The crystal cliff loomed over Justin. It glinted like a giant chunk of clear, flawless diamond under the harsh winter sun. An ever-shifting rock field lay behind him. Every few seconds, except on the trail he had just blazed, dust coalesced into rock, and boulders disintegrated into dust. Through the cliff, Justin saw the static rock field that lay before him. The path was clear to the nexus between the worlds. There, a bridge of gears spanned a gorge, and the mainspring that powered the worlds unwound lazily on the bridge deck. Every few years or so, the mainspring needed to be rewound.

Justin slipped his battered messenger bag off his shoulder and let it fall to on the ground. He bent over, his hands braced against his knees. His lungs burned with every breath. Every exhale misted the cold air.

Caden, Braden, and Aiden were now following Justin’s trail and scrambling up the rock field, he hoped. Three brothers, each one taller, blonder, and more athletic than the next, they were men only in age, and barely at that. They said they’d follow then didn’t. They must have stayed back to fight whoever was on their tail. Pontefractors were the only ones who wanted to stop the mainspring from being rewound. It might have been better to lose them in the ever-shifting rock field, but, over the course of this quest, the three brothers had done precisely none of the things he’d advised.

He had been about their age when he started guiding quests, and while he’d been on many different quests since, this was their first and last. Much as he hated to admit it, for these three, fighting the pontefractors was just as good as losing them in the rock field. They bought him time to blaze the trail, and they were more likely to kill the pontefractors than be killed by them.

He forced himself upright and ran his hand across the cliff face. Not a single crack or divot marred its pristine surface. It was also near vertical. Too smooth and too steep for friction climbing.

Justin had hoped for some cracks in the cliff. He didn’t have it in him at the moment to create any. Everything he did took some combination of strength and potential. Throughout this entire quest, potential had been in short supply. Strength could substitute for potential, but he was exhausted.

Each chosen one had their own harbinger. Caden’s was the theme from the movie Silverado. Justin turned around as it played in his mind. Caden came into view. Braden followed behind as rocks morphed around them. Aiden was nowhere to be seen.

Justin felt a twinge of sadness followed by a twinge of guilt. They’d lost Aiden, just as Justin, too, had to leave them.

In nearly every quest, there came a time when he needed to abandon his charges. There was always someone else who needed his help. That, once a quest was over, his charges would diminish and forget the quest made it easier for him to leave, but not much. Sometimes, he faked his own death, although obviously not this time.

Justin had learned the hard way to trust the intuition that, every once in a while, sat in his gut just so. Things invariably changed for the better whenever he did. This time, it told him to go back to his diner and meet whoever would find it in a few hours. Any sort of opening, even a crack, would do. He didn’t need to fit through it to go back.

The harbinger in Justin’s head silenced itself. Caden, the oldest, was the slightly yet obviously taller and larger of the two. His long, blond hair was drawn back in a ponytail, out of the way of a genial but hard face. He was dressed in browns, except for a green shirt. His long, winter coat was torn and smeared with blood. A coil of rope was slung over his shoulders. Climbing gear clanged in his backpack as he strode to Justin, his arms spread wide. If he was injured at all, it didn’t show.

“Aidan stayed back to cover our exit.” Caden grabbed Justin’s hand then pulled him into a one-arm hug. “He’ll catch up to us when he can.”

Under any other circumstance, Justin would have said the speaker was in denial. However, it was one of the brothers talking about another one of the brothers. If Aiden showed up right now only slightly worse for wear, Justin wouldn’t have been that surprised.

Caden pounded Justin’s back then let go. Slowly, the feeling and blood circulation returned to Justin’s hand, although his back still stung. Caden’s gaze locked with his. It was so intense that Justin had to resist the urge to look away. He’d had a lot of practice by now.

“Caden, I’ve been—”

“Called away. I see it in your face.” Caden said in a voice that was both rough and gentle. “It’s ok. We can take it from here.”

Caden walked to the cliff. He struck it with the heel of his right hand. The cliff glowed for an instant and shuddered. Cracks radiated across its surface and into the crystal. As the vibration worked its way up, though, the cracks at the base were already starting to close.

“We have to get going.” Braden walked up to the cliff, his climbing harness snug around his hips. “And you do, too.”

“Goodbye, Justin.” Caden gave Justin’s shoulder a hard squeeze. “I’ll never forget this or you.”

Justin nodded, then disappeared into a pencil-width crack at the base. He didn’t say, “Of course you will. Everyone does.”

The diner was not on the other side of the crack. Someone did not want him to get home.

