Quinn’s head was swimming, but John’s arrival had given him a jolt of adrenalin that provided a counterbalance to the alcohol’s sleep-inducing effects.
He had been sitting here, catching up with John, for a decent while – he didn’t know for sure, as he had lost track of the time somewhere around his fifth beer. He didn’t quite recall midnight striking, but he figured it must have happened at some point, since the tavern’s patronage had thinned to only a few people.
“So you’re tellin’ us you got here by riding some kind of cosmic pinball?” Rembrandt was looking at John with wide, bewildered eyes. Next to him, Maggie had the opposite look, leaning back into the corner of the booth, head lolling. Her eyes were almost shut, and expression vacant. She was checked out for the night.
“Uh, if you want to picture it like that, then sure,” John replied, a curious finger on his lower lip. “But it was less of a pinball and more of a… bar? Kinda like this one, I guess.”
“A bar that can travel back an’ forth in time and, and to other Earths?” Quinn squinted at John, his eyes struggling to focus. “Wait, Colin… didn’t…”
Colin leaned in, and Quinn gestured towards him, ceding the conversation to the more articulate brother.
“Um, was there a bartender there, who talked all cryptic like?” A smile tickled at Colin’s lips, and his eyes shone.
John and Alia exchanged a surprised look. “You’ve been there?!”
“Yeah, back in ’78 I stumbled on the bar,” Colin explained to a speechless John. “The guy didn’t take me anywhere, but it was like he expected me to swing by. And then he told me to say ‘hi’ to Sam as I left. So I asked Sam about it and found out he has a history with the guy, too.”
John looked like he had the wind knocked out of him. “He’s gotta be Q…”
“Q?” Colin and Quinn asked in unison.
John chuckled, his cheeks flushing. “Oh, it’s just what I’ve been calling the higher power the other me was always talking about.”
“Oh, like from TNG,” Quinn said, with understanding.
He yawned, and took a sip of the beer in front of him. He didn’t remember having got it, nor did he know how many that had been. But, it was in front of him, so he drank.
The jukebox was playing some slow song, and it was making him tired. He wondered for a moment who would put such music on in the small hours when it would send people to sleep, and it occurred to him that they might be hinting for everyone to clear out.
Rubbing his eyes, Quinn turned his head towards his brother’s seat, and noticed that he wasn’t there. And, across the booth, neither was Maggie.
He glanced around the tavern. The lights had dimmed, and they were the only people left.
“Hey, where’d Colin and Maggie go?” he wondered aloud, prompting a laugh from Rembrandt.
“Man, they left twenty minutes ago,” he explained. “Maggie got too sleepy, so he escorted her back. You said goodbye to ’em.”
“I did?” he mumbled. “Wow, I musta blacked out.”
He sunk his head into his hands, giving an embarrassed grin. “Of all times to see my old professor, huh…”
John regarded him with a warm smile. “You think I’ve never seen one of my college students like this? Don’t sweat it.”
Quinn watched Alia lean over to John’s ear and whisper something, before standing.
“I’m heading out,” she announced, picking up her helmet. “Lovely to meet you all.”
John nodded. “I’ll make sure these two get home okay, and I’ll meet you back at the motel.”
“Ah, you don’t have to do that,” Quinn said, waving a hand at him. “We’ll be fine. This is our turf, we’ll be fine.”
Rembrandt folded his arms. “We will be fine, but not ’cause of him.” He gave an appraising look over Quinn. “Reckon if you tried to walk it on your own, you might wake up in a ditch with a scorpion on your face.”
Quinn stuck his tongue out at Remy, though he didn’t argue the point.
He may be right. The thought made him laugh.
John smiled again, but it was more of a paternal look this time. “Quinn… just let me help you, okay?”
Quinn sighed, and his heavy head rolled back to the padded seat. “Man, all you Sams are the same…” he moaned, closing his eyes. “Such a goody two-shoes…”
And that was the last thing he remembered about that night.
* * *
The last time Quinn had been wasted like that, it was on the gunslinger world. But he was about eight years younger then, and his hangover had been manageable. Today, not so much.
Ugh. Being nearly 30 sucks.
He rolled over, blearily checking the time on the clock by his bed. Apparently, it was after midday. He noted that he was still in his jeans and t-shirt, and hadn’t removed his shoes. His jacket was in a pile on the floor.
He groaned as he climbed to his feet, and a dizzy feeling overtook his head. He stumbled into his ensuite, and ran the tap, taking handfuls of water to guzzle.
As he quenched his thirst, he ran through what he recalled about the previous night.
I didn’t just dream that John showed up, did I?
No, he remembered too much for it to have been his imagination. Excitement rose in his stomach once more as he thought about the unexpected encounter. They hadn’t known what happened to John and Sherri, but now they had a chance to fill in the missing pieces. They could have a full original history to work off now.
After swallowing some aspirin, Quinn headed out of his quarters, eyes squinting in pain at the harsh fluorescent lighting of the corridor.
He entered the common room, and was surprised to see it full. Rembrandt, Colin and Maggie sat on one couch, and John and Alia sat on the other. Maggie was wearing a pair of sunglasses.
Not a bad idea.
“Morning, sunshine,” Colin said with a grin. “How you feeling? Bad?”
Quinn glared at him a moment, before heading to the kitchen to get some coffee.
“What brings you guys here?” he asked John.
John looked at him with a serious expression. “Well, I had a long talk with Sam, and we agreed you needed to know what’s going on.”
“Oh great, you sound serious,” Quinn lamented, switching on the coffee machine, and returning to the group. He flopped down onto an armchair, and cradled his head. “What misfortune have we been gifted this time?”
Alia leaned forward. “This area may have been visited by a leaper without the… purest of intentions. Either recently, or currently.”
Colin looked at Quinn, awaiting a reaction. It was clear that the others had already had this told to them.
“Without the… what?” he closed his eyes, attempting to make sense of her words.
“Yeah, seems like someone’s been an impostor,” Rembrandt attempted to explain. “Someone trying to get a hold of some hush-hush information, maybe?”
“You don’t think it’s Grady?” Quinn asked nobody in particular.
“I narrowed the radius of the energy trace to San Antonio,” Alia said, “That means whoever was the… victim of the leap was in town when they either leaped out or in, early on the 23rd.”
“I don’t know where Grady was then,” Quinn muttered. “He was last seen snooping around on the 21st.”
“And the unknowns are the major issue, here,” explained John. “There’s always the possibility it wasn’t him, and there’s a traitor in our midst as we speak.”
“Like, midst midst?” Colin asked, suddenly on edge.
“Anybody,” Alia said. “That’s why I was asking around about people acting out of character.”
Quinn looked, wide-eyed, at his friends. Had any of them been acting odd? Not that he could think of. But the thought chilled him.
“Well, that’s not a problem,” Colin said, a large grin on his face. “I have just the thing!”
John cocked his head. “You do?”
“The Reality Lens,” Quinn said, exchanging a proud look with his brother. “It’ll reveal any leaper, easy!”
Alia’s anxious expression softened with hope. “You really have something that can do that?”
Colin sprang to his feet. “I’ll go get it.”
Quinn returned to the coffee pot, which was nearing its filling.
As he waited the last moments, he found his hand instinctively moving to his pocket, to make contact with the crystal.
But it wasn’t there.
Oh, shit.