“There you are, Gray!” Tamara loomed over the side of the shelf.

Bec knew that she had to do something… so she improvised. Badly.

“Hello, Tamara. You know, no worries. You don’t have to come down and introduce yourself, I was just leaving.” Bec stuck her thumb out back towards the exit.

“Yeah, I know, I brought you the body bag you’re leaving in.” Tamara gave Bec a look Bec couldn’t sense.

“Well, that’s very thou—” A knife darted towards Bec. She managed to dodge it as it slams into the concrete less than a foot from her foot. Bec felt very lucky because she sensed a random and very useful glint on the blade from the overhead lights before Tamara dropped it. The blade in the ground whizzed back up to Tamara’s hand as she slowly eased herself to the floor. Bec ran. Not towards the exit, but towards the central barricade, dodging around the shelves. Tamara threw her knife and it boomeranged around the corner past Bec’s head. She was sure that if she had her hair out, she would have gotten a trim. Bec bolted over the barricade and grabbed a gun. Ignoring the slick, stickiness of the metal, she fired at Tamara from behind cover. It would be called blind fire, but Bec was firing anything but blind. She could track Tamara’s movements fairly well with her hand out and aiming. Tamara ducked behind a box to avoid the volley of shots. A moment passed before Bec felt three things pop up from the back of Tamara’s box, arcing towards her.

Knives? When did she get her other knives back?

Other questions like that were silenced as Bec dived away from her spot. She heard three blades strike concrete only once because Tamara had already started to sprint forward and had vaulted over the barricade with ease. She gathered the knives in an instant after the first bounces. Tamara caught a glimpse of gray disappear behind a metal sheet propped up against a stack of wood. She was trapped. She slung all three blades into different directions, one left, one right, and one above. They arced around the cover, converging on a blind spot. She heard blades cutting flesh. A warped cry of pain followed by a whimper. Tamara took a deep sigh of satisfaction. She’d won her first major fight. Mission accomplished. Time to gloat.

“Oh, my. Did I hurt you?” Tamara teased as she approached the cover. She was relishing the wheezing sounds of pain. “These blades are my favorite. One of these men you so rudely killed made them for me. You see I don’t regen all that great. So, this guy, he had a really nasty Word. Fester. Anyways, it really, really hurts to get stabbed by these knives. The wound just keeps getting worse and worse. It takes days for these people to heal from the wounds. You know, like they’re supposed to.”

She turned the corner to see a corpse of a man crying, knives sticking out of his chest and head. She whirled around with her arms up, in time to block the truck that just hit her. Her right arm shattered, her jaw dislocated, and she was blinded by what she could assume were headlights. She went flying, maybe 5 feet into the air, before righting herself and land on her feet gently. It was then that she realized that it wasn’t a truck. It was that gray bitch that just punched her!

Tamara realigned her jaw with a crack. Adrenaline coursing through her veins, she laughed, skin straining against her smile. “So, you can actually fight? I was so sure you were just a cowardly support unit.”

“This isn’t a game, Tamara. This is real life!” Bec shouted.

“Just what an NPC would say!” Tamara scowled. Her face hurt like a sunburn after scraping the ballast tanks for 10 hours on a particularly sunny day of summer. This stinging skin almost distracted her from Bec’s next attack.

Bec pulled out the gun and tried to shoot, but Tamara had already marked every gun that her men used. It immediately yanked from the gray girl’s hand and skittered across the floor until it hit a box. Bec played it cool. “Fine, be that way. Where’s the Timelet?”

“You know about the Timelet? Yes, of course. That would explain the thing on your waist. You might not be an NPC. That would explain why Green’s bombing wasn’t as much of a sure thing as we thought. Who are you?”

“I’m Ms. Gray. Surely you’ve heard of me?” Bec bluffed.

“I haven’t. But I guess I’ll be famous for killing you.”

“Wait, wait, wait, if you kill me, everything starts over. We keep fighting, until someone dies. For good. It won’t be this time; it won’t be next time. We’d clash for years. You’ve reset what, 20 times? We will keep butting heads, so let’s just call it quits.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

Bec put up her arms in a placating manner. “Have you looked at the Timelet recently? It’s not working because we keep interacting with each other. It benefits us greatly to never, ever interact with another user. Just let my friends go, and we have a deal. I will not come bother you again. Stay away from the Mountain’s Border, that’s all I ask.”

Tamara was feeling sick. Her muscles were cramping. She was completely spent. She had lost everything today. She was really amassing an amazing thing here and they blew it all away.

