Oct 11th, 2013 – Current Timeline

A few minutes after leaving Frank in the lurch, Max had parked her commandeered wheelchair in the hospital lobby, perpendicular to the waiting room chairs, so that she had a clear view of the flatscreen television mounted on the far wall. The TV had been mounted at an odd placement, just around the corner across from the reception desk, but in such a way that only the patients could see it, and only if they craned their necks to the side to watch it from their chairs. A few persons were doing just that, though Max could not say if they were patients or simply displaced residents seeking refuge in the hospital. If the destruction playing out on the television was any indication, either seemed just as likely as the other.

Based on the aerial views currently flashing across the screen, much of Arcadia Bay had been burned to the ground, and much of the areas that weren’t burned were flooded, which was, she supposed, at least better than those areas that were both blackened and charred and drowned in the rising waters from days of torrential rain.

A ticker along the lower third of the screen scrolled the latest news across the TV with headlines reading: ‘Over 3,000 Evacuated;’ ‘47 Dead in Unexplained Weather Phenomenon;’ and ‘143 Still Missing.’

Max sat mesmerized as the nation’s eyes rested transfixed on her small hometown of Arcadia Bay. As the minutes passed, a clearer picture began to take shape. The snowfall began on October 7th, shortly after four in the afternoon. Roads became undrivable and the first fatalities began in a series of car crashes in whiteout conditions. Then the snow ceased and the fire began that evening just before eight o’clock. The next batch of casualties were numbered primarily among the student body and faculty of Blackwell Academy as a fire of unknown cause began on the second floor of the Prescott Dormitory. Thankfully the news did not list the known victims; Max wasn’t ready to read those names.

By Tuesday, the fire had engulfed most of Blackwell and spread into the hills, and west towards Arcadia Bay proper. Students and nearby residents had been evacuated to a makeshift evacuation camp at Arcadia Bay Hospital south of the blaze and out of the trajectory of the fire’s path, while firefighters from across Oregon, Washington, and California had converged in an attempt to smother the flames that had quickly shifted from their localized start into a fast-moving and raging wildfire. By Wednesday, only 10 percent of the fire had been contained, and nearly 60 percent of Arcadia Bay had been under evacuation orders. No matter what precautions were taken, the fire managed to jump erratically, crossing fire lanes and breaks at every turn, spurred on by increasingly volatile winds.

Come Thursday morning, the fire had been 20 percent contained, and the casualty count had risen to 32 confirmed dead, with nearly 200 missing. Then, around 9:45 in the morning, the fire had stopped. The winds didn’t let up, and the containment efforts had not undergone any drastic change in course, and yet, one minute the flames eagerly ravaged through the parks, hills, and residences of Arcadia Bay, and the next minute, the flames extinguished in a huff of smoke as the clouds rolled in and the rain began. By that evening, nearly 10 percent of the town had been impacted either by flooding or mudslides. By Friday morning, that percentage had increased to 25 percent and the remainder of the town, including the camp at Arcadia Bay Hospital, had been ordered to evacuate.

A few hundred miles off the coast, the weather had taken its strangest turn yet, with meteorologists baffled as a clearly defined eye formed in an approaching stormfront, whose rapidly strengthening winds, clear definition, and spiral formation all pointed to the formation of a tropical cyclone, despite the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest which should never have been able to feed such a storm, and despite the usual influence of the easterly trade winds that should have pushed any such storms west. Instead, strong westerlies pushed south, steering the storm straight towards the Oregon coast, and, in defiance of all meteorological science and forecasts, the storm kept strengthening. By 11 am that morning the storm had been upgraded from a tropical depression to Tropical Storm Octave, and was projected to make landfall as a hurricane between 9am and noon on Saturday the 12th, somewhere between Oldport and Sunnydale, placing Arcadia Bay right in the center of the projection.

