Chapter Text
In an instant Dee's perception of the elementary school was cut off-- from the howls of the zombie children, the sound of Kenny's voice crying out somewhere behind her, even the floor under her feet was gone so suddenly it made her briefly dizzy. In that momentary daze, everything about the new environment started making its way through; carpeted flooring in a dark room, with the faint droning of a TV on another floor.
She was home.
Perfect.
A deep exhale of relief left her as she double-checked the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, ensuring that she had both Wendy and Kartwright's devices and nothing
odd
had happened to them during the jump. Finding them present brought reassurance.
After roaring like that, screaming in reaction to the other monsters in the school, part of her worried that the thing she felt in her guts was her body rotting from the inside. That the black shit she'd been barfing up was necrotic tissue, and that her attempt at a time fart would result in a misfire because she wasn't strong enough to do it anymore. Not a misfire like the dud she'd let go of when Wendy had called out to her, but ripping time wrong and landing somewhere and some when she didn't want to be without the ability to extract herself again.
Thankfully, it appeared that her ass was as strong as it ever was.
The sound of the TV upstairs told her that she, or rather her time twin, was sound asleep upstairs; conked the fuck out after a long night. That meant the time had to be between midnight and five in the morning. Dee had been aiming for just before five, and moved to the kitchen to peek at the microwave clock and confirm.
4:47, nailed it!
A victorious grin flashed onto her face, but it didn't get to stay long. A moment later she felt her stomach twist in a way that was becoming far too familiar, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead as she realized she was still fucking sick.
Her boots thudded up the stairs as she raced for the bathroom, hand over her mouth to try and make it to the toilet.
Dee had awoken in the middle of the night-- or maybe the early morning? There wasn't any time to check as the sound of someone being violently ill in her bathroom registered with her brain.
That wasn't right. No one else was supposed to be home right now. Her parents were in Denver, enjoying their extended date night.
She had locked the front door before going to bed, right?
The question alone sent her rocketing out of her bed, clumsy feet slipping under her as her socks offered little in the way of traction. Lurching for the doorway, she caught herself before losing balance and was able to anchor herself upright while blinking at the darkness of the upstairs landing. All the lights were off, and she could clearly hear someone worshiping at the alter of the porcelain goddess.
There was a list of people who could probably get into her house, assuming the front door had been locked. Eric was top of that list, but she couldn't imagine him breaking in just to be sick in her bathroom. No, that sounded more like Stan on a bad night. Or worse, his dad.
I swear to fuck Randy, if you're in my bathroom I'm gonna dunk you in whatever you just threw up.
If it was Stan... well, she might sock him in the shoulder before helping.
Slightly less panicked and much more awake, Dee left her bedroom doorway to cross the landing to the open bathroom door. Stocking feet moved quick and quiet, and her hand slipped around the edge of the doorway to find the light switch and turn it on.
The bathroom blazed with white light, stinging her eyes and making her hiss through her teeth as they reflexively squinted shut and teared up.
Her anonymous barfer must have been surprised, too-- their head thumped against some part of the toilet, but they didn't say anything. No cursing or slurred speech, not even so much as a cry of 'What?'
Oh no.
She turned away from the bathroom as her heart jumped into her throat. The only person who wouldn't at least complain about a light suddenly turning on was her!
The thought alone felt like a nail getting driven between her eyes, shock and pain making her gasp as she had to actively resist the urge to go in there and smash that person's head in with the toilet seat. It made her itch along her nerve endings as she clenched her fists and slammed them backwards; against the wall she'd put her back to.
“ GET OUT!”
It was a shout she summoned from the bottom of her lungs, as loud as she could project it. A simple order for the interloper to leave, now, as fast as you fucking can.
Heavy steps, they stumbled. Dee heard every impact on the tile, and then the carpet as they launched past her.
Like reflex, she snatched after them. She tried to catch them, tried to grab their hoodie without even thinking about it; jumping at the sounds of footfalls as she concentrated all of her will on keeping her eyes shut.
I can't see her, I CAN'T SEE HER!
She missed. Her fingers didn't close on anything, and the blind lunge had caused her to fall forward from the wall; face first into the carpet.
The steps were escaping-- down the stairs, across the living room-- then out the front door.
Dee had dug her fingers into the floor, as if she could claw deeply enough to prevent herself from giving chase. It wasn't until those footfalls receded out the front door that she could dare to unclench and let go; promptly flopping onto her side with a gasp that was grateful to have the irrational violence evaporate from her brain.
What in the cherry flavored anal bead pulling hell is a fucking time twin doing here?! Was the first thought she managed to put together while sitting up from the carpet. Opening her eyes, she could see that she was fully alone-- light reflected out of the bathroom doorway behind her to fall down the stairs and highlight the glittering flakes that were now drifting in from the open door downstairs. With a huff, she levered herself upright to head down and shut it-- slamming it when she felt the urge to follow the footprints in the snow.
What fucking time is it? She wondered next when she didn't have any answers for the first question. At least this one was within her grasp to figure out, trooping back upstairs to get her phone off the charge cable and check the time.
4:51. So I warped back to before the first day of school... that doesn't seem like a good sign.
Part of her dearly wanted to go back to bed without investigation. The fact that there wasn't blood and brain matter splattered across the bathroom right now was lucky at best, and she well and truly hoped her time twin either got back to her own timeline or kindly died of exposure out in the snow to save them both the pummeling that would happen if they crossed paths again.
Hold up-- the bathroom! Did she flush?
She didn't remember hearing the toilet flush-- then again she'd gone from sleeping, to adrenaline beating the war drums in her ears, to flopped on the floor while containing blind rage; she hadn't exactly been focusing on every little detail.
