Hayley couldn't breathe.

  Each gasp drew in more of the liquid crystalline fire that seared her lungs. The pain made her cough, ragged and violent. The coughs became bloody, spittle dotted her sleeves, and even Lee's face.

  “Breathe, just breathe,” he kept saying.

  Hayley didn’t just hear the words or see his face, she felt a kind of connection, interconnection. She felt his inhale as she forgot her own.

  The world threatened to go dark again, then she gasped, starting the painful cycle all over.

  “Dang Lee, what rusty shit did she have?” Angel called out from somewhere behind her.

  Hayley couldn't answer verbally, although the implication was very insulting. She heard the worry in their voice, the concern that her disposition would result in some unfortunate circumstance.

  “I don't know, maybe some old timey shit. Is this dysentery?"

  Hayley took another sharp breath in and tried to hold it in to restore her normal breathing and end the worries that danced between the pair beneath their crude language.

  Instead, she fell victim to another round of coughing.

  Lee took a hit and began coughing too.

  “No, dumbass, dysentery is shitting yourself to death. This might be TB.”

  Hayley didn't know what disease they were referring to but gained the insight that they did not fear it. It was somehow curable, and therefore, they were not as worried.

  “No way,” Lee choked out from under a big smile, “this is some good shit.”

  The conversation drifted away from her as she took another painful breath. She felt, she knew, she heard without hearing, that Angel was about to speak about the real concern.

  “No, duh, but it's the last of it. The new guy…”

  “What?” Hayley croaked, then began coughing again, now with a deep, painful rattle.

  “Yeah, Angel, what guy?”

  “There’s a new guy, he took power a few months ago. Some kind of coup, but you know I don’t fuck with that shit.”

  “Real.”

  “He burned all of it, the seeds too.”

  Lee sat up at that, significantly more sober and alert.

  “Dude, no fucking way.”

  Hayley drew her first calm breath, although it still felt like she had inhaled frozen glass, and her lungs burned brilliantly with each breath thereafter.

  “Yes way. I smuggled this bag.”

  “Wait… No way we smoked keester herb!”

  “Yeah, not your business, Lee. You said you can synth it?”

  “Prof can, probably. Booty bag,” he said, his face contorting with disgust.

  “Tight. I've been waiting for you. We all gotta leave.”

  “We missed our window. The next one is tomorrow.”

  Hayley barely managed to whimper, “Help?”

  “We can hide here till—-”

  “Lee, shut the fuck up. Your girl is dying over here.”

  Angel leaned in, and Hayley realized she heard two clear and distinct voices. The first rang in her ears, and the other was more of an understanding, completely nonverbal.

  “Lee is unreliable, but good at heart.” Angel said something else aloud, with far more swear words in it.

  “I wish you were her. She was my anchor.” Lee didn't say it aloud, but she heard the meaning behind the crass vocabulary.

  Hayley couldn't keep up with the layered banter anymore, but she was able to see their fear and posturing.

  The door they hid behind tore open and another guard holding a staff burst in.

  She hadn't learned his language but she knew what he was saying.

  They had been found. They were going to be dragged before their leader.

  Then they would die.

  Hayley reached out and pulled the staff towards her; as the guard exclaimed surprise and leveled his staff at her, she pushed.

  She pushed with her mind, through the staff, its function seemed so obvious to her now. She knew it as if it was used to pull nails from a horse’s shoeing.

  Unlike the usual shoeing of horses, the guard's skeleton was wetly slapped about four man lengths behind where his skin remained, all the viscera between his skin and bones were sprayed between the two.

  Hayley's head rocked and her muscles gave way, like she had suddenly lost a lot of blood.

  Angel looked shocked, and Lee couldn't quite process what had just occurred.

  “Oh shit,” they said simultaneously.

  ***

  Hayley couldn't run, despite having Angel and Lee under each arm trying to drag her along.

  Between whatever she had inhaled, her still screaming lungs, her clothing aimed for far colder weather, and the exhaustion of using the staff weapon, she simply couldn't run. Even the stinging of her hand in the hot, wet air wasn't enough to keep her alert.

  She did hear the distant shout as the separated guard was discovered.

  “Fuck, Hayley, you have got to run,” Lee said, which really meant, “I made a bad decision and I’m scared.”

  “You got this girl, you got this,” Angel said, but beneath it, “You have to run or we all die. I haven't quite decided whether or not to leave you behind.”

  She got her legs to mime the act of running, and was able to put more and more weight on them, between coughing fits at least. More drops of blood stained her dress.

  “Halt!” a guard that had gotten ahead of them shouted.

