Chapter Text
“You must understand—and every year it becomes increasingly difficult to understand—how entirely different the world was then from what it is now.” –H.G. Wells, In the Days of the Comet
There are few things in life one knows with certainty, but Helena G. Wells has always known more than a few things. She has known men and women and how to love them; mundane things that girls a century later are not required to learn, such as riding side-saddle or how to be passably proficient in almost every form of social entertainment. She has known things that, while commonplace in this modern world, did not have a name in hers. Helena has known space travel and genetics decades before they were put to practical use. Of course, the world has forever suffered because they were not put to use by her. Helena wonders quite often what she might have done with what she once knew.
Today, one hundred years too old to have any ties to anything or anyone, Helena knows only two things: wonder is not endless (though stories are), and she is afraid of the dark.
The second is the reason for the first, though a century with nothing but herself for company has warped her mind and muddied her thoughts, and perhaps it is actually the case that the expiration of wonder has caused an immutable and irrational fear. (Will wonders never cease, she thinks, and then she shakes her head because of course they will. They must.)
Wonders will cease because everything does. Raindrops cease and children cease and morals cease. The worst part about being bronzed isn’t that she’s cut off from the world. Helena is well-equipped to deal with isolation—she created enough of it the first time she was alive. However, despite all of her best efforts to thwart chronology, she is not prepared for eternity. Helena spends one hundred and three years waiting for the world to change, for science to change and for time to cease under the wonderful will of man.
She awakens to discover that the will of man is entirely the problem, that time has not changed, and that people have only gotten worse.
That first night, while MacPherson consolidates their plans, Helena finds herself reminiscing about her time in the bronzer. Out here in the world, once again given the freedoms of a corporeal form, she is subject to so much more risk than an eternity of solitude. Helena is trapped by people, by morals and opinions and foolish whims she could never think of predicting.
Helena misses the weight of words and their ability to transport her everywhere without chancing danger. She misses the dreams of Christina that were warm and happy, instead of the nightmares brought on by the false safety of a comfortable bed. She misses the countless novel ideas she imagined (and she firmly repeats to herself, once she is freed, that she does not miss having a brother like Charles with whom she could share them.)
Stories are durable and dependable, and Helena has had a century to write all of them.
There is something to be said for that.
/
(There is also something to be said for being awake, she supposes. She has command of all ten fingers and toes; she can reach forward and feel something other than the cold scratch of metal; she could walk all the way to either coast if she wanted to.
Helena has full control of her own body for the first time in over a century, and no idea what to do with it.
Sleep continues to elude her.)
/
Helena never was one for much Austen, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer, in possession of little more than her thoughts, must be in want of a muse.
There is so much inspiration to choose from. There are airplanes and computers; mobile phones, cars that can (theoretically) race for days without stopping. The internet—Helena could spend a lifetime learning about the internet and still never get to the bottom of it. The possibilities almost make her want to be a scientist again.
MacPherson guides her from the Warehouse under cover of a blanket. Helena hears a soft voice, whom she’ll come to recognize as Leena, advise him to keep her away from light for twenty four hours. It is a task easier said than done, she will realize later. There is always light somewhere in this world. After a century in bronze, that brings her more comfort than she ever thought one person could feel.
(In a year, she will long for the darkness again. In a year, she will be no closer to an answer for the question that has plagued her all her life: which is more painful, light or dark? Both leave scars too important to be erased.)
He puts her in a car. Helena remembers cars, though this is nothing like the sluggish, ungainly contraption of her time. Where there once was potential, now there is achievement. Cars have evolved and grown into the efficient machines they were always meant to be. Helena hopes, though she hasn’t hoped in a very long time, that people have followed the same pattern.
The room that MacPherson has arranged for her is small, sparsely decorated, and dark. Helena cannot see a thing, and perhaps it is because her heart hasn’t had to work for a while that it doesn’t beat straight out of her chest. But her anxiety rises and she catches MacPherson just before he leaves her alone, speaking her first words in over a hundred years.
“Bring me a candle, please,” she says, and she sounds nothing like what she remembers.
MacPherson returns with a candle and a considerable pile of papers, some of which she recognizes as her own notes from Warehouse 12. The others, she presumes, are his research, his plans, his dastardly schemes. She thanks him as he sets them on her desk, but she pays them no more attention after that.
Her voice does not sound the way it used to, and that could be from years of disuse. It could very well be from the fact that Helena has not heard sound in so long. Or perhaps, though she is loath to admit it, it could be that she has changed. And so Helena waits until MacPherson has left the room and then carries the flickering candle over to the mirror above her desk. Just as her voice betrayed her, Helena is afraid of what she might find peering back at her in the dim light, the air that crackles with shadows and wisps.
It takes her many moments to lift her head and face her own reflection.
When she does, Helena finds the same features that were there when she was bronzed, along with more than a few new worry lines and a fatigue she hadn’t dared show in her past life.
Christina is all over her face, and for that reason Helena turns away and peruses MacPherson’s plans.
