I'm back in the lab.

The first thing I do is brush off the strange, distinct sensation of Once More into the Fray falling apart inside my... Firmament core, I suppose. It's a distinctly uncomfortable feeling, like holding broken shards of glass inside my mouth. The skill still feels usable, but only barely; thankfully, the feeling fades soon enough, and I'm able to direct my attention elsewhere.

Like trying to figure out whether or not Bimar's still alive.

I let out a breath of relief when I see her leaning against the nearby wall. She's breathing, at the very least, although she doesn't look like she's doing very well. The sight of the normally headstrong crow doubled over like she's about to puke isn't really comforting.

Nor is the part where she collapses onto the ground. I hurry over to her even as she lets out a curse that the Interface pointedly doesn't translate, and frankly, that in itself is kind of worrying. "Are you okay?" I ask, kneeling beside her.

"What do you think?" Bimar groans. Her voice is muffled by the fact that she's got her wings pressed to her face. "What happened? I feel like featherscrap."

"Uh... you died," I say. No use sugarcoating the situation, and I'm not sure there's a gentler way to tell her, anyway. Bimar still freezes, staring up at me in a mixture of horror, confusion, and disbelief. "Going after Miktik," I add.

"I don't think that helps," Ahkelios mutters from my shoulder.

"Yeah, you're going to have to explain that one." Bimar groans again, pressing her beak into the floor. "In a moment. Once I don't feel like all my feathers are about to fall off and explode."

She takes a deep, ragged breath, slowly pulling herself into a seating position; as she does, I use Temporal Link, creating copies of my selves from the past two loops—one to save Vahrkos, and the other to deal with the merchant harassing Wander. Bimar stares as two copies of me abruptly run off.

"...You know what, I don't even have the energy to ask."

I smile wryly. "Feeling better?"

"Not even slightly," Bimar grumbles, but she pushes herself a little more upright and exhales. "But let's not waste any more time. Tell me what's going on. Make it quick."

At least she's willing to hear me out. I explain the situation as quickly as I can, and by the time I'm done, Bimar's recovered enough that she no longer looks like she's about to collapse. Her breathing's still ragged, but the furrow in her brows tells me she's more focused on my words than on how she's feeling.

"Putting aside how terrifying what you just said is," she grumbles. "Those suits are meant to keep Firmament pressure at a tolerable rate while we're inside the scrapyard. If you're sure there wasn't any physical damage, then the only thing that could have killed me is..."

Bimar hesitates a bit. I frown. "Is what?"

"Is a dropoff," Bimar says. "They don't drop things off in the scrapyards often, but there's usually some kind of announcement before they do it. Or an alarm that runs through the scrapyard. You get about five minutes from the alarm to evacuate or the flood of Firmament into the area bypasses whatever protection even the suits have."

There's a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. "So you're telling me there wasn't a warning this time."

"Or a very short one," Bimar says with a grunt, trying to pull herself to her feet and stumbling slightly; I catch her, and she leans her weight on me gratefully. The fact that she doesn't have even a word of snark for me worries me, actually. She's usually more grumpy than this. "You're sure I didn't leave behind a message of any kind?"

"Not that I saw," I say. "And... this doesn't explain why I found your bodies outside the scrapyard, does it?"

"No, it doesn't." Bimar frowns, tapping her wings together. "Either someone else was there and got us out, or one of us pulled us out before we died. We don't have enough information. I would have left behind a message if I could have, though, so I doubt I was conscious long enough to pull us out."

"It'd make more sense for you to get yourself out," Ahkelios points out. "You know to leave behind a message."

Bimar's eyes sharpen. "I'm not leaving Miktik behind," she says harshly. Her Firmament flares red—genuine anger.

"We're not asking you to," I say quickly, surprised by the intensity of the reaction. "Ahkelios has... well, it doesn't matter. You know what to expect now. Do you think you can get her out in time?"

I don't say what I'm thinking. Bimar's pretty badly affected after experiencing this Firmament pressure once. Miktik's experienced it two times in a row. If she isn't dead already, experiencing it again this loop might very well kill her.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"I don't know," Bimar grunts. "I can't move very well right now. And you said the city's under attack?"

"I can get you to the scrapyard," I offer. "I'm not sure if I can go inside with you—"

"You'll need a suit," Bimar grunts. "We don't have one ready, or if we do, I don't know where we're keeping it. It'll be easier if I go in alone."

"You're sure?" I don't want to risk going inside. It's not just because I'm afraid of what I might find—there are very few relevant events I can think of that might warrant an emergency dropoff. The only one that comes to mind is the one I'd spent the last loop worrying about.

A far-too-detailed image flashes into my mind. I see Gheraa's body lying on a mountain of discarded Integrator tech, golden Firmament leaking freely into the ground.

