The first thing Lincoln saw when he opened his eyes was Gideon's terrified face. The boy was doing a good job of hiding it, but Lincoln could see through to the hidden fear. Gideon's posture was rigid, and his fingers did a little dance as they brushed against Mabel's.

"Lee? Are you okay?" Ford stood over him and offered a hand to help him to his feet. Lincoln took it, standing with some alarming cracks from his bones.

"Grunkle Lee," said Dipper, "that was terrible."

Lincoln closed his eyes. "I know," he said.

"How?" whispered Mabel. "How could he just. . . take over like that?"

"An old deal," Lee said quietly. "We made a deal years ago that he could take over whenever he wanted."

There was a beat of silence. "What did you get out of it?" asked Dipper.

Lincoln's closed eyes squeezed further together. "I. . . would rather not share."

When no one responded, Lee opened his eyes. Half of the faces in the room looked at him, the other half at the floor. All expressions were pained.

"Gideon," said Lincoln, and the boy flinched at the sound of his name. "Thank you."

Gideon looked up, surprised. "Thank you?" he repeated. "Why? I. . . I thought you'd be angry with me."

"Why would I be angry with you?" Then he remembered: Gideon didn't know about his amnesia. Lincoln often lost track of who did and didn't know. Those who were in the Order before Percy's death knew, and some of their children; but after Lincoln had taken over, the information wasn't widely disseminated. "No," he told Gideon, "I'm not angry. You helped more today than you even know."

Gideon looked confused, but Dipper spoke before anyone else could. "Okay, but why is it dark outside? I thought it was the middle of the day!"

Oh, right. "I'll do my best to explain that," Lincoln said, "although Bill was right when he said I don't know as much as he does."

"Come explain to Melody, too," said Dipper. "She's back in Ford's room with Fidds."

"Fidds?" Lincoln looked to Ford in alarm.

Ford nodded with a sullen expression on his face. "Like Dipper said, he and Melody are in my room. Last I heard, Fidds was unconscious. Melody is taking care of him." He sighed. "Dipper is right that Melody will want to know all of this. It's probably better to explain it to all of us at once."

That made sense, so Lincoln followed Ford from the gift shop. The kids lagged behind; Lincoln noticed that they — Mabel in particular — didn't walk too closely to him. It was a painful observation to make.

When they got to the entryway, Ford took off his trenchcoat and hung it on the coatrack. Then he started down the hall. "What did you say to Cipher," he asked Lincoln, "before he left?"

Lee thought back to that exchange. "After he told me to explain about the time bubble, I told him that he seemed very open with his secrets. That's when he mentioned being confident. Then, I asked him if you could walk with me to the Order tomorrow. You heard him say no." He glanced sideways at Ford. "I'm sorry," he added. "I wish I could've gotten more time. But Bill made it seem like we'd be very busy starting tomorrow."

"Busy doing what?"

"Preparing for his escape," Lincoln replied.

A shudder went through Ford's body, but he didn't say anything else. A moment later, he stopped outside a door and knocked on it.

It wasn't too long before the door opened, revealing Melody. She took in the small group around the door and looked unsurprised to see Gideon or Lincoln. She gave Lincoln a relieved smile. "Welcome home," she said.

A stray tear or two escaped from Lee's eye.

"Gideon's going to stay with us," said Mabel. "And. . . so is Grunkle Lee, at least t-tonight."

Melody's eyes widened slightly. "We'll have to figure out sleeping arrangements," she said, "but it'll be fine. Why did you all come to Ford's room?"

Lincoln let out a breath. "I have some things to explain. We thought we should all be together."

Melody glanced back into Ford's room. "One moment." She disappeared into the room, then reappeared with a device that looked like a baby monitor. "Okay," she said, "let's go to the living room."

"Is that a baby monitor?" asked Dipper as they went.

She shrugged. "Essentially. It's so I can hear Fidds while I'm in a different room, if he wakes up. Helpful when you're a geriatric nurse."

Lincoln thought he saw Ford turn a little pink at that.

