“Cleanup on aisle fifteen!

”

“Ug, not the same dog again,” I groan. The largest mastiff I’ve ever seen has left a lake on every aisle so far, and guess whose job it is to clean it up.

I’m only on aisle seven.

“Someday I’ll invent a mop that does this by itself,” I grumble, dunking my partner in its bucket and kicking it along to the next aisle. I haven’t been in robotics clubs since middle school for nothing.

“But Gabby, then someone would be out of a job,” Reese chides from atop a ladder as she rearranges clearance cat beds stacked to the ceiling. She throws me a mocking smile as I find the mess in aisle eight.

I ignore her and blow sand-colored hair out of my face as my mop splashes down on yet another yellow pond. “Why’d they even come down this aisle? It’s only cat toys!”

The glass doors at the front of the store slide open, and I glance up, the mandatory, “Hi, welcome to Paw Paradise,” on my lips, but the words freeze there, trapping my breath.

He stands in the entrance. Not just any he. He. Juan Martinez, the guy my ten-year-old mind dubbed the most beautiful person in the world when I first saw him. He lived next door. We walked to and from school together, stood alongside one another at graduation, and I haven’t seen him since.

Now he shows up, five years later, wearing a Tron-inspired motorcycle suit, dark hair blowing in the breeze, honey brown eyes meeting mine, and I—

I have a mop full of dog pee.

I duck behind my bucket, which I am too big to successfully hide behind, my insides melting as he smiles crookedly and starts toward me.

You’re a big girl, Gabriela. Stand up and face him like the strong woman you are.

I shoot to my feet, hands nervously unbunching my shirt under my apron’s tie as he stops in front of me, smile wide as the sun.

His arms fly around my waist, lifting me off the ground, and I gasp. We had been friends, and I had written his last name after my first a million times, but this is a scene from my wildest dreams.

I completely miss what he says.

“What?”

Still holding me tight, he looks up, eyes full of shine and hope. “I finally found you, Grandma!”

I drop my mop.

“Did you just call me Grandma?”

Her sets me down. “Gabriela Martini?”

“Yes, and I’m two months younger than you.” My face scrunches. Is this some hipster fad, addressing people as a grandparent? A beat too late, I add, “Grandpa.”

His brow furrows. “I’m not your grandfather.”

“Well, I’m not your grandmother, Juan. That’s impossible.”

My gaze narrows. Up close, he doesn’t match my memory exactly. He greatly resembles my Juan, but his jawline is different, more delicate.

“You are Juan Martinez, right?”

“Yep.” He scratches the back of his head. “Juan Martinez III.”

“You moved next door to me when we were ten?”

“I’ve never seen you before,” he admits, head wagging. The sound of my heart exploding and raining down around us like gruesome confetti drowns out the rest. “This young anyway, not even in pictures. Grandpa was right. You were pretty.”

“Were? Grandpa? What?”

Behind me, Reese giggles. “So, she’s your grandma, not your girlfriend?” She twists a tight ringlet of ebony hair around her finger as she booty-bumps me aside. “Are you single? You’re too hot to be single. Your feather earring is so cool.”

As she bats her eyes, slinking in for the catch, I dive for Juan’s hand and yank him down the aisle.

“Gabby, there’s still pee on the floor!” she calls after me.

“It’ll wait!” I slam open the door to the staff lounge/dog grooming room and swing Juan inside, making sure he stops well before the window where customers can watch their pooch get pampered in the tub in the far corner.

With my back to the closed door, I stand arms crossed as my sense finally settles into place. “This is a joke. Where’s your camera? Are you Juan’s brother? Cousin?”

Juan was adopted—the knowledge wriggles in the back of my brain—by distant relatives who looked nothing like him. He has no close family left. He never wants to talk about them.

The imposter shakes his head, lower lip caught in his teeth. “The Juan Martinez who grew up next to you is my grandfather.”

“You’re saying you’re from the future,” I deadpan.

“Not just the future.” He pulls a click pen from his sleeve and draws in the air with luminous orange lines.

“Is that a hypercube?”

“I’m from the dimension we call the Inner.” He points at one of the tesseract’s vertical planes, then a perpendicular one. “This dimension is called the Outer. I’m here because I messed up everything, and to fix it, you have to rescue Grandpa.”

I raise an eyebrow. “The Inner is ahead of the Outer in time?”

My mind whirs at Mach Two, pieces snapping in place. If my Juan is this guy’s grandfather, and I’m his grandmother, then I must end up with Juan.

A million butterflies fill my stomach.

My grandson winces. “The dimensions aren’t as neat as I drew them. They’re more like this.” He scribbles. “And they undulate, never meeting at the same point in time.”

“So, it’s like The Doctor says: Time really is wibbly wobbly stuff.” My hands wring each other behind my back. I’m going to end up with Juan, and this guy is proof. I look for any of myself in him. Maybe in the pinch of his nose?

“What doctor said that?”

“Nevermind. How did you mess everything up?”

His eyes gloss over, falling to his polished boots. “We have a ritual. Nature demands balance between the dimensions. If someone steps into the Outer, someone there is pushed into the Inner and vice-versa. The Inner has far fewer inhabitants, and to bring diversity to our gene pool, we give up the brightest of each generation in hopes of getting someone just as desirable from the Outer.”

