Titus' absence left an impenetrable quiet over the house. Every noise Caleb made seemed far too loud. "He's your nephew?" Caleb finally broke the silence. The difference in personality was so vast. Titus was like a viper hidden in the grass, girded by a spoiled, rude, and bullying demeanor.
"Aren't I just the luckiest?" Alexander sighed and flopped down on the couch.
"So Rhea James is--" Caleb sat on the other end of the couch.
"My sister-in-law. His dad is—was—my brother. He died."
Caleb couldn't help but notice the slight hesitation before the last word of Alexander's sentence. Almost like he didn't quite believe what he said. "How did he die?" Caleb said as softly and gently as he could.
"The great mystery," Alexander said, splaying his hands in front of him as he shrugged.
"You don't know?" Caleb asked. He lower on the couch until his knees touched the coffee table.
"Carter just disappeared one day. Rhea never explained. Titus was still pretty young. I'd be surprised if he remembers anything about him."
The rest of Alexander's words slid past like ethereal ghosts. Carter. The name rattled around Caleb's head. Titus looked almost identical to Carter. He hadn't been dreaming, but seeing Titus' own father.
"Caleb?" Alexander said. "You went all pale on me."
"Uh..." Caleb said, not sure if he should bring it up. His experience in the Void had only been a dream, a toxin-induced nightmare. It hadn't been real. Or had it? "I'm just really tired," he said eventually, without conviction. Something held him back from sharing the truth. He didn't want to mention anything and sound stupid. He didn't want to get his mentor's hopes up either. Besides, no one had ever gotten stuck in the Void before, right? The Manifesto said so on page 45, at least. The Carter in the Void had only been fifteen-years-old, too. He couldn't have fatheredTitus.
So he rose, bidding Alexander goodnight, and shut himself in his room.
Caleb slept, but rest was far from him. Back and forth Caleb had gone for hours, stuck and confused about the implication of Titus' relationship to Carter in the Void. Caleb remained contemplative and quiet as he munched on the crisp bacon Alexander fried the next morning. His thoughts bubbled to the surface and Caleb blurted, "What if your brother is alive?"
Unperturbed by Caleb's sudden question, Alexander only raised his eyebrows.
"It's possible. People don't just disappear. Timewalkers especially."
"Oh," Caleb said. He took a bite of eggs.
"Rhea told me about the possibility of him being in the Void." Alexander merely took a sip of his coffee.
"But people don't get stuck in the Void," Caleb countered.
"Ah," Alexander replied folding his hands together. "Therein lies a dilemma. The truth, or a falsity for the sake of calm."
Caleb watched Alexander, whose hand hovered between his plate and mouth.
"Rhea is a woman driven by grief more than anything. She tries to do the right thing."
"There was someone in my dream..." Caleb started. "Like, the one when I was injected with the Dream Toxin."
Alexander nodded to urge him on.
"His name was Carter. He looked exactly like Titus."
The consistent light in Alexander's features dimmed. It was so small, the shift, Caleb might not have noticed had their eyes not been locked. "Death is an absolute. It can't be changed once it happens."
"So even if—"
But Alexander cut Caleb off. "The Void takes, and it doesn't return. If my brother is in the Void, he's lost. Dead."
"But what if I..."
Alexander's lips lifted, and his eyebrows waved, daring Caleb to go on. He'd been about to say, "What if I really do open the Void..." but it seemed too optimistic.
"So there are no second chances," Caleb acquiesced.
His mentor's expression tightened. "No." His voice was soft and crackled around the edges. "There aren't."
+++
Training in the backyard was tense. By the second hour of fruitless Time Hopping, Alexander was the one teetering on a precipice. Caleb was too, stressed about the fact he wasn't learning fast enough. His mentor pushed him, and for the first time impatience caused Alexander to snap. Caleb was taken aback, as his mentor's words, "Can't you just learn, dammit!" sunk in and lit a fire of insecurity in him.
"Ouch," Caleb muttered under his breath, trying to focus, trying to dosomething that might never occur. The vein in his forehead pulsed, and it wasn't from the anger he felt bubble up in him either.
"What did you say?"
Caleb quailed under the severity of Alexander's tone. "I said, 'ouch,' because you're being an ass." His voice was pinched and shaking, but at this point he was sick of everything. Not only had Alexander gotten him out of bed at 5am to go on a sixmile run, but his body ached under the steady sheet of rain.
Alexander didn't escalate the situation further. In fact, he seemed to deflate. He leaned against the posts holding the portico—completely dry, by the way—and grumbled something about not being an ass.
"Why did you let Titus worry you?
"He doesn't worry me at all," Alexander interjected, but it was half-hearted and unbelievable.
"Sure, sure." Caleb sighed. "Your comment about me learning was completely uncalled for."
The defiant, angry façade was gone, replaced by the Alexander Caleb knew. "I'm sorry."
"It's not really okay, but I forgive you." He ran a hand through his hair. It came back wet. "You know I'm trying, right?"
"Of course I do. You're not lazy. I just have a lot of pressure on me is all." Alexander uncrossed his arms and knocked the wood behind him with his knuckles.
