256 Time Traveller [Nick/Guesswork]
256 Time Traveller [Nick/Guesswork]
Griffin did not wait for further explanation. She shifted fully into her namesake form, feathers and fur rippling as wings expanded wide enough to cast a shadow over the ruined factory.
“Come,” she said.
She launched upward, gale-force winds spiraling beneath her. I wrapped an arm around her midsection as she accelerated, the shockwave cracking loose debris from the structure below. Her speed increased sharply once we cleared the conflict zone.
The continent sprawled beneath us in fractured patches of smoke and distant artillery flashes.
“How about the civil war you just left?” I asked over the rushing wind. “I can help.”
“It’s fine,” she replied without looking back. “I have it handled. The old powers here are just uncooperative.”
Old powers again.
“You handle the outside,” she continued. “I handle the inside. That’s our arrangement, isn’t it? Besides, this is more important.”
Her tone left no room for debate.
We crossed open sea and descended toward a lone island crowned by a single light tower. The sun stood high and merciless. Even from above, I could feel the heat radiating off the stone.
We landed near the tower’s entrance.
The air shimmered.
I phased off the thermal transfer instinctively, intangibility filtering heat from my body until the environment became irrelevant. Griffin folded her wings and shifted back partially, talons retracting as she moved toward the door.
“Let’s go,” she said.
The interior was abandoned. Dust layered the steps. Rust crept along metal railings. No signs of recent habitation.
We climbed to the top.
He was waiting.
Guesswork sat comfortably on a broken wooden chair, one leg splintered beneath him but somehow still balancing. His posture was relaxed, almost amused.
There was a bloody hole in his forehead, like someone put a bullet in him.
He smiled as if greeting old friends. “Finally. I’ve been waiting for ages.”
I tapped my smartwatch automatically, initiating a secure line.
Griffin caught my wrist. “I already checked,” she said. “I called him while talking to this one. I brought you to confirm with your abilities.”
My psychic suite had long since merged into my intangibility framework, but it remained more than capable of perceiving inconsistencies. I stepped forward and grabbed his face, intending to possess him and tear through his memories.
My hand passed through him.
Guesswork chuckled. “You’re not there yet, buddy. You can’t touch me. I’m a temporal echo. A projection bleeding backward from a future point.”
He leaned back slightly, as if enjoying my confusion.
“It would be convenient if you could just read my memories,” he continued. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I’m only able to cheat time right now because I got lucky. It’s a gamble.”
I stared at the hole in his forehead. The blood had dried unnaturally, frozen in a state that did not decay.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
He raised a finger and casually inserted it into the wound, wiggling it slightly.
“Oh, this?” he said lightly. “I died. That’s what happened.”
Griffin’s feathers bristled. “Are you going to ask us to save you?”
He laughed.
“Hell no. That would waste everything I’ve done to reach this point. Even now, my other self is probably working very hard. Doing the heavy lifting. No offense, Nick, but you’re not that smart. The other me can’t risk exposing himself.”
I ignored the jab.
I extended my perception instead.
Intangibility allowed me to see layered qualities. Material. Psychic. Conceptual. What stood before me was neither fully present nor fully absent. He existed as a fixed imprint anchored to a specific moment, bleeding backward along a narrow corridor of probability.
“He’s not lying,” I said.
At least, that was what my power conveyed. There was no deception in the structure of his projection.
Griffin turned back to him. “This claim of time travel. How is this possible? Is it a power?”
“Nope,” Guesswork said lightly, though there was strain beneath it. “You don’t need to know. It’s irrelevant to you. I’m destined to die, and that’s it. As for this ‘time travel’ thing? It’s an imitation at best. I’m a psychic or temporal echo projected into the past. Nothing more.”
The wind through the broken windows tugged at his coat, though his body did not truly respond to physics.
“Let’s focus on what matters,” he continued. “I’m here to give the two of you the kick you need. Because you need it.”
“We have time to get our facts straight,” I replied evenly.
“No, we don’t.” He grimaced. “I’m on the clock. My existence here can’t be maintained for long. The more I’m observed, the faster I unravel.”
Griffin’s wings twitched. “That’s bullshit.”
“He’s telling the truth,” I said quietly.
