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Humanity had long been aware that they were not alone among the stars. Several failed alien invasions during the early twenty-fourth century — invasions that were too destructive to be covered up, much to the distress of several powerful governmental organizations across the globe — clued in the general public.
Across the subsequent centuries, longstanding tensions between rival nations eased as humanity united itself into one race of people belonging to the Earth, pitting themselves not against each other, but against an untold number of alien, outsider species instead.
Advanced spaceflight, also known as warp capability, or space travel at the speed of light, was achieved sometime in the late thirtieth century – though development of the technology had begun in the early twenty-first, and space travel to celestial bodies within Earth’s own solar system had been achieved as early as the mid-twenty-sixth.
The exploration of space was not the only major interest of humanity – no. While space captured the hearts and minds of many, others turned to the fourth dimension, and sought to conquer time.
Just imagine it, they whispered to each other in awe. Imagine being able to step through time. To know all that came before and all that will come after. What would it be like? How powerful would you feel? How powerful would you become?
The Time Window, the first major breakthrough in the field of chronoscience, was developed in the late thirty-third century. The Time Window wasn’t time travel, not by any means, but it was the first means by which people could see the past. Find a willing participant, someone who was alive on the day you wanted to see, track their unique chrono-genetic signature back to that place and time, and the Window displayed it — a frozen image, imperfect and limited in scope, but a clear view into the past nonetheless.
Expanding that scope, figuring out how to track chrono-genetic signatures not attached to currently living people, learning how to see farther back, to see moving images, to get access to a greater scope — this was the work of the next three centuries. Seeing the future would prove more challenging, and actually travelling through time would prove more challenging still.
Jeno was twenty-six years old during the forty-second century, pursuing his Doctorate in Chronoscience at the University of Terra’s Seoul campus, and a member of a research team intent on developing time travel when he met Jaemin for the first time.
Jaemin was… who the hell knows what Jaemin was doing. Looking back on it, Jeno was pretty sure that Jaemin’s sole purpose really was just to make sure that Jeno’s team utterly failed to research and develop time travel (mission sort of accomplished), but Jaemin usually had multiple reasons for being somewhere. Jeno never asked, and Jaemin never said, so he’d never know for sure.
There were lots of things about Jaemin that Jeno would never know for sure.
─── ★ ───
Jaemin was who-the-hell-knows-how-many years old during the sixty-third century, trying to figure out why people were vanishing without a trace in crowds at the center of Downtown Seoul, and traveling with a companion for the first time in a while when he met Jeno for the first time.
Jeno was… who the hell knows what Jeno was doing. Looking back on it, Jaemin suspected that Jeno was there following Jaemin himself, but at the time, he’d been rather convinced Jeno was wrapped up in the same mystery he was. Jaemin never asked, and Jeno never said, so he’d never know for sure.
There were lots of things about Jeno that Jaemin would never know for sure.
─── ★ ───
For Jeno, it started on an innocuous Monday morning. He was running late, and arrived on the opposite side of campus from his first class since he’d had to catch the slightly later, far more inconvenient bus with shoelaces that he’d only tied after making it onto the bus, his bag in complete disarray, and the back of his shirt damp with stress-sweat. Charming.
Jeno rushed across campus with single-minded focus. He couldn’t afford to be late to this class – he was the TA, for god’s sake, and Professor Kim, as much as Jeno liked him, was a total bitch about timeliness.
Jeno was so distracted thinking about his imminent death at the hands of a vengeful Professor Kim that he didn’t notice the pair of hands reaching out for him until they’d already yanked him out of the hallway and into a supply closet.
Jeno hadn’t even begun to process any of this before the man who had just kidnapped Jeno off the street slammed the door to the closet shut, turned around, and planted a kiss right on Jeno’s lips. He pulled back as quickly as he leaned in, cupping Jeno’s face in his palms – and oh god, he was gorgeous.
“Darling,” he said, voice warm. He dropped Jeno’s face, the look of adoration washed away by something far more serious. “What have you got?”
“What the fuck,” Jeno gasped, still rather breathless from the kiss. It seemed like the thing to say.
Because, well. Yeah. What the fuck.
─── ★ ───
On the day Jaemin met Jeno, Jaemin returned to the TARDIS to find a stranger standing at the control panel, looking for all the world like he was about to try and fly it.
“Hello,” he said, in that particularly dangerous tone of voice reserved for days when he struggled to remember why he bothered trying to be kind – the days when his sanity was holding on by a single, rapidly fraying thread. “What are you doing in the TARDIS?”
It was not a question. It was a threat. Armies had turned tail and fled at the sound of this voice, entire species burned to ashes in the Time War, cities and civilizations had fallen in his wake. The stranger looked up at him from the console, and where there should have been trembling fear, there was nothing but warmth. Mild amusement, maybe.
“Hello, dear,” the stranger said. “Bad day?”
Jaemin was so disconcerted that he stopped in his tracks and stared. The stranger laughed, and crossed the room to him, planting a kiss directly on his lips.
“What the fuck,” Jaemin said. It seemed like the thing to say.
Because, well. Yeah. What the fuck.
