Chapter Text
“Aaaand we’ve got a ping.”
Claudia had been sitting at Artie’s desk for half an hour, mindlessly refreshing browser tabs under the pretense that she was actually doing something useful. She’d call it procrastination if there was anything to even procrastinate on, but they hadn’t had a mission for nearly a week and she was getting antsy enough to try hacking into United Nations security codes like she’d always dreamed about. After all this time working for the Warehouse she still wasn’t entirely clear on the Regents’ policies regarding the breakage of international law, or rather, how much breakage of international law would be tolerated, and she’d figured it would be best not to risk it. A distraction had been necessary.
Now, it seemed, her boredom was over.
“Do we really?” Artie eagerly looked up from the Farnsworth he’d been fiddling with. “What sort of ping?”
She rolled her eyes. “A ping-y ping. And don’t touch that, I’m not done upgrading it yet.”
“Claudia, I’ve told you time and time again about tinkering with Warehouse equipment—
“Yeah, yeah, grandpa, give it here.”
He grudgingly handed it over and moved to inspect the computer screen. Skimming through it, his eyes landed on some particular piece of information and he froze.
“Claudia. Get Pete and Myka down here.”
“Artie, I’m not your personal assistant.”
“No, you’re my personal pain in the butt. Go get Pete and Myka.”
Grumbling, Claudia did as he said. Her targets were cataloguing Artifacts in the Ovoid Quarantine with Jinksy when she found them, and as usual, they were in the midst of an argument.
“Pete, you can’t just confiscate Gene Roddenberry’s Oxfords for your own personal use, it’s against Warehouse protocol.” Myka looked about as thoroughly exasperated as she’d ever been.
“Hey, I’m just saying, there’s a reason Captain Kirk was good with the ladies, and it’s all in the shoes of his creator.”
Not a sentence you hear every day, Claudia thought, but then again, extraordinary things were a very ordinary Warehouse occurrence.
Myka made a face. “That doesn’t give you an excuse to use them.”
“Why not?” Pete’s eyes lit up with another idea that only he would think of. “We could totally use them for snagging other Artifacts. I could be, like, the male version of Mata Hari.”
Myka threw her hands up and turned away, not bothering to dignify him with a response.
“If you’ll stop fighting for two seconds you’ll remember that too much negative energy can trigger the Artifacts,” Steve broke in.
Claudia clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, listen to Jinksy, he brings wise words of advice. Also, listen to me, I bring grouchy words in the form of a summons from Artie. Who would have been able to call you himself if you’d actually bothered to bring your super-cool, Claudia-improved Farnsworths.”
The three agents ahead of her shifted uncomfortably in a very familiar way.
“Pete, what did you do.” At this point it was a statement, not a question.
Steve spoke for him. “He thought he heard a noise when we were checking up on the Dark Vault earlier so he dropped them and ran.”
“Then he refused to go back for them,” Myka added.
Claudia rolled her eyes. “Great. Well, much as I’d love to stand here and reprimand you, if I don’t deliver you to Artie soon it’s coming out of my woefully nonexistent payroll.”
After re-sealing the Ovoid Quarantine they headed directly to his office. Claudia could tell he’d been pacing the room impatiently while awaiting their return. Jinksy had accompanied them, even though he hadn’t been expressly called for, but Artie seemed too preoccupied to mind. He cut right to the point.
“A 1940s automat has materialized overnight in New York City.”
“Not exactly the doomsday event I was expecting,” Claudia remarked, “Restaurants open all the time.”
Artie shot her a look. “I don’t just mean it opened, it literally appeared in a vacant lot out of thin air, according to several eyewitness accounts. The building, the materials, the interior—everything down to the last detail appears as if it’s sprung right out of a history book.”
“So someone’s got an eye for antiquities, I don’t see what’s so strange.”
“It’s more than that.” Myka was staring at Artie with that intense gaze she got when she was piecing things together. “You don’t think…it can’t really be an artifact for physical time travel, can it? You said that wasn’t possible.”
“Everything’s impossible until it isn’t.” Artie was pacing again. “It could be anything, maybe something that creates illusions or replicates past events, but I’m not taking any chances, and if it really is time travel….”
“That’s bad news,” Pete finished for him.
“Why bring Pete and Myka in specifically?” Jinksy asked.
The two agents exchanged a glance.
“We have…prior experience in the field,” Myka offered tentatively.
“Wait. Don’t tell me you’ve time traveled before and never said anything about it.”
A few guilty looks.
