PAST_

Adopted by a wealthy Boston couple in 2004, Bev—known then as Alex Nguyen—grew up lavishly and smothered in love and support. Though always somewhat detached from reality in an unobtrusive way labeled "dreamy" by his friends and family, Alex was in all a happy child who wanted for nothing. In a dimension that claimed supernatural abilities as the everyday mundane, Alex was content with his own supernatural strength and paid it little mind, as it had never been an obstacle in his life. Unfortunately, the walls of home and the protective arms of his parents couldn't shield him from the rest of the world, and as Alex reached adulthood, he encountered captivating influences that changed the course of his life. 

One influence was the Bureau of Interdimensional Affairs, an agency at the heart of time travel: one that prioritizes above all else keeping dimensions and timelines separate and enforces dire consequences on those who dream of escaping the restrictions in search of a timeline that offered a better life. The Bureau sought candidates to aid in that enforcement, ones with subtle supernatural abilities that could both be used for benefit and easily controlled. 

At this time, Alex was already neck-deep in historical studies after a successful campaign for standardized method acting training for time travelers. This training would give them ample means of blending into their target era, and thus much greater clearance for safe activity in these eras. Though he had full intent of becoming a history teacher at the Academy to load up the time travelers with knowledge about their target times, he was approached with a monumental offer. Instead of being a mere teacher of the new program, Alex had the opportunity to prove its merit himself by entering the field on the agency's most classified assignment.

Kept an internal secret to preserve confidence in the agency's reach and power, the reality was that there had been escapes before. Successful ones that were never resolved. Natural and supernatural timelines had already crossed, altering both history and future in ways uncertain in all ways but one: that it could never be undone. The most brutal aspect of the revelation was that the initial crossover had occurred not from some terrorist or rogue, but from the IBIA's own staff. A special agent, well-liked and deeply trusted, had drawn suspicion when a simple assignment kept stretching on for far too long. It was discovered that he had stomped protocol into the dirt and become involved with a woman in an alternate timeline. Of course, he was apprehended and faced the harshest punishment of all for the unfathomable breach of confidence, and the agency believed it had both quenched the nightmare and set a grim precedent for the rest of the staff. But, as Alex learned, a few years afterwards proved otherwise.

Somewhere in that vast alternate timeline was a woman who had lost a lover with no explanation; a woman with a young fatherless child. A child that, though born and raised there, did not belong. One that somehow, beyond all reason, was a supernatural being in an entirely natural world, with power substantial enough to blow out their radar in a way that had before been assumed impossible for one individual. Beyond the endangered wellbeing of a child with inexplicable abilities were the implications of what could follow their discovery by an unprepared world. 

Alex had the uncommon knowledge and dedication they were looking for. No past trauma. No large family. Few social ties. No debt. Studious, stunningly brilliant, disarmingly charming and intense in a manner suggestive of rock-solid determination. He was exactly the body they needed to serve Project PXMIZAR. 

With a sense of purpose overwhelming everything else in his life, Alex devoted himself to the assignment. He began traveling in spurts under rigid guidance, honing his book knowledge with lived experience in different worlds and times. Given the advantage of no biological aging when outside of one's own timeline—the same advantage that made escape through time travel such an enticing dream for so many—Alex crammed a plethora of lifetimes into just a handful of years. Each time he returned home, appearing exactly the same as he had before, he had gained new eons of experience, knowledge and self-control.

In the midst of his rigorous preparation for PXMIZAR, Alex encountered what he'd never specifically intended to find. The beautiful, powerful assistant director, Theodosia Michaels, displayed an unusual interest in him. At first it was brisk; professional. A quirked-eyebrows-and-velvet-pursed-lips sort of interest in his progress. Then it was discussions in her office over espressos. Then Michelin-starred dinners under chandeliers before floor-to-ceiling windows that displayed the whole city like a Monet painting but was somehow distant as a star to the little world that housed only Alex, Teddy, and the table between them. 

Teddy spoke to him as though he were the only one in the room that mattered. The second influence entered his life. Alex was utterly in love.

But things changed. Unknown to Alex, Teddy had no interest in a genuine relationship. Authority was far too important to her, and she would go to any length to retain and exert power. Alex was up-and-coming. He'd dazzled her peers. He'd been given the files on PXMIZAR that no one outside of the executive offices had ever touched. Teddy intended to keep Alex in his place.

