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Axton Manor. 24 hours before the end of everything.

Aarden stands before the apparition of his adoptive guardian, the visage of his own disbelief reflected back to him off the silvery surface of Xavier's specter.

"You're lying," Aarden concludes.

"Why would I have any reason to lie to you?" Xavier asks Aarden, seeing the familiar look of intense concentration coming across the red pandas face, one he's missed dearly.

"Especially now that it's too late. Think, you're smarter than that."

Aarden concentrates, now truly alone in the forest.

"How can I even do what you're suggesting? It's impossible."

The ghost of the cheetah smiles brightly, his crooked whiskers shining in ethereal light.

"You may need to reconsider what you think is possible. Thaddeus used to say that to me all the time."

***

Aarden replays the memory of his conversation with Elio Xavier in his head as he finds himself walking through a spinning city full of disorientating sirens and nauseating neon lights, dragging his slumping ringed tailed behind him. As the adrenaline in him dies, an intense pain fires up his leg as he realizes he's been hobbling his drenched body on a broken ankle. Witnessing him struggle, Phoenix places his arm around him, practically carrying him as they follow Fletcher's tail-feathers through the crowd and into a closed coffee shop in the center of the city.

Aarden's conversation with Xavier was mere hours before this moment, but it feels like a time long left behind. Back when Zephyr, Kyran and Indigo were alive. To Aarden, the world has turned darker and more dangerous, with every onlooker transforming into a possible threat lurking from the shadows, ready to strike with a super-sensory command.

Quinn glances back at them, tears sliding off the dirty fur on her face. When they emerged from the burning river she was waiting for them with Fletcher, having changed her mind.

Everything moves slowly, as if time is standing still. Hours pass by in what becomes the longest night any of them have ever experienced.

***

"I'm glad you made it out safe," Quinn tells Aarden. She treats his wounds as he lays on a dirty bag of coffee beans against the entrance of the café they broke into.

"I tried to fight my way through the fire to make it back to you all," Quinn says, wincing as she leans against the burns running up her thin, toned arms.

"We failed," Aarden says, too exhausted to cry anymore.

Fletcher glances out into the streets outside.

"I need to make my way back out there to gather the things to mend your ankle and your burns," she tells Aarden and Quinn, who nod silently in their pain. Fletcher departs, crouching low amongst the panicked crowd, assuring them she'll return.

In the back corner of the café, Phoenix sits in a standstill so agonizing it spins his throbbing head, making him wish they broke into a pub so that he could drink something stronger to drown his misery, but the bottle he found will have to do for this first night in a series of endless nights.

"When we lost Zephyr, we all shut down and shut each other out, we can't do that again," Kamala says, sitting beside him and placing her head on his shoulder. It all feels like a terrible dream, all she wants to do is wake in her bed, for everything to be as it was.

"What do I tell Orson?" Phoenix asks after seeing the bottom of the bottle. "I promised him that I'd take care of them."

Kamala's heart breaks for the buck she's never met.

"What else is there to say? We tell him we failed to protect Indigo, that they're dead because of us and we don't even have a body to bring back," Kamala says, taking the bottle from his hands.

"Indigo wouldn't want to see you drink yourself to death over them."

"Saying they're gone doesn't even feel real. And Kyran--

Phoenix's voice breaks as he sobs in silence before shouting through clenched fangs, causing everyone to jump when he slams his huge fist on the table, cracking the wood.

Kamala rises to comfort him when they're jolted by the sudden sound of broken claws scoring glass.

Dietrich Ziegler pushes his weight on the door, falling into the shop with a loud thud. He props his broken body against the doorframe, smiling at them with the teeth that remain on his broken jaw.

Kamala acts, surrounding the wolf in a shield of solid crystal, preventing Phoenix from leaping through the barrier to kill him with the sharp edges of a broken bottle. Lightning burns in Kamala's eyes as she connects to a world unfelt by the others, ready to strike.

"Get away from us! I can't hold this barrier for much longer, I won't stop him, or myself," Kamala shouts through the agony.

Ziegler ignores her questions and commands, looking only at Aarden.

"How did you do it?" he asks, trying to study every detail of Aarden's cannon his remaining eye can see through the prismatic surface of Kamala's radiant barrier.

