Chapter 49: Time and Again (1/2)

Standing in the middle of a white, underground experimentation room, Ryan let out a groan. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Too late, asshole,” Jasmine replied, as she used a screwdriver to close the armor’s lightweight alloy chest plate, leaving only the courier’s head exposed. Eugène-Henry Schrodinger meowed at her side, looking at his master with curiosity. “But I added a urine-recycling system if you want to drink your own piss.”

“Charming.” Ryan’s body didn’t feel so heavy, even if he wore a twenty-five kilogram suit of armor. The weight was evenly distributed to lessen the strain on his muscles, and the servos provided additional strength. While the courier wouldn’t be able to move as fast as in his glamorous suit, he could probably punch through concrete.

As per his demand, Jasmine had painted the armor purple, with orange lenses for the helmet’s eyes. Though Ryan looked like an oversized humanoid bug in it, he would remain outrageously flashy, and that was all that mattered.

Hell, his armor’s design matched Vulcan’s own. Wasn’t that adorable? Ryan had also memorized its schematics, so he could rebuild it in a future loop if needed.

Separated from a control area by a door and Plexiglas window, the place used to be an underground police interrogation room before the Wars. Jasmine had repurposed it into a lab, even managing to complete the armor in a matter of days using available material. The makeshift workshop was a far cry from Vulcan’s previous foundry, but it was sufficient.

They didn’t even have to lie about that project, not completely at least. Vulcan had promised Augustus that she would work on a new type of armor capable of enhancing Ryan’s power, and the would-be emperor had given his seal of approval. It seemed the courier’s power had left a good impression on Lightning Butt, or he just didn’t care anymore after his daughter’s demise.

Say what you wanted about the Augusti, but they got things done.

“Should have figured it out sooner,” Jasmine grumbled, as she grabbed the last part of the armor she hadn’t put on Ryan yet: the helmet. “You were just too fucking perfect. Was it a repeat performance? Did you fine-tune your sweet-talking until it worked?”

“No.” Though Ryan had centuries of experience with women, so he knew what made people tick. “You tried to kill me in a previous loop.”

“Did I succeed?” she asked, almost hopeful.

“Nope. Not even close.”

“A shame. Guess I might succeed this time.”

“It’s fine, half my girlfriends tried to kill me at one point or another,” Ryan replied with a smirk. “I’m a masochist.”

“I know you are,” Jasmine replied with a chuckle, though her mood quickly soured. “I’ve got a request, Ryan.”

“A request from you?” Ryan asked, quite surprised. Vulcan didn’t do requests, she gave orders. “How can I refuse?”

“If this fails… and it won’t fail, because I’m a genius…” Jasmine gathered her breath, as if admitting the mere possibility of failure took a colossal effort on her part. “But let’s assume that if it fails...”

“I won’t be able to transfer your mind.” In Ryan’s experience, failure would be the rule, and a potential success the exception.

“Yeah, right Sherlock,” she snapped, clenching her teeth. “If I don’t make it, it means I will cease to exist. The me right now.”

“You will just lose your memories,” Ryan argued. “Don’t be so pessimistic. It’s amnesia, not death.”

“I will lose memories of things I haven’t done. Stop kidding yourself, Ryan. I’ll be erased, end of the story.” She let out a sigh as if bracing herself for death. “So, if I don’t make it… I want you to leave my other self alone. Make sure she lives and doesn’t go to corpo-jail, but don’t pull off your summer fling crap on her. Don’t replace me with another Jasmine.”

“I understand,” Ryan said.

“Before, I said you wouldn’t forget me, and I mean it now. Even if I disappear… promise you won’t forget me.”

“I promise.”

He had made that oath before and always kept it.

The helmet in her hands, Jasmine pushed her lips against Ryan’s. The courier put his hands behind her waist, the armor clinking as it moved, and held her tight. It was a passionate, intense kiss; he felt as if Vulcan wanted to eat him on the spot.

This may be their last.

