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Sky waited beside the patrol cycles in the cold, open hangar. The light was too bright today, pulsing behind his eyes in sharp pinpricks of pain. He flipped open his morpher and checked the time: four and a half minutes late.
Somewhere on the far end of the galaxy, Z and Syd were escorting ambassadors to a summit on a beach-moon resort — seven days, Syd had told him smugly, of sun, sand, and the new pink-and-yellow S.P.D. regulation bikinis she’d designed. For reasons incomprehensible to Sky, Cruger had approved them.
Jack was off on a humanitarian mission, delivering food aid to a drought-stricken colony in the Perseus system. The Red Ranger insisted his personal supervision was important for “optics,” whatever that meant, and Kat agreed.
That left Sky here. Stuck at Headquarters, babysitting the newest and most controversial member of A-squad. Earth A-Squad Green, a position cadets across the galaxy had once aspired to, a badge that had once symbolized galactic justice and order and hope, handed down from Morgana to Bridge, from one dead traitor to a living one.
The distasteful object of his ruminations appeared beside him like a manifestation, as if he’d always been in that spot. He gave Sky a hesitant, forced smile that Sky did not return.
“You’re late,” Sky said flatly. His gaze raked over the newcomer. Bridge’s hair was messy as always, like he had rolled out of bed minutes before. It was a six-minute walk and a three-minute run from the dorms to the hangars, yet Bridge wasn’t out of breath. As usual, he looked both unhurried and unbothered.
His choice of outfit was bizarre. The pants were standard issue, but the jacket belonged to another era. A dull silver, cropped too short, the insignia angular and outdated, it looked like it had stepped through history. A flash of memory rose, unwanted: His father in that same style jacket, decades gone. He would have been turning in his grave to see it worn now, like this, by him.
“I lost track of time,” Bridge replied and paused. “Or maybe time lost track of me. I’m not always sure.”
Sky scowled. “That’s not a regulation uniform.”
Bridge shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “It’s a uniform.”
“It’s unacceptable.”
“It’s practical,” Bridge countered. “Black hides blood better.” He hesitated, and then seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say. For a second, Sky thought he saw fear in his eyes, or maybe guilt, but it vanished to the same unreadable, infuriating calm. Of course. Bridge always had something to hide.
Sky forced his jaw to unclench. “Don’t argue with me. And don’t do it again.” Then he turned on his heel and marched towards the patrol cycles, Bridge trailing behind him like an unwelcome shadow.
It should have been an ordinary patrol. Of course, nothing involving Bridge ever was.
The alert came halfway through their route: robbery in progress in the lower sector. By the time they arrived, the Newtech police had already contained the suspects. Three humans and one alien sat cuffed on the curb, while an officer finished taping off the gas station. A crowd of bystanders hovered at the perimeter, restless but dispersing.
Sky swung off his patrol cycle and flipped off the siren. Routine, which meant dull paperwork and clean-up detail as the alien would be transferred into S.P.D. custody and the humans taken to Newtech station for processing.
Beside him, Bridge suddenly stopped. Sky was about to berate him for inattentiveness until he noticed that Bridge’s gaze was fixed, sharp and yet distant, on someone in the crowd. “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Who?” Sky asked, but Bridge was already gone, cutting across the street towards a half-collapsed building opposite the station.
“Wait for backup!” Sky shouted after him.
Bridge didn’t glance back.
He cursed under his breath and followed. The building’s interior was a maze of shadows, but Bridge moved through it with eerie confidence, like he’d already seen the layout. He ducked through one broken corridor, then clambered through a collapsed wall.
“Bridge!” Sky snapped, “You don’t know what’s…”
Sky caught up just as Bridge stopped in his tracks.
On the far side of the dim room was a young alien woman. Green freckles were scattered across her face, and her pink hair was matted and tangled. Her eyes were wide with terror, breaths fast and shallow. The fear wasn’t aimed at Bridge but at…
A voice drifted out of the dark, smooth and venomous.
“So predictable, Bridge. Always playing the hero.”
Bork stepped into the dim light, drifting from the shattered windows, and smiled. Sky recognized him from the bounty boards. This criminal was wanted across fifteen planets for his crimes, including the massacre on Alpha Centauri. The scorpion-like alien was dressed as if he were attending a grand occasion, decked in a rich crimson suit studded with glittering gems. The ensemble was secured with a gold sash.
Bridge had his blaster drawn in a flash, but Bork only smiled wider, wide enough to see the razor-sharp teeth glinting behind a pair of insectoid mandibles. He reached slowly into the folds of his sash, withdrawing a small device. With a clawed flourish, he pressed the button.
