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  “What are you doing, Seb?”

  The nickname stung in his ears, skillfully shot by the person responsible for its poison. His sister was standing just fifteen feet away from him, in a neon orange prisoner gown, somehow so different, yet still the exact same. Back after nearly a decade, she had made quick work over the last two days of reminding him why it had been so long. If how he felt in that very moment, standing there, pointing a gun at her was anything to go by, he was certain he was better off without her.

  Some petty piece of him felt a tinge of elation from being vindicated. It was the same piece of him that protected him through their childhood, when his twin would not. It craved comfort and consistency, rather than the wild whims of their parents his sister obliged. And eight years ago, it was the piece she and their mother joined forces to destroy.

  “Just—just don’t f-fucking move, okay?” He was fighting adrenaline, and could hear it saturate his voice. “Y-you need help! Look at you, Tabby!”

  “What?” Her voice was weak but exasperated.

  Tabitha’s look of disbelief followed his eyes down to her arms. After she gagged at her right, she gasped at her left.

  Struck by the headlights of the SUV, it sparkled brilliantly against the dark backdrop behind her. Up and down her skin, tiny rainbow lines of light danced, refracted by something peppered throughout it. Jagged iridescent crystals had worked their way from her middle finger up to her wrist, then continued higher. The rainbow fragments gradually tapered off at her elbow, before finally turning to specks and stars near her shoulder. It looked like she had punched through more than one pane of ethereal glass, then rolled her arm around in the pieces of it.

  Varium? he wondered. Sebastian had never seen it before, rare as it was, but he knew it almost immediately from the material’s description in the Blackwell Foundation’s treasure trove of research files. It was otherworldly in its beauty, shimmering like iridescent water, or oil, with its rainbow sheen. Every angle you could look at it promised the discovery of a new color. Just from seeing it at it a distance, he knew at least part of the reason why it was often referred to as crystallized magic in antiquity.

  It sang like crackling ice while she twisted her arm around to look at it. The longer she studied it, the heavier Tabitha’s breath became.

  “I…the ring?” she said, still enthralled by it. Her voice was distant. “It can’t—this wasn’t—”

  “What?”

  “The ring I—it’s—”

  “VIO-071. That’s it, right? The ring? Or was? It was the variant object they issued you?” He stopped to collect himself. His mouth was dry, and his hands felt loose and clammy around the gun. “That’s the designation they want to give you now—gave you.”

  “What? Already?” Tabitha looked around questioningly, trying to find answers somewhere off in the night. “I didn’t—I don’t understand...”

  “Come with us,” Sebastian blurted. He was desperate for a solution. Anything was better than this standoff, and he could feel her wanting to run, because it is what he would do. It was what he did. And he knew, because of that, just how difficult it was being alone. “Lord Tredici wants to help you—we’re trying to help you.”

  “Help me?” There was an unfamiliar whine on the edge of her voice, a weariness he had never heard in it before. “You have a gun pointed at me,” she told him. A single, sad chuckle rolled through her, as she did her best to gesture at her arms, and at the situation. “That guy…my arm…he just tried to do that,” her thumb followed a detached glance over her shoulder at the red smear, “to me, Sebastian. Blackwell is trying to contain me. You’re trying to contain me.”

  Sebastian shook his head at the accusation. “I—Sorry. No. No. Please, Tabby. You don't have to hurt anyone else. Come with us. We can figure out how to get that thing off of you. VIO-071—that’s all they want. Help them get it recontained, and I know they won’t hold it against you.”

  A moment passed, as she shook her head at him. “You don’t get it, do you? Designations can change, the number can change, but being labeled a variant is immutable. That’s the word they use. Immutable. You know what that means. There’s no walking it back. That’s not what we do. I’ve—they don’t help things they don’t understand. And they don’t let them go.”

  “AB1? What about her?! She’s—there’s no way she would let them do anything to you,” he argued, shaking his head. “Especially, not lock you in a place like that site.”

  Tabitha scoffed at him, her jaw locking down into a tired scowl. It was the cold, distant look of someone disappointed in themselves for taking the time bothering with you. The look of someone who would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, rather than waste their time on you. Her face read like she had just realized she could be minutes ahead of the hounds, if not for him. Despite their father’s strong features, she was the spitting image of their mother.