In the living room, Lee and Ford took the couch while the others stood or sat on the floor. "First," Lincoln said, "I should explain something to those who don't know yet. This information isn't spread in the Order these days, Gideon; and Melody, I think this might explain my earlier behavior." He took a deep breath and once again explained his amnesia. Both Gideon's and Melody's eyes widened, the former with clarity and the latter with sympathy. "So, Gideon, if you hadn't told the Pines about me, I never would've known that they were my family." He gave the boy a soft smile. "Thank you."

It had only been a few hours since Lincoln had met Ford. The pain was still raw, and the confusion was still strong. But, somewhere deep inside, Lincoln knew that this was ultimately a good thing. Gideon had opened the door for a lot of pain, but somewhere in that pain was healing. Lincoln had a family, even if he didn't remember them.

"I think Melody should know about your deal with Bill, too," said Mabel quietly.

Lincoln looked to her. She probably felt betrayed that neither Lincoln nor Ford had explained Lee's deal before Bill took over. He couldn't blame her. "I'm sorry, Mabel. I should have told you before. . . before it was too late. Originally, Bill wanted to come here and go straight to talking with Gideon. I'm just glad that I convinced him to let me meet you first."

Mabel's voice was small as she said, "He promised he wouldn't take over again tonight, right?"

"Right. Not for eighteen hours." Melody looked rather confused at this point, so Lee reluctantly explained to her that Bill could possess Lee's body whenever he wanted. "But, he said he wouldn't do it again until tomorrow after ten. He has to keep his word."

He saw a hint of the same distrust in Melody's face that he saw in the children's. Never before today had he wished so strongly that he'd never made that deal.

"Now," said Ford. "Why did Bill say it was four-thirty?"

"What?" said Melody.

Ford gestured out the diamond-shaped window in the door to show her the darkness outside. "I believe you said something about a time bubble earlier," he said to Lincoln. "What's that?"

Lincoln took a steadying breath, unsure of how well he could explain. "Bill said that the portal opened just after ten A.M. and that time jumped forward about three and a half hours from there," he said. "Except. . . well, time didn't really jump forward. One thirty-seven was simply when the time bubble went up in the first place." This only seemed to add more confusion, so he tried a different tactic. "Does anyone know what date it is?"

"Of course," said Melody. "It's January. . ." She trailed off.

"January tenth?" Dipper tried. "Or. . . or is it February, now?"

"It's January fifth," said Lincoln. "It's been January fifth every day for weeks now."

Silence.

"What?" said Ford.

"Wait," said Mabel. "Dipper and I only got here on January second. Right, Dip? We celebrated New Years Day, then went to Gravity Rises the next day. But. . . but we've been here for. . ." She also trailed off as she couldn't think of the number.

"You two got here on January second," said Lincoln, "and I believe it was Pacifica who came here on January fifth. She was the ninth member of the Cipher Wheel to come to Gravity Rises. The moment she came into town, we. . . I don't really know how to explain it, but this whole forest sort of. . . separated from the rest of time. We've been living the same day over and over, all crammed into the space of January fifth. Until now."

"What's different now?" asked Gideon.

"Now, the tenth Symbol is here," Lincoln replied. "Time went back to normal — it was ten AM for us but one-thirty in the real timeline, so time jumped forward for us — and a barrier went up around the town."

"The invisible wall?" said Melody.

Well, none of the others knew about the invisible wall, so Melody explained the car accident and the wall and how the Corduroys said it was related to the Cipher Wheel. "I wanted to ask them more, but I was more concerned about finding you," she said to Lincoln.

"I haven't been to the wall yet," Lincoln said, "but yes, that's the barrier. It should be around the entire forest — all the supernatural creatures here, as well as the town."

"Why?" Mabel asked.

"To separate us from the rest of this dimension," Lincoln said. "Bill is imprisoned here — he has been for millennia — and to escape, he needs this area detached for some reason. He didn't know how to detach it, and he thought that the portal was a danger to him. But Fiddleford's return stopped the time bubble and formed the barrier. What Bill needed all along was his ten Symbols to be in town with him."

Ford looked horrified. "We helped him," he whispered. "We thought we were defying him — we thought we were saving you — when all along we were helping him."

