Chapter 2: Threads of Time
The Glass Atrium Mall was a shock to the system. After the sterile white hell of the lab and the mildewed gloom of the safe house, the barrage of neon and mirrored surfaces made Consuelo’s head ache. Disco ball reflections skittered across polished floors like frantic insects. A synth-pop version of a song she faintly recognized as “Stayin’ Alive” pulsed from hidden speakers, the beat thumping through the soles of her borrowed sneakers. The air was a thick soup of conflicting smells: pretzels, popcorn, a cloying wave of perfume from a nearby counter that made her eyes water.
Amy moved through it all with the ease of a native, a small, amused smile on her lips as she watched Consuelo try to take it in without staring. “Stick close,” Amy said, linking her arm through Consuelo’s again. “You look like a rabbit in headlights. We’re just here for clothes. Simple.”
But nothing felt simple. Every surface reflected a version of herself she didn’t know—a pale, wide-eyed woman in ill-fitting gray sweats, her magnificent hair a tangled cloud. She looked like a patient. A victim. The person they had made her. A hot spark of resentment, familiar and bitter, flickered in her chest. She squashed it down.
They bypassed the stores with headless, impossibly thin mannequins. Amy led her to a boutique splashed with electric colors and loud patterns. Racks of clothing were organized in what seemed like chaos. Consuelo’s fingers brushed against a sleeve of a neon pink windbreaker, the material slippery and alien.
“Too much?” Amy asked, already rifling through another rack.
“It’s… very bright,” Consuelo managed.
“Bright is good. Bright says ‘I didn’t just spend a century on ice.’ Here.” Amy turned, holding up a piece of clothing. “Try this. It’s rebellion fabric.”
Consuelo took it. The garment was small. alarmingly so. A top, but one that would barely cover her ribs. The black fabric was stretchy and sleek. She held it up against herself, instinct making her glance down at her own chest. It would hug. It would accentuate. The word ‘revealing’ didn’t begin to cover it.
A flush crept up her neck. “Amy, I couldn’t. There’s… there’s not enough of it.”
Amy shrugged. “It’s called a crop top. It’s normal. Cute.”
“What would Edward think?” The question was out before she could stop it, automatic, programmed by a marriage where his opinion was the weather she lived under.
Amy huffed a short, incredulous laugh. “With his track record? I’m pretty sure he’ll like it.”
Consuelo blinked, the fabric dangling from her fingers. “Track record?”
A shadow crossed Amy’s face, a flicker of something like pity or regret. She turned back to the rack, her movements suddenly brisk. “Nothing. Forget it. Look, just try it on. You need clothes that are yours, not borrowed, not issued.” She began pulling other items—a pair of dark, high-waisted jeans, a white top with structural seams that looked like a corset but was made of soft cotton, a few other pieces. She piled them into Consuelo’s arms. “Go. Changing room. Now.”
Overwhelmed, Consuelo obeyed.
The fluorescent light in the changing room was unforgiving. She shed the sweats with a feeling of relief, standing in her plain underthings, examining her body in the full-length mirror. It was the same. Golden skin, the curves that had once made Edward’s gaze grow heavy, the subtle, powerful musculature that was a gift of the Daisy compound. No scars from the experiments she couldn’t remember. Just… her. A body out of time.
She pulled on the high-waisted jeans. They fit snugly, a strange, comforting pressure. Then the white top. It was the bustier-style corset top with a delicate front bow. It cinched her waist, lifted her bust, bared a slice of her midriff and the slope of her shoulders. She stared.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger. Bold. Contemporary. There was a sharpness to the lines, a confident exposure that was utterly foreign. She thought of the tailored dresses and pressed skirts of her old life, chosen to be elegant, respectable, his. This was different. This felt like a declaration.
She stepped out.
Amy was leaning against a rack, scrolling on a sleek phone. She looked up. Her eyebrows shot up. A slow, genuine smile spread across her face. “Wow. Okay. Yeah. That’s the one.”
“It’s… daring,” Consuelo said, her voice small. She smoothed her hands over the jeans.
“It’s cute!” Amy insisted. “You look amazing. You look awake. Come on, we’re getting it.”
