Edward Graves: Temporal Detective
Chapter 33: Tidying Up

Under Melanie’s leadership, the Systems Operators and Security Team soon had the security protocols up and running again. After that, dealing with the remaining Black Glove agents was fairly easy. With the Wash Ships taken out, Hayden Crawlfield dead and Harbinger missing, they didn’t put up much of a fight.

Slowly the chaos gave way to order, as prisoners were processed and damage was assessed and repaired.

Edward and Jessica assisted with the cleanup operation and oversaw the retrieval of Crawlfield’s body as well as the search for Harbinger. His body couldn’t be found, which led Edward to theorise that he had actually fallen into The Furnace. Nobody was certain what that meant, The Furnace was much more dangerous than regular Timespace; it was all of Timespace compressed into a single point. Some thought that he would have been killed by the temporal stress, others believed that he could have been torn apart and scattered throughout all of time. But then there was also the other possibility – that he had survived and wound up somewhere out there, in time and space. Edward didn’t think that was likely, but said that he didn’t want to dismiss the idea completely. He didn’t mention what Jessica did – the blast of Temporal Energy – and neither did she. She wasn’t sure what it meant exactly, but she didn’t feel like it was the right time to talk to Edward about it. He put on a brave face, but he’d been shaken to the core.

Three hours after the fight in the Furnace, the Council were ready for a debriefing. Edward said that he’d rather put his head through a sausage grinder and, truth be told, a few of the councillors would have preferred that too. But they made him go anyway.

Thankfully though, Edward convinced them to spare Jessica the ordeal, something which she was grateful for. She wandered through The Watch until she found a quiet little rest area that Edward had told her about. After everything that had gone on, she just really wanted to grab a hot cup of tea and unwind, maybe even have a nap.

She passed through the dull metal doors as they hissed open, with her Styrofoam cup of tea clasped in her hand. It was a spacious but simple room with leather couches and benches lining the walls and a table sitting in the middle. The far wall however was mostly occupied by a large window through which the Earth could be seen, suspended amongst the eerie stillness of space and washed with the blue light of Timespace. It looked so beautiful.

Sitting on a leather, backless bench, looking out at the planet below, was Melanie. She was hugging one leg against her body while the other one lay stretched out on the couch. She looked morose and pensive.

Jessica didn’t really know what to say, so she took Edward’s advice and started with, “Hello.”

“Hi,” replied Melanie without really looking up.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” said Melanie.

For nearly a minute the two girls sat there without a word, just looking out at the planet below.

“It’s beautiful down there isn’t it?” said Jessica. “I mean, we’re looking at a single moment of the Earth’s history, frozen forever. Just think of all of the people down there, locked in a perpetual state of joy or sorrow or birth or...”

“Death,” continued Melanie.

Jessica frowned and looked down at her steaming tea. “Edward and I heard about Solomon,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend that I knew him well, but he was a good guy and he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“Does anybody?” scoffed Melanie.

Jessica hesitated, “Would you like to talk about it?”

Melanie scowled, “Oh sure and then maybe we can be besties and we can paint each other’s nails and talk about boys.”

Jessica had never been very good with these situations so instead of saying something that upset her further, she opted to take a sip of her tea. Unfortunately nerves turned that sip into more of a gulp and unfortunately the tea was still very, very hot and unfortunately her body reacted to that heat by spurting that tea all over Melanie.

“What the hell?” she screamed, springing to her feet.

“Sorry, hot, hot,” panted Jessica as she used her hands to fan her exposed tongue.

The scowl on Melanie’s face stretched into a smile and she began to laugh. Despite the tea in her hair and on her face, she laughed hysterically. Despite her stinging tongue, Jessica managed to join in the laughter, as best as she could anyway.

The two girls laughed and laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. Then Jessica realised that Melanie’s tears were flowing faster than her own and without any sign of transition, her faced morphed from laughter to weeping. She pressed her face into her shaking hands and howled with grief.

