing him out for some particularly dismissive comment he had just made. She was clapping her hands together, nearly in his face, for emphasis. He, on the other hand, was laughing.

I grinned at the all-too-familiar scene. Serious Tanya trying to wrangle one of us, but easy-going Ryan stealing the spotlight. I slipped out into the hallway and towards the front door. When I saw who it was, I pulled it open without concern, even though I was still in yesterday’s clothes.

“Hiya, Heidi,” I said.

Heidi was short, 5’2”, with eternally windswept brown hair. She smiled and answered back, “Hiya, Blake. Is Ryan ready to go?”

Two days. It had only been two days with the whole family. Now it was already time for Ryan to leave. The friendly exchange at the door seemed to have sapped some of the color from the outside.

***

HOW—?

HOW DID I GET HERE?

THINK.

***

Boom!

The deck of the assault carrier rocked. It was sudden, out of nowhere, and I almost lost my footing. People rushed around in clumps, just a touch of order to their scurry. The deafening roar and blaring alarms obliterated any structure to my thoughts, though. Just down the deck, a pillar of flame and smoke boiled up into the atmosphere. It choked the air and stained the crystal sky.

We were under attack? It didn’t make sense. Anarakia had been pushed out of Aechyr. Time Peace was cooperating with the Aechrian government, beginning to form an alliance. Everything was settled, the adventure over. We had control of these waters. And what had even hit us?

I looked out across the cerulean sea, but the only blot in it was the island of Aechyr itself. We were alone in these waters. But clear as day, something had exploded on the, uh, starboard side of our ship.

The assault carrier was like a miniature aircraft carrier, servicing helicopters up top, and landing craft below. I didn’t know where everything was, so I couldn’t tell if this was some sort of accident. But somehow, I doubted that the spot three-quarters back on our starboard side was prone to spontaneous combustion.

I just froze. In the middle of the deck. I had no idea where I was supposed to go, or what to do. What had a moment ago been a clearly organized, well-oiled machine was now a canvas colored with confusion. The crew was too busy trying to handle the situation to give instruction to me—I was just a passenger in their eyes.

I was breathing too hard and too fast. Then I spotted David, our team leader. He’d know what to do, but he was crouched near the edge of the deck. Was he hurt?

I hadn’t even finished the thought before I was sprinting over to him. I grabbed on and pulled him to his feet in a scramble. David was a little on the short side, with a wave of brown hair left a bit shaggy, and warm peach-colored skin. He looked a bit younger than he was, but his sea green eyes seemed to have endless experience behind them.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“Something hit us,” he replied simply.

“Out here? What could?”

Almost immediately after, as if to answer my question, a submarine breached the surface of the water to our starboard. It looked far away, no bigger than my thumb at this distance, but I knew it was way too close. Its black, rounded nose flew out of the water at a near-45-degree angle with such speed that it looked like it was going to leap into the air. But instead, it crashed back down, sending up a huge spray of foam as it belly flopped onto the surface.

I was still gaping at the breaching sub when David said, “Get the others!”

I snapped out of my reverie, spun around, and called, “Kennedy! Get over here quick! We got trouble!”

Across the deck, Kennedy turned and saw me. Immediately, he set off and rushed towards us.

“What’s the situation?” he asked, and then he glanced up towards the water. “Is that a submarine?”

“And now you’re up to speed,” I said.

“Anyone see Randy?” David cut in.

Kennedy had already been scanning. “No. I think he said something about visiting the mess hall.”

“Galley,” David corrected.

“Well then there’s a good chance he’s lost,” I replied lightly. Kennedy glanced over sharply. “Navigationally,” I hurriedly clarified. “Not like, lost-lost.”

Even though we didn’t like Randy, I felt a little queasy at the thought of the last member of Dark Eye being suddenly snuffed out.

“Hey, runts!” came a booming voice. A bald giant with weathered coffee-colored skin was shouting towards us. Thomas Madding. He was already suited up in his Theta battle gear. Thetas were the military arm of Time Peace. The blunt arm. And at that moment, Tommy’s normally friendly face fit the part.

“Fall in, now!” he ordered. Kennedy was at his side first, David and I barely behind him.

“We’re going down,” Tommy explained.

“We noticed,” I dared to say.

“No, all of us are going below,” Tommy replied curtly.

***

IT HURTS TO THINK.

BUT I HAVE TO.

REMEMBER WHAT I AM.

***

It was October. The small café near Aechyr Academy was a warm bonfire sheltered from the brisk wind. Padded and furry coats brushed past each other, making the small room seem like a den for overgrown critters ready to wait out the winter.

I had marked out my territory with a pile of books, which threatened to spill over the corner table. Most were on Aechrian history. Together with the minidisc of iconic Aechrian music and a few popular movies from the country, they should have helped me acclimate to Aechyr. That would be crucial in my training to be a useful Time Peace agent for David. To my tutor, they were valuable study aids for getting me caught up in Civics.

“Now you’ve got it,” Quincy assured me. As usual, she was poised and composed, making her wheelchair seem like a throne. Her hair was always delicately done up, and now her careful emerald eyes were checking just how close to the proverbial ledge I was.

“Wait, wait, wait. But then the Cardia Accords were pointless,” I said impatiently. “Didn’t the senate want to keep the King away from the military? So how come they still swear oaths to the crown?”

“Because technically, the monarch is still the commander-in-chief,” she admitted plainly before hastily adding, “However, that duty is traditionally delegated away. Besides, the Crown has the Royal Guard under their command.”

“What?” I actually grabbed my head at that. “How backwards are we getting? We don’t want the Crown to have armed forces, so we give it armed forces? Ah, forget it.”

I threw my hands up as Quincy examined me from behind her thick black glasses. After a moment, she pushed the disc with her curly handwriting closer to me, tapping it softly.

“It takes time. Exposure,” she quietly suggested. “But you can understand this. Your questions prove it.”

“No, I really can’t, because none of this makes the tiniest bit of sense,” I insisted from my slumped position.

“There are a lot of people who don’t think it makes sense,” Quincy said with careful restraint. “I’d start by saying what I’d say to them. No matter what you think of the institution, it is deeply embedded into our nation. Our government, our legal system, and yes, our military, and it has worked.”

“If it really works, it should make sense,” I insisted.

“Oh, really?” she said, tilting her head back a little. “So you’ve got the whole world figured out, then?”

Challenged, I sat up myself. “Now hold on a minute, that’s not what I said. If something works, that means it’s like in sync with reality. Reality has rules—if something works, it’s playing by the rules. If it plays by the rules, it makes sense. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Work, I mean. Whatever, you get my point.”

“Is it that it doesn’t make sense, or that it’s not what you expected?” Quincy asked, peering over her coffee to hide an enigmatic smile.

“I expect things to make sense,” I replied sullenly.

“But that’s just why you’re frustrated now.” She looked triumphant. “Because you expect to do well here. Yet it also makes sense to struggle with a foreign nation’s culture and history.”

I scoffed in astonishment. “That’s not even close to true. I do not expect to do well with this stuff. I’m no straight-A student. I got B’s in history, B’s in geography, B’s all over social studies, in fact.”

“Bees in your bonnet,” she teased. I threw up my arms and looked around in astonishment, puffing up for a retort.

