#timekeepers

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The first few weeks felt like drowning in slow motion. Slowly sinking under the weight of everything you didn't understand or couldn't say. 

Commander Voss didn't shout, and she never belittled you outright. She just looked right through you. It could be a cold glance, or a rude note in your file. Most of your assignments were handed off without explanation. You were given double shifts, night rotations, and clean-up details in half-collapsed buildings at the far ends of the district.

You didn't complain. Ever. No matter how hard or long your days were, nor how many bruises bloomed on your body, you were grateful. You had housing, uniforms, and you were fed. Those were luxuries for most people in Zone Twelve. Since you never had time to do anything besides work, you were able to bank your per diem.

The medic corps in Zone Twelve wasn't exactly what you expected. The female medics kept their distance. They were polite, sure, but always watching you out of the corners of their eyes. As if you didn't already feel like you were on the outside looking in. Were some jealous of the training your father had given you? Maybe. Maybe they were just wary. Some didn't seem to trust anyone Voss didn't personally favor.

The men in the medic corps were overly friendly at first. Until they realized you weren't another warm body or a bubble-head with less on the ball than they had. Once they saw your triage work, your stitching technique, and your field instincts, their smiles faded.

“Oh, you think you know better?”

“Try not to overstep.”

“You’re fresh off the transfer list, stay in your lane, new girl.”

To hear them tell it, skill was an insult, and competence made you threatening.

So you tried harder, pushing yourself each and every shift. You organized supplies, shadowed senior medics, kept charts accurate, and even volunteered for the worst field calls. And somehow, the harder you worked, the worse Voss treated you. No reason given to you. She just seemed to despise you for existing. She'd just hand you another overnight patrol, or have you scrub the equipment. She'd give you double shifts and then hand you something tedious to prevent you from sleeping. 

By the third week, you realized Voss didn't want you here. So, you just kept your head down and kept learning. You learned that the building's stairwell was a lot safer than the elevators once the sun went down. You knew around what time the drunk, off-duty Timekeepers stumbled home from wherever they went at night, so you could avoid the lobby too, no matter how tired you were.

You knew the sound of Voss's footsteps when you heard them, and you knew to look busy when she passed. You learned to sleep lightly because sometimes you only got an hour in between shifts. You were issued a cot in a communal room with five other female medics. Some nights when you had the luxury of a few hours of sleep, you'd lie awake and wonder what you were doing wrong. What could you be doing better?

Everything you thought you did well was criticized. And your work was never acknowledged. Every skill your father passed on to you, every long night in his clinic, every emergency you helped him with, all of it felt like a liability instead of an asset.

Today, before your shift, you were assigned to inventory the new supplies, audit the orders, and get everything sorted into their proper places. It was just you, and it would take forever. 

The blare of the alarms startled you, but didn’t sound the way you expected in that moment. You’d heard them before, but this time there was something different under the siren, like the system itself had flinched. Someone near you swore softly.

You were already moving. Now that you had a month in, you were expected to help with whatever emergency this signaled. And you'd been waiting for this opportunity. You always did your best work under pressure. Your father made sure of it.

Your father's training during countless trauma rotations kicked in, muscle memory overriding fatigue. Grabbing your bag, you cinched the strap tighter across your chest, and followed the other medics toward the transports. Voss’s voice cut through the noise, barking assignments like someone trying hard to sound calm while the zone was on fire.

All hands. That alone told you how bad it was.

By the time the transport doors slammed shut, smoke was already staining the skyline. The district ahead looked like it was tearing itself apart. Flames were licking up the sides of old buildings, and frightened people ran in every direction. Some were bleeding, some screaming, while others were frozen in place like they couldn’t decide which direction offered them a fighting chance.

Your pulse steadied. To you, it was familiar chaos. The moment your boots hit pavement, everything blurred into motion. You dropped beside a man with a crushed forearm, slapped pressure on a spurting artery, and shouted for a stretcher that might never come. Someone grabbed your shoulder, a fellow medic who usually didn't give you the time of day. She asked what to do, and you told her, without hesitation or fear, because there was no room for either.

Voss hovered near the perimeter, issuing commands but never crossing into it. You realized your medic commander didn’t understand the riot within the first three minutes. She was issuing orders from outside the crisis, her voice sharp and constant over comms. But none of her directives lined up with what you were seeing on the ground.

She kept redirecting medics away from the worst injuries.

“Pull back from the east corridor,” Voss snapped. “It's too volatile. Triage at the secondary line.”

You stared at the man bleeding out in front of you, the arterial spray already soaking the ground beneath him. “He’ll be dead in thirty seconds,” you said into your comm. “We need to treat here.”