Justin stepped into a narrow hallway with a row of doors on his left and a row of windows on his right. The floor rumbled. It was dark out. Fields and mountains in the distance slid from one window to another. He was on a train bound for destinations unknown.

He leapt out a train window and landed on the tight pile rug of a hotel hallway. Doors lined both sides. Unlocking doors was easy for now. From there, he walked through country roads, naval ships, and spaceships. Passersby stared at his wool-lined denim coat as he passed through worlds where the sun beat down in late summer, worlds where denim didn’t exist, worlds where there were no sheep.

No one could stop him from reaching the diner. They could delay him, though, until he was too late. With every step, pain radiated further up his legs, the messenger bag strap dug deeper into his shoulder, and every door seemed harder to open. How many worlds did he have left to cross, he wondered, before he found his way back.

Justin stumbled into a supermarket. No one noticed him, much less stared. Early spring snow fell on the other side of the automatic sliding doors. People walked past him, carrying their bags of groceries out to the parking lot. The door he needed was straight ahead, past the row of cashier stations on his right. Lines of customers stretched away from each one, deep into the store.

As he passed by a cashier, he heard her ask a customer in English, “Do you know what this is called?”

The cashier pointed at the long, pale green, blistered vegetable on her conveyor belt. The customer looked lost for words. The cashier started rifling through a booklet of pictures. Some guy behind the customer looked testy, tapping his fingers on the conveyor belt. The customer pulled her son in front of her and told him in Mandarin to answer the cashier.

Justin stopped. The son looked all of nine. Between his round face and puffy jacket, the boy was cherubic whereas Justin had been gaunt, but Justin had been him. Every child of an immigrant had. The boy was too young to be translating for his mother, and it showed on his face. Like Justin when he was nine, though, there was no choice. Someone had to navigate the English-speaking world for his parents.

Justin couldn’t remove the kid’s burden forever, but this one time was dead simple. A kid should just get to be a kid.

“That’s a bitter melon,” Justin said.

The cashier thanked him then went back to ringing up the groceries. The woman asked him in Mandarin what it was called and Justin answered. She repeated “bitter melon” to herself as Justin made his way to the door.

The world wobbled as potential dribbled through him. The sense that this next door would take him back was unshakeable. He opened the bathroom door and walked into the diner.

Fast, fat raindrops splattered against the two giant windowpanes that made up the diner’s storefront. A glass door took you into a tiny vestibule with another glass door that took you into the diner proper. Justin unlocked both doors and turned on the lights with a thought. Booth seating lined one side. A Formica counter with stools squatted on the other side. Behind the counter was a grill, a deep fryer, and soda dispenser. A swinging door next to the grill took you into the kitchen. Inside were the two wok burners and ventilation hood he had installed decades ago.

Justin slumped into a booth. His body felt leaden. His messenger bag slipped onto the booth bench. The pain in his shoulder dulled. He plopped face down onto the table. If he never had to move again, it would be too soon. At the moment, he wasn’t sure even sure he could move.

It was ten millennia, ten minutes, or just ten seconds later when the bell hanging off the diner’s first glass front door rang. Justin peered up. A tall, broad figure stumbled through the first door. Deep in the distance, but also only deep inside Justin’s mind, an operatic baritone sang “Stay With Me” by Jerome Moross and Carolyn Leigh, backed by a full orchestra. It was lush with longing, and, so faint, it lay at the edge of Justin’s hearing. Bright, of all people, had returned.

The song was plaintive, wearier than when Justin last heard it nearly thirty years ago. It made sense, he supposed, for a harbinger to evolve over time. It just never occurred to him that anyone could stay chosen for so long. They’d always fulfilled their quests then lived out their lives. Maybe their harbingers remained, a vestige of a forgotten time playing inside Justin’s mind.

Bright was one of the first chosen ones Justin helped and the last one he wanted to see again. It didn’t matter whether any of others could remember him. That they couldn’t was merely sad, not a wound that had never truly healed.

Bright pushed the second door and stumbled through. He fell face down, splayed on the tile floor. Justin sprang up and rushed over, utter exhaustion forgotten for now. Bright’s shirt and tactical cargo pants were torn and ragged. Fresh wounds covered his body. A mix of rainwater and blood pooled around him.

Justin crouched down. He reached to turn Bright over, but stopped. Bright’s wounds were deep, likely fatal, but turning Bright over probably wouldn’t hurt him any more than he was now. However, Justin couldn’t. Bright not recognizing him was bad enough. Justin didn’t want to see it on Bright’s face.

