TIME & TIED: ESCALATION

ARC 2.2 - To the Future

PART 34b: SHOTS FIRED 2

"Julie LaMille?"

It was an older male voice on the phone. Someone she didn't recognize.

"Julie, don't hang up," the voice continued. "Okay?"

Julie bit her lip. "O-kay?" she said tentatively.

"You are going to do something for me now. Listen carefully. You are going to sneak out of your house, and meet me at the corner of Parkside and Erb. You will receive further instructions there. Do you understand?"

"I will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb," Julie acknowledged, feeling a curious fog in her brain. "What... what instructions? What's going on?"

"You are not ready for answers yet. All in good... time."

"I am not ready for answers yet. All in good time,” Julie repeated back.

"You will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb."

"I will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb."

"You will go there now."

"I will go there now," Julie confirmed, feeling her body swaying from side to side.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Julie obediently hung up the phone and went to find her jacket. Her parents didn’t notice when she left.

***

"Oh, shoot," Luci muttered.

Chartreuse glanced over at her companion. "What's wrong?"

"I took some music out of my bag to look over while waiting at Frank's, and I never put it back in," Luci sighed. "You go on ahead, I'm going to run back and get it."

"You can always, like, look on with someone else," Chartreuse pointed out.

"Yeah, but my music has all my little pencil markings on it," Luci noted. “Anyway, it’s not raining that hard now, and it’ll only take me, what, ten extra minutes? I'll meet back up with you at practice."

Chartreuse shrugged. "Okay, see you there then."

***

Frank set the pencil back down. "So that's the equation you come up with," he concluded. "Understand?"

Carrie leaned against her hand. "No," she admitted, eyeing the page. "What's the x mean?"

"That's the length of the ladder."

"Uh huh. Remind me, why do we use x?"

Frank shrugged. "Why not x? Doesn't matter. We have to solve for something.”

Carrie drummed the fingers of her free hand against the table. “See, x is a stupid convention, if you ask me. It always makes me think of multiplication."

"Well, you can pick another letter if it makes you happy," Frank said with a smile. The doorbell rang, interrupting his train of thought. "One of the others must have forgotten something," he remarked, glancing at the clock. "Be right back."

"Okay," Carrie decided. “While you do that, I’m going to trig this thing up again using h."

"You do that," Frank said as he walked out of the sitting room. The grin on his face faded as he opened the front door. "Julie?" Frank greeted.

"Carrie still here?" the brunette asked blankly.

"Er, well, yeah... Julie, your hair's dripping wet, don't you have an umbrella?"

"I must see Carrie," Julie said. She pushed her way past Frank and advanced into the hall.

“Um, come in? Julie, what's going on?" Frank wondered, closing the door and hurrying after her. Julie stopped at the entryway to the sitting room.

"Julie!" Carrie said, standing up as she caught sight of the visitor.

"Carrie Waterson," Julie responded evenly.

The two girls stared at each other across the room. Frank hesitated, not sure whether to intercede or not.

"Look Julie," Carrie said at last. "I hope you're not coming to me with any thoughts of rejuvenating our friendship. Because honestly, I think you got exactly what you deserved today. In fact, I couldn't care less about you, now that I've started to get my life back together. So, know what? It's probably in both of our best interests for you to turn around, and walk back out through that front door."

Julie didn't bat an eyelash. "Shut up," she said calmly. She drew the gun out from underneath her jacket, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

***

Carrie stumbled back a step, reflexively bringing her hand up to her side. Her eyes dropped down to the redness that was starting to stain her shirt. “Then again, maybe we can negotiate," she gurgled out, before collapsing down onto the floor.

"CARRIE!" Frank’s voice screamed. She heard him running into the room, and then he was pulling her back up into something of a seated position, leaning her against the table. "Carrie, are you all right? Speak to me!"

"I... I seem to be bleeding," Carrie murmured, pulling up her shirt to see. She tried to apply pressure to the wound. The gunshot wound. Wow. They hadn’t covered this yet in health class...

