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Episode 1:
"Echoes"
Episode 2:
"Down The Rabbit Hole"
Episode 3:
"Coming Home"
Episode 4:
"Everybody Together?"
Episode 5:
"Tom, the Raptors, and Me"
Episode 6:
"Lost But Now Found"
Round Robin Main Page
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Chapter One
Veronica stood surrounded by the light. Everything seemed to take a
deep breath and then all was darkness. She was shaking with the
fear and pain that she had failed. Failed her father, failed her
mother, and perhaps more importantly, failed her friends. People
who had become her family on the Plateau.
She felt as if she were hovering in the endless void of space,
scenes were flickering around her. She tried to focus, tried to
see. Challenger's face came toward her, a brief glimpse, but the
knowledge that she recognized him and he was so much a father to her
made her cling to the vision. She focused harder. He was in pain.
A white room. Far, far away and yet so very close.
Veronica reached out for him, but as he screamed in pain the vision
was ripped from her and the swirling lights began again. She
concentrated and found Roxton. He was backed against the rocks; men
were shooting at him, bullets tearing his body apart.
Veronica screamed herself this time and pulled her mind away only to
find a bloody vision of Marguerite in her minds eye. She was
surrounded by men in dark robes. There was so much blood.
Marguerite's head turned to one side and her dead, sightless eyes
stared into Veronica's.
Once again, Veronica pulled away. The swirling continued but she
ignored it. She did not want to find Malone, did not want to see
him dead before her eyes, could not think of all the things she
should have said to him and didn't.
The darkness came closer and Veronica was weary. Tired right down
to her very soul. Whatever she was supposed to have done, she
didn't do it and now everyone; everything was gone.
A hand touched her shoulder and startled, she turned. Her mother,
stunning in her own right, stood before her surrounded by a vast
light that seemed to radiate out of her.
"It's your time, Veronica."
Her mother took her hand and pulled her up, out of the whirling
visions until they both could gaze down upon them, "My time for
what, mother? I've failed."
Veronica was encased in the light, and her mother began to fade back
into the darkness, "Please, don't leave me. I don't know what to
do."
"Look closer." The sensation of her mother's fingers lingered on
her shoulder and her last words seemed to echo through her, giving
her strength, "I love you, my daughter."
"MOTHER!"
"Look closer." And she was gone. Once again, Veronica felt
loneliness cascade over her, but she forced herself to push it
aside, forced herself to look into the mirage of visions swirling
beneath her.
And then she saw it. A flicker, a glimmer, a moment from the past.
She and Ned were swimming together; their laughter and joy
reverberated through the darkness and shattered it.
She understood. She was not seeing the outcome of anything, but
rather, everything that had happened. Form the day of her birth
until now, it was all laid out before her. She instinctively knew
she could not interfere, but she could rearrange things that might
or might not change the outcome of the situation when the Plateau
expanded once again.
That was what she had seen, that is what she witnessed now. The
Plateau had folded into itself, like the beginning of the universe
and in a moment, it would begin to expand again. The cascading
waves of time displacement had been the trigger and once the Plateau
expanded, each person would be transported back to where they
started, but this moment, this single piece of the fabric of time
itself had to play out. It was up to her friends whether they
returned to her dead or alive.
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