JACKIE:

“He’s gonna jump! Feraz, please don’t jump!” I called out. My top client was about to shit all over my holiday bonus. Not that I needed the money, but still.

“I’m infallible, indestructible!” Feraz Tal shouted with arms outstretched. One of his feet dangled over the top railing of the five-story Life Rite lab.

Feraz swung his other leg over as he boasted, “I am a God, and the probabilities are endless!”

Despite the train wreck unfolding around me, I zoned out. I got lightheaded, and my brain felt fuzzy. I refocused on the bling from Feraz’s diamond-encrusted watch against the florescent lights.

“Woohoo!” Feraz jumped, but his leg got stuck on a loose cable dangling from the fourth floor railing. He flipped upside down, and his body bounced like a bungee jumper. His laugh made my skin crawl.

The commotion brought out the big boss, my grandfather, Mark Claudi. He didn’t look a day over forty in his signature boat shoes and polo shirt. He always looked like he was ready to sail away on his yacht at a moment’s notice. I stiffened at his commanding presence.

“What the hell, Jackie?” Mark scolded. “This is your client. Control him.”

“Get him down. Now!” I commanded, hoping someone else would know what to do.

At only eighteen years-old, being a Junior Executive at Life Rite was a huge deal. Of course, I got the job because I’m a Claudi, but I still had a lot to prove, something my family constantly reminded me of. Mark hated my father, which made me the black sheep, but my work ethic helped me rise above all the drama. The unspoken pressure and obligation that came with being a Claudi was suffocating.

Feraz’s laugh reverberated in the open room as he wriggled around like a fish on a line. His jerky movements untangled his foot, and the next thing I heard was the splat of blood and bone against the linoleum floor.

Feraz’s seeping blood glowed and ignited into a fire. His skin melted under the intense heat.

Instead of entering Rebirthing Incident Number R64 into my tablet, I got lost in the flames. An overwhelming wave of déjà vu swept me away.

“I’ve experienced this before. But when?”

A loud male voice echoed in my head. “Jackie, I don’t know if you’re ready, but I need your help to bring down Life Rite.”

The boom of this mysterious voice confused me. It sounded familiar.

“Who are you, and where are you coming from?”

I dropped back into a trance from the fire dancing in front of me. I fell into some empty void within myself and sat still in its sweet silence.

“This won’t be easy, but trust is the glue that holds families together…” the male voice said.

A strange energy pulsed in my brain, giving me a headache. Images of another life not fully lived flooded my mind’s eye. Like a computer downloading a program, I remembered it all as if it were yesterday.

I unconsciously whispered, “Firestorm…”

All the memories from some previous life crashed into my brain like a wave breaking on the shore. I felt dizzy and nauseas from information overload. The only thing forceful enough to bring me out of my daze was grandpa Mark’s assertive voice.

“Baxter? Is that your name?” Mark pointed to the janitor’s name tag. The poor guy stood there, frozen with shock.

“Get the fire extinguisher or you’re fired!” Mark bellowed.

I looked over at Mark and could have sworn I saw my grandmother, Beatrice, instead. She died before I was born, but I recognized her from pictures. Mark made shrines of her image throughout his many homes. Reality glitched back and forth between the two star-crossed lovers.

I looked back at the janitor tasked with cleaning up Feraz’s mess.

“He used to… take care of me?” I whispered to myself.

In that other life, Baxter raised me as his own. I realized I loved him dearly.

“Pops…”

A Claudi, raised by a janitor? How absurd. Yet, I felt certain that it had happened. I remember the two-story duplex with cracked brick facade on Wright Road.

Equipped with this strange new knowledge, I snapped back into the present moment.

Baxter grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed Feraz’s flames as he rebirthed on the lab floor.

I remembered Baxter protecting me at a Life Rite checkpoint. He… died in the street to save me.

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“Did that really happen?”

I tried to make eye contact to see if Baxter remembered it too, but Mark barked at him to get some water and linens.

Baxter broke a vial as he reached for a jug.

The sound of faint broken glass snapped into my memory. I had been here before, but things were very different then. I was that lowly janitor in some other iteration of life.

A lab technician checked Feraz’s vitals.

“That was a full regeneration,” he whispered to Mark. “He’ll be out for a while.”

Feraz didn’t take his own life. He was surfing in the slipstream. What was Feraz up to in there? I remembered it works on probabilities. Did I live in another probability previously? Surely I was going insane.

I looked at Mark, but saw Beatrice standing in his place again. She had offered me a small bonus to keep quiet. She invited me into the family business. Beatrice built me a Kiln Room to explore the slipstream, but… the drones were everywhere. The last time I saw her, she sobbed, scared to go into the past to stop the end of the world as we knew it.

“She never took the serum,” I whispered. Tears came to my eyes as I realized what Beatrice had done all those years ago, before I was even born. She must have made the ultimate sacrifice to reset the timeline…

“What a mess…” Mark turned to me and said, “Come on, Jackie. I’ve got five minutes to talk about the financials before my next meeting. Let’s walk and talk.”

I sucked my tears in as Mark swiftly left the lab. On my way out, Baxter and I locked eyes. I knew Pops intimately, but did he remember me? No time to contemplate that now…

I picked up the pace to keep up with Mark. He was always in a hurry and didn’t appreciate what it’s like to walk in killer heels.