He peeks up at me, and I recognize the expression. It’s the one I see on my own face in the mirror when I’m about to break down, everything I wish I had never said running through my head.

“But you and Grandpa changed that. You invented gear, calculations, procedures that let someone cross over where and when they want. It’s all regulated, with those who switch places knowing exactly where they’re headed.” He looks down again, a tear sparkling on his lashes, and my heart bursts.

I hug him. “You broke the rules?”

He nods. “I came to the Outer legally, but I met Gwen. She was wonderful. I loved her, and they refused to let me bring her back.” His voice sinks deep, cold like a ravine at the bottom of the ocean. “I stole gear, but my calculations were hasty, and the moment Gwen stepped into the Inner, everything changed.”

“Because her presence pushed someone important out of the Inner?”

He shimmies out of my embrace and meets my gaze sternly. “My grandfather. Because of that, Grandpa wasn’t selected as a sacrifice. He wasn’t adopted in the Outer by descendants of former sacrifices, and he never moved next door to you. He never met you. You never changed the world, and I was never born.”

Continued in pt 2- Vanishing

Thank you for reading!

My heart pinches. “You’re an anomaly living outside a timeline.”

This also means I won’t end up with Juan. If I never met him, why do I still remember him?

My would-be grandson shrugs, and the nonchalance contradicts the passion in his light brown eyes. “Gwen disappeared. I think the only thing that keeps me from vanishing is my determination to fix this and the possibility that I still might.”

I bite my lip. “Saving your grandfather will solve everything?”

His mouth draws a thin line, and his foot scuffs the floor. “Specifically, you saving Grandpa. I’ve done the calculations so many times.” He grabs at his hair. It sticks up even when his fingers fall away from it to trail down either cheek. “When I returned to the Outer to search for Gwen, a tyrant was pushed into the Inner. He conquered it, and those he can’t drug into mindless compliance he keeps in stasis. That’s what you have to save Grandpa from.”

I’m lost in a sea of images. A fairy tale reels through my mind where I am the valiant princess who rescues my Juan, cape waving in the wind. Our first kiss of true love breaks the curse on the land, and the universe is set aright.

“Will you come?” This Juan’s eyes glitter with hope as he holds something out to me.

I wrinkle my nose. “What is that?”

“A helmet.”

It looks like a longhorn’s skull with a mane of eagle feathers and smells as bad as the carcasses it was likely taken from.

“It’s gear that’ll let you cross to the Inner. You invented it.”

He shoves it down on my head. I gag, stumble backward, and hit the door hard enough that it dents.

Future generations of employees will ask, “What’s that?”

“That is the stamp of Gabby’s butt,” they’ll be told. “It holds the world record for breaking the most things.”

With some difficulty, I find my balance and slide the skull up so it no longer covers my face. The feathers trail to the small of my back. Some of them glow azure.

I prop my hands on my hips. “I wouldn’t invent something that looks so macabre.”

Juan pulls a second helmet from a pocket that doesn’t look capable of containing anything larger than a flash drive. He flips it on his own head and leaves the mask up like mine. “The way the calculators look wasn’t your idea. You made them as necklaces to match the translators.” He tugs at the earring on his left ear, breaking off the lower section as he steps toward me.

I retreat, but the dented door prevents me from going more than two paces. As he brings the metal feather to my ear, I wince. “Wait! What—”

It doesn’t hurt. My ears aren’t pierced, but the earring latches on painlessly. Juan’s hands withdraw, and every sound has an odd echo, even the pounding of my heart.

“Grandpa modified the calculators’ design because he wanted our border patrol to look intimidating.”

“That it does,” I say with a grimace as he slides the skull down over his face.

It muffles his voice. “Give me your hand.”

I start to but pause. “When we enter the Inner, someone will get shoved into the Outer, right? What if they end up in a pre-historic era? What if they change this whole timeline?”

“They’re doped up zombies over there, incapable of doing anything without someone telling them to.” He grabs my hand.

I pull back but can’t escape his grasp. “And the tyrant? What if we push him in the past?”

“Then we pop back over, and he’ll be sucked back to the Inner.”

“It’s that convenient? We’d pull back the same person we displaced?”

He answers a beat too late, pitch a bit high. “Yeah. Now let’s go.”

Head down, he sprints across the room. I slip free just as he crashes into the grooming station, head first in the tub.

“Juan!” I scrabble at his shoulders. One of the helmet’s horns is wedged in the drain.

“Mommy, what kind of animal is that?” a kid shouts, pointing through the window.

I wish I could disappear.

And I do.

Continued in pt 3- Inner

Thank you for reading!

Light in the Inner comes from the ground. The sky is dark with deep, wavering colors. Juan and I trudge along a path of dusty, luminous pebbles, our footprints brighter than anything else. The wind is cold and fierce, yanking on my helmet, my apron, my slacks, and permeated with a sickly-sweet smell like old yogurt.

Both have an eerie, not-quite beauty.

“Juan, were your grandpa and I a cute old couple?”

He pauses, hand against glittery stone at a cave’s entrance as he flips up his mask to rake me with a scrutinizing gaze. “You’re both crazy smart.”

I laugh. “We’re a crazy old couple?”

He walks on, eyes darting to the cave’s every shadow, and I think he wants me to be quiet.