“Negative,” Voss replied immediately. “Move him.”

You didn’t. You dropped by his side, and sealed the vessel, feeling the lurch of your heart when the man gasped. But he would live.

That was the moment you understood. Voss wasn’t prioritizing lives. She was prioritizing containment optics. She kept ordering medics to regroup, to “maintain cohesion,” to “avoid unnecessary exposure,” even as people screamed from collapsed buildings. She sent two junior medics to stabilize a walking, wounded Timekeeper while three civilians lay crushed just a few feet away.

You watched another transfer medic hesitate, looking between you and her comm unit, terrified of making the wrong call. She was newer than you.

“Stay with me,” you told Anne. “Ignore the channel. Do what needs to be done."

When she did, more people lived.

Voss ordered you twice to stand down from active triage and report to a staging point “for safety.” You knew what that meant. She didn’t want you visible or looking like you knew what you were doing. She sure as hell didn't want you proving that she was way out of her depth. At one point, she rerouted transport resources to clear a street before extracting the injured still inside a half-collapsed structure. You watched dust rain down from the ceiling and felt your pulse spike.

“That building won’t hold,” you said. “We need to extract now.”

“Stand by,” Voss replied. “We’re not risking medics.”

You swallowed something hot and angry. If she’d been there kneeling in the ash with blood on her hands like the rest of you, she would have known that doing nothing was the risk.

You stopped asking permission after that. You started relying on your own instincts, just as you'd been taught. You were calling out instructions, assigning tasks, and moving bodies. The medics followed you because someone had to know what they were doing, and Voss clearly didn’t. It wasn't that you were trying to undermine her. You had one objective: keep people alive.

A shout went up from the east side of the block, something about a partial collapse. You turned just as a sickening groan rolled through the air, concrete screaming as it shifted. Just below it, you saw motion, heard a strangled cry.

Your stomach dropped. “No, no, no...”

You were already running in that direction when you saw him. A Timekeeper, pinned beneath a slanted slab of wall that hadn’t fallen yet, but it was going to. He was younger than most, his uniform was torn and he had blood in his sandy hair. His hands clawed uselessly at his throat. His eyes were wide and his body was jerking as he tried, and failed, to breathe. He was choking, an obstructed airway, not to mention the fact that he was about to be crushed.

You skidded to a stop a few feet away as debris rained down. The structure shuddered again. But you knew you could do this, you could save him. 

Smoke hung low and acrid all around them, sirens blaring in uneven waves as barriers were shoved back into place and then immediately overwhelmed. Timekeepers moved in tight formations, shields up, batons out, pushing civilians back from the worst of it. The ground shook underfoot, shattering storefront glass. Debris fell from the collapsed signage where they worked, the sharp crack of something structural giving way somewhere too close for comfort.

It was standard chaos. Ray had seen worse, and he’d managed worse. What stood out today wasn’t the violence, it was the medical response.

The medic line was holding, and that alone was unusual. Instead of panicked clustering or rigid adherence to bad calls, the medics were flowing in an organized way, splitting, regrouping, and prioritizing. The wounded were triaged fast and moved out even faster. Bleeders were stabilized before Ray had to bark for it. Airway kits appeared where they were needed without anyone shouting for them.

And then he noticed who they were listening to. It wasn't Voss. The medic commander was present, yes. Standing back as she always did, issuing clipped, overly cautious commands that came a beat too late and a meter too far from any actual problem. She was focused on safety in the abstract, on not losing control of her people, the medics, rather than actually saving the civilians bleeding out in front of them.

Ray took it all in, mentally cataloguing it. Then his gaze landed on her, the medic he’d brought in a few weeks ago.

She was everywhere without being in the way. Moving between teams, redirecting resources, dropping to her knees beside the worst injuries and then popping back up to point someone else in the right direction. She wasn’t loud or dramatic. But she sure as hell knew what she was doing. The day he found her and watched her work through an almost endless line of injured people, he knew she was a valuable asset. But being able to function on this level was another thing entirely. Her file said she'd been on trauma rotations since she was sixteen. It showed. Her father had trained her very well. 

Ray watched one of his Timekeepers hesitate beside a pinned civilian, unsure whether to pull or stabilize.

She didn’t ask for permission at all. “Hold pressure there,” she said to him, already moving. “You. Yes, you, get me the cutter. Now.”

The Timekeeper moved. He didn't argue or look to Voss or Ray. He just did what she said. 

That was when it hit him, the uncomfortable truth settling into place.

