My head flashed with a headache, and my limbs were fuzzy, as if disconnected from the socket. As it turned out, the ceiling was rather comforting to stare at.

Tiles crossed and doubled in my fragmented vision. The corners smudged with a darker shade of black, speckled with raised white dots emulating goosebumps. Strips of light placed above each cubicle dimmed, leaving trails that chased each other across my eyelids when I blinked. My temples ached to a drumbeat, but I was used to that.

I lay there for a while, counting the lightbulbs in groups of five each, waiting for the electricity to stop crackling in my ears.

Something prodded at my awareness. A pinch at the back of my neck. There was a certain connection to my power from the spinal cord, I figured. Some kinship between pathways, gates, systems. It fizzled around me in pulses. I nudged back at the Oort cloud of technology and reestablished the pinprick connection to the monitors.

The centre one chirred. A message appeared on the overlay.

Files received. Files received. Files—

It repeated. Always the same two words. Twenty-six times.

I knew it would work.

If June listened to me, she would have figured out that I already finished step one of my plan. I had scoped out Havens' local banks and companies, targeting the ones that shared the same system to transfer funds.

Twenty-six transactions completed. Which amounted to a little less than thirteen cents of skimmed interest, but it would accumulate.

I gave the system the command to erase any trace of Dianne. Stood, grabbed the key card so Tandem could shred it, and staggered to my feet. The breathable material of my suit clung to my arms, extending to thin gloves that held a host of my inventions inside of the v-shaped cuffs. Extending a tiny laser in the shape and size of a pen, its faint blue light sliced through the cords. I reached for the metal band beneath it, an auto-knitter made from a coil of silver. Thread looped within the cage and caught onto the charred threads, repairing the holes in the fabric of my pants and replacing them with a patch of matte black.

Once I'd gotten to my feet, I sighed. Checked the cameras. Still out of commission, which was a good sign.

The system politely informed me June was with her handler. His phone's calendar had a meeting scheduled. Heat gathered in my chest like coal burning. That was where she'd gone?

Gideon Parkland can seriously get a life. If one thing was certain, she'd never allow herself to be late. He didn't tolerate it.

He'd also, judging by the outside road cameras, called sanitation.

Ridiculous.

Sanitation was also under the direction of handlers like Gideon, usually heroes of any class except a fighter. It was their job to restore battle sites to their previous condition, cutting into the money the hero received, of course. Their lime green suits moved in unison up the elevator as I dodged from the room.

It seemed like overkill for a little drywall.

I crouched as I made my way to the fire exit. Scaling the building was an option, if a little too bold for my plan of escape. Plus, some of the business-casual suits were still camped outside, as if this whole thing was an event, a sort of new-age birdwatching. And so trucks filled with families parked across the curb, gazing out at the aftermath, their phones attuned to Cape's app for their handler news, either lamenting they'd missed June, or waiting to see what minor heroes showed up to deal with the civilians.

I cleared two flights before a door above me snapped open. Ducking into the relative safety of the cubicles, I made a semicircle to watch sanitation work. Music plugged into an old phone leaked the sound from someone's headphones. A glucose monitor flashed with numbers. Another's exercise watch counted heart rate and over seven thousand steps.

I shrunk down as one held a hose to the glass, attached to the vacuum pack on their back. Glass chuted into a canister of hazardous waste without a sound. Surely, that was pushing it?

They rounded closer to me. I retreated, speeding up until I hit the back door. I silenced the alarm that should have sounded upon opening, stepping out into the parking lot. Uneven stairs led the way down the incline, where the buildings formed neat rows. Trees swayed in the spring warmth as I removed my wig, folding it into the safety of the suit pocket along with my coloured contacts. Then I pressed a button on the belt, so the fabric changed in an instant.

With that, I was back to my natural dark brown hair and in a powdery blue tracksuit. It usually helped a little that sweat trickled across my forehead post-battle, so nobody suspected the runner getting in her cardio.

I hit the crosswalk. The indicator beeped in time with my breaths. The glare from the office building overtook the sun, hiding it behind the blistering neon signs. Pedestrians passed me through occasional, mutual glances in its direction.

I jogged at the intersection of Unity and Main Street before getting waved through and bent down to tie my shoe. Checked for the explosives by the street and found nothing. Resuming my pace, I stiffened. Tandem.

He could answer me on this.

I punched the crosswalk indicator. Quickly reconfigured its timer so that it synched up—so many of them didn't even work anymore. An endless annoyance.

