The Metropolis Series #2: Quinn Beyond Bounds
31. Time Travel Mechanics

HERE’S A FRIGHTENING THOUGHT: Cassandra’s plan was brilliant. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how meticulously everything had been laid out.

She could have succeeded.

Our story would have been close to an ending, a tragedy marking the last few pages. But I hope you guys still remember how I signed off the last time:

It only gets better.

However, before we could get to that, things must only get worse.

But don’t worry.

I wasn’t saying this just because I had almost met my dead-end with Ice Cream Curtis being the monster he really was. Going back to the foreboding realms of Mackenzie’s control room, Cassandra had put on such a display by taking over Viv’s body and fatally shooting Julio with one of Mackenzie’s arrows.

That was the first step.

The second step was bringing me into the twisted world she had claimed to create. Whether or not Ice Cream Curtis was lying, I could feel that Cassandra had all intentions of trapping me in for good.

I assumed this was because she wanted to resume her rightful place in the Metropolis by getting rid of me, but then, she wanted to destroy the Metropolis, too.

So what did she want to achieve, really?

At that time, I didn’t have the luxury to muse on those things. Instead, I had unknowingly found one of the two escape routes from Cassandra’s world.

The first route was Julio.

He had appeared out of the blue when Ice Cream Curtis attacked, shoving me out of the way. When I hit the ground, the entirety of the parlor had dissolved, and I realized that I was back in Mackenzie’s control room in the dark recesses of the Spanish House.

I would later learn that if someone else were to make an attempt to save me, it wouldn’t have worked. Julio had known Cassandra better than anyone else in the Spanish House, even better than Harumi. In fact, in one of our later conversations, he would tell me that he had gone to her world before.

And he had managed to escape.

Cassandra had injured Julio of all people so that no one would be able to save me, but this was where her plan had failed. She had underestimated Julio’s persistence.

Meanwhile, everything flashed before me so quickly that I wasn’t able to process it all. Before I knew it, Julio stood up to face a threat that had been on its way to clobber me.

And it wasn’t Ice Cream Curtis at all.

I saw that the attacker was wearing a St. John’s uniform, and it was only when he had received a blow to the head and collapsed on the floor that I was able to distinguish who he was.

It was Derek.

“Go, get out of here!” Julio then screamed, his eyes locking with Takahiro’s.

Takahiro looked like he was collecting all of his willpower to speak.

“No,” he said. “I’m not leaving you behind!”

“Get reinforcements!” Julio said, ignoring his statement. “Go. Now!”

Takahiro didn’t argue anymore. He rushed out and disappeared behind the metal doors.

Julio himself collapsed, too. His eyes were hazy, and his body was limp. That was when I noticed the stain of blood on his shoulder blade was more prominent, and that his face was going pale. He was fighting against his injuries.

“Julio!” I called, rushing to his side.

Julio said nothing. He was too weak to respond.

“T—turn into a dove, Julio,” I urged. “That will help you, right?”

Before I got a response, I was startled by a monstrous growl coming from behind me. I looked back to replace Viv sitting in a corner. She hugged her knees as her face filled with pure shock and horror. The poor girl might have been traumatized; Cassandra had taken over her body, too, and I could imagine the emotional stress she might have been going through. Meanwhile, Mackenzie guarded her against a looming figure that slowly approached them.

Derek, now corrupted with his eyes glowing red, had spotted his new targets.

What had happened while I was out? Well, from the looks of it, a lot. The glass window that had once kept Derek at bay was now nothing but shards on the floor. My eyes grew wide. If Derek alone was able to break out of the torture room, then why wasn’t the entire student body able to break through the band room’s window when they had turned into zombies themselves?

I remembered that particular day (or timeline, if you prefer). Bree, Curtis, Rachael, Philip, and I gawked at the dreadful mass of students as they hungrily stared us down through the band room’s window. Sure, they had been able to break down the door instead, but this was the entire student body we were talking about.

If a regular-sized teenage boy had the strength to break down a glass window when corrupted, then that could mean only one thing:

These monsters were getting stronger.

“Hey ugly!” Tamara called. Her voice was shaky, but she held on tightly to her ax as Derek turned to face her, his red eyes glowing fervently with anger.