Evacuations were now being called for along a hundred and fifty mile stretch of coast, and Max rapidly began to understand the panic that had seized over the parking lot that afternoon. She needed to jump back; she needed to leave this timeline behind. Chloe had died and, for whatever unknown reason, here Rachel’s powers had manifested in a uniquely unpredictable fashion. They always manifested with Chloe’s death if Rachel lived; but never like this. There was no salvaging this timeline.

Max reached to her side, ready to grab her failsafe, only her messenger bag was not there. She had not seen it since she awoke on that gurney; and she wasn’t even sure if she’d had it in the parking lot when she’d first come to. Had she been in the dorms when the fire started? Had she been forced to flee and leave her camera and photos behind? Had this Max even understood how important those photos were? She needed to locate her clothes and her personal effects. There had to be something there that she could use; some out that would give her a route back to Chloe.

Her breathing hitched, and she could feel her chest tightening with the rising panic. A hard return was always an option, but she didn’t like that idea at all. Would she even survive another return? The last one had been excruciating, and she had felt on the verge of collapsing there on that overlook. Did she dare go back there?

Her breathing quickened, and a hand fell down across her shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be moving,” came a voice from behind her. She turned, catching sight of a young doctor, his eyes weary and weighed down by dark bags. “You can’t wander off like that, Ms. Caulfield. You could hurt yourself.”

“Sorry,” she said, attempting to imbue her voice with the meekness of the Max that she had once been. She hoped that this man might find the will to help her if only she could elicit the sympathies from him that her former fragile persona had so often brought out in others. “I just… do you know where my bag is?”

“Your bag?”

“My messenger bag? I think I had it in the parking lot.”

“Anything that was on you when you came in was bagged up. I can look into it, but you need to come with me first. Your people are looking for you, and we’re prepping the last of the patients and staff for evacuation. Looks like somehow the administration managed to scrounge up a few buses from Tillamook and even some helicopters out of Portland. Should be enough to get most of us to Dillon at the least, maybe even Newberg.”

“My people?” Max asked, barely registering the doctor’s reference to the pending evacuation.

“I don’t know who, but Nurse Parker said that someone was looking for you.”

Nurse Parker, Max thought. That would be Luke’s mom, right? She’d met her here before. That had been in one of the timelines without Chloe . Had I been in the hospital because of the Prescotts then? Or was that the time I… no. I don’t need to think about that.  

Max simply nodded, still lost in her thoughts, fighting against their pull, yet ensnared in that tangled web. Thus occupied, she allowed the doctor to wheel her through the labyrinth of halls and back towards her gurney. As they wound through the twists and turns of the halls, Max wondered who was waiting for her at the end of this sojourn. Had Dana stayed behind? No, that doesn’t make sense, she thought. Dana isn’t your friend here. Kate neither. Rachel perhaps?

We were friends here. Just friends, she thought. Chloe had been alive up until just five days ago, and clearly it had been that loss of Chloe that had activated Rachel once more. With Rachel alive, Chloe’s death always became a trigger.

Max hoped that it was Rachel that was waiting for her. She could use a friendly face. Is that all you’re looking for? Doesn’t matter. Rachel’s presence would certainly simplify matters ( complicate them uncontrollably ). Perhaps she could assuage the girl, find some way to reach her and stave off any further damage to this timeline, at least for so long as was necessary to find a way out and back to Chloe. Life, of course, rarely provided Max with a gentle route forward. More often than not, Max had been presented with the path less traveled, and it rarely proved anything but tumultuous. Now proved no exception.

When she arrived at last at her gurney, she did not find Rachel waiting for her, nor Dana or Kate. She found instead only Officer Berry, Frank, and, of course, Pompidou. Whether these were the people ( and dog ) of whom the nurse had been referring, Max did not know, but she felt that drop of disappointment in her gut as Officer Berry greeted her with a polite wave and Frank with a silent, single-eyed stare. Max knew that Frank had noticed the peculiarity of her movement with the suddenness of her shift from the gurney to the floor, and while there was no way he had parsed out the truth of what had happened, she could tell, even in that glassy gaze, that he  knew something was off about her. Simultaneously, she knew that Officer Berry would try to fill the silence with banal chatter, and Max really didn’t have the stomach for that at the moment. Most of all though, that disappointment set in due to an absence more than it had due to any problematic presence.

