The White Rabbit Chronicles - Part XII

XII

Where does this end? White Rabbit asked herself.

Her hands cradled the stiff heat in the mug, the strong scent of coffee cutting through the sterility of Square One Medical Center. The drink tasted of scorched dirt and paint chips – bracing, and a jagged line to the moment. The acid sting a mooring to the reality of the lonely room – a mooring she desperately needed.

An irresistible tide was dragging her mind out into an inky ocean. All the rush had been for nothing. Three rabbit holes, four meta-timelines, and countless dances with the reaper. All for a last desperate shot that missed. Worse than missed, it had never left the barrel.

White Rabbit the… Thirteenth? Yeah, lucky thirteen. White Rabbit the Thirteenth considered the capriciousness of time. The hope that the dice would fall the same way on a new meta-timeline was always far out, but she might have been able to cope with the butterfly effect of her insertion to the meta-past if it had all played out the same. Maybe not. But maybe, she could find solace in that she had hit her notes in the cosmic symphony. If the vagaries of timelines had dissolved that chance through incalculable probability shifts, she could still rest easy that she had played her part perfectly in tune.

But that had never been in the cards. She couldn’t find solace in the idea that no mortal could match the machinations of the imperious Time. Instead, it was a single fatal miscalculation. A stupid oversight. One that she couldn’t have clued into, but that made the failure sting all the more pointedly.

The viciousness of Anarak Sainne disgusted her. A thorough cruelty had twisted the knife, and snatched away all hope. Everything she had tried – and she had tried so hard – had amounted to this moment. Lost at sea in a waiting room.

***

The rain was ethereal. It washed away the vibrancy from the already dull suburban street. It fell in even sheets as White Rabbit watched from her little shelter under the awning. Somehow, it felt like an embrace. As if the cold sheet was really a warm blanket welcoming her home. That this was the spot she needed to be.

It was a relief. A sign from the multi-faceted universe that her calculations were correct. This was indeed the moment she should have chosen. She had spent countless hours considering how to do it. She knew she needed to approach Kennedy before Anarakia could get a chance to do anything to him. So before he was a Timeless. But how long before?

Everyone had been on the same wavelength: they couldn’t churn the natural flow of time much. That meant a late point, where the ripples couldn’t cascade too much. But the earlier they struck, the safer from Sainne’s reactions. The choice had to be flawless.

Fortunately, White Rabbit still clung to a memory her own Kennedy Frost had entrusted to her. How he had once taken off from home just before joining Time Peace. And it synced perfectly on their time table.

So here she was, waiting. Waiting. Waiting and trying to shake away the last knots of worry bundling themselves in her stomach. As much as the moment felt right, tingling doubts still scratched at the back of her mind. This was the moment. The crescendo. The time that everything had built up to. Somehow, she had to take a strung-out young man and get him to dive into a world he couldn’t possibly imagine. No pressure.

It will be easy – this is the perfect chance, she told herself. He would be here, in his untethered haze, just begging for a lifeline. And she had just the line to throw him. Everything he wanted. Simple.

And yet. And yet the quiet whispers just below the level of coherent words persisted in their murky musings. Maybe she couldn’t do even the simplest task anymore. This was her third trip down a rabbit hole. She could not have been doing well. Those whispers – were they doubts, or her last shreds of sanity trying to shake her awake? Had she tumbled so far through the mirror that she didn’t recognize it anymore?

All it would take would be a few wrong words. Then she’d blow everything. If she came across offbeat, how could anyone reel these kids into Time Peace afterward? Their one lucky shot would be lost forever.

Ridiculous, she tried to convince herself. All she had to do was slap on the same old face she had worn for years. To take it easy, and tell it like it is. Mostly. But that didn’t seem so simple anymore. She was conscious of every fiber of her being. Every twitch of every muscle. Did she usually stand like this? How did she walk? What was her face doing? It really did feel like a mask. A thick, rubbery, unresponsive mask.

How absurd. All she had to do was act natural, and yet she couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t easy to be at ease. Even with the serenity of the lost world around her, a part of her felt out of place.

She heard a trace of slapping bare feet against sidewalk, barely audible over the downpour. She looked across to the bus stop, the vision of which had been washed away by the torrent of water. But she could feel them. They had arrived.

She took a deep breath.

Surrender.

It was show time.

Surrender.

***

All the careful poise and meticulous thought had been wasted. White Rabbit the Thirteenth downed the last dregs of her drink, and with it, the last of its warmth. She was still waiting for the meeting. She was dreading it. And yet, she hated stewing and waiting just as much.

So, the mission had been a bust. What next? She had to keep going. But to where? She was a spare. In theory, she still had duties – to be a backup in case this meta-timeline’s White Rabbit the First couldn’t book it to a rabbit hole fast enough. Her job was to wait. To drag out the interminable dread she was soaking in right now. To do nothing after having done so much.

