Causality: Part Three
2011
It was a good five minutes before Stef could do anything but lay there where he'd fallen and gasp for air. Even when he found the strength to sit up, shimmering streaks of color still danced at the edges of his vision and nausea roiled in the pit of his stomach. Motion sickness, he thought, giving a cracked laugh. It was sort of funny, really.
Logical thought returned slowly. Something had happened, he thought disjointedly. Nathan had--attacked him? No, that didn't seem quite right. If Nathan Summers had wanted him dead, he would have done it. He wouldn't have bothered swatting him into the timestream, and that--had definitely been the timestream he'd just exited.
Stef blinked his eyes rapidly, and then rubbed at them, wishing his vision would clear. Definitely the worst transition so far, and he didn't even know why. Taking a deep breath, trying to convince his stomach to settle, Stef looked around, trying to size up his surroundings.
And the breath caught in his throat as he realized that he knew precisely where he was.
No. This isn't--this isn't POSSIBLE. How did I end up here?
It was a construction site--an immense construction site. The unfinished skeleton of the building reared into the night sky far above him. Even now, it was magnificent; when it was finished, it would change the whole skyline of New York.
"The Tower," Stef murmured shakily. This was XSE Headquarters, while it was still under construction. He shook his head slowly, his mind racing, processing information desperately as he tried to figure out what had happened.
Something had gone wrong. He should never have wound up here. This had been one of the nexus points he'd initially considered, but there had been so many other better possibilities that he'd decided against including it on his final itinerary.
It was also five years earlier than the point he'd just left. Stef clenched his hands into fists, trying to ignore the way they were trembling. It was a losing battle. Something was very, very wrong. His program wasn't supposed to work this way. The whole point of starting in 2005 and working his way forward had been to use the momentum to bounce himself back to 2041 once he finally succeeded in altering a nexus. After all, what was the point of any of this if he couldn't slide into the new future he'd created and slip into his alternate's role? That had been the goal, to make a new world to conquer.
A horrible possibility occurred to him, and Stef nearly cringed. Had Nathan interrupted the program? His hand went instinctly to the belt he was wearing and the small stabilizer unit attached there. It vibrated faintly, warm beneath his hand, but that didn't reassure him. The simple fact that the unit was still operating didn't necessarily mean everything was all right. If Nathan had somehow snapped his temporal tether to the Tinex back in 2041--
I could be stuck here. Stef swallowed shakily and then pulled himself to his feet, using the girder next to him for support. There was other possibilities, he told himself as firmly as he could. Nathan might not have sent him here. If he remembered correctly, the coordinates for this nexus HAD been programmed into the Tinex during the long process of preparing for this 'trip'. Was it possible that the machine was trying to compensate for the interference by going back to another, earlier version of the program? Stef grimaced, wishing he'd taken the time to study how the Tinex worked a little more closely.
Would have, should have-- There was only one way to know what was happening either way, Stef thought grimly. He studied his surroundings more carefully, trying to figure out exactly where he was within the shell of the Tower. The options seemed clear enough. If he went ahead with the original plan of attack for this nexus, he'd either succeed or fail. Whether or not he was bounced forward again when the nexus window closed would tell him if the program was still in operation.
Either way, he still had a chance to accomplish his goal right here. Considering the mitigating circumstances, it wasn't much, but it was something, and at the moment he'd take what he could get. After all, he thought with a ghastly smile, if the temporal analysis had been correct this could very well benefit some version of him, even if he himself was stuck here.
Small consolation. Drawing his gun - there'd be security around here somewhere, he knew that - Stef started to make his halting way towards the center of the building, and the half-completed power reactor.
*
The images had been even more vivid, this time. His own blood-covered hands, and a small red-haired woman he didn't know laying dead at his feet, her throat slit. Ian kneeling on the floor, his mouth hanging open in a silent scream as his form flickered from human to electromagnetic mist and back again as if he couldn't stay in one or the other. Clare, a strange, elaborate tattoo like a necklace around her neck, approached a huge, silk-hung bed where a powerfully built Shi'ar male lounged, watching appreciatively as she let the thin, nearly translucent shift she wore slide off her shoulders and to the ground.
Nate groaned involuntarily, trying to push them away. They were lingering this time, remaining even as his sense of the reality around him returned. Hallucinations or imaginings, it didn't matter. Not now. Later, maybe, when he had time to think them all over, figure out where they'd come from. Have to focus--Stef's here somewhere--he's got to be.
He'd lost his psimitar somewhere along the line, but he couldn't remember precisely where. Swaying on his feet, his pulse keeping time with the pounding pain in his head, Nate reflected that he should be a little more concerned about that. It really did mark a disturbing trend. Losing his psimitar, losing his way--
Nate staggered, catching himself against the half-finished wall to his left. This was really getting out of hand, he thought hazily. But he knew where he was, at least. That was a start. He'd woken up just outside the construction site, and had had no problems identifying the surrounding buildings. This was clearly the Tower at some point during its construction, but he had no idea of the specific date, or what Stef might be doing here.
