Hayley felt her corset crushing her lungs, choking away her breathing. The actual garment was destroyed sometime millions of years prior, but the feeling persisted beyond her ability to endure.

  The men shouted at each other while she tried to stay out of their way. She expected one or the other to attack at any moment, to brandish a weapon and end the other's life.

  Instead, the large man laughed loud enough to lose the sweat from his dark skin. “You fucked this up Lee, you fix it.” His tone was curt but he retained the smile.

  “I said I will. I'm gonna send her back tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. Overnight.

  “You can't,” she said, without thinking.

  “What?” Lee answered

  “God, she even sounds like her Lee. How in the fuck did you manage this crazy shit.”

  “What was that?” Lee said, ignoring the man he sarcastically called the professor.

  “I cannot be returned tomorrow. My family will think I…”

  Lee looked at her puzzled for a moment, but he caught her meaning.

  “Well, it's after midnight now. It’s too late.”

  Hayley felt the tears on her cheeks before anywhere else. She went cold, knowing her future was sealed. The marriage, as awful as it would be, would be canceled. The next suitor would make the butcher's son look like a perfect gentleman, a prince of charm.

  Lee spoke over her lamentations, “Hey, can't we send her back?”

  “Fucking absolutely not. You want another schism in the timeline? Let's send her back to the Atlantean archives while we are at it.”

  “Wait, are those real?”

  “I don’t fucking know. The point is, that is a terrible idea.”

  But Lee's smile grew wider. “It’s a perfect test. We tag her and send her back to when she left. One simple, casual loop. Then we pick her up again in her sixties?”

  The professor looked at Lee, still holding a bit of a scowl, but he also looked contemplative.

  “You hit the Jurassic at 1630, then came back at 1730, right?”

  “Right. It was still light out when we left.”

  “Okay, then we send her at 1700, hopefully far enough from both incursions not to interfere.” He looked straight at Hayley, “And then you run like fucking hell, you hear me?”

  “Run?”

  “Oh my fuggin’ gawd, Lee, are all the locals this gottdamned stupid?”

  “No, no, I think she's in shock. Let me try…”

  Lee did not finish the sentence. He went over and kneeled next to where she was sitting.

  “You remember the doorway?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir. Please.”

  Hayley didn't know why she felt the sudden need to plead.

  “Okay, cool. You go through the doorway again, on the other side it will be yesterday afternoon. You run home. Got it?”

  “The doorway? That was awful…” Hayley's stomach tried flipping inside out briefly at remembering.

  “It gets easier, especially if…”

  “If one had been reared in the space between upon a mighty S-boat”

  The professor chimed in, “Lee, what the hell did you tell her?”

  Lee opened his mouth, but Hayley answered, “A fantastic tale of fiction, sir, nothing more. I saw nothing of importance here today. My involvement in your tale ends, and I live a modest life amongst my peers.”

  Lee closed his mouth and smiled. “Uh, yeah… That.”

  ***

  Hayley hated the second passage through the doorway more than the first. She was far more relaxed without knowing the consequence of its passage, her tensed organs screamed as they tumbled inside her, wildly but briefly.

  The window was full of the waning light signaling the end of an afternoon and the beginning of an evening.

  She ran.

  She realized as the cold outside air hit her that she was missing her outerwear. She didn't have any coin to replace them either, and arriving at home without them would be very noticeable.

  The idea struck her.

  She ran back to the bellsman. He leered at her far worse without her outerwear. She resumed walking a walk that was more of a march and approached him.

  “Sir, I must request a refund for the second bell, as my business is all but complete. Please return the decem.”

  He instead produced a gold dollar, heavy with the seal of the Columbic Federate.

  “Seems to me you have the time to spare, and are half ready. I know a place we could transact.”

  A gold dollar would more than enough to replace the dress. The decem was going to include a large volume of risk and begging the shopkeeper.

  She had made a point to evade the men who looked for such trades as much as possible, and Hayley did not believe she was so truly cornered yet.

  “Yes, sir, you see my state and you can surely improve it. Sadly, I must insist on the decem for now, as I cannot meet with both you and the dress maker before dark.”

  “Young missus, perhaps you can meet us both?”

  He took the bait.

  “May I present your dollar to him, and return?”

  The bellsman held out the dollar eagerly, but withdrew it before she could approach. Hayley didn't want to be within two arm’s lengths at any time before she needed to.

  “And what's to keep you from forgetting to return? The constable would look upon this most sour.”

  Hayley had been thinking overtime about this, but she didn't intend on being here. She could beseech Lee again tomorrow, and she could return the coin once it made the full circuit she was planning.