─── ★ ───
“Jeno.” The stranger standing across from him in the supply closet frowned, eyes narrowing. “We don’t have all day.”
“I know,” Jeno said, still utterly bewildered. “You’re about to make me late for class.” As if hearing himself say it out loud broke some kind of spell that this stranger had cast over him, Jeno’s eyes widened in horror. “I’m going to be late for class!” He yelped and rushed for the door, pushing past the stranger, who was starting to look just as confused as Jeno felt.
“Now, hold on –!”
Jeno just shoved past him back out into the hallway, resuming his mad dash for Professor Kim’s classroom. The stranger barrelled out of the closet behind him, and Jeno could hear him dashing after him, calling for him to wait.
Hell no. Jeno wasn’t going to risk Professor Kim’s wrath for anything – especially not some weirdo who pushed strangers into closets and kissed them within an inch of their life.
Jeno’s fingers brushed against his lips as he ran. Even if he was a good kisser. He shook himself, putting all his energy into dodging wayward undergraduates in his path.
Jeno made it just on time, screeching to a halt just outside the door, taking a moment to straighten his hair and clothes before stepping inside. Just as he was about to cross the threshold, the stranger careened around the corner at the end of the hallway, the long coat he was wearing flaring out behind him.
“Jeno, don’t you dare step through that door –” he panted, rushing down the hallway towards him. Jeno blinked, confused and mildly horrified, and did exactly that, shutting the door behind him. He could hear a muffled groan on the other side. “Would it kill you to listen to me just once?”
“Jeno.” Professor Kim’s voice was professionally detached as always, but after knowing the man for nearly four years, Jeno was pretty sure he could detect the slightest hint of amusement hidden in the tone. “Glad to see you made it here on time.”
“Of course, Professor,” Jeno said, trying his best to hide the way his chest was heaving with exertion. Based on the tiny twitch at the corner of Professor Kim’s lips, he wasn’t very successful.
Suddenly, the door flew open behind him, and the stranger tumbled into the room, a bright smile fixed on his face.
“And who are you?” Any hint of amusement or warmth was gone from Professor Kim’s tone. Every student in the room, Jeno included, shrank back slightly at the hostility.
“Apologies for the intrusion.” The stranger bowed deeply, nearly ninety degrees. He cast his eyes around the room, shrewd and assessing, smile frozen in place. There was something about it that made the hairs on the back of Jeno’s neck stand up. “I’m here to… observe. Your class. The Dean’s office sent me.”
“I’m a tenured professor,” Professor Kim said, eyes narrowing. “And my annual review was four months ago, mister…?” He trailed off, waiting for a name.
“Jaemin,” said the stranger. “Call me Jaemin.”
“No last name?” Professor Kim said.
“Just Jaemin,” said the stranger – Jaemin.
“Right. Well then, Just Jaemin, care to explain yourself?” Professor Kim suffered no fools, and based on the look on his face, he clearly considered Jaemin a fool. Jeno almost felt bad for him.
“I assure you, I’m from the Dean’s office,” Jaemin said, tone apologetic. Jeno stared at him in disbelief. “I have all the relevant paperwork, if you’d allow me to show you?”
Professor Kim raised an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving, but nodded his assent. Jaemin reached into his jacket and pulled out some kind of wallet. Jeno assumed it contained his ID, but when he flipped it open, it didn’t have anything in it at all – on the inside was a piece of blank paper.
Jaemin walked to the front of the class and held it out for Professor Kim to see, brimming with confidence. Jeno let out a tiny huff of disbelief – he couldn’t be serious?
A long moment passed as Professor Kim stared at the blank paper in Jaemin’s hand. Jeno understood. He would be shocked by the audacity too.
“I see,” Professor Kim said, sounding supremely annoyed. “You can sit up front.” He gestured to the spare chair that sat beside the TA’s desk. “But your office will be hearing from me for failing to email the faculty ahead of time about the policy change.”
“Absolutely,” Jaemin said. Jeno gaped as Jaemin sauntered over and sank down into the chair directly beside Jeno’s own, eyes twinkling in amusement as they settled on Jeno, who was still frozen in the doorway in shock.
“Jeno.” Professor Kim raised an eyebrow. “Find your seat.”
“Right, of course,” Jeno said. He hurried to his seat, settling in beside Jaemin as Professor Kim began his lecture.
Trying to talk during the lecture would no doubt draw Professor Kim’s ire, so Jeno stayed silent the entire hour, fidgeting in his seat under Jaemin’s searching gaze. Jaemin was still, almost eerily so. He barely even blinked – just tilted his head back and forth, back and forth, studying Jeno like he was a particularly complex mathematical equation.
It was unsettling.
─── ★ ───
“Don’t worry, I’m not lockpicking,” the stranger laughed, leaning against the console of Jaemin’s TARDIS like he owned it. Jaemin could barely believe the audacity. “I have a key.” The stranger crossed his arms, head tilted playfully to the side. “So, what brings you to this part of the galaxy?”
“No,” Jaemin said, holding up a hand to stop him. Despite the way his head was swimming with questions, his voice came out commanding. To his relief, he saw the stranger straighten up just slightly, ease making way for the slightest wariness – something subtly cautious, tinged with confusion.