And to top it off, he could barely see straight. Yeah, this was going real well.
Nate wished he knew what had happened. It was all so unclear, still. Nathan had shouted, there'd been a flash of what had looked like temporal energy, and the transition, when it had come, had been far rougher than before. The assault on his senses had been even more devastating, and exiting the timestream had been like hitting a brick wall face-first.
His face. His face did hurt, too, although it at least was a mundane sort of pain. I'm surprised Stef didn't just shoot me. The front of his battle armor was scorched and melted where it had been in contact with Stef's shield, but apparently he hadn't held on for long enough for it to burn through. Tackling Stef had probably been a really stupid thing to do, but he'd seen him aiming at Nathan, and had just reacted. Not intelligently, of course. Knee-jerk reactions rarely were.
What had the odds been, anyway? He'd gone to the embassy looking for Nathan, seeking help from the closest - and strongest - chrono-variant, only to find out that the embassy was where Stef had been going all along. He supposed it made perfect sense. If Stef had stopped Nathan from going to the White House and meeting Gyrich that night, a war could have started.
I don't even know that it didn't. This had to be years before the point he'd just left. There was no way to tell what had happened after he'd been pulled back into the timestream. Nate swallowed hard, telling himself that this wasn't the time to be dwelling on a situation he could no longer do anything about. He had to focus on the here and now.
And he had to start thinking and stop just reacting. He had to figure out a way to get a step ahead of Stef, and he couldn't do that without knowing what he was really after. Think, he told himself fiercely, wishing the fog inside his skull would go away.
Stef had to have done a temporal analysis to have found these nexus points in the first place. That much was obvious. Stef obviously had a clear sense of what he was doing, of the consequences his actions would have--which had to be desirably from his point of view, or he wouldn't be here in the first place. Stef's goal had to be well-defined, a specific future in which none of the changes he was trying to create would impact his own life negatively. That would have taken a temporal analysis of incredible detail, the sort that hadn't been done since the pre-Merge days of the Askani network and their Record.
That wasn't the only complication. Simply creating the changes wouldn't be enough. The Tinex had to have been tweaked somehow, to let Stef ride the distortion wave into the new timeline when he created it, where he'd--what? Get rid of the Stef there and take his place?
Okay. Maybe thinking too hard about all of this hadn't been such a great idea after all--
"Hey! Stop right there!"
Nate froze at the shout from behind him. Shit, he thought, very clearly, and raised his hands. He hadn't even sensed him coming--not paying attention, damn it! "I'm not going anywhere," he said, making sure he kept his hands in view.
"Keep it that way. This is Donaldson in Sector Three," he heard the voice said, presumably into a communit. "I've located the intruder."
Shit. Deep shit, Nate thought with a sigh as the security guard came up behind him. "Look," he said, as calmly as he could. "I don't have authorization to be here, I know, but I do have an explanation." He just wasn't sure what it would be, yet--
"Save it for the watch commander," the guard growled. "Hands behind your back."
Nate weighed the options for a moment. It didn't take long to come to a decision. "Sure," he said wearily, and complied. "Why not?" If he'd only known where Stef was--but he didn't, so blowing the guard as gently as possible into the nearest wall and running off would do nothing but get the whole security team after him, and wouldn't THAT be productive? He had to minimize the disruption he created in the timeline, and letting this turn violent would definitely be a step in the wrong direction.
Donaldson wasn't quite as gentle as he could have been, putting on the restraints, but Nate really couldn't blame him. 2011 had been the beginning of Humanity First's terrorist activities, and there'd been a number of attacks on the XSE in that year. If he'd been in the other man's place, he wouldn't have been overly soliticious, either.
The security office where Donaldson took him was surprisingly small, little more than a reinforced bunker. Inside, the watch commander was sitting at a desk, reviewing something on his terminal. Nate recognized him instantly, and only barely managed not to react. Of all the bizarre coincidences-- Andrej Chovan was a magnokinetic and one of the XSE's original officer corps; he'd been one of Nate's instructors at the Academy, and had retired after ten years spent as Chief of Security at the Tower.
"This is the intruder?" Chovan asked, giving Nate an odd look.
Donaldson shrugged. "He's the only one I found wandering around where he shouldn't be. He wasn't quite where the bioscanner said he'd be--"
Chovan raised an eyebrow. "Really." Nate reached out tentatively to try and see what was behind the inscrutable expression, but for a non-psi, Chovan had remarkably good shields. Too strong to pierce without some effort, and Nate didn't dare give away any more about himself than he had to. "Take him into the other room and watch him," Chovan continued, rising from his chair. "I have to alert the higher-ups that we've had a security breach."
