War Machines

26

     They put me on trial for war crimes, including what had happened at Jefferson Plains and the man I'd killed after I'd caught them torturing Zeke. I wasn't surprised. After all that had happened, the world needed answers and someone to blame. They had the latter in Leader, but I had my work cut out for me not to have them add Ezekiel the Pilgrim and me to that list.

     I told them everything. The world learned what the rift really was. They learned how two Enhanced had joined their energies to tear apart the very fabric of time and space to reach our world. They learned of the time loop the twins had created, the endless cycle of violence and destruction that destroyed the world again and again. And they learned how one of those two had rejected the ambitions of the other, making his pilgrimage to try to save a timeline where he was never born.

     "It made a correction in the timeline," I explained. "I've come to learn that similar events were happening all over the world with the creepers. Once the rift was sealed, the first thing that happened was that no one could access rift energy. But there was a much larger force at work. Time itself was being rewritten, dragged back onto the path it was always meant to go. But in that timeline, the Numans were never born. They never wiped out humanity, never fought each other over resources, and never created the living weapons. That's why the creepers all started to disappear."

     I'd seen the news footage, the images of creepers simply fading out of existence. They didn't all fade out immediately. Some seemed fine, at first. They had no more access to rift energy and didn't seem to know what to do, but they were still strong and tough. Most of them had been put down immediately, a few captured. The captured few were aging rapidly. Soon they'd all be dead.

     It had stumped scientists. The only thing they'd been able to come up with was that every one of the surviving creepers had been in possession of some object from our Earth. The going theory was that this connection with an object from our time had served as a kind of anchor, grounding them to our timeline. Then, without the rift energy that had kept them alive for centuries, they were finally feeling the effects of time on their bodies. It was as good a theory as any.

     "And what of Ezekiel the Pilgrim?" I was asked.

     "Ezekiel the Pilgrim was not immune to the effects of the timeline shifting," I reported. I was amazed at how well I was able to control my emotions. "When Leader captured us, he took Ezekiel's weapons and armor, intending to break Ezekiel and force him to comply with his will. The Pilgrim never used weapons other than the blades he fought with. Leader either didn't know about the weapons I kept, didn't believe I would be able to fight back, or simply didn't feel I was enough of a threat to completely disarm, especially since he left me restrained. But when Leader died, it ensured that his timeline would never come to be. That's when it hit them. Based on what I've learned, that's when it hit all over the world. The Pilgrim had taken supplies from our world that hadn't been taken from him when we were captured, but after his portal emptied, he no longer had them. When the timeline shifted, Zeke didn't have anything from our world to help ground him. So he..." I stopped, the sudden lump in my throat making it impossible for me to continue.

     "Operative J of Alpha Group, are you saying that Ezekiel the Pilgrim faded away, as the other creepers did?"

     "He didn't have anything to anchor him," I repeated, gripping the edge of the table. "There was nothing to keep him in the timeline. But maybe that's better. The Enhanced were created before the other creepers. If I'd had to watch him age and die before my eyes the way the surviving creepers are? I don't know if I could have handled that."

     "I understand you were with child?"

     That brought another lump. My hand moved to rest on my belly. "I traveled through radiation and temporal rifts. I fought. I went through an Overdrive that wasn't as harsh on my body as the one I knew but was still an Overdrive. What pregnancy could have survived all of that, even if it wasn't sired by a man who had never been born?"