Luke sat down at the terminal and looked at the keyboard, the blocky monitor, the entirely analog setup of what was supposedly the most powerful time monitoring organization in existence.
"You claim to be the advanced department that monitors all of time," Luke said, "and you use a keyboard. A keyboard. You couldn't think to make it at least touch screen?"
Mobius opened his mouth.
"We have Miss Minutes," he offered. "She knows all the data if you'd prefer."
"No thanks," Luke said immediately.
He would rather type on a keyboard from 1987 than involve that artificial intelligence. Miss Minutes was a master manipulator, built specifically to keep TVA employees comfortable and compliant and completely unaware of anything they weren't supposed to know.
He wasn't interested in anything that excelled at brainwashing people as a primary function.
"Enter my universe coordinates and pull every past and future file you have on it," Luke said, looking at Mobius.
Mobius sat down at the secondary terminal beside him.
"Your universe is tricky," he said carefully, fingers moving across the keyboard. "Because of you being in it. You caused so many branches that our future records for that timeline may not be accurate. The database can't predict a timeline that keeps rewriting itself."
Luke tapped the table slowly.
That complicated things.
Then he thought of something.
"Send a message," Luke said. "To a specific person. At a specific point in time."
Mobius looked up but did as Luke asked.
Then Luke searched for a suitable timeline—one set before his arrival in Marvel—so he could go there and ask the Ancient One for the Time Stone directly.
Luke found the branch he needed. 2007. Clean timeline, Ancient One in full operation, Time Stone secured in Kamar-Taj, no sign of his own arrival anywhere in the surrounding branches.
Mobius finished the job and came
"Okay done," he said. Then after a moment, "Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"How do you know this much about us?" Mobius asked. "The TVA's existence is supposed to be completely secret. Most variants we encounter have never heard of us. You walked in here like you've known about this place for years."
"Do you really want to know?" Luke asked.
Mobius thought about it for exactly one second. "Yeah. I do."
Luke looked at him.
"In simple terms," he said, "your life is a script you're being forced to live. The TVA is a hoax. And you and every person working in these corridors are no different from the variants you hunt and prune every day. You were all once variants yourselves."
"No," Mobius said, pushing back from the terminal slightly. "That's wrong. I work for the TVA. I prune variants who damage the Sacred Timeline. I'm not a variant myself, that doesn't even make sense."
"Yeah you are," Luke said simply.
"One of the sorry cases who altered the Sacred Timeline in your own universe. Instead of getting pruned like every other variant you were brainwashed, had your memories wiped clean, and became a loyal TVA employee. Happens to everyone here."
"That's not—" Mobius stopped. "Who told you that?"
"Nobody told me," Luke said. "I know."
"You can't just walk in here and say something like that," Mobius said, and Luke could hear it in his voice, the thing underneath the pushback, the part that wasn't quite as confident in the denial as the words suggested.
"The TVA was created by the Time Keepers to protect the Sacred Timeline. We exist to maintain order across all of time. That's not brainwashing that's a purpose."
"The Time Keepers," Luke said, looking directly at Mobius. "When was the last time you actually saw them? Not a recording. Not one of those giant statues. I mean really saw them in person."
Mobius opened his mouth slightly, ready to answer out of habit.
Then stopped.
Because he couldn't remember.
That hesitation alone was enough to change the expression on his face.
Luke noticed it immediately.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "That's what I thought."
Mobius looked unsettled now, his thoughts visibly turning over themselves as pieces stopped fitting together the way they were supposed to. The TVA had always operated on certainty. Questions like this weren't supposed to exist.
"Here," Luke said. "Let me give your memories back. The real ones."
Before Mobius could react, Luke snapped his fingers.
The effect was instant.
Mobius staggered, grabbing his head as memories crashed back into him all at once. Not fragments. Entire pieces of a life forced back into place—voices, faces, sunlight, a home, laughter, years that should not have existed according to everything the TVA taught him.
His breathing became uneven.
"I…" Mobius looked down at his own hands like they belonged to someone else. "I used to have a family?"
The question sounded smaller than he intended, buried under disbelief.
For the first time in a very long time, he looked genuinely lost.
Luke watched him for a moment.
"Yep," he said. "So yeah, my job's done."
Then his eyes shifted toward the TemPad clipped at Mobius' side.
"And this is for payment."
Before Mobius fully processed what he meant, Luke took the TemPad from him, activated it with practiced ease, and opened a portal.
Mobius looked up sharply.
"Wait—"
Luke stepped backward into the glowing doorway.
"Oh, and one more thing," he said casually. "You might want to ask who really built the TVA."
Then he disappeared.
The portal closed.
Mobius remained standing alone in the corridor, breathing harder than before, his restored memories still colliding with everything the TVA had taught him to believe.
*****
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