She had needed Rachel to be there. Chloe was dead, Kate and Dana were not her friends here, and Victoria, well, she wasn’t the Victoria from that first choice anymore; she’d be the Queen Beeatch, again, no doubt. Rachel, they said, had befriended her here. Rachel had befriended her many times and then some. Max needed that comfort now, no matter how fleeting; yet she also knew that comfort would not be had — not today.

Great , she thought as the doctor hoisted her from the wheelchair and back up onto the side of her gurney. He offered to help her swivel all the way up, so that she could lay back and recline into the gurney, but Max waved the doctor aside with a disinterested dismissal, and instead, pivoted towards the foot of the gurney, checking for her bag or any sign of her possessions. Instead she found only the rumpled mess of a discarded hospital sheet.

The doctor nodded his farewell as Max peered under the sheet and then down to the floor beneath her gurney, hoping to catch the slightest break for once and actually spot some sign of her possessions. She met with no such luck.

“I have a few final rounds,” the doctor said, already stepping towards the end of the hall, “more patients to round up, then someone will be by to collect you. Just stay put.” The doctor cast his gaze over the three of them as he spoke, that last bit apparently directed at the group and not Max alone.

“Understood,” Officer Berry nodded back.

Meanwhile, Max leaned over, careful not to dismount from her gurney and put any pressure on her injured leg, yet attempting to lean out as far as she could to catch a proper glimpse beneath her gurney. Perhaps they had stuffed her bag there?

“Could I help you with something, Ms. Caulfield?” Officer Berry asked, his attention diverted from the departing doctor and alighting now on Max and her search.

“Just looking for my belongings.” She tugged gently upon her thin hospital gown to emphasize her point and continued. “It would be nice to have some real clothes; plus I really would like my messenger bag back.”

Officer Berry nodded. “Of course.”

He bent over, peering beneath the gurney as well. He did have a better vantage point from his side of the hall, anyway.

“Afraid, I don’t see anything under there,” he said. Straightening back up, he reached over to a nearby ledge and came back with a plastic cup of water. “Still thirsty?” he asked, offering up the cup.

Max stretched out, gladly accepting the water and gulping it down in three greedy swallows.

“Pace yourself, Ms. Caulfield. You don’t want to make yourself sick.”

“Max is fine,” she said, setting the empty cup aside. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, I believe I promised to fill you in, but I’d feel terrible if I didn’t beg you off one more time. You sure you want to hear this?”

“Don’t bother,” Frank chimed in, his voice gruff, though whether that coarseness came from disuse or agitation, Max could not say.

“Didn’t ask you, Frank.”

“Fuck you, too, Andy. Just saying, girlie — ahem,” Frank cleared his throat as if excusing his phrasing, “Max, that is, I already tried to fill her in. She didn’t seem to want to hear it after all.”

Max rolled her eyes, though she doubted Frank noticed, his good eye still turned away from her, his form concealed beneath those splotchy bandages.

“No need to be rude, Bowers,” Officer Berry said, but Frank did not bother to respond again.

“It’s okay. I did kind of split on him — I needed a breather.”

“You need to be careful who you associate with Max. Bowers here is bad news.”

“I’m right here, prick.”

“I know.”

“Anyway,” Max said, interjecting between the two. “I caught myself up in the waiting room. They had the news on.” As she spoke, Max cast one final gaze about the hall, but found no sign of her missing messenger bag. Realizing that her efforts were futile, she leaned forward, propping her chin on one hand, and let her other hang absently over the edge of the gurney. A second later, a wet nose nuzzled into her palm, and she eased her hand up onto Pompidou’s head, idly scritching the delighted dog. Officer Berry was still speaking, but Max tuned him out, unable to focus on chit chat with so much in flux around her.

