Paul, June and Ari hunkered.

They listened but heard nothing.

Where there had been screaming, gun-fire and the sounds of fighting moments before, there was now only a long and uninterrupted silence. They were beginning to accept their new situation. They were closet-things now. Perhaps they would be so forever; like lost socks in a post-apocolyptic-suburban-closet-nightmare.

They were motionless. Regular little clothes-trolls. The only movement was the barely perceptible rising and falling of their little chests as they drew in and expelled the musty air. The intense smell of old clothing and mothballs was comforting, Paul thought, as he sat there, bundled together with his siblings so that one could not tell where one started and the other ended. Paul would have remained there forever, to the very end of recorded time – if he could. But he knew his wish was absurd, because Time had other plans in mind for them.

Time had shown him.

“Are you okay?” Paul asked Ari and June kindly.

Ari nodded from beneath an old double-breasted suit jacket.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Ari whispered back.

“I want mum,” June offered unhelpfully. She clutched the Teddy that Mortal Niv had given her. Her eyes were red and see choked with un-cried tears.

Paul smiled, but she couldn’t see his face. He reached for her arm to provide her with some much needed brotherly support, but wasn’t sure if it was June’s arm or Ari’s ankle he’d grabbed.

“You know guys - I don’t hear anything,” Paul said, his ear to the thin door. “It’s probably safe to take a little peek. What do you reckon?”

Neither offered a reply. Closet trolls don’t leave the closet.

Paul pulled a pair of bell-bottom jeans from his face, and nudged the closet-door open, just enough to see the room beyond. Despite his efforts at silence, the door creaked terribly.

He heard still nothing.

Saw nothing.

Generally perceived nothing.

“Stay here. And don’t make a sound.”

“No!” Ari said, pulling at his leg as Paul tried to crawl out of the closet on all fours.

“I’m not going far – Just to see if I can find mum,” Paul offered, softly dislodging Ari’s hand from his ankle.

Paul emerged cat-like into the lounge. He found it quite unchanged but for the haze of dust and the smell of burning circuitry. Everything else seemed to be in order. That could not be said for the adjoining main-bedroom - what was left of it.

He scanned the lounge-room, and the bathroom and the guest room, and the devastated heap of brickwork that was the main-bedroom.

“I don’t hear anything,” He called into the closet. “We should find mum.”

What the children couldn’t hear at that moment was the soft sound of strangulation coming from what remained of the kitchen.

…

“As much as I’ve enjoyed this - I really need you to go back to your own time,” Niv said as she struggled to reach for the Reset in her utility belt. Timeless June had no intention of making it easy for Niv. She weaved through Niv’s arms like a greasy red-belly black-snake. June kicked up from the ground, colliding with a sickening thud with Niv’s chin. With a few deft gesticulations, June disarmed Niv, turning the gun on her, and without so much as a thought, shot her clean in the face, flinging her into the oven, which buckled like an aluminium can.

It was right about then when Paul, Ari and June entered the kitchen in search of their mother. Timeless June was in the process of re-loading for a second shot when she finally laid eyes on the person she’d been waiting an eternity to see.

Mortal June saw Timeless June staring back at her with dark malice; a strange weapon in her hand. She screamed.

Timeless June jumped in unexpected fright, fumbled the gun, which fell nozzle down. The disruptor discharged into the tiled floor. The unrestrained force of the blast launched the weapon in an equal and opposite reaction through the ceiling, the tiled roof, and into the next suburb.

“If it isn’t my slippery little former self,” Timeless June giggled, embarrassed that she’d lost her weapon.

“Don’t be scared June,” she continued. “You’ll honestly thank me. There’s nothing in the future worth fighting for.”

Timeless June began to approach them, smiling in an approximation of kindness.

Paul put himself between Timeless June and his sister.

She stopped, her arms raised irenically.

“Juney - you don’t find love. You spend a miserable existence being ignored by every man who meets you because to them, you’re just a silly pre-teen girl with a big mouth and perma-acne. You aren’t smart enough to make a difference to anyone or anything. You run out of love or interest in everything. Nothing matters to you. You outlive every religion, outlast every God, you…”

Pew-Thwam

A concussive blast connected with Timeless June’s face, right as she was reaching the climax of her monologue.

If she weren’t Timeless, the Proton disruptor would have separated the flesh from June’s skeleton. But as we have discussed at length, this June was quite impervious to anything. The blast did not kill her. It merely lifted her from the ground like an empty pack of crisps, and hurtled her into Niv, who was still lodged in the oven.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The impact shook Niv from her befuddlement.

“She’s not wrong about the big-mouth. What a complete bore,” Mortal Niv said about Timeless June as she entered the room, the disruptor in her hand still smoking.

“Ouch,” Niv said. “Is what I would have said if that had hurt,” she peeled Timeless June from her body.

“What do we do ?” Paul asked as Ari and June still cowered behind him.

“We need to get the hell out of here, but first restrain the little shit.” Mortal Niv said, throwing Niv a pair of Quantum restraints.

Niv attached the quantum restraints to the very young looking, very old June and engaged them with a simple touch of the panel. She reached into her utility belt to retrieve her Reset, but found nothing.

“Do you have any Resets?” She said, sounding more concerned than she’d ever heard herself.

Mortal Niv couldn’t find any on her belt.

“I have the distinct feeling that that little brute has them all. She’s a snake.”

…

Quantum restraints were invented by New South Wales Police Officer Julius Smith of Bardwell Park in the year 1982. Julius had been in his basement on the fateful day of his innovation, trying to create a pair of refrigerated hand-cuffs to keep its users cool in the punishing Australian summer sun. Unfortunately for Julius, as soon as he initiated the cooling sequence every, cell in his body evaporated in a cloud of frozen mist.