  Angel wordlessly pressed the staff into Hayley's hand, and she didn't need the drug to know what they meant.

  She tried to stand firmly and pointed the staff at the guard. She pushed.

  All three of them dropped to the ground as if Hayley had detonated an invisible explosive. They flung apart like three dolls made of rags.

  She saw Lee tumble in the dirt, unconscious, before she joined him.

  ***

  Hayley's arms hurt. Her lungs hurt too, but her shoulders ached and the rope bit heavily into her arms. Her skinned hand stung, taking up residence in the background of these new pains.

  She tried to look around but the light was nearly blinding and her head ached.

  It was freshly dawn, the early sunlight was far more intense than anything she was used to and she faced an opening where the sunlight was pouring in.

  A silhouette moved in the distance, but she couldn't focus on it.

  “It’s been a long time, Angel.”

  Hayley looked around, lolling her head back and forth slowly, and found that her dress and most of her undergarments were missing.

  Extreme embarrassment flooded her; her eyes and mind sharpened.

  The room was made of stone, large and high aloft. The sunrise poured in directly in front of her, obscuring most other details from the outside but the tops of the distant trees ahead indicated her altitude.

  A man stood in the distance, just at the edge of her peripheral vision.

  “No fucking way,” Angel replied, “I thought you died.”

  “Nope. I had a mission. Now I'm on this mission.”

  “Fucking with Javvans in a dumb mission. They were our allies.”

  Lee groaned to her left. She could just barely see him, he was tied to posts similarly to how she was. She noticed the room was designed to accommodate many more tied persons.

  “Like you care. You're just a low level dealer and opportunist. The General has a real mission, even if you have to crack a couple eggs.”

  “You are so fucking stupid, John. How do you know the General isn't the cause. Or like, one of the gray’s minions.”

  “The grays have been around since before the Saurothrop, and they'll be around after them.”

  “Fuck you and the grays,” Lee said aimlessly.

  The man walked over to Lee. He cast a shadow over Hayley, and she was able to see another shadow in the entryway. Her mind solved the triangular issue and she came to know the corridor was at least twenty man lengths. If reason held, this room was deep inside the stone pyramid near the top but low enough to afford the silencing of the stone around them. Anyone below wouldn't hear their screams. Hayley imagined what was once a peaceful culture, advanced beyond anything she had known, slowly decaying as their equivalent of lowmen slowly outbred the ones who built this place until none were left. The last few sages were murdered by the man before her, ending an advanced civilization with cold indifference.

  Hayley shook off the folly and saw him, he barely saw her. He looked like he belonged here more than any of them, but he also looked very out of place. John wore the same style of garb as Angel, but he also wore a harness affixed with numerous weapons she could not place.

  “Oh, Emmaleigh, I don't miss having to deal with you. Are you as insufferable as a man as you were as a woman?”

  “The fuck? Angel? The fuck is this guy on about?”

  “Uh, yeah, Lee, I'm not your Angel. We talked about this. Multiverse.”

  “Ultramundus,” Hayley echoed.

  John turned towards Hayley and looked at her like she was a piece of food that fell onto a dirty floor.

  “Who’s this? She's not a spacer, although she is sickly and ropey like one.”

  “She’s your mom!” Lee shouted back.

  “Never!” Hayley gasped.

  John looked at her again.

  “She will be though. Late Victorian, looks like TB.”

  John tugged at her bare leg and she kicked out and screamed.

  “Hmm, low bone density like a spacer, but that's some kind of industrial poisoning. Where are you from, girl? Or should I say, when?”

  Hayley pushed her lips together, not wanting to answer.

  John walked behind the trio and she heard the definitive rumpling sounds of someone rifling through her dress.

  “I don't have the equipment to test the gold, but I guess the Columbic Federate is north of here and a few millennia in the future. Which means you can't cross the barrier.”

  “Fuck you, John!” Lee shouted out, audibly struggling against his restraints.

  “Okay, Emmaleigh, settle down. I’m Xhosl here. If you get free and I don't kill you, a dozen guards outside will.”

  “She’ll blast ‘em!” Lee shouted, then stopped thrashing.

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  “Oh, it was her? And here I thought Angel had grown some powers. I see, now.”

  John got in Hayley's face, and she spit on him for the impropriety.

  “I’ve had my shots, girl. I won't catch whatever you have. But they will.”

  John motioned outside.

  “They will catch anything you brought back, and it'll spread like wildfire. You will be the cause of a hundred million deaths,” he said, cackling.