The woman went stiff and dropped where she stood. Her face, turned toward them, was frozen mid-scream, eyes wide and glassy.
Bridge flinched. The blaster in his hand wavered. “You killed her… why?”
Bork tilted his head, amused. “To show you that you’re not the only one who gets to play god.”
Sky kept his blaster trained on Bork. “Friend of yours?”
“At this point in the timeline,” Bridge said, in a voice that was more tired than bitter, “I don’t have any friends.”
Bork’s smile faltered. He took a step back, slow and deliberate. Bridge mirrored it, stepping forward.
There was a sharp click.
The hairs on his arms stood on end as the air filled with static. Light arced through the air before coalescing into a shimmering dome. Bridge froze mid-step and dematerialized to strange transclucence before becoming solid again, then was gone entirely before reappearing. The scream came a second later, echoed, overlapping, wrong. For one heartbeat, Sky saw three of him: one screaming, one gasping, one already still.
“What did you do?” Sky shouted.
The field whined, a high-pitched pulse that rattled through his teeth and bones. The air itself was vibrating, as if it were full of static. Light bent in unnatural ways before snapping back into place. Dust motes hung in midair, rising and falling in slow loops, trapped in the same endless second. Bridge knelt inside the field, his body splitting into a shaky afterimage. Every few seconds, his outline shuddered backwards or forwards in time.
Bork glanced at Sky, then lowered his blaster in an apparent gesture of reconciliation. “You should let it finish.” The scorpion-like alien’s tone was mild, almost conversational.
“Why would I do that?” Sky demanded.
Bork’s face twisted with hatred. “You don’t know what he is. You think he predicts the future? He edits it. Erases the versions that don’t suit him. Nobody should have that kind of power.”
“Like you edited her future?” Sky snapped, eyes flicking towards the deceased hostage.
“Her future was already decided when Bridge chose to ‘liberate’ her. As you can see, she came right back to me.” Bork brushed a speck of dust off his crimson coat, as if lives were worth as little as sand, before continuing. “Several years ago, my business investments were on Therrax. A freight complex. Self-contained biosystems.”
Sky kept his weapon raised. “Trafficking.”
Bork shrugged. “Depends on your definition of freight.” His grin didn’t reach his eyes. “Bridge infiltrated my operation. Released stock worth millions. Half of them, anyway. The other half…” he tilted his head toward the shimmering field “… he left sealed in containment. Air scrubbers failed when he waited too long to break the locks. You know what happens to lungs in a vacuum?”
Sky’s stomach twisted. “You’re saying he killed them.”
“I’m saying he chose them to die, which is the same thing.” Bork’s voice softened. “They would have survived with me. Worked hard, sure, but alive. He looked at two groups of breathing, terrified people and decided which ones got to keep doing it.” Bork smiled again without humor. “So I’m asking you, Officer Tate, to walk away. Nobody has to know. You’ll be doing the universe a favor. Don’t make the same mistake the Troobians did.”
Sky hesitated. His finger closed a fraction tighter on the trigger. His heart was pounding in his ears. Bork was right. It would be clean. It would make things simple. No more ambiguity, no more traitors with badges. It would, in its own terrible way, feel like justice.
Bridge was trying to speak, but the words fractured as they left his mouth. The syllables splintered, incomprehensible, scattered across seconds. A tear of blood dripped down before snapping backwards as Bridge blinked, then it would repeat.
His body split and merged again, unstable light flickering around the contours. The only constant was the expression: raw agony, as reality and causality unraveled. Bridge’s form wavered, starting to fade entirely.
“A fitting end,” Bork purred. The pleasure on his face, as he watched Bridge suffer, was open and revolting.
Sky turned away, jaw tight, breath catching in his throat. The sound of the field was eating itself now, high and metallic. He wondered if this was how Bridge had felt on Therrax. Watching half of them die while he stood and did nothing.
Sky made his choice.
The blaster bolt missed Bork by inches, forcing the criminal to duck. Before he could recover, Sky dove forward, reaching into the field before he could talk himself out of it. The surface folded around his hand like water, but it felt like reaching through a million razor-sharp shards of glass. He could feel the skin on his unraveling, molecule by molecule. Sky gritted his teeth and pushed through until his hand caught Bridge’s arm and pulled.
Everything stopped.
Noise vanished suddenly, replaced by an unnatural silence. The only thing he could hear was his heartbeat and a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Time went flat, and in a fraction of a second that felt endless, Sky saw.
He saw a thousand versions of Bridge on Therrax, all of them bleeding, gasping, hands slick as they struggled at the door locks, each one failing to stop the same loss as alarms blared and the air filled with smoke.