Consuelo looked at herself in a mirror outside the booth. A hesitant smile touched her own lips. “It is cute.”
They bought the outfit, along with a few other basics Amy insisted on. Consuelo wore the new clothes out of the store, her old sweats folded in a bag. The sleek fabric against her skin was a constant, low-level surprise. She felt seen, but for the first time, it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. It felt like camouflage for this blinding new world.
They wandered, the tension of the morning easing into a quieter rhythm. They passed a bookstore, its windows filled with colorful displays. Without thinking, Consuelo drifted inside. The quiet hush, the smell of paper and ink, was a profound relief after the mall’s sensory assault. It was the first thing that felt remotely familiar.
She browsed, her fingers tracing spines. History, fiction, science. Then she turned a corner and stopped.
The entire wall was labeled in clear, modern type: FEMINISM. Dozens of books, with bold covers and provocative titles. The Second Sex. The Feminine Mystique. We Should All Be Feminists. Words and concepts she had no context for, but which hummed with a potent, unspoken energy.
Amy appeared at her shoulder, sipping a smoothie she’d picked up. “You’re from the ‘40s,” she said quietly. “Maybe you could use some reading on this.”
Consuelo frowned, her gaze still fixed on the shelves. “But I don’t hate men,” she said, the statement simple, earnest. “Just idiots.”
Amy choked on her drink, then laughed, a bright, clear sound in the quiet store. “That’s not what feminism is about, Connie. It’s about women not having chains just for being women. It’s about having the same rights as men. It’s about… not having to kneel just to make them feel powerful.” Her voice softened, lost its teasing edge. “It’s about choice. Real choice.”
Consuelo was silent. The words landed inside her, clicking into places she didn’t know were empty. Chains. Kneel. Choice. She thought of the marriage license she’d signed under the threat of her family’s ruin. She thought of the penthouse that had been a gilded cage. She thought of the doctors telling her she was pregnant, and then the nothingness that followed.
Her hand reached out, almost of its own volition. She pulled a book from the shelf at random. The cover was purple. The title was a question.
“Good start,” Amy said softly.
Consuelo held the book to her chest, a strange new talisman. They paid for it and left the calm of the bookstore, stepping back into the glittering atrium. Consuelo felt the weight of the book in the bag, a counterbalance to the light, exposing clothes she wore.
On a huge suspended screen above the central fountain, a news feed played. The sound was off, but the images were clear. There was Charles, his uniform impeccable, his smile magnified to god-like proportions. He was shaking hands with a city official. A ticker at the bottom scrolled: PATRIOT STILL AT LARGE. ALLIES CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
Beneath that, in a smaller font: Firelady commended for swift response in downtown chemical scare.
Amy followed her gaze, her expression turning to stone. “Part of the cover,” she murmured, her voice devoid of all its earlier lightness. “Always on. Always performing.”
Consuelo watched the silent, smiling Charles. The man who had triggered the recordings of her screams. The man who had run. The figurehead of the system that had stolen her life and her child and framed her husband for her abandonment. The simmering spark in her chest fanned into a cold, precise flame.
She was not just a wife out of time. She was the Terror of the Sky. And she was beginning to remember what that meant.
“We should go back,” Amy said, touching her elbow. “Jimmy’s probably double-parked.”
Consuelo nodded, letting herself be led away. But her mind wasn’t in the garish mall. It was in the past, sifting through memories of flight and fury. And it was in the future, staring at the path ahead, which no longer looked like a simple return to Edward’s side. It looked like a runway.
The jeans allowed for long strides. The book in the bag bumped against her hip with each step. For the first time since waking, the confusion was settling, hardening into something sharper. Something far more dangerous.
The drive back to the safe house was quiet, the thrum of the engine undercut by the weight of the unread book in the shopping bag beside Consuelo’s feet. She watched the city blur past, a cacophony of glass and steel that bore no resemblance to the skyline she remembered. Her reflection in the passenger window was still a shock—the sharp lines of the new top, the fall of her hair now freed from its century of stillness. She looked like someone who belonged in this velocity. She felt like a ghost wearing a costume.