He is a smart and resourceful man, but MacPherson is driven by revenge and fractured pride. He has no imagination, nor any goals beyond personal satisfaction. Helena familiarizes herself with his notes for twelve minutes before she decides to change them. He has cracked her research about the Trident, but has no idea where she’s hidden the other piece. She takes the time to compliment herself on not writing everything down. Helena will always take the time for worthy praise.
“We need to visit the Escher vault,” Helena says the next time she sees him.
“The Escher vault?” MacPherson replies, furrowing his brows. “We’ll never make it out alive.”
Helena smirks, relishing in the feeling of being the smartest person in the room. Of the many things she’s forgotten, this is one she’s glad to remember. “There are few problems for which I do not have a solution, Mr. MacPherson,” she smirks.
“You’re free to call me James, my dear.”
“Yes, I’m aware. I’m also aware that you know of my answer to the Escher obstacle, seeing as you failed to steal it—though I’m sure it was not for lack of effort, darling—some months ago. So I’m curious as to why you’re trying to deceive me right now. Do you intend to pry the necessary information from me and leave me to flounder in this world on my own?”
MacPherson smiles. His lips are pinched and rubbery, and the amusement Helena finds in them makes her cringe. “On the contrary; I had hoped you’d tell me where it is and I could retrieve it while you recuperated. It doesn’t take very long to get to London these days; I’d be back before you knew it.”
“There are, no doubt, Warehouse agents intent on your capture, yes?”
“And yours, I’d assume, once they discover I’ve freed you.”
“Yes, well, you cannot return to my house again. These agents will be there waiting for you in some manner or another. They will not be expecting me.”
MacPherson averts his eyes as he thinks. “Why do you need to visit the Escher vault?”
Helena grins, wider than she should considering the circumstances, and lies. “Your suspicions were correct.” She taps the bundle of papers she’d brought in with her. “The missing piece to the Trident is likely inside that vault, if that is truly where they keep the possessions of those the Warehouse bronzes.” MacPherson gazes at her quizzically. “The piece somewhat resembles a horseshoe, and among many other wonderful abilities, I was quite the capable equestrian in my day.”
“A genius, my dear. You are a genius.”
“Do you intend to use the Trident?”
MacPherson props his head on his fist, his attention returning to blueprints and strategies. “Only with the barest hint of resolution. The threat of using it will be enough for Arthur to surrender the Warehouse and all of its treasures, and then I’ll be rich. You’re welcome to share in the spoils, of course.”
His grin is lecherous and cold. It is one of the last times Helena will see him grin before she kills him. (She, of course, does not know that yet. She does know that she will kill him. But if she were to know that he would get the pleasure of a few more smiles, she would kill him sooner.)
For now, she simply nods and leaves him to his work.
There is more to contemplate, but she can save that for the flight to London. For now, she pores over encyclopedias and other reference books, learning about the century of advances she missed. She reads about airplanes and spaceships; wars and genocides; and always, always the ingenuity of man. There are more inventions than she’d ever contemplated, and it seems that as the years pass, they are used less and less for altruistic purposes.
Helena reads about all of these things, but it is not the space travel or computers that fascinate her most. No, she was dreaming of those big, lofty goals over a century ago. She invented some of them. The tiny inventions, the ones modern people seem to take for granted, are the ones that boggle her mind. Machines that dry your clothes in less than an hour; phones that enable you to call anyone, anywhere, at any time of day. The concept of shampoo astounds her.
She finds no muses in rockets or cyberspace. Helena is an inventor. She is, and always will be, enamored with the people who find a need and fill it, who change the rules when longstanding rigidities result in less than favorable outcomes. Though she is one, Helena never felt a need to surround herself with great thinkers. She prefers the company of great doers.
Helena is on a path to meet one. She is very near to meeting her muse, and it will be her downfall.
/
There are so many things to see on her first airplane ride. Helena gets a window seat and intends to keep her gaze trained outside the whole time.
Instead, she sleeps.
She sleeps and dreams of nothing, something she hasn’t done in one hundred years.
She arrives at her former home and runs into the agents from the Warehouse, finding them to be as blustering and arrogant as she was when she worked a case.
MacPherson charters a private jet for the flight back to America, thereby allowing her to travel with the Imperceptor Vest without alerting nosy airport security.
Helena sleeps on this flight as well. This time, she dreams.
/
The first time she tests her time machine, Helena stays for four hours. She has three and a half hours of bliss with Christina, and thirty minutes of terror. It is too much, almost, to even think of trying again. But Christina is a ghost when she awakens, and that causes a grief too acute to ignore.
The second time, she is so unused to Sophie’s body that she cannot adequately execute her Kenpo moves. She returns to her time and makes notes, details Sophie’s weaknesses so that she can improve upon them in her next effort.
The third time, Helena takes Wolly with her. He will inhabit the body of one of the thieves, she surmises, and she will recruit him to save Christina. By the end of twenty two hours and nineteen minutes, Helena is not good enough and Wolly is dead.
