AnimeCon Harem 14: Reiteration

   A churning morass of anger, fear, and guilt seemed to darken Stephanie’s mindscape as she dashed down the escalator two steps at a time. The tiny pink remaining flame of hope within her guttered and flickered as though a candle on the verge of blowing out, and with it even the surety of the ground beneath her feet felt as though it was giving way. A sickening sinking feeling that persisted now. She was fully aware that most of this weekend was built upon the foundation of her feelings for Brian, and the idea of losing him—the thought of something happening to him—seemed to yank everything out from under her.

   Out of the way, out of the way—please, Stephanie slipped past two standing attendees leaning against the descending rubber escalator rail and then broke into a run across the tile of the lobby.

   She shouldn’t have slapped Kelly.

   I’m a little out of—I don’t have very good control, yet, Stephanie sobbed. Of, of THIS, of dealing with all of this. Of feeling everyone, everything so completely. I shouldn’t have hit her.

   The pained patience Kelly had taken the slap with stung, the way Kelly just accepted it without flinching. Then, when Stephanie accused her of taking away choice for them and Kelly did react, the reaction did more than just sting, it really hurt, Stephanie could see that those words hurt her and she could feel how much the words hurt her, and seeing it, sensing it, realizing it on such a complete level was carving her own heart to pieces.

   At the same time, the anger that had propelled Stephanie’s hurtful words was also still there. It was an uncomfortable heat, a sputtering and hissing pink burn of rage and helplessness at thinking that Brian was going to get hurt, or already hurt, and that there was not a single thing she could do about it. How could she not be furious? She could feel how pissed Kelly was, and Emily’s disbelief and annoyance growing into outrage roiled within her as well—those feelings encroaching into her own mind all over again made Stephanie recoil from them, try to reject them, but it was too late—those same emotions of her own were already sparked, like lit tinder introducing unwanted new flavors of flame to spread within her.

   Stephanie hated how easily her empathic charm power thing drew in negativity, and how quick all of that was to take over.

   When she darted through one of the sets of open double-doors at the convention pavilion’s entrance, the warbling wail of an ambulance siren nearby made her blood run cold. The boxy shape of an ambulance had been backed up to that familiar access point, and without a second thought Stephanie began to sprint towards it. Stephanie grit her teeth and fought down panic to move even just a tiny bit faster. The space within her contracted, the tiny pink flame fluttered as the oppressive darkness all around writhed, despair and hopelessness pressing in from all sides in an attempt to snuff out everything for her.

   *     *     *

   “Pretty fuckin’ annoying that you took us way out of the fucking way of everything that’s going on,” Emily muttered under her breath. “Even worse ‘cause it’s like, you did it on purpose. Specifically to take us way out of the way.”

   They were running in the same direction Stephanie had gone, stomping now down the escalator, but with Stephanie’s speed, her headstart, and Emily’s smaller stride, Stephanie was already long since out of sight.

   “Yeah,” Kelly said. “I know.”

   “And, Brian gets hurt,” Emily asked again. “Hurt bad. Hospitalized. Because there’s three guys?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Brian could probably take on three guys,” Emily huffed. “Maybe it’s—maybe it won’t be that bad. I don’t think you realize how tough Brian is.”

   “Okay.”

   “‘Okay.’ That’s pissing me off, too. Being all like you think you know everything.”

   “Pisses me off more than you’d ever believe,” Kelly hissed out.

   It was difficult to run beside one another and still find enough breath to talk.

   “But, no—I don’t know,” Kelly said. “Things go a lot of different ways in all the timelines. Him showing up on that scene slightly too early or too late, that’ll change any kind of the outcomes in… in any number of ways. Just, in the broad sense, when we all go there and try to fight them off—we get hurt.”

   “So he might not be hurt,” Emily postulated. “Did you—fuck—send him over there early, or late?”

   “In between early and late, so—I don’t know, on-time-ish, I guess,” Kelly said. “Later than usual for us acting on advance knowledge, because thate sending timeline didn’t really want us to intervene at all. Earlier than it would’ve been, if Brian had only left right when Chloe called and asked for him. By… I dunno, a minute or two. Called the cops over there a bit early, too. Might help.”

   “Okay,” Emily struggled to take in air. “So, anything can happen. Right?”

   “Anything can happen,” Kelly gave a helpless gesture. “But, expect Brian to be seriously hurt.”

   “Yeah,” Emily’s expression soured again. “Because you know everything.”