“How can I help you, Bright?”

“I’ll be fine in a moment.” Bright healed his wounds. “I’ve missed you, Justin.”

Justin gasped. He stared with wonder and disbelief. Not only did Bright remember, but he was all he had been and more. There wasn’t even a scratch on Bright’s now smooth, if blood-stained, skin. Back then, healing a stab wound rendered Bright useless for hours. Dealing with this many injuries at once would have killed him.

Bright tried to push himself up. His arms gave way. He crashed back onto the floor. Justin reached for him. Bright batted him away, but Justin caught him by his torso. As exhausted as Justin was, Bright must have been even more so. No one could have gotten a hand on him if he wasn’t already half-unconscious.

“They tricked you.” Bright’s voice was an engine struggling to turn over.

Bright collapsed and a wave broke against Justin. His legs slid out from under him, and he fell back into rainwater and blood, trapped under Bright’s now catatonic body.

No point asking now what Bright had meant. He would wake eventually. For now, though, he was a sitting duck. At least Justin could make him a sitting duck who wasn’t exposed to the world by two giant windows.

“Well, I guess it’s time to get you out of those clothes and into bed.” Justin struggled to get out from under Bright. “You know, I’ve always wanted to say that to you. Just not like this.”

Justin grunted as he hefted Bright. He dragged the limp body. A trail of water followed them. His arms burned, and his legs ached with each step. Hauling Bright to the apartment over the diner was out of the question.

“Or we’ll just leave you here for now.”

Justin would stay by his side instead. With another grunt, he shoved Bright onto the table of the nearest booth. Bright’s legs dangled off the end. With a thought, Justin locked the doors and turned off the lights. His head throbbed as the locks clicked and the diner dimmed into darkness.

Justin sank into the booth with Bright. If Justin never got up again, it would have still been too soon. His torso lurched forward onto the table and he fell asleep.

Justin’s eyes popped open. The diner was pitch dark except for occasional flashes of lightning. The rain thudded against the storefront’s giant windowpanes. No one was in the diner proper besides Justin and Bright, but someone else was in the building. It wasn’t impregnable. Anyone who wanted in badly enough could pick its locks or force their way in, but Justin would know. Even when he was on other worlds, he always knew.

The intruder had broken into the apartment over the diner. They walked into the bedroom and stared at the empty bed where Bright should have been. Justin slid out of the booth, then slid back in again. Bright lay nearly motionless on the booth table. His torso subtly swelled and contracted with every breath. That was the only sign he was still alive. Leaving him here undefended was out of the question.

The world spun around Justin at a dizzying speed. He gripped the table for support. Potential rushed through every cell of his being. Until now, it had always arrived in drips and never more than he could handle. He’d never felt this buzzed and dizzy before, and he hoped never to feel like this again.

The world steadied, but he was vibrating so fast and so hard that the ultrasonic hum should have called dogs from across the worlds to him. As exhausted as he still was, he was also reeling and punch-drunk.

He metered his breath and settled himself down. The disorientation faded away, leaving only fear. This much potential would have been difficult to control if he were fresh and alert. Woozy and groggy, Justin kept his mind as still and as focused as possible under the circumstances. The intruder would find him soon.

The dining area had two exits. The front door led outside. A white, wooden door at the other end of the room led to the restrooms, the stockroom, and the upstairs apartment. The door next to the grill didn’t count. It was the only way into or out of the kitchen. The intruder wasn’t in the kitchen. They were striding their way down the stairs into the hall that ended at the wooden door.

Justin slid out of the booth, faced the door, and waited. Along with making sure Bright stayed alive, maybe he could also get some answers out of Bright’s would-be assassin.

The footfalls toward the door weren’t loud, but they weren’t quiet. Then again, maybe Justin, himself, wasn’t quiet enough. The door fell with a kick and a thud. No one was surprising anyone.

With a thought, Justin turned on florescent tubes mounted on the ceiling. Harsh, white light blasted the room. He aimed a tight, rapid beam of air at where the door used to be. As he did, the intruder sprayed the room with bullets. The sounds of overfilled balloons popping rang through the room. The bullets struck the ceiling, the windows behind him, and his shoulder.

Justin gasped. Blood spurted out, soaking his shirt. He grabbed his shoulder and pressed down, for all the good it did. Blood seeped around his fingers and dribbled down his forearm.