She is beside herself when she returns. Wolly is silent. Caturanga flits between sympathy and rage, eventually deciding to bridge the two with rational tragedy. He gives her a night to say her goodbyes. She uses it, instead, to spin one more fantastical yarn for Charles. She paints him a picture of a world changed by a comet, one whose vapors cause a mass fainting spell and imbue the air with knowledge and peace. She tells him of the civilization that is created when everyone awakens, a civilization made of amity and understanding. “All the world needs,” she tells him, “is a great change and a good bit of rest.”
(She will discover a century later that he has gotten the sentiment mostly right.)
The next morning, the Regents present her with a list of possible punishment, the kindest of which is death. Helena does not deserve kindness.
“Just bronze me, please,” she whispers, and they do, and she is cold for a very long time.
/
No one hears the words she whispers right before she cuts the string around MacPherson’s neck.
“I’m sorry, James, that our ignobilities did not correspond.”
She is doing the world a favor, ridding it of such a useless man. She is saving her life and the lives of the Warehouse agents, whether they realize it or not. MacPherson did not care for collateral damage. Helena chooses hers carefully.
Myka Bering will always be the collateral damage she did not intend to make.
/
The problem with killing James MacPherson, she finds, is that she is suddenly devoid a great deal of money. Helena’s plans are within her grasp and perfectly achievable, but they are not executable. It is not possible to fund an expedition on persuasion alone. Helena requires a bank account of preferably endless depths. It does not take her long to deduce where to find one.
The rest of her plan, however, is a bit troublesome. After running as far away as she could with the Imperceptor Vest, Helena spends many hours at a coffee shop near Lincoln, Nebraska. She reorganizes her notes on Warehouse 2, redraws the schematics for the structure. Helena Wells has an amazing mind; sometimes she impresses even herself.
“We’re closing in half an hour,” the barista says the next time he drops off a refill of tea. They don’t make it right in America, but Helena certainly isn’t going to drink what passes for coffee.
“Thank you,” she replies. The shop has emptied of most patrons; the only stragglers remaining are the day-drinkers trying to stave off alcohol dreams. “Carl? It was Carl, wasn’t it?”
Helena must have gotten his name right, because Carl smiles as he turns around, flicking a too-long strand of hair out of his eyes. “Yeah, it’s Carl. Can I help you with something?”
“Well, not with anything to do with tea or coffee, though I do have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
Helena pauses, expecting him to continue, but he just looks at her and waits. “Oh, you wish for me to ask my question? Marvelous; I have so much catching up to do.” She smiles at his confusion. “I have a bit of an archaeological expedition planned, but I lack enough hands to fully help. If you needed laborers willing to work for a relatively inexpensive salary, but preferably ones with reasonable intellect, where would you look?”
“Grad students,” Carl scoffs.
“Grad students?”
“Yeah, you know, pretentious thinkers in pursuit of a degree that only acts as a status symbol? They’re insufferable, idealistic, and completely broke.”
“And where might I find these grad students?”
He shrugs and clears away her empty teacup. “Any university, really. There’s thousands of them all over.”
Helena smiles and means every bit of it. “Thank you, Carl.”
By the time she gets to Tamalpais University, she’s already found her students and secured their loyalty with a small down payment. But it doesn’t hurt to keep an open eye, especially when those eyes land on an intriguing set of women.
She lies, of course, when Agent Bering inquires about her motives. Helena has had no trouble tracking the Warehouse cases; she knows what kind of incidents to look out for. Countless artifacts have been created while she was bronzed, but humans still use them for personal gain, and the trouble that ensues will always look the same.
So she spins a smooth yarn about being on the hunt for Tappon’s medal, just as they are.
They’re Warehouse agents; they’re bound to hunt down the truth eventually.
/
You are going back to the Bronzer, Agent Bering says.
Why, what did I do, Helena retorts.
She means it. Agent Bering doesn’t understand.
/
Agent Bering becomes Myka after their next encounter. She is disarming, to say the least. Helena has prepared herself to give nothing away, to worm her way into the Warehouse without making any lasting connections. But Agent Bering is stubborn and will not budge without a proper answer, and so Helena talks about Christina and the locket, opens the door to painful future conversations. And Agent Bering listens without interruption, and when Helena is done talking, Myka is sympathetic. She does not relent, but she is sympathetic.
Helena has cracked them both.
/
Death surrounds them the next time they meet. Death comes for Arthur, the cantankerous old man who will not budge. Death has found Myka’s former colleague, come and gone and come again, lodging a piece of itself inside Myka. Death always leaves footsteps.
(Death follows Helena wherever she goes.)
This time, Helena is telling the truth when she says she’s tracking Torquemada’s chain. There are useful artifacts, and then there are artifacts that should not be out in the world. At the very least, if she does not make it into the Warehouse in person, she can leave it in a package at their residence. Helena has kept tabs on the bed and breakfast; she knows how to sneak in and out without being detected.