He was standing beside Gruumm as the Troobian turned to face him — no, not him, Bridge — as the Emperor’s red eyes glinted within his shadowed skull.
His father, in a flicker of time, looking at him and smiling even as the silver jacket burned through at the seams and the air turned to fire around him within a mirrored cage.
A streak of a laser bolt moving in reverse, then Bork lowering his weapon and stepping backwards into a past that hadn’t happened yet.
Himself, duplicated across the room, each existing in a thousand slight variations. There was the one who hesitated. The one that ran. And the one that turned away, each choice creating its own infinite, rippling reflection.
There was his shield, flaring into existence in a blaze of blinding blue before he called it. For a second, he felt the shield and the temporal field spark against each other before merging.
The light from the implosion condensed to a single point before time snapped into place again.
The world unravelled in reverse.
The shockwave hit first, tearing the air from his lungs as gravity twisted, followed by crushing pressure. Then came sound, deafening, a roar re-winding itself, sucked back into silence. There was heat, excruciating cold at the edges, and burning at the core.
His shield wavered, then began to fracture. Power slipped through his fingers like water, scattering into the air. His heartbeat skipped and then lagged, each pulse slower, heavier. Every nerve burned as the shield consumed him, hollowing him out for fuel. He couldn’t hold it. But then something shifted. A second heartbeat, faint but insistent. A brush against his mind, a grounding presence. The dying shimmer of the shield steadied and then flared stronger against the blinding light.
Sky glimsed Bork frozen, illuminated in the blue light of the shield, shrapnel hanging motionless around him. Bork’s body unravelled at the seams, flesh peeling apart from skin like a shadow lifted from its surface as the explosion rewound.
He held the shield as energy howled through him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only fix on this instant of singularity as his thoughts fragmented and his vision blanked to white.
Then, an unmistakable whisper inside his head, quiet enough to feel rather than hear.
“Sky. You can let go now.”
So he did.
He had been at this debrief before. Or had he?
He was sitting upright in medbay, a blanket across his lap. Monitors beeped in unison. Bridge was still unconscious in the bed beside him. Kat stood beside him, datapad in hand, while Cruger stood just behind, arms crossed. Both looked concerned.
“…Sky?” Kat was saying.
He missed the question, but somehow he was already answering.
“The explosion ran backwards,” he heard himself say, and it sounded wrong, a half-second late. “Then forward again.”
Kat’s ears flicked. “You said that already.”
Sky frowned. “When?”
“Just now.”
Cruger’s voice was grave. “Focus, Cadet Tate. That explosion leveled a city block. How did you stabilize the shield?”
“I don’t know.” There had been Bridge, in his mind…
His hands began to shake. The vitals alarm blared.
Cruger took a step closer, his voice firm. “Look at me, Sky.” Sky’s gaze lifted automatically at the command. “You’re safe. You’re not there anymore. It’s over.”
He wanted to believe it, but it felt like a dream within a dream. “I…”
Time rewound.
Monitors beeping. The sharp smell of antiseptic. Bridge, lying motionless in the next bed.
His arm burned. He raised it, the skin catching the too-white medbay lights. Pale new skin was marbled with tan, older skin in a patchwork pattern, seamlessly fused.
“…ran backwards,” he was saying again, before cutting himself off mid-sentence. He’d said this too many times. Panic hammered beneath his ribs.
“He’s destabilizing.” Kat’s hands moved in the same rhythm as before. Cruger’s shadow crossed the same spot on the floor.
The world blinked.
Sky closed his eyes.
At first, it was just a flutter in the lights as Cruger spoke. “— not there anymore. It’s over.”
The walls rippled and then flattened. Kat and Cruger were still there, but not. They were jagged silhouettes, contrasted against planes of light and shadow. Color reduced to choppy gradients. Everything in the room, the floor, the ceiling, the future, the floor, the ceiling existed in a single, overlapping, impossible plane.
He tried to press himself backwards into the bed, but there was no backwards. There was no direction at all. A scream froze in his throat as a flattened vibration, folded so tight it couldn’t move.
A warm hand pressed against his own. Sky gasped, releasing the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. The world stuttered, then slowly began to assemble itself back together.
He turned toward Bridge, clutching his hand like a lifeline. His eyes burned; he kept them shut, tears leaking sideways into the pillow. He was too exhausted to wipe them away.
“Sky,” Bridge said softly. “Just focus on me. Come back.”
He tried to speak, the words catching in his throat. “How…” His breath hitched. “How do you live with that?”