“Don’t forget that,” Jasmine said upon breaking the embrace and putting the helmet on Ryan’s face. The courier started to breathe with a respirator and see the world through lenses. Vulcan then tried to grab Schrodinger, but the cat stubbornly refused to get caught.

“I think he wants to stay,” Jasmine mused.

“It’s a Schrödinger's cat,” Ryan replied, easily seizing the cat in his armored arms. “He’ll improve the odds.”

“Whatever, I hope he has enough lives remaining,” Jasmine replied, closing the room’s door behind her. The Genius sat next to a control panel beyond the window, sparing her boyfriend one last glance before starting her work.

The plan was for Ryan to open a rift to the Purple World with his enhanced power. Though the courier had never succeeded in doing so for centuries, it should allow for physical time-travel, at least in theory. It was a far-fetched plan, even a risky one, but they had exhausted all other options. Since they had lost the necessary tech for a consciousness transfer and Europe would soon erupt in conflict, there was no other way for Jasmine to survive the restart.

The chances were slim, but one could always hope.

“If you think you might die, why are you going along with it?” Ryan asked Jasmine as she began hitting buttons on her control panel, fine-tuning the armor’s functions. Schrodinger waited, strangely silent. “You could keep me chained up in your basement.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Jasmine replied, pulling a lever on her control panel. Words and numbers started to appear on Ryan’s lenses, the suit’s systems activating. “Roughly eight million people live in New Rome and its countryside. The Meta killed what, two, three million of them? No matter how I see it… one versus three million. You would have to be a huge dick to consider it a fair deal.”

“Some would have thought otherwise,” Ryan admitted. One Genius tried to keep his brain in storage in an old loop, to prevent the courier from reloading. “That’s why I tried to keep my secret under wraps after a few betrayals.”

“Poor you,” Jasmine mocked him, before looking at the armor regretfully. “I was a hero once.”

Ryan said nothing.

“I just wanted to change the world. Make an impact. Like your Len girl is doing, though she doesn’t get it yet. I guess that’s why I wanted you on my team, Ryan; I had the feeling we were going to do great things together.”

“We are,” Ryan reassured her.

“Yeah,” she replied, stopping her work to look at him through the window. “Make sure this disaster never happens again, okay? Kill that fatass.”

“I’m killing him in every single loop from now on, I promise,” Ryan said, frowning. “If I told the Augusti about the bunker—”

“No, don’t, unless I follow you. At best, Augustus will blow up Rust Town like he did now, casualties be damned. At worst… I don’t want to think about it.” Vulcan clenched her fists, scowling. “If I don’t make it, go to Laura.”

“I’m sorry, have I misheard?” Ryan asked, astonished. “You want me to go—”

“I was jealous, alright!” the Genius snapped, interrupting her boyfriend. “Because she’s so fucking perfect! And now she just apologizes? It’s sickening.”

Ryan didn’t answer, letting Vulcan vent out all her pent-up frustration. He had the feeling that the short Genius had invested so much in her bitter rivalry with her former teammate, that she had no idea what to do now that Wyvern had thrown in the towel. Maybe with time, Jasmine would learn to move on. To stop hating.

If she had time.

“I know her better than anyone,” Jasmine grumbled in admission. “She’ll help getting rid of that bunker, if only because she’s too stupid to see the possibilities. She isn’t corrupt, just goddamn naive.”

Ryan wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a compliment or an insult. Knowing Jasmine, probably both. “Do you regret joining the Augusti?” the courier asked his girlfriend.

She considered the question for a few seconds. “No, I don’t regret it,” Vulcan finally said. “It wasn’t the best choice, but it was mine. If that makes sense.”

It didn’t, but the courier accepted it all the same.

In any case, the Genius finished typing on the control panel and looked through the window. “Ryan, we’re ready. Open the path to that Purple World, for the both of us.”

“I will do all I can.”

“Do or don’t. There is no try.”

Both burst out laughing; Ryan couldn’t believe they even shared the same love for pop culture. Truly, they had been a match made in mafia heaven. Even if it ended terribly… this loop had been something special.