“What do you mean, no?” The stranger frowned, as if it was Jaemin who was being ridiculous in this situation.
“I mean, no,” Jaemin insisted. He stepped forward and grabbed one of the man’s lapels in hand, roughly yanking him closer so he could stare at him eye to eye. “We aren’t just moving past this. Who are you, and what are you doing in my TARDIS?”
─── ★ ───
The moment the hour was up, Jeno shoved his notebook into his bag and made for the door, not daring to look behind him. A moment later, he discovered that his efforts were in vain as he heard Jaemin’s footsteps following him out into the hallway.
“Jeno,” Jaemin said, and his voice was softer, less demanding. Hesitant, in a way – as if Jeno were some kind of small, spooked creature that Jaemin had to coax out of a corner. Jeno ignored him. Jaemin’s voice got louder, more insistent. “Jeno.”
Jeno sped up. Behind him, he heard Jaemin groan.
“Oh my god, loving you is a trial. Is this you getting me back for the Lianshu Star System? Because I’ve already apologized for that! About a million times!” Jaemin called after him. It was completely nonsensical, but then again, most of what Jaemin said and did didn’t make a lick of sense. Why start now? “Jeno, stop running away.”
“Stop stalking me,” Jeno retorted.
“Bold move, asking me to stop stalking you, considering how we met,” Jaemin said, snorting.
“We met today,” Jeno said, intrigued despite himself. Jaemin paused, understanding dawning on his face. He looked thrown, like the world had fallen out from beneath his feet, but he recovered quickly, the expression vanishing as fast as it had come, and he scrambled to catch up to Jeno, falling into step beside him as they crossed the quad.
“We met today?” He asked, quietly. Almost as if scared of the answer.
“Yes?” Jeno shot him a confused look out of the corner of his eye. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“Ah,” Jaemin said. He fell silent for a moment, contemplative.
Against his better judgement, Jeno began to actually feel sorry for the man.
“Sorry, but I’m not who you’re looking for,” he said.
“You are,” Jaemin said. He blinked, as if surprised he’d said it. He smiled. “Our first meeting. I never thought I’d get here.”
“If you want to convince me you’re not a stalker, you have got to stop saying things like that,” Jeno groaned.
“Does it make it better if I tell you that it’s not really our first meeting?” Jaemin asked, as if he were genuinely curious.
“It is our first meeting, though,” Jeno pointed out, rolling his eyes. They were nearly through the quad, now – a few more minutes to the bus stop.
“It is, and it isn’t,” Jaemin said, waving a hand. “You have to be specific when you talk about these things.” He paused, and tilted his head to the side, the assessing look back in his eye. “You should know that, being a Chronoscientist.”
Jeno frowned. “How do you…?”
“It’s true that this is your first time meeting me,” Jaemin continued, a knowing look in his eye. “But it’s most certainly not my first time meeting you.”
─── ★ ───
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my TARDIS?”
The man’s eyes widened. To Jaemin’s chagrin, he still didn’t appear to be all that intimidated. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “You’re being serious?”
“Deadly,” Jaemin hissed.
The man’s eyes narrowed, searching Jaemin’s own almost desperately, as if looking for proof that he was lying. Apparently finding nothing, the man’s eyes fluttered shut. He leaned away from Jaemin, a frown creasing his brow. “I see,” he said quietly.
Jaemin was confused, but it seemed like the man had gone from friendly and teasing to quietly devastated at the news that Jaemin didn’t know him. The puzzle pieces were starting to put themselves together in Jaemin’s mind – a man who was overly familiar with him, a man who had a key to the TARDIS, a man who could possibly fly the TARDIS, which, by the way, shouldn’t really be possible.
(All the men who could fly TARDISes burned in the fire that Jaemin set himself at the end of the Time War.)
A man who acted like he knew Jaemin, even though he’d never seen him before.
(Sometimes Jaemin could still hear them screaming.)
“I don’t know you,” Jaemin said, letting go of the man’s lapel and stepping back. “But I’m going to. Aren’t I?”
“Our first meeting,” the man said. He smiled, but there was something sad about it. “I never thought I’d get here.” He stuck out a hand. “I’m Jeno.”
“After such a passionate greeting, a mere handshake seems rather impersonal,” Jaemin noted, even as he reached out to clasp Jeno’s hand in his own.
“Spoilers,” Jeno said, rolling his eyes.
Despite Jeno’s best efforts to look unaffected, Jaemin caught the tips of his ears flushing pink.
─── ★ ───
Jeno stopped dead, nearly falling over as he looked at Jaemin in shock. “Wait –”
“There it is,” Jaemin whispered.
“You’re a time traveller,” Jeno breathed. “Which means…” His eyes widened, heart leaping at the implications. The research team he was a member of. The thing he’d spent his life studying, trying to achieve. The way this man out of time clearly knew him. “No.”
“Yes,” Jaemin said.
“No!” Jeno said, breathless with excitement. “You’re serious?”