She sent a text off to Kenny; if this was some case of superpowers going fucky, he was the first person she wanted an opinion from. Not that she expected him to be awake at five in the goddamn morning... but if he happened to be, it would be nice to have a friend to help her figure this out.
The light didn't hurt anymore as she returned to the bathroom, allowing her to peer in and see that everything looked about the same. A large mirror sat above the bathroom counter, the glass of the corner shower was shiny and clean; there was barely any sign that someone had been here at all. The only difference in this picture was the toilet seat was left up... at least, until she approached and looked down into the bowl.
There was something black in the toilet. Something that smelled like a landfill and gasoline mixed together, and glistened like oil slick.
I barfed that up? ... better out than in.
Time was taken to snap a picture of the goo before disposal, although Dee wasn't sure if she wanted to flush it. On one hand, the smell was not getting better the longer it hung out in the toilet bowl. On the other hand, would this sludge even go down the pipes?
On the other, other hand... did she want to explain any of this to her parents?
Flooded bathroom is easier to explain than why the toilet bowl is full of tar.
She pressed the flusher, and was relieved when the toilet didn't clog.
Dr. Haley Kartwright had been sitting in the coffee shop since it had opened at 5 AM. She wasn't that uncommon of a sight; a stranger with a laptop, ordering a drip coffee with cream and taking a seat to tap-tap-tap away at whatever work there was to be done on her personal little computing device.
She wondered if anyone would even guess it was her research that might put an end to vaccination deficits in public schools-- even if it had been shoved out into the field way too early. At first she'd been over the moon that her research had been submitted for greater funding. She didn't realize that a great deal of strings were attached, and came in the form of new supervisors to direct the project. Worse, a team of engineers had been brought in without her knowledge, synthesizing a substance she'd only constructed in theory and pushing it into early trials.
Now they'd given her the worst possible job; she was to prevent losses if the project went bad. Technically, it put her in a place of power-- at any time she could pull the plug on this experiment, tell the whole team that they needed to abort and go home... but if she did, she would be disgraced. If she didn't believe in her research enough to test it, then who would? If she pulled the plug without a damn good reason, she'd definitely lose her funding and would be lucky to keep her job.
Rock and a hard place... but hey, at least she had a delightful cup of coffee to enjoy as she felt the walls closing in on her.
The coffee house was home to a morning crowd fairly similar to herself; a number of adults came and went, getting their fix before heading to work, but two others had arrived with computers under their arms, and the man behind the counter called out “ The usual?” To both of them, getting an affirmative as one, a woman, sat down with a drawing tablet at the table that was as tucked into the corner as she could get. The other, a man, took a seat near the wide glass windows that made up the front of the shop before setting up his laptop and beginning to furiously type at... something. It appeared that the usual for the artist-type was a hot chocolate, while the business man had a dinky cup of espresso presented to him-- along with a muffin.
The doctor turned her attention back to monitoring her own computer. She had multiple windows with read-outs of PSI and flow, along with a few other key factors that she'd be fussing over when the experiment got underway. The system that would pump the product of her work into the the ventilation systems at every school in this district was on standby as final preparations were made. Right now she was waiting on only one thing; the connection status. Once the final pieces were in place, she'd be able to pull the trigger on this at 6 AM... assuming everything stayed on schedule.
She couldn't decide if being the person to press the go button was a pittance or a punishment.
The door opened, ringing a little bell as another person entered the cafe. Dr. Kartwright took note of them as part of her people watching to pass the time; a kid in an electric blue hoodie and baggy gray cargo pants had thumped in from outside, tapping the snow off their heavy boots before scanning the cafe. Were they looking for someone?
Eye contact was made.
Kartwright blinked. She didn't know this kid, did she?
The kid rushed over, taking the other chair at her table without a word and shoving a hand into the pocket of their hoodie.
“... may I... help you?” She inquired, feeling as if she were being pranked in some way. Who was this tween? They had wild red hair that curled in every direction it could, restrained by a binder into a low and fluffy tail to keep the majority out of their face... which was smudged with some kind of black substance that smelled like a trash can in a severely neglected gas station bathroom.
The kid nodded. Their hand withdrew from their pocket and presented her with... a smart phone. It appeared to be the same make and model as her smart phone. Not exactly rare, seeing as it was last year's model. Still, to see the pair of phones side-by-side was somewhat... odd. She couldn't put her finger on it at first, but then it hit her; it wasn't just the same sort of phone. Both phones had the same blemishes. The same cracked corner from that one time she'd dropped it without its case, the same scuffs on the case itself from the fact that she still tended to knock it off of her desk when she was otherwise occupied, the same bubble pattern in the screen protector she'd pasted onto the thing.
It wasn't just the same kind of phone. It was the same phone.
Slowly, Kartwright took the phone the kid had placed on the table. It was off. Somewhat warily, she powered it on and waited for it to boot up. Then, finally, she was presented with the lock screen. Just like her own phone, this one was set to take a picture of her face and scan her thumb print in order to unlock.
She looked at the kid, who was still staring at her. Had they blinked? Their eyes were intense, mildly bloodshot around green irises and constricted pupils.
“You're creepin' me out, kid.”
They didn't stop staring. In fact, they gestured to the phone as if it desperately needed further investigation... so she investigated. She unlocked the phone, and was greeted by her familiar home screen with her usual icons over her background image; an electron scan of the measles virus.
Plus one extra file. A video file, saved to her home screen, very clearly labeled:
'WATCH ME, BITCH'
“What the...?”
Kartwright stared, frowned, had half a mind to huck the phone back at the kid and return to her hotel... and then reached into the pocket of her long tan jacket to retrieve a set of earbuds.