The thing was, there were reasons they’d never gotten around to telling Jinksy about Pete and Myka’s trip to the past, and those reasons began and ended with H.G. Wells. Myka wouldn’t say it out loud, but even now the history between the two of them hurt, and everyone saw it. Helena had worked with the team as a Warehouse agent once, and in spite of her trying to destroy the entire world, Claudia could tell Myka missed those days. It was Helena’s time machine that had enabled Pete and Myka to inhabit the bodies of 1960s Warehouse agents, and every time that particular adventure got brought up other memories came along with it. It didn’t help that after the whole Sykes debacle H.G. had up and vanished into thin air again, leaving them with no idea if she was even still alive. There was simply no sense in pouring salt into an open wound.
“We can go into the details later,” Artie was saying, “right now, Pete and Myka need to get to New York.”
“Whoa there jumps-to-conclusions, I’m coming too,” Claudia declared.
“No you’re not,” he shot back.
“But Artie, it’s time travel!”
“Yes, exactly, it’s time travel, and do you know what time travel is? Dangerous.”
“You said you didn’t even know for sure that’s what we’re dealing with.”
“Enough!” Artie pounded a fist on his desk. “Pete and Myka are going in because they are the only ones who have some form of firsthand experience in this area, and that’s final. Understood?”
Claudia sighed. “Understood.”
Half an hour later, Pete and Myka were headed to the airport, Artie was muttering about something in his office, and Claudia had been relegated to inventory duty with Steve. Being stuck here while her friends got to go off in search of an Artifact wasn’t remotely fair, so as soon as she was sure the senior Warehouse agent wasn’t monitoring them, she pulled Steve into the Curie Aisle for an aside.
“Jinksy. I have a plan.”
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
“We are going to sneak out to New York so we can help Pete and Myka.”
Jinksy blinked. “No.”
“But it’s—
“Yes, I know, Claude, it’s time travel, but Pete and Myka can handle themselves and if we go anywhere near them Artie will kill us.”
Claudia folded her arms defiantly. “He can’t kill a dead man, Jinksy.”
That shut him up. When she’d brought her best friend back from the dead using Johann Maelzel’s metronome, she’d thought everything would feel out of the ordinary, but it didn’t, not exactly, and that was what had made things so unusual lately. Sometimes, she would share a joke with Steve and he’d roll his eyes and elbow her in the ribs and she’d forget for a moment that not so very long ago it had seemed likely she’d never see him again. But then someone would say something like “I’d die for one of Leena’s apple pies right now” and it would all come rushing back.
“Artie’s right, you know.” Steve could be annoyingly practical at times. “It’s dangerous. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“And I don’t want you getting hurt either. I lost you once and I’m not going to let it happen again. But don’t stand there and pretend you’re not curious about where this might go.”
She could tell he was, but he just turned his back on her. Claudia began singing “Steve Jinks is a poopy pants” under her breath to the tune of the theme from Star Wars until he relented.
“Fine,” he said, “but you’d better know exactly what you’re doing.”
She grinned at him. “Oh ye of little faith. Just follow my lead.”
----
Not for the first time in her life, Myka Bering found herself gazing at something that was, if not entirely inconceivable, then at least highly improbable. She could see why Artie had suspected this was the result of a time-travel Artifact. He might not be as old as Claudia liked to claim, but when he was younger he’d probably visited automats not much different from the one in front of her, and would know if something was missing as a result of modern historical inaccuracy. As far as Myka could tell, it was perfect.
The design didn’t just appear authentic. She and Pete had inspected it top to bottom and it looked like it really had come from the 1940s. All of the technology was certainly right for the era, and some of the building materials were illegal by today’s safety standards. If someone had used an Artifact to somehow create a replica of an old cultural landmark, for whatever bizarre and obscure reason, it would’ve been impractical to leave it with the inefficiencies of bygone machinery.
Then there was the location. Who would decide to put an unstaffed fast food place in the middle of a seedy abandoned lot in New York City?
So if time travel was responsible, the first question was how. Shortly followed by why, and then possibly some running around panicking about accidentally becoming your own grandfather. Not that Myka was the type to run around panicking; in the rare instances she truly did feel desperation she tended to shut down rather than freak out.
“Hey Myks?”
“What is it?” Myka was crouched down examining one of the automat’s stoves and didn’t feel like giving Pete her full attention.
“There’s something you need to see,” he said, and his tone made her shoulders tense warily.
“More like someone.”
Myka knew that voice, though it was almost the last one she would have expected to hear just now. She stood slowly and turned around.
H.G. Wells stood in the doorway.
She smirked at the stunned looks on the agents’ faces, and after a moment of silence had passed she stepped further into the room. “Let it never be said I pass up the opportunity to make an entrance.”
