Matters Of Time and Fate

Chapter 25

What now?

Helen's mind flared with the question as she sat on the dock's edge, her briefcase sitting on the wood planks beside her. Around her, the lake was quiet and peaceful, a far cry from the chaos she'd endured over an hour ago. Or had it been two hours? She had not checked her watch, though it did not matter.

Helen had a few options: she could leave the townhouse and return to Mann Co.'s headquarters, where she could resume business as usual while pretending nothing had happened. She was a master at pretending, she knew it. Alternatively, she could go back and force everyone to sign non-disclosure agreements...or she could kill them.

No, no. She couldn't do that, she couldn't kill them. But why? Had this been years ago, she would not have hesitated. Helen realized with horror that she'd grown quite fond of all of them – spending so much time with them, learning their names, and getting to know their personalities had made her mind refuse to allow her to even consider harming them directly. It made her feel almost ashamed...what had happened to her? Was it feasible for her to go through another change at her age, after having lived as long as she had?

It was already happening. Olivia's pain as she demanded to know if what she had heard was true made Helen feel terrible about having left her child behind. At the thought of that, she stared out at the stretch of water before her, trying to take her mind somewhere else.

She reached for the briefcase beside her, pulling it onto her lap. After checking to make sure no one was around, she opened it.

The Australium sat before her, pure and warm. It had been slightly dented from traveling into space and then being scraped off the rocket, but it was fine. Helen could still feel its power, still feel the golden glow that held her captive. It was just the same as when she'd first felt it as a small girl, sitting in her family's old house all those years ago.

Helen then had a new idea: she could run away. She could take this Australium right now, transform into a much younger woman, get a haircut at one of the neighboring salons, and board the first bus out of town. She could do it...it was a coward's way out, but it wasn't impossible. On her own, she could get that Australium from Sage. She was capable, she was always capable, and nothing would stop her from –

The piece of wood she was sitting on suddenly broke way and snapped beneath her, sending her and her briefcase plummeting into the lake. Helen let out a piercing cry as she fell into the lake, the shock of the ice-cold water silencing her.

She thrashed around in the water for a brief minute, frantically looking for the briefcase. The freezing chill of the water, however, was too much for her, and she felt herself slip out of awareness and into the black within moments.

Some time passed, although she did not know how much time.

Helen felt someone nudging her on the shoulder when she finally came around. Before turning her head in the direction of the prodding, she blinked carefully, flinching at a bright light above her.

Her heart sank as she realized she was no longer at the lake, but in a setting she was all too familiar with: a courtroom. She could hear people talking and a typewriter tapping somewhere in the room, and the person nudging her was...

"Grandmother?" Helen's voice came out in a hushed whisper, in utter disbelief.

With her hair tied up and tired yet scheming eyes, Elizabeth appeared exactly as Helen remembered her. At this point in life, there were not many situations where Helen would feel overpowered by another person but being beside her grandmother even after all this time made her shrink back into her chair. Elizabeth looked Helen up and down, her expression unimpressed.