Voss wasn’t ineffective because the riot was bad. The medic commander was ineffective because she didn’t see people the way this medic did. Even worse, she didn’t inspire confidence. Not the kind that made others follow without question when seconds mattered. Not when she was off to the side watching while her medics were up to their elbows in blood, trying to actually save people.

Ray scanned the scene again, sharper now. The medics nearest to her were working harder, faster. They trusted her. His Timekeepers trusted her. Hell, some of them were taking direction from her without even realizing they were doing it. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

But it was working.

Then movement broke the pattern. Ray saw her break from the medic line before he registered why. His attention snapped to the movement instantly. The newest medic was sprinting toward the unstable section like she hadn’t heard the warnings, like the cracking concrete didn’t mean anything at all to her.

“What the hell is she doing?” Jaeger muttered.

Voss’s voice cut in sharp. “Medic, stand down! That area is compromised!”

She stopped, her chest heaving and her hands on her thighs as she fought to catch her breath. She was still thinking about it. Just long enough to make Ray’s heart lurch. 

Ray stepped forward then. “Medic, stand down. Now.”

She looked at him then. There was absolutely no defiance in her expression, nor panic. Just a certainty and purpose that Ray recognized all too well.

And then she ran like hell anyway.

“Goddamn it,” Ray snarled, already moving, but he was too far back to catch her. There were too many bodies and too much chaos between them.

Samuel, who was closer to her, swore loudly and bolted after her.

“No!” Ray shouted. “Samuel Kors, get back here!”

Samuel didn’t even look back.

Ray’s heart slammed in his chest. Two of his people were charging straight into a death trap, and he couldn’t see who the medic was even trying to reach. The structure groaned overhead again. He was already calculating casualties, bracing for impact as he watched.

She dropped to her knees in the compromised area beside someone pinned down, he assumed it was a civilian. She shouted instructions over the noise. Samuel grabbed the slab the victim was trapped under, straining to lift it just enough. Together, they dragged the man free as the wall behind them collapsed, concrete slamming down where they’d been seconds before.

Ray sucked in a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when he saw the victim's black uniform, a Timekeeper. One of his.

But the emergency wasn’t over. The Timekeeper, a kid named Cyrus, was choking. His fingers clawed at his neck, though Ray couldn't tell from where he stood why he couldn't breathe, his face going purple. Samuel stood over them, watching fearfully.

The medic didn’t hesitate. She was already cutting. Ray watched, frozen, as she performed a field tracheotomy with hands so steady it was almost unreal. Another medic slid in beside her without being told, assisting like they’d done this together a hundred times. 

Air rushed in. Cyrus convulsed on the ground, and then breathed. The sound punched the breath out of Ray’s own lungs. They stabilized him quickly. The kid was alive.

Ray's heart felt like it was beating its way out of his chest, and it wasn't from adrenaline. It was the realization that for a few seconds, he'd been completely powerless. He’d watched her disappear into danger he couldn’t reach, and watched Samuel follow her without hesitation. For the first time in a long time, command hadn’t meant control. It had meant waiting to see if he would lose them both.

Finally, the dust settled and the screaming dulled to noise again. The wounded and the dead were moved, and the structure was deemed stable enough not to kill anyone else. The danger passed, but the consequences remained.

Voss marched up to her in front of everyone.

Ray stayed where he was. He watched and listened as Voss laid into her, her voice sharp and public, and every word designed to reassert authority. Voss accused her of insubordination, reckless behavior, and a complete disregard for protocol. She would be reprimanded at the very least. Voss made sure every medic within earshot understood who was still in charge. She obviously wanted Ray to hear it too. 

The medic didn’t argue. She didn't offer explanations or defend herself. She didn't look away from Voss the entire time. She just stood there and took it.

But Ray saw what Voss didn’t. The other medics were watching her now, but not with resentment or distance. Some of them watched with respect and awareness. She’d stepped in where they’d faltered, and made them faster and better. His medic corps saved countless lives today. They knew it, and they weren’t going to forget it. 

Neither was he.

You were alone by one of the transports when Commander Leon found you, packing up supplies.

You kept moving, your hands automatically restocking, wiping down, and checking seals. You were doing anything to keep from thinking about what had just happened. About Voss and the way everyone had been watching while she took you down for doing what you were taught to do, for saving lives. About the moment you’d seen Commander Leon’s face across the chaos, and you chose to go against his orders to save the Timekeeper.

You heard his boots before you saw him.

“Medic.”

Your spine went rigid at that calm voice. You turned slowly, your heart already racing, and met his gaze.

He was angry. Not loud angry. No, it was worse. A cold, controlled fury solely focused on you.

“Sir,” you said quickly, straightening.