This comment settled around the living room like ashes.

Then Dipper spoke up. "So, you're telling us," he said, "that it's January fifth; time has been on a loop since our first week here; now, time isn't on a loop; and we're trapped here? For how long?"

Mabel realized the implications of what he was saying, and her face turned pale. "Mom and Dad," she said. "If we're trapped in here. . . how will we get home at the end of our break?"

"I haven't even thought about Mom and Dad for weeks!" Dipper added. He sounded a bit hysterical.

Melody sat beside him and put an arm around him. A few feet away, Gideon took Mabel's hand, and she leaned against his shoulder.

"I don't know entirely how it works," Lincoln said. "The only way out, I believe, is to form the Cipher Wheel with all ten of us."

"But you can't," said Ford. He sounded angry, and Lincoln worried that it was directed at him. "You made that stupid deal with Bill, and you apparently can't join the Cipher Wheel. He made it sound like he's already won."

"I don't know," Lincoln said, his voice small.

Mabel took deeper and louder breaths, and Dipper trembled in Melody's arms. Lincoln's heart broke for them, and he knew that Ford was right: that it was Lincoln's fault if they couldn't get out of this.

"It doesn't feel like the same day happening over and over for weeks," said Gideon. "The weather's been different on different days. The Internet worked, at least for a little while. Even the tourists have been different, if I'm not mistaken."

"Yeah," Dipper said, sitting up straight. "How did Amanda get in and out if she got here after we met Pacifica? How could she and I email for a while?"

Lincoln didn't know who Amanda was, but he tried to answer the questions regardless. "I'm really not sure how it works," he said. "I think the two timelines — ours, stuck on the fifth; and the rest of the world, continuing forward in time — overlapped in some ways. Or, we simply didn't notice if the weather was on a three-day loop. And the tourists may not have been real people, just projections of whatever magic caused the time bubble."

Dipper's eyes widened. "Amanda is a real person," he said firmly.

"She got here through a portal, remember," said Ford, "and left the same way. She had different circumstances than your run-of-the-mill tourist."

"I really don't know," said Lincoln. "I do remember Cipher commenting that he thought the Internet and cell service should have cut out a lot earlier than they did. Whatever the magic is, it's powerful. It repeated things or simulated them or inserted them from the normal timeline or something else, and it did it in a way that none of us even noticed it."

"But you knew," said Gideon.

Lincoln conceded that point with a nod. "Because Cipher told me about it. I mostly took his word for it."

"Who else knew?" Ford asked.

"I believe only Cipher and I knew about it as it was happening. The time bubble in general is known by Order members who study the prophecies about Bill's escape. So is the barrier."

The room fell silent as everyone digested this overwhelming information.

"We lived for weeks, even months, in a single day," Mabel whispered.

"January fifth," said Dipper. "Our third full day that we spent here. We found the third Journal that day, didn't we? Everything between finding the Journal and opening the portal. . . that was all in this time bubble thing?"

"I guess so," said Gideon.

Mabel let out a quiet, hysterical laugh. "Everything terrible that happened with Pacifica and Bill was all in the same day."

"Not exactly," said Lincoln. "We still lived however many days there were for us. But, yes. In terms of the regular timeline, we did all of that in one day. Actually," he added, "the day isn't even over yet. It's still January fifth."

Melody let out her own hysterical laugh at that. "To think, Ford," she said, a little too loudly, "we hadn't even met the twins a week ago."

"I don't think it's funny at all," Gideon muttered.

This comment quieted the room. Gideon was right: It wasn't funny in the least. To see the five faces in front of him, all horrified by what he'd just told them, made Lincoln feel terrible. The time bubble wasn't his fault, but. . . he had deliberately kept the information from everyone around him.

Kind of like how everyone around him had deliberately kept Stanford from him.

The six of them — Lincoln, Ford, Gideon, Melody, Mabel, and Dipper — sat silently around the room. Melody gently rubbed Dipper's back, and Mabel and Gideon were stock still as they sat together. Lincoln glanced to Ford, who managed to return the gaze for a moment before his eyes slid away.

Through the window, the night fell.