Nova Empire,
Mobius was walking through the branching timeline, tablet in hand, noting the readings that had been coming in all week — branches splitting faster than he had seen in a long time, all originating from the same source, all flagged and then immediately abandoned by high command without explanation.
He had his orders now though. Timeline abandoned. Return to TVA before it got messy.
"Well, they're the bosses," Mobius said to nobody, pulling up his TemPad to open a time door back.
A hand caught his wrist.
Mobius looked up slowly.
Then went very still.
Because in the TVA, this face was known.
Not personally, but by reputation, by the branch readings, by the fact that an entire timeline had been classified as uncontainable and quietly abandoned specifically because of the individual now holding his wrist and looking at his TemPad with calm interest.
A sword appeared at Mobius's neck from nowhere in particular.
"Hello Mobius," Luke said, looking at the TemPad in his hand.
Mobius kept very still.
"How do you know my name?" he asked carefully, the particular tone of someone who was doing the math on their current situation and finding the numbers unfavorable.
"Well, I know many things," Luke said. "Your name isn't a particular mystery. But I need your help, and if you cooperate I'll let your head stay intact. Otherwise I'll split it open like a piñata."
"How about we just talk?" Mobius said. He really didn't want to be a piñata.
"Good," Luke said.
They ended up sitting beside a fountain somewhere in the branching timeline, two people who looked like they were simply taking a break except Mobius was hyperaware of exactly who was sitting next to him and what the TVA files said about him.
He had read those files.
Several times actually, because the readings never made sense no matter how many times he went through them.
"I need your TemPad," Luke said. "I need to go back and retrieve something from a specific point in time."
"I can't do that," Mobius said. "My job exists specifically to stop people from doing exactly that. You understand that right?"
Luke looked at him with the flat patience of someone who had recently watched everyone they loved turn to dust and had stopped finding bureaucratic objections interesting sometime around then.
"I'm not asking," Luke said simply. "I'm telling you what's going to happen. You help me willingly or I reach into your head and help myself. Honestly either works for me right now."
Mobius looked at him.
A month ago Luke probably wouldn't have said that. Mobius could tell the difference between a threat and a fact, and that was a fact delivered by someone who had stopped weighing the ethical cost of things somewhere along the way and hadn't picked that weight back up yet.
"Okay," Mobius said quietly. "Where are we going?"
"First we go to the TVA," Luke said. "Open the door."
Mobius tapped the TemPad and the time door appeared. He stepped through and Luke followed.
They arrived in the TVA corridors, the massive Sacred Timeline visible through the glass, branches spreading across it in every direction, the scale of it something that never got less impressive no matter how many times Mobius walked past it.
"I need access to everything recorded about my universe," Luke said, looking around.
Mobius's finger drifted toward an alarm panel out of habit.
Luke glanced at it.
"If you value your office," Luke said quietly, "don't. Because I will absolutely kill everyone here if they get in my way. That's your choice."
Mobius looked at the alarm.
Then at Luke.
Then slowly moved his hand away.
They walked through the TVA corridors, Mobius moving at his usual pace, nodding at colleagues passing by.
"Mobius," one analyst called out, falling into step briefly.
"You hear about Universe X? Earth is completely destroyed. Wiped clean. Nobody here can figure out how it happened, the readings don't make sense."
"Yeah," Mobius said carefully, not looking at Luke beside him. "Heard about that."
"Strangest thing we've seen in decades," the analyst continued. "Whole planet just gone. If you ask me something seriously powerful is moving around in that timeline and we should be—"
"Thanks," Mobius said, cutting him off and steering Luke around the corner before the conversation could develop further.
Luke said nothing. Just walked.
Mobius glanced at him sideways.
Universe X was what they called it internally. Luke's universe. And listening to his colleague casually discuss the destruction of everything in it while the person who had lived there walked two feet away was not a comfortable experience.
Mobius stopped outside a room and looked at Luke.
"Don't do anything in there," he said quietly. "I mean it. These people are just doing their jobs."
Luke looked at him with an expression that didn't promise anything.
Mobius opened the door anyway.
Inside was a single terminal connected directly to the TVA's complete database, every recorded event across every timeline the TVA had ever monitored accessible from one chair.
"Everything you want to know about your universe," Mobius said. "It's in there."
*****
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