Contingency Bureau, In Between Time and Space

JAX

Jax had begun this mission with bright hope in his chest, the kind only the newly promoted carry before the world reveals its weight. As a freshly minted Bene Elohim, he had flown with purpose, bathed in golden winds, to receive his commission from a senior Throne who, in a rare gesture, insisted on shaking his hand. That small act alone had startled him. It was said the Thrones didn't touch unless the matter brushed the edge of divine crisis.

And now, this.

Jax stood still in the stillness, watching the ripple Marisse V. Rickarte had created stretch across realms, growing more chaotic with each passing moment. A mortal man, a logistics magnate with ghosts in his chest and precision in his stride, had somehow unsettled the balance of righteousness in the mortal realm.

Jax couldn’t fathom it. Not fully.

He was supposed to meet with Azrael to discuss the next course of action, to understand how the ripple might be contained. The responsibility pressed down on him like an anchor, unrelenting and absolute.

He clutched his Bureau-issued tablet, a radiant slate humming with living protocols and systems, as if it were a shield. It was his only tether to certainty. He hadn’t even handled a case before, much less one that threatened to rethread the fabric of fate. His training echoed in his head: We are guardians of choice. Custodians of fate. We guide the lost back to love, to humanity, to life.

But how was he supposed to guide someone like Marisse?

Azrael’s office looked nothing like the ethereal sanctums Jax had studied. It resembled, strangely, an old mortal tax collector’s office with dusty ledgers, ink pots, and brass fixtures. Rows upon rows of pocket watches dangled from the ceiling like wind chimes, each ticking to a soul’s heartbeat. There were no floors. Just spinning, orbiting shelves that rotated like enormous rolodexes, each slot neatly stacked with soul records, bound in quiet parchment and ancient light.

Jax floated cautiously into the room, his boots barely grazing the arcane platform beneath him.

Azrael didn’t turn when Jax entered. Instead, the archangel’s voice came like the rustle of old paper. “You’ve made a mess.”

Jax winced. “I didn’t intend to---”

“No, but your intentions don’t matter here. Outcomes do.” Azrael’s cold gaze met his. “You’ve grown attached.”

Jax blinked. “I… what?”

“A personal bias,” Azrael said, voice like a chisel on stone. “You let it cloud your task.”

He made a mental note to ask someone later what exactly personal bias meant.

Azrael narrowed his eyes. “Are you ready to do what it takes to repair this?”

Jax’s heart stuttered. “Yes.”

Without another word, Azrael lifted his palm and light poured forth, a torrent of truth and judgment so blinding it stripped all silence from the room. A gale of information hit Jax like divine floodwater. Names, dates, decisions, unspoken thoughts, and interwoven fates, all flowing into him in a rush that nearly tore his consciousness apart.

He hovered there, barely upright. His white vest and suit trousers gleamed like bone in the celestial haze. His blond hair caught the light like fiberoptic silk, and his wide green eyes reflected infinite realms unraveling and reforming below.

He had once believed that promotion to Bene Elohim would bring glory, certainty. Instead, it brought trembling awe.

The Great I Am had summoned him this very morning with trembling urgency. You will oversee Marisse Rickarte’s contingency. He is owed a favor. Guide him well, for the balance is delicate.

Jax hadn’t expected to feel so small. So young.

He found Marisse seated at the edge of a bed in a luxurious, sterile hotel suite. The man looked untouched by sleep, like someone who hadn’t blinked in hours. There was weariness beneath his tailored poise. Exhaustion, perhaps grief. Jax felt the tremor of a bond awaken between them, one born not of sympathy but of purpose.

Jax stood quietly for a while, cloaked in the folds of veiled presence, watching Marisse Rickarte move about his suite in methodical silence. There was an eerie grace to the man’s movements, like a soldier between wars. Perfectly efficient, but nowhere to place the ache.

He was folding something on the bed. Adjusting a cufflink. Reaching for his phone, ignoring it. Reading a note, forgetting it. Jax watched, tablet clutched tight to his side like it might ground him. His mind teetered between two imperatives: tell Marisse the truth or wait and allow the man to move through this night with less weight on his shoulders, as Azrael had suggested.

But how could he?

Marisse had already broken the natural order. One man saved. Thirty-seven others displaced, one of whom had now begun to tilt the axis of righteousness itself. And with the distortion spreading further into the mortal realm, silence felt more dangerous than revelation.

Jax stepped forward, finally crossing the threshold of space between them.

Marisse flinched violently.

“Damn it,” Marisse snapped, his voice taut with nerves. “Don’t do that. You can’t just---appear out of nowhere.”

Unbothered, Jax’s voice was calm, almost too calm for the moment. “There are more pressing matters to discuss than my entrance.”

Marisse sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of course there are.”

Jax didn’t waste time. “One of the thirty-seven passengers who was meant to die has become… a problem. A ripple effect was expected, but this one’s different. It’s destabilizing the balance. My focus now is to contain that disruption before it contaminates other timelines. Until then, you cannot use the camera again.”

Marisse straightened his jacket absently, expression unreadable. “I’ve done nothing since the bridge incident except try to understand this… device. And right now, it’s 6:07. I have a dinner meeting with Enrique Villamor in less than an hour, and I’m still trying to find the right pieces in a game I’m barely able to see.”

He faced Jax fully, voice sharper now. “But I need answers. You can’t just keep talking in riddles and expect me to follow orders like I’m part of your choir.”

Jax didn’t flinch. “I’ll tell you what I can, for now.”

Marisse raised a brow. “Fine. Start with this: why does everyone else forget? Their memories, their behaviors, they all shift to match whatever changed. But mine? I remember both versions. I remember what I did, even if they don’t.”

Jax nodded solemnly. “Because you took the photo. That act bound your memory to the breach. You retain both realities, but only temporarily. At the stroke of midnight on the seventh day, your mind will begin to forget. Your memory will align with whatever version of the world you’ve created. That’s the law of the Favor. One week, no more.”

Marisse’s brow furrowed. “So why didn’t the change take hold the moment I woke up? Why was I still in the original thread for hours before seeing the new present?”

Jax hesitated before answering. “The delay is due to traffic,” he said, almost apologetically. “Ripple congestion. The more complex the alteration, the more resistance it meets. Both from opposing spiritual forces and unresolved karmic entanglements. This is no ordinary change, Marisse. You’ve bent more than just time. You’ve stretched the weight of desire across fate itself. You must be flexible… and smart. Adapt until I sort things out.”

Marisse looked at him long, eyes sharp with questions he didn’t yet have the words for. But before he could voice another, a shrill chime burst from Jax’s tablet. A low-priority alert, but urgent enough to require response.

Marisse narrowed his gaze. “One last thing---”

“I’ll come when you call,” Jax interrupted quickly, already beginning to blur at the edges of light. “But I really must go.”

“Wait,”

But Jax was already gone.

No doors. No footsteps. Only silence, the air left trembling from the gust of his departure, and the faintest after-image of soft golden glow dissipating near the ceiling.

Marisse exhaled heavily and glanced down at the time. 6:12.

He was running late.

But time, it seemed, had already been bent far beyond repair.

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