"What? What happened?" someone gasped - Julie gasped?

"What HAPPENED? YOU JUST SHOT CARRIE, DAMN YOU!"

“Frank, don’t antagonize the crazy person,” Carrie suggested. Okay, talking hurt now. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"N-n-no," Julie whimpered. Carrie reopened her eyes, in time to see that her former friend was now staring at the gun as if she was seeing it for the first time. That didn’t make much sense. However, when Carrie saw Frank rising to his feet out of the corner of her eye, Julie quickly cocked the weapon back up at him. "D-D-Don't move,” Julie warned.

Unlike before, the gun was now wobbling all over the place. Then again, Carrie decided it was equally possible that her vision was wobbling all over the place. Should she call 911? Wow, yeah, someone should definitely do that...

As if reading her mind, Frank said, “Julie, let me get my phone out. Carrie needs medical attention.”

"This is not how my birthday was supposed to go," Julie countered. With that, Carrie decided that both of them were shaking. "This is NOT how my birthday was supposed to go. This IS NOT how..."

"Julie, put that gun down, so we can straighten all of this out," Frank suggested.

"NO!" Julie shrieked. Her head snapped from side to side. "I'll fix this,” she declared. "I'll fix it all. Where's your time machine?"

"Wh-What?"

"I KNOW you have one! Carrie told me all about it, you MUST have fixed it by now, so WHERE IS IT?" The brunette was no longer whimpering but practically screaming, while holding the gun in both hands. Even that wasn’t helping to keep it steady. Heck, Julie’s whole form was starting to look blurry. Wait, no, Carrie realized everything was getting blurry...

“D-Downstairs," Frank said.

"Downstairs," Julie repeated. She swallowed. "I know how to make everything better. I never should have been born."

"Julie..."

"NO!" Julie shrieked again. "I can't LIVE like this any more!"

She fired the gun a second time. Frank stumbled back as the bullet slammed into the carpeting somewhere by his feet, and Julie took the opportunity to run out of the room.

It was as Carrie heard the new voice calling out from the front of the house that she discovered her unfocussed gaze was drifting up towards the ceiling.

***

"Frank??"

That was Luci’s voice! "In here," Frank called out to her.

"Frank, I came in because I thought I heard a... holy geez!" Luci gasped out as she rounded the corner and spotted both him and Carrie.

"Julie's gone crazy and she's after the time machine," Frank explained to her, fumbling with his phone. "See if you can tell what she’s doing as I call Carrie an ambulance, but BE CAREFUL. Julie got herself a gun from somewhere.”

Luci nodded wordlessly, and ducked back out of the room.

Frank finished dialling 911, requesting aid for a gunshot wound, and giving them his address. He winced, as he now recalled that their time machine was sitting out in plain view, on his lab bench.

"Frank?" he heard Carrie rasp. "Frank, it's getting cold. Did your parents not pay the heating bill?"

Frank pulled the phone away from his mouth. "Yes, Carrie," he replied, tears stinging at his eyes. "But we'll get it fixed, so you make sure you stay conscious until then, okay? You promise me you'll stay conscious!"

"Okay," Carrie agreed quietly. “Okay, yeah... I'll... try... that......"

"You won't just try, you WILL," Frank pleaded. He saw movement by the entranceway, and whirled towards the source.

"It's me," Luci said, raising her hands.

"Julie...?"

"She's... gone,” Luci admitted quietly. "I saw her grab about half of our notes, take a coin for a particular year from your collection and then she activated the time machine. I’m not even sure what time period she selected.”

Frank ran a hand back through his hair. “From what she said, I’ve got a pretty good guess,” he admitted. "But... without the machine, we can't follow her."

"Right.” Luci swallowed. “So... so what do we do?"

Sirens began to wail outside. “I wish I knew," Frank replied. "I really wish I knew."