  But first she needed the coin.

  She pulled a slip of paper from his cart, licked her lips discreetly, and pressed them firmly to the paper. The faint imprint could be seen, and was a somewhat universal contract binding, not unlike what other spacetimes used fingerprints, signatures, family seals, or signet rings for.

  The bellsman was so eager to take the paper that he dropped the coin. Hayley slowly picked it up, never breaking eye contact. His face and neck became far redder than the cold could justify.

  Hayley did everything short of running to the general store that she knew sold the factory made dresses and outerwear she had recently lost. The riskiest moments of the plan were the transit to the store. She left her hands in her pockets, one tightly gripping the coin, trying not to warp it too badly.

  The streets were full of stares, gestures, and hoots from strange men.

  She marched on.

  The shop did not have the exact style of dress she had, as the stock seemed to rotate annually and her dress was a few years past. She could survive the ill fit until it could be sized.

  But she was ready for that.

  “I need a new dress!” she announced, overtly boisterous. “I am to marry and must have the dress of a woman”

  She knew what the conclusions would be, unseemly, but technically allowed by Columbic law. She had to thread this needle.

  The shopkeeper was a man, younger than her father but not by much. He had many children, the oldest boy helped with the shop. He was young, but not so young that he wasn't inclined to notice her.

  “What dress would a man like you want upon his wife?” she asked the shopkeeper but shot a look at his son.

  The boy nearly dropped his broom and his father stuttered, “Ahh, yes, right this way. We have one with more pockets than all of Nova Yorkshire.”

  Hayley liked dresses with abundant pockets.

  The boy found a lot to sweep near her and nowhere to sweep it to, as his father sold Hayley the most expensive dress and outerwear he had in stock.

  Hayley knew what was to come next.

  The shopkeeper had to find some of the stock, since keeping such rarely sold items in the open air would only cause their loss by decay. He went into the back.

  “Oh my, I must hurry.” Hayley pulled out the coin, and the boy looked at it even more bewildered. “Please, write my ledger so I am not late. I cannot be so careless about the sunset.”

  He knew what she meant and wrote her purchase down in his father’s ledger.

  She smiled at him, the kind of smile she knew to be careful with. “I have one more errand, but I'll be so grateful if you can take this when I return for the rest tomorrow?”

  “I don't know, miss. I cannot—”

  She moved closer, slowly, never breaking eye contact. “Please, I have to return anyway, and I can show you what a great woman can offer.”

  The last few words nearly came out as a whisper, Hayley was close enough to the boy to hear his squelching heartbeat in his chest.

  “I'll show you… Tomorrow…”

  Hayley slid out of the shop, with the dress and the coin and no fanfare or shouts of theft.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The sky darkened faster than she planned, but she made it home before those who prefer their deeds in the dark came out.

  ***

  Hayley hit the wall as if shoved, startled and frightened by what awaited her.

  Her father sat at the table to the left, his usual place was inhabited by the butcher and his son. Her mother dragged her towards the kitchen.

  “What is this?!” She tugged at the new dress.

  “I thought to surprise my new husband with a dress more fitting of a wife?” Hayley couldn't say the words seriously, and a nervous chuckle followed them.

  “This is no play! Get in your chair for supper!”

  Hayley couldn't get to her garment before her mother began tearing at them. The corset was missing entirely, and the girdle, as those items were still at the dress shop.

  Your mother noticed and hissed, but didn't say anything.

  “A man would be careless in this, but I know which of your garments were lost to lowmen this day.”

  Hayley froze, trying to come up with a reply that did not include her travelling the great causeways of time.

  “I will keep silent for now, for all our sake. This is the best we could hope for you.”

  Hayley's mother pushed her forward to dine before Hayley could process why her mother was so motivated for this marriage.

  ***

  The butcher's son sat, stuffing his face with slice after slice of pork as the grease ran down his second and third chin, undeterred by the few mangy patches of facial hair that only seemed to grow there and not on his face.

  The butcher himself looked like he had worked heavy labor since he was born, and would do so until the day he died.

  Hayley couldn't seem to look away from the sight of the three large men occupying the tiny space at her family's small table.

  “My daughter is of a marrying age,” her father interrupted her follies, “and I thought it best to make our arrangement official.”

  Hayley's blood ran cold. The talk was overt. The greasy man, whose lack of hardship made him look more like a boy, was about to propose a marriage, in her house, with her. Hayley explicitly felt extra gross that this was taking place in her house and not in an alley outside someplace.

  An alley where Lee could use his weapon to save her and melt away any evidence of this.