Bridge was quiet for a long moment. Then, without releasing Sky’s hand, he turned his other arm over, slow and deliberate. Lines of pale scars traced the inside of his forearm. Some were so faint as to be barely visible, while others were deep enough to catch the light.
“Not easily,” Bridge said at last. His voice was even, but his hand trembled slightly.
Sky was dimly aware that Kat and Cruger were still there, both pretending not to see more than they should.
He didn’t pull away. Not yet, not this time.
The Command briefing room felt wrong.
It had been days since the mission, but light drifted through the shutters at the wrong angle, the holo-screens hummed a half-second offbeat behind the rest of the room, and the floor itself had a barely perceptible tilt.
He’d put this off for longer than regulations allowed. This was his first late report.
Cruger stood behind the table, arms folded, expression unreadable. Kat stood beside him, tablet in hand, the datapad’s glow reflected faintly in her green eyes.
“Cadet Tate,” Cruger growled at last. “Your report.”
Sky straightened. “He disobeyed protocol. Pursued a civilian without waiting for backup. Bridge entered the structure first, and I followed. Bork killed the hostage, then ambushed us, trapping Bridge in a time-sync field.”
“Not both of you?”
Sky shook his head. “No. It was personal, relating to the incident on Therrax. The field was designed specifically for Bridge.” He kept his tone cool, measured, exactly the way his Academy training dictated. “Bork tried to convince me to leave. I attempted extraction with my shield. The shield synchronized with the device. The blast sequence… inverted. I experienced the shockwave before light. The field collapsed inward, then resumed forward. Bork did not survive.”
Kat stilled. “That shouldn’t be possible, or survivable.”
Sky hesitated. The truth felt too personal, too fragile to say in a briefing room. “Bridge stabilized it. Through me. I don’t know if he meant to. It felt like…” He stopped, reworking the sentence. “It was a second pulse, under mine. The shield held because he matched it.”
Kat and Cruger exchanged a look. When Kat addressed him again, her voice was carefully neutral. “And you, Sky? Symptoms.”
He disliked the question and answered it anyway. “It’s… improving. Sometimes, things lag a bit, but it’s getting more intermittent. ” He flexed his hand. “My arm is somewhat… inconsistent and will need monitoring.”
Cruger watched him for a long, heavy second. “Assessment of Carson.”
Sky exhaled. He had rehearsed a dozen versions of this line, and yet the words felt too inaccurate, too small. “He’s extremely dangerous. I almost left him to die because… because I thought Bork might be right.” He winced at the admission.
“You’re afraid of him,” Kat said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. More than before. I underestimated him and his powers. They’re not like the rest of ours.” Sky stared at his faint reflection in the too-polished tiles. A faint, fractured image gazed back. “I’m not accustomed to being afraid in the field. Not like that.”
He paused, collecting his thoughts before speaking. “But… he’s not trying to hurt us. He is trying to shape reality to reach a specific outcome. I don’t think he chooses who dies, but I also don’t think he can accept it when they do. I don’t think he knows how to stop when he starts.”
“That sounds like someone else I know,” Cruger said with a huff, while Sky looked at anything and everything to avoid his eye. “Does your objection to his placement on A-Squad stand?”
“Yes,” Sky said quietly. “But I understand now why you didn’t relegate him to janitorial duty. Even so, I don’t think he should ever be deployed alone. It might not make a difference, but we should try. Or there might not be a universe left.”
Kat’s gaze lingered on him. “Do you want to know what really happened on Therrax?”
His pulse jumped. “No.” Then. “Yes.”
“Bridge infiltrated Bork’s operation,” she said. “That much was true. But there was only enough power to sustain one container. He did have to choose, but there was no saving both.”
“I know. I saw.” Sky took a shaky breath. “I don’t think I can repeat that maneuver safely. I hope I never have to. But I’d like to be partnered with Bridge, sir. My shields stabilize his powers.”
Kat blinked at that. Cruger’s snout furrowed.
“You trust him,” Cruger said finally.
“No,” Sky answered, “but I think I understand him a little better now.”
A pensive pause before the faintest stiff nod. “Provisional pairing approved,” Cruger said. “Congratulations, Cadet Tate, on your exemplary performance under… unusual circumstances.” Cruger folded his hands behind his back. “You and Cadet Carson are on leave for the next three weeks. I suggest you visit that beach moon that Syd’s been talking about. Consider it an order.”
Sky saluted. “Yes, sir.”
He turned toward the exit. The door hissed open, and for a fraction of a second, he saw his reflection split, one racing a heartbeat ahead of him, before falling into step once again.