Breathing out, I rounded the corner. A cutting gust tangled with my hair. The ends were short enough to tumble over my ears on both sides; the back was razed.

Trees clustered, blocking the sidewalk in shadow. The houses grew in size, spanning gardens and tucked behind armoured gates. A few more turns, and I reached his street. There had better be an explanation.

I arched my shoulders.

His gate came into view. Woven wires overlapped into a spiderweb with a massive array of hedges and trees that were so tall, they were practically Pangea relics. Their leaves were wide and vibrant green, a canopy for the rocks lining the pathway to the door. I passed the buzzer with the speaker to force my way into the house security. His wife changed the password on a diligent two-week schedule, and it was nothing but an extra step in my routine to bypass it.

The dusky blue door sported three off-centre windows; one at the bottom for the two family cats. At my knock, the doorbell camera activated.

It inched open to reveal Tanner's wife, Serena. She was taller than me by a few inches, cradling a tabby cat in her arms while the other, a black kitten, rested across a pair of dress shoes, batting at a sock. She scanned me. "Oh, you're one of Tanner's students, aren't you?"

I nodded. "Rory Lennox."

"Yes, yes, yes." She pulled the door open to let me into the entryway. The hardwood floors gleamed under her slippered feet. "Home appliances, isn't it?"

I kicked off my shoes. After Tanner retired, he spent most of his time investing in business ideas. Including mine.

"Washers and dryers, mostly," I said. "Apartment complexes will charge you a dollar for one wash, seventy-five cents for one dry. But they could switch to a card system and charge five flat. Nobody carries cash anymore."

She scratched the cat's chin. "It must have been a dollar when you were in college."

"Exactly. University campuses are our first target. Card slot goes right over their machine, no renovations."

"Yes, yes." She pointed me to the stairwell. "Tanner's where he usually is."

As I gave her a smile, I whirled around and rolled my eyes as soon as she was out of sight. It was always the same conversation, and I liked to play it up to see how farfetched I could go. Even when I pitched recycling water from apartment pipes or reinvented dry cleaning, she wasn't the type to disagree.

At the top of the stairway, I slipped into the hall, following the collage of photographs and article snippets Serena framed. One read, Opal Technology, Inc., CFO, funds an elementary school lunch program. Endless headlines: Tanner Zinck sponsors local hockey league... a businessman with a drive to make a change... seen at a family-run restaurant.

In the glass, I saw his face, sometimes with one hand raised halfway in the air as if in a halfhearted attempt to block the view of the cameras, sometimes with a smile and a faraway glance that seemed to trail through the frames. As I walked, it was as though passing funhouse mirrors.

At the end of the hall, I eased the door at the corner open.

"There had better be a world-ending explanation for this," I said.

Tanner hunched over the dryer machine, spinning the dial as harmonic blips emitted from it. "Hello, Ridge. Nice of you to give me a heads up," he said as I entered. "You let yourself in again, I see."

"You ought to tell Serena to stop making her security passwords birthdays. Granted, this time it was the cat's, but... still."

He shrugged. "The cats are family members. She celebrates those birthdays, and besides, I don't worry too much. Her memory has been difficult lately. She likes doing it; gives her confidence."

"There is another technopath in Havens." I skirted around the series of prototypes we'd made together, smiling at them like he did with the cats. Dryer machines twinkled with metallic light, some connected to wires and the pulley system I hadn't bothered to take down. Getting to where he stood was like moving through a museum of the invention's variations. My greatest one yet.

I came to a halt beside him. What Serena thought we were doing wasn't so far off from the nonsense ideas I pitched, but this dryer had nothing to do with clothes anymore.

A time machine. Small and square, it was a shade of brilliant, bleached-coral white. A digital overlay replaced the coin slot that showed four numbers for the date: January 1, 2999. He sighed as he continued to flick the dials; hot water to cold, regular to premium press.

"Whoever they are, they are not as smart as you." He lifted his tray of rainbow-coloured macaroons. Tanner's baking increased, especially when he was stressed, and a trail of flour drifted across his clothes. "I assume you're here because of the machine."

"The machine?"

"Yes, Ridge," Tanner said in his usual flat tone. Now that I was out of the suit, it sounded all crisp and rolled r, the way he pronounced my name. Almost as if saluting me.

"I'm here because my explosives went missing. Something happened?"

"It's nothing major." There wasn't a hesitation, but something else behind the words. A sort of expectance. "You armed your plan with explosives?"