I follow his example, treading lightly as my sightline sweeps the massive columns clustered on either side of our path. The stalactites look like daggers ready to rain down on us. I gulp and pull my arms in tighter. The multi-forked walkway angles steeply down, and the last thing I need is my butt knocking something over.

“You and Grandpa always say you are the most amazing thing that ever happened to each other,” Juan whispers, and the lumpy walls repeat his words as barely audible hisses. “Considering everything you’ve been through, that’s saying a lot.”

A sheepish grin spreads across my lips. “Did he ever say what he liked best about me?”

“Your eyes, how they’re such a clear green. He said he could see things in them.” Juan glances back. “I can see it, too, your incredible intelligence. It’s like you take apart everything you look at.”

Odd. My Juan always referred to my eyes as puke-colored and never once called them beautiful.

As we pass under an arch, my breath refuses to leave my throat. This next cavern is huge. Light-edged paths spiral around towers and vertical fields of fruit-bearing vines. Rope and thin boards form a bridge before us, and a long drop awaits beneath it.

It sways as it takes Juan’s weight.

I hold in a squeak, eyes wide as my hands clasp each other in front of my mouth.

Juan turns to me, head tilted. “You’re not afraid of heights.”

“I wasn’t until I was twelve.” My hands tremble, and I curl my fingers against my palms. “To prove girls could be brave, I took a dare to leap across the gully behind the school. I fell and broke my collarbone. Your grandpa carried me home.”

“He was supposed to catch you.” Juan snorts. “That was supposed to be the first time you met. You won’t let a little fear stop you now, right?”

I shake my head, but my legs don’t move. “Distract me, Juan. Tell me more about your grandpa.”

He nods and walks backward with a hand stretched toward me. It feels like forever before he speaks, and when he does, it’s with a whimsical, distant voice. “Grandpa never complained when I followed him around, though he was busy. He always answered my questions. He said I would find a girl just like you someday.”

“You did, right?” I step onto the bridge. It creaks, and I close my eyes. “At least, you feel about Gwen how your grandpa feels about me?”

His tone contains a sad smile. “She’s just like you, eager to do whatever she can to make the world right. I wanted her to meet you.”

My foot crunches on gravel, and my eyes flutter open. We stand on a wide balcony outside a long hut. A thatched roof angles just above my head. The top of it looks smashed against the cavern ceiling.

Juan takes my hand, a finger to his lips. His head jerks toward an entrance far to our left, where a buff man with a double-ended trident leans on the doorframe. The guard scans the cave, but there isn’t much movement for him to note. A few others like him loom in far-off exits, and a scattering of women tow loaded carts on the spiraled roads. Everyone is dressed the same, regardless of their differences. The crimson jumpsuits are ill-fitted to most of their wearers, but no one seems to care.

Juan pulls off his helmet and tucks it in his too-small pocket without a trace. Then, standing tall, he approaches the guard. “Move aside and do not disturb us!”

Blinking, the guard skitters out of the doorway, and we slip inside a twenty-foot square space. It is a rustic dungeon, everything wood lined in riveted iron. Sparkly dust coats the floor, and an azure glow saturates everything. Stairs disappear through an arch on the back wall. In the center of the room, shelves host sharp tools and form three short walls around a man about our age.

He is paused, though he looks about to say something, lips pale and set in a thin line. One hand is raised, ready to snatch at something, one bare foot forward. He wears a jumpsuit like Juan’s, minus the florescent edging and a faded gray instead of ebony. Its collar hangs open, revealing the end of a long scar.

Juan’s chin hovers over my shoulder. “Grandma, meet Grandpa.”

I whirl on him. “That is not Juan Martinez.”

“No, his name is Zinc Alta.”

“But you said Juan Martinez is your grandfather. You look like him. You have his name!”

Wincing, Juan flicks a glance at the guard behind us. His voice is very quiet. “Juan Martinez is my grandfather, and so is Zinc.”

I am going to melt from embarrassment. “You mean Juan Martinez is your dad’s dad, and Zinc...”

“Is my mom’s dad. Grandpa Zinc was supposed to be sent to the Outer, but I displaced my other grandfather. Originally, he died in an accident when I was little. I didn’t even know him, but this time he grew up next to you.”

I start to sink, but Juan catches me.

“Only your kiss can free Grandpa.”

My stomach roils. “It’s actually like in a fairy tale?”

He nods, gaze intent on Grandpa. I gulp, and he shoves me toward the stranger.

My steps fall unsteady and lurching as I squint in the azure glow. My grandson has this man’s jawline. Did Juan III deliberately lead me to believe we would rescue his other grandfather? He deserves a good whack on the behind.

I stop in front of Zinc. We are the same height, five-foot-one, and his hair wavers between blond, brown, and gray, like dead grass. Long strands spike on top, and symbols are shaved into the sides. A scar bisects his face, starting between his brows, curving under his jaw, and ending at his clavicle.

“What happened to him?”

No one answers, but I feel like Zinc wants to. Life pulses in his obsidian eyes. He remains motionless, but in them, I see calculation. It’s like watching the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

I smack my forehead for thinking that.

This is Juan III’s grandfather. I don’t know him, but I feel like I should, like there’s something deep within me that connects us and pulls me toward him. I’ve heard theories about how altered timelines constantly try to fix themselves. That sounds like destiny, like I don’t have a choice, and I do have a choice. I can walk away.

I pivot forward and touch my lips to this stranger’s.