Nate tried not to look surprised - or wary - as Donaldson escorted him to the room at the other end of the bunker and pushed him down into a chair. Another guard came in to join them, and the two stood at the door, not taking their eyes off him. This wasn't right, Nate reflected, thoroughly confused. This definitely wasn't standard security procedure, and Donaldson in particular was looking very edgy about it.
At the very least, they should have slapped an inhibitor collar on him--wait, what am I saying? A tired laugh slipped out before he could stop it, and his guards looked wary.
"I thought I was going to get the chance to explain to the watch commander?" Nate asked a little recklessly. He was losing time here, and Stef was out there doing heaven only knew what.
The other guard, a muscular, red-haired man who also looked vaguely familiar, shifted uncomfortably, shooting his companion a questioning glance. Donaldson looked thoroughly unimpressed by Nate's attempt to strike up a conversation.
"You know, you're both terribly antisocial," Nate said, giving in to that small, perverse part of him which he attributed in his saner moments to all the time he'd spent around Zara and Harry. Mouthing off like this was probably not the smartest thing to be doing, but his head hurt and his pride hurt and he was so damnably worried--
He reached out and brushed their minds gently, wondering if he dared, now that he had a little space and time in which to work, to try a partial mindwipe and just walk out of here. But what he found made the option much less palatable. Their defenses were nowhere near as strong as Chovan's, but they were still all too solid. He'd be able to do it, even under these conditions, but he wouldn't be able to do it instanteously. If they had time to react, he might wish he hadn't even tried it--
No. Too unpredictable. He couldn't take the chance. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in the chair a little, trying one of the biofeedback techniques he'd been taught to control pain. As it began to work, he let his mind drift outward, searching for Stef.
*
Stef replaced the panel, smiling tightly. He'd studied the schematics of the power core exhaustively when this had been one of the nexus windows on the list, and he'd always had an exceptionally good memory. It had been easy, the work of under ten minutes to fiddle with the power regulators and create a feedback loop that would build slowly over the next two days.
Whether or not the explosion actually happened while the group of VIPs were touring the site on Friday was a question mark. That wasn't what he was aiming for. He only wanted to stop the tour, and eliminate the opportunity for a certain conversation that had taken place that morning.
Stopping the conversation wouldn't stop the formation of the XSE's Counterterrorism Division, but according to the temporal analysis, it would delay it for a considerable length of time. Opening that twelve to eighteen month window would allow several other events which would weaken the XSE enormously. It wasn't as much of a quick-fix as the other nexus windows on the list, which was one of the reasons he'd initially discarded it as an option. But it would still do the job, eventually.
Once the panel was back on and fastened securely, Stef took a deep breath and checked his watch. This nexus window was a tricky one. The analysis had been able to identify that it would close thirty minutes after it opened, but not the trigger event that caused it to close. Stef was betting that it was a security sweep or some such minor thing.
He felt something brush again his mind and Stef stiffened, his gaze darting around warily. The light touch came again, a little more insistent, and Stef swore under his breath, his blood running cold as he remembered Nathan peeling away his shields. What if he'd done enough damage to let other telepaths get through more easily?
I have to get out of here. If the program was still in operation, it wouldn't matter where he was when the nexus window closed, and if it wasn't, he needed to get away, period.
*
Nate's eyes snapped open, and he stared at Donaldson and the other guard for a moment. Weighing the options, again. He was positive he'd sensed Stef - those shields didn't seem quite as strong anymore, for some reason - and even had a moderately clear idea of where he was. Now that he had something to go on, he had to MAKE an opportunity for himself. Letting Stef get away, or finish whatever he was doing, was a bigger risk than forcing his way out of here.
"I don't suppose you'd take these restraints off?" Nate asked, a wry note creeping into his voice despite the new urgency of the situation. Donaldson gave him a 'you've got to be kidding me' look. The other guard just blinked. Nate sighed. "I didn't think so," he murmured, and telepathically 'leaned' on both men, as hard and fast as he could. He got through their shields, but Donaldson reacted swiftly, reaching for his gun, and Nate had to smack it out of his hand telekinetically.
It clattered on the floor, and Donaldson's alarmed expression faded, until he was as blank-faced as the other guard. They stood there like statues, staring straight ahead with vacant eyes, and Nate grimaced, implanting the suggestion to stay frozen like that more deeply into their minds. He couldn't afford to get distracted and have them snap out of it.
Turning his attention to the restraints next, he probed at the mechanism telekinetically for a moment, and they snapped open. He hauled himself to his feet, gritting his teeth at the way his head spun. The few minutes worth of meditation had been helpful, but it hadn't been enough. He was beginning to wonder if a week's worth of sleep would be enough.