This was supposed to have been it — the final fix. She had sent Chloe back, actually sent someone else without going back herself, and Chloe had been able to save Rachel, so the three of them should have been okay. Max should have returned to this timeline to find all three of them alive, and finally, perhaps, she could have had an Arcadia Bay with no storm and with everyone she loved still alive and well. Instead, she’d wound up in this mess. She exhaled a frustrated breath and leaned further into the palm of her hand. This blew.

She needed to find some way to retrieve her photographs and to get out of this hospital. Without that failsafe, she would have to rely on her rewind alone. As Max petted Pompidou, she tried to recall if her bag had been on her when she jumped into this timeline, but try as she might she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t have arrived here more than a few hours ago, so she could always rewind and find out — it wouldn’t be her longest rewind ever, and unlike muscle memory, she didn’t seem to lose her grasp on time with each jump. Yes, a few hours back would be an easy enough thing to accomplish, but it would raise new questions. She’d still have her broken leg and would need to explain why she was confined to a wheelchair (as she didn’t see any crutches nearby). Moreover, her bag wouldn’t magically reappear on her shoulder. No, even if she had been carrying it, she wasn’t now; the bag would just end up abandoned in the parking lot, hidden beneath the surging crowd. Even if she could manage to explain her injuries she would have been unlikely to find her bag in that chaos.

All things considered, she was going to have to wait this doctor out and see where this timeline took her. If her bag didn’t show up, she could always rewind still and try her luck in the parking lot. Max snorted, resigning herself to the wait.

“Something funny, girlie?”

“Frank. Shut it.”

“You’re too kind to me, Andy.” Frank coughed.

“Officer.”

Max shook her head. God, she hated waiting.

“Whatever,” Frank said, his cough finally dying down. “Tell me, Max , how’d you get so chummy with my dog?”

“I’m good with animals? Plus, Pompidou’s a sweet girl, aren’t you, puppy?”

Pompidou’s tail sped up, wagging excitedly at the mention of her name, while Max continued stroking her head.

“Yeah, well, Pompidou don’t take to just anyone. You said you were Chloe’s friend, but she sure as hell never brought you around.”

Huh, Max thought. Obviously Chloe never took me to meet Frank in this timeline. I guess with Rachel alive, maybe she didn’t feel the need to drag me around her shadier associates?

As Max pondered this latest crumb about her “past,” Officer Berry interjected with Frank.

“Mr. Bowers, you best not be telling me you spent time with Joyce’s girl.”

“Don’t trust a word I’m saying, Andy — ”

“— Officer —”

“— I’m high as gas on painkillers,” Frank continued, ignoring Anderson Berry. “Not in my right mind.”

“Frank, we found you parked outside a damn high school. I know you’ve been selling to students.”

“Uh-uh, not me. Now fuck that nonsense. I want to know how this Blackwell shit has ingratiated herself with my dog. And how she knows her name?”

Max paused. Woops. 

“I must’ve heard you say it, that’s all.”

“Ain’t buying it.”

“Frank,” Officer Berry jumped in. “Stop being so paranoid.” He turned to Max. “Just don’t mind him, okay?”

“She better fucking mind. I never met this girl. Not once, Chloe’s friend or not; yet she acts awfully damn familiar.”

“See, that’s the part I keep coming back to Frank. The Price girl. You seem awfully chummy with underage girls.”

Max pushed up off her knees and leaned back against the wall. This whole conversation was getting her nowhere. She wished they’d just both shut up. Nothing they said mattered. Pretty soon, they wouldn’t even exist.

