Instead of fixating on the quiet in my head, I reached for the pages of time. Pasts and futures popped into my brain in a bluish haze that was almost what I was used to, except different.

Now they were… Ordered?

Like I had the pages, but Tair was the glue, binding everything together with his perfect clarity.

Frantic hope bubbled over the horror and panic.

One page—one moment from the past—called out to me, just like it had earlier. But I hadn’t been paying attention.

I reached and the scene washed over my vision as easy as breathing.

It was a moment I’d already lived, but it was crisper than I remembered. The figures weren’t wispy or faded or washed in blue. They looked photo-realistic. Like a movie instead of just people in my head.

Tair sets a breakfast tray in front of me. The scent of bacon seeps from under the lid. I reach to switch the trays and our fingers brush.

That bump of skin against skin had shot through my nervous system, numbing and fuzzing and electrifying, doubling my vision like déjà vu. I’d thought the sensation was Tair’s fault and I’d been half right.

His powers synced with mine.

Boosted mine.

A thrill of hope surged through me as I glimpsed a future I’d never imagined.

I could fix this.

I could fix everything.

Reaching with every mental muscle I had, I smushed the pages of time together. Everything that had happened between breakfast and now. Our shooting match. Walking the hallways. Me collapsing. The holo room. Finally, the bullets. I held them together until I could see every moment at once, like peeking through pieces of tissue paper.

If I strained, I could see all the way through the flimsy bluish layers, straight to Tair’s crisp vision of our breakfast. It looked realer than everything else. More solid. Like the one image in thick marker mixed with hundreds of pencil sketches.

Combining our powers had marked time and I could get us back.

I didn’t know how or why, but I felt the possibility in the air and I was about to make it happen. Taking a deep breath, I turned the page.

For a silent second, everything froze. Tair’s chest stilled. My heart stopped.

Agonizingly slowly, time started to reverse.

My body moved backward, rewinding into the holo chair. Then my bindings snapped back into place. Tair lifted like he moved on strings.

Bullets popped out of his chest and flew back where they’d come from.

Thank the gods.

It was like watching a video in reverse, only I didn’t get to sit and enjoy the show. I wanted to gape at it—and the light returning to Tair’s eyes—but I had to fight the pressure building between my ears.