The door, unsurprisingly, was locked, and he had to take the unlock code from Donaldson's mind. As the door slid aside, he stepped through, and threw all of his strength into freezing the three other security officers, including Chovan, in place before any of them could react. The effort left him feeling dizzy again, almost faint, and Nate braced himself against the wall for a moment, cursing his own weakness.
Only for a moment, though. As soon as he could move without staggering, he grabbed one of the guns off the rack and made his unsteady way out of the security bunker.
*
"It seems a little indecent, to be so glad to hear about a security breach," Sam Guthrie said as he and Sulven reemerged into normal space just ouside the security bunker, "but ah have to admit, ah would've taken any excuse to get out of there. Talk about dying of boredom."
The corner of Sulven's mouth quirked upwards. "You sound so much like Nathan sometimes, little brother," she murmured ironically. "Do stop complaining. Besides, you're adorable in a tuxedo."
Sam snorted at the tiny Askani. "Ah've heard that one before," he said, and smiled despite himself as Sulven gave him a rude gesture and flounced off towards the security bunker.
The formal dinner they'd just teleported from had been yet another damned public relations function, and every bit as tedious as every other 'evening' of its sort. It had been his turn to bite the bullet and make an appearance tonight, and since Dana was in England with Pete and Kitty, Sulven had offered to keep him company. He was glad she had. The only fun he'd had all evening had been watching the men in the room trying to pick their jaws up off the floor after she'd walked in wearing that dress. Red, sequined and form-hugging, it had a little more material to it than Betsy's old uniforms, but not much.
#Logan didn't approve of it,# Sulven thought at him, her 'voice' quivering with amusement. #Actually, he asked where the rest of it was.#
"He's losing his sense of humor in his old age," Sam said with a grin for the image she sent to him of Logan's expression when she'd shown him the dress. "Ah think you look nice."
#If I tell Dana you were flirting with me, youngster, she'll have your choice parts on a plate-# Sulven trailed off and stopped in her track, frowning at the security bunker. Sam followed suit, instantly wary. #That's odd,# she said.
"What is?" he asked quietly, serious again now. She turned away from the security bunker and studied the skeleton of the building with narrowed eyes. "Sulven?" he prodded.
"There," Sulven said aloud, and pointed. Sam looked, and saw a dark figure running in the opposite direction. "Our intruder. He's--Sam, wait!"
But Sam's mind had already made the connection - the intruder running away from the security bunker, none of the security team chasing him, therefore something had happened to the security team - and he was rocketing after the figure in the distance even as Sulven called out after him.
#Sam! Wait, stab your eyes!#
I've got him, Sulven! he shot back. By then, he'd crossed the distance between himself and the intruder, deftly weaving in and out of the girders as he flew. It had been a long time since he'd bounced himself off a wall.
"Hold it!" he snarled, and lowered his speed just a little as he slammed into the black-clad man. After all, he wanted to stop him, not break every bone in his body.
The intruder went down like a sack of potatoes, but something that felt an awful lot like telekinesis flung Sam away and back through the air for a good ten feet before he caught himself. Already hauling himself back to his feet, the intruder was turning to face him--
And Sam froze as he met eyes the same shade of blue as his own. An overwhelming sense of recognition hit him fast and hard, even as his rational mind protested that he'd never met this man before.
What the hell-- "Who are you?" Sam whispered. The man stared back at him for a moment, his expression unreadable, and Sam stiffened as he felt an unfamiliar presence brush against his mind. Reacting on instinct, he reinforced his mental defenses and switched his blast field on, flying forward rapidly and slamming a fist into the man's jaw. The intruder staggered backwards, hitting the girder to his left and sliding to the ground as if his legs had refused to hold him.
*
Stef reeled against the wall as the relentless assault on his shields suddenly ceased, so abruptly that it left him dizzied. One minute, someone had been pounding on the doors of his mind with the obvious intention of breaking them down, and in the next, he was alone in his own head again. He didn't let himself wonder what had happened; he wasn't the type to look askance at an opportunity.
Pushing himself away from the wall, he started to run once more, knowing only that he had to get out of here before Nate or whatever telepath was out there focused on him again. He was nearly to the edge of the construction site when the night shimmered around him, his program kicking in and pulling him back into the timestream.
What he felt, this time, was profound relief, and a moment, barely more than a flash, of triumph.
*
Ruby light flashed beside Sam, and Sulven appeared, scowling fearsomely. "I told you to wait!" she snapped at him, and dropped to her knees beside the intruder, murmuring in Askani.
Sam gaped for a moment, baffled. "You know him?" he said, letting his blast field fade, more out of confusion than any real conviction that the intruder was no longer a threat.