Continued in pt 4- Grandpa

Thank you for reading!

Zinc bellows. I fall and knock over shelves of metal tools. They clang, answering his shout. The azure glow is gone, but the lighting retains a fuzzy, surreal sparkle as if shadows have gone rogue.

Zinc’s dark eyes flick to me. I probably look like a lunatic, gaping at him, cow skull atop my messy hair, eyes and apron a pale green I have yet to see elsewhere in this dimension.

“Did you just kiss me?”

I scramble to my feet, chin held high. “Our grandson brought me here to rescue you.”

“I’ve never met you.”

That comment is so blunt, it’s sharp, and I wince. “You were trapped in stasis, and he said the only way to free you was to kiss you.”

Zinc raises one dead-grass-colored eyebrow. “You only had to touch me.”

Of course. Juan will meet my wrath via the biggest sandal I can find.

I turn, but my grandson is gone. The guard fills the doorway. A snarl twists his face as his bloodshot eyes zero in on Zinc.

Trident raised, Snarly charges, and I drop. He sails over me, weapon aimed at Zinc’s heart. A scream wells in my throat.

Zinc ducks, and the trident’s prongs skim his grassy hair as his weight glides from one foot to the other. His hands brush the floor and scoop up two fist-sized rings. As he curves around Snarly’s back, lightning covers those hoops and trails his movements. He punches them against the guard’s spine. Snarly stiffens and falls to the floor like a plank.

A burning smell fills the air as distant hollers grow louder. More guards pour down the stairs, bursting from the arch, and Zinc spins to face them.

I remain on the floor, wide-eyed. The shredded strips on the back of the downed man’s suit are a darker shade of scarlet than the rest. Is that blood? Steam rises from him, but dust swirls away from his mouth. He’s breathing. He’s alive.

Where is Juan? Is there something else he has to take care of? Did he see these guys coming and flee? Is he planning a counter attack?

I did not come all the way here to “save Grandpa” by gaping on the floor like a beached fish. I didn’t come here to watch a horde of red-eyed, twisted-face goons trample the guy I’m supposed to save. They kick at him, slash and stab with so many weapons I can’t even begin to name, but he keeps moving. He is the lightning that trails his fists, untouchable.

He doesn’t need me.

A club sweeps Zinc’s knees out from under him, and he goes down rolling, rings held above his head so as not to shock his own core. The guards close in, a million pointy things glinting.

On my feet, I pull off one shoe and hurl it into the horde. It smacks the back of a bald head, and the guard swivels with a growl. His crimson-streaked eyes cut to me.

Somersaulting, Zinc throws me a look that simultaneously says, “That was stupid,” and, “You’re brilliant.”

Baldy lunges, and I backpedal. My legs tangle in a pile of long-handled tools congregated in the corner. Something sharp scrapes my ankle, and I glance down.

An ax!

I grab its handle, but it’s too heavy and too entwined with the other tools. Baldy’s spear races at me, and I shift the ax handle just enough to block it. The blow sends the whole pile into a noisy cascade with me in the middle of it.

A mop falls across my chest. As the spear careens down again, I grab the familiar tool and knock the thrust aside. Baldy staggers, and I kick at his shins, then slide to my feet and high-step over the other handles.

I have never been so delighted to see a mop.

I try to dart around him, but Baldy attacks again. I wield my trusty sidekick like a bow-staff, stance wide. The spear jabs at my nose and stops short as the wooden handles of our weapons clank together. Teeth bared, Baldy pushes, and I skid back lopsided, footing unbalanced with only one shoe.

My rear knocks against one of the shelving units. The case tilts, gaining speed. It crashes into another and sends that one into a pair of Zinc’s opponents. I only have time for a quick glance, but a grin stretches across my face. Did my clumsy butt actually do something useful?

Baldy strikes, and I duck. With all my weight and momentum, I swing the mop at his side.

No effect. He doesn’t even flinch, and my smirk vanishes.

I thrust the mop’s stiff tendrils at Baldy’s face. A flash pulses behind him, and he falls, revealing Zinc in a low fighting stance, lightning rings held at chest level. He’s sweaty and bleeding, and he stares at me.

He and I are the only ones standing.

I still look like a lunatic. The skull helmet fell off at some point, and my hair reigns so wild even I can see it wafting in my peripherals. Plus, I’m still gaping at him.

“What are you?”

How am I supposed to answer that? I’m a girl? A klutz? An inventor? A pet store clerk and a whiz with a mop. In another timeline, I was your sweetheart, and we grew into a crazy old couple.

“I’m human,” I say instead.

“Your eyes sing the song of the land.”

I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but it sounds poetic. I play it cool, chuckling as I lower my mop and lean on it. “Maybe the land sings the song of my eyes.”

“The land has been singing that song for longer than your eyes have been around.” His chin tilts, and his obsidian stare bores into me.

I stand my ground, wispy hair flying as I shake my head. “Not to me. I’ve had my eyes for longer than I’ve known this land existed.”

He quirks an eyebrow. A smile tries to spread his lips, but he keeps them tight and his dark, ticking gaze narrow. “I don’t know you, but I feel I should. What’s your name?”

“Gabriela Martini, and you’re Zinc Alta. I came to rescue you, so with that out of the way…now what?” I spin. “Juan, seriously, now what?”

Zinc steps back. “You’re with Juan?” The lightning rings brighten as he grips them tighter.