No, she needed something. Some sort of meaning. Some new groove to cling to. At least a shadow for the real purpose that had slipped through her fingers. Could she be an arcane tech specialist? No, she didn’t have the mind for such work. In two senses of the phrase. Her sanity was still in doubt, and she never had the chops for tech. The last thing she needed was to bend her mind into more knots. So what? Logistics? That would surely send her over the bend. She couldn’t sit still. And yet, she could never be a Delta or a Theta. What sane commander would let her into the field with a weapon? They’d have to be as nutty as they thought she was.

No, there was nothing left.

Nothing left but to face Kennedy again.

***

With a shrug, White Rabbit said simply, “This has all happened before, and it will happen again.”

She was looking at the rain soaked faces of the very inexperienced Kennedy Frost and Blake Anthony. Anguish and confusion were etched in both of them. They were so different – so raw. It was hard to believe that this kid could be shaped into a soldier.

And somehow, that was comforting. It made it easier to quash the murmurs in the dark underbelly of her consciousness. To carry forward without effort.

And with that easy momentum, she added to her last thought, “With luck, for the last time.”

Blake looked aghast at the words. “That doesn’t mean anything!” he exclaimed. White Rabbit felt the twitch of a smile coming on as he declared, “You’re speaking in riddles. How hard is it to give a straight answer?”

Funny enough, that was an apt question, and she let the answer flow freely. “Harder than you might think.”

As she explained, she kept a tight watch on the words slipping into the downpour. This was still a recruitment gig after all, and Time Peace had a veil of secrecy to protect. No guarantee that these cats would sign up like they had in meta-timelines before. Every syllable had to meet the melody. But it was so tempting to just let the conversation flow. She was in a groove. Why be careful, if that would just kill the vibe?

“I’ve met you before, even if you haven’t met me,” she explained to Kennedy. And then, threading conviction through the rainy static, “And because I’ve met you, I’d bet you’ll find what you’re looking for. You did last time.”

“You’d bet?” Kennedy shot at her. “Shouldn’t you know for sure?”

“And what do you mean, ‘last time’?” Blake asked.

She squeezed a brake in her mind. Their suspicion was almost cute, but it sent alarm bells ringing in her head. She had to adjust course. She had to focus. She couldn’t swerve into the realm of secrecy, but she couldn’t trip herself up, either.

She was suddenly aware of every raindrop falling around them. She could feel every muscle of her mouth – it’s exact shape, and her tongue’s awkward presence behind her teeth.

Pick your words, but be sincere.

“That I can’t tell you,” she began. A simple truth to ease her into a new gear. Now just a hint of the bigger picture. A thread leading towards the greater truth. This is what she prepared for. Don’t press them, but lead them.

“I can only answer with another question,” she said carefully. “If you had a chance to do everything in your life all over, knowing all of the mistakes you made before, would you do it differently?”

And as the two boys looked at each other, White Rabbit felt a tentative confidence bloom. She had done it. She could do it. A gentle push, and they understood. If she could do that, she could finish the conversation.

She felt a muscle uncoil, and a new sense of ease.

“Let’s say yes,” Blake answered cautiously.

“There’s your ‘last time’,” she answered, a quiet satisfaction with them and with herself. Turning to Kennedy she added with a ghost of a smile, “and there’s your reason why I can’t know what you’ll find.”

***

It’s all happened before, and it will all happen again.

The riff she had used to comfort Kennedy and Blake was a discordant note in her mind. Because this wasn’t the last time, after all. She set aside her mug, looking at the few drops that had been left behind. Like her. When inevitably, a white rabbit will go down the rabbit hole, she’ll be washed away with this meta-timeline. Multiple layers of herself erased forever. Her home meta-timeline, the one she had arrived on where Kennedy snagged victory from defeat, the one she had juked Sainne and the Black Skull on, and finally this infernal failure. They only lived in her mind, and she wouldn’t be making the trip down another rabbit hole. It would all be over, except maybe a few factoids in one of the other rabbits’ heads.

Everything she had slogged through, everything piece of her soul she’d offered up, it dissolve into the same ether as Twenty-Six’s Oblixis gamble. Fortunately, that mad plan had been washed away on her last trip, too. But even in that relief, dread waited to claim her. Oblivion was her fate as well.

She thought bitterly about how confident she had been after the conversation.

“Wait! Who are you?” Kennedy had asked.

And she had been so proud of herself. Riding high on the thought that she had pulled it off, with ease and grace. They had taken the tickets, the first step to total victory. She had done her part, fulfilled her purpose.

It was just like she had told the Hawk. She had pulled off a miracle.

And so she answered cheekily, “Mira. Call me Mirabelle.”

Thirteen clenched her fists. She hated herself for that. If she didn’t know the truth, she would have said that moment had jinxed it all. Because there was no miracle. Not even close. The entire conversation had been pointless after all.