“Relax, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she laughed, waving as if to contain my little outburst. Catching her breath, she assured me, “But this is my point. It’s normal to experience turmoil when you don’t find what you expect. There’s a reason, a sense, to it. A lot of untrodden paths are short lines to sudden stops. One wrong step, one cog out of place can cause everything around you to come crashing down. The world’s a lot more delicate than most realize.”

Oh man, did that hit home. It was like my own theory: good change has to be built up, but disaster can strike in an instant—one snap of the fingers, and suddenly it’s all gone.

Sudden and unexpected. They made a natural pair. And that was what this whole war was about, wasn’t it? Aechyr is on one of a whole bunch of other timelines out there. Each parallel Earth diverged from another timeline at some critical point in history (or is it histories?). At a flashpoint like that, the entire world can change with a single act or decision if a Timeless intervenes.

And Anarakia loves to make new timelines. Anarakia, the cabal of maniacs looking to control and exploit the timelines, outnumbers Time Peace four to one. Bottom line, more timelines to fight over means more timelines for Anarakia to win. And you don’t want them to win. Stop the flashpoints, stop the sudden change. That’s what Time Peace is about. That, in the grand scheme of things, was my job.

“Expectation. Stability. Tradition. Therefore, the Crown. QED,” Quincy quipped.

I laughed as her convoluted logic train parked itself firmly in the “gotcha” station in my brain. Or was it the “got it” station? Either way, I laughed. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to ruin the moment.

***

We shoved our way through the torrent of marines and crew scrambling across the well deck, Tommy barking people out of the way until we made it to a ramp. The well deck was an internal dock in the assault carrier beneath the flight deck, housing the large landing craft we were now directly in front of. The aft doors were already open to the ocean, floating our boat on the seawater flooding the deck. Intentionally, I hoped. Looking around, I tried to judge if the ceiling was closer to the waterline than the last time I had been down here. I thought it was getting closer, but that might have been an illusion.

Someone grumbled from behind me, and I realized David and Kennedy had already crossed the ramp. I quickly clattered into the transport behind them. The walls seemed to rise high all around the large flat deck inside, the wheelhouse looking over us all like a watchtower. It kind of felt like being in a large, gray, rectangular serving bowl.

“The rest of Dark Eye make it?” I heard a familiar voice from behind. Turning back, I spotted Randy’s slightly pointed red hair, swept back from his pointed yet meaty face.

“Funny, they were wondering the same about you,” Tommy grunted back, obviously displeased at Randy’s tardiness.

“Bet they were,” I heard Randy grumble, even through the noise.

“Don’t count your blessings before they hatch,” another marine cut in. I caught a glimpse of straw-colored hair over a round face as the shorter man handed Tommy a pack. This must have been Happy—one of Tommy’s men who was supposed to babysit us.

“They weren’t too worried,” he clarified.

Randy snorted and then cut the line. Actually, he cut past the ramp entirely. Clutching a handful of duffel bags, he hopped the guard rail and jumped into the boat. A small crowd of personnel cleared the way just before he hit the deck. As he pulled himself up to a chorus of cursing, he spotted us. His cool green eyes seemed to pop when contrasted against his porcelain skin.

“Are you trying to get someone hurt?” David reprimanded.

“Just making up time,” Randy smiled toothily as he answered. He always reminded me of a predator when he did that. His overall build just added to that impression. He was wiry, but with broad shoulders, built just enough to be lethal. Not a pound more.

“After all, I needed to pick up after the kids,” he continued, shoving a duffel bag into my arms and giving me a pointed look. It was my go-bag. The stuff we were supposed to have ready to take at a moment’s notice. I didn’t think it was fair to expect us to grab it for this particular go.

“We need everyone in one piece,” David interjected, emphasizing the word everyone as he grabbed his own bag.

“So you feel it too?” Randy replied, easing off a bit. It was amazing how David could get him to do that.

“Feel what?” Kennedy immediately blurted out as he took the bag David passed to him. “What’s going on?”

“Besides the obvious,” I added before Randy could get in the ready-made snark.

“I think there’s more than an evac going on,” David replied. He gestured towards the marines, including Tommy and his unit, who were loaded up like pack mules. A man with sharp eyes and thick black hair disbursed them into careful lines along with the rest of his store of marines.

“Someone’s expecting action,” Kennedy realized.

David nodded grimly and pulled a sleek silver pistol from his bag. An arcane tech electro-pulse gun. Or more commonly, a gauge gun. It fired energy beams of various strengths, augmented by our time gauges. That could make them particularly powerful ray guns, or more impressively, precise stun weapons. By using the arena, they could find the exact charge necessary to stun their target.

The arena. That was a cool, if mildly confusing topic. To keep it brief, our time gauges (special arcane tech watches) could create a small area of space in which we could reset time. Well, we could reset it to when the arena first dropped. So once the arena was activated, as long as we didn’t leave it, at any point we could just press in the middle crown on our time gauges and we would snap back to that first moment.

Our ATEP guns did that automatically, looking for just the right amount of energy to stun a target. Too much energy would do permanent damage, and too little would do nothing. So it made a mini arena on its firing path, and tried a whole bunch of guesses. The time it found the goldilocks zone would then be the final version that the rest of the timeline would experience. Same principle applied to people in the arena—if we needed to try something a dozen times to get it right, we could.

If I realized how much pain that concept was about to bring me, I might not have pulled out my gauntlet gun so eagerly.

***

I KNEW BETTER.

THAT’S WHY I’M HERE. IN PAIN.

I CAN’T LOSE MYSELF.

***

Ryan was about to go.

I barely paid attention to the global human zoo around me, or the miraculous metal tubes outside. I always felt a little thrill at seeing a several-ton monstrosity take to the air through sheer velocity. Almost always.

“Well, I’ll see ya later, little bro,” Ryan said. “We shouldn’t be out too long. Might stop by and see some of Heidi’s friends, but we’re playing it by ear.”

I nodded. Supposedly, this was just another one of their trips. Rock climbing in Colorado. But Ryan had always come home. In fact, despite being the oldest, he was the most regular fixture in our house. Besides me, of course. While he casually shepherded the rest of our siblings off to out-of-state schools, he stuck around at a little community college, still bunking in the same old room. It was hard to imagine that would ever change.

For a second, I wasn’t going to say anything.

For a second.

“What about the job?” I asked.

Ryan’s smile faltered a little. “You heard about that?”

I didn’t say anything. I just waited for his answer.

“Dumb question,” Ryan commented. “That’s why you’re asking.”

“I’ll save us a spot in line,” Heidi said, politely excusing herself.

Ryan looked at me a long time, contemplating what to say. That alone was an answer I didn’t like.

“Look, nothing’s decided,” he finally said. “There isn’t really an offer out there yet. Besides, it’s not like we’re moving. We just have a couple of suitcases. I’ll be back.”

I nodded. “I wish you had said something.”

He glanced aside a moment. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal. No reason to get anyone’s hopes up.”

I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Getting my hopes up was the last thing I associated with the prospect of Ryan leaving the state.

Glancing back at me, his expression changed. “Hey, it’ll be fine. It’s about time I stretched my legs and stepped into the real world. Besides, you’ll be off soon, too. You’re the smartest of us all. It’s not like you’ll miss my help taking off.”

“Maybe I will,” I said suddenly.

I regretted it immediately. It was stupid. It’s not like picking a school was some life-or-death challenge. I didn’t need my older brother to hold my hand. So why did the idea of following in Tanya, Carter, and Riley’s footsteps without Ryan there seem so discomforting?

His face had fallen slightly. He scratched at the back of his neck.

