SHE FELT TUGGED alongside Wayne, drawn from her navel as if by some magic umbilical cord pulling her back toward the real world, a world that she’d been born into just nineteen short years ago. Jo raised a hand up to her eyes, guarding them from the suddenly all-too-oppressive sun.

The door spit them out on a side street connected to her mother’s neighborhood. Jo instantly recognized the squat houses and modest lawns. It wasn’t a long walk from her home, maybe ten minutes. She should be glad to be so close, but Jo’s anxiety had already kicked into overdrive and she found herself wishing she’d had just a bit longer to compose herself.

“So, where’s home?” Wayne looked around, hands in his pockets.

“Texas.” Jo followed suit, beginning to lead the way.

“The mighty Lone Star Republic doesn’t look like what I’d expect,” he mumbled.

“What would you expect?” She latched onto the conversation as an opportunity for distraction.

“It to look a lot more different.”

“Different than what?” She gave him an up and down look. “No one has dressed like that in America for over a century, you know.”

“More than fashion, doll. When a country is invaded and then split up. . . I just thought it’d look a lot different is all.”

“Texas has always been Texas. It’s not even like this is the first time it’s been its own country, even.” Jo shrugged. “I’m surprised you even know about the outcome of World War III.”

“I haven’t lived in a hole.” There was mock offense in his voice.

“Just outside time,” she countered.

“And even there you can’t escape the talking heads on the television.”

“Really?” Jo arched her eyebrows. “You get news in the mansion?”

“How else would we keep up with the world?”

She merely hummed and kept wondering why people who existed beyond time would even need to “keep up with the world.” Jo looked at the sky; it was already turning a dusky color with the beginnings of sunset.

“I was born in 2038, a full twenty-three years after the war ended. Can’t say I know what the old America even looked like to compare. Plus, most of the fighting stayed on the coasts. America surrendered before any of the bombings got here.”

“For the best, as they say.” Wayne’s voice grew distant as he pulled into his own thoughts.

Jo nodded in agreement. The war had been hard and costly in both life and finances. But history was a topic her mind withdrew from when they rounded the corner of her street—or rather, the street that once marked home. Down at the end of the cul-du-sac, her family home crept into view—still small and square-shaped, a one-story affair painted in a rich terracotta that her mother got to keep after the divorce. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that it looked exactly like she remembered. It was almost too similar, eerily so, and Jo had to keep reminding herself that this was a house that she had now never visited before.

“Come on, dollface,” Wayne pulled her out of her thoughts, one hand on the back of her neck as the other fiddled with his coin, flipping it up and down. “You were rallying to come here. How’s about you give me the nickel tour?”

Jo hadn’t realized her feet had stopped moving at the edge of the driveway. She took a breath and nodded, walking up the concrete with renewed purpose.

Her mom’s car wasn’t there, so it was unlikely that anyone was home—unless this was now a universe where her father was a stay-at-home husband. Unlikely, even in a world of magic. Jo thanked her lucky stars, not quite sure if she’d have been able to handle that. Knowing the woman who had been everything to Jo wouldn’t be able to hug her, probably wouldn’t even recognize her? Even with her ability to go unseen, she didn’t think she had the heart for it.

They walked up to the keypad on the garage door. Jo raised a hand, hooking the cap to open it. When it didn’t budge, Wayne caught her wrist.

“Just a sec, doll.”

“What?”

“Let me.” Wayne motioned to his watch. “You can’t interact with things outside of time.”

“Why? I got time with the wish, didn’t I?” Jo flipped her watch, affirming the fact. The numbers 10:00 still read where her stopwatch usually was.

“Time doesn’t just run because you walk through the Door. Thankfully,” Wayne added the last word as a mutter under his breath. “You have to activate it.”

“How do I do that?”

“Let’s not worry about that for now,” he said with more delicacy than Jo had previously thought possible for him to muster. As Jo moved to object, he continued. “I have some time still leftover from a prior wish. So, just in case, I’d rather preserve yours.”

“Didn’t Snow make it clear that I wasn’t going to be of help anyway? Shouldn’t I use mine?”

Wayne just shook his head, clearly not wanting to go down that route of conversation again. Jo watched closely as he pushed in a knob on his over-sized Rolex. Just like that, the hands began turning on the face. She didn’t perceive him as any different, but the keypad opened up with a flick of his fingers.

“Code?”

“Eleven, Seven, Two,” Jo recited, watching his fingers depress the buttons as though that—of all things—was the most magical thing she’d seen. “And press the car button after.”

The door groaned open, then closed again as they slipped through.

The garage was a little messier than she remembered, but she hadn’t visited her mother in months, so that could very well have been a recent change. Either way, she ignored the little details for now and started for the interior door.

“It should be unlocked,” she informed Wayne.