“Oh yes,” Jaemin said, grinning. He paused, the barest hint of hesitation flashing across his face. “It’s funny. It’s hard to know how the rules work with you. Should I be telling you any of this? Or is this how things have always been? You never told me.”
“Who the fuck cares,” Jeno said, eyes bright. “You’re a time traveller.”
“Spoilers,” Jaemin said, half to himself. Something wistful flashed across his face, gone as soon as Jeno caught a glimpse. He clapped his hands together, suddenly all business. “You’re a member of the university’s chronoscience research project?”
“Well, there’s more than one of those, but I’m involved in a couple, yeah,” Jeno said. “Why?”
“Hm.” Jaemin frowned for a moment, but between one blink and the next, the serious look was gone, replaced by a near-manic smile. “I think your friends might be up to something. Or more precisely, I think your friends might not be your friends at all. At least, not anymore.” Jeno opened his mouth to respond, head spinning, but Jaemin was already turning on his heel and tossing a grin back over his shoulder at Jeno. “So. Are you coming?”
Jeno scoffed. “As if I’d ever miss… whatever the hell this is about to be.”
Jaemin’s grin widened. “That’s the Jeno I know!” He reached out, grabbed Jeno’s hand, and then they were running across the quad. Jeno’s heart was pounding, a strange mix of excitement and terror bubbling up at the back of his throat as Jaemin pulled him forward into the unknown.
─── ★ ───
Jaemin relinquished his hold on Jeno’s hand just as the TARDIS door flung open, admitting Donghyuck, who had abandoned Jaemin on their way back to the TARDIS so he could go grab some coffee – he always complained about the TARDIS coffee.
“So, any theories that could explain how people are vanishing in broad daylight in front of a ton of witnesses –” Donghyuck froze as he caught sight of Jeno, who looked equally shell-shocked. “Whoa. Who are you? Jaemin, you know this guy?”
“This is Jeno,” Jaemin started, and then, Jeno cut in.
“Who are you?” He was frowning at Donghyuck, as if he was the one intruding.
Thankfully, Donghyuck didn’t appear fazed by Jeno’s sudden standoffish behavior.
“Just Jeno? No last name?”
“Used to have one,” Jeno said casually. “Then I took his.” He pointed at Jaemin, who choked.
Donghyuck’s eyebrows raised even higher, practically vanishing into his hairline. He shot a look at Jaemin like, we will be talking about this later. “So… you do know this guy.”
“Not yet,” Jaemin said, head spinning at the implications of what Jeno just said.
“Spoilers,” Jeno said, the corner of his lips turned up in amusement as he watched Jaemin panic. He sobered, turning back to Donghyuck. “It doesn’t really matter. You still didn’t tell me your name…?”
“Right.” Donghyuck still looked disbelieving, but he was already used to the chaos of travelling with Jaemin, so he was good at rolling with the punches. He reached a hand out for Jeno to shake. “I’m Lee Donghyuck. Some of my friends call me Haechan.”
Jeno’s eyes widened.
“You’re Lee Donghyuck,” he said, voice soft, and oh, god. Oh, no. He looked so sad.
“Yeah…?” Donghyuck said, clearly unsettled, but Jeno was just looking Jaemin’s way with terrible, knowing eyes, and Jaemin had to change the subject now, before he learned too much about wonderful, effervescent, endlessly-kind, funny Lee Donghyuck’s future.
“Anyway, I caught Jeno breaking into the TARDIS,” Jaemin interjected. “Except not breaking in, because he had a key. What were we saying about the disappearances?”
“I’ll never understand you,” Donghyuck said fondly, and Jaemin thanked all the gods he didn’t believe in as conversation turned away from the heartbroken looks Jeno kept throwing Donghyuck’s way and towards the mystery that brought Jaemin and Donghyuck here in the first place.
─── ★ ───
“Okay, so, just to recap –” Jeno took a deep breath, head spinning. “There are shapeshifting aliens called Zygons that have been living amongst us on Earth for the last several centuries unnoticed because their home planet was destroyed in a cataclysmic war of space and time. You’re about 80 percent sure that my entire research team has been replaced by a radical underground splinter cell of these aforementioned shapeshifting aliens, who are attempting to develop time-travel a few decades early in hopes of traveling back in time to save their aforementioned destroyed home planet, which they absolutely cannot succeed in doing –” he paused to breathe. “– Because the aforementioned cataclysmic war of space and time is a fixed event and messing with it would not, under any circumstances, go well?”
“Nailed it!” Jaemin said cheerfully. They were back at Jeno’s apartment. Jaemin was looking around the small living room with visible curiosity, having caught Jeno up to speed on the bus ride over here. Jeno’s pretty sure they scared some of the people riding on the bus – Jaemin didn’t really have any concept of an “inside voice” and he was saying shit that sounded absolutely fucking insane.
“Great,” Jeno said, trying not to let Jaemin in on just how horribly overwhelmed he was feeling. “Want a drink?”
“Sure!” Jaemin said, a knowing look behind his eyes even as he continued to grin maniacally like nothing was wrong. Fuck. No fooling him, then. “Going to make tea? I know it calms you down.”
“How do you know that?”
“Spoilers.”
