Author's Preface
Nathan's final words looped in Max's head so she wouldn't forget and she continued her sprint across the now invisible plain to nowhere in particular; all she cared about was running for her life from whatever was triggering this tremor.
Deep down, she knew , but couldn't bear to face it. She was losing control… if she had any to begin with.
She also started to lose feeling in her body, like it had begun to numb under her. When she looked down a little at her little hands swaying by her sides and in front of her, she noticed how harder they were to see, and at first, she thought it was because of the blurry motions, but once she actually stilled them, she made a new horrible discovery, which proved that it wasn't the case.
Her fingers, her palms, and her wrists had all turned transparent, resembling a glass sculpture, and this transformation was only continuing further to her elbows. It was only when she lost the feeling of moisture in those limbs as well that she made an even graver realization.
She was vanishing, not transforming into any clear substance, but vanishing.
"Rachel!" She cried to anyone who could listen, if anyone was even there to hear her. "CHLOE!"
Max was sobbing again, her sanity threatening to come undone from the sheer panic.
"I N—NEED YOU!"
"MAX! NO!" Rachel screamed as she tried forcing herself off the ceiling she was pinned up on; it felt like being pressed against the surface by a giant invisible thumb. Even for a spiritual time-bending entity, this was much pressure to take.
Right below her, the other time bender had her wrists suspended above her as though strings were jiggling them like loose limbs. Legs were bending in irregular angles like they were about to snap like twigs. By this point, Max had oozed out so much sweat and tears and Rachel believed she could literally melt at any moment.
"PLEASE, MAX! YOU HAVE TO FIGHT IT!" The force, restricting movement and making it extremely difficult for her to speak, clenched the entity's jaw. "FIND THE BUTTERFLY AGAIN! LET IT SEEK YOU!"
Outside, Chloe, much like everyone else, was helpless, as she could only listen with great apprehension to what was transpiring on a frightening level.
At the same time, she could feel a sharp pain forced into the front of her brain, cleaving ever so slowly into the soft organ like a hot knife.
Next, she felt her consciousness being pried away. She found herself blinking between the present and vivid images of other places that she could assume were part of her past, since each setting piqued some form of familiarity. Yet, her mind fought like a cat on a sofa to stay intact with her stationary body, only increasing the pain further.
Chloe could next feel a wet trail leaking down her nose that she could assume was her runny snot, but she then looked around with her eyes at other people and realized it was blood when she saw the same mess streaked on all their faces too.
Finally, she moved her sight to her mother and stepfather, both glancing back at her with the same terror.
She could only imagine what their minds could be experiencing.
Is this what Rachel warned us about?
With that question in mind, Chloe returned her gaze into the Two Whales.
Rachel summoned her own energy to try and counter Max's, and while it only pushed a bit of weight off her ribs, she managed to extend a hand out and pointed it straight below at Max.
She then closed her eyes and slowed her breaths to try and pore into her head once more; her influence wasn't going to be as strong without physical contact, but at her voice had to reach her somehow.
"Don't… give up… Max!" She tried to groan, though it came off more of as a raspy whisper instead. "You can't… let this…" She trailed off and continued to focus on reattaching their connection.
"T—This is it…" Max choked. Darkness contaminated everywhere, corroding her soul, her mind, and her heart. She could feel the last remnants of herself slipping, fading, out of existence. "I can't…"
She wanted to stop running. She wanted to lie down. She wanted rest. She wanted to let go. There was no use in trying to escape anymore.
Finally giving up, Max slowed down and allowed her knees to buckle like rusted beams. The rest followed as she sank onto the cold, invisible plain. She rolled to her side, into a fetal shell, as she prepared to accept her fate. By now, she was as glassy as a reflection on a window facing the bright sun.
"I'm sorry, Chloe." She hummed. "Forgive me, Rachel." She took in her next few pockets of air in sips, as though they would be her last to cherish; she was like a wanderer trapped in the Himalayas. "Mom… Dad…"
She drew out the faces of her parents and the setting of where she last saw them. It was back in Seattle, right before she departed for Arcadia Bay. She remembered the warmth of their arms around her, and the image of them waving goodbye to her, shrinking out of sight in her rearview mirror as she drove off through the highway into an uncertain future.
"Be safe, honey!" Her mother's last words echoed through the chamber.
"Say hi to the Prices for us!" Her dad followed up with.
Max, much to her own surprise, chuckled at the irony. "For cereal, guys? You'd kill me right now." They were still stuck all the way back in Seattle, or speeding in their car to get here, terrified beyond all measure for her, and she was laughing about it in her own twisted psyche; all her tears had been used up.
She then thought back to Warren, the real Warren, the one who wanted to impress her with his overzealous knowledge of movies and chemistry, the geek who always stood up for her, a friend she could always count on.
"I'm so sorry, Warren." She raised her tone so that whoever could be there could listen. "I'm sorry to all of you who lost your lives because of my selfish decision. I kept trying to fix things for myself. I should have died in that storm too. I've fucked everything up for life. Some Everyday Hero I turned out to be, huh?" She waited a bit for an answer that she knew wouldn't come. "I get it, now. Dying alone is how I'm being punished, right? My atonement… my… reckoning… and suddenly… I've become a wordsmith ." Max laughed again, this time aloud. "Too bad no one can hear me!"
The girl was beyond exhausted. She relaxed and rolled to her back, facing skyward in exactly the same manner Chloe did after she was shot by Jefferson in the junkyard in one of their previous timelines. "Still… if I'm glad about one thing about my… or Rachel's powers…"
Max ran out verbal energy, so she gave up bothering to finish her last sentence. She's had enough of rambling.
She squinted open one last time to see the butterfly descend upon her forehead.