At first it was only little biting remarks. Amplifying any blunder Alex made. She always made up for it later with adoration, scrubbing away the sourness. All calculated in the most perfectly unassuming way, as if she picked apart every cell in his brain under a psychological lens to pinpoint exactly how much, exactly how often; when to chip away, when to rebuild. She had his trust. He was like a puppy at her heels. It almost made her sick how much he loved her. How willing he was to own any mistake she pinned on him, how easily he'd grown to put himself down without Teddy's help at all. She targeted his studies, reminded him with a gleaming million-dollar smile that he should take it easy since any other agent could take his place. But, of course, they could never take his place to her—she'd then cling to his arm with half her strength, reminding him to be ever aware that she was too delicate to ever hurt him—because she loved him far too much.

Then she dug out insecurities. Alex was supernaturally strong, but certainly not the only one who was. Traits bled down through families. He had blood relations somewhere with that same strength, and distant offshoots of his genealogy boasted it as well. He wasn't special by those means. What was her specialty? Teddy would only laugh in her silvery windchime way and insist it was anticlimactically dull compared to what Alex had. But at any meager glimpse of his strength, she feigned thinly veiled concern. Pointedly watched how the rim of the foam coffee cup pinched into an almond shape in his hand and cracked down the sides when he lost focus while talking. Grimaced when he left fingerprint dents in the doorknob.

When she goaded him into an argument, she thought it might have been too much for him. She'd nonchalantly tried to sway his interests away from PXMIZAR, complaining in her demure pouty way that Alex spent far too much time on work for a man in a relationship. And she deserved attention at least sometimes, didn't she? Startled by her distress, Alex stood from his desk to approach her, but in the flood of emotion toppled the massive mahogany desk to the floor with a bang that echoed all the way down to the ground floor. It couldn't have worked out better. Teddy worked herself into a fit of sobbing and wailing, her frosty professional demeanor tucked away for the moment as she pleaded with Alex to not hurt her, and that he frightened her and how she just knew deep down that some day she would regret being with him but against all reason she simply cared too much to flee to the safety that logic told her she so desperately needed. 

In that moment, Teddy offered Alex the role of protector to avoid the role of provoker. She controlled the story. She controlled everything that could happen to him. By feigning that her life was in his hands, she held his own in hers. Alex accepted his new role swiftly, in a numb panic, with no time for thought nor reflection. And in that same moment, Alex as he'd always been was gone. There began a new story for a man whose reality had grimly shifted. Everything—his future, his goals, his plans, his perception of himself, the perception and opinions of all those around him—everything was now under the control of someone else. Teddy began calling him "Lexi," a tender nickname that signified her forgiveness; their newfound closeness and understanding. So he accepted it.

Lexi had never before been worried about his strength. He'd never hurt anyone, never caused an incident worse than a few shattered glasses and snapped pens. In terms of destructive capacity, his strength paled in comparison to those who could interact with antimatter or control the flow of water. But Teddy's reaction instilled in him a terror that perhaps she was right. What if he did hurt her? Or someone else? How could he function knowing that he didn't even have to hurt anyone to be feared and regarded with wary unease? He became hyperfocused on micromanaging every movement, every inflection of voice, folding himself into a paper-thin facsimile of Alex Nguyen whose goal was to be as nonthreatening as possible. To eliminate any suspicions or misgivings that could affect his career, his relationships, his life. 

He was a character with no will and not enough security to defend his reputation. He'd found himself stranded on the middle of a tightrope, but strangely, he didn't care. Whatever Teddy said, he'd do. That was his safety. His Gibraltar. As long as he stayed under Teddy's stiletto heels, she'd ensure he'd have a home, a social standing, and a life to come back home to. The transaction was so smooth Lexi wondered why it felt as though it happened to someone else. He was happy to follow Teddy's whims. Whatever she said. It didn't matter that he'd lose everything if he didn't. Nothing mattered, except Director Michael's—his little ninety-eight pound, crimped satin-haired, supermodel-lipsticked Teddy's—satisfaction. Anything for her. Whatever Teddy said. Lexi was just like that.

Pleased with the result, Teddy announced to the board that Lexi was ready for Pasadena, 1983, Project PXMIZAR.