“Hey,” said Jessica, as she put an arm around her shoulder, “it’s alright, just let it out.”

She let go of Melanie for a moment to produce a hanky from her satchel and offered it to her. She took it with a trembling hand and wiped her eyes. Her tears eased a little.

“Great,” said Melanie, “there goes my tough girl reputation.”

“I don’t know,” said Jessica, “with that running eyeliner you still look pretty scary to me.”

Melanie smiled a tear-stained smile and handed the hanky back to Chrystal. “Thanks.”

“I should thank you for not blowing your nose on it,” said Jessica.

They both laughed again. Not as long or hard as before, but genuine, healing laughter nonetheless.

The laughter slowly died down and was replaced by the particular brand of awkward silence, that exists once laughter has faded away.

“You know, I could have been you,” said Melanie.

Jessica cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“I could have been Edward’s partner.” She took a deep breath. “When I was about twelve my parents were murdered, they were both Archaics and Edward investigated.”

“My god, I’m so sorry,” said Jessica. She was surprised, not only by what she had just said, but by the fact that she had said it at all. It was like, in a single instant, her walls had come tumbling down and all of that repressed emotion had come flooding out, desperate to be received by somebody.

Melanie kept talking, as if she were worried that if she were to stop, she wouldn’t be able to start again.

“They were good, honest people, my parents. Both Archaics, but they weren’t really involved with The Watch or the Council, they just lived out a normal life, raising me, running their little shop.” She paused for a moment, her head bowed. “The guy who killed them was a psycho and a serial killer, but he wasn’t an Archaic, he was a Linear. So naturally, the Council didn’t want to get involved - they said that they couldn’t interfere with Linear affairs.”

The sadness in her voice was replaced by anger. “They even had the audacity to say that if my parents had worked for the Watch then they still would have still been alive.” Melanie scoffed, “They think that all Archaics should just live on this heap of junk for eternity and not bother with something trivial like a normal life. Mum and dad never liked that idea,” she said with a soft smile.

“So how did Edward get involved?” asked Jessica.

“The same way he usually does, he heard the gossip. Two Archaics murdered in their own home, an orphaned child, the Temporal Council refusing to intervene, how could he resist?”

“That sounds like him alright,” said Jessica.

“He caught the guy,” said Melanie, leaning back on her hands and looking up at the ceiling. “But since the Council refused to put him on trial, he had to be a little more creative.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just made sure that the Linear police were able to catch him. He may have messed with time a little bit, helped them replace bits of evidence which would have otherwise gone unnoticed, that sort of thing.” She smiled and wiped away a stray tear. “Plus, I hear that he may have given the creep a...well, a talking to. I’m not really clear on the details, but he scared the guy, I mean really terrified him. And he made it clear that if he somehow escaped or weaselled his way out of prison, or hurt anybody ever again, then Edward would replace him.”

“I was so in love with him after that,” she continued. “Not love, love, but you know? I was only eight and he was this superhero that came in and caught the bad guy who killed my parents. I was amazed by him, I looked up to him. He taught me to laugh again and was the first adult who seemed to genuinely understand me - the first person to really make me feel like everything would be alright.”

Jessica smiled, “He has that effect on people.”

“Yeah he does. Anyway, he kept checking up on me, organised to have me study at the Watch but also to live with a guardian in my own time so that I could receive a traditional education. He’d visit me from time to time and brought me presents, took me on trips, that sort of thing. But it was tough for me; I had a lot of anger, guilt and grief swirling around inside of my head and for a prepubescent girl, that’s a dangerous thing.”

“I started getting into fights, started running away and doing whatever I could to make other people feel at least a fraction of the pain which I felt. By the time I was fifteen I had been to three different high schools and the Temporal Council were going to throw me out of the Archaic Training Program. Edward tried to talk to me, tried to help me but I didn’t want help. I told him that if he wanted to help me then he could make me his partner and let me work with him. He seemed to honesty think about it and then he told me that if I could make it through high school and the training program without causing too much more trouble, then he’d consider it.”