His eyes adjusted to the light. The intruder lay supine at the far end of the diner. Bright was safe then, at least for now. Justin’s legs gave way as he tried to make it back to Bright’s booth. Maybe a lie-down would be good, Justin decided. He’d just stay on the floor a while. As long as he got up before the intruder, it’d be fine. His eyes shut. Incongruously, a warmth spread across him. Shock was supposed to feel cold and clammy.

“Justin, I’m going to extract the bullet and heal the wound.” Bright’s voice betrayed no hint of how exhausted he still must have been. “Don’t worry. You will feel no pain. I will feel it for you.”

“No.” Justin opened his eyes to Bright crouched beside him. “That’s ridiculous. You are in no condition to do that. I will feel my own pain.”

“That would be decidedly suboptimal.” Bright was clearly censoring himself. “If I were less wrecked, no one would be feeling any pain.”

Everything that had happened tonight replayed in Justin’s mind. Not even the gunshots woke Bright up.

“How are you even awake?” Justin eyed Bright curiously.

“I’m awake because you’re injured.” Bright gently pulled Justin’s hand away from his shoulder.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Believe me.” Bright tapped his hand on Justin’s shoulder and the bleeding stopped. “It absolutely does.”

“There’s an intruder at the other end—”

“He’s too busy dying to bother us.” A scalpel made of light extended from Bright’s index finger. “A clean hole blasted through his chest and heart. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“What?” Justin tried to sit up for a look, but Bright didn’t let him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Bright sounded vaguely insulted. “I can tell from here. I’m not that tired.”

“Oh, I meant to knock him out. Too much potential, not enough control.”

“Let me fix your shoulder. I’ve had plenty of practice enduring pain by now. I’ll be fine, but if I don’t do something now, you will deteriorate beyond my abilities to heal, then you won’t be fine.”

“I have to be able to help you somehow.” As Justin said this, he realized the potential that coursed through him to protect Bright hadn’t subsided one bit. “I’m flush with potential right now.”

Bright looked testy. A few seconds passed before he sighed.

“Fine. If I show you where the bullet is, will you be able to extract it gently?”

“And you won’t feel my pain?” Justin didn’t wait for an answer. “Yes.”

“OK.” Bright nodded. “I will shunt the pain away.”

Bright worked in deft, swift strokes, clearing a path for the bullet. Justin only felt some pressure inside his shoulder. If Bright felt anything at all, he hid it too well.

The bullet filled Justin’s vision as though he saw it through a camera at the tip of Bright’s scalpel. He knew exactly where the bullet was in his shoulder. Carefully, he started to lift it out.

“Easy, Justin.” Bright’s words were soft and soothing. “Not so fast.”

Justin took a deep breath and tried to constrain the absurd amount of potential he had at his disposal. The bullet burst through, tearing its own path out of Justin. Bright shot Justin a withering look.

The bullet hung in the air an inch above Justin’s shoulder. It had six tiny, wire-fine legs that were still wriggling. Bright stared at the bullet and its legs stopped. Fresh blood ran down Justin’s shoulder.

“Your bit of it is done, Justin.” Bright stopped the bleeding with a touch. “Just let it drop.”

Justin let the bullet go. It thudded against the tile floor louder than a bullet ought to have. Bright stomped down. A loud crack and a flash filled the diner. The bullet lay on the floor in fragments.

“I’ll heal what I can now.” Bright yawned. “Finish up tomorrow.”

The wound closed up under Bright’s firm pressure. Justin’s shoulder itched, but that was nothing.

Justin stared at Bright for signs of his impending exhaustion. In the past few decades, Bright had clearly developed a better sense of what he was capable of, but the Bright Justin knew always pushed himself to his limits and, sometimes, a little past.

Bright reached for Justin and fell forward. Justin found himself holding Bright in his arms. He’d have collapsed from the weight if he hadn’t expected it.

Justin allowed Bright’s body to levitate just enough so that he could bear the weight. He couldn’t carry Bright healthy, much less with a dodgy shoulder, but fully levitating Bright was a bad idea. With too much potential and not enough focus, Justin could just as easily suspend Bright in mid-air as he could shoot Bright through the roof. Justin wanted to keep a hold on him.

Bright lay like a sack of rice in Justin’s arms. He bore Bright upstairs. In the bathroom, he stared at the tub for who knew how long before his mind wandered back to why he was there. He peeled off Bright’s still damp rags and washed the blood off him.

When Justin realized he was also covered in blood, he stripped and washed himself, too. He blinked, yawned, and zoned out again before he put his clothes back on.