PRESENT_

There's dozens of Pasadenas on the map. Pasadena . . . somewhere. Beverly Keo followed the cryptograph directions on his pager. This one is tiny. Something is off about it. Built like a city. New York skyscrapers sticking up like metallic skewers, but a city built on all the space of a dime. People and cars as scarce as those on a country backroad after dusk. Like the skyscrapers and towers are a facade, and behind the cardboard is just a cozy little southern town full of horse pastures and white picket fences and brick houses.

His target is in their mid-twenties by now. That's really all he knows. All anyone knows. He'd memorized the dossier. Most of it was pertaining to Jade Alcaraz, the rogue agent who'd found love outside his own timeline, and paid for the thrill of that spark with life. Could Alcaraz had ever fathomed that his unrestrained emotion, the passion that turns the space between two people into a world of its own, could have altered the future to such a degree? Bev wishes he could have met him. It's not his place to question if he deserved such a penalty for what he did, or if what he did was wrong in the first place.

Mizar's the name. Big capital typewriter letters. No surname. That's what the subject has been called the last twenty-odd years. Named for a star in Ursa Major. The nomenclature is funny, but Bev gets it. Ursa Major's a constellation with extremely deep history that spans the world, creating myths across cultures. PXMIZAR—Mizar—has influence like that too. One they're not even aware of. Imagine changing the world, past, present, and future, and not even knowing.

Bev stares at the rickety little billboard with the painting of a floating swallowtail that welcomes him to Pasadena in blaring yellow font. The slogan adds, "Where the small things matter." Homey. He hefts his briefcase and boards the bus, mulling over this story. He's Beverly Keo. CEO. Got tired of feeling so useless sitting in an office chair and wanted a change of pace to figure out his life. Twenty-three. Too young to settle for anything less than his dreams. What dream is that? He'll figure it out later. His own voice loops through his head, whittled into a Transatlantic drawl with the crisp, commanding punch of a radio announcer. Beverly Keo. Signing off.

Finding a target with no information to go on will be difficult. That's why he got this project, after all. He's the intellectual. He picks up on the details. Mizar's his needle, Pasadena is his haystack. To find them means scouring the town top to bottom, meeting everyone and gaining enough confidence to be entrusted with that secret. He just needs to find a way to fit in.

That way, instead, finds him. Day One. A frazzled schoolteacher runs into him. Quite literally. On a skateboard. Bev doesn't react instantaneously. A bomb going off behind him wouldn't have enough force to knock him down. But Bev remembers this is Pasadena in 1983 and there's no ban on skateboards on the sidewalk and there's no such thing as magic, so when someone bumps into his back he hurls himself to the sidewalk, flinging his briefcase and skidding out the knees of his pants. The schoolteacher runs before Bev can even ask his name and the old paranoia itches again. He forces it down. There's no reason to worry. This is Pasadena. Nobody knows who he is or where he's from.

He passes the school. His bingo. There's plenty of people to ask for directions. The first he spots is a lady in a windbreaker and gym shorts and a curly ponytail stacked high on her head like a banner. Somehow she beats him to it without even knowing what "it" is: she greets him with all the warmth of an old friend, chattering in a sweet bubbly way that reminds him of strawberry cream soda, putting his guard down so fast he forgot he has one. She gives him directions to the gas station, the convenience store, and the sugar bowl. Bonnibelle Cardozo, she says. Like Southern belle, not B-E-L. She's got a smile like Christmas. She asks if he wants to meet her brother. Twin, she says, but tells him that he'd never be able to guess. A teacher. Bev forgot twins could grow up and weren't always identical grade schoolers in matching outfits.

Her brother is AWOL. All they find in the dark classroom is a stray cat that Bonnie scoops up and squeezes like she doesn't know it's alive. She promises they'll meet up later. She wants Bev to feel at home.

His meeting with Darby is another bang. This time it's Darby sprawling on the ground, clutching a grocery bag that Bev's elbow just impaled. Startled by Darby's horrified reaction at the sight of him, Bev is ready to take blame for the run-in, but Darby just begs that Bev forgive him for being such a klutz. He certainly does, amused by the hammy theatrics in spite of himself. They trade small talk, and Bev gets to recite his rehearsed history. Unpredictably, Darby zeroes in on the "CEO" part with interrogator steel, and Bev shuffles the topic aside with the offhanded remark that his company does patents and such. Patents. Nobody knows anything about how those work and nobody cares, right? 