Amy pulled the car into the alley behind the building, the headlights cutting through the gathering dusk. "Home sweet dump," she muttered, killing the engine. They gathered the bags, the rustle of plastic loud in the quiet alley.
Inside, the safe house felt smaller, dingier after the mall’s expansive glare. Consuelo dropped the bags onto the scarred wooden table with a soft thump. The normalcy of the action felt bizarre, a domestic chore after a day of psychic upheaval. "Would you like some tea?" she asked Amy, her voice seeking the comfort of routine.
"Sure. Anything caffeinated," Amy said, flopping onto the sagging sofa. She picked up a controller and turned on the bolted-down TV, muting it immediately. The silent news footage showed a burning building, a figure in silver and blue—Charles—posed heroically before it.
Consuelo turned away and went into the kitchenette. She filled the kettle, her movements precise, focusing on the click of the stove dial, the blue leap of the flame. The simple mechanics grounded her. "The book you suggested," Consuelo said, raising her voice slightly over the growing boil. "The one about chains. It sounds...political."
"Everything's political," Amy called back, her eyes still on the silent, smiling Charles on screen. "Especially for people like us. Choosing a damn outfit is political. Existing is political."
The kettle began its shrill whistle. Consuelo poured the steaming water into two mugs, the tea bags blooming brown tendrils. She carried them out, placing one near Amy on a stack of magazines. She kept hers, warming her hands through the ceramic. She stood by the table, not sitting, her posture unconsciously straight. The clothes still felt new on her skin, a constant, whispering awareness.
The front door opened and Edward walked in.
He brought the smell of the city with him—concrete, exhaust, a faint, acrid hint of something burnt. His eyes found Consuelo immediately, a hunter's instinct. They swept over her, from the cascade of her hair down the exposed column of her throat, over the bold white fabric that cinched and sculpted her torso, down to the slice of golden skin above the waistband of the dark jeans.
His gaze was not a husband's appreciation. It was an assessment. A sudden, frozen inventory.
His eyes narrowed, the green turning to frost. He looked from Consuelo to Amy, his frown deepening into a scowl of pure disapproval. "What the hell is my wife wearing?" The question cracked through the room like a shot. "Where's the long skirt and the blouse?"
Amy rolled her eyes, a magnificent, deliberate gesture of disdain. "Relax, old man. She's dressing like a modern woman. She has to blend in."
Edward took a step forward, his focus swinging back to Consuelo. The anger in his voice was tight, personal. "Showing herself off like that? She's a married woman, dammit!"
Heat flared in Consuelo's cheeks, part shame, part a rising defiance. She set her mug down with a sharp click. "I'm not showing myself off! It looks cute!" She gestured at the clothes, her voice climbing. "I have to look like I'm from this era! What should I do, walk around in a housedress from 1947?"
"The one you left in would have been fine," he shot back, the words dripping with old, venomous history.
The door opened again, and Jimmy slipped in, laden with a paper bag of takeout. He froze, sensing the charged air instantly.
Edward didn't even look at him. He stabbed a finger toward Amy, his accusation shifting. "You'd better start controlling your woman! Look what she did to my wife!"
Jimmy's mouth opened, then closed, caught utterly off guard.
Amy stood up slowly, her own temper igniting. "She can dress however she likes. She's a person, not a pet!" She took a step toward Edward, her chin lifted. "Maybe you forgot that while she was gone. Maybe you got used to the idea of her being a picture in a frame."
Edward’s control snapped. He moved, not with super-speed, but with a terrible, deliberate slowness that was somehow worse. He closed the distance to Consuelo, his presence overwhelming the small space. He didn't touch her. He loomed.
His voice dropped, low and dangerously calm, meant only for her. "Take it off."
Consuelo didn't back away. She held his glacial stare, the fear transforming into something harder, something that had once made armies look to the sky in dread. The steam from the forgotten tea rose between them like a fragile curtain.
"No."
The word was quiet. Absolute. It hung in the air, a line drawn in the dust of the safe house floor. It was the first true refusal she had ever given him.
His expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes—confusion, then a spark of something darker, more intrigued. The dynamic they had built a century ago, the one of command and reluctant compliance, lay shattered between them.
