In the laboratory, alarms were beginning to sound as the magnetic stimulation equipment surged beyond normal parameters. Through the temporal storm, Finn could hear River's voice demanding that Dr. Voss reduce the intensity, his terror cutting through all the noise and chaos to reach Finn's scattered consciousness.
“I'm here,” Finn called back, using River's voice as a guide through the temporal chaos. “I'm coming back.”
The magnetic fields reached peak intensity, and Finn felt his body convulsing in the laboratory chair while his consciousness fought to reassemble itself around the anchor of River's voice. Equipment alarms began screaming warnings about dangerous exposure levels, but Dr. Voss ignored them, her attention focused entirely on the unprecedented brain activity patterns showing on her monitors.
“Shut it down!” River was shouting, his voice raw with desperation. “You're hurting him!”
“The data collection is at a critical stage,” Dr. Voss replied, her excitement overriding concern for Finn's physical state. “His neurological responses are showing complete temporal displacement integration. This is exactly what we hoped to document.”
But Finn wasn't achieving integration. He was experiencing complete fracture, his consciousness scattered across multiple possibilities while his body went into distress from magnetic exposure beyond therapeutic levels. Only River's voice kept him tethered to any version of reality, calling him back from the temporal storm with love and terror and absolute refusal to let him disappear.
Through the chaos, Finn suddenly saw him clearly—the older River, seventeen years damaged by grief, standing in the corner of the laboratory watching the scene unfold with heartbreak and bitter satisfaction. This was the moment he'd been trying to prevent, the treatment that would destroy everything they'd built together.
“I can see you,” Finn managed to say, his voice barely audible over the alarms and equipment noise. “I can see what you've been doing, trying to save us from ourselves.”
The older River's expression shifted from manipulation to desperate pleading. “It's not too late. You can still choose to walk away, choose to let him go before this destroys you both.”
“No,” Finn said, his decision final despite the chaos. “I choose love. I choose the risk. I choose him.”
The older River's face crumpled with defeat and understanding. “Then you choose to create me—seventeen years older and broken by loss that could have been prevented.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I choose to prove that love is stronger than your fear.” Finn forced his consciousness to focus, to gather itself around the anchor of River's voice calling him home. “Either way, it's my choice to make.”
The magnetic stimulation equipment began malfunctioning at exactly that moment, systems failing in ways that had nothing to do with Dr. Voss's settings or the apparatus reaching its limits. Warning lights flashed in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, alarms screamed about impossible system errors, and the basement laboratory filled with electrical disturbances that defied explanation. Something was interfering with the equipment from outside normal causation—the same force that had been manipulating Finn's episodes, creating temporal disturbances, trying to prevent this exact moment from occurring.
“Finn!” River's voice cut through everything, terror and love and absolute determination to reach him regardless of the chaos.
Finn felt himself falling back into his own body as the equipment shut down in emergency protocol, his consciousness finally anchoring to the present moment through sheer force of will and the gravitational pull of River's love. The last thing he saw before exhaustion claimed him was River diving toward him through flashing warning lights, risking everything to reach him as the laboratory descended into emergency shutdown.
And in that moment, as consciousness fled and everything went quiet, Finn felt peace for the first time in months. He'd seen the truth about their manipulation, understood the forces working against their love, and chosen to fight for what they haddespite all the risks and fears and warnings from futures that might never come to pass.
Whatever happened next, they would face it together, without manipulation from broken versions of themselves or experimental treatments designed more for research than healing. They would find their own way through love and patience and the simple faith that some things were worth risking everything to protect.
Even if that faith led them into the same darkness that had claimed the older River's hope seventeen years too late to change anything.
Even if choosing love meant choosing to become broken by it.
Even then.
Chapter 17
Emergency
River
The world exploded in sparks and smoke and the screaming of machines failing in ways that defied explanation. River dove through the chaos without thinking, his body moving on pure instinct toward Finn's convulsing form in the laboratory chair. Heat from shorting circuits scorched the air, but all River could see was Finn's face, pale and twisted with pain as the magnetic equipment discharged in patterns that seemed almost deliberate.
“Finn!” River's voice tore from his throat as he reached for the emergency shutdown, his hands shaking as he tried to stop the nightmare Dr. Voss had created. Sparks flew from the magnetic coils, and the smell of burning electronics filled his lungs with acrid smoke.
Dr. Voss was shouting something about data collection, about breakthrough readings, but River couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own heartbeat hammering against his ribs. Finn's body went limp as the machines finally died, leaving themin sudden, terrible silence broken only by the hiss of cooling metal and River's ragged breathing.
“Jesus Christ, Finn, wake up.” River's hands found Finn's face, his skin cold and clammy, no response when River touched his cheek. “Please wake up, please be okay.”
But Finn wasn't okay. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, and when River checked his pulse it was too fast and too weak. Whatever Dr. Voss had done to him with her experimental equipment, it had pushed his brain past the breaking point.
“Call an ambulance,” River yelled at Dr. Voss, who was crouched beside her destroyed equipment, looking more devastated about her ruined research than concerned about her patient who might be dying.
“The data,” Dr. Voss mumbled, picking through smoking circuit boards like she was searching for buried treasure. “Years of research, all the breakthrough readings...”