No. I shove it out of my mind. My imagination's being too active. There's no reason to think it's Gheraa.

Unless Guardian of Fate is warning me, but—no. Guardian of Fate can't pierce the Firmament of the scrapyard. It's the reason I couldn't tell that Miktik was about to die, and it's the reason I couldn't tell what was happening to Bimar once she entered the scrapyard.

I'm being paranoid. It'll be fine.

"I'm sure," Bimar tells me, and I can tell from the way she's looking at me that she's caught on to my inner turmoil. She doesn't say anything about it, though, for which I'm grateful. "I'm sure you have other things to do this loop."

"I need..." It takes me a moment to remember. "I need to make sure Guard and Tarin are okay. I think I managed to fix Guard, but I'm—I'm not sure yet."

"You fixed—" Bimar cuts herself off, but there's a distinct note of hope in her voice that wasn't there before. "If you managed to fix him, then we've got a chance against this raid of yours," she says. She regards me with an intensity I'm not used to seeing from her. "Get me to the scrapyard. I'll do the rest. If all goes well, you'll find me outside. If it doesn't and you find my body again..."

Bimar hesitates, then shakes her head. "Ask Tarin," she says eventually, though it obviously kills her to say it. "He'll know how to find out what happened to me."

"Is there some kind of history between you and Tarin?" I ask. It's not the first time I've seen this... hesitation from her when it comes to Tarin. It's not open hostility, exactly, but it's something close. Like something about him makes her uncomfortable.

"No," Bimar denies. "I don't know him."

"That doesn't seem true," I say. She glares at me, and while I don't react, I feel Ahkelios folding his arms across his chest, glaring right back. I can't help but smile slightly. He makes for an intimidating sidekick.

"I don't know him," Bimar repeats, though this time she doesn't quite meet my gaze. Then she sighs, like she's rolling the thought around in her head. "Directly. Look, get me to the scrapyard. I'll explain on the way."

I do. Carrying a crow of her size is... awkward, but I make do with a few well-placed Barriers, shaped and tethered to me with Firmament Control. She's silent for the first few minutes, then eventually finds the words.

"He got away," she says quietly. "That whole village. The Cliffside. They take in the crows that get tired of living in the Great Cities."

"That doesn't sound like a bad thing."

"It's... not." Bimar looks away. It kills her to say it, I can tell. "But it feels like running away. I hate it. So many of us caused... people died, Ethan. People were tortured. And some crows get to just walk away from it all, like it never happened."

I don't know how to respond to that.

"I stay here because I want to fix what I did." Bimar's words come out as a slight snarl. "Crows like Rotar just run away and live happy lives and pretend they can just forget—"

Her chest heaves. I see her visibly trying to calm herself down. On my shoulder, Ahkelios's claws once more tighten on my shirt; he recognizes the name, just as I do.

"What did Rotar do?" I ask quietly.

"Same thing I did," she says bitterly. "Helped. With that lab. With the experiments. If Miktik hadn't..."

There's no small amount of self-hatred in her voice.

This explains a lot, doesn't it?

"I'm no stranger to regret," I say quietly. "And I can't claim I know what the right thing is here. But for what it's worth, I think what you're doing is worth doing."

A small silence. Ahkelios seems like he wants to say something, but he hesitates, and then drops it before even saying it.

...'Hkelios? I ask.

Later, he responds.

"Thanks," she says quietly.

"Rotar was the one bringing me back here, originally," I say after a moment. "He had something with him. A pocket oracle. Claimed it was predicting the end of the world."

Bimar snorts. "If you brought him with you when we met..." she says. Her wings tremble a bit with anger before she eventually forces herself to relax. "Not sure I would've given you the time of day."

"Maybe it's a good thing things happened the way they did, then," I mutter. "But he's trapped right now. Lost in time. He was going to slipstream here with me, and then something interacted with the Trial, and it went haywire."

Bimar starts a bit. "I didn't know," she said. "Is he—"

"Not dead," I say. "Frozen. In the Fracture. Slightly out of phase with the rest of time. I don't know what it's like for him, but I've been trying to figure out how to get him back. Him and the morphling that was helping me."

There's a long moment of silence. "...Well," Bimar says eventually. "Maybe he's been punished enough."

When we arrive at the scrapyard, neither of us speak. There's not much to say. Bimar's suit is apparently hidden somewhere in the bushes nearby, locked behind a secure code and a Firmament print of sorts—I see a machine taking a sample of her Firmament, not unlike the ones used at the Great Gates.

"Try not to die in there," I tell her. Bimar snorts.

"And you better not die, or else we're all screwed," she mutters.

She opens the door. It's enormous, but there's an almost-invisible control panel camouflaged within the handle.

I'm gone before the door's completely open. If I've timed things correctly, my temporal clones are now helping Vahrkos and Wander meet, which means now's the time to find Whisper.