Ray didn’t respond, he just stepped closer instead, stopping just inside your personal space. Close enough that you had to tilt your head back to look at him.

“You disobeyed a direct order,” he said quietly.

The softness of his voice made it hit harder than Voss’s shouting ever could. “Yes, sir.”

“In front of my entire unit.”

You swallowed, tears stinging the backs of your eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“And you put Samuel at risk,” he went on. "One of my lieutenants."

“I didn’t call for him. I didn’t ask him to follow me. I—” You stopped yourself, forcing your voice steady. “I couldn’t account for his choice.”

A muscle at his jaw twitched.

Stupid. Don't talk back to him.

“That’s not how command works,” Ray said. “You don’t get to decide whose life is acceptable collateral.”

You nodded, even though your hands were shaking now. “I understand.”

He moved closer. Too close.

“You don’t,” Ray said. “What went wrong wasn’t your assessment. It was your timing and lack of communication. You acted alone. You forced everyone else to react to you instead of with you.”

His presence was overwhelming. You felt lost in the shadow of his authority, the weight of his attention. You felt like you couldn't breathe. You fought not to flinch when he lifted a hand, forcing yourself to remain still as he used his thumb to brush something off your cheek. He had to see how badly you were shaking.

“If you ever disobey me like that again,” Ray continued, voice low and deliberate, “you’ll be back on the streets. Is that in any way unclear?”

Your heart lurched in your chest, deep fear flashing hot and immediate. Being thrown back into the streets was your worst fear. 

“No, sir,” you whispered, because it was all you could manage. Especially with the man's face mere inches from your own.

Ray just studied you then, watched you fold in on yourself and fight to appear calm. It was then you realized the difference between the two commanders. 

Voss you tolerated. You knew you had several advantages on her, and so did she. It was the reason she targeted you relentlessly.

Ray? You were afraid of him. He wasn't cruel like Voss, and some of your fellow medics. No, his opinion mattered to you. You respected him, and you needed to prove to him and everyone that he hadn't been wrong to save you.

He stepped back then, just enough to let you breathe again. “Finish up,” he said. “Report back to your unit.”

“Yes, sir.” 

You waited until you knew he was gone before you allowed the first tear to fall.

Ray walked away from her with his spine locked and his face set, the picture of a commander who had handled a problem and moved on.

Inside, however, it was anything but settled. He had meant to correct her and reassert the chain of command. He needed her to understand what she'd done, that command wasn’t bravery and instinct alone. It was also structure, timing, and control. All components necessary.

Somehow, that hadn't been all he'd been doing. Ray told himself it was practical to stand so close. There was noise, chaos, and the need to be heard over engines and shouting. Such proximity was normal. A commander correcting a subordinate in the field didn’t shout sensitive topics across a yard.

But that explanation fell apart the moment his hand came up to touch her face. His fingers had moved before his mind did, guided by something old and animal. That touch was an admission his body made before his mind was ready to admit it. 

Ray had wanted her complete attention. He needed her to understand the gravity of what she’d done, and the gravity of what she meant. Some part of him wanted her to feel his presence the way he felt hers. And for him, she was now impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t desire alone, though that was there, sharp and unwelcome. No, it was deeper and darker. 

If he’d stayed back and kept his hands to himself, he might have convinced himself he still had control. But Ray never truly had control in that quiet moment. In his mind's eye, he could still see the way she’d gone still when he mentioned her going back into the streets. There wasn't so much as a flash of indignation or anger in her expression. No, she'd looked terrified. 

That was the moment when Ray realized just how badly he’d misjudged the leverage he held over her. Voss shouting at her was noise. That was petty authority she’d learned to endure. But him? His words went straight to the one thing she couldn’t afford to lose. She had stability and safety here, and there was a very thin line between surviving and being swallowed whole again.

Ray hadn’t intended to weaponize that fear. But he had. And worse, it had worked. But the realization sat heavy in his chest as he crossed the transport yard. He didn’t like power used that way. He’d spent decades watching commanders confuse fear with loyalty, obedience with respect. He’d sworn he wouldn’t be that man.

And yet, she’d looked at him like he could end her with a sentence. His disappointment seemed to tear her apart far more than the public dressing-down she’d just endured from Voss. Why did he feel like her proving herself to him was suddenly the most important thing in her world? That concerned him. She'd keep pushing until she proved she was worth what he’d given her, even if it cost her everything else. She was the kind of person who ran toward collapsing structures, and didn’t ask permission to save someone when time ran out.

And, honestly, she didn’t belong anywhere near a commander who was starting to think in terms of mine.