“Our grandson,” I explain, and he looks at me like I’m crazy. “Like I said, we came to rescue you—”

“Now Zinc, what have I told you about maltreating my zombies?” The familiar voice comes from behind, and I whirl. The speaker stands in the doorway, surrounded by more guards.

My idiot grandson neglected to mention that the tyrant we have to save this world from is none other than my Juan.

Continued in pt 5- Letting Go

Thanks for reading!

Juan has always dived wholeheartedly into every project, confidence shining like the sun. He is even brighter now, fueled by the guards’ blind obedience, but as his gaze lands on me, his change of expression is like an explosion. His strong jaw drops, honey-colored eyes widening and eyebrows falling into his dark lashes.

“Gabby?”

This is my Juan, costumed like a rogue prince—soft, black shirt scribbled with golden brocade. He is a little older than I remember him, but it has been five years. My expression mirrors his. I want to run to him, throw my arms around him. He looks so lost. Has he been here all this time?

I also want to strangle him.

Instead, I straighten, chin held level so my voice comes out even. “Juan, what is all this? Are you really a tyrant? Are you mind-controlling these people with drugs?”

He starts toward me, one hand extended, and I am whisked to the side. Shorter, darker arms encircle me. A luminous ring sizzles by my cheek.

“You’re working together,” Zinc hisses.

“No, I came here to save you.”

I feel him pause. His head tilts.

“Zinc.” Juan reaches both hands toward us as if smoothing a blanket. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“Finally, we agree on something,” Zinc growls. He flicks the ring, and it straightens into an electric scalpel. He angles it toward my heart. Plasma strands pop as they slice the air, and my eyes widen, a scream bubbling from my deepest being.

No one hears it.

All breath is knocked from me as my backside hits the floor. The incandescent blade swipes inches above my nose. Guards soar, leaping at Zinc, and his attention yanks to them as I slide away from the scene. My left ankle stings.

A slender strap digs into my calf as it drags me toward Juan. Fire burns in his warm eyes. The clang and zap of weapons behind me seems distant, somehow quieter than the thud of bodies against the ground. I know Zinc still stands, still fights, still moves, because Juan still frowns, brows slanted in worry.

When Juan disappeared after graduation, not even his family knew what happened to him. Police found nothing, gave up. I refused to let myself believe he was dead. He must have needed a change. I convinced myself he had started over somewhere. He was happy.

I never imagined he would become this.

I twist, but he grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet and further from the fray.

“What are you doing?” My voice sounds ravaged and tattered. It reflects the state of my heart.

“Saving you from a madman.”

“You’re the madman!”

I refuse to look at him, but I feel him stiffen. Those words stung.

I slip free, rush back into the crowd of his guards, scoop up my abandoned mop, and swing wildly. I twirl and duck and jab and stab, feet sliding over the dusty floor. I fall to my knees, get up, receive a blow to my shoulder, my side, but I keep going. I never stop. Zinc hasn’t stopped, and he has been fighting this battle longer than I. What excuse would I have?

For a moment, I ride on a guard’s shoulders, ducking as we spill out the doorway. He flings me on the wooden boards of the balcony, and I roll, heart in my throat as the edge nears. My sneakers find traction on the planks, and I leap up, a wary eye on the never-ending drop as I skitter away from it.

My mop swings, meets a club, and is shoved back. My spine crashes into Zinc’s. His electric ring is circular again, no longer a knife. My stomach flips, cheeks like pools of lava.

It’s Tomato-Face Gabby, my father always teases. Can’t tell if she’s angry or just took a nap on a plate of spaghetti.

“Why would you try to kill me?” I demand, searching for a wince or any sign of remorse, but narrow lines of determination have hardened Zinc’s face.

“The zombies don’t deserve blame for what they do.” His voice hitches as he leaps over the swipe of a cutlass. The sword passes a centimeter from my behind, and I move like a dog tucking in its tail. “They’re under Juan’s mind-altering drug, but you’re lucid, and you chose to help the tyrant.”

I shake my head, mop flying like a bronco’s kicks. “No, I came for you. I chose to release you from stasis.”

He dances around me, meets my gaze for the briefest of moments, and it feels like lightning passes between us. “You think you’re brave enough to help me, stranger?”

“I am not brave, but I’ll stay by your side.” I move with him, swatting at the pests at his back.

Juan appears in front of me. “That’s why you came here, why you crossed dimensions? To destroy my kingdom.” His stare flicks across me, and it feels like embers seeping between my cells. “I thought we were friends.”

I point my mop at him. “Friends don’t let friends turn worlds into dystopias.”

A grin sneaks over Juan’s lips. The strap coiled around his left arm loosens and becomes a whip in his hand.

Zinc barrels into him, and like a sphere in Newton’s cradle, Juan flies over the edge of the balcony. His arms pinwheel, and he stretches for the bridge, fingers just shy of its planks.

“No!” I reach for him. His hand is too far, but the strap trailing from his wrist falls across my palms. My fists clench. The cord pulls through my hands, and fire tears my flesh as I’m yanked forward.

I lie flat on the bridge’s rough planks, about to plummet head-first off the platform, when Zinc grabs my shoulders.

“Let him go!”

I grip the cord tighter. Juan is my childhood friend. He carried me home when I fell in the gully. He walked alongside me every day. Now he dangles from the end of a thin strap, knuckles white, fear and trust overflowing from those deep brown eyes.