"I won't tell you. Besides, there's no use to it anymore," Aarden shouts, breaking free from Quinn's grip as she tries to pull him close.

Ziegler grips his long hair in a clenched fist to cough cold blood onto the floor.

"Clearly, we all failed. When my eyes sprung open, I realized I even failed to die, so I closed them and accepted my demise at the hands of my own creations. But it was a single burning question in my head that gave me the strength to follow the stench of death on you to crawl my way back here. I just want to know how you managed to do it. Grant me that as my last request, and Phoenix can learn to finally extinguish a flame for good. I'm not long for this world," Ziegler rasps, painting his palms crimson as he coughs more blood.

"Why should I do anything you ask me to do?" Aarden asks, pushing himself up.

"Because I'm a lone wolf whose lost everything. I lost her for this power, lost my son to Thaddeus, and now I've lost my company and what's left of my body. What else do I have to live for besides the truth? I have nothing left," he groans, sincerity in his fading voice.

"You haven't lost her, even if Thaddeus made you forget she existed," Phoenix says, throwing the broken bottle aside.

"For once I want to hear what you have to say. Enlighten me," Ziegler says, close to collapsing.

"It was all in the file I took from Zenith Genetics, the one no one else cared about but me. Zephyr's mother survived."

Ziegler looks penetratingly at Phoenix, searching for the truth in Xochitl Solis's eyes.

"I never imagined it would be the words of Phoenix Axton that would leave me speechless."

"It's Phoenix Solis, I'm not letting you take that from me too."

"Very well, and I'm supposed to trust you?"

Phoenix tosses a water-damaged photograph through the barrier, one he discovered on his journey alone before rejoining the group in London.

Ziegler stares into his wife's eyes as if for the first time, shocked they're as dark red as the world around them.

"She survived?"

"I never thought I'd say this, but Thaddeus manipulated you the same way he did us. He kept her from you, that's how he maintains control. Aarden, tell him what he needs to know, he can figure out the rest on his own once he leaves. I won't kill him, there's been enough death tonight."

Aarden hesitates, but Kamala nods her head to him, promising to keep him safe behind the barrier, but Phoenix doesn't relent.

Aarden clears his throat, realizing how dry his mouth is.

"Thaddeus Axton had the Zenith Crown. I took a part of it, the same way you did, and used it to fuel the cannon. If Kamala fires it, she can reverse the polarity, causing it to drain Zenith energy from us instead of overwhelming us with it. We planned to shoot Zephyr in the hopes of weakening him enough for Indigo to pull him from whatever influence you had over him. We underestimated you, as I'm sure was the fatal mistake of many," Aarden says, slumping forward.

"It wouldn't have been enough," Ziegler says with a menacing grin, "but that's a very clever plan indeed. It wouldn't have worked because there were two Zenith crystals fueling Zephyr from the beginning. That was the only way we could save him. It would take the entirety of what remained of the Zenith Crown to combat that, and that power would've been enough to kill you, obliterating you the same way you did my most loyal friend when you killed him in that nightclub, Aarden."

"I recognized him from the mountain base. He was the one you had torture me for days to get information I never had. I killed him, but I did it to save someone I loved. That's something you'll never understand."

The look in the wolfs eyes turns feral, as a mixture of saliva and blood falls from the corners of his long snout, black blood coming from somewhere deep within. He grips onto a silver chair as the small, square room of glass and tile fades.

"He was my most loyal follower, and my successor. Your death will be satisfactory in balancing the scales. Then there will be enough death tonight."

Ziegler reaches for the cannon with the last of his strength and fires at Aarden, whose small body takes the entire force of the emerald Zenith energy, the blast shattering Kamala's shield to a hailstorm of pink diamonds.

All Aarden can feel is scorching pain run up every channel in his body, but he's not launched back, instead spinning through an inferno in a contained pearl of energy as Kamala focuses on shielding the others from his burning body.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, knowing Aarden must already be gone but the threat of the blast remains.

Quinn shouts his name, but Phoenix holds her back, sparing her the agony of failing to save a loved one.

Then emerald eyes open to brilliant light, and Aarden's adaptation blossoms like a desert flower from deep within, causing the energy from the cannon to explode outward, instantly vaporizing everything and everyone around him.