In the bedroom, he tucked Bright into bed, resisting the urge to fall into bed with him. Justin was spent, but his job wasn’t done yet.

Justin set Bright’s rags on top of his chest of drawers. They hung like ribbons, swaying slightly off the edge. He stared at them disapprovingly. They lifted into the air. Over the course of a minute, they knitted themselves together. Broken threads found their long-separated counterparts. The warp and weft of the rags matched precisely. Extra fabric materialized to replace what had been torn away. Justin’s gaze darted between Bright and his clothes, trying to fit the latter to the former.

A fresh, dry shirt and cargo pants now lay on the chest. Justin stared in befuddlement. Reconstructing just the shirt alone should have taken hours. He was too tired to process what had happened. Instead, he trudged into the living room and aimed for the sofa.

He missed. His body splatted like a lump of clay onto the wood floor. His shoulder throbbed. Sleeping on the sofa would have been better, but the floor was right here. Justin fell asleep before he closed his eyes.

When Justin woke, he found himself in bed. His arm shot out searching for a body next to him. There was no stab of pain. His shoulder was fully healed. However, there was also no one next to him. Justin panicked until his gaze fell on Bright, slumped in a chair next to his clothes, now neatly folded, resting on the chest of drawers. Bright sat there, eyes closed, clad only in his underwear and socks, which inspired in Justin a slightly different kind of panic.

“I’m not asleep.” Bright opened his eyes. “I was just waiting for you to wake up.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m maybe eighty percent or so. I could use another day off, but I don’t need it. And you?”

“OK, I guess. Still flush with potential, which is odd.” Justin kept his gaze leveled squarely at the shirt and trousers on the chest. “Did I make your clothes too small for you?”

“No, everything fits perfectly.” Bright stared at the floor for a moment before he met Justin’s gaze again. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but, before I passed out the first time, I thought I heard you say that you wanted to see me out of my clothes.”

Justin stammered. He got out of bed and took Bright’s clothes from the chest of drawers.

Bright stood up. He faced Justin and opened his arms as if to say, “I’m not sure what the big deal is, but here you go. Ogle away.”

Justin didn’t ogle, but he didn’t not ogle. Bright only looked older now if how he looked when they were both in their twenties was seared in your mind. It was as though he played football in college then just decided he would stay in that shape, as if it were that simple. Time had worn down his features a little. He’d shaved off his coarse, black hair, hiding a hairline that was already receding when they first met. If anything, he was bigger now, a little fuller, a little rounder than he once was. He’d always been human, but now you might suspect it. Rather than an exquisitely chiseled work of art one had to admire from a safe distance, in the intervening years, he’d become a magnificent creature of flesh and blood you could approach, if you were brave enough.

Bright stared right back. A smile grew on his face.

“A stranger would swear you were twenty-five, but I know how you looked at twenty-five.” He took his clothes out of Justin’s hands. “The extra muscle mass suits you. Back then, you were so fragile. I spent our entire quest petrified that you’d blow away in a stiff breeze, or shatter into a million pieces if someone stared at you too hard—”

“Bright, who’s trying to kill you?” The words burst out of Justin. “I can barely control the potential roiling through me, so you must still be in danger.”

“Oh, Justin.” Bright rolled his eyes as he pulled on his trousers. “If no one is trying to kill me, wait five minutes.”

“I’m serious.” Justin let fear bleed into his voice. “Why are you here? How do I help you?”

Bright slipped on his shirt. He left it open and untucked.

“I’ll get to that.” Bright held his hands up. “But, first, can we just admit that we both spent the last twenty-seven years avoiding each other because I was afraid you’d look at me and see a stranger, and you were afraid I’d look at you and see a stranger?”

Justin furrowed his brow. He folded his arms across his chest.

“You did not nearly get yourself killed twice just to ask me that.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on asking at all until I realized we’d probably had the same reason for avoiding each other. I’d always assumed you’d forgotten like everyone else on that quest.” Bright stuck his hands in his pocket in a way that made him seem almost bashful. “But if the real reason is that we were both fools, I have tickets for the theater in New York on Saturday, if you’re free. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime event. It’s a seminal musical, but it can’t have had more than ten productions ever, and hasn’t been produced in New York since 1948.”

Justin let his arms fall. It took a few moments before he realized Bright was serious.

“Whether I go with you to see Love Life very much depends on whether we’re both alive on Saturday. Who’s trying to kill you?”

Bright’s face lit up at the words “Love Life.” Of course Justin knew which show Bright was talking about. He had narrowed it down pretty well. Clearly, he took Justin’s response as a yes. Justin still expected, though, that at any moment Bright would look at him and see a stranger.