A zombie clubs Zinc’s back, and his grasp slides along my biceps. I slip over the edge a little further.

The puppet raises his weapon again. Others crowd around, tripping over one another. One of them is a child not a day over ten. Tears spill over my lashes. How could my Juan have chosen this?

“Stop!” Juan calls, and his minions freeze as if someone pressed pause.

“Drop him,” Zinc insists, pulling me back inch by inch.

I shake my head. If this Juan dies, Juan III will never exist.

“I knew you always loved me,” this Juan says. Through my tears, I can’t quite make out his expression. I hope my nose doesn’t drip on him.

“You’d have been really dense not to notice I loved you.”

His gaze pierces my soul. “I love you, too, Gabriela Martini. I’ve wanted to see you again ever since graduation.”

Words I’ve always wanted to hear spoken by a voice that could always melt me, yet here they ring hollow, as if all my emotions have been scraped out and hang there with him. I am only an empty shell, and logic slowly pours in to fill the void.

“Just after graduation, you were pulled back to the Inner,” I realize. “When Juan III returned to the Outer, he really did push back the same person he had displaced.”

“Stop rambling.” Zinc’s arms tremble. How much longer can he hold us? “I’m trying to save you because you tried to save me, but we’ve got about ten seconds before we all drop.”

I squirm, lurching the rope closer to the bridge post. I can wrap the cord around it, use that mechanical advantage to pull him up, but I also need answers.

“Why this, Juan? Why turn this world into a dystopia?”

“I wanted to be something.” He looks like he’s staring up at his guardian angel and confessing all. “I was ripped away from this place, but that was okay. My new family was nice. I was going to be a doctor. I worked hard. I had scholarships lined up, and then all that was ripped away, too.”

Surely, those aren’t my tears dripping down his face.

I wipe my eyes on my arm, but the scene only clears a little. “You were home here.”

“Here, I had nothing.” He shakes his head, midnight hair flying. “I was no one, but I knew how to make everyone else less than no one, so that being no one was the best.”

“This isn’t a healthy society.” My argument emerges as a faint whisper, and I force my voice out stronger. “You could have used your knowledge for good. If you continue down this path, this world won’t have a future.”

“Who cares about the future?” Juan screams. “It can be ripped away from you at any moment.”

“I know.” I swallow. “But I do care about it. That’s why I’m letting you go.”

And I do.

Continued in pt 6- Love

Thank you for reading!

Juan falls, eyes widening as round as the O his lips form. Though nothing more than a breath, his gasp is as loud as a scream in my ears, an accusation piercing my heart. How could I?

His feet hit the platform first, only a story and a half below where they had hung. The wooden boards vibrate with the impact, thudding as he collapses, but they are strong. They hold, and as my end of the rope plops down on the planks, Juan rolls to his feet. With shining tear tracks scrawled down his flushed, tan cheeks, he limps into a cave, and darkness swallows him.

Again, my expression mirrors his—lashes wet, brows low, and mouth open because I can’t breathe. My Juan lives, but he is this world’s villain.

And I just helped him escape.

The horror I feel at that thought reflects as fury in Zinc’s eyes. Juan’s victims remain motionless, gazes empty and dull. Zinc laces another rope around their wrists, trusting his hands to work unsupervised as he glares at me.

Jaw set, I glare back. My face burns as if I face the sun. “I had to do it.”

“You love him.” Three words, all emotion carefully peeled off before being sent out into the world.

I nod. “Not just him.”

He frowns. “You love his vision, believe in his cause?” Zinc gestures at the empty-eyed people around us, little more than breathing mannequins. “You would condemn them to this life?”

“No, of course not. I...” I reach toward the rope he uses to bind them, then think better of it, fingers curling in. “What will you do with them?”

He studies me, nose crinkling to the right. His dark gaze is eerie, pupil barely discernable from iris. It’s like he’s reading something written on my soul.

“What?” I squeak, trying to tuck loose wisps of hair behind my ear. “Are you going to answer me?”

“You’re really from the Outer?”

My arms droop. “Does that matter?”

“Those of the Outer are gifts given to us by the universe.”

My hands capture one another in front of my chest as if they hold my ever-curious heart. “Is the reciprocal also true: Are those sent from the Inner also gifts?”

No longer looking at me, he resumes rounding up the zombies and guides them into a straight line.

“You were supposed to be one of those gifts,” I say quietly.

His gaze flicks back to me, pinched under brows so curved, I’m sure they could do the wave.

Did he ever try that in the other timeline? Was it a cute trick just between us, something to make me giggle when I had a bad day? Did our daughter roll her eyes at it, embarrassed that her father could be so weird?

Right now, Mr. Super-Serious thinks I’m insane, so I straighten my budding smirk.

“Zinc, why were you frozen in that room?”

“As a trap.”

My eyebrows rise, not nearly as flexible as his, but high enough it feels like they might rip off my forehead and take flight. “For whom?”

Did Juan know my grandson and I were coming? No, he was surprised to see me. Was it only a trap for Juan III then? Did it work? My grandson disappeared. Is he captured somewhere?

A hopeful wariness softens the black of Zinc’s gaze, making his eyes seem warmer. He turns away, rope in hand as he leads the zombies back into the hut.