“Fuck that,” Frank said. “Chloe was nineteen, and I never said we were chummy. Just saw her around on occasion. At the diner. Concerts. Look, everyone knows the girl was no saint. I can’t help it if our paths crossed.”

God, he needs to shut up.

Max bit at her lip, trying to restrain herself.

“No one’s saying Chloe wasn’t a delinquent, but it sounds like you’ve known her for some time.”

“A delinquent? Shit.” Frank coughed. “That dumbass was on a bad road with or without me.”

Max bit down harder, but she just couldn’t restrain herself. Frank didn’t get to say Chloe’s name.

“I don’t know, Frank,” Max said. “I heard you’re all about higher education — a virtual font of information; especially since that whole Gearhardt incident.”

Frank turned then, his single visible eye widening. Max doubted he cared to have his drug business called out in front of a cop, even in code, though it was likely the mention of Gearhardt that really caught his attention. Where you had Gearhardt you had Damon and James Amber, and that whole mess would end worse for Frank than the drugs.

“Girlie…” Max could tell Frank was attempting to put some bite behind that bark, but it came out more a whimper than anything.

“What’s she talking about, Frank?”

Frank said nothing. Just continued to glare at Max.

“It’s nothing, really,” Max said. “Just Chloe had goals, dreams, she wasn’t the girl you all make her out to be.” Max paused, turning her focus solely on Frank. “So let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

“Whatever.” Frank shifted, rolling over and away from Max. Her message had come through loud and clear.

“Well, no, hold on a second,” Officer Berry started. “If you know something — ”

“— I think we all want one instant replay in life, Officer Berry. We’ve all done things, maybe taken a job we shouldn’t have?”

At the allusion to his work with the Prescotts, Officer Berry shut up, and finally, finally Max had some quiet. Then Frank went and ruined it.

“Telling you there’s something scary about that girlie, Andy.”

“Just shut up already, Bowers.”

Officer Berry huffed, then stepped a few feet away, leaning back against the wall and doing his best to ignore both Frank and Max without abandoning his charges.

Max smiled. Sure, her methods may not have been kind, but the end, well that silence was bliss. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, the antiseptic smell of the hospital flooding in with that breath, yet she tried to ignore it and focus instead on more familiar scents: like that unique blend of sweat and musk, of cheap body spray, cigarettes, and weed that reminded her of Chloe; or the soft Jasmine of Rachel’s shampoo; even the expensive perfumes and cigarette smoke that clung to Victoria, or the earthy scent of spring that reminded Max of Kate. Each unique scent called up different memories of different timelines and different moments of peace amidst the chaos that had consumed Max for so long.

Here, however, in this time, what did she have? She had hospital antiseptic, sweat, and wet dog. It wasn’t the most ideal scent, but it was at least unique.

Opening her eyes, Max glanced about hoping to see the young doctor from earlier returning from his rounds, her belongings in hand, but no such luck. The far end of the hall remained empty. Turning back towards the route that led to the waiting room, however, and Max did spot a newcomer turning the bend. She immediately noticed a familiar gate in his approach, a surety and directness in his steps mixed with the faintest hint of a limp. She hadn’t noticed that in her first encounters with the man, but she had had many chances to become more familiar with him since then. His hands straightened out the bottom of his tailored blazer, as he shifted with the turn into the hall, then fell relaxed, yet ready at his sides. Beneath that blazer he wore an equally tailored, crisp black shirt, the whole ensemble completed by the slick black tie, neatly knotted below that perfectly starched collar.

A lump formed in Max’s throat and her body tensed, her right hand flexing, preparing for the inevitable. At last, she rested her gaze upon his face, that familiar day-old layer of dark stubble lining his angled jaw, his mouth drawn into an impartial, emotionless line, all beneath that slightly crooked nose. Once she had thought of him as the bent-nose man. Now, now she knew him by name: Abraham. He smoothed the vents of his blazer once more, then looked up, his eyes locking with Max’s own. The same weathered lines crinkled from the corners of his eyes, cutting through that leathered skin, and that slit of a mouth, ticked up just a notch in the corner, revealing his same smug half grin.