"What the fuck do you want now ?" Maybe she wasn't quite done mouthing off. "Haven't you caused me enough of a shit-storm already?" Chloe's attitude had definitely rubbed off on her. "You're right now… reminding me of the best and worst things…"
"Max…" Another voice called to her, as if it echoed through a tomb.
It took her about a second to recognize whom it belonged to, and she jerked out of her daze and focused up at the source. "R—Rachel?"
"Max, are you there?" Her repeat confirmed it, and Max shot back up, flinging the butterfly back off her head.
"Rachel! I'm here!" She flailed her hands, wondering if she can actually see her, unlike vice versa. "I thought you left me!"
" Never ."
Without warning, her vision blinked back into the diner where she saw the blurred outline of Rachel pinned up against the ceiling, trying to reach out to her.
"Wait! What's going on? Where's Chloe!?"
And then she was back in the void.
"But Max, listen to me!" Rachel continued. "Your powers are going berserk! You're endangering everyone around you!"
"What!? I don't…" And then Max understood. "My seizure. It's affecting time, isn't it?"
"Worse." Rachel responded. "Your powers are sending each of their conscious back through time. They're all fighting to stay in the present! I don't know how much longer they can take it, though."
"No…" It felt as though a knife was then pointed to her soul. "I don't know what to do!"
She was about to become a memory, a vegetable, as Rachel told her. But worse, she was about to risk yet another time paradox. She couldn't bear that happening, not again.
Max heaved the deepest breaths she could ever take. "Rachel…"
"No!" Rachel knew immediately what this girl was about to ask. "Don't you dare!"
"I can't do this." Max sounded completely resigned; she was calm now, yet melancholy.
"Please, Max! You can't give up!"
"I'm tired … kill me…"
"Absolutely not!"
"I'll end up killing everyone if you don't." Max had gone numb now. "Please, I beg you!"
"What about Chloe!?" Rachel's demeanor changed to that of anger and desperation. "Do you want her to lose another friend!?"
"I would rather have her grieving for me than the other way round!"
As Rachel intensified their link, the entity felt her back finally being lowered ever so steadily off the ceiling; something was working. "Well I don't! And neither does she!" Rachel briefly looked outside at Chloe once more and back. "I'm not going to let you go! I FORBID IT!"
As Max's energy continued to weaken bit by bit, Rachel could finally sink back to the floor. Once that was done, she cradled Max once more like a loving sister. As the entity gazed at her, she could see her eyelids gaping ever so slightly open, and she was even murmuring.
"Max? Is that you?" Delight coursed through her like pixie dust.
The girl just murmuring even more as a reply, a better sign, she hoped.
Outside, Chloe, as well as everyone else, could feel their struggle becoming easier to handle. Their hold on the present was now easier to maintain. The punk found that she was able to turn her head at last towards the diner, as well as loosen her rock-hard stance just a tad, and so did the others.
Their situation seemed to be improving, but Rachel had to be sure. She scanned Max's vital signs, only to find that it wasn't the case, at least for her physical health. Inside her head, there was a hemorrhage swelling in the center of her brain.
Rachel's glimmer of hope burned up like a ball of paper.
Max's seizures, combing with her powers, had stressed her to the point that it ruptured a vessel, and there was no way even she could fix that.
At long last, Max's seizure settled and ceased. Time had pulled itself back together. Everyone could move normally again, though they all lingered, shaken from their individual traumas.
"What… the fuck… was that!?" Frank bellowed through panted breaths.
Chloe, clutching her knees as she was coming to. Even the paramedics had yet to budge while they tried as well to process. Their stretcher was strewn on the pavement, having dropped it during the ordeal.
Rachel soon enough noticed the paramedics lingering outside. Maybe hope wasn't all lost, but she wasn't optimistic that they could help her either. All she knew was that Max needed to be on life-support now , as in right this second.
Settling for her backup plan, Rachel embraced the other brunette one last time before she lifted her shirt up.
If she could transfer her powers into Max, then perhaps she could channel some of her essence into her bloodstream to at least stabilize her a little longer. She couldn't be certain, but she had to try.
"Here, Max." Rachel planted a soft kiss on her forehead.
With that, Rachel firmly yet gently bored her fingers, her palm, then her wrist, through her chest like gel until she literally had her hand clasped over the girl's heart. "This is all I can help you with for now."
Though still half-conscious, Max sounded a gasp as though her soul had returned itself to her body. She looked into Rachel's eyes once more before passing out again.
Finally, the entity could relax and smile upon the girl. "Hang in there." Feeling her own stability faltering due to this process, Rachel sucked it in and allowed her being to disperse into embers and float out through the exit. "We'll see each other again, I promise."
And so, she went, leaving her fate to the paramedics who finally pulled themselves together and rushed inside to scoop the girl's body onto their stretcher and carried her back outside.
"Let me through!" Chloe barged through the gathered onlookers so she could get her glimpse of her beloved, and hopefully get to touch her as well. When she made it to the front, only to be held back, there she saw her best friend strapped to the board as it was quickly moved into the ambulance.
"Max!" Her heart dented at her horrid complexion. She looked like a corpse. "Is she okay?" She asked one of the medics, but got no answer. "Answer me!"
David came by and pulled her away as the back doors were shut on her. The siren blared as the vehicle drove off. "Please, God. No!"
When Chloe was brought back to her mother, she fell into her arms, her legs giving way. Joyce held her tighter than she ever could and patted her back for as long as it would take.
"Tell me she's gonna make it!" Chloe sobbed into her shoulder.
"It's okay, honey."
"I hate myself!"
Chloe lifted her slimed face up. "W—We have to go see her!" Chloe hiccupped like a broken child. "I w—want my friend back!"