Just when I think the only answer I’ll get is the tamp of feet sounding like a drumroll, he throws a glance back over his shoulder. “There are a few of us that Juan’s chemicals don’t work on the way he expects, and we’ve banded together.”

“The trap was for them? Because they’ll try to rescue you?” I jog to catch up. Zinc might not be tall, but he really covers ground. I squeeze sideways through the prison’s door, too impatient to wait for the zombies to follow him in first. “Are we going back to your rebel base?”

“Yes, I hope not, and no.” He surveys those lying on the ground in here as if he contemplates whether or not he can carry them.

He can’t, so he ventures up the stairs at the back of the room, towing those who can still walk. They trip up the steps, no reaction to the bruises forming on their toes.

My lower lip juts out. “I wish we could get them all to a hospital in the Outer.”

But who would pay for it? With my store clerk paycheck, it’ll take years to pay off my school bills. I can’t afford to take myself to the hospital, let alone send a whole civilization through rehab. Maybe there’s some charity for that?

“Are things really that much better in the Outer?” Zinc is hidden somewhere higher on the staircase, but the footsteps stop.

I bend and pick up my fallen calculator helmet, mouth twisting as I stare into the skull’s dark sockets. “That depends on your definition of better. Are people doped up, mindless husks? For the most part, no. Are things perfect? Also, no.”

Near weightless feet tap behind me, and I turn to face Zinc as he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

“It isn’t a utopia?”

I shake my head, gaze on the ground. “Juan disappeared five years ago. There were a million bad things that could have happened to him, so after a while, even the people who cared about him stopped looking. It was better to accept it and move on than worry about an answer that may never be found.”

“Did you give up on him?”

With a gasp, I look up. Zinc’s dark eyes are hungry quasars. Their gravity tugs at my soul, and shame fills me. I don’t want to tell him that yes, I gave up, too.

“Why are you asking a stranger such personal questions?”

His lips draw a cynical, slanted line. “Why are you answering them?”

“Because I want to trust you. I came here to rescue you, and now that you’re free, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“What is that?” He gestures at the helmet.

I hold it up and turn the macabre face toward him. “This is how I got here. It’s a calculator that lets you travel between the Inner and the Outer in a controlled way.” Guilt pinches my gut, and I wince. My presence here displaced someone and sent them to some time in my world.

It’s okay, right? If they were a zombie, maybe they’re someplace they can get help now.

Or they could be stuck in the stone age. If they die, what will happen when I go back? Will I displace someone else?

These questions hurt my head.

“It’s a work of art.” Zinc reaches for the helmet, but I don’t let go.

I snort. “You would say that. Our grandson told me you designed it when originally I made it as a necklace to match the translators.” My fingers fondle my heavy earring. Without it, could he even understand me?

My face heats in embarrassment. He doesn’t know me, probably doesn’t want to. We have nothing in common except some grandson who doesn’t exist yet. Who probably will never exist because Juan wasn’t supposed to be an evil tyrant who lost faith in life and basic human rights. Zinc was supposed to love me, to think I was the greatest thing that ever happened to him and not look at me like I’m a lunatic, like he’s looking at me now.

“I should probably go now.” I try to put the helmet on, but Zinc pushes it down.

“You said that before, about our grandson?”

My face is on fire, and I hate it. I’m a tomato. “He’s the one who brought me here.”

“He was from the future, from another timeline, or are you just a lot older than you look?” His eyebrows twist again, and my stomach flutters. Is he teasing me? Complimenting me? Both? Or just confused?

I nod. “In his timeline, you and I were neighbors. You were a gift from the Inner, and we made these”—I hold up the helmet—“and revolutionized travel between our dimensions. I think we were amazing.”

His eyes widen as if something about that is horrifying. “A gift to the universe isn’t supposed to be taken back.”

“What?”

“I was a gift to the universe, and I tried to come back to the Inner. This must be punishment for that.”

My face twists so much, I probably look like I expected candy and bit down on a pickle. “Our choices have consequences, but I don’t believe we’re punished for choices made by different versions of ourselves. The other you and I no longer exist, and that should be punishment enough, whatever they did.”

“You still have that helmet. It still exists.”

“True—”

Zinc yanks the mask out of my hands, and the feathers trail in the breeze as he holds it in front of his face. “Maybe if I go to the Outer, things will be set right.”

“You’d just leave me here?” My heart is a stone, crumbling, not beating.

He pauses.

I grab his wrist, tears boiling along my lashes. “When I said I didn’t just love Juan, I was thinking of our grandson. A mother’s love…a grandmother’s love, that’s incomparable. Now that I’ve met him, I can’t stand the thought of him never existing.”

I can’t look Zinc in the eye. For Juan III to someday exist, at some point I have to have a daughter with the man standing in front of me.

If I was a tomato before, now I’m a fire truck with flashing lights.

“Please don’t cry at the ground like that.” His fingers slide under my chin and attempt to lift it, but I flinch and scramble back. I release my grip on his arm and cover my face.

“Your eyes sing the song of the land,” he repeats, so soft, so gentle, “and when you cry at the ground like that, it looks like the world has lost all hope.” His hand covers mine, pushing it to the side to reveal one eye.

“I don’t think you going to the Outer would solve anything. We have to do things here.”

His expression scrunches. “You already let Juan get away.”

“He has to live,” I say too quickly.

“Why?”