“I don’t think how much potential you have at your disposal has anything to do with me. Honestly, the intruder was probably trying to kill you, not me.” Bright held a hand up to stall Justin’s retort. “You’ve been tricked into guiding three pontefractors to the mainspring at the nexus between the worlds. I’m replaceable. Without you to guide someone to them, no one can head them off in time.”

Justin stared at Bright, jaw agape. What Bright said made a weird sort of sense. Maybe it was why Justin had had to muscle his way through this quest. Not that the right choices inevitably came with a surge of potential, but the wrong choices never did. Then again, being tricked brought Bright here. Defending Bright saturated Justin with so much potential, his hearted raced and he was still a little out of breath.

“There’s a dead body downstairs that might clarify things,” Justin said finally.

Justin walked to the door then held his hand out. He gazed expectantly at Bright, who took his hand. Justin walked out of his bedroom, with Bright in tow, and into the diner.

Which was as Justin had left it. There was a smear of dirt and dried blood on the floor next to the door outside. The bullet hole in one of storefront’s giant windowpanes had spider webbed, fracturing the empty street beyond it. The dead body lay right in front of him, next to the back door.

The intruder was a tall, athletic, blond man, dressed all in black. Justin recognized him immediately. True to what Bright had said last night, a neat hole was punched through the intruder’s chest.

“Braden.” Justin sighed and slumped a little. “Damn it.”

“You know him?” Bright stood next to Justin. “He looks like the guy who got in my way. I had to kill him to get here. They could be brothers.”

“They are. He’s one of the three pontefractors I guided. You killed Aiden. Caden, the chosen one, is almost certainly at the nexus by now.” A ring of keys appeared in Justin’s hand and he pressed it into Bright’s. “Take care of the diner. I have to go fix the mess I made.”

Bright’s gaze deconstructed Justin atom by atom. Justin kept his thoughts about taking on a tall, blond, athletic hulk of a man cheerful and optimistic, not that it mattered. As far as Justin knew, Bright couldn’t read minds. He just knew Justin too well to miss the penance Justin set for himself.

“No. Unacceptable.” Bright, however, shoved the keys into a cargo pocket. “No martyring. I need to make sure you come back alive.”

Justin had never hated and loved Bright as much as he did at that moment. There was no scenario where Justin bringing along his own big, bruising brawler wouldn’t be better. If he just stood here pondering what to do any longer, though, Bright would say—

“Come on, Justin. Don’t be a dumbass about this.”

“I can get to Caden.” Justin sighed. “If we go now, we’ll meet him at the mainspring.”

“I’m sorry. This is laying a lot on you all at once.” Bright’s gaze was soft and kind. “No one knows how anyone ever gets chosen. Sometimes, someone gets chosen who needs to fail. Who knew? In this case, there’s a competing quest. It’ll reach the nexus in days.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.” Bright shrugged. “Ever since our quest, every once in a while, I get this weird feeling in my gut. I’ve learned to trust it. It’s one of two things in my life that’s never let me down.”

Bright’s gaze locked with Justin’s as he said that last sentence.

When it wasn’t being torn apart by a traitorous chosen one, the mainspring at the nexus between the worlds was a wonder to witness. A glittering bridge, built out of gears of all sizes, spanned a deep gorge. The larger gears clacked, creating an intricate but unerringly regular polyrhythm. The tiniest gears whistled. Their tightly harmonized melody soared through the air and enveloped everyone in the grace of stability.

To witness the mainspring was to witness the one perfect thing in all of creation. If nothing else lived up to it, everything else was driven by it. Before the music could falter, a chosen one would manifest a crank and, through their might, tighten the mainspring again.

Or at least that’s what Bright must have done. The chosen one faced this last challenge possibly with their companions but rarely with the guide. Justin had been grateful to be gone, to not witness Bright diminish. It would be a few more quests with a few more chosen ones to a few more wonders before Justin discovered the rate and when they diminished varied. The profligate began even before they met their final challenge. The careful maintained some vestige of being chosen even after they’d called for their lift to go home. Then, they continued their lives, changed in ways they didn’t remember. Except Bright.

Justin and Bright arrived to loud, discordant squawking. The gorge careened back and forth between grainy sepia to hyper-saturated color. Gears slipped and stuttered. As Justin and Bright sneaked toward Caden at the base of the bridge, their movements looked alternately choppy and fluid as the frame rate of the world lurched from a few per second to infinite and everything in between.