  “Yes,” the butcher's son oinked, and he received an elbow from his father. He swallowed the hunk of gristle he had been chewing and said again, “Yes, sir, I would have your daughter.”

  The words sounded more like he was speaking of a helping of meat. His eyes said it too.

  She saw.

  She saw her end in his eyes. His father’s business dying but a few years after the man who had built it. The boy of man's age striking her about the head and body, forcing her to make children.

  She saw them treated as liability and cattle, until she stood up for a daughter too young to marry.

  Hayley saw this sour man kill her with the tools of his trade.

  Hayley screamed.

  ***

  The alleyway was cold and dark.

  The cold seemed to drive away the various unpleasant people and lowmen who prefer it.

  She arrived at Lee’s warehouse and heard his voice. And she heard her own voice.

  “Oh mah gawd, I literally cannot with you right now…” echoed from beyond the doors, and Hayley smiled.

  But she realized she couldn't barge in. She had no memory of barging in, and therefore if she did, “Scism?” she asked herself quietly.

  Hayley had not run like that for years, and she hadn't done it in full outerwear ever. Her heavy breaths seemed to interact with the mist, and she wondered if her breath had different compounds in it when she was tired, or if it had a different temperature as her hot sweat became uncomfortably cold against her skin.

  The metal wheels cracked loudly against the pebblestone road.

  A carriage driven by lowmen approached the alley.

  Hayley sank to her knees, she tried to look like anything other than a person, but the alley was surprisingly devoid of cover.

  A hoot echoed, the carriage of lowmen saw her. Another hoot.

  The pair inside the warehouse seemed unfazed. The interaction was not slated to end soon, and she had to solve for their presence.

  Hayley realized they didn't come down the alley the first time, that her presence caused this.

  Which meant she wasn't present. She was changing time, even if she wasn't changing what happened inside.

  Her mind reeled at the possibilities. She could prevent her own birth, stop her mother from marrying her father.

  But they weren't bad at first, perhaps if her father had had a son. Or her mother could be made able to carry another child.

  If she knew exactly when and where, she could stop Lee from becoming stranded. Or maybe she could cause it.

  “That you, miss?” a lowman called out. The connotation was clear, feigning familiarly would serve in their defense if she screamed for a constable.

  But then her prior self would be interrupted, and perhaps even Lee's operation and equipment.

  Hayley felt a lot more cornered now than with the bellman or her groom-to-be, even though Lee and his weapon was but a few manlength’s away.

  Hayley stood and placed her finger horizontally across her lips. She had an idea.

  The lowman obliged, which surprised her. He motioned to the four others who were creeping from the carriage toward her.

  She flashed the coin, and they all made wide eyes.

  “Hidden inside lay far more,” she whispered to the closest lowman. “I cannot fight the man who stands guard, and I wait for him to sleep”

  Lee's voice, and her own, echoed faintly down the alley.

  The lowmen looked at her, assessing the situation.

  “Perhaps we can sleep and come back too,” he smiled, stretching the terrible analogy.

  “If he leaves, the vault cannot be opened. My chance is gone.”

  This made sense, at least from the fictions she had read.

  “Perhaps we take you, and come back for him?”

  This was exactly what Hayley hoped he wouldn’t think of. She didn't have a good reply.

  “What you could buy after helping me is far more than what you could take. There are more perils inside I have not and will not reveal.”

  The other lowmen were close enough to hear the quiet conversation, and they all looked amongst themselves quietly. They seemed to make a decision.

  The professor's voice bellowed from within. They all stood frozen, one man even took a half step backwards.

  “I see. Leave and sleep. What would I do to keep from leaving here with nothing?”

  Hayley smiled at him, “Quite simple. I shall hear the moment and we will enter quietly. Once the peril is removed, we can take the bounty.”

  The foremost lowman smiled briefly, and she knew what he thought. He thought to take her after the coin was revealed. Which was exactly what she hoped he would think.

  ***

  Hayley heard the doorway make the noise that meant she had stepped through. She heard the whine and whinny of the machines as they closed the doorway.

  Hayley made the signal for quiet, then slipped into the empty shop room.

  “You nearly fucked us up, Lee.”

  “Not on purpose! I saw her and just froze, I guess. She followed me here.”

  “She may have corrupted the timeline.”

  “Hey, I've been thinking, what do I really know about my Hayley?”

  “No, don't. I spent way too long in Kemet trying to find that kind of answer.”

  Hayley was grateful that they were both there. She moved toward the door to the warehouse when she heard a click and saw a flash of metal.

  The lowman had a knife to her throat. He could hear them talking as plain as she could. He realized he had been duped somehow.