“Because our grandson—”

There’s a thud behind me, and I whirl. The last zombie in line, the child, has collapsed. None of the others even look at him as he spasms on the dusty floor. Foam froths between his lips, sizzling as it drips onto the boards.

I run to the child and try to still him with my embrace.

“Don’t let the foam touch you,” Zinc warns as the boy falls still.

My relief lasts only long enough for half a sigh.

“Tacit!” Zinc kneels, black hole eyes wide. “Tacit, can you hear me?”

As he lifts the boy’s arm, it is as limp as a scarecrow’s. He checks for a pulse, and any smidgen of hope is abolished from his expression.

Pressing the back of Tacit’s hand to his forehead, Zinc falls into a bow, face on the floor. “I’m sorry, Tacit. I didn’t make it fast enough.”

Trying to hold back tears of my own, I say, “You knew him.” That’s painfully obvious, but they are the only words among the million bouncing around in my head that can emerge from my mouth and make any sense at all.

Zinc’s shoulders shake. “He was captured the same time I was. He wanted to be a teacher.”

I want to believe that in Juan III’s timeline, this boy got that wish. I see that future for him, see him as a smiling, middle-aged man in a suit, standing in front of a blackboard scribbled all over with algebraic equations. He asks Juan III to come to the front and solve a few problems, and my grandson grumbles about chalk being so uncool as he works through the math.

“What does Juan do with those whom his drug doesn’t work on?”

Zinc sits up slowly. Wet streaks stain his cheeks, but a fire burns in his dark eyes. “He experiments until something works.”

Or they die, I mentally add, unable to hold back my tears. They drip off my chin onto the pale hair of a boy who did nothing wrong but is dead anyway. Zinc knows the foam is dangerous. He’s seen this happen to his comrades before.

The inferno in Zinc’s eyes ignites in my heart.

“I want to join your rebel army,” I tell him. “I want to save these people.”

Continued in pt 7- Future

Thank you for reading!

Five years have passed since I let Juan go. In my heart, he is no longer my Juan. That distinction goes to my grandson who does not yet exist.

My thoughts turn to him often lately, especially on these late nights as I hold my daughter in my arms. Zinc should be home soon, and I glance out the window again. The Inner’s ground has begun to glow in anticipation of “dawn,” but the only movement out there belongs to the wind.

My gaze tacks back to the infant at my bosom, staring up at me with eyes just like her father’s, like the night sky of the Outer.

“Shall I someday tell you the story of how we fixed the world?”

Glitter fills her gaze as if she understands. I know that’s impossible, but I’ve been through impossible, and I like to think my little girl is exceptionally smart. It’s a mother’s prerogative.

“Well, it wasn’t easy.”

We never saw Juan again, and with no access to the resources of the Outer, we had to rely on what we found in his notes to figure out how to medically treat these people. Since he wrote in some combination of English and Latin, interpretation was up to me. And I didn’t speak Latin.

We lost as many as we saved.

It’s an iron weight in my heart, all these atrocities Juan caused. I wish I could talk to him, talk sense into him. I wish I had never stopped looking for him, that I had found him sooner, before things went so horribly wrong.

But I can’t change the past. Such wishes will only put me on a dangerous path. Every time I have such thoughts, I call up an image of my grandson and wonder how many times he tried to change things.

I still don’t know what happened to him. Did he leave me in the hut because he felt his part in the mission was over? Or did his being an anomaly finally catch up with him? Did he cease to exist? Will he exist again?

That opens up another full box of questions. Is this the daughter who will be Juan III’s mother? Or will I have another daughter? Will I have that daughter at all? Did Juan have a son, the right son? Did Juan III’s other grandmother even survive being a zombie, and can she forgive the evil tyrant?

Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe he’s hiding his real identity.

Ug, it hurts my head, all these possibilities and knowing nothing for sure.

I hug my daughter and hope my grandson will exist someday. I hope he’ll be just as proud of me, of us, as he was that day when he barged into the pet supply store to find me so I could save his grandpa.

With a smirk, I look at my work table, where a new calculating helmet sits on a mannequin head, feathers glowing scarlet as it waits to be activated. I still think the skull design is macabre, but it has grown on me.

A mop sashays around the table, soaking up the oils, lubricants, and accelerants I spilled while working earlier. I’m a bit of an untidy worker, and the mop is my most prized invention. If I don’t have to worry about the mess, I can keep moving forward.

I wonder how long it took us to invent the calculators the first time when we didn’t have a template to copy or a society to rebuild.

Regardless, this one is finally ready for testing. Five years has felt like a lifetime. How much has changed in the Outer? Are people still looking for me, or have they given up like they did on Juan?

Guilt twitches in my chest, tightening my throat, at what I must have put my family through, but I couldn’t come back before now, not without knowing exactly how the calculators worked, not when the Inner needed me so much.

Standing, I hold my daughter with one arm and reach for the helmet. Swinging the feathers over my shoulder, I slip it over my face and position myself alongside the doorway. It’s good to surprise Zinc every once in a while. Otherwise, he gets too serious. Sometimes the whole world sits on his shoulders, and I have to scare it off.

My daughter fusses, and I rock her, grinning in pride at the wonderful things we’ve made here in the Inner. I will never regret saving Grandpa.

~fin~

Thank you so much for reading! Any thoughts shared are greatly appreciated.