After Jeno retrieved their drinks – he stuck with water, almost like he was trying to prove a point to Jaemin – the two of them sat across from each other on the couch.
“So,” Jeno said. “What’s the plan?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jaemin said, waving a hand dismissively. “I figured you could just bring me into the lab, considering you’re a student on the project. You’re the plan guy, not me.”
“How am I the plan guy?” Jeno said, off-kilter. “I literally just found out about Zygons.” Jaemin shrugged.
“That’s usually how it ends up working out.”
It was strange being around Jaemin. He knew so much about Jeno. He kept saying things, shooting him knowing looks, smiling fondly at him when Jeno could only barely see him out of the corner of his eye – there was a whole history between them that only Jaemin was privy to, and it unsettled Jeno.
“Okay, I’m the plan guy,” Jeno muttered. “What the hell, sure.”
“All I’ve got so far is that there are definitely Zygons, and they’re definitely trying to bring back Zygor,” Jaemin said. “No clue how many of them have infiltrated your team, or how close you are to actually developing time travel. I was excited when I saw you – I assumed you’d have the other half of the puzzle.”
“Well, I don’t,” Jeno said. “And your plan sucks. Assuming you’re right about this, most, if not all, of the members of my team have been replaced by aliens,” Jeno said. “Any of them, Zygon or not, will question me if I bring someone random into the lab.” Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to him, and he had to swallow back a wave of nausea. “Wait. You said they were replaced. Are they all dead? Please don’t tell me they’re all dead.”
“Can’t be dead, Zygons need them alive to maintain a successful copy,” Jaemin said. Jeno breathed a sigh of relief.
“Okay, so there’s that. Wait.” He squinted at Jaemin. “How did you manage to get Professor Kim to let you stay in class?”
“Oh, this?” Jaemin reached into his pocket and pulled out the little blank wallet-thing from earlier. He flipped it open. “Psychic paper. I plant a suggestion, and the target sees what I want them to see. Look, it’s my student ID.”
Jeno looked at the paper and, sure enough, despite knowing that Jaemin was holding a blank piece of paper, he only saw a University Student ID card in his hand.
“Neat trick,” Jeno said, impressed. The gears in his head began to turn. “I bet we can use it to get you into the lab without any questions.”
“I said you were the plan guy,” Jaemin said, looking pleased as punch. He leaned forward, awe and excitement sparkling in his eyes as he looked at Jeno. “So. What’s the plan?”
─── ★ ───
Their investigation took Jaemin, Jeno, and Donghyuck to Downtown Seoul and the shopping mall where Jaemin and Donghyuck had been poking around earlier that day. Jaemin moved them about four hours ahead in time so they could investigate after hours, without being caught by the swarms of daytime shoppers.
There was a lot of ground to cover, so the three of them agreed to split up. Jaemin dug some ancient walkie-talkies out of storage from underneath the TARDIS console so if anybody found anything, they could contact the others and meet up before investigating further. It was a foolproof plan.
But Jaemin was just so curious, you see – when he saw the strange slime oozing from under the doorframe of a supply closet in a basement underneath the mall, he was just so intrigued he forgot to call the others. Besides, he should scope it out alone first, to make sure he wasn’t leading the other two into unnecessary danger.
He thought about the look on Jeno’s face when he looked at Donghyuck, and shuddered, even more resolved in his plan. Worst comes to worst, he could regenerate. Jeno and Donghyuck couldn’t.
So, Jaemin descended further into the basement alone, and before he knew it, found himself in a room covered in horrible slime with some kind of supercomputer – it looked Kalayan in origin, he was pretty sure.
He scanned the thing with his sonic screwdriver, and the readings on it were incredible. It had billions of terabytes of storage, and yes, he was right that it had some kind of artificial intelligence – but the readings were strange. He frowned, and scanned again.
Some of the numbers had changed drastically, fluctuating wildly – almost less like a machine, and more like a living being. Perhaps some kind of cross between the two?
And the slime! Absolutely fascinating. What kind of self-respecting computer produced slime? Oh, Jaemin could not wait to find out.
He scanned the slime, and frowned. The screwdriver wasn’t sure – couldn’t identify the exact substance, but it was comparing it to a few different substances, including Kalayan machine oil and Kalayan blood.
Jaemin was so wrapped up in the readings that he missed the screens of the machine humming to life until suddenly, there was a cacophony of voices speaking to him.
WHO ARE YOU…?
The voices – there were so many of them, and yet, they were all one. He could hear old voices, low voices. Young voices, high, reedy voices – slow voices that lagged behind the others, quick voices that rushed ahead. They crawled across his skin, overwhelming and far too many to pick apart from each other.
“Boring question,” Jaemin gasped, scrambling up from the floor where he’d been kneeling to take readings of slime. “Here’s a far more interesting one. Who are you?” He tilted his head to the side, absolutely captivated. “Even better question – what are you?”
WE ARE OF KALAYA.
“Got that much, yeah,” Jaemin said, flipping his screwdriver end over end, catching it and tucking it away into his coat. “You can’t find Phrikk metal like that anywhere but on Kalaya, and all of that is gone now. But what are you doing here?”