  All of a sudden, her head snapped around to stare down the gory driveway. Standing there, perfectly still, she listened for something.

  Lord Tredici, he thought, though, squinting his eyes at the darkness told him nothing.

  “The advisor you’re with,” she said without turning around. She was speaking quietly, in an almost grow. “What’s his variance?”

  At first, the question caught Sebastian off guard, and then it finally dawned on him.

  “Don’t,” he told her, raising the gun halfheartedly. “Come with us, Tabby.”

  “Something with luck, right? But how does it work?”

  When she turned back to him, the look on her face had become the revenant of her childhood insolence. Her crazed smile dared him to do it. Her weary eyes begged him for help. She knew he would not shoot. And she knew he could not help. She would have to run, and there was nothing to be said or done about it.

  Sebastian desperately tried to think of what would have stopped him eight years ago. Surely, there were words, or a word, that could have done the trick. If not the words, specifically, then maybe the act of saying them, or their intention. Perhaps, saying anything at all, besides go.

  The sudden sound of someone’s foot dragging across dirt pulled both of their eyes down the dark driveway.

  When Tabitha’s head swiveled toward the intruder, her crystal-ridden hand shot out in front of her. Resting her palm on an invisible surface, a flicker of light danced up her arm.

  The image of Lord Tredici being reduced to a golden slurry flashed through Sebastian’s mind.

  “Stop!”

  rewind<<

  There was a glint of gold in Tabitha’s bandaged eye.

  Someone was creeping down the driveway, like the midnight sun. Even though her good eye could not see him through the darkness, she could still feel the press of the advisor’s presence in her left. It was resplendent but tarnished light, both oppressive and fickle. Despite his apparent radiance, there was no warmth to bask in. Fool’s gold, she thought.

  “Worth more at a distance, than it is in hand,” Agent Harris said.

  Standing behind the Crown Vic, in the iridescent expanse, again, Tabitha stared down into the open trunk. Inside, a baseball bat and camcorder floated in a pool of golden liquid.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “You were mumbling something about fool’s gold,” he told her, somehow turning his clarification into a question midway through, “and I said it’s worth more at a distance than it is in hand?”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Tabitha squinted at him. “Yeah, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “You called him ‘fool’s gold’ and what this guy is exuding is worth its weight in actual gold.”

  “Exuding?” she questioned with disgust. “And I didn’t call him fool’s gold, I just made a goddamn comparison.”

  “Hey,” he said, shrugging, “exuding works.” Agent Harris scooped his hand into the liquid gold, removing a handful, before slowly pouring it back into the back of the car. “This guy practically sweats the stuff.”

  Following the phantom’s eyes back into the trunk, with her left eye, Tabitha’s expression soured further as she pictured the imagery. “What’s it do?”

  Tabitha’s attention flickered, momentarily, to her right eye, and the gun pointed at it.

  “…the advisor you’re with, what’s his variance?”

  The question was a test she knew Sebastian would fail. She gritted her teeth at his silent confirmation.

  In her left eye, Agent Harris threw his hands up as he laughed. “Not a clue. Why don’t you try drinking some, and find out?”

  The back of Tabitha’s hand flew up and found Agent Harris’s shoulder. As automatic as it had become, the playful strike felt different, empty somehow. Her hand no longer struck the same way, or his suit jacket felt too much like static. Whatever it was, something had changed enough to make the familiar gesture feel wrong now.

  “Yeah,” she said, her chuckling dying off, as the joy slowly drained from her. “You first.”

  “I already had some…”

  Her questioning eyebrow pulled Tabitha’s eyeline up to his.

  “…tastes like heaven going in.” A wide, exaggerated smile stretched across his face, revealing a gold plated mouth. Every bit of it, from gum to tongue, was covered in the glimmering liquid. His face turned to disgust as he started rolling his tongue over itself and his teeth, trying to rid himself of the flavor. “But the aftertaste is like piss and dirt.”