“Ms. Caulfield – ” he began, but he said no more.

Max stretched out the fingers of her right hand and time stopped. Abraham’s presence never led anywhere good. That old pressure filled her head, but it felt faint, now; barely a nuisance. Motes of dust hung in the air, and the world seemed to shimmer in the frozen moment. There was a time where Max had seen so much beauty in the viscous stillness of a pause. Now she saw only opportunity.

Her previously commandeered wheelchair waited just out of grasp, so she pushed back on the wall, angling her gurney out about a half a foot until she could stretch down and just reach the back handle with the tips of her fingers. Little by little, Max wrested control over the chair, gripped it and hauled it over. Once settled into its seat, she wheeled into action. She would not be fleeing, but she had no desire to listen to Abraham either. Careful not to touch Officer Berry, Max slipped his nightstick from his utility belt.

A moment later she found herself at the end of the hall, stopped mere inches before Abraham, his lips still parted in speech, an unspoken threat waiting to spill forth. It would never know the light of day. Pressing up with one arm and leg, Max half stood from her chair, while she hauled her other arm back and took aim with the nightstick. Her muscle memory was gone, along with any actual muscles she’d ever had. Without proper training she knew she wouldn’t have much force or technique behind the blow; yet she still knew the basics. Don’t aim for the point of impact. Aim for a point beyond the impact, behind it. Don’t stop on contact, but follow through. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Max released, swinging the nightstick up at an angle into Abraham’s throat and beyond it, towards his spine and arcing out behind – only, as always in the syrupy pause of time, the baton shook upon impact, stopping cold at Abraham’s throat, the force of the blow reverberating back through Max’s arm. Her whole body trembled, and her left arm struggled to keep her aloft; yet she was not done. She pulled back again, twisting her wrist, and adjusting the angle of her baton, then hefted a second blow up and into Abraham’s closest ear.

Again, the force of the impact rattled through Max, as if pounding against a brick wall, and this time, as her body shook, she could herself aloft no more and fell back into the rough cushion of her wheelchair, rolling back a foot as she did. She wasn’t strong enough, though. Those two blows would hurt, but the wouldn’t incapacitate Abraham. She knew that. And she needed Abraham down. Let the doctors tend to him, if he survived, but she wanted no further words with the man.

She wheeled forward and pounded blow after blow into the man, gritting with the force of each impact. First to the back of one knee, then the front of another. Let him crumple to the floor when he came to. Next she pounded a blow into his gut, and another into his ribs; one to his back, and two to his thigh; another to the ribs; and three to that shin. Let’s see you really limp. Keep them coming. 

Blow after blow, she battered the night stick into the man’s paused form, until at last her hand shook and she could hold to the baton no more. It fell from her grasp, then paused hung in mid-air awaiting the resumption of time to begin its descent. Max massaged her arm, attempting to ease the hurt of impact after impact, then reached out with her left hand, gripped the baton from its mid-air pause, and wheeled herself back towards her gurney. There was no need to arouse any suspicion.

She tucked the nightstick back into its spot on Officer Berry’s belt. There was no need to clean it first. Abraham didn’t have the slightest cut nor bruise; not yet. There would be no evidence that Max nor Officer Berry had ever been involved. That done, Max backed her chair towards the gurney, and hauled herself back onto its thin mattress. Her muscles shook barely able to lift her weight, still in agony from her assault of Abraham, but after a minute or two, she managed her way back up, kicked her wheelchair as close to its former resting spot as she could with her good leg, then relaxed back against the hallway wall. It wouldn’t be a perfect match to her former position, but close enough to arouse curiosity she hoped – especially not with the spectacle about to play out at the end of the hall.

“Ow. Since when are you violent?” that Chloe from the hill asked. That Chloe that Max had sent back to save Rachel; that she had sent back to die, yet again.