WE ARE KALAYA.
“Yeah, okay, I heard you the first time,” Jaemin said, pacing closer to the machine, circling it, absolutely fascinated. “But what are you doing?”
He heard grumblings, a million sounds of displeasure all overlapping.
KALAYA HAS FALLEN, BUT WE LIVE ON.
Jaemin’s eyes widened, darted back and forth across the machine’s screens, which were all fuzzed out and indistinct. “It’s not possible…”
He crept closer to one of the screens, leaning in until he was close enough to see the individual pixels and… oh. They weren’t pixels at all. Every tiny speck was a Kalayan face, squashed in and crammed against each other, clawing at the glass, trying to escape.
Kalaya fell in the Time War – just one more planet he’d burnt. But the people… He looked between the screen and the machine, whipping out the screwdriver once again to see if his theory was right, if the Kalayans had truly done what he suspected they had.
Unfortunately, the Kalayan Hivemind, if that was truly what it was, was not willing to wait for him to figure it out.
IT IS CROWDED, they whispered. WE MUST MAKE SPACE, WE MUST MAKE SPACE.
“No thank you!” Jaemin said cheerfully, ducking out of the way of a sudden beam of light – a tractor beam perhaps? Trying to hold him in place?
ABSORB THE MEMORY, the Hivemind screamed. The pain of a million Kalayans, trapped in a memory card, shoved up against each other with no space to move or even think independently of each other, compounded on itself millions of times until there was nothing left but a desperation for there to be more memory, more imagination, more space for them to move. THERE IS NO SPACE, THERE IS NO SPACE!
Jaemin’s mind whirred a million miles an hour as he dodged a second tractor beam, and suddenly, the obvious occurred to him.
“Oh, I see! You’ve been absorbing human mind space, taking their capacity for memory, to slowly build out your own memory card and build yourselves an inner world, because the one you have right now isn’t enough,” Jaemin said.
MORE MEMORY, the Hivemind groaned, wailed, cried. NO SPACE. GIVE US YOURS, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE…!
“You’ve been going about this the wrong way,” Jaemin said. “You’ve been taking human minds, and they’ll never have enough memory. But it’s your lucky day,” he said, grinning the Hivemind’s way. “Because I’m not human. I’m a Time Lord, and I’ve got plenty of memory to spare.”
“No way in hell,” said a familiar voice behind him. Jaemin’s eyes widened, and he spun around just as Jeno clocked him in the back of the head with a long, wooden board, and he fell to the ground, unconscious.
─── ★ ───
In the end, the plan was rather simple – which did not stop it from going to shit almost immediately.
The plan was to go in, try and do some recon to figure out a bit more of what was going on with Jeno’s coworkers. What neither of them had planned on was the two of them to walk right into a room full of wholly undisguised Zygons, who had not been expecting any of their human coworkers to come in that day.
Fair enough – showing up at the lab unexpectedly wasn’t really a thing that was done. Jeno invented a whole excuse about forgetting his laptop in one of the spare offices to justify showing up that he never got to use. He and Jaemin walked in, Jeno said, “Hey guys, sorry for coming in unexpectedly, I –” and stopped dead because he realized that the only other living beings in the lab besides himself and Jaemin were five very large red alien men.
Jeno blinked. The Zygons blinked.
There was a long, long silence. Jeno was pretty sure the Zygons were just as shocked as he was.
Then Jaemin laughed, and all hell broke loose.
Honestly, the next five minutes were a blur. Jaemin managed to grab the now-completed time-travel device – “A Vortex Manipulator!” he’d called it, as he tossed it across the room to Jeno – and the two of them rushed out of the lab, dodging fire from some kind of ray gun the Zygons had. They’d sprinted down hallway after hallway, the Zygons in hot pursuit.
So far, they’d evaded capture – but there were five of the Zygons, and only two of them. Jeno’s heart was pounding in his chest, his hand clasped tightly in Jaemin’s as three Zygons appeared ahead of them in the hallway. When Jaemin spun around to try and retreat back the way they’d come, the other two stood behind them, blocking their path.
“That’s not good,” Jaemin said, casually as anything, like he was simply commenting on the weather, and not pointing out that they were completely and entirely fucked.
Jeno looked at Jaemin, who was backing slowly away from the closer set of Zygons. Despite his unflappable confidence, even now, Jeno could see a hint of unease in his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Jaemin said quietly to Jeno, before raising his voice slightly to address the Zygons. “No need to get so upset, gentlemen. Can’t we talk about this?”
“There is nothing to discuss. We lost everything in the Time War!” One of the Zygons, the biggest of them all, snarled back. “We will reclaim the Vortex Manipulator, and return Zygor to its former glory!”
“Not going to happen,” Jaemin said simply.
“You don’t even have a weapon,” the Zygon scoffed.
“For all you lost in the Time War, it’s clear that you know nothing of it,” Jaemin said, leaning back against the wall, carefully casual. “It’s good to meet you, fellas. I am Jaemin, of Gallifrey.”
At this, most of the Zygons truly shrank back. The biggest one, the one mouthing off at Jaemin, frowned.