"Only minor ones. The heroes won't disarm bombs anymore. They have to call in a professional, and it's much less exciting." My hands formed a tight fist. "What happened to my machine?"

"Our machine."

"My machine," I said. "I invented it."

He gave me a small sigh that was more out of habit than anything else. "It's not yours alone until you pay me."

Sometimes, he got on my nerves. I may not have had a student loan, but he wanted an amount so massive that the numbers ceased being part of reality. By no means was I a millionaire, but I owed him five of them. He called it a good deal. I called it extortion.

I'm thirteen cents richer now, though.

"I'm basically there. When the plan is done, you'll have your money," I said.

"Basically there, meaning? One half? Three-fourths? How many million is basically?"

"Tanner. That is not the point."

"Rory," he said in response. "It was merely a personal curiosity. Such as how seeing June was."

A muscle in my jaw ticked. He had to bring her up. "Fighting her used to mean something. Now she's a corporate drone. An engine in the hero machine."

"Ah." He stopped fiddling with the machine and smiled. "Do you have an inclination that Gideon knows about your history?"

"Of course he does." June didn't keep secrets, and anyway, wasn't that leverage? I plucked a macaroon from the tray. "He's why she's like this. If he's got her scheduled for eight o'clock, she shows up all punctual"—I threw my hands up—"'Sorry, I didn't stop the bank robbery on Third and Summer, you were more important.' Unbelievable. A bureaucratic failure."

"Her boss, by all accounts, is more important than your failed relationship from nearly ten years ago." He lifted a mug full of coffee, still hot and smelling of fresh-ground beans. "I would call it the bureaucracy working as intended. But, well. You aren't exactly an event one can schedule on a calendar, though not for his utter lack of trying. Maybe you should start doing that, considering you've got his phone number?"

Phone numbers, plural. He has two. I scoffed. I was done talking about June and Parkland. "Twenty-nine ninety-nine? That's the problem with the machine?"

"Turn of a century." He took a long sip of his coffee. Tanner's face was clean-shaven since as much as he'd tried, a beard on him looked misplaced. He'd gone full tilt in the opposite direction and shaved so that he was bald. It gave him a sort of authoritarian look, something war-torn, weathered. Something in the unevenness of his stubble. "Well, yes."

"Why twenty-nine ninety-nine?"

"Pomp and circumstance?" He grinned at his own joke. "The future would be it. Imagine the celebration."

I leaned against a prototype dryer. "If the new year even exists by then." The date seared into me, leaving a stain of dots in my periphery when I blinked. "But why? Did it break?"

"I'm not sure. The dials don't change anything, so perhaps there is a reason," he said. "Look, I recognize it interferes with your master plan, but..."

I already suspected what he was about to ask. He leaned over, popping the dryer door open. I stared into the circular space, only wide enough to fit me.

"It should be quite simple. Get there, figure out what went wrong, get back, and that'll be the end," he told me.

"Three steps."

"Yes. Three."

I stepped over to the machine. Once I get this over with, I can initiate the next steps of the master plan.

Folding my legs close to my chest, I climbed into the machine. The cold metal clanged around my palms as though I was inside of a rocket ship. My shadow rose like the whisper of a candle flame, on both sides, and even in the white of the soda-can door. Tanner shot me a smile as he closed me inside, and the heat kicked around me. The machine shook and swayed. Luckily, I've never been claustrophobic.

I imagined myself taking off, leaving the ground, as the tremors shot me back and forth. My breaths came in thin, my palms sweating. There was nowhere but the lint trap to hold onto, and it became my anchor through my slingshot around the stars.

The shaking slowed but didn't stop. The door opened in a wash of light. I blinked rapidly, shielding my eyes against the shine. I fished into the clinical nothingness, searching for some new form of purchase. Some familiarity in the echoes of a void.

I crawled out, squinting at the fluorescent contrails against a flat, white ceiling. An ironing board dotted with violet flowers overtook the otherwise empty room, beside an overflowing basket of socks and towels. Lined-up washers and dryers formed a blockade before the wall behind me, in groups of four each. My fingernails dug into the metal, still hot like an iron I shouldn't touch. A printed sheet of A1 paper tacked above me read: Out of Order.

Rubbing my eyes, I pushed the hair from my face. A stairway trailed the way upward. I spun halfway around, recognition building within me and settling in my stomach like a heavy weight.

I was in the laundry room of my old university's residence, and I was pretty sure that wasn't where I was supposed to be.