The moment Kennedy Frost stepped through a time gate, it was over. She had lost the game before it began. Because of Sainne and his Talhesian Torture Device. The freak hadn’t blinded Kennedy on the last meta-timeline. He had done it on all the meta-timelines to follow, too. That infernal device had somehow corrupted Kennedy’s very identifying information. The blueprint of his soul. In the end, it didn’t matter one iota how skillfully White Rabbit had weaved through her pitch, it meant zilch. Kennedy Frost would always be blind, and they’d never get the lucky shot again.

In fact, this meta-timeline had gone wildly off the rails. Despite the Hawk’s hopes, Kennedy had fixated on his blindness. He didn’t become the Theta they needed, but a failed wannabe Delta. He had disobeyed orders and stirred up trouble. And White Rabbit couldn’t do anything about it. Even when they had to bring Kennedy in to straighten him out, she couldn’t help.

When she had first heard what had happened when he became Timeless, it shattered her. All the patches that held her mind together seemed to fray at once. A nervous breakdown was a polite way to put it. She was in a fractured free-fall that only sedation could stop. So while Kennedy was a few floors away meeting with Twelve, she was under the ether – staring into starless sky of incomprehensible defeat. All her efforts had been nothing against the void. She couldn’t face that.

No, it was worse than that, she reflected. She still felt the clawing oblivion in her chest. It was the weighty thought that it would all happen again, and again, and again, and again. A galactic ouroboros. She used to scoff at the Thetas who called the war eternal. From their perspective, it sure wasn’t. She thought that only white rabbits could truly feel the truth of that word. But even that wasn’t right, she realized now. Few white rabbits had experienced as much of meta-time as she had. And those who had? Gone. Vaporized. Erased when another went down the rabbit hole. She was the only one left who had seen it all stretch before her. And endless loop of conflict and death where time was arrested in about the span of a century. All of humanity crystalized because a conflict couldn’t be allowed to end. A conflict that infiltrated every aspect of every world.

It was too horrible of a vision to dwell on, but she had. It had taken her. It had taken months to recover. Recover. That wasn’t the right word, was it? “To get slightly better,” was more like it. The Psi’s insisted she was doing well. She didn’t believe them. Just because she wasn’t strapped to a bed anymore didn’t mean much. She could feel the darkness linger.

And for some joke of a reason, the Hawk thought she should be chatting with Kennedy. Her heart fluttered unpleasantly. What was she supposed to say? She could hardly help herself, and now she was supposed to face someone about to be drummed out? What was even the point?

The truth, the Hawk had told her.

He doesn’t want the truth, White Rabbit reflected darkly. He doesn’t know how awful it is.

The doorknob turned. White Rabbit glanced up nervously, but it was the man she’d expected. The Hawk, his appearance as impeccable as ever.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She stared at him blankly for a second, her thoughts catching like a broken record.

“Not a chance,” she replied flatly.

He looked at her, narrowing his eyes at her response. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked mildly.

White Rabbit sucked in a breath. Words couldn’t package the turmoil. The chaotic swirl was too much. She reached for the closest thing she could, the only thing in front of her.

“We’re going to go in there and talk to this kid,” she began slowly. As she spoke, a tint of the truth leaked into her tone. “To tell him that once upon a time, he had been a hero. But that he’ll never get that chance. That everything that happened to him is all about something that will never be. How am I supposed to do that?”

Something seemed to come over the Hawk. A subtle shift. He stepped closer and put a hand on White Rabbit’s shoulder.

“You tell him the truth,” he explained softly. “That he doesn’t need to be a hero to make a difference. That it doesn’t all have to be about a single moment, but the slow accumulation of work across time. That the happy ending isn’t gone, it just has to be earned.”

White Rabbit winced and turned away from the stern man’s gaze.

“If there is an ending at all,” she muttered bitterly. “Can you really think this war will have one?”

The Hawk’s eyes narrowed. And when he spoke, it was in a dire and serious voice.

“Did the Medusa activate?”

White Rabbit’s heart skipped a beat. How could she forget?

“Yes.”

And the Hawk’s eyes softened, just a little. He was too steeled to let a glint of hope into his eyes, but maybe, just maybe, there was a flicker of something just short of that in his gaze.

“Then just maybe, there will be an end,” he said. “Just maybe, that’s the real key.”

Pinpoints of ice dug into Thirteen’s skin, a cold prickly wave crawling up her body at the Hawk’s suggestion. And yet, none of the spikes of frost reached her heart. Somehow, there was an elation mixed in with this ominous portent. A terrifying gauntlet lay before them, but at the end… was that a new, last desperate shot? A true ending waiting for her?

She had been gambling a lot lately. Maybe she could stomach one more.

“Let’s go talk to the cat,” White Rabbit said, and for the first time since she landed on this meta-timeline, her old smile came naturally.

***

END TRANSMISSION