“Brothers, he is unarmed,” he snarled. When they didn’t move, he snarled in displeasure. “Cowards!”
“The first thing you notice about Jaemin, the Time Lord of War, is that he is unarmed,” said one of the other Zygons, quietly. “For many, it is the last.”
A ripple of unease passed through the group of Zygons, and for a moment, Jeno thought that somehow, this insane gambit had worked – that the Zygons, knowing about Jaemin’s reputation (which Jeno had a lot of questions about, but they’d have to wait for later), would back off.
But the leader shook his head. “I will die for Zygor, and do so happily,” he growled. “It is better to attempt to fight, than to leave empty handed, failing in our mission. We have nothing left, so better to die here than live on in shame!”
“I know your pain,” Jaemin said, voice dripping with sympathy. “Zygor was not the only planet to fall.”
Jeno looked at Jaemin, and the look in his eyes… it was haunted. He looked like he was a million miles away, still caught in a war zone, and Jeno realized, suddenly, that Jaemin didn’t want to hurt the Zygons.
He hadn’t spoken to them with sympathy. He’d spoken to them with empathy.
“I know your pain,” Jaemin repeated. After a pause, a brief moment of silence, of remembering, he shook his head, chasing the shadows of ghosts away, visibly steeling himself. “But I cannot allow you to reignite the Time War in a foolish attempt to save a planet that perished in a time-locked event. Billions and billions have died for this fragile peace.”
The Zygons listened, and for a moment, Jeno thought that maybe, jaemin had gotten through to them. Jeno could see one their hands shaking where they held their ray-guns at their side.
But then, despite their fear, they stayed put, visibly steeling themselves. One of them stepped forward, clearly the bravest – or perhaps, the stupidest – and raised his weapon.
Jeno looked down at the Vortex Manipulator in his hands, the thing the Zygons were after, and looked back up to Jaemin as a truly terrible, reckless idea occurred to him.
“You said I’m the plan guy?” Jeno asked. “Well. Here’s my plan.” He yanked his hand out of Jaemin’s grip and slapped the Vortex Manipulator on his wrist as Jaemin turned, shock and horror written across his face.
“Jeno, don’t –” He reached out to grab Jeno, but he’d already jumped back, out of his reach.
“This is what they’re after,” Jeno said. “Once it’s gone, you’ll be able to get out of here.”
“Jeno, take the Manipulator off right this second.” Jaemin’s voice was stern. There was something in it – something just on the wrong side of sanity, a sense of gravitas that Jeno had felt from Jaemin a few times now, an ancient authority that could not be denied, could not be explained away or covered up by Jaemin’s typical, put-upon, bubbly affect.
This was the man the Zygons had talked about. This was the Time Lord of War.
He was terrifying, and Jeno felt fear crawl up the back of spine. If he looked down at his arms, he knew he’d see them covered in goosebumps, hair standing on end. Even the Zygons took a few cautious steps back. But Jeno refused to be cowed.
“We met in another time,” he said firmly, eyes darting between the Manipulator on his wrist and Jaemin’s desperate gaze. “How the hell do you think I got there? This is the closest humanity has come to developing time travel, and it’s right here, on my wrist.”
“It’s untested, Jeno! Anything could happen! You could end up trapped in the vortex – if you even catch a glimpse of it, it could drive you mad!” Jaemin said, as the persona shattered around him, lying in shards at their feet. He wasn’t powerful, or terrifying, but rather, terrified. Scared to lose Jeno, for some reason. He lunged forward, and Jeno dodged out of the way again.
“Sorry, Jaemin, but I’m a scientist, and I’ve got a hypothesis to test,” Jeno said, grinning as he jumped back out of Jaemin’s way once again. He was hitting the buttons on the Manipulator, trying to enter in a destination year, entering the override codes so he could remove all the safeties put in place to prevent accidental temporal shifting during the experimental phase, doing his own pre-flight checks. “You’ll see me again. And hey,” he said, smiling. “If it doesn’t work, then we’ll never meet. You won’t even remember all this happened.”
“Don’t you dare, Lee Jeno,” Jaemin snarled, snatching at his wrist once again as Jeno whirled away. The Zygons, off to the side, were yelling at each other not to shoot, scared of hitting the Manipulator. “We’ve gone on so many adventures. Don’t you dare erase them, not one single line.”
“I’m not erasing them,” Jeno said, and there! The final override code. One more press of a button, and he’d be off, hurtling through space and time. “I’m writing the first sentence.”
He hit the button, and the last thing he saw was Jaemin, hand outstretched, desperately hoping to catch him before he vanished – and then, he was gone.
─── ★ ───
Jaemin woke up handcuffed to a pole at the edge of the basement, out of the reach of the Hivemind, with Jeno arms-deep in the machine.
It took Jaemin a second to process exactly what he was seeing, and once he did, he immediately began pulling at the handcuffs, trying to pull himself free, wrench his own wrist out of the metal that held him fast, to try and get to Jeno, to stop him.
“Jeno, what the hell do you think you’re doing!?”
Jeno turned back to Jaemin, an amused smile on his face.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do yourself, dear.”