“Nothing’s decided,” he repeated lamely.

“Forget it,” I hastily said. I wanted to get out of there, but my feet were magnetized to the floor. I tried to plaster over my misstep. “I’ll keep the secret. Whatever’s left of it.”

He chuckled slightly, his smile making it only halfway to his eyes. But he leaned in and gave me a big hug. “Thanks, man,” he said softly. I wasn’t sure what that really meant.

As he broke away, he grinned more broadly, saying, “And I will see you soon. If nothing else, I’m coming back for my CDs.”

I rolled my eyes as he effortlessly lifted the mood.

“Hey, that’s not a joke.” He pointed at me as he backed towards Heidi. “They better all be there when I get back, or I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“They’ll be safe enough,” I replied. “At least from me. Now if Riley wants to give your collection an update…”

“Not a decade newer!” he insisted, just before the crowd swallowed him up. I didn’t get a chance to say anything more. To really reach out.

And just like that—like a snap of the fingers, he was gone.

A day later. The TV droned on about the story. A crash. Ryan’s flight. No survivors.

Everything turned gray.

A week later. Everyone was still in shock. I couldn’t admit what had happened, but I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t. Limbo.

Tanya was a robot. Efficiently arranging transportation where necessary, making sure everyone was taken care of. No emotion. Everything rerouted into supervising the flock. We needed it. My parents were shells. Carter was pretending he was over it. Sporadically, he would lash out at the rest of us for turning into zombies. Riley cried. A lot. Sometimes, she seemed to have it together, like she was the most normal of us. But every day at some point, she broke down.

Months later. Another news story. It was suspected that a maintenance technician had used the wrong sized bolts on a routine fix. No one noticed. It was just a matter of time after that. One random flight. It was just bad luck.

Bad luck. Bad luck had made us a statistically perfect set.

Slowly, one by one, my siblings left home again. They couldn’t stay forever. My parents woke up just enough to bury themselves in their work. Twice as hard as before.

The house was bigger than it had ever been. It was haunted by absence. Kennedy’s visits were all that filled it. We didn’t talk about what happened, but I knew that even in our long silences, he understood. My family had always been his second. He couldn’t feel the absence as acutely, but his company was comforting either way.

When he was gone, I immersed myself in the emptiness until I was exhausted by it. Until the emotions were too draining to even think about. Until finally, time prodded me along. Like it had for everyone else.

My body remembered the old routine and it physically couldn’t keep wallowing anymore. Sports, school, friends—they didn’t do much at first. But it was so familiar that over time, they started to massage life back into me.

And then one day, Kennedy was gone too.

Snap!

***

We pulled away from the carrier slowly, and as we did, I could begin to appreciate the columns of smoke pouring up from below the waterline.

“Not much of a list,” Tommy commented. As he did, a helicopter slowly lifted from the deck, unsure at first.

“It’s a Viper!” A female marine announced in amazement. Claire. That was her name. She had transformed from her usual stoic to ecstatic. A couple strands of her blonde hair had come free over her angular face, which flushed even more than its default rosy color.

For a moment, I was confused as to what she was saying, feeling pretty sure that we didn’t call our helicopters Vipers. Then, I turned to see her hanging catlike over the lip of our transport, pointing towards the submarine.

Now that I had a chance to look at it closely, I noticed some strange features. There were bumps—blisters at a couple points along the waterline. More than that, the smooth hull wasn’t an even black, but made of several different gray blocks overlapping and patched seamlessly together.

“A Viper?” Tommy repeated, apparently searching his memory for the reference.

“A Zmeya—a Soviet garden hunter,” Claire went on, still astonished and filled with energy. It seemed like her excitement was making her speak in tongues. “From the Winter World.”

“A garden sub hunter,” Tommy said, the wheels finally seeming to click into place. “What’s it doing here?”

“How did it get here is the question,” Claire corrected.

Soviet? They were talking about another timeline then. Yeah, how could—?

And then I had a horrifying realization.

“Aechyr,” I said. “It’s because of Aechyr!”

Claire and Tommy looked at me for a moment, as if they hadn’t quite heard what I had said. And then the truth hit them. The ripple of realization made its way across the small boat with astonishing speed.

Aechyr, a little island kingdom off the southern coast of the United States, only existed in one timeline. Because it wasn’t an island. It was one giant time gate complex. And it might have any number of time gates. Including giant undersea ones.

“It’s venting!” Claire announced.

I and several marines pulled ourselves up to the lip and followed Claire’s pointing finger. I could just make out little disturbances in the air at certain points along the hull. Like little spouts of steam, air popping up and out from the sub.

“It surfaced and cycled its air during an attack?” I asked. Something definitely didn’t add up about this whole situation.

“The hatch is opening!” Claire cried before anyone could respond.

And a moment later, I saw them too. Dark figures emerging atop the sub’s sail—the tower thing. Don’t ask me why it’s called a sail, I just remember hearing it called that and being just as confused. Probably why I remembered the term.

The figures rushed up fast. Their movements were quick and jerky in one way, but kind of graceful in another. I couldn’t really describe it, but it was somehow unnatural. No, not unnatural. Just as natural but alien as an octopus.

Watching as more emerged from below and climbed down onto the sub’s surface, I noted, “They’re evacuating. Is it a reactor leak? Should we help them?”

Instead of an answer, the black-haired marine who had been organizing the evac barked a command and a dozen rifles came to bear on the strange figures.

“Wait, why?” I said hoarsely to Tommy. “They have to surrender—”

“Leash and muzzle, Madding,” the marine croaked in a surprisingly loud, harsh voice. He didn’t bother turning his piercing gaze on Tommy, but the lines creasing his square face grew tighter across his beige-gray skin.

I felt a pit in my stomach and a chill in my veins. I looked at Tommy, but he just shook his head.

And then the gunfire came.

Glancing back in horror, it took me a moment to realize that the shots dropping the figures on the sub weren’t coming from us.

“Hold!” the marine in charge commanded again. His men’s rifles had twitched towards a new group popping up on the sail. Armed and armored men firing at the strangely moving crew, who had suddenly found the courage to dive into the water.

It didn’t do them any good. The muzzle flashes and slightly delayed cracks continued until no one besides the attackers were moving.

“Captain Silva?” Happy asked, finger hovering near his trigger.

“No,” the captain replied sharply. I could sense his muscles coil as he silently watched the figures mill about. Finally, one started to descend back into the hatch. That’s when he struck.

“Do it now!” Silva ordered.

A clattering of rifle fire cut down the armored assailants as fast as they had dispatched the fleeing figures.

As the last one slumped over, Silva called a ceasefire and our boat lurched forward. He stood tall and looked over all of us. “Alright, ya jarheads, grab your guts and drop the lead from your pants. We’re going in,” he announced.

Some marines cheered, but Tommy and Claire snapped around towards him, their faces professionally blank.

“The brass wants to know what it’s doing here just as bad as you do,” Silva drawled on. “And that’s no reactor leak. Not with them hopping back in. So buckle up, boys and girls, it’s time to make history. This is something no one else has done before, and no one else can. The question isn’t can we do it. The question is, who’s going to be the first?”

This time there was a roar as the troops jockeyed briefly for position. I looked around at the insane group. Admittedly, my only command experience involved groups of pixels who perfectly responded to my inputs, but I could recognize a choke point when I saw one.

I tugged at Tommy’s arm. “This is insane. You’re going to blunt force your way onto a submarine?”