Helena is valuable to the agents, whether she works with their blessing or not. She is fairly certain that Myka and Claudia are convinced. It should be enough to welcome her back. It would have been, in the old days. A lot more was taken on faith, though it seems there was also a lot more faith to be given. People have grown far too suspicious for their own good.
Even Myka, smart, rational Myka, is infected.
“I’m gonna need more than, ‘She doesn’t like the world,’” she scoffs. “I need the truth. Why did they bronze you? What did you do that the Regents felt they had to encase you—”
“I asked to be Bronzed!” Helena finally yells. She is tired of the questions, tired of the memories, tired of being tired without any hope of sleep.
“You asked. Who in their right mind—”
“I wasn’t in my right mind.” And she explains, in the barest language, about her daughter, how Christina destroyed her more than anyone ever could because she was so perfect to begin with. Helena had known happiness. She had known it so constantly and so deeply that to have it ripped away was like losing her grip on her soul. She spins a story sad enough in its truth that Myka will bend even further, and true enough in its sadness that Helena feels her conscience twisting.
“The Bronzer was your time machine,” Myka deduces.
“Closest I could come,” Helena admits, and Myka’s faint smile tells her that she’s in. Myka will fight for her.
Helena will fight back.
/
It is Myka’s approval she seeks when Mr. Kosan introduces her.
It is Myka’s approval she gets, without questions or conditions.
Helena tries so hard for so long to make it be enough.
/
“Agent Wells—”
“Please, Myka. To you, I am Helena. I could be something even more informal, if you were to ever guess my middle name.” Helena gestures for Myka to come into her room.
She does, smiling as she walks. “So it isn’t George, then?”
“I’m afraid not. Charles did pick out the stuffiest alias. I think he always was jealous of my boundless imagination.”
“Did you know? You know, that your stories would last, I mean.”
Helena inhales a breath and holds it, closing her notebook before answering. “I had a hunch, yes. Charles may have been frivolous and boring, but he always did have a way with words.”
“You didn’t write them?” Myka looks greatly disappointed, and Helena can’t help but laugh.
“What, imagining them isn’t enough?” Myka averts her eyes, smiling sheepishly. “No, I lent an editing eye, but I have always been too restless to fiddle around with words. I don’t fiddle with anything I can’t touch.”
For some reason, Myka blushes.
“Was there something you needed?” Helena continues.
Myka shakes her head. “Right, yeah, sorry. I, uh, I saw your light on and I thought, you know; it’s late, you’re awake…maybe you needed company, or someone to talk to—”
“I’m fine,” Helena interrupts, cutting off Myka’s rambling with a smile. “I’ve spent a century asleep; I don’t have much use for it now.”
“I thought you said you weren’t asleep,” Myka objects.
“Well, I certainly wasn’t awake,” Helena retorts. Her words have more bite than she intends, and she winces at how uncomfortable Myka seems. “I apologize, my dear. Perhaps you have it right, and I’m still feeling the effects of working off a hundred years of sleep. If Charles were alive, he’d tell you how horribly groggy and cranky I always was in the mornings. Perhaps this particular morning has simply lasted several months.”
Myka smiles. Her upper lip curls toward her nose. It is a lopsided smile—imperfect to some, though Helena has seen few truer. “Maybe it has. That still doesn’t preclude you having company.”
“Indeed, it does not.” She pats the space beside her on the bed. “If you are going to be my company, though, I insist you do so comfortably.”
Myka hesitates just a moment before kicking off her slippers. She climbs onto Helena’s bed with an unexpected grace for someone so tall. Helena takes an extended look over Myka’s body; she lets her gaze amble over slender toes and long legs and slim arms, before finally coming to rest on inquisitive, amused eyes.
“Ah, yes,” Helena coughs, before smirking. “Tell me, darling; which of my stories did you favor most?”
Myka laughs for a very long time.
She keeps Helena busy with words until the morning comes. They laugh and talk until the sun comes up, and even a little past that, though Myka’s feet start twitching around five thirty, eager to start the day. Myka tells her about the historical events that encyclopedias skirt around. She is Helena’s emotional conduit. Helena has always had better luck with emotions that are not her own. She can imagine the collective outrage with oppression, feel the global mourning of Princess Diana’s death. Helena is fascinated with the Berlin Wall, the proliferation of cults in the 1970s, the seemingly pointless conflict of the Cold War. The magnitude with which humanity can make mistakes continues to be the most interesting part of history.
(On an individual scale, however, Myka Bering is the most interesting woman Helena will ever meet.)
/
Retrospectively, Helena would extend the next few weeks indefinitely. They are somewhat of a golden period, if she doesn’t dwell on Arthur’s hostility (and he is considerably unpleasant, so she doesn’t.) Helena gets to know Myka extremely well. They are a dangerous combination—one astutely observant, the other incurably expressive.
(Myka thinks she’s observant as well, but the signals that Helena expresses, for the most part, are false clues.)