"Do I know him? LOOK at him, you half-witted boy!" Sulven growled, not looking at him. "Ask yourself that question, for the Bright Lady's sake!" She reached out, as if to take the other man's face between her hands, but he grabbed her wrists before she could touch him..
"No," the intruder muttered, those eerily familiar blue eyes going distant. "Damn it, no--" He caught his lower lip between his teeth, a nervous mannerism Sam had seen countless times before.
Of course, it had been Dana doing it at the time.
Sam stared at the man for a moment, his mind adding it all up. The nervous mannerism, the eyes that were a mirror of his own, the shape of those features--the unmistakable resemblance that was staring him right in the face--
"Where is he?" Sulven said insistently, making no move to free herself. "Talk to me."
The man groaned, sagging back against the girder. "He's gone," he said in a despairing voice. "He must have timeripped back out. I felt him--he was right there, but now he's gone again--"
Timeripped? Sam thought wildly, and nearly groaned himself as the last bit of the puzzle fell into place. Kneeling down beside them, he took a deep, ragged breath as those blue eyes turned to meet his. "Nate?" he muttered unsteadily, half of him hoping he was wrong, the rest of him almost certain he wasn't.
His son mustered a wobbly smile. "Hey, Dad. Anyone ever tell you that you hit like a truck?"
Sam uttered a profanity that would have inspired his mother to wash out his mouth with soap. "Damn it," he said miserably, reaching out and squeezing Nate's shoulder tightly. "You should've said something!" His son, here. Grown to adulthood. Looking older than he did--that bothered him more than he'd ever dreamed it would. It bothered him almost as much as the fact that Nate was here in the first place, that something had been so serious as to bring him back in time this far.
Nate bit his lip again. "And disrupt the timeline even further?" he said roughly. He had to be projecting, because Sam could almost feel the emotions coming off him. Fear, tinged with guilt, and so strong that it made him shiver and fight the sudden urge to draw back. "I'm doing too good a job of that already."
"Enough," Sulven said firmly, breaking into the conversation. She reached out and laid a hand against the side of Nate's face, making him look at her. "Don't be foolish. You'll create some disruption no matter what. The timestream is a chaotic system. It's a question of keeping what changes you make within an acceptable variance, so don't hold yourself to a standard that you can't keep."
Nate shook his head, then winced as if the movement had hurt. "She shouldn't have sent me," he muttered. "She should have come herself--"
"Who shouldn't have sent you? Are either of you going to tell me what's going on?" Sam asked almost plaintively. Nate and Sulven exchanged a wary look that made him immediately suspicious. He might not be a telepath himself, but he'd spent enough time around them to know when there was a conversation going on that he should know about.
Nate looked back at him, his expression so grim that part of Sam ached to see it. "You shouldn't know. You shouldn't even be here, Dad. Just let me go and figure out what he did."
Sam opened his mouth to protest - XSE time travel rules be damned, this was his SON! - but Sulven beat him to it.
"Nathan Thomas Guthrie," she said chidingly. "Did you leave your good sense back in 2007?"
Nate gave a short, despairing laugh. "2016, I think."
Sulven paid absolutely no attention to the comment. "I'm willing to make allowances for the fact that the distortion is probably making rational thought a little difficult for you, but I'm hoping that you do remember I'm a chrono-variant." Nate blinked at her for a moment, and she sighed. "I can assure you that your father and I were not involved in any temporally significant events. In fact, these flonqing social occasions are probably the very antithesis of significant, when you look at the big picture. Morever, what disruption our presence does cause, I can fix."
Sam made himself close his mouth and forget the first reply that had sprung to mind. Come to think of it, the second probably wouldn't do much else than make him look woefully slow, either. Opting for a semi-dignified silence, he stared at his son for another long moment, trying to reconcile the man in front of him with the quiet, watchful five year-old he'd left at home that morning.
And he couldn't do it. Maybe there was some secret to it, something he needed to ask Scott and Jean about the next time he saw them. "Okay," he said as levelly as he could when Nate looked back at him. "If you can't tell me all the details--" Although he could tell that Sulven knew, somehow, and they were going to have a little talk about that once the immediate crisis was dealt with, "--just tell me what's going on right now."
Nate took a deep breath, rubbing at his jaw almost absently. Sam winced a little, and then frowned, realizing that he hadn't been the only one who'd hit Nate tonight. The whole side of his face was bruised, and his eye looked like it was beginning to swell shut. He just plain didn't look well, either. What had Sulven said? Something about distortion?
"I don't know," Nate was saying. "I don't even know what kind of a nexus window we're in right now, what he's trying to affect--"
Sam really wanted to know who 'he' was, but he was guessing that they probably wouldn't tell him even if he asked. He toyed for a moment with asking anyway, but decided against it. Pushing things right at the moment probably wasn't the most productive thing to do. That wasn't to say he was going to drop the issue, of course. There was a difference between deciding to wait for a better opportunity and choosing to stay in the dark.