Tommy gave me a well-worn look he usually reserved for Kennedy. “Kid, those are called orders. Better get used to them.”

“From this crazy guy?” I asked incredulously. A couple of marines shot us dirty looks. Tommy looked like he was about to snap, but he just said, “Hush.”

For a second, he kept glaring down at me. Then, he actually smiled. Thinly, but he smiled. “Would you rather they go in believing they’ll lose?” he asked in a gentler tone.

My mind ground to a halt.

He winked. “Can’t do the impossible if you don’t believe.”

I didn’t respond at first. I just shuffled aside before muttering, barely audible, “You can’t do the impossible. That’s what makes it impossible.”

***

It was impossible. Quincy was standing—standing!—in front of David, Randy, Kennedy and me, and pointing a gun right at us. At me. Just a moment ago she had revealed that she had been Royal Guard the entire time. My mind was still reeling from the statement. So much so that I almost didn’t register the fear.

She was Royal Guard and we were breaking into a restricted area of the Bridgehead Borough Basilica. We were in danger. From Quincy.

And she was in danger too.

My jaw was clenched. We had just taken several steps back, and the thing was finally coming into view. A huge, floating round body, draping a dusty battered black cloth over itself as if it were a ghost. Five segmented tendrils sniffed around from below, slithering through the air, their little fingers flexing patiently. Their silvery sheen showed they were mechanical, not organic, but they moved like a slimy sea creature. The impression was enhanced by how the thing floated in midair, descending from above.

The whole thing was utterly alien in aura, projecting a presence of palpable pressure. An unsettling air of apprehension. Of awaiting agony. Of awful anticipation. Its existence was so incomplete and disturbing that it demanded to be understood. No, to be experienced. That was the only way it could be complete. But you knew that as soon as you glimpsed the answer, as soon as it got close enough to put the last puzzle piece into place, that it would be too late. That you would fall victim to something unspeakable. Maybe it would steal your completeness to fill what it lacked.

“Quincy, I’ve surrendered, and I will answer any questions you have,” David said.

I felt a stab of hope. He could do this. He had to.

“It will do us no good if you got hurt now,” David continued. “But there is a danger to you here, and it is close. I know it sounds silly, but there is a threat behind you. Thirty feet behind you, your five o’clock. We will do whatever you ask, I only want you to be safe as well.”

“I’m not turning my back on you,” Quincy replied.

“I told you who I am, you know Blake Anthony, this is Kennedy Frost and Randy O’Neill. You were right, we were here looking for information on Princess Sophia. There is a hostile fifteen feet behind you at your five o’clock. Please, we’ll turn around, or drop to the floor, or anything, but please believe me.

And I couldn’t take it anymore. Its empty presence demanded explanation. My eyes were torn away from Quincy and toward the monster, and I couldn’t stop myself.

“What is it?” I demanded of David.

And that was it. I had accidentally found the magic words. Quincy knew me well enough. Even as I was living a double-life, even as she was too, she somehow sensed some truth in what we were saying through that panicked utterance.

“Turn around and lie flat on the floor, hands above your heads, now!” she instructed.

And I did. Immediately, as fast as I could.

Then I heard her gasp.

I looked back, just in time to see the huge creature hovering in front of Quincy, reaching out to her, one tendril extended, one finger almost touching her nose.

Snap!

When a person first steps through a Time Gate, they’re removed from their old timeline and become a Timeless. But back home, it’s as if they had never existed. Only another Timeless would notice how the timeline had changed to remove them.

Timeless aren’t the only people who can be removed from a timeline.

Enigmas—those monsters—can remove anyone. But their victims don’t pop back up. They don’t get to travel the timelines. They’re just gone. Completely. The only ones who would ever remember are the Timeless. Like us.

Quincy had never existed outside my mind.

***

Bang!

A helicopter hovered over the sub as we sat in its shadow. A marine leaning out of the chopper had launched something down the open hatch, which hardly filled me with optimism about the plan. Last I checked, submarines did poorly when poked full of holes. But marines were already scaling the black hump as if this were perfectly safe.

“What was that?” I asked, searching the sub for damage. Then, as the thought hit me, I suggested, “Smoke? Was that a smoke bomb?”

Tommy leaned in towards me, partly to get out of the way of the next boarding party, partly to make himself clear over the muffled cracks. “Flashbangs. Smoke would cut against us hard,” he explained.

“What do you mean?”

“The arena,” Tommy said simply, like he expected me to just put it—

“The smoke would break the arena?” I asked, surprised. Everyone wanted to activate an arena in a fight. Since everyone was obviously alive at the beginning of the fight, any time someone reset it, those who were killed would “come back.” They would repeat the fight over and over until one side could flawlessly defeat the other, or something broke the arena.

“But air doesn’t break the arena,” I protested.

“Sometimes it does. Powerful gusts of wind will. Jet wash, hurricanes, that sort of stuff,” Tommy explained.

“But a normal breeze doesn’t?”

Tommy shrugged. “Guess it’s not significant. It’s a probability thing. Ask an Upsilon. Later.”

He cut himself off as the tension changed tenor.

“How can the time gauges just stop working?” Captain Silva demanded, loudly enough for us to hear over the din.

“Maybe someone got onto the network,” the marine being shouted at suggested worriedly.

“That’s possible?” Silva snapped, clenched jaw showing his opinion of that possibility.

“Shouldn’t be, but what else could do this?” the marine said.

“You’re the engineer,” Silva shot back.

And then Kennedy looked up from his watch. “Ours are working,” he reported.

And at that moment, it was over. Silva glanced over to us, and I saw Kennedy fighting to suppress his tense eagerness.

Snap!

***

Kennedy had bolted. I knew it could have happened any of these days, but I had missed the signs. Or maybe there hadn’t been any. But suddenly, he was running.

The world was gray again, but that might have been the sheets of rain blotting everything out. I followed behind, awkwardly holding the soccer ball. Ryan was gone, and soon Kennedy would be too. I had to do something, but I had no idea what it should be.

All at once, he turned and nearly screamed at me, “Why are you here?”

“I mean,” I stammered, searching for words, “I’m worried.” The plain simple truth had slipped out when nothing else materialized.

Something like rage flashed across Kennedy’s face. The unnatural paleness turned to red, skipping over his usual sandy tone. His dark blonde hair, always parted into short curtains, was plastered to either side of his face. His brown eyes smoldered, momentarily covering the hurt.

Finally, he managed to grind out, “I need to be alone.”

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. A silent fear jolted up through my stomach and into my heart. “And what if I do leave you alone?” I demanded suddenly. “What then?”

He had his back to me. He wasn’t going to turn back. I knew it. I hated that I knew it. And I knew I couldn’t change his mind. But then where would I be? My siblings were gone, my parents might as well have been, and now, so would my only true friend.

Trying to express that, I could only manage to say, “I know you’re not turning around.”

And then he admitted it. “No. I’m not going back.”

I felt a minor breakthrough. I could talk to him. “I don’t blame you,” I said. And then, all at once, I knew what I had to do. It was the only option. “But you’re not going alone.”

When Kennedy looked back, he was shocked. “What did you say?”

I straightened. “I’m coming with you,” I repeated. Saying it only confirmed the rightness of the act. This was my place. This was where I could make a difference.

Kennedy hardly looked convinced. He managed to say, “No,” but it didn’t matter. Now, my mind was just as made up.