“This isn’t a time to joke,” Jaemin screamed back. Why the hell couldn’t he get himself free?
“Oh, alright then. It’s just that I thought you knew.” Jeno shrugged, and gestured towards the Hivemind. “I’m going to add memory to the hard drive.”
“I know what the hell you’re doing,” Jaemin yelled back. “I was going to do it! You know it’ll kill you!”
Jeno rolled his eyes.
“Of course I know,” he said. “Of course.” He was trying to sound brave, but Jaemin heard his voice shaking ever so slightly.
“Jeno, come over here and uncuff me,” Jaemin said seriously. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” Jeno said suddenly. “I'm the plan guy, and you’re an idiot.”
“I am not an idiot, Jeno, that’s clearly you, sacrificing yourself when this is a problem only a Time Lord memory could solve –”
“This is why I'm the plan guy. You're always so arrogant,” Jeno snorted. “No, it’s not a problem only a Time Lord memory could solve. You were going to brute force the problem – shove your entire lengthened lifespan and capacity for memory into the gap. I’m going to do exactly what you were going to do, but better.”
“Explain it to me, then,” Jaemin snarled.
“Imagination,” Jeno said simply. “Yes, a single human’s lifetime of memory isn’t enough, the human memory is too flawed, too incomplete. But a single human’s lifetime of imagination?” He smiled. “That’s endless. All-encompassing. I think the Kalayans can build an excellent world with it.”
“Jeno, don’t –” Jaemin tugged at his bonds helplessly, tears welling in his eyes.
“This is our first meeting, right?” Jeno said, looking sympathetically at Jaemin as he connected nodes to his forehead, shifting back to face Jaemin. “For you, anyway. You have no idea who I am, not really.”
“You took my last name,” Jaemin said helplessly. “I know who you’re going to be, one day.”
“Exactly,” Jeno said firmly. “If you die here, you never make it to our first meeting. If you die here, I’ll never know you, and that cannot happen. Do you understand me, Jaemin? It cannot happen.”
Jaemin was beginning to cry in earnest now, as Jeno smiled, clearly at peace with his decision.
“We do so many wonderful things, Jaemin,” he said softly, as the Hivemind behind him beeped and a million voices whispered between them desperately. “We dance across star systems, and run from explosions, see the light at the end of time go out, and see so many incredible things. So don’t you dare rewrite those stories. Not a single line.”
His hand came to rest on the machine, and even from here, Jaemin could tell the preparations were complete. One more press of a button, and he’d be gone.
“Jeno, who – what –” He struggled for the right question to ask, anything to keep Jeno here, but Jeno just smiled.
“The adventures, Jaemin. I can’t tell you anything, because, well. Spoilers. But just you wait. You watch us run.”
He smiled at Jaemin, and hit the button.
─── ★ ───
Years later, once Vortex Manipulators were properly developed, Jaemin called them cheap and nasty time travel. Jeno couldn’t really disagree – they exposed a person just a bit to the raw cosmic power of the Time Vortex, and you can’t really enter the Time Vortex without your lifespan being at least slightly altered – though in what way, you often couldn’t tell. You could become a few years younger than you were before you traveled, or you could accidentally age six months. It was a toss up, really.
Properly developed Vortex Manipulators minimized these effects as much as possible. The aging and growing younger was rarely by more than a year, once the right safety mechanisms had been developed and implemented.
But Jeno had traveled through the Vortex with a prototype, with no safeguards whatsoever. Jaemin never let it go.
“You could have aged seventy years,” he’d pouted. “Aged a million years, even! Died, instantly, crushed under the weight of eons of time.”
“I didn’t, though,” Jeno pointed out. Jaemin just huffed.
Traveling through the Vortex with no safeguards was a dangerous game. The Time Lords, Jaemin’s own race, were the only species to look into the Vortex and survive, to master it and become one with it – their techniques perishing along with them in the Time War.
When Jeno traveled, completely exposed, through the Vortex, it changed him on a biological level. He, too, became one with the Vortex.
He gained the lengthened lifespan of the Time Lords, the ability to regenerate, the cosmic connection to the passing of time, all of it – but he did not realize any of this until he died in the basement of a shopping mall in Seoul in the sixty-third century, sacrificing himself to preserve the timeline of his own relationship to the only Time Lord to survive the Time War.
He died in that basement, and then – he woke up. Shrugged. Kept on living. Kept studying archaeology to better find traces of Jaemin throughout history and to try and meet him there, tried to study himself to understand what had happened and why it was that he could apparently survive death.
He didn’t tell Jaemin – not immediately. Timelines were delicate. He’d always instinctively known the danger of disturbing them, ever since his trip through the Vortex.
He would never risk rewriting their adventures – not one single line.
So he didn’t tell Jaemin.
(Until, one day, when he was certain it was safe. When their timelines converged, and stopped being all front-to-back, back-to-front, all timey-wimey and out-of-sync.)
(When he told him, Jaemin laughed until he cried, or perhaps he cried so hard it seemed like he was laughing. Jeno never asked, and Jaemin never said.)
(After all, there were lots of things about Jaemin that Jeno didn’t know for sure. But now, he had eternity to discover them.)