  This time, Tabitha transmuted the golden laughter she felt rising in her chest into soot-covered annoyance. She felt her face tighten into a practiced scowl. “I’ll pass,” she told him, letting her tone do the damage. Her hand hovered over the shallow pool of gold, hesitating on the baseball bat, before finding the camcorder. “And this?”

  “Seems pretty self-explanatory, I think. You’ve seen some of it in action.”

  As she picked it up, and flipped open the screen. Agent Harris’s posture tightened, like she might break it.

  “Just—just be careful,” he said, fidgeting over the urge to take it out of her hand. “You know these things are finicky—sensitive. And, really, I guess we haven’t seen what fast-forward does with this thing. If it does anything at all.”

  Fast-forward? It did sound self-explanatory, but nothing was ever straight-forward with variants. For all she knew, it would fast-forward through her entire life.

  More inclined to press the button she had seen used, her finger slid over to REWIND. Tabitha walked the moments that led her there back in her mind. She slid through useless chatter, the smearing punch, the white hot pain, and then back through the fall that preceded haven.

  Beyond the fall, the second-story room in the ruined house waited for her, and the promise of its pitch black safety.

  In her right eye, Sebastian’s silhouette still held her at gunpoint.

  “Stop!”

  But it was too late.

  Agent Harris’s voice sounded not unlike a beep. “Smart.”

  Suddenly, what felt like dozens of tiny hands were tugging at Tabitha’s body. The invisible force yanked and pushed and jabbed at her from all sides, guiding her through her past actions in reverse. In her ears, she heard only the static buzz of rewinding, despite her brother’s yelling.

  Words wasted slipped back into her mouth, to rejoin the ire that spit them. Heat from decade old hate sank back into embers. Stinging betrayal cooled. Acceptance became uneasiness, then fear, then bewilderment, a revelation rendered in reverse. Her body dropped back through the motions of her grand slam punch, and—

  —haven was not haven in reverse—

  —the world flickered around her, again, and for the briefest moment the night sky was full of eyes instead of stars.

  It was over in a blink.

  Tabitha returned from the unhaven, and continued through her rewind. Unaffected, the unvarite had not returned to her left arm, though, the heat it trapped before cracking did. It jetted into her broken skin, like needles, as the fragments of the ring running up her arm glowed brilliantly. Dragged back through her stumbling recovery, after the first crushing blow landed, the pressure in her shattered right arm tightened back into a white hot knot. She found the moment lost to fresh pain still blinded her, the lightning bolt snapping back across her vision.

  Then the agony seeped back into the bone, with a sickening crunch, as her arm realigned itself.

  Tabitha was dragged backwards through the adrenaline of anticipation, the realization she was being attacked, the struggle to stand up after the fall to haven, and then back into the ground she had slammed into.

  As the pain from shoulder checking the ground left her, she was lifted by puppeteer’s hands, up into the air through her fall, and—

  —haven was not haven in reverse—

  —the night fell away into deeper darkness, where eyes waited, watching.

  The static hum of rewinding, or something like the sucking sound of a vacuum, filled Tabitha’s ears. As she stared up at the audience, she could not help but feel like something was being lost. Rising to meet the growing stage fright, the gleam in her bandaged eye slipped out into the crowd to join them.

  Perception peeling back over the scene, Tabitha looked down at herself, floating in a void. She was being guided along, or held in place, by what looked like ribbons of film stock. Now above herself, she was one of the audience members, a silent pair of eyes pressed into the nothingness surrounding her body.

  Somehow a part of the viewers, yet apart from them, she met their questioning eyes with questions of her own.

  A tangent? she wondered, unsure of what else it could be. The spaces between space came in all shapes and sizes, and were filled with all manner of life and unlife. Stumbling into one was less than ideal, unless you knew how to stumble back out.

  Staring up at herself, staring at herself, staring at herself below, Tabitha’s mind spiraled into itself as the film fluttered from its reel, then off into the emptiness surrounding her.

  There was something behind her. She could hear the sound of crunching and slurping as it ate.