   “Emily,” Kelly took in a deep breath as they crossed the expanse of the convention lobby together, trying to calm herself. “I was in the middle of having a big moment with Brian. We were—we were connecting, really connecting. And, right smack dab in the middle of that, I get hit with like, a cram session study for a bullshit test we can fail in different ways but never actually pass. Along with a ‘hey, decide how y’all wanna be fucked over, and decide really fast.’ I get that you’re mad. I am fucking furious. This went from being just a thing we all go through, to a thing that’s my fault no matter what, because I get put on the spot to decide it. I-I’m not proud of the call I made. But, I had to make the one I thought we could all live with long term. And, all of the options suck. Okay?”

   “How bad does Brian get hurt, in most of them?” Emily asked. “You say ‘hospitalized,’ so like—broken bones? Stuff like that?”

   “It doesn’t matter,” Kelly shook her head. “So long as he doesn’t die, there’s… a sort of magic fix that keeps any of the damage from being permanent. Or, long term injury stuff, or anything like that.”

   “Then—what the fuck, lead with that!” Emily jolted to a stop. “If magic healing is on the table, then—then—this is the best option, because we can undo whatever damage he takes for free? Right? I mean not the best option, because he has to go through all the shit when it’s all happening, but—”

   “Emily, it’s complicated and I don’t understand it all super well myself,” Kelly said, shoving the shorter girl back into motion. C’mon. Like I said, I don’t know this stuff, I have like, answers but not understanding. I got hit with a cram study thing. I have some answers now, but don’t ask me to show my work on the problems, and if you ask me for specifics on outcome shit in a couple weeks I’m gonna be real hazy on specifics.”

   “So…?” Emily’s eyes narrowed.

   “So, there are two ways to magically heal Brian; the good way I can’t tell you about, and the bad way… we’re gonna avoid.”

   “Stop stop stop, time-out,” Emily held up her hands, stepping around different people and losing sight of Kelly for a second as they exited the building through different sets of adjacent double-doors. “You can’t tell me about it—that means it has to do with my power, right? Since you didn’t want to spoil that. I get healing powers? Water and healing, that makes sense, that’s a thing.”

   “It’s—no,” Kelly shook her head. “Sorry. Your thing is not healing. I can’t tell you about the healing thing in a… not my secret to tell sort of way. This—no, not over towards the alley, you come with me this way, we’re grabbing Brian’s car.”

   “Oh. Fuck,” Emily growled, hurrying after Kelly. “Whatever. Then, who can you tell? How are we gonna get this rolling? Sooner we start, the better, right? Wait, is it Rebecca’s power? Rebecca gets healing?”

   “Not Rebecca, either,” Kelly said. “It’s another magic bullshit group outside of ours, that we’re kind of sorta on okay terms with in the future. We can just ask for their help early now, because I know how to find one of them.”

   “Okay,” Emily nodded. “Okay. Cool. Other magic groups. Secret magic society? Stuff like that?”

   “Kind of,” Kelly admitted. “The gist I got from future us was; stay the fuck away from as much of that as we can. The real big groups are dangerous and don’t give a shit about rules or ethics or anything. That’s the bad healing option, actually. If we don’t get Brian out of the hospital within a day or two, there’s this circle of mind control creeps in the city that call themselves the Masters who scoop him up. They heal him, but—”

   “Kelly what the fuck?!” Emily yanked on Kelly’s arm. “You can’t just suddenly—”

   “They can’t like, influence Brian,” Kelly assured her. “Or, they can influence him, but not magically? He’s immune to what they do. They can’t mind-control him, they want him to like, join them. They’re like—they’re like Brian is, in a magic sense, but they’re like if Brian was a bad guy. Rapist creep bad guy Brian group.”

   The plaza and busy street that stood between the convention center and the Westerlin hotel’s parking lot had never seemed this long before, and Emily realized her best attempt at a run was now barely a power walk. She couldn’t keep up any speed for any kind of longer distance, and was struggling to gulp in air after Kelly had led them all way out of the fucking way on purpose so that they wouldn’t intervene with what happened. Annoyance and frustration bubbled up at a boil, she was sweaty, Brian was off getting hurt somewhere, and there was way too much information being thrown at her all at once.

   “Wait, can they mind-control us?!” Emily demanded. “You’re saying like Brian’s immune to their shit, are we immune to their shit?!”