My perception showed it clearly. His structure frayed at the edges whenever our attention fixed on him. Observation destabilized the echo.
Griffin folded her arms. “Then get on with it. If your time is so precious, stop stalling.”
Guesswork laughed, a genuine sound despite the hole in his forehead. “That’s unfair. It’s still my life, you know? Indulge me a little. Anyway, how’s my family, Nick?”
“They’ll be taken care of,” I answered. “I already made arrangements.”
He nodded, satisfied, then turned to Griffin. “You. I’d appreciate it if the GDF also kept an eye on them. There’s an orphanage in Median. I relocated them about a year ago. Some of the brats have powers. They get starry-eyed talking about heroes. You’ll look after them too, right? Amelia?”
Her expression softened despite herself. “I will.”
As expected, Guesswork secured every base he could before addressing the abyss. On a moral scale, the GDF was more trustworthy than the Company. If there were powered children in that orphanage, the Company’s future might tempt recruitment. At its core, my organization was still a support network for criminal activity, no matter how polished it appeared.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “I appreciate that.”
His posture straightened.
“There are three things you need to remember. First, never let the Guesswork of this world, or anyone else, learn about this conversation. There are eyes behind him. If this leaks, we’re finished.”
I felt Griffin tense beside me.
“Second,” he continued, looking directly at her, “Amelia, you need to die. Fake it. You’ll need the element of surprise later.”
Her eyes flashed with indignation.
“Third,” he said, turning back to me, “don’t stop at the Entity. There are bigger fish. You already suspect that. The SRC has to go.”
That hung heavier than the rest.
I studied him for a moment. “Is that all?”
He nodded.
“I understand,” I said. “You may leave.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Thank you, Nick.”
Then he vanished.
Griffin rounded on me immediately. “What was that? We could’ve asked more. Extracted timelines. Weaknesses. Anything.”
“He needed it,” I replied.
She stared at me. “Needed what?”
“To say goodbye.”
Frustration crossed her face. “Nick, he’s not dead yet in this timeline. We could have saved him.”
“We can’t.”
The certainty in my voice surprised even me.
Since my evolution, I could see souls. I could perceive when something was aligned toward an endpoint, when a thread had already been woven into the tapestry of whatever came after. Guesswork’s echo had carried that quality. Finality.
“He’s a dead man walking,” I said quietly. “We just spoke to his ghost.”
Griffin winced at my words.
“Even if we tried to change it,” I continued, “we would gain nothing beyond what he gave us. There are rules to whatever he did. Constraints. If we pull too hard, we might collapse the very future he’s trying to secure.”
She looked unconvinced. “You’re willing to gamble on that?”
“I’m willing to trust him.”
That was the uncomfortable truth.
“Right now,” I said, meeting her gaze, “I’m willing to trust Guesswork with my life.”
She exhaled slowly, still unsettled. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
The instructions replayed in my mind.
Keep this secret.
Fake Griffin’s death.
Eliminate the SRC.
A path was being laid out in fragments. Dangerous fragments.
I looked toward the horizon beyond the tower windows, sunlight glinting off the ocean’s surface.
“Guesswork is a good man,” I murmured. “Who would’ve thought?”
…
..
.
[POV: Guesswork]
I was thankful for Nick’s understanding.
For all his flaws, he compensated with instinct. Insight. The ability to grasp the shape of something without dissecting it to death. He knew when to stop pulling at threads.
That was why I chose him.
The psychic currents loosened their hold on the lighthouse and carried me elsewhere, drawn toward the minds that held me warmly. Affection was an anchor. Memory was a coordinate. I let myself drift along those emotional vectors.
Before arriving, I willed the wound in my forehead to vanish.
It took effort.
The puncture sealed. The dried blood receded. My reflection in the glass of a distant window became whole again. If this was my final visit, I refused to look like a corpse.
Median continent welcomed me with suburban quiet. Rows of modest houses. Fences in need of paint. Wind chimes and uneven sidewalks. At the edge of one such neighborhood stood Sunnyday Care.
Home.
I stepped through the front gate.
A beat passed before someone noticed.
“Sam’s here!” Sasha shouted from the yard.
Heads snapped up.
King dropped the wooden sword he had been waving. Patrick abandoned a half-built sandcastle. Tom, Haley, Dick, Robin, and three others whose names I still occasionally mixed up sprinted toward me like a stampede.