But he really hated trying to feel his way through situations.
"You think something's going to happen here," Sam said slowly, more to fill in the silence than anything else. The words 'nexus window' echoed in his mind, and he scowled thoughtfully, trying to dredge up the bits and pieces of temporal theory he'd absorbed over the years. "Something important."
"It might be something very subtle," Sulven said, her brow creasing in thought. "Maybe it's better to consider what he might have done, rather than guess at his goals." Her gaze roamed their surroundings for a moment, measuringly. "But what could he have had to work with here, of all places?"
Nodding to himself, Sam stood up. Nate and Sulven both looked up at him. "Only way to find out is to look," he said in as neutral a voice as he could manage. "So let's look. What happened to the security team?"
"They're fine," Nate said, starting to get to his feet. Sam offered a hand, and Nate took it with a grateful nod. "I just told them to make like statues."
Despite the situation, the corner of Sam's mouth quirked upwards in a half-smile. That was quite the mental image. "'Ven, go get them, will you? We're going to go over this place top to bottom, make sure everything's in order." He raised an eyebrow as Nate opened his mouth. "Hey, they were here already, right? It can't be disrupting the timeline all that much to have them do their job."
He hoped not, at least. The simple fact was, he wasn't prepared to turn his back and walk away to let Nate deal with whatever this was on his own. Temporal paradox be damned. He didn't work that way.
Nate closed his mouth and gave a strange, crooked little smile. "I don't know anymore, Dad."
Rising, Sulven took his arm and squeezed it tightly. "Stop worrying so much," she said severely.
*
In the end it was Donaldson that stumbled onto the answer. "I've shut everything down in here," he reported as they joined him in what Nate was surprised to realize was the Tower's reactor room, minus most of the instrumentality and the back wall. There was clearly still a great deal of work going on here.
Donaldson looked up from the console, his gaze lingering suspiciously on Nate before he turned to Nate's father. "Someone was tampering with the reactor. There was a feedback loop beginning. If it hadn't been caught, it would have built up to an overload and then we would have been in a shitload of trouble." Donaldson flushed as Sulven raised an eyebrow at him. "Sorry, ma'am."
"When was someone due to check on it again?" Nate asked hoarsely. Blowing up the Tower's reactor? Well, there was a new approach. The question now was what the hell Stef had been trying to accomplish with this. Nate wasn't coming up with anything, at least not off the top of his head. There were plenty of nexus windows centered around the Tower, he knew that, but common sense said most of them would be there when the place was actually in operation. Stef had to have been after something a little more subtle, here--
Donaldson shrugged, then seemed to consider the question more carefully. "No--actually, wait, I know this. I was on duty when the team left yesterday, and I remember them saying they were coming back on Friday to run some test sequences."
"Another two days," Nate muttered, trying not to sigh. A lot could happen in two days.
"Actually, that's very helpful," Sulven murmured, and gave Donaldson a bright smile. "Thank you, lieutenant. You can go now." Once Donaldson was out of earshot, she shook her head, a look of rueful understanding descending over her features. "Well, isn't THAT interesting. Would anyone care to speculate on the odds that the team was coming AFTER the VIP tour on Friday morning?"
"Tour?" Nate asked a little weakly.
"The tour," Dad said with a heavy sigh. "Damn. Ah hadn't even thought of that. You think that was the target?"
"Possibly. In any case, he's clearly working with a very sophisticated temporal analysis." Sulven tilted her head, looking contemplative. "I'm inclined to suspect overloading the reactor was the plan, but perhaps we should allow the security sweep to continue, just in case."
Dad nodded. "Better safe than sorry."
"I'll let the security team know to keep at it, then."
Nate leaned against the wall beside him, focusing on the mechanics of breathing for a moment, trying to beat the headache into submission. His legs felt a little rubbery, and he wasn't about to let himself fall on his face in front of his father. He could still sense the residual guilt Dad was feeling about the confrontation earlier, and he didn't want to make that any worse. It hadn't been anyone's fault, except maybe his own for not being quick enough to tell Dad to make like a statue, too--I can't believe I just thought that--
He closed his eyes. A VIP tour. Well, there was an obvious enough target, he supposed. Someone pivotal was involved, or something would happen, something Stef wanted to change. He shouldn't be surprised that Stef had chosen another violent way to make those changes. It fit his modus operandi so far--
A hand fell on his shoulder, and he opened his eyes to meet his father's concerned gaze. "You okay?" Dad said, trying to sound diffident - no, professional, Nate told himself - and failing miserably.