The investigation into Julius’s disappearance was perfunctory. He was listed as a missing person and seven years later his estate was divided between his two siblings who sold his home to a developer. The basement was filled with concrete and the first set of Quantum restraints was lost forever.

It took more than one hundred and seventy thousand years until the theory of the Quantum restraints were rediscovered. By some twist of fate, they were rediscovered in a laboratory which had been built on top of the basement by a Cartussian intergalactic Professor of Spooky Science whose name was Julius Smith.

In reality the Quantum restraint is not as complicated as they sound or half as quantum as they actually are. Quantum restraints aren’t even really restraints - their more like a second skin. If you tried to restrain anyone but a Timeless individual with a pair of Quantum Restraint you will freeze them (the whole of them) instantly at the point of contact, rendering their bodies into a brittle mess of icy blood and bone.

That’s the problem with quantum mechanics in this universe: In order to create and maintain an entangled state, you need absolute zero temperatures to do it.

Absolute zero is cold.

Anyway Quantum restraints work by mapping all of the particles of skin it comes into contact with - usually on the person’s wrists. It then creates a duplicate, paired, anti-particle of that skin and entangles it with a bit of fancy science, largely involving opposite spins.

Look it doesn’t really matter how it works.

The upshot is that the restraints become as strong as the person they are attached to and impossible to breach even with infinite strength. There’s just one problem; they have one major flaw known to only a few people.

Quantum decoherence.

In short, the loss of information erodes the Quantum state.

…

“She must have taken your Resets while you were fighting. Not just a nutcase - a thief too. Search her while she isn’t squirming.”

“Good idea me.”

“You love saying that.”

“I really do me.”

“Where’s my mum?” Paul asked as Niv dragged June from the oven.

“She’s okay. She needs some time to recover, but she’s ok.”

Niv had moved June’s limp body across the floor to the centre of the kitchen to start the search. Unfortunately for them, June immediately began to twitch, a small groan emerging from her mouth, which was still agape from the blast.

She appeared to be saying something to Niv.

“What’s she saying,” Paul asked as he began to approach her.

“Stay back Paul. She’s dangerous - restraints or no.”

Niv leant in so that her ear was only millimetres from June’s mouth.

June’s eyes opened, and she bit down on Niv’s waiting ear. Niv did not feel anything, of course, but she reared back carrying the small Timeless girl with her.

As June bit down on Niv’s ear, she began to talk in tongues, as fast as photons emerging from the sun. She spoke with such intense complexity that it came out with the soft buzz of a fluttering hummingbird.

“What’s she doing?” Ari yelled.

“Oh no!” Niv yelped “Shut her up or find a Reset now! Now!”

“What’s happening?” Mortal Niv asked. It was the first time he’d seen either Niv look concerned.

“She’s losing information!” Niv screamed!

“What? What does that mean?” Paul asked beginning to panic.

Mortal Niv finally understood.

“The only way out of a quantum restraint, is to expel information at the same frequency as the quantum bond,” Mortal Niv yelped.

“How do you have the sense of mind to explain this right now?” Paul asked as he backed himself and his siblings into a corner.

Mortal Niv jumped onto June’s back, and the three began a dangerous dance around the kitchen.

Paul dove out of the way, narrowly avoiding Timeless June’s kicking feet. Unfortunately Ari was collected in the brawl, pushed head first into the wall and knocked out cold.

June jumped up onto the counter, but slipped off and fell onto the kitchen floor, wind-ing herself.

The two Nivs and Timeless June tumbled, and rolled, nose-dived, toppled and spilled around the room. Mortal Niv finally fell from June’s shoulders after a few minutes, coming to an abrupt halt on top of Ari. Niv and Timeless June came to a halt moments later, when they collided with a cupboard full of cheap China, which came crashing down around them.

It took all of her strength, but Niv finally dislodged her ear-lobe from Timeless June’s mouth.

She leant back kicking Timeless June away with the frustration of an abused donkey.

“Now I’ve had just about all I can take from you.”

That’s when it happened.

As Timeless June pirouetted through the air, her insane (yet informative) chatter was just enough to counter the quantum effect of the restraints. The restraints evaporated into a swirl of anti-matter and Timeless June was free.

“June!”

It was Paul who screamed first, as Timeless June finally found the opportunity she’d been seeking for more years than there were stars.

As her brother watched, Timeless June drove the jagged spout of a broken teapot deep into his mortal sister’s eye socket. It was quick and mundane - and it could not be reversed.

Mortal June exhaled softly as the stream of blood escaped from the spout and her small body collapsed limply to the ground. She did not make another sound.

It was unfortunate that Liz was not awake to see her daughter die. It would not have made it easier, but she would have preferred to have been there; so she could confirm the awful thing. And so that she could catch her daughter’s body and be the hands into which she fell as her soul entered another space.

Timeless June began to sing a song that none of them knew. It sounded like a military song. Something official.

She sat back, and started to cry.

“How can you stand there looking at me like I’m the monster Traitor,” June said, as she sighed the relief of complete release.

“How,” she continued “can you judge any of us for this,” She said, pointing at nothing.

“This is the most humane way we have available to us. Can’t you understand this.”

“If any of you monsters would listen - you would know there was another way,” Niv said, slumping.

“Tell mother I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt her. But in time she will come to understand. She’ll have an eternity to understand it.”

Timeless June no longer cared to speak.

She didn’t care about anything.

It seemed that time was done with Timeless June too. She popped out of existence leaving the corpse of her familiar at her brothers’ feet.

Liz woke up an hour later crying. She didn’t know how she knew. But she did know. She knew that her daughter was dead.