Caden was laying waste to the bridge. He struck the bridge again and again with the blade of plasma that extended from his hand. The bridge sparked, gears cracking and flying away, with each hit.

Bright inched his way over, a long thin blade of light emerging from his hand. Caden turned as Bright struck. The blade of plasma sizzled against the blade of light. Slowly, Bright gave ground, drawing Caden away.

Justin surveyed the destruction Caden had wrought. His heart sank. Cracked and broken gears littered the ground. Others stuttered or jammed. Supporting structs had been torn or shattered. The bridge teetered, threatening to dump the mainspring into the gorge. The mainspring itself spun wildly, spewing its stored energy uselessly into the deck of the bridge. At this rate, it would be mere minutes before it ran itself out. After that, nothing would matter.

Caden was a walking tank, but so was Bright. The two men met each other blow for blow, scrambling across the uneven ground. Caden had the speed and agility that Bright had thirty years ago. Bright had, if he could be believed, thirty years of people trying to kill him and failing. As they fought behind Justin, blades sizzling and bodies grunting, he had to believe that was enough.

Stabilizing the bridge was straightforward enough. With a thought, struts untwisted themselves. They reformed into strong, straight beams that slid back into place. Justin thought about the structures they needed to form. Slowly, the bridge rose. He couldn’t hold it up forever, but he could long enough to get its supports set up. Struts sizzled as they merged into trusses.

The bridge settled solidly into place. The mainspring, however, was still uselessly spewing energy.

The grunts of Bright and Caden fighting behind Justin punctuated the bridge’s squawking. If restoring Bright’s shirt from shreds had been like playing “Three Blind Mice,” restoring this bridge would be like playing Alkan’s Concerto for Solo Piano. Justin had his work cut out for him. He took a deep breath and dove into the work.

Shards of wreckage spun around each other, searching for the shards they fit with. A cyclone of metal particles hissed and clanged around Justin. The debris crashed against each other, forming microscopic gears and joints that collided with each other to form tiny differentials and drive shafts.

Justin locked rigid as he contained the cyclone. If he had days or even hours before the mainspring wound down, he wouldn’t have needed a cyclone, and it wouldn’t hurt. Instead, he had mere minutes. Sharp pain stabbed his joints, and he felt like he would crack into pieces.

He couldn’t hold on. The differentials and drive shafts scattered like dust across the rocks as the cyclone spun out of control and dissipated. Justin collapsed. Air wouldn’t stay in his lungs.

He risked a peek behind him, then wished he hadn’t. Caden had Bright pinned to the ground. Justin didn’t have much time left then, either.

Just because something was necessary didn’t mean it couldn’t also be uncomfortable or painful. Some things, if it didn’t hurt, you weren’t doing it right. That pain, though, was always a good pain. It wasn’t sharp or piercing. It didn’t radiate into fine cracks, threatening to shatter you into pieces.

A flare lit the sky. Caden’s lift home would be coming soon. Whichever flying beast might arrive, it couldn’t harm the bridge, but Justin and Bright were mere flesh and blood.

Justin tried again. A cyclone spun up around him, drawing up the gears and struts that lay across the rocky field. Rather than locking the cyclone down, he let it spin as it would, gently metering out potential to keep it in place. Justin was stretched taut but also agile. His muscles burned, but it was the pain of exertion, not of a body breaking. This, he could bear.

Piece by piece, the bridge was restored. Gears fitted back into their proper places and meshed with each other in synchrony. The wailing died down, replaced by increasingly complex polyrhythms of clicks and clacks. A sinewy melody floated over that bed of sound, haltingly at first, then with a generous confidence. The cyclone dissipated of its own accord, and Justin collapsed to the ground. Air heaved in and out of his burning lungs.

An unsteady bolt of flaming ice whooshed overhead. It struck the bridge, vaporizing a chunk of machinery. The steady bed of clicks and clacks faltered and the bridge began to keen. The mainspring whirled with a high whine. Caden must have overpowered Bright. If this was the worst Caden could do to the bridge, though, Justin doubted he had much more on tap. Caden was diminishing.

Justin would be inconsolable in about ten seconds, not just because he would never have even a day with Bright, but of the years he wasted, afraid of the Bright he’d find. But he wouldn’t be around in ten seconds. Caden would blast him as he repaired the bridge. No matter how unsteady and failing the blast might be, it would be enough.