  Turning to face the chewing, Tabitha found a small, childlike creature with static skin. It was sitting in the soft glow of a television, staring at the screen with no eyes. There was only a mouth on its face for it to shovel film and tape into. Pulling handfuls of it from every direction, it chewed ravenously as it pretended to watch.

  Drawn in by curiosity, she approached it carefully, not wanting to interrupt its meal.

  A few steps from the child of static, she realized one of the strands of VHS tape it was eating was being pulled from the VCR sitting atop the television. Her eyes followed the black ribbon toward the screen. On it, something was playing backwards.

  Staring at the image filled Tabitha’s head with the whir of rewinding.

  The closer she got to the screen, the louder the static drone grew.

  The more her eye focused, the clearer the image became.

  Through the snowy picture, a midsummer day came into view.

  Tabitha knew the memory well, even in reverse. Even halfway through it being consumed, the metallic smell stinging her nose made it obvious.

  At the end of a red breadcrumb trail through a dense patch of undergrowth, a bullet exited a fallen deer. It was a mercy undone as the shot returned to Tabitha’s gun. She was twelve, and the rifle was heavy. It had become heavier over the course of the day.

  With each step rewound, it grew lighter and lighter.

  Walking backwards, ruby pools became splatters, splatters became spray, and then spray became drops. The animal’s speed as it fled had slowed the more exhaustion took hold of it. In reverse, the trail gradually became less and less easy to follow. The deer’s running from its pain had outpaced the beat of its own heart, causing the trail to be broken up by more than fifteen feet in some places. It had been so difficult to find, at times, Tabitha had to go by sheer luck in order to pick a direction to continue her chase.

  Eventually, she found Sebastian, again, right where he left her to return home. After following Tabitha all day, he had grown tired of carrying around his own rifle. It was during a five minute period of time where they could not find any trail to follow that they parted ways.

  Before whining had overcome him, the two of them were making easy work of spotting the sanguine path. Rewinding through the joy of leapfrogging their discoveries, one finding a breadcrumb after the other found the last, again and again, step after step, the twins returned to the beginning of the trail.

  At the start of it all, Tabitha and Sebastian returned to their firing position, and watched the doe reappear. She swore in reverse, as her brother returned his eye to the scope of his rifle.

  Then, out from the deer’s stomach, a bullet returned to the barrel.

  The suddenness of the rewound gunshot startled Tabitha from the memory.

  Huh? Staring at the television while something still chewed behind her, she began to wonder if Sebastian’s shot landed. Her brother was a decent shot back then, when there was no pressure involved. The guilt of killing an animal, though, was exactly the kind of thing that would make him miss. Probably n—

  Tabitha’s heart sank when it dawned on her what was happening.

  Spinning on her heels, she turned around to stand over the static entity. Watching it nonchalantly shove the memory, along with other countless things to be forgotten, hand over fist into its mouth, she wanted nothing more than for it to choke on it.

  When her wish did not happen immediately, Tabitha took the creature’s face into her hands, and began ripping the film stock and tape from its mouth. Unsatisfied by the bits and pieces stuck in its teeth, she took her shimmering hand and shoved it down its throat.

  As it fought her, the choking drone of rewinding turned into a buzzing wail.

  All of a sudden, the wall of eyes snapped open around Tabitha.

  No longer curious or confused, they glared and glowered at her until she felt it in her throat-bound arm. A warmth was rising from her hand, and she could feel the crystal in it begin to grow. She could hear it as it cracked and popped and sang to her.

  Before she could tear her arm from the forgetting maw, the witnesses did it for her.

  Outside of the window she had jumped out of earlier that night, Tabitha continued her fall through the air. The suddenness of it dragged a sharp gasp from her, drawing the flashlight of the man below her up into her eyes.

  “What the shi—oooh shit!”

  The man dropped something that clattered onto the ground during his scramble to get the screen flipped open on the camcorder. His fumbling caused the light on his gun to wave about and create a disorienting strobe effect.

  Tabitha screamed, dazed and unsure of how she would land. “Haven!”

  But this time, the world did not slip away and return to her as the driveway.

  “HAAAVEN!”

  Right as she landed on the agent, sparkling elbow first, a beep rang out in the night.