Graymere

I don’t think I will ever understand Sapphire Graymere, although I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime trying.

At one point, I kept a running tally of how many days we had been here, but I’ve long since lost count. Of course, the sun still marks the passage of a day, but the moon never changes, as if we are living the same day over and over again.

Sapphire has been working with Martin Fisher to create a masterful revenge plan, and they have all the time in the world to do it.

It’s not enough to simply blow up a train, or even the entire corporation. Those things can be easily rebuilt, especially with access to time periods where structures are intact.

No, instead the corporation, its records and data, and any employees with knowledge of how the bracelets or time travel works must be destroyed. In every time period.

It seems as though Martin Fisher is set on destroying Mortimer not only because he despises the corporation and government as a whole, but also because he fears that one day they may be able to develop technology similar to his that would allow them to find him here. Genius and paranoia seem to run hand in hand in his case.

In addition to genocide, there’s been talk of modifying human brains so that no one can remember Mortimer or conceptualize time travel, and human extinction has even been proposed.

Although Professor Warrens believes Martin Fisher’s plans to be horrible, he is much too timid to tell him off for it. He prefers to keep to himself and stay out of the affairs of others.

Somehow, Sapphire convinced Professor Warrens to take me on a brief trip to see the life my younger self led, the life I can’t remember. Of course, we couldn’t interact with anyone, especially not my past self, but I got to see father letting me ride on his shoulders, his hands gripping my legs tightly against him so I wouldn’t fall. I watched him smile as I messed up his hair. I had seen that smile before in my dreams

Seven years later, that little girl would see her father cry for the first time. He would be taken away from her, locked up in an asylum. She would be taken to Mortimer and trained to be an agent. She would forget ever having a father.

She would grow up. She would train. She would go on her first mission and fail miserably. She would make new friends, fall in love, nearly escape death countless times. She would survive.

The girl she fell in love with would work with an evil man to create a poison to kill everyone.

But this girl was clever, and she had a secret. The poison they created did not kill. Instead, it worked similarly to the serums used to erase the minds of young agents. It would make them forget. The girl with Sapphire eyes had finally learned to be compassionate and forgiving. She didn’t want anyone else to die, but she also had to protect her brother and those remaining at Graymere Manor.

The kindly nurse sacrificed his memory of the girls to save them. He took the poison back to Mortimer, but in the process of spreading it, he was affected by it. He knew this would happen and he made that sacrifice willingly, but the girl who loved him like a father still cried when he did not recognize her.

The professor took the girls and the tailor back to 1864.

The tailor went back to his shop and the girls went back to Graymere Manor.

Years later the girls—who, although women, preferred to think of themselves as girls—found an orphaned baby boy and took him in. They raised him as their own child. His mothers even made him a toy train in honor of their experiences with Mortimer. Although mostly wooden, as toy trains are, some of the wheels were replaced by buttons when they broke.