Jimmy finally found his voice, weak but trying. "Guys, maybe we should just eat? The noodles are getting cold."
Nobody moved. The silent TV continued its parade of lies overhead, a pantomime of heroism that mocked the real standoff in the grimy room below. Consuelo’s heart hammered against the restrictive seam of the new top, a frantic drum against the cage of her ribs. Edward’s gaze remained locked on hers, no longer just angry, but calculating, reassessing the woman—the weapon—he had just gotten back.
Edward’s gaze remained locked on hers, no longer just angry, but calculating, reassessing the woman—the weapon—he had just gotten back. The silence stretched, a wire pulled taut. Then his lips thinned. “I won’t repeat myself,” he said, the words flat and final. “Take it off.”
Consuelo’s chin lifted a fraction. “No.”
He moved. It wasn’t the blur of super-speed, but a terrifyingly efficient lunge. One hand clamped on her upper arm, the other hooked behind her knees. He yanked her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. The air left her lungs in a shocked whoosh.
“Hey!” Amy shouted, surging forward from the couch. Her fingertips sparked, orange heat wavering the air around them.
Edward turned his head, barely glancing at her. “You know perfectly well that your stupid powers don’t do anything to me,” he snarled. “You’ll set the place on fire. Step aside. You’ve done enough.”
Consuelo pounded her fists against the muscle of his lower back, dizzy from the blood rushing to her head. “Put me down, you bastard! Edward!”
Jimmy stepped into his path, arms out. “Man, come on, don’t—”
Edward didn’t break stride. He shoved Jimmy aside with a brutal sweep of his arm, sending the younger man stumbling into the wall with a grunt. He carried the raging, kicking Consuelo down the short hallway, shouldered their bedroom door open, and kicked it shut behind them. The lock engaged with a heavy, definitive click.
He dumped her onto the bed. The cheap springs screamed.
She scrambled up onto her elbows, her hair a wild cloud around her furious face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He stood by the door, his chest rising and falling with controlled breath, his eyes dark. “Take it off.” His voice was a low grating stone. “You don’t look like a decent woman.”
A raw, disbelieving laugh burst from her. Decent. The word from a dead world. Her hand shot out, gripping the rickety wooden nightstand. She flung it at him with all her strength, the legacy of the Daisy compound humming in her tendons. “What do you care?!” she screamed as it sailed toward his head.
He deflected it with a contemptuous swipe of his forearm. It shattered against the wall, scattering splinters.
“I was at the bookstore!” she raged, her voice cracking. “I saw books about you! You rolled around with whatever woman crossed your path! They all wore less clothing than me, and you still let them into your bed! Our bed!” She was on her feet now, grabbing the other bedside table, her vision swimming with hot, furious tears. “I don’t owe you anything! I no longer have a family for you to manipulate! I have nothing left! And now you want to demand that I bow my head?!” She hurled the second table. “Fuck you!”
He batted this one aside too, his expression shifting from annoyance to something stark and agonized. “I thought you had abandoned me!” he roared back, the sound raw, filling the tiny room. “That you were out there living far away from me, that you hated me!”
“I hate you!” she shrieked, the truth of it and the lie of it twisting together into a perfect, devastating knot. “I hate you! What more do you want from me?!”
He crossed the room in one stride. His hands seized her shoulders and he drove her back down onto the thin mattress, his weight following, pinning her. Her strength met his, a futile, shuddering resistance before he subdued her, his body a cage of muscle and history. Her struggles stilled, replaced by a violent trembling. Her eyes, wide and black, were filled with tears that spilled over, tracing paths through the dust on her golden skin.
She stared up at him, her breath coming in ragged hitches. The fight drained out of her, leaving a hollowed-out ache. “You never looked for me,” she murmured, the anger gone, replaced by a grief so old it had fossilized. “You left with other women.”
Edward squeezed his eyes shut, a muscle jumping in his jaw. The words, when they came, were torn from a place he’d kept sealed for a century. “I’m sorry.”