“Over here!” Tamara called again. She waved her ax in the air as Derek lunged and attacked. She dodged with such agility, moving swiftly away from the monster’s claws.

Then, something occurred to me. Tamara and Mackenzie had apprehended the Spanish House’s attackers, who happened to be Derek, a classmate of mine who Cassandra had proudly used as her meat puppet. When Cassandra had taken over Viv’s body, there was a question she had asked Mackenzie that slipped through my mind at first. It was evident that she was just trying to get into Mackenzie’s head, but there was more to it than I had initially thought.

Were you right bringing him here? Cassandra had asked, pertaining to Derek. Have you not thought about the consequences of bringing him beyond bounds?

Her plan did not begin when she struck Julio with an arrow—it began at the arcade when she attacked Derek.

She had deliberately brought him here, outside the Metropolis’ bounds, only to replace a new way to corrupt the Author’s most precious work. It was similar to how Julio and Viv turned into doves in the alleyway. In addition to being injured, they could only maintain their physical forms for a limited amount of time.

Beyond the Metropolis’ bounds, Derek had met his time limit.

Tamara had knocked Derek unconscious, sending a kick straight to his jaw, and when everyone thought it was over, he began to stir once more, standing tall with red glowing eyes. Tamara would have been unlucky if Mackenzie hadn’t stepped in and sent an arrow straight to the monster’s gut. Her forehead trickled with sweat as Derek met the ground again, landing by the pile of shards on the floor.

“They’re regenerating too quickly…” Mackenzie said. She was out of breath. Who knew how many times she had to fight this thing?

“What are we gonna do?” Tamara asked. “We can’t fight them off forever! We can use your computer to alter them, right? We can type up some prose to make them disappear.”

Mackenzie stared grimly at her mismatched monitors, a few word documents flickering across the screen. “We tried that… with Cassandra…” she began. “Nothing worked. These corruptions… they seem to have rules of their own…”

Both girls flashed a concerned look toward Julio, who remained motionless on the ground. He tried to speak, but his voice came out in raspy little mutterings that shrouded all context and meaning. He was trying to tell them something for sure, but they couldn’t quite get it, and neither could I. In the end, Julio’s words became less of a priority when Derek stood up again, and he faced Mackenzie and Tamara with a glare in his eyes and a scowl on his face. His fists were clenched, and he had the stance of a warrior.

“Oh crud,” Tamara muttered.

And Mackenzie and Tamara would have to fight them off. Again.

And again.

And again…

I felt hopeless. I didn’t know what to do. If only I could fight, but I couldn’t. My only hope was my super unreliable time-manipulating powers—which had pretty much only saved me from a volleyball at gym class.

I needed to activate my powers, but how? I tried to concentrate, but nothing seemed to work. I needed to rewind time so badly; I couldn’t replace any other way out of this mess.

I had to think. In all instances where I was able to make major changes in the timeline, what was common?

The first time it happened, I had passed out running away from a bunch of zombies in school. The second time, I had passed out again after the storage shed incident. The third time… I passed out… yet again… when I lost too much blood from an injury in my arm…

So, I needed to… pass out? How was I supposed to do that voluntarily?

I then had an idea.

“Julio?” I called, lightly tapping his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

He groaned, looking at my direction. His eyes were half-open, but I knew that he was truly attentive.

“So,” I began. “If I type up something on that computer, it’ll materialize, right?”

“Quinn…” Julio stammered. His breathing was all over the place as he winced from the pain. “You cannot defeat those monsters with—”

“I know,” I sighed. (Seriously, though, why did everything have to be so complicated in?) “Mackenzie just mentioned it, but I have a plan. You have to trust me.”

And with that, he simply nodded, his head going limp.

I rushed to the computer. Derek clawed Mackenzie across the stomach, and she curled up on the floor as she was too severely injured to move. Tamara wasn’t so lucky, either. The boy had her cornered as she tripped over a pile of junk. Meanwhile, Viv was still in a state of shock. She stared straight into nothingness; she hadn’t stirred since.

I heard the room’s metal door open. The reinforcements Takahiro had gathered arrived. Hopefully, though, their services would no longer be needed.

I placed my hands on the keyboard, typing the words:

And Quinn Vasquez passes out.

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