CHAPTER 11: FINDNG OUR FRIEND

NOVEMBER 26, 1347

EUROPE

 

Johnny furiously stomped down the stone path, far away from the building Seth was in. He couldn’t believe he could be so stupid, letting that damned actor be in a top secret, DANGEROUS agency that has access to all of time. What COULDN’T go wrong? The punishment for imposing as a Time agent is death, so as much as it hurt Johnny to kill someone, it had to be done, so that part of the stress released from his shoulders, but the rest still remained: How is he going to get back home? Where he was safe and not able to die from simply coughing or shaking a hand, where his friends were, where Time Agency was. How he longed just for that, and that’s all he longed for.

            Out of nowhere, a red swirly portal opened, releasing Lee into the Black Death. He stumbled out of the portal, flopping on the stone ground. “I’M HERE!” he shouted. Johnny froze, startled. He couldn’t believe it. Lee found him and was here to save the day!

            “Lee! Oh Christ how happy I am to see you!”

            Lee stood to his feet, swaying and disoriented from his fall. “Hello there, too.” He said as he fell back down. Johnny helped Lee up.

            “C’mon, buddy, let’s go home!”

            “Where’s Seth?” Lee asked, full consciousness regained.

            “Burning. He’s not a true agent, he was only an actor. He betrayed us and went behind our back. So, I did what I needed to do.”

            “Johnny, are you crazy?! He’s helped us solve this case more than any other agent! Because of Seth, we have the Quagmire’s identity, relatives, I know his location, all that jazz. We need to go find him and see if he’s alive.”

            “Lee, the Rules of Time Agency state in the ‘Punishments’ category that pretending to be an agent and traveling through time results in death. I did what I had to...”

            “But not what was right. He could be the one to save history! You probably just killed him!” Lee ran off in the direction Johnny was coming from, hoping to find Seth again.

 

            The walls enclosed a vast floor of stone debris and ash. Out of it, Seth arose. He had to use rocks to support him up, due to his burnt leg. He couldn’t stand up straight, and he could barely walk. But he pushed on, over to the wall. He stacked dome debris to make a staircase of sorts, and climbed up and over it.

            He limped down the path. It hurt him to walk, oh how it hurt. He used the stick him and Johnny used to burn the roof as a cane, but he still hurt to walk. Every step he took sent a new jolt of pain through him, especially his leg, the burnt one. He didn’t want to look at it, he felt it would make him feel worse. Half burnt, wondering through a time hundreds of years before he was born. Hell, hundreds of years before his parents were born.

            But he ventured on, hoping he would be found by SOMEBODY.

            And he was.

 

            Lee ran down the path. Johnny was hesitantly chasing after him, under the mindset Seth should be dead for what for what he did. About thousand or so feet later, they heard a groan. They called out, “Seth!? Hello!?”

            “I’m here,” the groan replied.

            Lee paused and looked around. Left, nothing. Front, nothing. Right, a shadow. The shadow limped and struggled his way over to Lee and Johnny. Lee took off and ran over to the crippled shadow.

            It was Seth.

            “Seth!” Lee screamed as he threw his arms around Seth’s warm, sweaty, moist body. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

            Seth moaned. “I need water. And a doctor.”

            Lee swung open his coat and grabbed a bottle of ice cold water, ripped the cap off, and instantly held it out to Seth. Seth chugged half of the bottle in one drink, and poured the rest on his burnt leg. His burned flesh let out a loud hiss and steam rose from it rapidly, like pouring cold water onto a just-used grill. Seth cringed and tried to old in a scream, but after a few seconds, it was alright. He couldn’t walk on it, but he could limp easier now. “Let’s go to the end of time and-uh…uhh…” Seth started. His pain was so strong and he was so weak he could barely speak. “…Find the book, yeah, let’s go get it…”

            “As of right now, the end of time is in 1991.” Lee explained to Seth. “Since he is in 1991 with the book, the rest of time hasn’t happened yet, because the book ENDS with whatever time it’s in. If it’s not at the end of time, then the end of time as WE know it doesn’t exist.”

            “How do you knowwhereheis?” Seth said, as he almost fell over.

            Lee quickly dashed and caught him. “Because I managed to get out of the end of time as he killed Paradox, so he didn’t know about me. I traveled to the beginning of time, then after about an hour or so I jumped to the NEW end of time, 1991, and I tracked him down on my watch. Then we fought on the train and I found where you guys were.”

            “So we need to go with you to stop him!” said Johnny.

            “Yes. But he knows we may be coming back, so there’s no saying what he’ll do.”

            Lee opened the red swirly portal, helped Seth in, then got in himself, followed by Johnny. And just like that, they were gone.