Ray blew out an exhale, grounding himself. He did the right thing in drawing a line. Her fear of him might prevent something much worse later. Yes, he'd been very angry. Not just because she disobeyed him. He'd been angry because she scared him. For a few seconds out there, watching her disappear into danger, he understood what it would feel like to lose her.

And that was a weakness a man in his position couldn't afford.

Over the next few weeks, Ray noticed her. Not because he was trying, he convinced himself of that anyway. He just saw her in passing as he went about normal business.

A week after he'd told her not to disobey him again, she was standing at the edge of a triage circle with her hands folded behind her back and her gaze lowered. Another medic, older and louder, corrected her in front of two others. It had been something minor, a labeling issue. She nodded, murmured an apology, and fixed it immediately without protest.

Ray caught the chart later. Her original call had been right, and it was written on the chart. It had been signed off on by the senior medic as if it were her evaluation, her work.

He didn’t like that, nor did he like how easily she’d stepped back. He’d seen that behavior before in people who learned early that being right wasn’t always safe.

A couple of weeks after that, it was her hand. It had been wrapped in a quick, efficient bandage that wasn't medic-issued but self-done and functional. Ray made a mental note to go back and look for the injury report, to see what had caused that. But there was no report or injury logged. She’d just treated herself and kept moving.

Ray had stared at the screen longer than necessary. Injuries just didn’t disappear unless someone wanted them to. Had she not filed a report? Or had she filed one and it had been deleted?

Last week he saw her walking with another medic named Anne, a recent transfer from Zone Ten. He remembered signing off on Anne's transfer order and it had been processed within twelve hours, unlike hers. But Anne was a typical medic with decent training and average looks, so apparently she didn't make Voss feel threatened. 

The two of them were moving down the corridor at an unhurried pace, heads inclined toward one another. Whatever Anne said next made her laugh. Not her polite smile, or the careful curve of her mouth he was used to seeing. A real laugh.

It stopped Ray cold. He halted so abruptly that Jaeger walked straight into his back with a low curse.

Ray didn’t even acknowledge him, didn’t move. He just watched her, really watched her for the first time outside of a medical crisis. Her shoulders loosened when she laughed, and her face transformed. Warmth cut through the exhaustion like sunlight breaking through the clouds. If he’d thought she was beautiful before...

Exhaling sharply through his nose, he forced himself to look away, to keep walking.

This was a growing problem.

It wasn't that what he was doing was wrong. Her clock hadn't yet started, but she was a grown woman. But Ray Leon was seventy-six years old. He didn’t do relationships. He didn’t do this. Desire had always been simple for him. It was contained, transactional, handled, and put away. Needs met. Lines clear. 

But what he’d been thinking lately, late at night, and alone in his bed, had no place in his life or his command. What would her lips taste like? How would she feel spread open beneath him? It was all too easy for him to imagine how it would feel to have her nails scraping down his back. How would it feel to lose himself inside her? Wouldn't he like to pin her there and make her take everything he had to give?

Maybe that was all this was. A physical distraction. Maybe it was because she was bright and competent, brave enough to stand her ground in a riot and save one of his own. Or maybe it was because she was the most beautiful young woman he’d ever seen, and that was why he was noticing everything. 

Either way, it needed to stop. Ray needed to get her out of his head.

Easier said than done. 

But what he saw the next day stayed with him. Ray had been reviewing patrol routes, cross-checking assignments for an unrelated issue, when he saw the gap. A clean, unmistakable absence. 

It was her again. She'd returned late from a double shift, which didn't make sense to him. The medic corps was fully staffed. No one needed to work a double shift. When he went looking for the escort logs, there was no escort assigned. There was no overlapping patrol, no shadow detail. And there, beside the entry, was Voss's neat authorization code.

Leaning back in his chair, Ray shook his head. That wasn't oversight. She was still being disciplined for an incident that had happened nearly a month ago. Not only that, the situation appeared to be getting worse. Since when did correcting a subordinate involve taking away safety protections and putting them in harm's way on purpose?

Later that night, Ray saw her from a distance. She was crossing the far side of the compound alone, walking fast. Her head was down, and her shoulders were drawn in. Instead of her medic-issued jacket, she wore that same worn brown jacket she'd been wearing the day he found her, the hood pulled up over her head. She moved with the posture of someone well aware of the potential danger she was in. 

She never saw him. 

Ray’s hands curled into fists at his side, but he didn’t move or break cover. He just watched until she was safely inside and the doors sealed behind her.

He stood there far longer than he needed to, unease settling low and heavy in his chest. He could tell himself she was fine, and that she'd likely faced worse than that before he brought her here. He could tell himself any number of things. But when he finally walked away to head back to his own quarters, one thought lingered in his mind.