He tried anyway. “You have things good. I mean—” he corrected himself slightly, “—you have things to lose. I don’t. You shouldn’t follow me.”

“Too bad,” I answered simply.

He turned and ran, but like I said, it was too late. I kept him in my sight, even through the sheets of rain. Kennedy ran himself out, and I was still there.

And then, on that fateful day, a strange girl with white hair met us at a bus stop and gave us the first hints about Time Peace. She showed us the path to the time gate.

One step through that gate, and I’d be gone from the timeline forever. My past would be erased—it would be as if I never existed here. I would be utterly separated from my own timeline. I’d be a Timeless.

Snap!

***

The calamity was contained within the hull of the submarine, but it felt like the real chaos was unfolding out here.

“Ours are working,” Kennedy repeated, pointing to his time gauge. His face seemed neutral, his eyes hidden behind the visor sunglasses he was forced to wear. His eyes were scarred from a previous journey through time, processing too much light to be able to see without aid. And now he wanted to leap into another escapade.

Silva was mulling it over. Tommy looked unhappy. The color was draining from the sky.

But there was nothing I could do about it. Well, nothing except the obvious. What I had already done before, and sure would do again.

I looked to Kennedy and nodded, psyching myself up as much as reassuring him. With infinite chances, nothing was really impossible, right?

“Let’s make history,” I said.

Snap!

II

The Descent

COLD FLOOR.

BUZZING HEAD.

MUST FIND MYSELF.

***

“Take everything, I want options when we’re in!”

“We should send more Thetas—they’ll remember the loops!”

“I want as many gauges down there as possible—redundancy!”

“Our team first! We’ll secure a landing!”

Everyone was shouting and shoving, and I could barely follow the tangled mass of thoughts and plans. But one way or another, the sea of bodies carried me towards the rope ladder that led up to the sail.

Tommy pulled me up and onto the surface, still glittering with water. The black paint hid how much of it was actually blood.

David made a motion to me. He was shouting something that was drowned out by the other voices and the ringing shots echoing loudly out of the hole in the floor. His jaw clenched and he forcefully mimed strapping his bag to his back again. I took the hint and slung my own exactly as he had.

“Listen up!” Tommy’s voice boomed. I could barely hear him, but at least everyone on the sail stopped shouting, giving me a chance to make out the words.

“We go in waves—use the arena,” he barked. “Get below the hatch and hit it! Reset as much as you have to until you’re secure. Then signal the next group!”

He pointed to his time gauge for emphasis. His was a much simpler matte black and looked a lot hardier than our silver watches. It didn’t have a seam like ours did, letting us use our crystals as a powerful weapon. In fact, the glass was perfectly flat, and instead of any of the many fancy arrays of hands ours could display, he just had rectangular hands and a digital display underneath. One that flashed a series of 8’s—all the segments of the characters filled. Under normal circumstances, his gauge should have allowed for communications with the other Thetas, it looked like that slack would have to be picked up by our—Dark Eye’s—watches, too.

“You got that?” he shouted over the noise.

I nodded, squinting from the effort to make out every syllable while blocking out the clatter below.

“Frost, Happy, you’re up first!” he bellowed.

“Yes, sir!” Happy chirped and turned to Kennedy. Randy curled his lip, but didn’t make a move.

“I’ll take point,” Happy told Ken, feet already below the hatch. “Hit that arena as soon as you’re in the shaft.”

All at once, he was sliding down into the hatch, down a rope tied to the first handle. As Kennedy stepped forward, I punched him in the arm.

“Don’t die,” I said, grimacing.

“See you soon,” he promised, giving a quick sarcastic salute before stepping backward down the hatch himself.

I took my own step back when I felt a hand on me from behind. I turned back to see Tommy.

“You’re up next,” he yelled, right next to my ear. I nodded and swallowed hard. Tommy had already moved on to organizing the next waves. It looked like he wanted David and Claire next, and Randy was finally voicing his opinion on that choice.

But I stopped listening. Instead, I raised my watch and waited intently for any signal from Kennedy. My nervous fingers found the three crowns and brushed against them, but I made sure not to press down on any of them. The last thing I needed to do was make an arena up here or open a channel and confuse everyone.

So I had to just wait and listen, the action once again obscured by my angle. But one gunshot and thud sounded just like another. Some a little louder, some a little more muffled, but none of them meant anything to me. Besides the obvious danger.

And then my watch beeped. My first thought was that it had come too quickly. My second thought was that I had just wasted my first.

“Go, go, go!” David said from right behind me, clearly thinking the same thing.

I rushed to the hatch and slipped down before my hands had found the rope. The passageway down was tight and cramped. Pipes surrounded the walls and about halfway down, I could see the rungs abruptly shifted 90 degrees to one side of the shaft. Anyone climbing down the normal way would have to contort their body around as they descended. The rope tied to the first rung let us circumvent that obstacle.

I slid to a stop on the rope, hands burning. I released one hand, to its immense relief, but continued to grip my lifeline with my other hand and my legs. I twisted my watch around my wrist and hit the middle crown.

Instantly, the bright blue sky above was extinguished by the top of a black dome. If I reached out, beyond the hatch, I could touch it. But I wouldn’t do that, of course. I didn’t want to break the arena I had just created.

It was odd. I could still see the ambient sunlight brightening the top of the shaft, even though the sky was cut off. The only light there was from the cyan stars that were exploding like fireworks, or the streams of liquid red flame. These strange shapes that appeared in the black walls of the arena were yet another mystery that no one could explain to me. They were dangerously mesmerizing. It was said that if you stayed in an arena too long you could go insane. I didn’t know about that, but I could see how someone would get obsessed with these fantastical visions.

But I didn’t have that temptation now. I could still hear the gunfire below, and I had a big challenge ahead of me. Somehow, I had to drop down into that haze of gunfire, get my bearings and find cover without getting hit.

My knuckles turned white, clinging to that rope, my lifeline. Dropping in blind was not my idea of a well-thought-out plan. But I couldn’t see what else to do. If I used the comm to call Kennedy, the signal would travel to David and Randy too, breaking the arena.

The arena, however, was my friend. My safety net. I trusted its function and slid down the rope. I had to keep my knees in or they would slam against the horizontal bulkheads as I rushed downwards. I banged myself up just a little anyway, but that hardly registered.

I hit the floor in a tight, flatly rectangular corridor. It was clogged with limp, unmoving figures. The Thetas who had gone in before.

I took one step around them and felt my leg getting chewed up by rifle fire. I didn’t even have the chance to look down to see my shredded appendage as I landed next to the fallen marines.

My mind didn’t focus on the damage or the pain. It went oddly blank, filling only with the question of, how many are there? For a second, it was like I was back in the Aechrian woods whipping my head around in search of Randy. Back then, I only had to worry about being hit with paintball pellets. But Randy’s intensity had brought out my flight-or-flight regardless. The reflexes I had managed to associate with that instinct must’ve kicked in now.

Find the target.

I turned onto my back, still lying on the floor, and saw two of them. Both masked and in armor. And… parkas? I just managed to catch a glimpse of fleece-lined hoods before taking in the rest. They were both peeking around corners in a room lined with pipes and filled with blinking lights, buttons, and switches. And that was the last thing I saw.

The last thing I saw before I was hanging from the rope again, my fingers having just released the middle crown. Like they had just activated the arena. Because I had been flung back into that moment. I felt disoriented to say the least, the sudden change of venue blocking out whatever had happened before the arena had been reset. Except I hadn’t reset the arena. So how did I get snapped back?

