Sofya shuddered, feeling much less comfortable in the space than she had only moments before, and hurried to the door out of the Archives. She wanted to make sure she got through the door and closed it before it, too, disappeared without a trace. She moved as quickly as her cane would allow her, even though there was no sign that the door wouldn’t be there for her, and she pushed her way through and closed the door behind her with a slam that sounded like thunder in the work room of the Library. Sofya leaned against the closed door, trying to catch her breath, before she realized that there was no other sound in the work room besides her own, labored breathing. She straightened up, forced herself to breathe more naturally in through the nose and out through the mouth, and calmly walked toward the table where the rest of her team sat, looking bewildered. She did her best to avoid making eye contact with any of the other people in the room, focusing only on her team and on getting to her chair and sitting down before she fell down. She’d already made herself the center of attention - the last thing she wanted to do was continue to call attention to herself by falling down or something similarly humiliating.
Sofya finally got herself settled in her usual seat - Niles was kind enough to stand and hold the chair for her, helping her push the chair back in so she wouldn’t have to worry about pushing with her bad leg - and Veronica kindly set down a proper mug of hot water and a variety of tea bags and honey on a little tray. “I didn’t know what you’d prefer after the long day we’ve all had, but I had a feeling you’d want something,” she said, smiling at her friend before settling at the table. Sofya fought a sudden urge to weep, and covered it by focusing on the tea selection so she could keep her face hidden from the rest of her team.
While she moved through the ritual of tea making (choosing an herbal tea with notes of ginger and orange this time), she asked Veronica, “Well? What happened in the universe? We know something must have, because there was devil of a reaction in Prime.”
Veronica had a cup of her own, filled with something that smelled like coffee, but not like anything particularly good in that category. She wrapped both hands around her mug, using it like a talisman to hold on to and keep herself grounded. “I didn’t know if things would show up in Prime, but it doesn’t really surprise me,” she answered, staring into her half-empty mug. “It was pretty bad in-universe. And it doesn’t seem like it was an accident, either.”
Beale sat up sharply. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Anomalies are things that slip into universes through reader misinterpretations or author folly. There’s no way to deliberately introduce an anomaly. You know better than that!”
Veronica felt her face redden with Beale’s words. She did, in fact, know better than what she was saying to them now, and that was what bothered her. She did know better, knew what the Head Librarians had put in the training manuals and every other piece of official communication the agents had ever received from them, but. But she had seen the bomb strapped to the protagonist’s body. She had seen the woman who claimed to be the author and the fear and uncertainty in her eyes. Veronica looked up and met Beale’s challenging glare, and felt some of the redness move out of her face.
“I know what’s supposed to be impossible, Beale,” she answered in the coldest voice any of them had ever heard from her. “I also know what I saw. There was a bomb, attached to the protagonist, in a universe that had no explosives. Our protagonist was a lovely werelion who had recently been elected to the House of Representatives, making him the first supernatural-human elected to national office. That was the kind of universe we were in - UrbFan, but political. Nothing should have turned it into a mystery, yet there we were and here we are. All because of a bomb we haven’t been able to trace, and weren’t even able to keep from detonating.”
Beale’s face fell. “Do you mean…I mean, the protagonist, is he…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud, suddenly terrified of what their fate might be.
Nuereddin smirked before responding. “Oh, now you’re all concern, are you?” He leaned toward Beale, though it was clearly an empty threat - Nuereddin’s feet didn’t touch the floor, and it made it very difficult to push off from the chair and make an attack. “Well, you don’t have to worry. The protagonist survived, and we managed to get a trained therapist into the backstory so that he’s able to help the poor boy recover from his horrible ordeal.” Nuereddin winced, leaning back in his chair again. “Would have been nice if we’d been offered any kind of therapist too, but I suppose the universes believe the Library takes care of its own in that regard.”
Sofya, having finished brewing her tea, looked up at the in-universe portion of her team again. “I’m glad to hear that things worked out in the end, though I know you all were harmed psychologically, if not physically.” She eyed the scorch markes on Veronica’s blouse, the scratches on Nuereddin’s leather vest, and the red welts that had appeared on Niles’ arms. “I’m assuming you did something to the bomb so it wouldn’t explode on the protagonist?” There were nods around the table.