Nate managed to muster a smile. "Fine." It was a flat-out lie, but he was hoping Dad wouldn't press him on it. They had more important things to worry about at the moment. "Continuing the security sweep--it's a good idea. Just in case."
Dad nodded with a faint smile. "Ah'm not a big fan of surprises, and ah'd like to make sure that--whoever this is hasn't left any others behind." That troubled look came back, and Nate almost squirmed.
"Hopefully this is it," he said hoarsely. Surely it had to be. Stef couldn't have had time to do much more than tamper with the reactor. It would have taken a while to get past the safeguards. *And how he knew how to do that is another question entirely--*
"Yeah. Then you can move along back to your own time," Dad said with a chuckle that sounded a little force. Nate did flinch, this time, but his father didn't seem to notice, and went on, sounding almost wistful now. "Not that it's not--good to see what sort of man you grew up into, but ah'll be happier when this is over and you're back where you belong.
Nate felt his smile waver and fall off his face before he could do anything to stop it. "Me too," he said lamely, and watched his father's expression change completely, into something that he knew meant 'I'm done beating around the bush'. How to tell him that he didn't think it was over, though? Because he didn't. It couldn't be over. Stef had almost certainly bounced out of here and into another nexus window--
The bottom dropped out of his stomach as he wondered, for the first time since he'd sensed Stef disappear, what he was still doing here. If the nexus window had closed, Clare should have pulled him out by now.
#Sulven?# he thought wildly, trying to keep his expression as calm as he could. #I shouldn't still be here, should I?# Unless the nexus window hadn't closed--but why wouldn't Stef still be here, though? It didn't make any sense. Something was wrong--
"Nate?" Dad said, quietly but firmly. Very clearly not about to drop the subject. "Ah think it's about time you told me a little more about what's going on, and ah don't want to hear anything about paradox or altering the timeline. Ah don't intend to act on anything you tell me."
*Easier said than done, Dad.* Nate wondered a little wildly just exactly what his father would do, if he knew his best friend's son was behind this. Would he keep it in mind, let it affect how he treated Stef over the next thirty years? Was that even a bad thing? To fix what had happened, change things so that Stef never had the need or opportunity to do this in the first place--
Change the future, irrevocably. It was so tempting. Let the information slip, let others decide how to act on it--but he couldn't do that. "I can't, Dad," he said softly, hating himself for his own cowardice, for wishing that he could give up the responsibility for making the decision.
Sulven stepped in, cutting Dad off smoothly when he would have said more. "You should be going, Nate," she said, almost gently.
#I should be, but I'm not,# he shot back at her in agitation he was barely managing to hide. The time-travel rules made so much sense--when you were studying them in isolation, safe in your own here-and-now. How was anyone supposed to keep to them when you could timerip back and find yourself in situations like this? #Sulven--#
#I'm just putting on a show for your father, boy. Work with me, here.# "I can assure you that no one's keeping you in the dark to be perverse, Sam," she said to Dad, who didn't look particularly reassured.
Nate tried to remind himself that his father's state of mind shouldn't be first on his priority list at the moment, though. #What's happening?# Nate pressed uneasily. #Why haven't I timeripped?#
Sulven's answer was perfectly, evenly calm, as if she were trying to be soothing. #Whatever happened to bring you to this point in time snapped the temporal tether between you and Clare. She clearly hasn't relocated you yet.#
Nate's knees tried to buckle, and he was suddenly very glad he was already leaning against something. #How the hell--okay, this is a problem.# The flash, whatever had thrown them backwards in time again--but he had a hard time believing Uncle Nathan would have deliberately cut him off from Clare. An accident, then? #I'm hoping you have a suggestion?#
#Try stalling, dear,# Sulven sent back with a mental sigh. #I'm working on it.# "The timestream has to be preserved as much as possible," she said to Dad. "If you had all the information you wanted, you'd be tempted to do too much with it. It's not wise to flirt with temptation."
"Ah'd be more inclined to buy that, Sulven, if it wasn't perfectly clear that you know what's going on. We all know how you like to meddle," his father said bluntly, giving Sulven a suspicious look and Nate a penetrating one. "There's something here you really don't want to tell me, isn't there?"
All right. The 'I'm done beating around the bush' look had been replaced by the 'You think I'm going to take no for an answer? Don't make me laugh' look, and Nate knew better than to think he was going to out-stubborn his father. #Sulven, if you're going to do something--#
#Patience. I'm going to send you forward along Stefano's path. I can keep you tethered until Clare finds you again. Now, say something reassuring to your father and let's do this.#
Nate forced himself to straighten. "Dad--" The words didn't come for a moment, not until he forced himself to reach out and focus to the best of his currently hindered abilities on what his father was all but projecting at him.