“The quarterly financials… go!” Mark pointed at me with a wink, as if we didn’t witness the bloodbath from Feraz falling five stories. All in a day’s work…

“Earth to Jackie… You with me?”

I shook off the flood of memories from that other life. I had to talk as fast as I walked.

“So, um, the manufacturer is having shipping issues with the latest round of face creams. Something about volcanic activity?”

Mark shook his head. “That department is always on island time. You need to light a fire under them.”

“I’ll get right on it, Gramps.”

“Never call me that.” Mark paused in front of the closed steel door to the R&D Department.

I paused too, expecting the walk to continue.

“Anything else, Jackie?”

“Oh, I guess not. Anything fun going on in there?”

“You know you don’t have the clearance. Pull Feraz’s contract. He’s in breach. And get on the shipping issue, okay? You reap what you sow.”

I nodded as he turned away from me. Mark scanned his Universal DNA Identifier to get into the top secret research and development lab. As he slid inside, I instinctively reached out and stuck my tablet into the door frame to stop it from locking. I had to get inside to see what he was up to.

The heavy door crunched my tablet in half, and it ricocheted inside.

“Crap. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Okay, what’s my next move? Think, Jackie…”

Equipped with the knowledge of all that I’d experienced in the slipstream in some alternate probability, I needed to get into that room to see if the drones were a threat in this probability.

“Is Life Rite still creating mutants?”

If so, both crises needed to be stopped.

“Unless I’m experiencing some sort of mental break…”

I rubbed my temples, hoping a solution would fall from my skull. I wished Firestorm was here to guide me, or Beatrice or…

A realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Baxter was originally my most trusted ally. He was still alive, and there was unfinished business between us.

I went back to the lab to find him. Some goon security guards were locking it down, so I quickly scanned my high-level Universal DNA Identifier to get inside before they tried to stop me. Most of them were too afraid to even look at a Claudi, let alone tell us what to do.

Inside the lab, technicians pushed Feraz out on a gurney. Unconscious, he smirked under a layer of carbon dioxide ash.

Was Feraz in the slipstream? Did I still have access to that crazy place, or was it all a dream?

I found Baxter on his hands and knees cleaning up Feraz’s bodily fluids. Blood covered his jumpsuit. He always had to clean up my mistakes, but at least it wasn’t his own blood this time.

“Pops?” I whispered to him.

At first, Baxter didn’t realize I was talking to him.

“Oh, hello Miss Claudi,” he finally said. “May I help you?”

He clearly didn’t have the same memories I had, although mine still felt fuzzy, too.

“Yeah, um, so great to see you, by the way.”

He gave me his warm smile and nodded for me to continue.

“So, I need to get into the R&D department, but my DNA Identifier isn’t working. Do you have access to clean in there?”

Baxter wiped his sweaty brow. “Oh, sorry to hear that, Miss Claudi. Protocol dictates that I should take you down to security to get your identifier rebooted. Would you like me to walk you there?”

“No.” I shook my head. “That won’t work… I’m… too busy for all that. I’m a Claudi after all.”

Baxter nodded, lowering his eyes to the floor.

“Can you please let me in real quick?” I asked again. “Just this once?”

Baxter winced. I knew what this job meant to him, and he was terrified of losing it. If Mark found out he let me into a restricted zone, he’d fire Baxter on the spot. Still, if he told a Claudi like me no, he could get fired anyway. I appreciated the no-win situation I was putting him in.

“Anything for you, Miss Claudi,” Baxter said with a strained smile. He looked back at the bloodbath on the floor he was tasked with cleaning.

“Let me call in some back-up to help with this mess,” I offered. “Get cleaned up. Meet me by the R&D department when you’re ready?”

Baxter smiled and nodded. “Thank you, Miss Claudi. That’s very kind.”

I stared into his eyes, searching for recognition. But Baxter always had a solid poker face, so it was anyone’s guess if he remembered our past life together.

“My pleasure. See you in an hour, Baxter.”

I called for another cleaning team and went back down the hall to stake out the R&D department.

“What is Mark up to in there?”

I covertly watched that door for over an hour, and no one came out. I wasn’t sure if Mark was still in there or if he left while I was in the lab. Either way, I had to take my only shot at getting in.

Baxter met me outside the R&D department in a fresh jumpsuit. We stared at each other in silence for a beat before he said, “Hello. I hope you’re having a wonderful day, Miss Claudi.”

What could I say to the man who raised me in some other life? I felt relieved that he was even alive. I had Beatrice to thank for that.

“Do you still need my DNA Identifier to get in?”

“Yes, please.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

As Baxter moved to open the R&D door with the Universal DNA Identifier inside his finger, against my better judgment, I hugged him.

“I’m going to take good care of you,” I whispered to him in our embrace. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Baxter stammered, “Oh, okay… Thank you, Miss Claudi.”

“Thank you,” I said as I let him go. “Your payout is going to be way bigger than two million dollars too. Way bigger! Thanks for everything, Pops.”

With that, I slid into the top secret room to see if Mark's killer drone was on the loose again...