Tamara was pulled out of her thoughts by a cough. Mr. Green’s cough. She thought he was dead. A smile crept across her face as far as the pain would allow. She hadn’t lost everything. If she was going to be honest, things were only starting to look up for Tamara after she caught Mr. Green. And he matched her hair.

“You aren’t taking Mr. Green, but other than that, go. We have a deal.” Throwing her arm up and back, Ms. Scarlet and Mr. Purple started skidding away down the corridor towards the opposite exit. Ms. Scarlet bounced across the corrugated ceiling in a way that made Bec wince. Mr. Purple skidded away like he’d been placed on an extremely steep slip N slide, bouncing over the barricades and plummeting into the dark corridor.

“Let’s hope next time we meet, it won’t be under such ugly circumstances.”

“Let’s hope we don’t meet.” Tamara nodded, weakly. She had a lot to think about.

Bec nodded back, turned and went to follow her friends down the long corridor of the warehouse.

~~~

“What were you thinking, Bec?” Ms. Scarlet chastised her. “We needed her dead!”

“Ah knew she was too green.” Mr. Purple nodded. They had all met up at the back exit of the warehouse. Walking through the room with the couch, they talked it out.

“Ok, Scarlet. I haven’t exactly… been honest with you.”

“Your ‘Timelet,’ was it? Tell me everything.”

“Ok, ok. I had to make a gamble. It didn’t pay off because Tamara never revealed her Timelet. It HAD to be somewhere in there.” Bec held up her hands in resignation. Her secret was out, and she most likely didn’t win this fight against Tamara.

She was glad Ms. Scarlet was playing interference in the fight, swapping her body with the dead soldier, but that was not what she asked for. Bec thought a quick trick like that could certainly win the battle but would definitely not win the war… so to speak. Time loops are complicated, fighting a person in their own separate time loop was damn near impossible to win. Her plan with Ms. Scarlet didn’t pan out this time. It may work next time. All these fears and concerns were making Bec dizzy, but, thankfully, Mr. Purple broke her out of her mental loop.

“Ok, what does it do though?” Mr. Purple asked.

Bec sighed. She didn’t want to lie. “I guess I just got to come out and say it. It records things and, when I die, it sends the data back to an earlier version of me so I can do better, learn from mistakes and whatnot.”

Purple and Scarlet exchanged a worried look. “So, you’re unkillable. Certain circumstances permitting.”

“I assure you I’m very much killable. I just don’t stay dead. The bomb locations, I was given them by Robert in an alternate timeline. That was my secret.”

“Well, shiet, and that green-haired nut has one, too?”

“Seeing her here, I am inclined to believe that there are at least three more of these in the wild. I think Lauds is using us as guinea pigs. I think they’ve already figured out how to exploit multiple timelines, that would explain why they were exploding into all the tech industries on Earth. I’m from Earth, by the way.” She told that last part to Purple specifically.

As they climbed the stairs to the scout’s nest across from the warehouse, Ms. Scarlet froze, “Something’s wrong… this house is the house Camo is in… but didn’t we exit from the back?”

“Hey, yeah, I didn’t remember after we walked out into the plaza. Wasn’t that supposed to be the opposite way?” Bec cocked her head. They opened the door to find the nest there, the chair, the binoculars on a tripod, but there wasn’t a person in sight. “No Camo?”

Bec noted, “I can’t hear anything. He’s not nearby unless he’s being very quiet.”

“I wouldn’t discount that possibility.” Ms. Scarlet’s words indicated a different story from her actions as she pulled out a blade from thin air. She turned on the display, turning the wall transparent. A familiar scene showed the plaza, burnt out wrecks and all.

“It looks exactly the same as before.”

“Not exactly. Where ahr the bodies we left? Look the chair is spilled over, but no blood or anything from when I killed those sentries.”

“You’re right. I didn’t think of it at the time, just assuming the rooms were similar, but the sofa room had no bodies and the door was blown off its hinges just the same. How could I have missed this.” Ms. Scarlet pressed her palm to her forehead in frustration. “This is bad. Really, really bad. We need to get back into the warehouse. NOW.”

The group ran as fast as they could, past the external barricades, past the sofa room, into the warehouse. Last time, they had taken it slow and snuck through the aisles. This time, they were booking it. Bec didn’t know what was wrong, but as they approached the open central area where they’d fought Tamara, she started to get an idea. It wasn’t the center anymore, instead, there was a wall and garage door cutting the barricade cleanly in half. Boxes were bisected at odd angles. There was a corpse half inside the wall, half outside. Bec gasped. There was a single space generator lying there on its side, no longer humming. “What does this mean?”