   “...Kind of,” Kelly balked. “It’s—”

   “No, no—fucking stop right there,” Emily grabbed Kelly’s arms. “Don’t give me a fuckin’ kind of, tell me what the fu—”

   “We may be technically immune, sort of,” Kelly said. “Maybe. Up for debate. Whenever they would snatch and grab Steph from the hospital and mindjob her, for example, a future me could hit me with a fucking textbook cram session on all the specific ways on how to avoid that happening. Just. It’s fifty-fifty chance. I mean, the argument’s also there that at least one timeline for sure gets fucked up to even send back a warning, so we also need to make sure we’re not that timeline. That timeline that has to live through the real shitty stuff to be able to send back a warning to avoid the real shitty stuff. Right?”

   “So, so—alternate timelines don’t erase?” Emily scowled. “Like, if you go back and prevent them from happening?”

   “This time bullshit or future knowledge send whatever isn’t like a video game save,” Kelly explained. “In a game if you mess up, you go through on a new save with what you learned, and try again until you win, or—or get past whatever obstacle. In a game, all those previous attempts would just disappear, right? You learn from them, but then they’re gone. Don’t count, like they never happened. But, here with us, each different try we’ve taken at this remains in play.

   “All the slightly different branching, uh, realities I guess, from each of these attempts, each one of those persists on as its own thing. Then the us in those timelines then have different perspectives and outlooks on the way things went down. We—they—form different, opposing ideas on the best way to advise the next timeline with a send. Things go down many different ways, and they each crammed in all their own secondhand, thirdhand, fourthhand memory send shit from a lot of the real bad ones before them.”

   “So—” Emily considered the implications for a moment.

   “So, we get mixed advice from different futures, but we all have to live with the consequences of whatever choices we make,” Kelly summed up. “The way the future Emily put it, as a personal magic thing it’s broken overpowered but it’s not that broken overpowered.”

   “Fuck,” Emily panted. “I-I can’t breathe.”

   “Yeah,” Kelly was visibly struggling as well, holding one arm across her chest to pin her breasts against herself. “Fucking—if I’d known, I coulda grabbed a bra from all the shit Chelsea just gave us. If I’d known, we could’ve had so many fucking more options to do—anything. Pisses me off so fucking much.”

   “Why’s—” Emily gasped. “Why’s our previous timeline fucking us over, again?”

   “They’re, it’s,” Kelly made a face. “They got extra fucked over by Chloe. To the point where they just want to leave her to get raped. She fucks them over that bad. They’re not fucking us over, it’s a fuck Chloe timeline.”

   “I’m, yeah—” Emily tried to shrug. “I’m kinda in camp fuck Chloe, myself?”

   “But, are you fine with just letting her be gang-raped?” Kelly glared.

   “Well—no,” Emily shook her head. “Wouldn’t go that far.”

   “It’s terrible that they got that much of a raw deal from her, that they feel that way,” Kelly huffed. “I saw—well no, they just kind of threw some of that at me. What they went through. And, yeah. It was fucking bad. It was real fucking bad.”

   “Fucking Chloe,” Emily spat. “So, we’re—what, we’re shaping up to just go through that? Go through what they went through?”

   “I don’t know!” Kelly scowled. “I don’t know.”

   “What are we even—what fucking are we aiming for?!” Emily demanded. “What’s our hypothetical best case scenario, here?”

   “Chloe gets a rape scare but not actually gang-raped,” Kelly blurted out between breaths. “Brian rescues her and gets hurt, potentially setting her on the path to wise up and become Christine, instead of Chloe. That’s a whole process, and we shouldn’t expect her to not try to assfuck us any way she can in the near future. Brian gets hurt but not that hurt, we check out of the hospital before nightfall, get the fuck out of the city before creeps turn up. Stephanie never gets hurt. We never try to use Rebecca to solve this. That’s—that’s best case scenario, I figure.”

   “Are we—are we on track for any of that?” Emily asked.

   “Chloe shouldn’t get raped, Rebecca’s not involved, and Stephanie won’t get hurt,” Kelly guessed. “I think. Steph getting messed with was what ruined everything for the previous timeline that sent to us. Anything happening to her makes the rest of us real unsympathetic towards whatever happens to Chloe.”

   “Okay. Okay,” Emily took a deep breath. “Brian gets hurt. Probably. But, it’s hopefully not bad, and we can fix that anyways? Question mark? The Masters—”

   “Don’t call them that,” Kelly interjected. “They call themselves that. We’re not going to ever call them that, it’s their power trip sex and submission thing. They’re creeps, call them creeps.”

   “Yeah. Okay, so, the creeps will try to recruit Brian. So, we need to get Brian fixed up and out of the hospital fast. If he’s hurt. Before creeps show up and move in on him.”

