Part 1: Quarantine
Part 2: Odd Jobs
Part 3: Shuck
Part 4: The Old North
Part 5: Dirty Dave
Part 6: Multipliers
Part 7: Kilogold
Part 8: Analysis
Part 9: Reversal
Part 10: Miss Meta
Part 11: The Fourth Consortium
Part 12: Young Ghost
Part 13: Dungeon Diving
Part 14: Puzzles
Part 15: Calm Before the Storm
Part 16: Eventual
Part 17: Changing History
Part 18: The Gaze
Part 19: Panic
Part 20: Panic
Synopsis(spoilers ahead if you want to read the story from the beginning)
Victor Meta is a time traveler who lived with his wife Janet and his young daughter Mira in a quaint timeline on the edge of obscurity. However, one day he was ambushed by soldiers of the Legion, and was forced to ally with a con artist named Shuck to save them from certain doom. By carefully manipulating time, he was barely successful, thanks to additional help surprisingly provided by his own daughter, now an adult time traveler.
But all of that pales in comparison to the revelation that Mira brings. They were not alone in being targeted. The time traveling family of Meta has been attacked throughout history. Ghost, another Gatekeeper who helped Dante Meta escape the coordinated assault, has joined the effort alongside that same Meta to find the masterminds behind the attack. And now, they all are working together to unravel the mystery of the Legion's ability to coordinate throughout time.
They now find themselves in the middle of a veritable warzone, facing contorted monsters called Vorpals. With few options left and other lives at stake, they throw in with a group of survivors to try holding back the encroaching horde. But it proved too much, and with their backs against the wall, Shuck played his trump card, ironically in the form of a summoning card.
With the overwhelming power of Panic, the group is now safe. For the moment. However, there suspicions have finally turned their attention to apprehending Shuck.
Victor time jumped back to pause. It was oddly straight forward after their desperate fight for survival. The unending city felt different, and he was overwhelmed by an urge to see his wife and daughter, or at least the version of his daughter that had yet to grow up. If his guess was correct, he had been away from them for only the time it took to hold a meeting within pause, which was only a matter of hours.
A man wearing a very official, elaborate uniform that labeled him as Pause management came up to the bound Shuck, and immediately cut the bindings with a glowing knife. Dante swore at the man. “What the rift are you doing? This is our prisoner, we are taking him to-”
The man held out a piece of very official paperwork, speaking with authority to Dante. “I am the Pause Manager for District Seven, Wesley Meta… the Third. I have been authorized to release Gatekeeper Shuck immediately, after an emergency trial was held where he was found as not guilty on all counts.”
Victor stepped forward. “Impossible! You don’t have the authority to do that without involving at least one Time Magistrate!”
Dante looked at the document, squinting as he scoffed in disbelief. “He got three.”
“What?!?”
“He has the signatures of three different Time Magistrates. That let’s him avoid all the usual bureaucratic red tape.”
Victor was speechless. Shuck walked away with the Pause manager, briefly turning to make a rude gesture and a parting comment. “It’s been fun Victor. But after trying to turn me in, all I can say is… go fold yourself.”
The time traveler clenched his fists. Moments ago, he was completely fine with this exact situation. Shuck out of his life, permanently, and him being free to continue his own. But the fact he had personally seen Shuck flex his no doubt deeply entrenched political power irked him greatly.
He felt Mira pull on his arm. “Victor, let’s go! I want to catch up with you and mom before I leave. I’m fairly certain I can even be around my younger self as long as I wear my disguise, just to be safe. At this point, I was still too young to remember much.”
“I can’t, Mira. Not yet.”
“...what? Why?”
Victor started walking. “I can’t let Shuck keep doing this.”
Mira followed along, while Dante simply went his own way without even a farewell. Metas ran into each other all the time, and could very easily organize meetings by exploiting time travel itself to synchronize timelines, so goodbyes were many times not even said. However, Mira was not interested in leaving yet. “What are you talking about? They cleared him of his crimes, or whatever.”
Victor stopped, looking at Mira. “You can’t seriously be that naive. I swear that I should have taught you better than that.”
Mira blinked innocently, completely oblivious of what Victor was alluding to. “What? Isn’t that what the paperwork said?”
Victor kept walking as he responded, taking on a lower volume due to what he was about to suggest. “That paperwork said he was free to go. It did not say he was innocent of anything.”
“But aren’t those two things basically the same thing?”
“They can be… or… it could be he isn’t innocent, and found a different way out of the charges.”
Mira mulled over the idea. “Okay… but if that’s true, which it very well might not be, how can you hope to confirm it one way or another? It’s not like time travel let’s us track a person perfectly. We still need to have some sort of starting information.”
“I know a guy.”
Gerald looked up from his paperwork, seeing Victor with an older Mira. He sighed as put down his pen. “Victor… isn’t it a tad reckless to be desynchronizing yourself just to hang out with your time traveling daughter? She has knowledge of your death, after all. I doubt you would be happy with causing her death via time toggle.”
Victor shrugged. “It wasn’t by design. We just sorta… bumped into each other.”
Gerald frowned. “Hmm, what a coincidence… anyways. What can I do for you?”