“I have no idea…” Ms. Scarlet said. “I really have no idea at all.” She lifted the garage door feeling the outside air rush in. “I think we’re trapped. On the other side of…”

“That doesn’t make sense, other side of space?”

“I think Tamara outplayed us. I think this is something with Mr. Green’s work written all over it.” Ms. Scarlet cursed up a storm. “How could I ignore such an obvious gesture as throwing us to the back of the warehouse. This, Gray, this is why you kill, not negotiate.”

“I hadn’t gotten to that part. I think Tamara is dead. I might have killed her.”

Ms. Scarlet clenched her teeth. “What do you mean, she’s dead.”

“You know when I punched her? I dosed her with every ounce of gamma radiation I could. She had burns on her face, if you noticed.”

“Yeah so, she’d… just… regen… She’s like you. She’s got tier 0 regeneration. She said it herself.”

“Yeah, I was hoping she’d slowly die of radiation poisoning, and she’d only realize it after the time loop’s checkpoint reengaged. Tomorrow, assuming she’s on the same interval I am. I’m getting a headache thinking about what it’d mean if she wasn’t. Once the checkpoint elapsed, she wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

“Ah take it back, Scarlet. Gray here ain’t green. That’s insanely fucked up.”

Purple was right. Bec frowned. It was grim. She had trouble dealing with killing a man less than an hour ago. Why was she suddenly okay with killing Tamara? It really boiled down to how scared she was and… as sad as it sounded, Bec wouldn’t have to be there to watch Tamara die. It didn’t seem real yet that she had poisoned someone to death with her fist.

Ms. Scarlet sighed. “You’re telling me that there is a decent chance that the only one who knows that we’re here on the flip side… will be dead in a week?”

Bec grimaced. “Yeah… I mean, Green knows and he’s still alive.”

Scarlet glared. “We better figure out a way out of here fast, or I’m going to kill you and reboot this whole timeline.”

“Actually, that wouldn’t fix this problem.” Al popped in to comment. “I’ve been mulling over options on what we can do to escape. Killing you, Bec, is a probable bad option.”

Bec wasn’t excited about getting killed as a bail button, but she was still curious. “Why shouldn’t I die?”

“It would be unproductive, and the Timelet is flagging a new error. ‘Error 603: Checkpoint Discontinuity Found. Please wait until a new checkpoint is established.’ This error is, thankfully, more descript. I believe it means that, if you were to die, we’d be starting from scratch, but, if we wait until a checkpoint, we could try everything to get out of here. Looking over your fight, I believe this outcome is unique, and therefore likely to be a better chance of us emerging out successful than another randomly decided timeline.”

“How do you know it’s unique?”

“The fight could have only worked out in this way because you employed both Mute Step and Project Voice in order for the fight to turn to your favor. We know this was a new combo based on the picks of previous Becs. I find it unlikely that you would have survived the crate error, which you would have made regardless of power, without Mute Step. You wouldn’t have tricked Tamara long enough to punch her if you didn’t Project Voice to get her to approach your hiding spot. You wouldn’t have been able to attempt a gambit with Ms. Scarlet. That half-baked plan was a unique choice that led you to negotiate with Tamara instead of fighting or running, thus this is a promising opportunity. Tamara may be dead, and everyone has survived thus far. I believe this is close to a win.”

“Al said this is our best chance to make it out of this fight alive. We’ve won as long as we break out. These circumstances won’t happen again, and I still can’t pass any new data about Tamara back to past me. It finds proximity to other Timelet disagreeable, and this place has broken the connection to my past self. Dunno how that works.”

Ms. Scarlet threw out a flurry of curses. Bec hadn’t seen her so off-kilter before.

“Can we fix the generator?” Bec asked. “Get back to the other side?”

“Ahm alright at Word tech. Lemme see.” Mr. Purple lifted the generator over onto its legs. “This pawrt is damaged. It’d take a spare pawrt and a day ‘er two ta replace it, I guess. The real problem is that the Word crystal has been… eyup, removed. Mr. Green’s word was prolly powering it and those crystals are uniquely imbued by him. No dice.”

“Unleeeeess…” Bec asked.

“Unless we can go to the base. If this weird mirrored dimension is infinite,” Ms. Scarlet put her hand to her forehead realizing just how profound this technology was. “Oh Lauds, Green what did you do here? Anyways, if we go to the base, we can pull a mirror world crystal of Green’s, right out of the Fab’s space expanders… hopefully.”

“Mr. Green made the base a maze. Yes! Yes! Haha!” Bec laughed.

“Mmm. Yes, it might just work…”