Wrong. Darby pounces on him and delivers a whirlwind spiel about how he and his sister are inventors who need someone to believe in them and give them a chance. Bev's that chance. And Darby is Bev's chance. Bev offers an exchange: if Darby and Bonnibelle help show him around and introduce him to everyone they know, he'll give them the opportunity to present their research to his company. He's got money, he reminds Darby—enough money to make any dream he has happen. 

So begins Bev's assignment in Pasadena, 1983.

DARBY CARDOZO • ???

Bev met Darby with a bang. Then another bang. Not the suave first impression he hoped to make. But Bev isn't sure if charm and manners could have fazed Darby to begin with. Excitable, awkward and perpetually frazzled, Darby had already lived out an imaginary lifetime of lawsuits within the first five seconds of stumbling into Bev and knocking him to the curb. However, with Darby's emotional odometer whipping between zero and a hundred in a blink, his doom and anxiety gets replaced just as quickly with delight and good humor. 

Bev always found a strange comfort in the mundane and predictable, enjoying the sense of control in correctly foreseeing someone's response or reaction. Darby completely strips him of that skill, never saying or doing quite what Bev would guess. Though at first discomfited by situations that render his rehearsed scripts useless and put his acting skills to the test, Bev grows to enjoy Darby's Olympic jumps to conclusions and drastic oscillations between moods. 

Not quite the most astute in social settings, Darby is one of the few people that respects no barrier. Despite noticing that Bev is hiding something, Darby doesn't consider it a taboo topic. He digs into Bev the way Bev himself is used to digging into others, determined to become his friend and determined to find out more about him than a name and favorite restaurant. Unlike others, Darby doesn't know when to stop; when to drop a topic; when to leave "well enough" alone. 

For all his scatterbrained, nose-in-the-clouds cluelessness, Darby knows more than Bev thinks he does. The specific things he laughs off. The points in conversations at which he steers it into a different direction but with such casual precision it feels natural. The expert way he answers questions that offers nothing of substance, no real information, nothing more valuable than the sound of his voice.

For the first time in his life, Bev realizes his self-control is becoming precarious. Truths start blending into the persona he's striven so strenuously to craft. And for the first time, he wants to tell someone the truth. Somehow Darby is different. Somehow, it feels like Darby would understand.

BONNIBELLE CARDOZO • FRIEND

Bev was smitten by Bonnie from the moment he met her. Quick-witted and with a presence like autumn morning sunshine, Bonnie treats Bev as though she's always known him. From the start, she made it her personal mission to see that he settled in happily in his new home. Though she, like Darby, recognizes that Bev is struggling with heavy secrets, Bonnie has the philosophy that burdens are best shared and not uncovered. After all, she wouldn't want someone prying into her secrets. 

Instead, she strives to make Bev laugh away those hidden heartaches, determined to keep the atmosphere light and free and enjoyable, so that as long as he's around her he can forget whatever darkens his eyes and makes his smile seem tired and plastic. Bonnie never prods into Bev's personal life or asks how he feels, but the affection and concern she shows for him gradually melts him down. Her hugs and pet-names and playful teasing are lavished on him just like on each of her other friends, but they eat Bev like an acid—hot and painful. He's lying to her, to everyone, and she knows, and he knows she knows, but she loves him just the same. 

Maybe she's waiting for him to decide the right moment to tell the truth. Maybe she's afraid of what the truth could be, and prefers that it stay a faraway shadow that they can both ignore in the moment. Sometimes nothing more than a glance from her puts Bev on the brink of crumpling to his knees and crying until he pukes. He wants to tell her, no matter the risk, no matter the jeopardy, but something restrains him that he can't break from: the fear of losing her.

THEODOSIA MICHAELS • FIANCÉE

Teddy was at one time an idol to Bev. Influential, respected almost to the point of reverence, wealthy and with celebrity good looks, Teddy is the kind of woman that Bev heard other men admit they'd kill for. He was stunned when she approached him with an interest that was first professional, later personal. The romance went from smoldering kindling to a bonfire fast enough that some people considered it a soulmate destiny, while others feared it would burn out only when it was too late. 

Cleverly accepting engagement but always dodging discussions of marriage, Teddy aims to keep Bev right in her sight for the time necessary. She has no intentions of a genuine relationship; rather, Bev is her means to an end. Through her influence on Bev, she can directly affect the operations and outcome of his assignments, leaving his reputation, career, and life entirely at her mercy.