Helena learns that Myka twirls her hair when she is nervous; that she is nervous with more frequency than she should be; that she is exactly the kind of companion Helena was looking for in her past life. She is the perfect bridge between past and present, seeing the events of Helena’s world through a modern lens while still appreciating the nostalgia of antiquity. Myka invigorates Helena, energizes and makes her want to be human again.
It is so easy, you see, to become the bronze that surrounds you. Bronze is tough; it is durable and unforgiving, and in a world of steel and chrome, it is so easily overlooked and dismissed. But it takes a very determined fire to melt bronze.
Bronze does not easily corrode. It is harder than iron and conducts heat and electricity better than steel. And yet, presented with a suitable blunt object, bronze blades will dull all too quickly.
Myka dismantles with her rectitude. Helena is sharp, but not in the ways she wants to be. The longer she spends with Myka, the less lethal her sting becomes. Her words bite with amity; they are capable of little more than nips and nibbles.
Pete and Arthur regard her as if there were barbs protruding from every inch of her skin, but that is the kind of mortality Helena can only dream of.
She almost doesn’t care.
/
(It is Myka who discovers her true distaste for the dark. Every hour without the sun is a witching hour, and they weave only awful spells.
Myka finds her pacing one night, every lamp lit. It is almost three in the morning and Helena cannot let go of the locket at her breast. The lights cast a golden haze against the walls and it does nothing to soothe her galloping anxieties.
H.G., what is it, Myka asks. Helena? Helena, what’s wrong?
It is all Helena can do to extend a shaking hand and wait, as Myka grasps it, for the threat of tears to abate. There are still lines she cannot cross.
Every night following that first one, there is a knock at her door the minute the sun sets. Helena has never felt more relieved.)
/
Her nights can be terrors, but her days are truly wondrous. Arthur demotes her to inventory for most of them, still not trusting her enough to go out on missions. Helena spends a considerable amount of time with Leena and Claudia, organizing and shelving artifacts that do not always adhere to their instructions.
Leena is admirably friendly, engaging in polite conversation and curious inquiries. But Claudia is truly a rare creature. Helena, despite being many decades her senior, spends many hours under Claudia’s tutelage, learning everything she can about modern technology (and all of its shortcomings that Claudia finds and fixes.)
Claudia is the kind of person Helena always wanted Christina to be. Inquisitive, intelligent, and impulsive without being reckless. Helena spends hours contemplating whether this is simply Claudia’s character, or if she has passed so much time in the company of Pete and Myka that she has absorbed the best qualities of each of them. They are a seamless Warehouse team, stitched together tighter than she had been with Wolly, Caturanga, McShane and the others.
Helena surmises that they are closer because they are fewer. She is, at once, jealous of their bond and desperate to share it. Human connections are the most important things in this world—in any world, really. Helena has always loved her inventions and her stories, but she always cherished her friends most. Helena would go to extraordinary lengths to spare the people she loves undue pain.
(A century in bronze has mutated her principles, and she has become the cause of such pain.
Sometimes she feels remorseful about it.)
Time that Helena does not spend with Myka is spent with Claudia. Claudia teaches her about technology, science, films, and—most importantly—music. Helena enjoyed music in her time, though she studiously avoided it after Christina’s death. (It seemed barbaric to enjoy even the smallest of comforts when her favorite one was gone forever.) But now, she craves music. She yearns for the inexplicable, inimitable, unrelenting sadness of song.
Claudia gives her an iPod, of which Helena is immediately skeptical—it has been her experience that something so small must be in constant need of repair. But Claudia assures her that it will last, and she loads it with numerous composers. Helena revisits her favorites (Schumann’s Kinderszenen Traumerei, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth), and puzzles over Mahler’s Ninth—it is music, Helena recognizes that, and yet it terrifies and paralyzes her.
She asks Claudia once, what the twentieth century did to music, because there is a clear progression of emotional attachment. The twentieth century, Helena supposes, must have inserted mankind with a hint of mania and the inability to adequately explain it. Everything feels so…present. At once relatable and foreign, intimate and detachable.
“Is all music like this?” she asks one day.
Claudia smiles as if Helena is missing a truth that everyone knows, and of course she is. “No,” she finally answers. “A lot of it sucks. But that’s why you have me, Claudia Donovan: Disc Jockey extraordinaire.”
Helena chuckles and stops Claudia before she can make another wasted reference. “No,” she corrects, “what I meant was, is all music today this painful?”
Claudia’s face falls. “Oh,” she stutters. “You want happy music? My tech-punk image would be totally destroyed if I admitted this, but I’ve got a wicked collection of Wham!’s greatest hits.”
Helena unplugs her iPod and hands it back to Claudia. “Whatever you listen to when you really want to feel something—I should think I’d like to listen to that.”
Claudia frowns. “But that’s all my sad stuff.”
“Alright.”
/
And so it is Claudia to whom she details the account of Christina’s murder. Myka is sympathetic and concerned and so very available when Helena needs to talk, but she is not tainted the way Claudia and Helena are.