"Why?" Caleb sat down in a chair next to Alexander; it felt nice to not have rain pelting him, though he was shivering.
"It's no reason."
It was anything but, and Caleb voiced this.
"Seriously," Alexander said. He plucked a bit of fuzz from his checkered flannel. "It doesn't matter. Just drop it."
Caleb stared at his mentor for a second before standing and going back to the center of the lawn.
"I had a daughter," he called, and Caleb whipped around. Alexander's salt and pepper hair blew in the wild wind. He was stiff and sat down in one of the chairs on the deck. Caleb slowly walked back and sank into the chair next to Alexander. "Her name was Natalee."
"Was?"
"Yeah." The sound of rain again filled the silence. Alexander's breaths were slow, unsteady.
"Oh." So many questions rushed through his head. "How old was she?"
"Eighteen months." Alexander's reply seemed to suck the air from the earth. It was hard to breathe. What did you reply to something like that? What did you say when someone had lost their daughter so young?
Silence enveloped them, and it took Caleb a while to formulate the next leading question. "How?" It's all that came out, and he couldn't figure out what more would go into it.
"Well, first you have to know it was forbidden. You've read enough of the Manifesto to know two Timewalkers are can't have kids." Alexander pinched the space between his eyebrows, and Caleb watched his mentor age years in an instant. Weight from the past often did that to people.
"Yeah?" Caleb prodded.
"I had a wife, once. Weird as it is, Rhea's sister."
Caleb didn't want to ask the next question, afraid of a painful answer. "What happened to her?" he said. He was unsure if the tremor in his voice was from the cold or from this fragile moment.
"She died during delivery." Alexander's eyes sparkled with mist, but they weren't filled with tears. The pain of a man who'd come to terms with death. Alive and raw, but muted by years.
"I'm sorry." What else was there to say?
Alexander put his hand on Caleb's shoulder. "It's forbidden for a reason, but Lena and I broke the rules and had a daughter. We loved each other, and people who love each other don't always do the right thing. Double negatives in math may make a positive, but as a Timewalker, it's a tight rope that shouldn't be played with."
Caleb wrapped his arm around Alexander, and his mentor's smile was wistful and sad.
"Because she was born of two Timewalkers, Natalee was filledwith the Void. She wasn't the cause of the Void bursting into our world, but she was a product of it. Lena and I--" Alexander seemed to falter for a moment. "--Because of the Void she was damned to an early death.
"It happened—" he stopped suddenly "—I could show you," Alexander said. "Only if you want to, though." Alexander's voice was aching with a desire to share—that sort of yearning desire to bring someone into a deep hurt.
Caleb nodded. "If it's easier than talking about it, sure?" He spoke a little higher than normal, since he wasn't sure what Alexander meant by showhim. A chill snaked its way up his spine.
Alexander took hold of Caleb's hand and laid it flat in his palm. Removing his own ring, Alexander pressed it into Caleb's hand and closed Caleb's fingers into a fist around it. "Close your eyes," he instructed.
Perhaps there was something to be said of Alexander's ability to trust Caleb with this, but Caleb said nothing, closing his eyes instead. Expecting to see the tinted red of his eyelids, Caleb jolted as he found himself on a cobbled street lined by buildings with Germanic facades. If Caleb opened his eyes, he knew he'd be sitting on the back porch holding Alexander's ring. But he didn't. He wouldn't until this was over.
Caleb saw the world as if through a fogged window; every detail, every color was frosted and dull. He was not here in this place, that much was certain. Caleb had become no more than a bystander, drawn into the wisp of a memory.
So then, if this was a memory, where was Alexander? At the thought, as things had been in the Void, the entire scene oriented for Caleb to observe his friend. This version of the man was considerably younger than the one next to Caleb on the porch, though Caleb wondered if this Alexander only seemed young because he lacked the salt in his pepper hair.
Memory-Alexander was simply on a morning stroll, and it was obvious he was having the time of his life with the little one in the stroller. He talked to her with a high, childish voice, pointing out bright red front doors and a burbling fountain. They stopped at the edge, and Alexander looked at his cooing child with one of those smiles that gave off its own sort of radiance. "My parents brought me to this fountain when I was little, and every day we threw a coin in." Alexander wasn't speaking English, but Caleb heard the words through the ring's translation.
Alexander lifted a coin from his pocket and showed Natalee who smiled and kicked her legs wildly. She giggled, and the sound drew the gaze of a few strolling past. Even Caleb came in closer, pulled by the child's enigmatic gravity.
The little girl's hair fluttered in the breeze, and her gaze stayed on her dad with laser focus. As if he were a magician who might suddenly vanish. Caleb wondered how often Alexander had done this, disappearing on his daughter only to return moments later. "So, Nina," Alexander said to her. "This coin is for you." And he flicked it over his shoulder into the water.
It froze halfway through its parabolic arc.
The world came to a halt in a way Caleb had experienced once before. The passerby were stopped, some mid-step, others mid-laugh. The world was between movements, and yet it fell still. Save for Alexander and Natalee.