Max sniffed, then rubbed absently at the corner of one eye. This was not the time for tears. She could mourn the girl she had once been, later – mourn the innocence that she had lost.

“… when innocence evolves into corruption,” Jefferson whispered from that hollow of a Dark Room long gone. 

Max shivered then suppressed the memory, much as she did her tears. Already her gown felt drenched in sweat. She didn’t need to add puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks to the changes she’d soon introduce. Sure, Officer Berry and Frank would likely be distracted by Abraham’s hopefully brutal seizure, but she didn’t need to push her luck.

Max relaxed into the wall, easing her breathing slowly, breath by breath, until at last her breaths came normal once more, and the tremor in her arm and shoulder had faded to a barely perceptible quiver. It was time.

Max released her hold on the moment and let the world spin forward on its axis once more.

A scream cut through the hall, then cut off, but neither that gasp nor its abrupt end caught Max’s attention. She had already focused on Abraham, waiting to take in every agonizing impact. She had seen his mouth open in shock as the scream burst out, then cut off as the blunt force to his throat and gut winded him, ending his voice and sending him gasping for air. She delighted as his knees buckled and he writhed every which way to dozens of blows landing all at once. Biting at her lip, she tried not to smile as the blood sprayed from his ear, and that stupid earpiece shattered in place. As the sounds of ribs cracking pierced the quiet of his muted lungs, Max bit harder, knowing she couldn’t let anyone see her delight in this pain. She could barely stomach how much it pleased her herself.

Then time rushed forward, not of Max’s accord, but just in that way time does when a moment is over and reality sets in. Officer Berry hurried to Abraham’s side, while Frank rolled onto one shoulder, attempting to peer behind him towards all of the commotion.

“What the hell is it now?” he asked, before breaking into a wet gurgle of a cough himself.

“We need a doctor,” Officer Berry yelled.

Abraham said nothing, only gasped like a fish out of water, and Max reveled in his silence. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay to watch his agony play out. She’d hurt him, yes, but Abraham had a thick skin from years of war and a mercenary lifestyle. He was a completely different monster from Jefferson. He operated not for his own pleasure or sick ideology, but killed instead as a matter of professionalism. He had a job and he finished it, and Abraham never let any inconvenience prevent him from accomplishing his goal, whatever it may be.

Had she never met Jefferson, never graced his Dark Room, it was quite possible that Abraham would have been the Boogeyman that haunted Max’s dreams; whose nightmarish visage rose up every time that she closed her eyes. Yet his methodical nature could be understood, and as hauntings went, it paled in comparison to the psychotic obsessions that drove her former teacher. Abraham would get his job done if Max stayed, but he’d never get underneath her emotional armor; not now. It had been built up too strong, forged in timeline after timeline of trauma.

Slipping from her gurney, Max eased down once more into the wheelchair.

“I’ll find a doctor,” she mumbled as she stretched and angled her way into the seat. She tried to keep the statement low, just barely audible over the panic at the end of the hall; enough to excuse herself, but hopefully not enough to reveal the lie in her tone. Max had changed in many ways since she first discovered her power, but her ability to lie still remained unreliable at best. Thankfully, Frank didn’t seem to notice, still straining to catch an angle on the commotion at the end of the hall.

“No need,” came a voice behind Max, and a hand settled onto her shoulder. “Glad to see you’re awake.”

That voice stopped her cold, and all reason fled. His voice. Her breath hitched, and Max’s vision began to close in, tunneling off as the panic took hold.

Each footfall echoed out as the man slid his hand from her shoulder and stepped around to face her. Ever so slowly, he bent down, taking a knee so that he could look Max in the eye through those pretentious, white-templed glasses. Then he lifted a hand to her face, thumbing her chin until her gaze met his.

“Hello, Max,” Jefferson said. “It’s always a pleasure to see my star pupil.”