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“Well, it worked, but it still happened on-camera, and with quite a bit of fanfare,” Sofya continued, taking a sip of her newly-brewed tea. “Beale and I were in the process of checking the book out of the public library when the first few pages burst open with a loud explosion, causing all of us to duck down, thinking we’d been shot. By the time we realized we were safe, the first pages had been changed irrevocably. The librarian, who later admitted to being the author of the book, looked as though she would faint when she realized that words she hadn’t written were permanently in her book. It gave the poor dear quite the panic attack.”
“What did this librarian look like, by chance?” Veronica asked, suddenly feeling the gears of her brain spinning. “Was her name Rosemary, by any chance?”
Sofya and Beale exchanged a glance before responding. “Yes, Rosemary,” Beale said. “We couldn’t see much of her face, since she was wearing a mask, but her eyes were gray and she was tall and pale. How would you know that name?”
This time, Veronica and Niles shared a look, while Nuereddin was simply befuddled. “Why was she wearing a mask?” he demanded. “Was she a robber, or planning a feat of derring-do or some trash like that? Seems like an odd thing for a librarian to do.” He noticed that all eyes were on him, and shrugged. “I’m just saying, it seems off. The lady we ran into, she seemed off, too, so it would make sense if they were the same.”
“You haven’t been to Prime in a while, have you, Nuereddin?” Sofya asked kindly. She took a moment to sip her tea, hiding a smile and allowing herself a chance to school her expression into something more appropriate for the situation. “The last few months real time, Prime has been dealing with a plague that has ravaged the populations of countries around the world. In order to reduce their risk of infection, people are wearing hospital-type masks to protect themselves from spreading germs or breathing in germs from other people.” She put down her mug to demonstrate the area covered by the mask, then pulled her own out of one of her pockets. “Since people wear them any time they come in contact with one another, there have been a lot of designs and such that have come out of the whole mess. In times of strife, people make art,” Sofya ended, running her fingers over the embroidery of her mask fondly.
Beale, meanwhile, focused on a statement Nuereddin had made in the midst of asking questions about the mask. “What do you mean, the lady you ran into? Are you trying to say that you saw the author of the universe IN the universe? Is that…I mean, does that happen? Is that even possible?” He looked to Veronica for answers, knowing that she spent more time reading and learning about Library history than anyone else. If an author had found their way into a universe of their creation before, then she would know about it.
Veronica took a deep breath, but Niles responded first. “Yes, we are saying that the author of the book appeared in her universe. She was the one who alerted us to the bomb, in fact - were it not for her, we may not have gotten to the protagonist in time, and the universe would have been destroyed before it had truly begun. She told us there had been irregularities within her universe before today, but the anomaly today was the biggest problem she’d come across, and she didn’t know what to do or where to turn for help.”
Veronica spoke up at last. “Rosemary stayed behind after we got the protagonist, Keith, out of the house. She said that she didn’t feel safe leaving the universe out of her sight, but I don’t know what good it would do her to stay there. I also don’t know of other authors who have made their way into their own universes, outside of copies of the author becoming the protagonists of their autobiography. That isn’t quite the same, though, as the character in the autobiography is created from the character of the person the author writes, and not the person themselves, flaws and all.”
Sofya nodded slowly, recalling the librarian’s reaction in Prime. “She seemed extremely distressed with us as well,” she replied, taking another sip of tea. “She nearly didn’t let me check out the book, but I reassured her that we would be bringing it back as soon as we could and that we just needed to document the changes that she had noted.” She scowled, turning toward the door of the Archives. “I just hope that digital copy thing they made doesn’t get changed somehow if there’s anything else happening behind the scenes.”
Beale frowned at the thought. “I still don’t understand how things can be changing so dramatically. If the author isn’t doing it - and it really didn’t seem like Rosemary had any idea of what had happened, or why - and there’s no reader misinterpretation to add a bomb into the middle of things, then how did it get there?”
Nuereddin leaned back and spread his hands wide. “Sabotage, of course,” he said in a voice that brooked no disagreement. “As I understand these things, bombs don’t appear accidentally, and the device we saw was clearly put there by someone who knew what they were doing and meant wha they were doing. I just wish Keith could tell us more about who had tied him down and put the bomb on him, but of course, they did a good job of keeping him in the dark.”
Veronica sighed, then pulled the top form from the stack she’d already picked up before Sofya had come back. “Well, this is going to be a whole lot of paperwork, no matter what,” she said, with a weary smile. “At least there’s always that to depend on. Let’s start from the top, shall we?”
