Maggie awoke from a wonderfully dreamless slumber, one of several short stints throughout the night, and now, day. While she seemed to be free of the nightmares, she now found her head was in splitting pain once again. She rubbed her forehead and moaned.
“Ah, welcome back, Maggie,” came Rembrandt’s voice from somewhere across the room. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.” She opened one eye and glanced around the room, before a burst of pain forced the eyelid to close again. It was enough to see that it was just the two of them in the suite.
“Where’s everyone gone?”
Rembrandt threw a bag of salted peanuts to her. “Q-ball and the Doc have gone to see the Professor, and Farm Boy’s gone to snoop on Q-ball’s parents. Just leaves me to keep you company.”
Maggie gave a weak snort, thinking about how Rembrandt hadn’t used a single actual name in that whole statement.
She clutched the peanuts, and tore open the bag, her eyes still tightly shut as she chewed on them.
“Want another… you know what?” Rembrandt suggested.
Reluctantly, she nodded. “It’s kind of embarrassing, but it’s better than being completely out of commission.”
“Would it make you feel more comfortable if we did it together? Definitely won’t be my first time.”
Maggie smiled at this. The singer’s past as a touring performer probably was the kind of environment that encouraged a lot of substance use. A little mary jane was probably small potatoes.
“Sure,” she said, in answer to his offer, and it didn’t take long for the two of them to be relaxed on their beds, surrounded by clouds of earthy smoke.
“Do you really think they’ll be able to help me before… you know…” Maggie said, having one final toke on the spent joint.
Rembrandt smoothly exhaled the puff of smoke he’d been holding in, making a large smoke ring that slowly dispersed as he spoke.
“Sure they will, Maggie. Seven-time-Doctor and Q-ball, workin’ with the Professor? That’s a dream team.”
Maggie’s head was as cloudy as the room. The only thing she remembered about the Professor was an older man with a limited vocabulary dying of a gunshot wound, but everyone seemed to be placing their faith in his help.
“What was he like? The Professor?”
Rembrandt took a little while to answer.
“Real big opinion of himself. Short temper. Called people idiots all the time.” He chuckled. “Ah, man. He was great.”
Maggie joined in on the laughter. “Oh yeah, sounds like the life of the party.”
“He was a softy, really. Just had to go past the first four or five layers of the onion. Kinda guy that did the right thing, just complained about it the whole way.”
Sounds like my Dad, at least when I was a kid.
The two of them spent a little while in silence. Maggie felt more deeply affected by the drug this time, and it was nice. The pain had dulled to something she could almost forget about, if it didn’t surge whenever she moved her head. She felt relaxed, despite knowing her possible fate.
Which me will stay, and which will go?
The two halves of her, which she had dubbed ‘Sheriff Maggie’ and ‘Slider Maggie’, did seem to be getting a little easier to distinguish than they had been. She felt one side of her feeling bitter to the core, and a kind of jealousy flared up every time she thought about Slider Maggie’s experiences. However, there was a defiance that came with the jealousy. Sheriff Maggie didn’t want to be consumed by Slider Maggie, she wanted to be Slider Maggie. It was a conflict that caused an uneasy tightness in her chest.
And then there was Uncle Sam. Her memories of him blended together to the point that she didn’t know which was which at all. In Slider Maggie’s world, she didn’t know if he was a time traveller or not. If he was, did he even know that his world was destroyed?
“I wonder if he’s still in the past, leaping from person to person, wondering why nobody in his present is contacting him?” she wondered aloud.
Rembrandt looked at her, puzzled. “What?”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “Oh, right, I forgot I was just thinking all that and not saying it.”
She rolled over to face him. “I was just thinking about the Uncle Sam from the Earth that was destroyed. What if he’s stuck in the past, and doesn’t even know that there’s no future to go back to?”
She felt her eyes welling up as she thought of how tragic that would be.
“Hey, maybe one day he’ll jump into someone who can kick Rickman’s butt before he kills all those folks.”
It was a nice thought. But that was really all it was, a thought. Maggie couldn’t find it in her to hold out hope of such things.
She stretched, and gingerly rose off the bed. To her surprise, she felt okay. Not brilliant, of course, but as okay as she had felt since she’d been in this state of fusion.
“I wanna get out of here,” she announced. Rembrandt raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“You sure you’re up to it?”
“Yeah,” she said, almost as surprised as him. “I want some sunshine. Can we go for a walk, Remy?”
Rembrandt sluggishly climbed off his bed. “Sure thing.”