  “You came to do this?” Angel asked, almost pleading “You would kill so many ancestors?”

  “Okay, Angel, you don't hold anything as sacred as the cred on your tag so don't play pretend now.”

  “I never got paid to genocide my own people.”

  “I saw the beam you used on a Saurothrop nursery. I'm at least accomplishing something here. If the Javvan never leave, the planet stays a planet longer. We—”

  Lee hurled himself at John, Lee landed a punch to the side of John’s head mid-leap, and the pair tumbled onto the stone floor. John pulled a small, boxy weapon from his coat and fired it at Lee. Lee slid sideways, the stone splintered and thousands of cracks appeared where he had been standing, it threw shards of stone all around the chamber. One of them sliced Hayley's arm, lightning fast and white hot.

  She craned her neck upwards and saw that it cut half of the rope too.

  She tugged with her bleeding arm, and the hemp rope tore strand by strand, buying her more room to apply more force with each tug. Her hand brushed roughly against the fibers, bringing the stinging from her missing skin into a crescendo of pain.

  The weapon went off again; this time, instead of the ear-bursting explosion of stone, it sounded far more wet. Hayley focused on tearing free, trying to imagine what else in the room could have been hit.

  Lee screamed.

  Hayley fell roughly to the stone floor and saw the weapon go off again, its muzzle flashing so brightly that it washed out her vision. Its ripping sound echoed wetly as before, directed downward.

  Hayley blinked rapidly, clearing her vision, she saw Lee standing over what was left of John. This wasn't like the weapon Lee had before, its effect was more like something she would've seen as a construction site, when nails or something similar were dropped from a great height, rending flesh at incredible speeds despite the objects being small and inert.

  Lee rushed over to Angel, begging and pleading.

  Angel was dead, chopped cleanly in two by the weapon which created a thousand tiny holes made to form a tear.

  Hayley realized, once again, she was far less clothed than she would have liked and retreated to where her dress was.

  Lee continued wailing and crying over the corpse of his friend.

  Covered in blood of both friend and enemy, she saw Lee as his human self, apart from the fantasy of him she was holding.

  Lee won the fight, but caused Angel's death. And he knew it.

  A shout came from outside. The guards had orders to stay out but heard the commotion and wanted permission to enter.

  Hayley's mind raced.

  They knew the sound of shooting. It wasn’t foreign to them, but John didn't want them to know about the discussion. That he was from the future.

  Hayley grabbed Lee's arm, hard. As hard as her fingers could and dragged him upright.

  “We only have one chance to escape, do not fuck this up,” Hayley hissed. She pushed down a laugh at the buoyant swear word; she had to speak his language now.

  Lee looked at her, puzzled.

  “Take the weapon. You work for John. I am to be delivered to the telecaster field.”

  “What? No, wait, what?”

  “Take this weapon! I am your prisoner!”

  Lee looked back towards Angel.

  “We can’t, we have to—”

  Hayley shook him, “Fuck fuck fuck, Lee. I said your word now fuck and get me fuck to the fuck field, have you fuck heard?”

  Lee blinked dumbly a moment longer, and then answered, “Oh, fuck.”

  ***

  Lee took a deep snuffly breath in, and moaned a ragged “ugh.”

  “Lee, it's a good plan,” Hayley said, trying to keep her voice low so the guards couldn't hear but with enough force to keep Lee tethered to what was currently happening.

  “We once took a party shuttle out of one of the rogue asteroids and partied for like three weeks. We ran out of water before we ran out of drugs.” Lee sighed, reminiscing.

  “Lee, we have to go. You have to express the plan, right now.”

  “One time Angel got me out of lockup by flirting with the entire security detachment. Co-ed. I have no idea how, but all of them thought they were gonna fuck and then Angel just… ” Lee chuckled as another stream of tears formed.

  “This weapon, you have to operate it. Can you?”

  “Oh, yeah, it's a hypersonic SMG. Standard issue. Shreds flesh, barely scratches metal or ferrocrete.”

  Hayley pressed the weapon into Lee's chest. Lee looked at it, then shook his head, blinked, and looked at it again.

  “Huh, this one's a bit different.”

  Lee regarded the weapon, narrating as he went over the features.

  “Red you’re dead, safety is set higher. Mag release is on the wrong side. The slide is off-center. It's a bit lighter though. Huh. Weird.”

  “Yes, weird, yes. Now I am your prisoner and you must take me to the telecaster field. Now, Lee!”

  Lee looked at Hayley and his face changed. His clarity returned and he looked around.

  He calmly but quickly went over to the pile of gear they left and grabbed the staff and his clothes.