Aarden's final thoughts are of the remainder of his conversation with Xavier, followed by dreams of a sky dazzling with fireworks, and the flutter in his chest when gripping Quinn's hand as everything returns to darkness.

***

"Believe me, I've seen the impossible. But manipulating time itself is beyond what the others are even capable of. I'll settle for even the most lackluster adaptation at this point, you don't have to lie and make up something interesting like time travel just to make the waiting worth it. I'll settle for something dumb, like stretchy limbs," Aarden says, standing before Xavier as the redwood forest slips back into view. In the near distance, the lights of Axton's manor paint the air with gold.

Xavier's specter rubs his nose out of habit, no longer able to feel his own twitching whiskers.

"Aarden, focus. You always were their secret weapon. That's why Ziegler wanted you more than anything else. Your parents weren't geneticists working for Thaddeus like the rest of them, they were the world's leading quantum physicists searching for the boundless possibility of time travel. Think logically as I've taught you, what does a wolf like Dietrich Ziegler desire most of all?"

Aarden suspends his disbelief to think, focusing on everything he's learned from listening to Ziegler's rambling thoughts from within his small cell carved from razor sharp rock.

"He has this obsession with the past, with how we were once before with natural adaptations. He wants to recreate it so he can exploit it in the present," Aarden says, concentrating so deeply he vividly remembers the sound of melting snow dropping onto his head from the cracked stone.

"Ziegler wants redemption for his mistakes, even if he must find it in the impossible. If he doesn't already know about your adaptation he will soon, and he'll come after you with everything he has."

"Why me? I can't possibly control that kind of power. It's the power to fix everything, or walk away from all of this, why would anyone trust one with that much power, or that choice?"

Xavier tunes into the silence of the forest, observing the manor beyond the trees.

"I don't have an answer to that, but I'm certain your parents trusted you'd figure that out before Ziegler did and make the right choice. I was the only other one who knew, besides Thaddeus."

"Then why didn't he tell me, or raise me here? Yes, I realize now that he sent me with you to keep me safe. But in those moments, when Ziegler was torturing me. All I wanted, more than anything, was to know what terrible secret I was supposed to be hiding from him so I could tell him and stop the pain."

Xavier steps closer, his body fading to air as he tries to cross over into a world he's long departed.

"Could you imagine the life you would've lived here? You would've been the outcast, the seemingly ordinary child in a home for unwanted enigmas. One would believe you'd resent them for being special, but they would've resented you for being ordinary. Perhaps in the end Thaddeus wanted for you something he couldn't give the others, a normal life. But now it's clear your destiny leads elsewhere, somewhere between the present and the past."

"How will I know when I'm ready?" Aarden asks, his knees buckling as if they're about to give way.

Xavier speaks his final words as the bridge between them fades.

"It will come to you. In time."

***

Somewhere in the unknown present, Aarden blinks sight back into his eyes, seeing only the faint green after-burn of the blinding lights that consumed him. He stares up at the vaulted ceiling of his underground bedroom in Axton's Manor as he rises to the sound of his blaring alarm.

He throws sweat soaked sheets off himself, climbing out of bed and making it halfway up the narrow stairwell and halfway dressed when he realizes his ankle is no longer broken.

Aarden can't help but to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He's seemingly teleported thousands of miles from where he last was, and the only thing striking him as unusual is that his ankle feels fine.

His mind wanders to Quinn, wondering If he's crossed the veil, and that he'll never see her again. He glares down at his sleeves, only then realizing he's wearing Xavier's green jacket.

Ziegler killed him, Aarden thinks, running through the grand, but empty, foyer of Axton's Manor. Aarden peers into the long ballroom, staring at his own portrait on the wall, his heart sinking when he sees Kyran, and Indigo's painted faces look down at him.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," Aarden says to the paintings, agony flooding back into him.

He wanders through rooms he's unfamiliar with, rooms filled with crystal vases, others filled with spare equipment, the scent of dozens of different flowers flooding his nose as he pushes through the doors.

Several floors above Aarden's basement bedroom, Kamala and Phoenix's eyes dart open to the sight of an identical glass ceiling on opposite ends of the manor, each wondering how they made it back home unharmed. The last thing they remember is a blinding light as the pearl of energy surrounding Aarden's shattering body, and their fingertips turning to ash before their eyes.