“I need more information on Shuck. I know you didn’t give me his full report.”
Gerald scoffed. “And how do you know that?”
“Because you never give me the full report. But this one specifically mentioned nothing that would indicate the kind of subterfuge Shuck is apparently capable of.”
“Really? Like what?”
After a moment of silence, Gerald nodded in understanding. “Right, right… you have no proof of anything. Or at least no proof that won’t hurt you as well. That’s the sign of a truly skilled operator, in my mind.”
Victor began to grow impatient. “Do you have the records or not?”
Gerald grumbled, standing up from his chair to rummage through one of his many nearby cabinets. “I swear it was here somewhere… ah, here! Yes, there is some more information on Shuck. I have some timecodes you are cleared to use from his earlier days.”
Mira looked at Victor. “Is that… safe?”
Victor smiled slyly. “It’s much more safe. If we go to a time before Shuck met us, he won’t recognize us. We can look around his natural habitat with him none the wiser.”
Mira frowned. “That sounds a bit underhanded.”
“It is what it is. I have to know what Shuck is up to, because it’s clearly deeper than running two bit cons. He has real influence, the kind not even money alone can buy.”
Gerald sighed. “Victor, you really gotta watch how you speak so openly about these matters. Your loose lipped daughter and a person you only know through business transactions are right here in the room with you.”
Victor laughed. “I know I can trust you, Gerald. And if I can’t trust my daughter, then who can I trust?”
Gerald handed over the folder with copies of the relevant records. “It’s not always about trust. But I’m not here to lecture you, so take your records and take care.”
Victor took the folder, and shook Gerald’s hand thankfully. “I knew I could count on you. I’ll be sure to let you know how this all turns out when it’s over.”
Victor and Mira left the office as he flipped through the papers. “Okay, seems simple enough… he was a Gatekeeper for many decades. Probably a good place to start.”
Both Metas took out their pocket watches and jumped to the specified time, finding themselves high in the air above Colossus. As they descended, they garnered barely any odd looks from the bustling population. While generally uncommon, most comptent Gatekeepers had run into Metas multiple times in the past, so even if they were recognized, it wouldn’t raise much concern. Victor began walking, flipping through the pages. “Now… I wonder if he has any relatives? I have some names here, we could check the local graveyard. Maybe one or two were buried here.”
Mira gasped. “What? Why the rift would you go right for that? That’s so morbid!”
Victor closed the folder, and began walking. The signposts around the fortified city of stone made it easy to find his own way, negating even the need to ask for directions. “Because, while we aren’t overly concerned about drawing attention, it’s best if we can gather information without interacting with people. Every person we talk to unnecessarily is one extra person that might tip off Shuck to our activity. If that happens, we will probably need to bail. I’m fairly certain he didn’t know me before I first…”
Victor stopped. “What if he did?”
“What if he did… what?”
“What if he did know me already? What if he had met me previously? It would explain… a lot.”
Mira walked past Victor, nose stuck in the air. “Alright, Father… let’s just investigate what we can verify, and stop with all this nonsense conjecturing. The truth is probably a lot simpler than you think.”
Mira and Victor found themselves in the local graveyard. It was far from a small city, though the graveyard itself was suprisingly small. Both Victor and Mira realized that only war heroes or other important figures would likely be buried within Colossus itself. “Okay, Mira, here we are. Looking at it now, we probably won’t find any of them here, but at least we won’t waste a lot of time. The names to keep an eye out for are-”
Victor looked up, and froze. He grabbed Mira by the arm and started walking out of the graveyard. “We’re going, Mira.”
Mira struggled against Victor’s strong grip. “Hey- Ow! Stop, what are you doing?”
“This was a bad idea, let’s just go ask around… Maybe the current top electro caster can-”
Mira suddenly realized what had happened. “Vic, you saw something, didn’t you? What did you see? Tell me!”
Victor continued pulling Mira along, his grip only growing tighter. “It’s nothing, just trust me on this. We need to go, now.”
Mira wrenched herself out of Victor’s grip, and quickly flew back. By the time Victor had caught up, he could see he was too late. Mira was standing in front of the grave he had seen in stunned silence. He walked up behind her slowly.
Tears were streaming down her face, in a mixture of fear, anger, sadness, and confusion. She collapsed onto her knees. “This can’t be right… someone must have made a mistake.”
Victor said nothing.
Mira looked back at him. “Tell me this is a lie! It’s a trick, I’m not… it couldn’t be…”
Victor continued to say nothing.
Mira vanished, having dropped out of the time period entirely. Victor stood there helplessly as his daughter, falling into despair, had run away to a time he had no way of guessing. And because of that, he could not be there to comfort her like he wanted to.
But even if he could be there, he had no idea what to say. He had no idea how this could have even happened, the odds were just too astronomical to consider beforehand how to respond to it.
What do you tell a time traveler who stumbled upon their own grave?
Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying the story, you might also enjoy some of my other published work on Amazon! It’s set in the same fictional universe, but follows different characters.
Gatekeepers, Book One: Unquestionable Truth
Gatekeepers, Book Two: Order of Gravitas
Same post on Minds