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I found Retcon in the basement of a shitty little casino He’d crashed into it when I threw him; they didn’t have the cash to fix it up quite yet He turned his head toward reen apples They srass and hot stone

Heya, Jules I missed you Don’t hit me too hard

I hit hiainst the dark slot machines, the roulette wheels, the card tables Harder than any hubirds could take He let me It all bounced off him Retcon looked up at me from under the billiards with his ruined eyes and scrawled out another nasty X on the back of his hand

The casino vanished

Retcon and I stood in a field of pa purple flowers Massive prehistoric capybaras grazed on the plains A fewin red splatters

“Where are we?” I was too stunned to swear at hi up

Retcon turned to ht blue, unstitched eyes “We’re about a thousand years back in a timeline where the New World was never colonized Europe just sort ofdidn’t happen Africa’s aces, though We sho

uld go have a look”

“Why did you bring ain

“Hold on, hold on!” Retcon held up his hands No tricks “I brought you here because I’ve always brought you here I will always have been bringing you here I’ve met a hundred million versions of you I know you so well This is what I do This is what I did Back on the ice I moved us all into a timeline where Crucible wasn’t invulnerable to fire There’s another one where he never had any powers at all, where no one ever did You’re still together in that one You have a baby girl She’s going to be a prograrows up In this timeline, our Henry is” Retcon scanned the herds He pointed “Just there Alive and well”

The Crucible-capybaramoon and scratched at his haunches

“Fine I’ood timeline”

“It’s one-way, I’ that somewhere, your Henry, the one who called you a boat, is alive and safe?”

No, it did not But I didn’t say anything I walked toward the capybaras, soothing the Bowie into their cozy, hungry hearts I held out my hand to the Henry-beast He looked suspicious He’d never smelled human this close before unless the human smell was very quickly followed by the blood save it a prim little lick Somewhere deep, in every timeline, Henry Hart knows me

Retcon ran his hand over the shaved half of his head “I didn’t know hi to me Just a job You’ve had lots of jobs Your jobs have killed my friends, too, you know My fa by it It’s not personal When you see all of ti I hope you will understand too In that timeline, the one I took us out of, Crucible would have siphoned off so mad, and eventually, he would have lit the world on fire with it Destroyed us all I was helping I a”