Ten seconds of steadily weakening bolts of flaming ice nailed Justin’s back. He endured them until complex polyrhythms and a sinewy song filled the air again. A searing cold spread through him. It burned him from the inside out. He collapsed. This would kill him, but Caden’s last gasp was taking its sweet time. The mainspring, though, would last until the competing quest arrived. Maybe there had been other ways to guarantee this, but if Bright was dead, Justin didn’t care about any of those other ways.

Justin let his eyes close. He had maybe as many as three minutes of exquisite agony left.

The burning cold melted away, replaced by a gentle warmth. Justin wondered whether he was dead. He opened his eyes and realized he wasn’t. Bright knelt next to him, wounded and bloodied. He looked next to dead himself.

“What did I tell you? No martyring.” Bright sounded like he was trying too hard to not sound angry, “Did I need you to distract him? No. He was going to be dead at the bottom of the gorge either way. If you’d just waited another minute—”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” Bright placed his hands on Justin’s chest. “I’ve put out the fire. Now I’m going to heal you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Justin tried to wriggle away and failed, “No martyring. Heal yourself first.”

“I’m not a martyr. Neither of us can deal with whatever Caden sent a flare for right now.” Bright pressed all of the tremor out of his voice. “If I heal myself, you’ll be dead before I’m conscious again. I’m not going to just let you die. I’d rather die trying.”

Justin was struck silent. No one ever promised him that the things he needed to do would always be comfortable or free from pain. At least, the pain would be bearable, if only because of why he was bearing the pain.

“Bright, throw us both into the gorge.”

Bright looked at Justin oddly before realization dawned on his face. The diner was safe, at least relatively. Bright wouldn’t have to heal either one of them well enough to fight right away.

“You can take us back?”

“I can if I’m taking you back with me.”

“Wait. How does that make sense?”

“Trust me.”

Bright picked Justin up then stumbled into the gorge. They tumbled, fumbling over and clinging to each other with failing strength. The effort burned across Justin’s arms, chest, and back. It pressed all the air out of him. Then, as suddenly as they had fallen, they stopped. Justin felt the diner’s tile floor below him and passed out.

Bright insisted they both dress up for the theater. He had Justin fitted for a bespoke suit that arrived in days. Bright had invested well, and his occasional freelance work was rather lucrative. That barely explained Bright’s Manhattan apartment and Justin’s bespoke suit not at all. It should have taken multiple fittings and months to build. Then again, Justin ran a diner that, chosen-one–adjacent folks—even assassins—aside, was only found by those who needed his help. They both trafficked in the impossible.

A bespoke suit made Bright look more like everyone else. Or, rather, it made everyone else look more like Bright. A suit teased people into thinking perhaps the wearer’s shoulders really were that broad, and perhaps his chest really did swell out like that. A well-cut suit created a taper to the waist. It cast the illusion that underneath the fabric, the wearer had a body like Bright’s. Sitting next to Justin, Bright in his bespoke suit could have been any obviously large man, albeit one who could afford an expensive, well-made piece of clothing intended to last for generations.

Chandeliers hung down from the theater’s art-deco ceiling. Each of their long, thin branches clutched a round light bulb. About half of the bulbs were burnt out. For Justin, making them light again was tempting but not that tempting. It would have been easy. The uncomfortable surfeit of potential was still coursing through him. The only way to rid himself of it, he suspected, was to renounce protecting Bright. He’d have to mean it, though, so there was no point even trying. Physically, he was still a little delicate. Who knew what out of control potential might do besides repair those bulbs? Bright was probably also still a little delicate. He was just fronting harder.

People were still streaming into the house. Hundreds of overlapping conversations merged into a din that made Justin feel hidden and anonymous. He could say or do anything right now, and only Bright would know.

“So, do you just go around fixing quests that go wrong and making enemies?” Justin thumbed through the show’s program, trying to sound casual.

“Well, sometimes, I go to the theater.” Bright smiled. “Love Life is an odd musical. Its original production opened during a musicians’ strike, so there is no original cast album, after which the show was basically lost. They tried to produce it here five years ago. It would have been the first New York production since the original, and there was a global pandemic. The world locked down during its dress rehearsal. Whatever happens this time around, I want to face it with you.”

“I don’t know why I never forget.” Justin set the program on his lap.

“And I don’t know why I haven’t forgotten.”

Bright offered his hand to Justin. Slowly, Justin took it. Their grip was tight enough to be sure and loose enough that either one could pull away. As the house lights went down and the stage lights went up, neither one did.

 

(Editors’ Note: “The Diner at the Intersection of Duty and Despair” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 65A.)

 

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