He glanced at her eyes, and added: “Think we better steer clear of the fuzz, though.”
Maggie’s eyes widened, and she moved to the bathroom to see her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were noticeably bloodshot.
Great, now that was all she was going to be able to think about while they were outside.
* * *
As Sam and Quinn trekked back to the hotel, their mission a success, the two physicists talked animatedly about things that a layman observer couldn’t possibly comprehend, both enthusiastic about having someone off whom to bounce ideas.
Through it all, Quinn wondered how much of Sam’s extensive knowledge was forgotten through his damaged memory. He was pushing the limits of his own knowledge, and Sam hadn’t slowed down. With these supposed gaps in his memory, Quinn had to wonder just how vast his knowledge must have been before. He wondered if this was how Professor Arturo had felt at the moment he’d seen the chalkboard in Quinn’s basement all those years ago.
As they walked along the city sidewalk, the stimulating conversation between them was brought to an abrupt end, when Quinn spotted a familiar face hailing a cab.
“Hold that thought,” he said to Sam, and dashed off towards Michael Mallory.
“Hey!” he called out as he approached. Michael, who was standing by the cab with the door open, looked at him with a furrowed brow.
“Hey Da- uh, sir,” Quinn fumbled. “I’m glad to see you again. I want to apologise for yesterday, I don’t know what’s going on but it’s clear I made you uncomfortable.”
His father looked him over momentarily.
“I think you may have me confused for someone else,” he said curtly, and got into the cab. He shut the door and it pulled away, leaving Quinn even more confused than before.
Wait, why is he in a taxi? He has a car.
Quinn watched the cab for a moment, before making a snap decision, and hailed a cab for himself.
“Follow that guy… not too close.” he told the driver, and he mouthed ‘sorry’ towards Sam, on the street, who had watched this scene in bewilderment.
* * *
Colin skipped over the white fence, and ducked behind a bush.
Unlike the way they had approached Quinn’s childhood home the previous day, today Colin was going to try and be covert about exploring the house, and seeing if he could figure out the reason behind Quinn’s foster father’s paranoia.
He’d already seen Michael Mallory leave for work, so at least he wouldn’t run into him, but Quinn had all but guaranteed his mother would be home, so he still had to be sneaky.
He crouched and made his way to the basement hatch to the side of the house, which was secured with a padlock, as expected; nothing he couldn’t pick. He dropped to a prone position, and peered through the window just to the right of the hatch, and his heart skipped a beat when he locked eyes with a small child.
Colin crawled away from the window, alarmed. He’d already blown his cover. This wasn’t ideal. Colin ducked behind a hedge, cursing his misfortune.
Was that Quinn?
The child did bear a resemblance to his brother, certainly.
“Hello?” Came the voice of the five-year-old. Colin heard the window open. “Who are you?”
Colin sighed deeply. If he was going to get out of here before his mother noticed, he’d have to engage the boy.
He stepped out into the open, and sat on the ground. Little Quinn was at the window, looking at him with wide eyes.
“Are you the man who wants to take me away?”
Colin frowned. “No…”
“Then why are you here?”
At that moment, Bopper rounded the corner and made a frenzied beeline towards him.
“Um, I am… here to pet Bopper,” he lied, as the dog jumped on him, and began to lick his face. He rubbed the dog’s back. “Good boy…”
He gently coaxed Bopper off of himself, and stood.
“That was fun. Now, I’m going to go find that man, and um, tell him not to take you away, okay?”
Quinn looked up at him, pouting. “Mom already did, but she says I gotta stay in the basement for longer. I’m bored.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Colin said, brushing the dirt off his clothes. “Well, I have to go now.”
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“Uh… Skip,” Colin replied, recalling the name of Quinn’s childhood imaginary brother.
He crouched and slunk away from the house, feeling the young Quinn’s eyes on him as he went.
As he cleared the fence and returned to the street, he was startled to see a taxi pull up in front of him. The surprise turned to heart-pounding anxiety as he saw Michael Mallory emerge.
Colin froze as his father locked eyes with him.
And then, Michael’s eyes moved to the gate of the house, and he walked past Colin without a word. Colin watched him start to open the gate.
Huh? It was like he didn’t recognise me.
As he headed up the path to the house, Colin crouched out of sight of the door, before seeing yet another taxi pull up.
A moment later, he and Quinn were peering through bushes at Michael Mallory knocking on the door of his own house.
This was turning out to be a strange kind of day.