  “Sorry, Hayley, it'll be more believable the less you have on. Is this okay?”

  His tone was confident, soft. Like a different man had stood up.

  “Yes, but please let us bring it. It was expensive.”

  “Roger.”

  Lee took the bag they came for from Angel's belongings and hid it inside the dress. He used the rope from his restraints to fashion a crude bag, then reused Hayley's restraints to tie her up.

  He took the SMG and slid a piece out. “Half ammo, this guy’s been busy.”

  Hayley thought to ask, but simply agreed. “Ammo” seems to track the weapon’s usage, and half seemed to be a lot for the machine.

  Lee took Hayley's rope softly and offered a quiet, "I'm sorry. Everything I do will be to escape. Please forgive me.”

  Hayley felt her fear well up but knew Lee wouldn't take anything too far unless it was absolutely necessary.

  “I am ready.”

  Lee’s face turned hard, cold, ugly. He pulled the rope cruelly, and shouted, “Shut the fuck up!”

  ***

  The guard wasn't buying it. None of them were. They formed a rough half circle around the pair.

  “Go in there and ask him yourself then, dumbass,” Lee shouted, dragging Hayley roughly by the rope and brandishing the weapon almost carelessly.

  The guards all flinched as it slid over them, they knew it had the power to loudly rend flesh far faster than what their staves could.

  Lee had the staff tied to his back underneath the pack made of her dress. She repeatedly thought about pulling it free and blasting them, except she wasn't certain she still had the power.

  The effects of the drug were wearing off. She could understand the guards, and they could understand Lee, but when he spoke to them it was all gibberish compared to their real structured language.

  Lee began walking away.

  “I'm following orders. If you fools want to die for this, it's your choice,” Lee said roughly.

  Hayley got the impression that John and Angel had either taken the time to learn the language or had a more powerful grasp on the drug than Lee did.

  Hayley yanked backwards hard, “No, please don't take me. I can't go!”

  She kicked Lee hard in the thigh, hoping it looked real without causing any real injury.

  “Please, one of you help me! Please!”

  This got their attention. They all thought to help her, or rather, help themselves to her.

  One took a step forward, and the weapon Lee held chopped him down. A muzzle flash and a terrible ripping sound was answered by the guard’s meat slapping onto the stone below, and slowly began sloppily tumbling down the stone stairs his body was guarding.

  “Anyone else seek to defy orders?”

  Hayley noticed he wouldn't use John's name here. Maybe it was a ploy, but she got the impression that if he tried to pronounce it, it would break the spell.

  Lee jerked her forward so hard she fell to her knees, scraping them.

  “You. Will. Rise,” he growled.

  She did not expect the flush she felt, and desperately tried to file this feeling away until she was home alone.

  Except, where was home now?

  The tears were a surprise, and she saw concern in Lee's face. She didn't want him to break his characterization now.

  “You can't take me!” she screamed and threw herself to the ground. She landed too hard on her left shoulder and it screamed its own silent alarm. She tried to kick Lee again, but he evaded and simply began dragging her down the steps.

  The guards laughed cruelly as she fought against the ropes and the stone stairs battered her.

  But the plan worked, so she kicked and cried and thrashed as they entered the marketplace proper.

  The area was busy now, and she realized how obviously the trap was set for her and Lee. Everyone knew they were there, it took a large collaboration to clear the streets before they arrived.

  She almost asked if Angel had set upon the trap, but she knew the words could break Lee's composure. She could ask once they were safe.

  Horns sounded from the steppe pyramid they had escaped.

  The common folk, exactly as in her times at the constables' siren, scattered and hid.

  Hayley smiled briefly, seeing how human they were despite seeming so strange.

  Lee pulled her from her folly, tearing her wrists free of the rope.

  “Welp, it's time to run.”

  ***

  Hayley couldn't breathe. She tried to follow Lee, he seemed to know exactly where to go without any kind of landmarks or signposts.

  Her lungs simply wouldn't pull in air. The coughing began anew, fresh pink blood straining her hands and arms.

  The faster he went, and the closer the guards got, the more her vision swam from the fatigue.

  Her head pounded, every thunderous heartbeat was agony under a set of failing lungs and bloody lips. She did everything she could to stay upright and keep her feet moving.

  “Here! It's here!” She heard Lee's voice, but he sounded very far away.

  Someone grabbed her and she thrashed away.

  The whole of reality tumbled around her and landed her on a smooth stone floor.

  She lay there a moment coughing.

  “Lee, what did you do?” said the deep resonant voice above her. The professor.