Sure enough, it was, and he ushered them both inside, closing the door behind them and pulling out the pin on his watch again. Time stopped flowing through the device and the hands stilled. Jo gave him a once-over, waiting for some magical aura to appear, but he seemed the same as he always had.

She didn’t know why everyone was making magic out to seem so complicated. All this “learning her place.” From what Jo had seen, so far, magic was about intention, determination, and simple actions.

The moment Jo took more than a step into the house, however, all thoughts of magic and time vanished from her mind. Out of reflex, she found herself sniffing the air, heart clenching when she could smell none of the familiar scents of home.

“You all right?” Wayne asked softly. Jo startled slightly.

“Oh, yeah. Fine,” she replied quickly, clearing her throat. “Just. . . habit.”

“To sniff your house?” He asked, and his obvious attempt at keeping the mood lighthearted almost worked, the grip around her heart loosening a fraction.

“Whenever my mom knew I was coming home, she would always make my favorite dessert,” Jo said, taking a breath as she reminisced, even though it came away lacking. “The first thing I would smell whenever I visited was sopapillas.”

A brief pause, and then, “Your mother used to feed you soap?”

She couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up her throat, but she offset it with a tight roll of her eyes. “Yes, Wayne. My mother used to feed me soap.” After a second, however, she felt her own face soften, the laughter settling into a sigh. “Sopapillas are like hollow donuts you can pour warm honey into. When you take a bite, the honey pours out all over your fingers, and it’s just. . .” She took another breath, this time more to combat the renewed tightness in her chest than any lingering desire to smell dough and honey in the air. “They’re just really good, that’s all.”

She didn’t wait to see Wayne’s reaction, and instead continued wandering through the house on autopilot.

Besides more of that relative messiness, it was still in much the same shape as she remembered. There were more little details depicting slight, barely recognizable change, however, like no upright piano in the hallway; a smaller, lower-quality television in the living room. As she walked into the kitchen, she noticed a lack of fruit in the bowl by the toaster, a pile of bills stacked in its place. Without turning her watch on to get a closer look, she could tell some of them were recent, especially the ones with Final Notice stamped in bold red ink along the front.

It occurred to her then, just how much her mother had been relying on her for financial stability. The money she made from various odd and usually illegal jobs—high paying stints with the Yakuza, usually—had always gone at least in part to her mother. Without that cut, how difficult was it for her to get by?

“This your little sister’s room or something?” Wayne’s voice pulled her through the kitchen and to the back of the house, her distraction giving way to confusion the moment she approached the open doorway.

“This—” she heard herself whisper on a half-second delay. Jo swallowed to clear the lump in her throat and make room for the rest of the sentence. “This is my room.”

But it wasn’t. Not really, not anymore. The walls were painted a light blue, toys and stuffed animals littering the floor. It was obviously a room belonging to a little girl, nowhere near what her own childhood room had been. Her walls had been a messy collage of movie posters and sticky notes, her “toys” limited to various computer parts and video games. Whoever this child was, she was very much not Josephina Espinosa.

And why should she be? Jo remembered the vague conversation of a miscarriage somewhere around when she’d turned eight, a passing comment about how it had probably been for the best. A casual joke about Jo being enough of a handful, though Jo was already old enough to recognize that it was more about another mouth to feed and all too recently filed divorce papers. Maybe, in this version of reality, Jo’s lack of existence meant the creation of this little girl’s.

Maybe embryonic Jo had been the one who miscarried.

Wandering throughout the room, letting her fingers brush against a bright, floral comforter, a stuffed unicorn, it finally hit her.

The world didn’t continue on without her. The loved ones she’d had and the memories she’d made with them didn’t just vanish; they were never there to begin with. She’d known that, Snow had implied as much, and yet the sinking realization hit her like jumping into an outdoor pool in the winter. Her sacrifice had created something entirely new: a world where “Jo” had never been. In giving up her own existence, she’d ultimately set everyone she’d ever known down a different path entirely. A new time-line, new reality.

Which meant—

“I need to go see Yuusuke,” Jo said abruptly, turning towards the closet door and imagining—no, believing—that the door would appear. It took a second for the sensation to manifest into something tangible, but just as she reached towards the handle, it began to shift.

Which was exactly when a small child, hair almost identical to Jo’s pulled into pig-tailed braids, came frolicking into the room.

Jo lost the image of the door instantly, turning on her heel with a start, part of her still expecting to be caught. She’d been so preoccupied with her thoughts, she hadn’t even heard anyone come home.

Just like the agents in the Ranger compound, the girl paid them no mind, going about removing her backpack and tossing it onto the bed. With a quick flourish, she plopped herself onto the comforter beside it and began digging through the small, purple bag with a determined expression. She looked to be about seven years old.