“So did you?” asked Jessica.

“I managed to not get kicked out of anywhere again, if that’s what you mean. But I still had some trouble - a fight here and there, usually brought on by somebody else. But I was genuinely trying and my marks, both Linear and Archaic were pretty damn good. But on my graduation day for the Archaic program, Edward was there and I asked him whether I had proved myself. He told me that he was proud of me but that I just had too much anger inside of me and until I could master that, then he couldn’t take me on as a partner, it would be too dangerous for me. Pfft, it’s easy to judge when your parents weren’t murdered four days after your eighth birthday.”

A heavy silence hung between them for a long while, before Jessica felt the overwhelming need to break it.

“Melanie I,” she began before Melanie held up her hand to stop her.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t apologise or say, that you understand - I don’t want that. It’s true that I can’t bear the fact that he chose you and not me, and yes when we first met, I resented you for that. But I know that it’s not your fault. If he chose you, then there must be something special about you that he saw, probably something that you’re not even aware of. Just do me a favour, alright?”

“Anything,” said Jessica.

“Take care of him and take care of yourself too. I want you to prove to me and to him that he chose the right girl for the job.” She smiled a devious little smile. “Because if it turns out that he chose a little princess over a bad-ass like me, then I’m going to have to kick your ass you understand?”

Jessica gently placed a hand on her shoulder, leant in and with a smile she whispered, “I’d like to see you try Emo chick.”

They both laughed again and in that moment Jessica had the nagging feeling that, despite their differences, she had just made a new friend.

Jessica left the room and Melanie to go in search of Edward. It exactly didn’t take her long, since he was standing right outside in the corridor.

“What are you loitering around here for? Were you spying on me?”

“Do you really take me for the type to spy on young girls?” he asked, pretending to be offended. Then, more seriously, he said, “How is she?”

“About as well as you could hope,” said Jessica. “I can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through right now.”

“You’ve been through a lot too,” said Edward. “You’ve seen people killed right in front of you as well and even though they weren’t friends, you still have every right to upset by that. So if you feel like talking, my ears are at your service.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I’m Ok. No, really, I am.”

They walked side by side down the corridor, though Jessica had no idea where they were going. She thought that Edward probably didn’t either.

“So, how did the debriefing go? You weren’t in there for very long.”

Edward shrugged. “There wasn’t much to say really. I told them I’d have my official report in by Monday. I didn’t actually specify which Monday, though. I’ll pick a nice one. Out of the hundreds of trillions of Mondays that exist, there must be at least one nice one out there,” he said thoughtfully.

“Maybe they’ll start taking you a little more seriously now.”

“Oh I wouldn’t want anybody to do that,” said Edward.

“I mean, maybe they’ll listen to you now. You were right about The Watch being attacked, so surely that’ll change their opinion of you.”

“And maybe it’ll start raining sugar plums and mince pies, but it probably won’t. The Council’s opinion of me has nothing to do with what I do or say, it’s all about what I am.”

“You mean, immortal?”

Edward cast a sidelong glance, down at her. “In part. They think that I’m an abomination; a monster; an unnatural event; a paradox; a dangerous anomaly. And that’s just the ones who like me!” He shook his head and smiled. “It’s OK, I don’t need them to like me, I just need them to stay out of my way and to let me have my freedom as a free agent; a private investigator. In return, I round up the bad guys whom they don’t want to waste their time with. It’s an uneasy relationship, but it works.”

They kept walking for a little longer, with Edward making casual chatter and stupid jokes. But he never once brought up what took place in the Furnace; the man who had called out to Edward with such animalistic fury. Jessica couldn’t stop thinking about him, or about the powers which she had seen Edward wield, nor how emotionally assaulted he had seemed by the whole experience.

