Desperate, I shifted through the futures. There had to be a way.

Tair drops me and tries to fight through, taking three of them down before he’s sedated and dragged off; he gets the door open but they shoot us both and we tumble down a flight to a sickening chorus of cracking bones; he surrenders and they drag him off anyway; He turns, defiant, and I jump in front of the bullets, shielding him, but the shots punch through us both and we fall in a tangle of limbs, the light leaving our eyes—

The lines of that last future firmed up way too dark for comfort, and I squeezed him tight. Don’t turn around.

If I died, that would be the end of us both. But I wouldn’t really jump in front of him…

Would I?

“Don’t… Hit her.” Last to arrive, Darren wheezed, out of breath “Take… The shot.”

Brace— Before I could warn him, the bullets went off, ringing in my ears like sledgehammers.

I couldn’t hear his grunt, but I felt the impact through his body.

Two shots. Two shattered kneecaps.

Both of us went down hard.

He held onto me instead of throwing out his arms.

Idiot! I spread myself over him, using my body as a shield against more fire.

I’m okay. He said that, but pain spiked through his inner voice.

And red dripped onto the white floor.

A guard lunged to yank me away, but time slowed as I focused on the sound of Tair’s pained breaths.

It was now or never. I grabbed hold of Tair’s shirt and scrunched my eyes, searching for the right page in the past.

The vision of breakfast called to me, its lines crisp and solid and shining. The mark in time was stronger than a bookmark… More like Tair and I had bent the universe’s spine and it would keep opening to that page until we did something about it.

Whether it was the blood or the shadow of the hurt tightening Tair’s face, everything else bled away until all I could sense was that one moment in perfect clarity.

The two of us, our fingers brushing.

I spun through all the timeghosts that we’d created these last few hours and then flattened the layers together.

Please work. With everything I had, I flipped the page in time.

The guards and everything else froze for a breathless second.

Then it all snapped back. Time and space howled around me. We lifted up, gunshots reversing, Tair’s body unbreaking, and both of us finally reversing down the hall.

My head pounded as we paged back, but relief dulled a little of the pain. It was working.

It was going to work.

I focused on Tair, feeling him anchor me as we rolled back. The other glittering universes called, but they weren’t as tempting if I kept my brain on Tair.