“Sam!”
“You came back!”
“Did you bring anything?”
“Tell us a story!”
They surrounded me in a chaotic orbit, hands grabbing at my jacket, voices overlapping.
Sasha tugged my sleeve, somehow able to touch me. “You said you’d show me that coin trick again!”
King puffed up proudly. “I learned how to punch faster!”
Patrick squinted at me suspiciously. “You look… weirdly tidy.”
I laughed. “Excuse you. I always look tidy.”
The front door creaked open.
Lisa stepped out, wiping her hands on a towel. “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said. “I would’ve cooked something better if I did.”
“Wow,” I replied dramatically. “Special treatment? My, my, Lisa, I might just fall for you.”
She rolled her eyes, though a faint smile betrayed her.
She looked plain in the most deliberate way possible. No makeup beyond practicality. Hair tied back. Clothes simple. To the outside world, she was unremarkable. To the children here, she was law, comfort, terror, and sanctuary rolled into one.
Whenever I visited, discipline dissolved slightly.
“Sam promised to race me!” Tom accused.
“He cheats!” Haley countered.
Robin attempted to tackle me from behind in greeting.
I sidestepped smoothly.
“Hey, watch out,” I said, laughing.
Tag broke out instantly.
Several of the older kids decided to escalate. Sasha flickered out of sight briefly, practicing her short-range blink. King hardened his skin for a split second, trying to body-check me. Dick attempted to anticipate my movements by reading micro-expressions.
Too bad.
I was always one step ahead.
“You’ll have to try harder than that,” I teased, vaulting over a low bench. “Predictive analytics, people. Think three moves ahead!”
“You’re using powers!” King protested.
“Allegedly,” I replied.
Eventually, Lisa corralled them inside for lunch.
We gathered around long tables patched and repatched over the years by someone who probably used to live here before us. Bowls of stew. Bread slightly overbaked. Juice diluted but sweet enough.
The kids laughed and talked over one another.
“Today in class—”
“King almost set off the fire alarm—”
“I didn’t!”
“Sam, do you know if heroes really get secret bases?”
“Can we visit one?”
I listened.
I did not eat.
Food would have passed through me if I tried. Better to simply enjoy the noise, the chaos, and the warmth. I contributed where I could. A joke here. A deflection there. Encouragement slipped between sentences.
At some point, I slipped away to the rooftop.
Clouds drifted lazily across a painfully blue sky. The wind was gentle. From up here, the world looked manageable.
“I knew you’d be here,” Lisa said.
She lay down beside me without ceremony.
“So,” she asked quietly, “is it today?”
“Nope,” I answered honestly. “I still have more time.”
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“Is it that obvious?”
She reached for my hand.
Her fingers passed through.
She frowned faintly. “Sam, your legs are missing.”
I looked down.
They were.
The unraveling had begun at the edges.
I laughed awkwardly. “Yeah. About that.”
Silence stretched between us for a few seconds.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
If my heart had still been operational, it would have stopped.
“Seriously,” she added, voice trembling. “I’m so lucky.”
I turned toward her.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. Ordinary Lisa. No powers. No dramatic flair. Just stubborn resilience and quiet strength. I had always found her the most beautiful person in my life.
“So,” she said after a moment, forcing a small smile. “Names?”
I thought about it.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “Sisa.”
She blinked. “Sisa?”
“The S from Sam. The Isa from Lisa. Too girly? Yeah, I’m terrible at this.”
She laughed wetly. “What if it’s a boy?”
“It won’t be,” I said with certainty I did not logically possess. “It’s going to be a girl.”
For a moment, something shifted.
A warmth.
A contact.
Lisa’s hand clasped mine.
This time, I felt it.
Her fingers wrapped around my palm as though I were fully there.
She leaned in and kissed me softly. “It’s a beautiful name.”
“Well,” I replied, voice gentler than I remembered it ever being, “you’re the boss.”
I looked at the sky one last time.
Lucky.
That was the word.
Lucky to have met her. Lucky to have had time. Lucky that even in death, I could carve out this moment.
The wind carried me apart piece by piece.
And just like that, the last of me vanished from the world.
No one would know, but I just saved the world.