  “She has TB and had a bad reaction to the stuff. I bought some back!”

  Her dress hit the ground unceremoniously, she tried to look towards it, the cold seeping through what little she still wore.

  “Lee, I don't know if I have the cure for TB on hand. I'll have to synth it first.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  Hayley could smell blood, a lot of it. It wasn't hers. She tried to look around, crawl away. The area she was laying on was stained with blood, it wasn't like that when they had left.

  “What…happened?” she wheezed.

  “That’s a long story.”

  ***

  The professor ran a machine that looked more like an icebox full of colored tubes while Lee ran back and forth across the building acquiring various liquids and powders from storage for him.

  She could barely sit up without the world swimming away from her, she missed parts of the professor's lecture about the synth, and how he was going to cure something in her called tuberculosis, despite it simply being a natural thing most people have.

  Hayley knew time was passing by the hour, but it seemed like he very quickly synthesized and administered the first of many doses.

  “You probably have severe scarring, so it'll take years to heal. But it won't kill you.”

  “Uh, prof… How long were we gone then?” Lee asked.

  “Lee, it's complicated. I'm still trying to understand it.”

  Hayley watched the man's face. He was clearly uncomfortable with the answer, but he didn't seem to be the type to shy away from the truth or keep secrets.

  He caught her gaze, and must have seen something in it.

  “No interrupting,” Ray said pointedly.

  “Deal,” Lee replied.

  “It’s been a week.”

  “A week? What the fuck, Sarge?”

  “No interrupting!"

  Lee cast his gaze downward in a scowl, and waved his hand.

  “Someone, somehow, cast into our, uh, telecaster.”

  “How the— Oh, okay, fine, continue.”

  “It wasn't human.”

  “Wait what? Like an alien— Oh, oh my god, talk faster then,” Lee huffed in response to Ray’s scowl.

  “I didn't have the inhaler, but the computer was able to translate a little. She…”

  The professor paused, running up against the more difficult facts.

  “The creature popped in a few hours after you left. The equipment wouldn't charge the spooler, and now I know why. The creature looked like if people evolved from birds instead of monkeys, or maybe they were so far in the future they turned themselves into bird people like therians.”

  Hayley motioned to ask what a therian was, but the professor shot her a look that roughly translated to "don't interrupt.”

  “She was upset that she landed here. She was going somewhere else. And she complained a lot. The computer has the transcripts. I was able to eventually reverse whatever she did, and got her out, but not before…”

  He looked at the stained concrete flooring.

  “She gave birth to an egg, and I had to rig a heater for them. The pair returned through the telecaster to regions unknown. I have a week's worth of readings that make no sense and she was mildly radioactive which messed with the machines a lot.”

  Hayley gasped at the realization of what she was left to lay in for hours, and found her breathing far less painful, every breath more rewarding and vigorous.

  “What the fuck, Sarge?”

  “Yes, Lee, I asked that same question about a thousand times. But, if I can figure out where I sent her, we might have a way around the wall.”

  Hayley tried to sneak in, “The wall?”

  “Uh, yeah. We can't seem to cast too far into the future, we get too far and Earth is destroyed. We can’t figure out how to cast to Mars, but we might know why.”

  “The cloak,” Lee answered

  Hayley sat a moment, trying to process.

  Instead, she just said, “Can you show me?”

  ***

  Most of the equipment had leather belts around their frames, tucked out of the way. The trio had themselves wrapped up and secured to the floor, and the telecaster surged.

  The professor showed her each destination.

  A few years in the future, the machine couldn't produce a connection at all. Then, about 180 years in the future, the connection works.

  The telecaster opened, and a horrific wind began sucking everything not secured into the doorway. The machine the professor called a Geiger counter was furiously counting geigers, its clicks so rapidly they sounded more like an animal's cry.

  The doorway closed, and the debris that was flying towards the doorway stopped in midair and flopped to the floor.

  “Right now,” the professor said, “about three to five years from now, the wall goes up. We can't cast in and make any changes, so instead we have to focus on the past.”

  “And now it is past, to the wall you hope to defeat?"

  “Yeah, if we can get back to our times, then we can make changes and stop the destruction of Earth.”

  Lee smiled at Hayley before she could get another idea to form.

  “And if we try anything too loud, Earth gets destroyed sooner than we are born.”

  “Actually, Lee, that's already happened. I opened that less than a hundred years from now. You messed something up by pulling Hayley.”

  “Fuck,” Lee answered.

  “I changed things? By not marrying the pigman’s son?”

  The professor looked at her, sadness in his eyes.

  “Yes.”