  “Well, let me fire up the transponder and make sure she's—”

  Hayley's blood ran cold. The painfully cold spot in her thigh is where they placed the device that could trace the path of her life.

  If they turned it on, they would know she was hiding here. They would exclaim this, and her throat would be cut before they thought to open the door.

  “You just cannot leave this alone,” the professor answered.

  “What, it might be good data?”

  “No, it's another failure you're chasing. It's like you can sniff them out.”

  The knife came closer, “They are awake.”

  Hayley tried to sound annoyed, “The vault sleeps. Let us take it quietly before we are locked out.”

  The lowman held still. She couldn't see him, but she felt the hot and cold of his decisions.

  The knife slid away, he decided five lowmen could take her and the two he heard. They didn't know about the weapon.

  “I will scout ahead," Hayley whispered, taking a step forward. Two different men grabbed her arms and pulled her back.

  “We will, miss. Stay here and stay quiet.”

  They couldn't hear her smile.

  The first man peered into the door and just stared, half in half out.

  She heard Lee’s shout, then the prof’s.

  She saw the lowman disappear from the waist up, a fine mist of viscera coated most of the room.

  The other lowmen screamed and ran, some forward and some back. Half of the frontmost lowmen sprayed free as the rest tumbled down.

  A lowman slipped and fell on his chest. Then his chest and shoulder sprayed free, part of his head joining the bottom of his feet.

  Two of the lowmen escaped into the night.

  Lee chased them, fired the weapon. Up close, Hayley felt the same distortion as the doorway during every firing.

  The professor came out more cautiously, and looked at her in disbelief.

  Lee ran back in and said, “I got ‘em!” triumphantly.

  Hayley stumbled toward him and fell into his arms.

  He was smiling with his victory, and she found herself far more happy to be there than she expected.

  And as if he was still in the future, he casually kissed her.

  ***

  Hayley used a handheld machine to clean the blood. They called it by some word she could barely speak, but it took all the blood and skin it touched away, leaving the walls, paint, and fabric of her dress alone.

  Her cheeks still burned with embarrassment. The kiss was wholly uncalled for.

  But she yearned for another. The contradiction ached in her, spun in circles inside her.

  She took up the task of cleaning with the device, hoping upon hope that she would not be cast out.

  She realized what she had done. She ran screaming from her one chance of a life into the night, then watched five more men die. Nine men died in this alley because she was in this alley.

  The constable could easily incarcerate her indefinitely, or even put her to death over this. Worse, if anyone had the evidence of what really occurred or Lee's involvement.

  She worried for Lee more than she worried for herself, even though Lee was armed as such.

  In the other room, she very clearly heard the men arguing about her fate. Men always argued about her fate. Lee argued in her defense, and she was grateful. The professor had a more noble purpose, even though he was moorish. He seemed far more concerned with their presence, with time, with the doorway and their mission.

  Hayley was able to tell they were both stranded, and both from different times and places. They both became stranded during catastrophes that killed people close to them.

  But the professor also mentioned dying himself, at least by inference.

  Hayley tried to focus on the task at hand, but between the loud conversation nearby and her own mind processing, she found her work erratic and slow going.

  ***

  “She’s not even done yet? Lee, I swear you picked the most poo-brained local to diddle.”

  “I didn't diddle a local she—”

  “Ran back immediately for an extra diddle.”

  Hayley felt her anger rise, and she tossed the machine to the floor. “I am not a diddle!” she shouted.

  The professor paused, then scoffed, “Whatever. You need to leave.”

  Hayley couldn't process the words. Tears spilled free and she flopped onto the floor.

  “Here we go,” the professor said, “I know it seems nice here, but if I have to ask again, Lee will be cleaning what's left of you off the walls.”

  “Hey!”

  “No,” Hayley said.

  “No? Like you'll leave now?”

  “No. I am staying. I decide my fate.”

  “No, you aren't. Lee, tell her. ”

  “Prof, I think she’ll contribute—”

  “Horseshit, c’mon, Lee. She’s a local,” he stressed the word like slur, "there's no way she could contribute.”

  “Tell him, tell him your thing.”

  Hayley perked up and got to her feet. “The ultramundus has six titular folds, using L’Hopital’s threads to affirmament eleven fully-realized force lattices," Hayley recited from earlier.

  The professor stopped. He quietly looked over the obsidian slate containing Lee's notes from their time together.

  Hayley could almost see in her mind Lee’s ugly, boxy S-boat coming to visit her at the casino on the moon that she called home in the follies when the professor interrupted.

  “Okay, get her a bunk. And not your bunk, Lee!”