They run toward one another in the long hallway, nearly crashing into an exhausted Aarden at the landing of the wide staircase.

"You're alive!" Phoenix says, grabbing Aarden and pulling him into an embrace hotter than the summer air outside.

"We're alive," Kamala says, catching her breath, "but how?"

"And how did we end up back home?" Aarden asks, relieved to find the others in whatever this may be.

"How did we end up back here, and where are the others?" Phoenix asks as they follow Aarden, who races toward the library at the other end of the manor.

"Maybe Fletcher brought us back and fixed us up?" Kamala asks.

"If that's true, we must've been in bed for weeks, my ankle was shattered to dust after we jumped into that muddy river and when I woke up it felt fine," Aarden says far ahead of them.

"Something's not right," Kamala says, glancing at the date on her cellphone's screen. "What's the last thing you remember?"

A cheetah around their age, dressed entirely in white, walks past them as if they were invisible, holding a stack of white embroidered towels. Phoenix reaches for her arm and pulls her toward him.

"What are you doing here?" He demands, fire in his eyes.

Her eyes grow wide with panic as she pulls away from his grasp, slamming the door shut as she escapes into the laundry room.

"I thought Kyran fired her, and then I dumped her for insulting Kyran in front of me."

"I thought he fired all of them," Kamala says, as several other staff walk past them, their heads fixed to the polished wooden floor.

Phoenix and Kamala continue to ask questions and propose theories until they pass the grand archway into the library where they see Aarden standing frozen in the center of the room, transfixed on the upper level of the library, toward the bookshelves made to look like massive branches.

Kyran pushes his golden glasses up from the end of his muzzle as he organizes heavy books back to their places on the sturdy shelves, carefully brushing dust off the spines with his velvety fingertips.

He glances down at them briefly, more interested in the delicate books before him than in guessing why they look so shocked to see him.

"You're up early, or are you just getting in?" Kyran asks, feigning interest after sensing their eyes on him for too long.

Phoenix and Kamala stare at one another as Aarden pieces together the consequences of his adaptation.

"We have to be calm about this," Aarden whispers.

"Why aren't you dead?" Phoenix blurts out, the words spilling from his head as if it were making room to process more information.

Kyran's expression is unchanged as he peers at Phoenix from behind his glasses like a sullen librarian.

"Is there any particular reason why you would ask me something like that?" He says as he places the book down on a desk.

"He doesn't mean anything by it," Kamala says, jamming her fist into his side.

"Kamala, I saw him die; we saw him die! I don't know what's happening, but he can't be Kyran. If you are him, tell us about Thaddeus's ring, whose name is engraved inside of it?"

"What ring? Is this some sort of joke?" Kyran asks as he teleports down to them, searching for an explanation in Phoenix's eyes.

"Spending my time in here may not be as fun as going out all night and drinking, but I'm certainly as alive as you are. I don't know what you saw, or what you're on," Kyran says.

Phoenix opens his mouth to respond when a soothing voice purrs from the hallway.

"Out all night? Did you celebrate the fourth a day early? I would too if I were you, can't have you around all those fireworks, you could start a forest fire," Indigo says grinning, their large front teeth biting into a piece of hard candy.

"I love what you did with your hair," Indigo says as they brush silken gloved hands through Aarden's hair, "I could've done a better job, but I like your choice of color, it matches your eyes."

"Quinn dyed it, remember. On the fourth of July, after we got back from town," Aarden says, challenging his suspicions.

Indigo flutters their eyelashes.

"Today is the fourth, silly. But how would you know, you're always cooped up down there, in the wine cellar. I don't think I've seen you leave that lab in weeks, so is Quinn someone special I should know about?" Indigo asks curiously, wagging their stubby tail.

Phoenix stares at Indigo in disbelief, the words unable to escape him as he pulls the rabbit in to a warm embrace.

Indigo thrashes as their short muzzle is buried into Phoenix's firm chest. They finally land a knee to Phoenix's groin, causing the lion to release them from his suffocating grip. Kyran catches them as they fall backward.

"What's gotten into you Phoenix? Last night you said you couldn't fucking stand me and the morning after you feel like hugging it out?" Indigo shouts, pulling down on their short skirt to adjust it.