No anger. No mistrust. Just worry--simple, powerful worry, and Nate responded to it almost instinctively. "It's complicated," he said more quietly. "It's a mess, and I don't want to be doing this any more than you want me to be roaming the timestream, but you have to trust me. It has to be done, Dad, and you can't get involved." It wasn't quite reassuring, but he knew his father, knew what approach to take. "Trust me," he said again. "Please."
Dad sighed. "Ah suppose ah don't have much of a choice, do ah?" he asked almost wryly, but the worry was still there, just as overwhelming. "Just promise me you'll be careful. Ah do not want to wind up having to explain this to your mother at some point--"
Nate gave a shaky laugh. "Hey, she's the one with actual time-travel experience, Dad, remember? She'd understand--"
"Not if anything happens to you, she wouldn't," Dad pointed out, and Nate flinched.
"I'll be okay," Nate said, willing it to sound convincing. "Dad, I--"
Maybe Sulven had sensed that his resolve was beginning to break, or maybe she'd been so preoccupied with getting ready to throw him back into the timestream that she'd missed the fact that the conversation was still going on, but the result was the same.
He was gone, before he could finish his sentence. Which was something of a relief, as he really hadn't been sure what to say.
2041
"Clare? Clare, come on, love, open your eyes--"
Her head hurt. It was the first thing Clare registered as she clawed her way back to consciousness. It wasn't the standard appalling-headache sort of pain, either--she'd caught feedback from something, from the feel of it. Taking a deep, ragged breath, she leaned into the arms supporting her for a moment, and then sat up under her own power, opening her eyes.
"You," she said as severely as she could manage to the man sitting beside her, "are not supposed to be here." For someone who wasn't field-certified anymore - by his own choice, damn it! - he made a bad habit of sticking his nose into field operations. Her conscience pointed out that he didn't generally indulge in that particular bad habit unless she happened to get herself in some sort of trouble, but she told it to shut up and go away.
Harry shrugged, managing a faint smile. There was still more concern in those dark eyes - and seething unhappily along their link - than she wanted to acknowledge. "Chew me out later, Summers," he said flippantly, although his tone sounded forced.
"Yes, let's get our priorities in order, shall we?" Zara's voice came from off to the left, and Clare rubbed at her eyes, willing her vision to clear as she looked towards the Tinex platform. Zara was examining it carefully, pausing in her scrutiny to make a face at Clare. "What the fuck were you doing, anyway?"
"Lay off, Zar," Nick said from where he was examining the console. "That's not productive. Clare, where's Nate?"
Clare didn't bother asking any of them what they were doing there. After how many times the group of them had merged in the last fifteen years, the bonds between them went without saying, and she'd almost certainly been projecting a great deal of distress whenever whatever it was had hit her--
"Shit," Clare breathed, realizing as she reached out to check her tether to Nate that it wasn't there anymore. Her heart thudded sickly in her chest as the full impact of it hit her, and Harry reached out to support her, his brow furrowing in worry.
"Let me guess," Zara said dryly, although Clare saw the hard glitter in her eyes and wasn't fooled. "You don't KNOW where Nate is." She smirked. "Things got out of hand again, didn't they?"
"Zara! Leave it!" Nick barked, his blue eyes flashing dangerously. The twins glared at each other for a moment, but eventually Zara looked away. Nick turned back to Clare, his expression softening slightly. "What happened?" he asked, more calmly. "Details, I mean. We scanned you while you were out, so we know what's going on."
Her vision blurred--with tears this time, unbelievably enough. It was just fatigue, and the headache - and the worry - but it didn't make it any less humiliating. "Something--changed," she muttered, rubbing at her eyes doggedly. "The bastard did something to change things--I don't know what." She coughed, and was relieved when her voice came out a little stronger as she went on. "I think I felt my father trying to control the distortion from the other end--I'm not sure. There was no branch point, at least."
"Your father?" Zara asked, sounding surprised. "You mean he knows that someone's back there messing around?" She hesitated and then shook her head slightly, looking aggravated with herself. "Dumb question, I know. Anyhow, this is a good thing, right? That he's helping out from his side of history?"
"I guess," Clare murmured faintly, instinctively beginning to undo what distortion she found as she scanned desperately for Nate. She was horrified to realize that he wasn't where she'd left him. Had he been pulled along with Stefano? Whether or not the tether was still intact, Nate should still be lit up like a Christmas tree. Wherever he was, his temporal signature was still out of sync with everything around him--
And she couldn't find him.
"Easy," Harry murmured, and a wash of soothing emotion rolled up their link from his end. "Just calm down and focus."
Clare closed her eyes to filter out visual distractions, and concentrated on the timestream, tracing the lines of distortion, looking for a conflicting temporal signature. She might at least find Stefano that way, and Nate had to be somewhere in Stef's vicinity.
He had to be.
to be continued...
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