   “But, not too fast or too fixed up, because then the whole circumstances with Chloe seem suspicious, and she uses that angle to make it like Brian faked getting hurt and actually led the rape gang to attack her in revenge for—you know, whatever.”

   “Fucking… great,” Emily groaned, clomping to a stop at the crosswalk and nearly doubling over, putting her hands on her knees.

   “Alright—c’mon,” Kelly urged her, stepping off the sidewalk and onto the street.

   “Wait, we’re—” Emily paused for a moment before scrambling after the girl. “Fuckshit!”

   They were just cutting across the lanes rather than waiting for a cross signal. Though there wasn’t as much intercity traffic on a Sunday afternoon, there were still several cars trying to zip along at speed, and the deafening blare of the horn from the first as it jerked to a halt with a screech of brakes made Emily jump. A second car honked at them, forced to swerve to avoid hitting them and Emily yelped, following after Kelly in a panicked run.

   “You okay?” Kelly took Emily’s hand again the moment they reached the safety of the opposite curb. “You’ve still got that key case? For Brian’s car.”

   “I—yeah, yeah,” Emily nodded, shoving her free hand into the front pocket of the hoodie to confirm. “It’s here. Let’s just—let’s go. Am I driving?”

   “Lived over on the shittier side of the city,” Kelly stated. “But, I know my way around, and I can get us to the hospital fast.”

   “You’re driving,” Emily thrust the key keeper towards Kelly.

   “Okay,” Kelly accepted it. “We’re picking up Stephanie if she’s there. If she’s not there, she maybe was able to ride with the ambulance.”

   “Yeah,” Emily gasped, still out of breath. “Rebecca?”

   “Call her on the way if you want, but we’re not waiting for her,” Kelly shook her head as they raced over to Brian’s car. “If Chloe got it bad, she went with either the police car or the ambulance. If she didn’t get it bad—then, uh, she’ll still be psychobitch Chloe, and it’d be great if Rebecca could sort of help… manage Chloe’s bullshit, right now.”

   “Right, yeah,” Emily said. “Makes sense. Jesus.”

   “Are you okay?” Kelly asked again.

   “I—no, not really,” Emily said. “All of this is starting to feel more and more real, and it’s—and that’s just getting shittier and shittier. Let’s just fucking go.”

   They got in the car, and Kelly started driving.

   Emily alternated between slumping with exhaustion and sitting up to lean forward, both hands on the dashboard in front of her. She felt manic, trying to wrap her mind around everything had her mind going a billion miles an hour. In contrast the vehicle seemed slow and sluggish, every other vehicle on the road seemed to be in their way, and they had to drive partway past where they wanted to be to even access the loop in front of the convention center that connected back to the alleyway.

   The ambulance was already gone, though a squad car was parked inside the alley, police officers visible in the distance further down towards where there were dumpsters and pallets—and there was the lone figure of Stephanie, frozen stock-still and at a loss.

   “Steph!” Emily jammed her knuckles against the car door in her haste to roll the window down. “Steph we’re going, get in.”

   Her heart sank as she watched the stunned-looking Stephanie turn around and face them. That hollowed-out look of horror and loss cut deep, it dredged up all of her own out of control fear and hysteria from the dark blue depths where she’d been fighting to shove everything down to. Grinding her teeth, Emily popped open the passenger’s side door for her friend and then twisted and clambered between the seats and into the back, which was filled with everyone’s stuff—bags, boxes of clothes, costume parts took up the entire rear bench. She awkwardly jammed herself in against the toddler table box that held Kelly’s clothes, veritably squashing it.

   “He, he—” Stephanie was practically hyperventilating in between each sob as she climbed into the car. “I didn’t see him, I-I didn’t see him the ambulance was already closed up when I got there and they, th-then they pulled out right away. They went, they took a left right there, it, it went—”

   “We’re on our way, I know how to get us to the hospital,” Kelly hurried to assure her, each of the girls being pressed into their respective seats as the car accelerated into motion again. “Buckle up. Brian’s gonna be okay. Okay? Brian’s gonna be okay.”

   “I just. I don’t understand. Is this supposed to happen?” Stephanie demanded through her tears. “L-like this?”

   “We’re… we’re on track for an okay outcome,” Kelly told her through clenched teeth. “Yeah, I know it’s bad. But, it’s not—it’s not worse. It’s been worse before, a lot worse. Brian got hurt here, but we have a way of undoing that, and this is still on track for being one of the best outcomes we can get. Just, it’s not—it’s not right away. Okay? Brian IS going to be okay, though. He’s—listen to me, he’s gonna be okay. Okay?”