"I'd never say that to you."

"You did, repeatedly. Or are you still too drunk to remember?"

"Whatever's going on, please stop it," Kyran says, stepping between the rabbit and the lion. "I can expect this kind of stuff from Phoenix, and maybe Aarden if he's bored enough, but Kamala? I thought you were past childish charades."

"Kyran," Kamala explains through teary eyes when a heavy door opens behind them on the second floor of the library.

"Good morning children, I didn't expect to see all of you up so early," Thaddeus Axton says, his white mane shimmering as golden as it was when he was their age with the early morning sun that spills from the tall windows overlooking a colorful and thriving garden.

***

Somewhere far away, Quinn wakes up to the sound of someone urgently knocking on her bedroom door. She kicks heavy sheets off her bed and rips apart the blinds to the small square window, her teal eyes adjusting to the sight of the cobblestone street before her. She places her hand on her shoulder, searching for where the fire burned her, but all she finds is velvety fur.

Quinn throws on whatever clothing she can find off the ground when she spots a framed photograph on her dresser, one of herself smiling brightly with a group of girls she doesn't recognize, arms wrapped around one another in the busy center of a city she's never been to.

"What the fuck is going on!?" Quinn asks as she opens the door to her bedroom.

"Please watch your language Quinn," Soraya Singh calmly says, adjusting her long silver hair as she dresses hastily for work.

"Mom!" Quinn says, hugging Singh tightly, nearly tackling her into the wall.

"Now she misses me, after being out all night, every night with her University girlfriends. Nice to know you remembered you still have a mother waiting up for you when you get home. Whatever's happening, let's talk about it when I get home from work and you get home from--

Singh glances at her wristwatch.

"Blimey, Quinn! You should've left half an hour ago if you had any hope of making it just late enough to come up with a convincing excuse for missing practice! Don't let this opportunity pass you by, or is it no longer your dream to play football professionally?"

"Mom, I gave up football a long time ago," Quinn says, her hands shaking. She turns to Singh, but all she sees is confusion in her eyes.

"Then who was I cheering for in the stands the other weekend? Please get going, I don't have time for mind games, I'm busy enough as it is."

Singh skips steps down the stairs before Quinn stops her, pulling on her lab coat.

"Don't go."

"Darling, what's gotten into you?" Singh asks, surprised to see genuine worry in the eyes of her daughter.

"If you go, Dietrich Ziegler will kill you," Quinn says.

Singh stands frozen in place, her amber eyes shifting to her teal.

"How do you know that name?"

***

Kyran nearly disappears into the soft black upholstery of an oversized chair in Thaddeus's study as he glances curiously at the volumes of unfamiliar bookshelves. Indigo sits on the desk beside him, swinging heavy boots at the end of their slender legs as Kamala, Phoenix and Aarden try to convince Thaddeus of the impossible with zero evidence.

"You traveled back in time?" Kyran asks, convinced they've taken their joke too far to involve Thaddeus and Fletcher as they observe them from the corner of the room.

Aarden sighs as he repeats what he remembers.

"Yes, and I don't know how. We were in London, in some café Fletcher broke into when Ziegler shot me with my cannon. At first, I thought he killed me, but I woke up here, on the same day I--

But his voice fades away when he realizes they inadvertently travelled back to the day he wishes he could repeat forever, the day he and Quinn escaped into the city together. His fondest memory.

"This cannon you've described, I've never seen anything like it before," Thaddeus says, writing frantically, ink flowing unstopped onto the pages before him.

"Neither have I," Kyran says, his neck extending out to catch a glimpse of what Thaddeus is writing in a small black journal with gilded pages.

"I've looked everywhere for it; It has to be down there somewhere."

"And Zephyr is alive, according to you?" Fletcher asks, towering over them as she approaches the desk.

"Yes. That's why we were in London, to rescue him. I've gone over all of this with you already, you have to believe us."

"We believe you alright," Kyran says with an unconvincing grin to Indigo, who raises their eyebrows and shrugs.

"Aarden, If you can't prove it, there's no reason for me to believe you other than your word. This has all been quite entertaining, but this has to end now," Thaddeus says calmly, taking off golden glasses, identical to the ones Kyran wears.