Looking at him now, talking and laughing, she wouldn’t have guessed that just a few hours ago, he had been slumped on the floor with tears welling in his eyes. He was good at wearing a mask. She supposed that living for four hundred and fifty three years would have given him a lot of experience.

“Edward,” she said reluctantly, “can we talk about what happened down in the Furnace?”

He stopped in his tracks and then turned to her, resting his hands on his cane. His face was hard to read. Jessica was unsure whether it was an invitation to speak, or a polite refusal to talk about the subject.

“Yes, I suppose that I do owe you some explanations.” He sighed. “That man who came through the portal, his name is Alexander Tooms, better known as-”

“Xander,” finished Jessica. “Sorry, I saw a picture of him at Archie’s place, along with the rest of the Second Hand. Archie filled me in on some of the details.”

“Oh,” said Edward. “Oh, I see. How much detail did he give you exactly?”

“Not much, really. Just that you and Xander were like brothers, but something happened. He didn’t really elaborate.”

“Right,” said Edward.

They found another vacant rest area without too much trouble, it seemed that everyone was far too busy to rest. Edward made them both a cup of tea and then sat her down to tell her about Xander.

“I was orphaned at a young age,” he said, blowing on his steaming tea. “I was taken in by an English lord, who also happened to be an Archaic and a very well respected one at that.”

“So you weren’t born into privilege,” said Jessica.

“Not at all. My father owned a bookshop, coincidentally. We were well off, very much middle-class. But my adoptive father – boy, now he was loaded!” He took a sip of tea. “But I digress. A few years after he took me in, he took Xander in. We were the same age and he was also a budding Archaic who had just lost his parents.”

“So you became adoptive brothers.”

“Oh yes, but we were so much more than that. We were best friends and as close as two people could be. We were survivors of tragedy, both thrown into worlds that we scarcely understood and being taught to harness power that we could hardly believe.”

“So, what happened to him?”

Edward frowned. “Not everyone can survive tragedy and keep their soul at the same time. Some people become tainted, even if they aren’t aware of it. For years, Xander tried to fight the anger and pain inside of him; he tried to bury it. But all that did was make it grow and fester, until one day it exploded to the surface.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking and remembering. “He wanted to change time, to stop his parents from dying. More than that, he wanted to be able to control time, to shape it as he saw fit. He thought that he could rewrite time and make the world a better place - that was his life-long ambition. Nobody really worried about it until he found a way to do it.”

“The Alpha Point,” guessed Jessica.

“Gold star,” said Edward. “He thought that if were able to reach the Alpha Point, he could tap into it and not only see all of time before him, but control it as well.”

“So you stopped him. You didn’t want to, but he didn’t leave you any choice, right? You tried to reason with him; convince him that nobody should wield that power, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Edward lowered his head and a shadow fell over his face. “I followed him through the Furnace and, just as we reached the Alpha Point, I slapped a pair of stasis cuffs on him. I was going to bring him back, but the Alpha Point, it was...there aren’t any words to describe it. I was mesmerised and horrified at the same time, it was beautiful and terrifying and the pain was just too much.” He exhaled silently. “To this day, I can’t remember how I returned. I just remember waking up on the floor of the Furnace control room with the blue light dancing over my face. And Xander was gone. I assumed that he was dead, but I always had my suspicions, a feeling that he was still alive and in eternal torment, because of me.”

“Why didn’t you go back and check?”

“I wanted to, but the Council forbade me and put measures in place to block off the Alpha and Omega Points, preventing something like this from happening again. It was around about then that they stopped trusting me.”

“That was when you became immortal?”

He nodded.

“And what about those other powers?”

“When I came back, strange things started happening to me. Time distortions, unnatural fluctuations in Timespace, that sort of thing. I quickly realised that I could actually control Timespace, and by extension, control time itself. I tried to keep it secret, but the Council found out and pretty soon they were cutting me up and running experiments on me. That’s how they discovered that I was immortal too.”

Jessica cringed at the thought. “That’s horrible!”