A few more seconds passed, and then Myka found her voice.
“What are you doing here?” The words came out more harshly than she’d intended. “I mean, it’s just, well…we haven’t heard from you in months, and now…”
“I understand if you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry,” Myka said, too quickly, “it just seems like too much of a coincidence for you show up on our case like this.”
“What’s a coincidence?” Helena leaned against one of the counters. “The whole situation reeks of time travel, I had to come and see who was able to accomplish what I could not. And anyway, I loved the ‘40s.”
“You were in the Bronze Sector during the ‘40s,” Myka pointed out.
“Details,” Helena scoffed, “a world war leaving us on the brink of destruction. I went in for that kind of thing in those days.”
Myka knew that all too well. She’d nearly permanently resigned her post as a Warehouse agent because of it. Even now she wasn’t entirely convinced that what had happened back then was not, at least in some part, her fault.
Helena looked like she was about to say something else, but just then, more people burst through the door.
What now? Myka thought. They’d taped off the area so they could make their inspection without prying eyes, but it would seem nobody paid attention to simple rules anymore. But then she realized who exactly it was grinning at her from across the room.
“Claudia?”
“The one and only.” The younger agent was moving around scanning things with what looked like another of her inventions. “So what do you think, is it really time travel?”
“Claudia, does Artie know you’re here?” Myka inquired, though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“If he doesn’t now he will soon.”
That was Steve. Myka turned on him. “I would have expected you of all people to be above this kind of behavior.”
He looked at his feet, abashed. “Yeah, well, someone responsible had to go with Claude to make sure she didn’t wreak too much havoc.”
“And Jinksy here didn’t want to be left out of this fascinating new discovery,” Claudia added, “why should you and Pete have all the fun?”
“This isn’t just fun, Claude, this is serious stuff.” Pete made his best attempt at a serious face.
“But, consider: I can help you make the Star Trek references.”
“Deal.” He high-fived her.
“Is anyone going to explain why H.G. Wells is here?” asked Steve.
Myka cast her a glance, still not entirely sure herself.
“Resident time travel expert,” Helena said smoothly.
In a matter of minutes what was meant to be a simple assessment had quickly become a rather unpleasant situation waiting to happen. Something was bound to go wrong with five Warehouse-affiliated people in one place, and Myka didn’t need Pete’s vibes to know it.
“Claudia, when I get my hands on you—
“Artie, hey, what a surprise.”
Correction: make that six Warehouse-affiliated people. She felt a headache coming on.
“Do you know what this miscreant did?” Artie was fuming. “She stole the Ellis Island Key Ring so she could sneak out of the Warehouse.”
“What’s the Ellis Island Key Thingy?” Pete asked.
“It’s an Artifact imbued with the longings of thousands of detained immigrants to be able to cross through to the mainland,” explained Artie, “it gives the holder, or holders plural in this case, the power to teleport to New York City.”
Claudia shrugged. “I do my research.”
“You, young lady, are in big trouble. Bigger trouble than your life has ever seen thus far.”
“What is your deal about time travel anyway?” Claudia burst out, “My brother was trapped in an interdimensional vortex for twelve years, I think I can handle quantum mechanics.”
“Your brother has nothing to do with this! You can’t just pop off on a mission whenever you feel like it, and you definitely can’t steal an Artifact to help you do it.”
“I didn’t steal it, I was borrowing it.”
“That isn’t the point!”
The argument was only intensifying Myka’s bad feelings, and she barely had to glance at Pete to see that he was experiencing the same thing. There was a slight tingling in her fingertips, which wouldn’t have been remarkable except that it was spreading slowly to the rest of her body. It was like she could feel the molecules in the room vibrating at an increasing velocity.
“Guys, I think maybe you should stop—
She never got to finish her sentence, because just then there was a blinding flash of light and a violent thump that sent everyone assembled in the automat sprawling to the ground. For a few moments no one dared move, and then Myka slowly got to her feet, dusting herself off.
“Does anyone else get the feeling like—
“—we’ve traveled?” Claudia finished for her, “Yeah.”
“I’m getting bad vibeage,” Pete declared.
Artie’s eyes were wide. “Oh, this is bad. This is definitely bad.”
“Everyone, stay calm,” said Myka, “I’m going to look outside and see what’s going on.”
Artie’s alarm intensified. “I wouldn’t do that if I were—
She threw open the doors.
“—you.”
Outside, the scene had completely transformed, yet it wasn’t unrecognizable to anyone who had read as many history books and seen the number Noir films Myka had. Her heart sunk. The automat hadn’t changed locations.
It had changed times.