"You were dead, and you tried to take the truth with you to your grave," Phoenix says, having remained silent beside Kamala.

Thaddeus ignores him, uninterested in listening to someone who never knows what he's talking about.

Sensing this, Phoenix rises.

"Xochitl Solis! I read everything you said about her in your journals. Every single one of those books on that shelf I burned long after you were buried in a dead garden. The cancer killed you, what should've been last winter."

Thaddeus can no longer feign disbelief, staring up at his son with shaking rage at the mention of Xochitl Solis and the disinterment of his buried secrets.

"Don't mention that name to me again! How did you manage to get in here and plunder my journals?"

"I know who she is and where she is because I've met her! I also know you amended your will to leave Kyran everything only because you believed Zephyr was dead."

Thaddeus slams a sturdy fist onto the polished black wood of his desk.

"Enough! I'll get to the bottom of this. As for the mention of my illness, I felt it best not to burden you. Kamala insisted I be screened last summer when I wasn't feeling well, and her concern was justified. Thanks to her, we detected my illness in time and I'm almost through with my treatment. I'm far from well, but not as close to dead as you'd like me to be, son."

"Me?" Kamala asks, trying her best to comfort Phoenix, "I couldn't have, I was in London last winter."

"Why would you be in London, we haven't been back there since you were children," Thaddeus says, dismissively.

"I went to find Soraya Singh," Kamala says, "after Zephyr's funeral."

Thaddeus can no longer pretend what they're saying isn't possible. He leans his heavy hands on the polished wood and stands himself up, reaching for his cane.

"How do you know about Singh?"

"Because we're telling the truth," Aarden says, raising his voice at Thaddeus for the first time.

"Singh isn't someone you want to go looking for. She's been working closely with Dietrich Ziegler since the day she walked out of Zenith Genetics with a briefcase full of my secrets. Do you know what she's responsible for?"

Kamala backs into the heavy doors, pushing them aside as she races down the hallway. She's skipping every other step on the grand staircase when Phoenix and Aarden catch up to her at the center of the compass pattern on the marble floor.

"Quinn's in danger, and she may not even know it. If we woke up here, she must've woken up in her home as well. If what Dad is saying about Singh is true, Ziegler is going to get his hands on her. We need to get to London," Kamala says, her eyes shifting as it becomes harder for her to breathe.

"Then let's stop wasting time," Phoenix says.

Kamala and Phoenix run up the stairs and are beginning to race toward opposite ends of a long hallway when Aarden yells for them to stop.

"Listen! We didn't just go back in time; this must be an entirely different timeline. It's the same date, July fourth, but it's clear this isn't where we belong. Our variants lived altered lives, ones we don't remember, and we took their place. This Kamala never left to go to London, so she never met Quinn. This Indigo never left for Las Vegas, so there's no Orson Flores in their life, and this Phoenix never fought this timeline's Kyran because Thaddeus's writings are all intact. Because of us, there's unintended ripples. From minor ones, like my variant not having a green streak in his hair, to major ones, like Thaddeus Axton being alive, and Soraya Singh working for Ziegler."

"She's always worked for Ziegler," Kamala says, sounding defeated. "What are you suggesting we do?"

"Until we can figure it all out, we can't trust this variant Kyran or Indigo, no matter how much they behave like the ones we remember, they're not our Kyran and Indigo. They're still dead."

"But it's still better than not having them around," Phoenix says, desperately.

"You don't get it. They lost their versions of us in this mix up too. We don't belong in this timeline, and I'm betting Quinn doesn't as well. We need to get out of here, and fast."

As they rush into Aarden's basement bedroom for the supplies they'll need, Phoenix brings up the one question they're all too afraid to ask.

"Was Ziegler still alive in the end? I didn't see him die."

"If he survived, then things are going to get much worse," Aarden says, hastily reaching for his belongings.

"Why is that? I doubt this version is any eviler?"

"Because he has the Zenith Crown, or at least a part of it, in the cannon," Aarden says, "and even worse, he'll remember everything."

"Going back to London is going to feel strange, considering it still feels like we never left to begin with. Besides, how do we even get there? Only Kyran and Indigo know how to fly the Cepheus," Phoenix says when they return to the foyer.

"We're wasting time, we have to figure it all out alone," Kamala says, pushing past them to make it to her bedroom.