Then everything clicked.

I had just died. And I had no idea how long I had been dead before someone—Kennedy—had reset the arena. Reset me back to my position when the arena dropped.

I’m still alive. I’ll still be alive next time, too.

I didn’t hesitate as long on my second run. Once I shook off my resurrection affliction, I dropped. This time, I had no concern for my health, as I scanned the environment. I managed to catch glimpses of the same two Anarakians. Glancing down to the other end of the hall, I saw Happy and Kennedy peeking out of a wood-lined doorway. The corridor stretched past the room they were in, with several more just like it before finally opening up into—

Something dug into my ribcage and burrowed through my flesh. Out of nowhere, my body flared with intense heat and I could barely draw in breath. It was overwhelming, and yet, I could push it to the side. I was in the arena. None of this was real. Even as the pain and sensations forced reality onto me, my mind rebelled and kept a razor-sharp focus. A detached determination that showed my fingers to the key.

They found my watch, to my relief. I could feel my body getting peppered with impacts, my bones rattled, but it didn’t matter. I pushed the crown.

Instantly, the environment around me stuttered and jerked to the side. A moment later, it clicked into place, as if it had been caught and dragged into a substantial form before it could flash past once more. I was hanging from the rope, perfectly fine once again.

The ragged memory of what had just happened still impressed itself into my brain. My breath came in shallow stabs. I could feel everything pass by below me, familiar but terrifying.

No, focus. You’ve seen it before. You know it. You can do it. As many times as you need to.

But I couldn’t shelve the emotion. It was boiling up inside me and I was losing grip of everything except for the rope.

Focus. Focus!

Kennedy and Happy were shouting something. Through my distorted perception, the tones of their unique voices were all that made it clearly to my mind. They had to be wondering where I was. What was taking so long.

I took a gulp of air and hit the middle crown again. As reality shifted and stuttered, this time it seemed to ground me. I barely shifted as I re-entered time, still clutching the rope, and I felt a clarity wash over me like a splash of cold water.

I had work to do.

I pictured the lay of the land in my head, trying to envision a clear retreat into one of the doors on the friendly side of the hallway. The problem was that there just wasn’t enough room to maneuver. It was choked with bodies, and there wasn’t any room for error when dodging bullets.

The gunfire. I heard a familiar patter of it. Rat-a-tat-a, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-a. Yes, that was it! At that moment, there had always been a pause!

I dropped, angling myself as I hit the floor. I didn’t pull it off perfectly. The twisting in midair made me bump against the bulkheads. Something heavy thudded to the floor with me. I immediately dashed back towards Kennedy and Happy, leaping from one free patch of floor to the next. But a sharp stab hit me from behind. I stumbled, then slid, falling prone.

I fell at the entrance to the door. Kennedy reached out hurriedly and started dragging me in, but I could feel the sudden impact fatigue mixed with adrenaline. I could keep going, but I wasn’t okay. Kennedy’s face, cracking with concern, confirmed my condition.

“Last one held back this time,” he spat. “They’re learning.”

“They’re baiting me?” I clarified. I gasped in pain as the words left me, but I forced myself to continue.

Kennedy unintentionally interrupted with, “We’ll come in next time, cover your—”

“No, same thing,” I squeezed out. “Just like this time. At least until second guy pops out.”

“Then can I nail him?” Kennedy asked, a fierce expression stealing over him.

“Nail the sucker,” I said, grinning even as a bolt of pain shot back up through me. What could I say? After getting killed a couple of times, I wasn’t feeling particularly merciful. But I was excited. We could do this, after all.

Kennedy nodded. “Try not to die this time,” he suggested as he held up his time gauge. His voice didn’t quite have the humor he had intended.

“Save me a seat,” I replied, lips twisting my smile into a grimace.

And he pressed the button. I was fully ready this time. Back in the ladder well, I instantly sought out the object that had clattered to the floor with me last time. There it was. A heavy rounded hammer lying on one of the ledges.

I climbed down to it while focusing on the sounds. There it was again. The same pattern of gunfire from the first Anarakian. He was experiencing the repeats in time, too. He could have changed up the pattern if he wanted. But as I had guessed, he was baiting me.

So I gave him what he was waiting for. I released the hammer, which clattered loudly on the ground. Instantly, a renewed burst of gunfire filled the air. Followed up by two bright blue beams of energy flying in the opposite direction.

I didn’t bother to wait and see if Kennedy had found his mark. I just dropped, twisted and ran.

To my utter astonishment and relief, after a blur of motion filled with slips and ending in a sudden, awkward turn, I was in the room and unscathed. I glanced towards Kennedy, but at first, his face was blank in surprise. I broke the strange tension with a tight grin.

“Told ya,” I said.

And then Happy cut the moment short as he announced, “Reloading!”

Immediately, Kennedy rounded the corner once more and started firing with his gauge gun.

I was going to have to start contributing to this. As Happy slapped a fresh mag into his rifle, I pulled out my own sleek ATEP gun. And then realized the next priority. I hit the bottom crown on my watch, inviting the next man up into the fray. The arena no doubt broke with the single beep my Time Gauge transmitted to the others, but we couldn’t tell down here in the claustrophobic little room.

Happy looked like he was about to round the corner when he glanced at me. He paused. “Don’t drop it!” he suddenly said.

His order startled me. I gripped my weapon tighter. Then I realized, duh, he was talking about what I was just about to do. My finger was on the middle crown, ready to drop the Arena. Why shouldn’t I try? We needed it for David and Claire’s descent. I mean, sure, if they were only halfway through the hatch when I dropped it, he would immediately break the arena. But so what? I’d just keep pressing the button. I’d know the arena was up and running when we started to reset. And if I didn’t drop it, then David surely would.

Oh.

“Don’t drop the arena,” I called into the Time Gauge on comm mode.

“Acknowledged,” David replied tinnily. He must already be down the ladder. “You got a way in?”

“We’ll cover you. Stand by,” Happy said into my watch. Just then, Kennedy whipped back around the corner, sweat dribbling down his face.

“About that,” he said, as if to prompt Happy to take his place.

But Happy turned back to me. “Drop it after I turn the corner,” he ordered. “Reset after each shot unless I say ‘hold.’ Got it?”

“Got it,” I said, feeling the pressure in my chest tighten.

But before I could think about it, Happy spun around the corner. Reacting as fast as I could, I pulled up my watch and hit the middle crown. Once more as the arena dropped, all the hands of my time gauge snapped to the 12 o’clock position. With the arena walls invisible from my position, this was my only indication that it had activated.

The second hand had barely ticked over once when Happy fired. In my nervous haste, I jammed the button back before I could even think to check if he had said anything. Happy flickered back about an inch but aimed and fired in an instant. I saw his mouth this time around, immobile, and hit the button.

Happy fired again, and again I hit the button. We repeated the short, second-long sequence over and over. I wasn’t even trying to keep count, concentrating completely on the upcoming command.

Finally, I saw more than heard his mouth form the word, the motion exaggerated for my benefit. I managed to check my muscle memory just in time. With the minimum motion possible, Happy adjusted aim and fired a second time. For a second, with the pattern broken, it didn’t click that a second shot also qualified for a reset. But when, in that awkward moment of hang time, Happy didn’t move or say anything, I realized that was my cue.