Then his mouth was on hers.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a punishment, an apology wrought in flesh and breath. He kissed her deeply, desperately, his tongue forging into her mouth with a taste like salt and old whiskey. She froze for a heartbeat, then a broken sound escaped her throat and she kissed him back. It was a collision.
What started as a passionate kiss turned wild, feral. His hands left her shoulders, one tangling in her hair to angle her head, the other groping for the hem of the hated top. He grabbed a fistful of the white fabric at her ribcage and pulled, the seams straining with a terrible tearing sound.
Consuelo broke the kiss, panting. “Don’t you dare,” she snarled, but it was a different kind of fury now, molten and collaborative.
He growled against her lips, his hand shifting. He found the small zipper at the side of the corset top and yanked it down. The fabric loosened, sighing open. He peeled it off her, baring her to the waist. The cool, stale air of the room touched her skin, tightening her nipples.
They undressed each other to the ruthless rhythm of their kisses—a desperate, clumsy symphony of grasping hands and torn fabric. Buttons on his shirt popped and skittered across the floor. Her jeans were shoved down over her hips, his own followed. There were no sweet nothings, no tender caresses. This was archaeology of the most brutal kind, digging through layers of betrayal to find the raw, pulsing nerve they had once shared.
He was hard and thick against her thigh. She was wet, a slick, shocking heat between her own legs that acknowledged nothing but the animal reality of his body on hers. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, his teeth scraping her skin. She arched into it, her nails scoring down his back, drawing faint white lines that reddened instantly.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice thick.
She opened her eyes. His face was above hers, shadowed, his green eyes blazing with a possessive fire she remembered and a torment she didn’t.
He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her wetness. He didn’t ask. He pushed inside.
Consuelo gasped, her body stretching to accommodate him, a familiar, shocking fullness. It burned, not with pain, but with the sheer, overwhelming reality of it. He was in her. After a century of nothingness, of cold sleep and colder waking, she was brutally, undeniably filled. She cried out, a short, sharp sound swallowed by his mouth as he kissed her again.
He began to move. There was no gentle rhythm, no loving cadence. It was a driving, punishing pace, each thrust a physical echo of his words: I thought you left me. The bed frame slammed against the wall with a monotonous, grinding thud. His hips pistonned against hers, the sound of skin on skin wet and obscene in the quiet room.
“You’re mine,” he grunted into the sweat-damped hollow of her neck, each word a thrust. “You were always mine.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only feel. The coil of tension deep in her belly, tightening with each brutal stroke. The scrape of his beard against her cheek. The overwhelming scent of him—sweat, anger, a cedar-like musk that was the scent of home and prison. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper, meeting each drive with a roll of her own hips.
“Fuck,” he hissed, his control fraying. His movements became more erratic, deeper. “Consuelo… god…”
The pressure inside her shattered. Her orgasm ripped through her without warning, a silent, seismic event that clamped her around him and turned her vision white. Her body bowed off the bed, a strangled scream caught in her throat.
It triggered his. With a final, brutal plunge, he stilled, buried to the hilt. A raw, guttural groan was punched from his chest as he spilled into her, hot and endless. He collapsed his weight onto her, his face buried in her hair, his body shuddering through the last pulses.
Silence, then. Broken only by their ragged, syncing breaths and the distant sound of a siren winding through the city streets outside. The room smelled of sex and sweat and shattered pride.
He didn’t pull out. He lay heavy upon her, his breath hot on her shoulder. One of his hands came up, clumsy, and brushed the tangled hair from her damp forehead. It was the only tender gesture in a violent symphony.
Consuelo stared at the water-stained ceiling, feeling the slow, intimate leak of him between her thighs. The tears came again, silent this time. She didn’t know what they were for. The lost child. The stolen years. The man inside her, who was both her destroyer and her only anchor in a world that had melted and reformed without her.
His lips moved against her skin. The words were so quiet she almost didn’t hear them. “I looked,” he whispered, the confession dragged from a dark, secret place. “I looked for years.”
She turned her face into his neck, and didn’t answer. The weight of him was the only truth she could comprehend. Outside the locked door, the safe house held its breath. Inside, they were welded together by shame, by need, by a love that had festered in the dark for a century and now pulsed between them, raw and bloody and alive.