"You're wrong. You're never alone," Fletcher says, catching up to them in the hallway.

"So, you believe us?" Kamala asks her.

A curious look comes across Fletcher's face, and her lilac eyes shift slightly.

"I've dedicated my life to believing in you," Fletcher says, a motherly sincerity in her voice.

"We need to get to London, and fast," Kamala says.

"I'll make arrangements," Fletcher says, turning around to gracefully glide down the stairs when Aarden stops her.

"The conventional way won't be fast enough Mrs. Fletcher--

The peacock laughs. "If you call me Mrs. Fletcher, I'll start having to call you--

"Mr. Kuiper."

The long feathers on Fletcher's tail ruffle slightly.

"How did you know?"

"You told me you once flew the Cepheus, is that still true?"

Fletcher nods, a thrill once lost building in her narrow chest.

"I can try, but I may have forgotten how to."

"There's no better way of knowing than trying," Aarden says, smiling at her.

***

Dietrich Ziegler stumbles down the white halls of his lab far below London. When he awoke and saw past the blinding light, everything around him was exactly as it was before, except for the heavy device strapped to his arm. His body was still marred, but it was not yet broken.

As he leans against the concrete walls, he presses the controls of Aarden's cannon, hearing the inner mechanisms roar as the Zenith Crown energy inside of it springs to life with emerald light.

Ziegler stumbles his way to the infirmary, finding Ulysses Thorne drowned in a sea of tranquilizers on a large bed, the marigold-colored energy from the Zenith crystal gradually rejuvenating his body.

"How did we survive?" Ziegler asks glancing at Thorne's medical records and freezing with fear when he reads the date written by his own hand.

"Kuiper."

Ziegler shuffles frantically through the papers, recognizing the writing of observations he never saw.

"So, it's true, we've taken the largest step forward imaginable, by taking a small step back in time," Ziegler says, dropping the file on the floor.

The wolf circles the Komodo dragon, placing his claws on the tubes and machinery.

"So, what am I going to do with you Thorne?"

Ziegler tears at the tubes, destroying the machinery in a burst of rage and confusion.

Ulysses Thorne wakes, digging his claws into his bed and snarling as the invaluable energy drains away from his system.

"Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see you again old friend. You won't believe the places I've been, or the incredible things I've seen. But in my journeys, I've also discovered where your loyalties truly lie, and I've seen a weakness exploited in you I never imagined possible. If you're here before me alive as if none of it ever happened, then I know Indigo is as well. So, I must do what I can for the good of this movement, and it saddens me to say it will pain me far more to kill the rabbit than it will to kill you."

Ziegler dives into the confusion in Thorne's wild red eyes as he tries to break the surface of his chemical daze before pressing the cannon against his temple.

"Farewell, Thorne."

Ziegler presses down on the trigger within the device to launch a powerful beam of energy. But the green blast is deflected off Thorne's body, launching Ziegler backward into painful blackness.

Sometime later, Soraya Singh shakes consciousness back into him. Ziegler sits awake blinking until a duo of familiar faces fade into focus before him.

"Hello Quinn, Soraya. It's nice to see you all again," Ziegler says, rising and rubbing his aching head, seeing Thorne's torn restraints and hearing the door shriek as it swings on broken hinges.

"How do you know her, if you've never met her before," Singh says cautiously, "you promised you would leave her alone if I--

Ziegler interrupts her, his head throbbing.

"It's a pleasure seeing you again Soraya, It's been too long. I hope things end up better for you this time around. Consider yourself fortunate to be so indispensable to me."

Singh glances back at Quinn's teary eyes with visible confusion, knowing she's right.

"Sir, I was here last night working closely with you, and I believe I found a solution to our problem with Thorne."

"Thorne will no longer be our problem for much longer once I get a hold of him, and any time you spent down here with me was spent with someone else. I'll explain it all later, if your children haven't already. For now, take them to the holding cell until we can figure out what to do with them. We're expecting guests soon, we must prepare for them before I depart to catch up with our old friend Thorne."

"Mom," Quinn begs, confused about everything, but Singh looks at her with an emotionless face.

"I'm sorry. You know too much, you've brought this upon yourself, and there's nothing I can do to shield you from what comes next."