I hit the button. Happy fired, ordered a hold, and fired again. This time, I was quicker on the reset when he didn’t say anything.

But I didn’t get a chance to find the new rhythm. The next time we tried this pattern, Happy cut my reset off.

“Hold!” he repeated after the second shot. Then he shouted, “Drop! Drop now! Get in here! Kill the arena!”

Startled, I glanced towards my Time Gauge, feeling for the bottom crown. I heard a set of boots hit the ground as I found it and pushed it in.

And then three more sounds hit me in such quick succession I couldn’t tell which came first. A shout of alarm from Claire, a second impact of feet, and a new chattering of gunfire.

Happy swore loudly, and immediately returned fire. Kennedy had rounded the corner too and was letting off with his gauntlet gun.

I pressed the middle crown unconsciously. The spatter of gunfire was coming faster this time. Happy and Kennedy almost stumbled over each other. They fell into the hallway, easy targets. I heard David gasp in pain. They weren’t going to make it to him. I hit the crown once more.

The world settled again, and the gunshots were there to meet us, repeating the pattern of fire they had laid down as soon as I had dropped the arena for the third time. It was almost the opposite of our last tactic. Each reset would let the Anarakians hone in. As I realized this, my blood ran cold.

Happy and Kennedy were rounding the corner, but it was too late. They slumped against the walls, just visible from my hidden position. I forced myself to wait, to hold onto my terror for a moment. To let the Anarakians get comfortable, or stew in puzzlement. Then I slapped the middle button.

But the unconventional timing didn’t seem to throw them off. The stuttered sawblade of fire was only delayed a split-second. There was nothing I could do. Happy and Kennedy turned, and then they were gone.

I pressed the crown in as the world shook and jittered, almost coming out from under my feet. Kennedy and Happy were back, but Happy didn’t round the corner. Happy said something to Kennedy. Kennedy held up a hand to me in a wait gesture.

Outside, I heard a new barrage of fire, and then a counter-spray, culminating in silence. In it, I could hear David moan, and I realized the Anarakians could finish him off at any moment. They didn’t though. They were using him as bait. And they had just finished Claire.

Without warning, Happy spun around the corner and pulled on the trigger. His weapon spat out a chain of bullets, too quickly for him to have aimed any of them.

Because he wasn’t trying. His wild act only carried on a second before the real show. Time stuttered backwards again as Kennedy slammed down onto the middle crown of his watch.

And then threw himself to the ground. The world had just settled back into place when he dove low, out past the corner. The Anarakians fired, but Kennedy remained unscathed. Between the sudden mid-fire reset, Kennedy’s low approach, and Happy abruptly resuming his onslaught, they must have been thrown off.

I only figured that out later, however. At the time, I only had a vague sense that something was different when Happy made his move. I could just barely tell (I don’t know if I heard, saw, or maybe felt it) that he was screaming, “Go, go, go!” to me.

I was almost too amped up to panic. I pulled my own silver pistol and darted forward. Taking Kennedy’s old place at the corner, I finally faced the hallway again.

David was on the floor in an awkward heap. He had his gun, too, pointed vaguely back towards the Anarakians. Claire was up against a wall, behind a pipe that couldn’t truly be called cover. Kennedy raced up to our team leader as best he could, crawling down the corner of the far wall, avoiding most of the fallen. Happy was unloading into the distance. Furtive figures were diving back behind cover there. But even so, a flash would appear and a bullet would ricochet down towards us.

I squeezed the trigger and a blue beam lanced down into the dark. I was shooting at shadows, almost no chance of hitting anything. But I was buying time. Hopefully. Kennedy heaved David back towards me. I leapt back into the room as he reached us.

Kennedy rushed in, pulling David with him. Immediately I saw David’s leg had gotten a similar treatment to mine the first time I had dropped in. But before I could process more, Happy and Claire came speeding into the room, pelting fire back behind them indiscriminately.

Happy shoved me further in as Claire took up his old position at the corner. Stumbling into the small office-like room, I got a better glimpse of David’s injury. On second glance, it wasn’t as bad as mine had been, but he wasn’t getting the benefit of a reset. I guessed at least three bullets had hit his lower leg, but it was hard to tell. His pant leg was torn and soaked with blood.

As I felt my stomach shrivel into a stone, a voice pushed its way into my thoughts from deep within the submarine.

The deep tones boomed and yet sounded perfectly restrained. The command the voice held was unmistakable, even though the words weren’t clear to us as we holed up again.

But all at once, the gunfire stopped.

Happy was reloading. He nodded towards me and then towards Claire hunkering just inside the room.

Something clattered onto the metal floor in the hallway. A hiss accompanied it a moment later.

I stepped over to Claire as quick as I could, knuckles whitening with the hold on my gun. She gave me a quick nod as she licked her lips and clung to her rifle. Crouching on one knee, I barely peeked around the jagged corner that used to be a doorframe.

Smoke was pouring from a small cannister, wreathing the hall in the thick gas as it swirled up into the sail. For a second, I thought I saw a tall, broad-shouldered man through the haze, framed by metal pipes and valves.

Then Randy swooped in from above. I saw him land perfectly, no knees banged up in the drop. His arms clung to his sides only long enough to protect them during the fall. By the time his weight was on the balls of his feet, he had whipped up his gun, too.

His finger twitched and let off a shot. But it angled up into the ceiling.

Because a split-second before Randy chose to shoot, a different flash of blue struck him in the chest. The energy surging through him as he fell backwards contracted the already tense muscles in his trigger finger, and the shot he had been ready to release sizzled harmlessly out of the way. Randy hit the floor, stunned.

Stunned. That shouldn’t be possible. I was sure he was stunned, not dead. Well, strictly speaking, I couldn’t be sure, but my mind leapt to that conclusion. There weren’t any signs of a wound, nor a smell of sizzling flesh, so I figured he couldn’t have been shot with full power. If I had enough time to think about it, I would have realized that he could have been hit with a high enough current to kill him without physically wounding him. But at the moment, it seemed obvious that a shot from an ATEP gun that left no wound meant he was stunned.

But how could that be possible? The arena—

And then I realized what the smoke had done.

I sprang around the corner. I had a job. I had to get Randy. Correction: I had to get a teammate. Randy, personally, could get whatever was coming to him and I’d be a happy camper. But I had a duty to my squad-mates. And Randy had to constantly be a thorn in my side by occupying one of those spots.

As I dove into the hallway, the smoke swept over me and I was lost in a constantly changing world of swirling ghosts. My eyes burned and watered, but I was compelled to rush forward.

No sooner had I done that did I hear Claire shout after me. But in my hurry, in my focus, I didn’t make it out. But the raking fire above me was unmistakable.

I slunk as low as I could to the floor, but I had to keep moving. I could feel the air ripple above me, but I didn’t bother to think about it. I scanned through all the still figures on the floor, looking for the only one I cared about.

I caught a glimpse of red hair and reached out. I found Randy’s arms and grabbed on with all my strength. I was pulling him back, slowly, when I nearly jumped out of my skin.

A hand was on my shoulder. I snapped my head around and saw Claire, her face scrunched up with fury or concentration. Her rifle was slung on her back now, and her sidearm was gripped in her other hand, continuing to spit lead into the increasingly dense mist.

I surrendered to her direction, letting her hand guide me as she roughly pulled me back, back, back. That was too far, I thought, but I couldn’t question it.

Without warning, she tore me aside. I heaved Randy around and fell back through a doorway. But not the bullet-chewed doorway we had been peeking out of with Happy and Kennedy.