Claudia comes back with an iPod full of Billie Holiday (whom Helena was surprised to learn was a woman); Johnny Cash; The Carpenters; The Smiths; Radiohead; and a wonderfully bizarre woman named Sinead O’Connor; and Helena is overcome with a wave of gratitude and a devastating desire to wrap Claudia in her arms.
Myka knows grief and loneliness, isolation and shame.
Claudia knows the dark.
Not as well as Helena, of course, for she still looks terrified when Helena confesses what happened to Christina’s killers. Helena has had a century to come to terms with the fact that she doesn’t have demons so much as she is one.
“H.G.?” Claudia ventures after a few tense moments of silence. “Can I ask you something?”
Helena raises her head and clears her throat, shaking out the last, lingering thoughts of Paris. “Yes, dear.”
“I mean, it’s totally cool if you don’t want to answer, but I was just curious—”
“You might want to ask whatever this question is before your lips part company with the rest of your face.”
Claudia laughs and shakes her head. “Right, well, I was thinking—you had the idea about Sophie before you started working on the time machine, right? I mean, you know, how she was you, or you were her, or whatever…but you came up with that before the time machine existed.”
“Yes,” Helena nods.
“Did you, um, and I don’t mean this to sound judgey or anything, but did you ever think of not inventing the time machine?”
Helena stills her hands. “What?”
“Well, so your book The Time Machine. Or, well, your story and your brother’s book—but anyway, it was published a couple years before Christina…died, so did you ever think that maybe that would kind of happen to you? You know, that even if you did go back in time, it wouldn’t do anything because you’d already gone back in time and she still died.” Claudia takes a deep breath and studies Helena’s face. Helena makes sure not to look away. “So, theoretically, what would have happened if you came to the same conclusion about Sophie and made a conscious decision not to invent the time machine? And then you wouldn’t be Sophie and maybe things would have been different.”
Helena looks at Claudia for a moment longer before smiling to appease the poor girl. “I…that thought had honestly never crossed my mind,” Helena answers.
Claudia wrinkles her nose. “Really? But you’re H.G. Wells. You worked at Warehouse 12 and you think of everything.”
“Though we may be surrounded by absurdity, too often we are tricked into thinking our lives are incapable of being inherently absurd.”
“How long have you been waiting to use that one?” Claudia chuckles.
“One hundred years,” Helena answers.
Claudia’s face falls.
/
(It is a lie, either way. Of course the thought crossed Helena’s mind. She is Helena Wells and she does think of everything. It was an all-too tempting idea; Helena was completely prepared to step away from constructing her deus ex machina. The list of possible benefits was longer than the list of possible disadvantages—it seemed the only conclusive way to significantly alter the course of events.
And yet, the consequence of not building the time machine—though there was only one—was too powerful to ignore.
What if Christina died alone?)
When Pete and Myka return from the past, when Helena is sure they are safe and unharmed, she contacts the grad students before Christina can tell her not to.
/
“Hey.”
The night is quiet when Myka finds her. Pete and Claudia have holed themselves up in Pete’s room and are playing video games. Artie is playing his piano. Helena is trying to write, Myka is restless, and everyone is mourning Rebecca St. Clair.
“Hello, Myka.”
“Can I come in?”
Helena checks her watch. “It is well past nine and the sun set some time ago. I’d be greatly disappointed if you didn’t come in.”
“Right,” Myka smiles. She walks in and takes up her usual spot on Helena’s bed, leaning all the way against the headboard and crossing her legs. “Are you okay?”
“Of course, darling.”
“Helena,” Myka chides. “Claudia said you guys had a pretty intense conversation today.”
Helena feels her heart speed up, beating erratically as a hummingbird’s wings. “Did she?”
“I know that tone; don’t get ahead of yourself. She didn’t tell me anything, just that I might want to talk to you.”
Helena smiles and tugs Myka’s hand from her lap. “Time travel makes fools of us all, doesn’t it?”
“God, I hope not.”
“Do you feel good about this case, Myka?”
“I feel better.”
“Ah, diplomacy. I see I’ve made my point.”
Myka squeezes her hand and pushes it into her side, almost knocking Helena over. “Just because you say things with that fancy accent doesn’t mean you’re right.” Helena just waits. “I had a thought when Pete and I were in the 60s,” Myka continues. “But first I have a question for you.”
“Alright.”
“How many agents were there in Warehouse 12?”
Helena hums and leans her head back, remembering. “Well, we formed our little duos and trios, much like you have with Pete and Claudia, but there were more of us. I would wager that we had as many as fifteen at one point.”
“You must have bagged a lot of artifacts.”
“Darling, there were fifteen agents. That does not mean there were fifteen of me. Some of my cohorts were terrible buffoons.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a horrible ego?”
“Of course. That was frequently the only true thing people ever told me. That, or they took the time to chatter about how mad I was.”
“I don’t believe you’ve ever been mad, Helena.”