Rhea James' unmistakable form materialized near the edge of the fountain, ten feet from Alexander. Her dark hair and rose colored pantsuit were striking, out of place from the attire of the frozen passerby. Alexander was focused on the Time Queen, even as her gaze remained transfixed on Natalee.
When Rhea walked over, Caleb tensed. "This is Natalee," she said, but Caleb didn't think she sounded much like an aunt overjoyed by the birth of her niece. She seemed more unsettled by the idea of the human in the stroller.
"Yes." Alexander's pulsed spiked, and Caleb shouldn't have known that. But the scene once again reoriented, and Caleb was within Alexander's thoughts and mind and vision.
Rhea clasped Natalee's finger, and Alexander's heart constricted. She was weaving her web, leaving Alexander no choice in this matter. He wouldn't be able to flee, to change his mind. She'd appeared in complete control, as always. She now held the situation in her palm, first with time, and now with his daughter. Alexander's pulse fluttered.
"She even looks like Lena." Somber and withdrawn, Rhea continued to clasp onto Natalee's tiny fingers. "You knew the law, Alex." The diminutive of his name slid off Rhea's lips with a broken intimacy. With tender hands, Rhea lifted Natalee from the bassinet. Natalee cried when anyone else held her—even Blandia, a stooped old woman who lived next door.
"Don't patronize me today, Rhea. Please." Alexander ran a hand through his hair, and the breeze lifted a strand and held it aloft for a moment. "I've already lost my wife, and now my daughter."
Rhea bounced Natalee against her hip, while Natalee played with Rhea's hair, twirling it and flipping it. Natalee had forgotten Alexander. "You can change your mind," Rhea said.
"You know that isn't true," Alexander responded. "I didn't plan on ever telling you but Sven—"
"He was only trying to help you."
"I knowthat." Alexander huffed. "Natalee is getting worse. Every day. You're only here so that you can help her."
"I may not be able to." Natalee yanked on Rhea's hair, and she winced.
"Dammit, Rhea, don't."
Rhea attempted to uncurl Natalee's fingers from her head, but the little girl's fists had gone white with pressure. At Rhea's coaxing, Natalee grew more frustrated and held tighter.
"She's not going to survive," Rhea said. "The Void is going to eat at her until there's nothing left. She will destroy, and she won't be in control."
"She won't die." Alexander couldn't bring himself to believe it.
Natalee loosed Rhea's hair, but she gnashed her teeth together and screeched. Alexander was desperate to pull his daughter from Rhea's arms, but when she got like this, it wasn't long before her eyes—
Pools of darkness swelled over her lashes, poured out of her fingertips. Even if he wanted to, Alexander could not touch his daughter. Rhea was unscathed because she, like Natalee, had been born of the Void—yet without this...he despised the word...malformation. Rhea was untouched by the darkness that streamed around her, probing and poking and spooling as it was.
"Alex." Rhea's voice broke through his thoughts. "The code was written to keep people safe." She sounded nearly as heartbroken as Alexander felt. "This was never about Natalee being stronger or better than me. It's about the Void being stronger than anyof us."
The overflowing shadows in Natalee's eyes faded, and the soft, chocolate brown returned. She stifled her tears, but she reached for Alexander. She reached, and she reached, but the world unfroze. And then Rhea—and Natalee—were gone, having slithered through the cracks in time.
Caleb couldn't stand to watch Alexander break. He dropped the ring as if it burned him, forced his eyes open, and stood.
"Why did you—" Caleb began, but the thought stopped. "Where is she?"
"Natalee died soon after that memory." Alexander sniffled, and his cheeks wobbled in the way they did when someone forced tears back. "Rhea was supposed to help her but—" He slouched his shoulders.
"Why did Rhea force youto leave if your daughterdied?" He didn't want to ask the question on his mind: Why did you let her go? The answer was obvious. He couldn't touch her without the possibility of dying. Rhea was supposed to help. Rhea had failed.
"Because I broke the law—not just her law." Alexander took a breath. "The law was supposed to keep Natalee from happening. Not her birth, but the way the Void controlled her. She was born after the Void started to leak into the world... I not only put my daughter in danger, but others. I was moved here because I can't do much damage here."
Caleb stared at Alexander. "Rhea said Sven sold you out. Who is he?"
"He's—well he was—my best friend. He knew, but he told Rhea because he cared. I was a single father, raising a child who could decimate us." Alexander cracked his neck.
"Did you only tell Rhea because he told?"
Alexander only bit his lip.
"Do you forgive him?"
"I supposed I have to. Bitterness is like taking a poison and expecting someone else to die from it. Not only do they not know, they don't care, either. You're dying and they're free."
"I'll make sure you don't get into any more trouble." Caleb put his hands on Alexander's shoulders. "I'll Time Hop by this weekend. I promise." He pulled Alexander into a hug. He didn't seem to expect it, but it only took a moment for Alexander to return the affection. When they pulled apart, Alexander had tears in his eyes. He might have lost his daughter, but Caleb had begun to realize over the past few days just how much a father he'd gained.