   “WHY, though?!” Stephanie wailed. “Why does he have to get hurt?! At all?! I-I don’t understand, I don’t see, I don’t see why Brian has to get hurt!”

   “We should’ve just stayed out of it,” Emily snapped, tearing up all over again in response to Stephanie’s hysterics. “Whatever would have happened to Chloe—that’s on Chloe, her problem, that should’ve just been her shit to deal with. Not ours.”

   “Doesn’t even work that way,” Kelly shot back. “Fucks with Brian’s conscience if we don’t even try, and that fucks with Stephanie’s conscience because of her thing, and when we do finally go and try to pick of the pieces of Chloe—Christine—after she’s gone through that, there aren’t even that many pieces left to put back together. Can’t undo what happened to her and what it does to her mind. Okay? The charm bullshit’s magic, not magic.”

   “We could have all gone TOGETHER, then maybe—” Stephanie began to yell out.

   “We have! We’ve done that!” Kelly shouted back, grimacing in frustration as she stomped the gas so she could pull back out into traffic before the oncoming cars could prevent them from doing so. “Over and over and over again, okay? It’s bad, it’s worse, because we’ve already tried it all before and it all goes fucking bad. If any of them had better fuckin’ solutions, they woulda sent them. They fuckin’ didn’t.”

   “Why? Because Stephanie keeps getting hurt, instead of Brian?” Emily sniffled, rubbing the heel of her hand against her face. “Or becau—”

   “It’s never just Stephanie, Brian and I always get fucked up too whenever she goes,” Kelly huffed out. “It doesn’t make more of a difference with more of us there. I’m not a fighter, okay? Brian really isn’t, either. Both of us get stupid and sloppy once Stephanie’s thrown into danger. Stephanie getting hurt specifically is always worst fucking outcome because of what happens later. Hospital. Creeps.”

   “Does—” Emily started.

   “No, we’re not going to get into that right now,” Kelly warned her off talking about it in front of Stephanie with a pointed glare. “It’s not productive, and I need to—just let me fucking focus on driving. Okay?”

   “You, you never say anything about if I get hurt,” Emily pointed out, suspicious all over again. “If I were to be there for it, at the—stopping the rape.”

   “You don’t get hurt, really, but don’t get pissy at me about why,” Kelly shot Emily another glance. “When we run there, you barely even get there. You don’t run. Side stitch, or too slow, or you’re just out of shape. Even the ones when we have more notice and don’t have to run there, you’re—Emily, sorry, you’re just not all that useful in a fight.”

   “What?!” Emily felt more than just pissy about hearing that. “Fuck you! I’m not that out of shape! I’m not fucking useless or any—”

   “Fine, okay, it’s—” Kelly shot her another glance. “I’m not even that much better off than you, alright? Just, you’re also a lightweight, you weigh like a hundred pounds, Emily. You get knocked down or thrown or whatever like, once, and that’s it. You’re done. Out of it. You don’t get hurt as bad, but, yeah, you’re out of it fast no matter what. No offense.”

   “I—” Emily choked on what felt like a half dozen thoughtless rebuttals. “I actually fuckin’ take a lot of fucking offense to that. Fuck you.”

   “Well, sorry,” Kelly muttered. “You’re not Rebecca.”

   “What about Rebecca?!” Emily asked. “If, if it’s this thing and we’re trying to stop it, sending Rebecca and Brian together would wind up a way better outcome, right?”

   “I’m sure it would have!” Kelly hissed. “I’m sure it fucking would have, but we got screwed over and got our message late. Because the fucks in the timeline before us were just fine with Chloe getting raped. Because fuck Chloe, I guess.”

   “Then, why even—?!” Stephanie cried out.

   “I don’t fucking know!” Kelly snarled. “I’m sorry, okay? I did what I could with what little time I had to work with, and what I got sent. I think all the ones before us—all the ways this has gone down, over and over—we’re just going in circles, back and forth. Not actually making any fucking headway on getting towards a better outcome. One timeline saves Chloe and gets real fucked over by her, tells the next one not to bother. The next one doesn’t save Chloe, guilt trips about it, and tells the next one to save her. We’re not getting anywhere on this.”

