When the sobs finally subsided and her body calmed, Isis wiped the various fluids from her face with the sleeve of her dress. After a long moment of steadying her shaky breath, she finally looked up with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “I’ll help you,” she croaked weakly. It took her a couple tries to stand and get her bearings as she tried to smooth back her hair and sniff back more tears. “I’ll help you. And.. I’m sorry, Hanna. Please understand. I never wanted any of this. I just…it became..”
“An obsession,” Hanna finished. “You were obsessed. Like evil Sol is now.”
Isis nodded, her brows knit and her eyes wet with fresh tears. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you how to accomplish it.”
Hanna fought back her own emotions, namely her suspicion and disbelief at Isis’ sudden change of heart, swallowing them down. “First, I need you to tell me about Candace. I want her sent back and the actual Candace from here to return.” She knelt down and moved her face close to Isis’. “Why is Candace’s body in a coma?” she demanded quietly.
Isis stared at Hanna as if she were speaking an alien language. “She—what?”
“Candace,” Hanna repeated impatiently. “She’s in a coma. Why—”
“That bitch,” Isis growled suddenly, cutting Hanna off completely, her eyes widening in disbelief. Hanna jerked back to her feet and stared in shock, unsure of what just happened.
“That lying, scheming BITCH,” Isis yelled, balling her hands into fists, her tear-stained face twisted into rage. She looked up at Hanna. “She lied! She lied to BOTH of us! She told us she didn’t know why Candace couldn’t travel. That’s the only reason she was ever helping me here—because we couldn’t get her to return home!” The desperation in her voice, the strain, ran true to Hanna.
Slowly the pieces fell into place. “Do you think,” Hanna began slowly, “That she did something? To the other Candace, or to Candace’s body?”
Isis visibly paled, a small beat of silence struck as her mind spun. “If that’s true, then we have to get back to her as soon as possible.”
Hanna felt the ice cold sensation rush through her body. “Isis.. What happens if we don’t return to our bodies?”
Isis shook her head. “I don’t know. Nothing good. Sol—the Doctor—she wouldn’t tell me. But I suspect that without our consciousness, the body would eventually..” Her words trailed off as she shook her head regretfully, but Hanna could hear them clearly, understood their meaning. Candace’s body would fail. She would fade away into nothing until only death waited. And if that was true for Candace.. Hanna swallowed hard.
“And what happens if we’re forced to stay in a world that isn’t ours?”
Isis looked at her, perplexed. “Don’t you know?” she asked, her face screwed up in confusion. “It’s already started with you, hasn’t it? Headaches? Nosebleeds? Confusion? Maybe even disproportionate losses of time?”
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Hanna felt as if her body became weightless, floating out in space, and as if she were watching it from nearby and far away at the same time.
“With enough time, you’ll probably die.”
Hanna felt a ringing in her ears. She wasn’t sure suddenly if what she heard was real or if it was imagined.
“What? What did you say?”
Isis met Hanna’s gaze, her expression a jumble of emotions, namely regret. “You’ll probably die. And if Candace and I don’t get back, we’ll end up dying too, eventually.”
Hanna shook her head. “No, but.. Are you having them too? The nosebleeds? The headaches and the..visions?”
Isis stood up straighter, her eyes sharpening with concern. “Visions? What visions?”
“No!” Hanna cried, pressing her palms to her eyes in frustration. “No, no more changing the subject! Answer my questions!”
Isis hesitated a moment, then sighed. “No. We’re not having them. Yet.”
“Yet?” Hanna echoed quietly.
“Yet,” Isis repeated. “Once they start, it’s a just a matter of time.”
“Okay, but you.. Weren’t you in this world before me?” Hanna’s head began to swim. She couldn’t be dying. Not yet. Not before she got to fix Sol. Not before she could stop the evil Sol and figure it all out. Not before—
“It doesn’t work like that,” Isis said, cutting into Hanna’s rapidly spiraling thoughts. “Time isn’t what you think. We think that just because we’re born, we grow old and we die that that’s it, that’s time.” She shook her head. “It’s not. Time is.. It’s not linear, exactly..” Seeing Hanna’s frown, Isis shook her head, trying to find a better explanation.
“How do I put this? It’s almost…alive. It’s everywhere, all at once. It’s all happened already before and is happening now, and will happen again. That’s why creating a paradox could get so messy. It’s why they think it could splinter reality or destroy the world. Things like that.”
Hanna couldn’t speak. She couldn’t make sense of what she just heard. Time was alive? Time was why she got the raw end of the deal? Because TIME? A hollow laugh filled her ears, starting quiet and growing louder. It took her a moment to realize it was her own—and once she did, she let it overtake her. It was hilarious, wasn’t it? Some evil, mad scientist could twist reality or time or whatever the hell she was doing—but time was alive—and that’s why Hanna was dying and nobody else? Nobody who had done evil things? It sounded like the most bullshit excuse she had ever heard in her life. And it was funny, too, wasn’t it? It was just so funny..
SMACK.
Hanna wasn’t sure what hit her first, Isis’s hard slap or the sound of it, which seemed to break the sound barrier and ring in her ears as deafening as a sonic boom. But it sobered her. “Get your shit together, Hanna!” Isis snapped. “We’ve got a job to do! Unless you WANT to lose Candace and Aema! And Sol,” she added, her face hardening with shame as she took in Sol 2’s limp form.
Hanna wasn’t sure if it was the slap or Isis sounding so much like Aema, her Aema, but Hanna threw her arms around her and was hesitantly welcomed into Isis’s warm embrace. She had nearly lost it, but there was her lifeline. And if Aema—Isis—could hold her shit together, then so could she.
Beside her, a grim tear-streaked Soohae appeared and took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “We’re not gonna let you die,” she said, her voice breaking, yet determined. “None of us are going to die. And if we have to kill Evil Sol, herself, to stop it, we will.”
An icy finger ran its way down her back. She looked at the girl beside her and suddenly had the thought about the Soos she knew: the Soo from her world, who cried and panicked easily, who still acted like an innocent and bashful child and overthought everything; The ghostlike Soo that seemed forever trapped bouncing between Worlds 2 and 3, quiet, sullen, matured by her trauma. Neither of those Soohaes were capable of cold, calculated murder. Whoever this new Soo was, tortured and angry, she just might have it in her to do it.
For the first time, considering the ways that Isis, Candace, Soohae and even Sol, herself, had twisted with the right motivation, Hanna wondered what she, too, might be capable of.