“I hope you never have cause to learn how truly wrong you are.” Helena clears her throat. “You said you had a thought.”
“Ah, yes, I did,” Myka stutters. “Well, it seems the sixties were kind of like Warehouse 12. You know, there were a lot more desks and a lot more agents, and it just…got me thinking. It would be nice to have all those minds to bounce things off of. I mean, god, the Warehouse recruits a special kind of agent. Can you imagine how many unique skills there would be between a team of a dozen instead of just four?”
Helena nods. “There were moments of remarkability, I seem to recall.”
“But then I kept thinking a little more,” Myka continues, “and I thought about how I kind of liked being part of such a small group. It makes you feel a little more…necessary.”
“And a little more culpable when something goes awry.”
“I know Artie and Pete give you grief sometimes—I mean, I know Artie hasn’t really stopped giving you grief since you came back—but…” She falls silent for so long that Helena is on the verge of wondering what kind of artifact has affected her. Myka takes a deep breath and looks up, watching with a fixed, determined gaze. She squeezes Helena’s hand once more, but this time she doesn’t stop. “I just wanted you to know that you’re needed, Helena. You’re needed so much by this team.”
And by me are the words that Helena hears, though Myka doesn’t give voice to them. Helena can see them written so clearly in Myka’s eyes, the same way they have been since Helena was reinstated. Helena has no delusions that Myka is alone in her affection; she is quite sure that a similar sentiment has been slowly seeping into her very character for the last few weeks. Helena needs Myka perhaps even more than Myka needs her.
Helena has been needed before. It is a glorious feeling, and she almost gives in to it. But the last time Helena was needed, Christina died.
So she steers the conversation back into safer waters, and hopes that a little more time will give her courage to stop being so foolish. “Myka, would it bother you terribly to stay with me tonight?”
Myka’s features morph from confession into concern. “Why, what’s wrong?”
Any number of things, Helena thinks. But Myka—wonderful, open Myka—deserves the truth. And so, for the first time in a very long time, Helena returns an honest question with an honest answer.
“In truth, I’m in the middle of a terrible bout of loneliness.” Helena attempts to laugh. It doesn’t resemble a laugh so much as a confused shudder. “I miss my daughter,” she says. It shouldn’t be a surprise to feel tears on her cheeks, but Helena has not cried in one hundred and three years.
She did not miss it.
“Of course I’ll stay,” Myka murmurs.
Helena wakes up the next morning curled around a body that feels so wonderfully unlike a small child’s.
/
When the ping comes that drags them to Egypt, Helena is fully prepared to turn herself in. She will travel to Warehouse 2 and stop it from killing Mrs. Frederic, and she will leave without procuring the Trident. And when Claudia discovers her money trail—because such an act is inevitable—Helena will admit to everything and allow the Regents to punish her accordingly. Helena is needed, and she has found her courage to surrender.
But there is never a good time and Myka is so worried. Helena knows that she will be hopelessly disappointed when the truth is revealed. If there is one aspect of this plan that Helena regrets, it is that she has hurt someone like Myka.
Helena falters after Valda’s death, but she has gotten through much tougher times. She can, to use a phrase that Pete and Claudia favor, suck it up and deal with the consequences.
Helena is not prepared for the Medusa. She is not prepared for the insidious cruelty of its torture. Helena would have gladly fallen to her death while under the spell of her hallucination. She would have died dreaming of Christina, instead of spending a century trapped in nightmares. It would have been a thing of poetry.
But Myka rips her from her daughter, and Helena can longer internalize her pain. She can no longer pretend that life is preferable to death. Life is pain. Life is loss. If the duty must fall to one person, Helena can shoulder that loss for the entire planet.
Helena grabs the Trident, after all. She fractures Myka instead of the caldera, and yet again, Helena fails to save anyone.
There is no word big enough to describe the relief she feels at being taken away by the Regents.
Helena has belonged to the Warehouse for far too long.
/
“It is an interesting predicament in which we find ourselves, Ms. Wells,” Mr. Kosan says as he leads her into a room. Helena appreciates how bright it is.
“I presume that is why I have not been returned to the Bronzer.”
“There are extenuating circumstances, yes.”
Helena sits across from Mr. Kosan. They are separated only by a table, which she finds interesting. “Aren’t you going to handcuff me? There are at least three ways I could incapacitate you without ever leaving this chair."
“We are not policemen, Ms. Wells.”
“But I am a criminal.”
Mr. Kosan smiles with more condescension than most people are capable of producing. “Handcuffs are not the only way of detaining someone. Surely you must give us more credit than that.”
“I think, if I had given the Regents any semblance of credit, we would not be sitting here right now.”
“This is not something to be taken lightly, Ms. Wells.”
“Why? What could possibly be so important that you have delayed my retribution?”
“The Warehouse has lost an agent,” Mrs. Frederic says from behind her. Helena starts violently in her chair; she hadn’t even heard the woman come in.