   “Except—except, wait,” Emily slapped at the headrest of Stephanie’s seat in agitation to get their attention. “Except this isn’t like that, because, because—the direct previous timeline that sent to us was a fuck Chloe timeline. Right? Because they saved her, and then got fucked over. But we’re also trying to save her, so—”

   “So, what?” Kelly snapped. “Sorry. Fuck.”

   “So, that breaks the pattern you describe,” Emily said. “Right? Not a cycle anymore, it’s like a spiral. Maybe we’re getting towards—I don’t know, a real conclusion. Why did you take in all that send shit they threw at you, and then decide to save Chloe anyways?”

   “It’s—” Kelly gnashed her teeth in frustration. “I don’t fucking know. Bad timing on their send? The shitty intention behind sending it late pissing me off? Maybe I’m just a fuckup? Maybe I am just not fuckin’ okay with feeling like I’m to blame for another girl being gang-raped, no matter who that fucking girl is? Even if it’s fucking Chloe? If—”

   “Stop, stop, I get it,” Emily interrupted. “But, what’s different? Why? Did the timeline before us get more fucked over than usual? Did they send too much? Or not enough? Are we the first one to get a send too late in the day to have better options? Too close to the event? What defines our timeline here as, uh, as unique?”

   “I—” Kelly scowled, slapping the wheel and then flipping a middle finger at another car as it cut them off. “I don’t know. Emily, I honestly don’t fucking know. I’d need time to—you know, to sit down and just mentally sort all of that shit out. And, I haven’t had time. I’m just trying to do the best I can, and—and make calls we can live with. Also, driving someone else’s car, through the busy fucking part of town that I hate, with all these stupid dumbfuck drivers, who—I mean yeah look at that, look at this asshole, look at how close he is. Asshole! With today, I know what I did. I know, I sent Brian over, and I got him hurt. I think he can forgive me on that, he’ll back me up on that being the right call. For now.”

   “The Brian I know would, yeah,” Emily agreed. “But, from what you say… now Chloe’s just gonna keep coming at us, over and over again, trying to fuck us over, until she succeeds to the point where Brian—and the rest of us—agree that we shouldn’t have even tried to save her.”

   “Yeah,” Kelly’s face was bitter. “‘Bout sums it up.”

   “Then,” Emily took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for slapping you earlier. You made the right call, and listen—I’m with you.”

   “I made the right call?”

   “We tried to save her, we have the moral high ground, whether she ever appreciates it or not,” Emily reasoned. “We can—I don’t know, we’ll think up Chloe countermeasures, or something. Get a restraining order, or get her committed, people’ll be able to tell she’s a mental case. If that doesn’t work, if we’re careful and cover all our bases and like, monitor Brian twenty-four seven, which wouldn’t even that hard with this many of us girls but I mean with like, solid video evidence, that’d give him alibis for whenever she tries to claim harassment or assault or whatever. Once we get a legal win where we disprove her on shit, double jeopardy law comes into play and she can’t just keep trying to pull the same bullshit. Right? I swear that’s still a thing. And, and in any case, there’s five of us, and one of her. We’re a team, we’ll’ve all got magic fuckin’ powers by then—we’ll figure something out. Worst comes to worst, we just fuckin’ bail. We delete all our socials, change our names if we have to, move to some different state or out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, where she can’t even find us. Yeah?”

   “Yeah,” Kelly sighed.

   “Or wait,” Emily paused. “The me in all those other timelines woulda thought of all that too, and they’d have tried it all already, huh?”

   “No, it’s—being more prepared always helps, I guess,” Kelly blew an errant lock of hair out of her face with an annoyed puff of her lip. “Just, like. Don’t expect me to convey all your fuckin’ enthusiasm for this in whatever we wind up sending off to the next us. I’m just… already out of fucking patience for all of this bullshit. If we figure out how to turn off the charm power or block future calls or whatever, that’s what I’m doing. You okay, Steph?”

   “No,” Stephanie said in a quiet voice. “I’m—I’m so… tense. Angry. Terrified. Confused. I’m sorry I’m n-not, that I’m not really contributing to the, to this conversation. Or helping. I just, I can’t even think right now. I just want him to please be okay. Everything else—everything else doesn’t matter right now. I’m sorry.”

   “Steph, do you think we’re doing the right—do you think we should’ve stepped in, like we did?” Emily asked the girl. “Saved Chloe from all that?”

   There was a long, uncomfortable silence, filled with only the hushed sound of their tires on the road before she answered.

   “Don’t ask me that,” Stephanie finally responded. “If, if Brian’s hurt—then, I’m sorry but just—don’t ask me that yet.”

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