“I know, I was there. It wasn’t so bad though, well, OK, it was, but it gave me a new scale to measure all future pain and suffering on, so that was pretty cool. Naturally, I eventually decided that I didn’t like being treated as an undying lab experiment, so I escaped and spent the next few centuries travelling, training, learning and all the while seething with anger. But, I think that’s a story for another time.”

“Edward, I’m sorry, your life – it’s been...”

“Pretty amazing, right?” Suddenly, he was smiling and looking like his usual self. “Sure, I’ve had some rough spots – nobody should have to see what their internal organs look like – but, hey, it’s the bad times that make the good times matter. Don’t pity me Jessica, I’m far too amazing to be pitied.”

“Wow, you really have been humbled by your life experiences.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Something I’m still not clear on. If you’ve got these super timey-wimey powers, why don’t you use them more? I can think of at least a half a dozen times since we’ve met, that they would have come in handy.”

“Because I stand by my beliefs, Jessica. I believe that time is an awesome force that needs to be treated with respect. I believe that nobody should have control over time and that includes myself. I’ll use my abilities when absolutely necessary, but never before that point. Every time I use that power I feel like a hypocrite and in the process, I dishonour Xander’s memory. Besides, it doesn’t take much for an ability to become a crutch and I would much prefer to rely on my intelligence, cunning and remarkable problem solving capabilities, than any sort of superpower. Time-travel none-withstanding, of course.”

Jessica felt so much closer to Edward than she had before. It spoke volumes that he felt comfortable with divulging so much to her and she was truly grateful for his trust and faith in her.

She looked down at her right hand, the tingling long since subsided. She knew that she had to tell him about what happened earlier.

“Edward,” she said, still looking at her hand, “back at the Furnace, when Harbinger fell over the railing...”

“You hit him with a blast of Temporal Energy,” said Edward.

“You saw it?”

“I’m a detective, I see everything, even if I’m a little bit out of sorts.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Edward shrugged, “It’s been a busy day and besides, I knew that you’d talk to me about it when you were ready.”

“So what does this mean, how did it happen?”

Edward leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’d say that your exposure to the Alpha Point through the Furnace, triggered similar changes in you as it did in me.”

Jessica’s eyes grew wide with worry. “Do you think that means that I’m immortal too?”

“It’s hard to say,” he said, rubbing his chin. “You didn’t actually visit the Alpha Point, as I did, so you might not be affected in the same way. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I’ll just have to broaden your training to include your new abilities.”

Jessica looked down at her hands and thought about the feeling of power that she’d felt before. But she also thought of Edward and his cursed life and she hoped beyond hope that she wouldn’t have to share the same fate.

They spent a lot of time at The Watch over the next week, sitting in on interrogations, taking part in hearings and enquiries and overseeing security debriefings. The Council seemed to hold Edward in a slightly higher regard now and even extended the same courtesy to Jessica.

Then, of course, there were the funerals. Thirty-seven people had died during the attack and Jessica and Edward attended every single funeral and memorial. For Jessica though, the only one that carried any real emotional weight was Solomon’s. She realised that she had hardly known him – she had met him once and they’d hardly even spoken. But maybe that was what cut the deepest wound – the sense that comes from being touched by a life, but having never fully known that life.

Melanie was at the funeral too. So were Ahmed, Archie and the twins. It felt like they all shared a bond now, like old army buddies. The night of the funeral, they went to the Chrono-Logic, along with some others from the Watch, and they raised their glasses to Solomon’s memory. Gradually, the mood lifted and sorrow gave way to joy as, for the first time since the attack, they were able to actually celebrate their victory. They talked and laughed and danced and sang – watching Edward sing Barbie Girl on the Karaoke machine was something she’d never forget.

Despite the danger that she’d faced over the preceding weeks, Jessica felt something that she’d never felt before. For the first time in her life, Jessica really felt like she was part of something. She belonged somewhere and she felt like she had a purpose in life.

And it made her feel happy.