She looked nothing like Jo had at her age.

“Lydia!”

Jo’s heart clenched, her mother’s voice echoing from the kitchen. The little girl—Lydia, not named after her maternal grandmother like Jo had been, but her father’s mother—sunk her hands deeper into her bag. With a grin, she pulled a touchpad from somewhere in its depths and settled into her pillows.

“Mija, no games until your homework’s done,” came her mother’s voice again, this time closer. Jo found herself panicking.

She couldn’t see her, not like this. She didn’t want to see how tired her mother looked or how much happier she was. She didn’t want to know anymore either way.

A hand on her shoulder had her jerking back towards the closet, Wayne’s other hand was already on the handle; the keypad blinked, waiting for her to plug in a code. When she looked up at him, no idea what expression was written on her face, he only motioned at the door with his chin.

“Let’s make tracks, doll,” he said, voice serious and calming. It was a steady skiff in the swell of panic she was suddenly riding. She took a second to let herself lean into his touch before turning back to the keypad, the code forming like puppet strings tugging at her fingers.

She tried not to listen to the sound of her mother’s approach, keeping all of her focus on leaving that room, that house, and that life behind. For good.

Almost too quickly, they were on the other side.

Yuusuke’s familiar wreck of an apartment was laid out before them. Amidst that wreck was also Yuusuke himself, her friend lounging in an awkward half dangle off the couch. He seemed to be struggling with whatever game he currently had pirated onto his touchpad (Jo would, in any reality, default to assuming he stole it), and the sight was so blissfully familiar, it almost made her dizzy.

He was alive and well. Thanks to her wish, despite the little alterations of the new reality, Yuusuke was alive. Even though he’d never know about her sacrifice, it didn’t make the results any less real, and that made everything she was currently drowning in worth it.

Jo found the tension in her shoulders seeping out, a smile beginning to tug at the corner of her lips. She could go and accept her new life, knowing that he was well. She could make herself believe everything was going to be okay, knowing that she’d accomplished something with her wish.

Before Jo had the chance to even turn back towards the door, however, a familiar beeping sound began to echo persistently from Yuusuke’s computer.

“Finally!” Yuusuke groaned, tossing his touchpad onto the couch cushions and scrambling to his feet. His headphones were in place and his fingers tapping furiously over the keyboard in seconds flat.

Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was jealousy—but before they left, Jo had to know what he was working on. For reasons she didn’t even particularly understand, she needed to see his current project.

All it took was one glimpse at the screen.

“You dumbass,” Jo hissed, taking a step back. Her hands were clenched so tight she could feel the bite of her nails against her palm. “You stupid son of a bitch!”

Wayne might have said her name, but it barely registered. All she could hear was the faint music coming from Yuusuke’s headphones, the rhythmic tapping of his fingers working through a reply to the messages—a thank you for this anonymous person’s assistance. All she could see were the start of scrolling files, the thumbnails and open windows depicting every bit of information she was still painfully, suffocatingly familiar with.

He was, after all, sifting through data that Yuu and she had worked on together for months. It was nowhere near as organized as when he’d had her help in collecting it, but that wasn’t something Jo could even take pride in. He was far enough, and the information was sound. At the rate it looked like he was going, he’d be right back in that server room in under a few months—weeks, even. Mere days, if he was reckless—and he usually was.

Yuusuke was still going after the Black Bank, alone this time.

She hadn’t changed a goddamn thing.

“Jo?” Wayne repeated her name for what could have been the second or umpteenth time, concern evident in his voice. Unfortunately, Jo was still seeing red.

“Will he feel it if I hit him?”

Wayne didn’t answer right away, and when Jo shot her glare in his direction, the look of surprise was etched plainly across his face. “I mean, without time activated? No? But I don’t think you should—”

Jo didn’t even breathe before rearing back and slapping him across the back of the head, something she used to do (with far less force) whenever he was acting stupid. His headphones didn’t fly off, though, and he didn’t turn towards her with a shout and a crude gesture. In fact, Jo was pretty sure the action hurt her more than it hurt him. Deep down, though, she hoped she could at least give him a weird, unexplained headache.

If she knew how to use her blasted watch and time and magic, she could appear before him. She could be like some Latina ghost of Christmas Present wielding a “what do you think you’re doing” chancleta. But watching him obliviously race down the same rabbit hole that had gotten him killed the first time? That was the last straw. Something she couldn’t quite describe broke at the idea.

“Take me back,” Jo whispered, suddenly too tired to even believe the door would appear to her if she tried. When Wayne didn’t immediately respond, she turned towards him more completely, eyes pleading. “Take me home. Please.”

For a long moment, Wayne looked as if he was trying to figure out what to say. An apology maybe. Or some kind of comfort. But in the end, he did as told, leading her back to the Society without a word.