The smoke was lighter in here. Claire holstered her pistol and grabbed Randy’s legs. We both hauled him inside the new room.

Ahead of us, I could hear Kennedy and Happy exchange a couple quick words. The tension was as thick as the smoke. We were waiting for the Anarakians’ return fire, but it was bizarrely absent. It was as if the marines and our squad were suddenly alone, a curtain of smoke having fallen on our little drama.

In the stark silence, I heard yet another pair of boots hit the deck. But any additional noise was quickly swamped by a fresh machine gun. A closer one. From where the new guy had dropped in. And it wasn’t firing towards us.

Then, out of nowhere, each bark of the machine gun was accompanied by a strange new partner. A cold clanking and clicking immediately after each outburst, like rattling against thick glass. In an instant, the sounds were cut short by the echoes of an impact.

“I said cease fire,” the deep voice said.

It was cold, quieter than last time, but rich in tones that melted together into a mix so perfect that you could hardly hear the humanity in the words. But it was there. Confidence, disdain, a little amusement, and anticipation. More than that, too, but it all melded together in the undertones so I couldn’t pluck out the individual notes.

I heard a heavy shuffling. I couldn’t tell from the sound, and the sight was still obscured by the thick wall of smoke. And then I heard something that made my stomach, already sick from stress, turn over.

A quiet pop. Then a snap.

And then nothing.

I turned towards Claire. I could just make out her ghostly figure through the gray whisps of gas filtering into the room. She was motionless, eyes hidden from me, but I could see her jaw clenched.

In the stark silence, I heard the footsteps. Only one pair of boots at first, with that same quiet calm confidence. Then another, or several more, clattering forward. And then struggling, muffled by tight confines. Someone fighting in the shaft up the sail.

Claire unslung her rifle. There was a heavy clunk against metal. And the hatch fell closed with dull finality.

A weight slumped to the ground and silence reigned again.

“Servants of Time Peace,” the deep voice reverberated into the dark heart of the sub. “You are cut off. Escape impossible, your mission failed. This vessel is your coffin.”

The words hung in the air. I glanced towards Claire and the unconscious Randy, trying to sort through what we had to work with.

“Unless.” The voice cut my thoughts short. The single word was a statement, not a preamble. “Unless you lay down your arms and submit. That is the only escape from your fate. Otherwise, you’re already lost, forgotten forever in the deep.”

I watched Claire’s finger linger on the trigger. She leaned out the doorframe, her squinted eyes burning holes through the smoke. Or trying to.

She lowered the rifle a millimeter. Then, all at once, she shifted back into the cubicle. She took in a shuddering breath, almost choking on the smoke, but still steadying her nerves. She pointed towards my watch.

I raised it, initially moving to press the middle crown, but Claire shook her head. I got it. I hit the bottom button.

“Blue to Dark Eye,” I whispered.

“Green here,” David immediately answered.

Claire leaned in towards the watch. “Happy, you copy?”

“Affirmative.”

“How are you looking for a retreat?” Claire asked.

“The smoke’s plenty thick. I’d say we’ve got a foot in the running. Do we have a door to dip into?” Happy asked back.

Claire checked through the doorway, back further into the sub. I felt I had to speak up.

“Uh, not that I’m eager, but is surrender totally off the table? Not voting that way, but I don’t know another way off a submarine.”

“Can we trust an Anarakian?” Kennedy asked, mostly genuinely.

Happy responded cheerily, “Depends on their Anarak.”

Claire leaned back in, face stony. “Let’s not stick around to find out. First objective is to stay alive.”

“Roger that,” Happy replied. “Lead the way.”

And I pulled the lower crown, cutting off the channel. I looked back at Claire, but she gestured down towards Randy. I nodded and heaved Randy over my shoulder. Honestly, he wasn’t as heavy as I had expected.

Claire’s feet snaked along the ground, one in front of the other, parting the smoke methodically. She scoped out the corridor, looking back towards the source of the voice. But the opaque smoke kept the speaker hidden. She soon turned the other way and pushed ahead.

I pulled myself along after her. The smoke didn’t abate for a while. The shifting boundaries threatened to lead me into walls. I was nearly lost, but I could just make out Claire’s creeping figure ahead of me. I followed as close behind as I could, navigating straight and true through the blinding fog. Finally, it started to thin.

I hauled Randy into what appeared to be a galley. The wood paneling seemed out of place in this metal monstrosity. We had just stepped into a little crate appearing out of the heavy gray. Kennedy appeared next out of the swirling acrid layers, David hanging off his shoulder. Then Happy materialized, covering the retreat.

We were a sorry group. Only two trained marines, with two fresh Deltas hobbled by our unconscious or wounded companions. Completely cut off, only protected by a layer of smoke.

A shudder rolled up the deck and into my feet. And then the vibrating floor tilted. For a horrifying moment, I thought my feet would slip out from under me. That the whole floor would turn into a slide, sucking all of us down back into the smoke and into the waiting arms of the Anarakians. But the tilt never grew more severe than a handful of degrees.

But that was bad enough. Deep inside a submarine, it could only mean one thing.

Claire signaled for us to keep going, further on into the tunnels of pipes beyond the galley. So we did. We skulked away, back into the dark like scurrying rats.

Before we could round a bend and really lose ourselves, Claire held me back.

“Wait,” she whispered in a tone so soft it barely reached my ear.

She turned. I mimicked the move. We crouched behind a panel, just peeking out of the black, looking back towards the smokey corridor. It was far off now, a matchbox beyond the galley.

“Let’s see who’s in charge,” Claire said.

A hardy buzz rattled in the distant hall. Even here, we could feel the light breeze as the fans kicked on. The smoke billowed and was slowly sifted away by the ventilation. And as it was sucked away, a small window opened up through the middle.

Two soldiers stepped over the limp forms of our own marines, pushing through to the galley. And past them, a tall, bulky figure stood with his arms crossed behind his back. They might have been saying something, but its face was entirely covered in shadow from a large winter hood, so I couldn’t tell.

The tall figure moved his right arm to his face and pulled it down. The hood fell around his shoulders, segmented into puffy copper strips, now laying against a copper vest. But everything else about the man was black. The sleeves, boots, gloves, and mask. A reflective bullet-shaped helmet, though perfectly round at the top, with a single large crack running down it. A real bullet had encased itself just above where the eyes should have been.

Once more, his hand went to his face. He gently lifted part of the helmet from the rest. A glassy plate, starting exactly at the eyeline, and running to the top of the forehead was removed. The corners were snipped at shallow angles at the top and bottom, making it an irregular octagonal shape. Underneath, instead of more of the same ultra-glossy black, was gunmetal gray. I could barely make out the four bolts near the corners of the exposed undersurface. And at the bottom, right where the eyes would be, were two glowing blue slits. They angled up malevolently with the cut corners, little more than thin lines.

“That one we don’t surrender to,” Claire breathed.

“Back! Back! Back!” Happy urged as quietly as he could.

The rest immediately obeyed. For a moment, I was transfixed, looking at this strange, armored figure. The crack from the bullet was still occasionally visible above and below the exposed plate. It was the only thing about him that revealed any vulnerability. Even his posture and steady movements conveyed the same invincibility his armor had displayed.

And then he turned. I froze, as for a terrifying instant, I was sure those white-blue slits where gazing straight at me.

Claire grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back into the sub.