“Pete has gone after Kelly? I must say, that is a surprise,” Helena replies, once she has composed herself.
“Agent Lattimer is missing his partner.”
Helena sits up and loses any grain of confidence she might have had. “Myka’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Mr. Kosan, if you might give us a moment.” Mr. Kosan leaves, slipping out of the room with almost as little noise as Mrs. Frederic. The woman may be a guardian of the Warehouse, but sitting in Mr. Kosan’s vacant seat, she looks positively deadly.
Mrs. Frederic clasps her hands on the table. “You mean a great deal to Agent Bering,” she starts.
“She means a great deal more to me.”
“I don’t think so. I think you underestimate the admiration she has for you. I think you’d prefer it if she weren’t so fond of you.”
“Is this why I’m not being bronzed? So you can lecture me?”
“I need your help as much as you need a reality check. Ms. Wells, I am reality and I am not leaving until you accept your truth. The Warehouse will suffer greatly if Agent Bering does not return.”
“You are in the business of replacing agents, Mrs. Frederic. I should hope you don’t need me to do your job.”
“I think we are both aware that, as agents go, Myka Bering is unique.”
Helena searches Mrs. Frederic’s face for any political agenda. She finds only the traces of desperation.
“That is something upon which can agree, yes,” Helena concedes. “But I can’t—I can’t imagine I will be much help, after everything that has happened.”
“Not everything that has happened,” Mrs. Frederic corrects. “Everything that you have done.”
“Yes,” Helena whispers. “Everything that I have done. If you must know, not everything I’ve done was horrible.”
“And isn’t that the worst part? You made Myka believe, Helena.”
“Stop.”
“You allowed her to care about you. You nurtured her affection, and I believe you returned it wholeheartedly.”
“Please, Mrs. Frederic.”
“Claudia and I did a little more snooping on your bank accounts before you closed them. You had the requisite funds to pay the students long before you actually did. Why did you wait so long?”
Helena finds she cannot look the woman in the eye anymore.
“Ms. Wells?”
“I did not want to leave the Warehouse.”
“You must have known, when you were reinstated, that you would have to leave it eventually.”
“I admit, I was not prepared for it to make me feel so…safe.”
“The Warehouse is extremely dangerous.”
“Its agents aren’t.”
“Its agents are even worse.”
Helena clenches her jaw. Her mouth is set and angry, but her eyes are tired. She knows Mrs. Frederic can see nothing but the fatigue. “Not all of them,” she admits. “Myka will not want to see me.”
“Do you want to see her?”
“Yes.”
“Then she will endure.” Mrs. Frederic stands, sliding her chair noiselessly. “Mr. Kosan will be in to debrief you about your containment.”
“And then I’ll talk to Myka?”
“In time, Ms. Wells,” Mrs. Frederic answers, her hand on the door. “You and I are going to have several conversations first.”
/
Irene Frederic is a dangerous conversationalist. Helena wonders if she slides in and out of the Warehouse with silence to spare its agents her words, for she is too good at talking. She does not mince truths or allow Helena to avoid any humiliation. Mrs. Frederic is confrontational. She does not relent in revealing every one of Helena’s faults, even those that have nothing to do with Myka.
Helena asks her about it one day.
“Do you defend every Warehouse agent this fervently?”
“I defend the Warehouse against every personal attack until I am sure it is safe.”
“My attack was not a personal one.”
“I don’t think Myka would agree with that.”
“Pete would have eventually worn Myka down, I’m sure; bronzing me would be less painful than this conversation.”
“Rehabilitation is painful.”
“This is rehabilitation? I was under the impression this was punishment.”
“Not everyone deserves punishment.”
“In other words, I have not stopped being useful to the Warehouse.”
“True.” Mrs. Frederic adjusts herself in her chair and fiddles with her glasses. “I am going to be candid with you, Ms. Wells. I do not believe you should have been bronzed.”
“Clearly, as I’m sitting here with you.”
“I meant in 1906.”
“I asked to be bronzed.”
“And Caturanga had the opportunity to refuse that recourse.”
“The Regents gave me chances to change my behavior.”
“The Regents did not give you the right kind of chances.”
“And you think this new batch will?”
“I think someone will, if you let her.”
/
Three weeks later, Helena finds herself in Colorado Springs.
It is a wonderful fall day, by all accounts. The sun is not hidden by clouds and people smile at it in the streets. Helena can walk among them and she can almost pretend that she is one of them. But she cannot feel the sun or the breeze; she cannot open a door or sit down on a bench.
She cannot rely on anything but words to convince Myka that she is needed.
It is a gift.
Helena wanders around the bookstore, wanting desperately to inspect every book she comes across. There are some titles she recognizes and far more that she doesn’t. Those are the ones that make her fingers itch to be anything other than transparent.
But there are more important things in this shop than books, and they are glaring at her, angry and hurt.
“Hello, Myka,” she says.
Myka has spent three months hiding away from her truth. Helena has spent three months confronting hers.
It is time they learned from each other once again.