Chapter Text
Prologue
The footage is grainy and pixelated; the video had been captured on a low-resolution camera phone by a person whose hands were shaking with adrenaline.
The poor image quality makes it no less affecting for the tens of millions of YouTube viewers who have seen it -- in fact, it imbues the three-minute video clip with both suspense and urgency. The anxiety of the videographer can be sensed as the screen shakes and shudders; and while the smoke clouding the air makes the footage appear blurrier, it pulls the viewer in as they, too, strain their eyes to make out the unfolding drama through the murky haze.
It starts out with a wide shot of the building's exterior -- a mid-rise apartment building, shown with smoke billowing from the windows and the low flicker of yellow-orange flames visible on the top two floors. A dim cacophony of sirens, shouts, and whispered swear words can be heard in the background.
The image swivels suddenly, as though the filming bystander has only just noticed something out of the corner of his or her eye, and after a few seconds of blurred disorientation, the angle changes and the video focuses in on the building's front door. For a few seconds, it's hard to tell what's happening -- movement of some kind, definitely -- and then something, or perhaps more than one something, emerges from the blaze.
The camera zooms in closer and the barely-discernible shapes on the screen coalesce into identifiable figures. Two firefighters have exited the building; the first one runs across the lawn, shouting and gesticulating furiously toward someone before rushing out of frame. The second firefighter moves more slowly, his movements hindered by the weight of what appears to be a person draped over his shoulder.
Three paramedics rush into the foreground with a stretcher; they are accompanied by the first firefighter. The second firefighter adjusts the clearly unconscious person -- a woman; that is obvious now, even under the soot and grime -- into a front-carry before carefully depositing her still form onto the stretcher.
The firefighter's shoulders slump as soon as he sets her down. He waves off the lone paramedic who approaches him and reaches up to remove the oxygen mask from his face. His features are difficult to distinguish, but it's possible to see that he's quite young and that his skin is a rich coffee-brown.
A sharp buzz of sound emanates from just off-screen and the camera angle changes again, focusing on the woman on the stretcher who is starting to come around. She coughs once; a short, hacking rasp that causes the first paramedic to steady her and pat her back as the second paramedic readies her oxygen mask. The young firefighter enters the frame and she struggles to sit up even as the paramedic next to her gently stills her.
"You -- you saved me," she wheezes as the screen tilts to an odd angle. "Oh my god, how -- how can I ever -- ?"
The firefighter ducks his head bashfully before looking up to meet the eyes of the woman he'd rescued for the first time. The sound volume has to be turned up all the way to hear him; his speech is still barely decipherable. "Don't thank me, miss," he murmurs. "I'm just glad you're -- "
High-pitched beeping cuts off his sentence; a loud, insistent tone with no visible source.
The firefighter turns around in alarm to check his oxygen tank and the paramedics spring into action, examining their equipment for malfunctions or abnormalities, but the video stays in place, still and unwavering for once. It is focused closely on the woman who is staring down in shock at her wrist -- as her Timer flashes and beeps -- something she knows it will only do once, and on a very specific occasion:
When she has met her One.
The firefighter turns back around and the woman holds her wrist out toward him, the other hand pressed shakily to her mouth as she bites back a sob. Her Timer blinks and beeps, and the firefighter draws in a sharp breath. Without a second's pause he begins yanking off his right glove, struggling with the thick material before throwing it to the ground and pulling up the filthy, soot-blackened sleeve of his uniform jacket.
The footage doesn't provide a clear enough picture to make out what he sees on his wrist, but the insistent beeping is unmistakable for anything other than his Timer device. A second later the light reflects off what could be a glint of silver and the firefighter looks up at the woman again, locking eyes with her as their Timers continue to chime.
He takes two steps toward her until he's next to her, blocking her from the camera's gaze --
-- before letting out a hoarse-sounding cry and falling to his knees in front of her.
Now hers is the only face seen, and although it's hard to make out her expression given the grainy quality of the image, each viewer can precisely imagine how she must look as she touches a hand to the face of her One for the first time.
He says something to her, although it isn't clear what, and she either laughs or cries in response; all that's audible is the muffled sound of her voice and all that's visible is the set of her shoulders as they shake. The camera zooms out, as though the person filming it is loath to bear witness to this most intimate of moments, and there is a dizzying, three-second shot of the grass and the videographer's shoes before the screen fades to black.
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The video clip went viral about a week after it aired.
It garnered nearly sixty-five million YouTube hits, and although there are literally thousands of videos of couples whose Timers 'zeroed out' together -- all of them deeply moving -- years later, this remains one of the most popular.
Sixteen-year-old Blaine Anderson of Westerville, Ohio, has it ranked very highly among his Timer video bookmarks.
It's one he can watch over and over again; it's right up there with the video of the police officer meeting her One when she pulls him over for speeding, or that hilarious clip with the 'platonic' friends who get Timers implanted together for a laugh and discover that they aren't quite as platonic as they thought, or the young soldier who disembarks his plane after a long tour in Kuwait and zeroes out with his pregnant girlfriend, who had acquired a Timer in his absence, right there in the airport. That last one is just beautiful; the beeping of the Timers is just barely audible over the couple's joyful laughter and the delighted exclamations of the people around them.
But not all the Timer stories in the videos have happy endings.
One young couple, on the cusp of becoming engaged, decided to take the final step in confirming their compatibility. They hire a videographer, eager to capture the joyful moment of zeroing out together. It's hard to tell which is worse -- the stunned devastation on the man's face or the frightening blankness on the woman's -- when their newly-implanted Timers start alternate countdowns.
There's one that shows a doctor zeroing out with the terminal cancer patient he's meeting for the first time. Blaine thinks he'd gone through half a box of tissues on that one alone, and he'd gone to bed sobbing, just praying to whatever deities might exist that he and his One would get to live a long and healthy life together.
There's also an absolutely heartbreaking video that almost nobody can get through without crying: black-and-white security footage of two young Israeli military prison guards opening a gate to escort five Palestinian prisoners to their cells. There is no sound to the video, so all it shows is a few tense seconds where both guards defensively draw their Glock 17s and the prisoners stop dead in their tracks with their hands up, everyone looking around the room and apparently reacting to an unheard noise -- the sound of two Timers chiming plaintively. The guard and the prisoner realize it a split-second before everyone else does. The two young men lock eyes, a look of dawning comprehension and horror passing over both of them as the gun starts trembling in the guard's hands. The second guard scrambles to control the situation, quickly barking orders at the group of prisoners and ordering them all through the gate at gunpoint. He gives the first guard's arm a rough shake as he passes, clearly telling him to get it together. The first guard is left alone, staring blankly at the gate in front of him before quietly lowering his head in his still-shaking hands as the video fades out.
No one knows who leaked the footage and there's definitely debate online: Is it fake? Was it staged? Regardless, Blaine has only been able to watch it once.
Blaine has amassed quite a collection of favorites throughout the years, and on tonight of all nights he finds himself re-watching them. He sits up in bed, his handsome young face lit strangely by the dull-bronze glow of his laptop, and he drags the scroll-bar of the firefighter video back to the 2:06 mark -- the first second the woman's Timer goes off. He watches it again, drinking in the sight of that beautiful moment, his gaze drawn equally to the flashing device on her wrist and the stunned expression on her face.
Blaine's own heart speeds up as he thinks tomorrow, tomorrow and almost without his volition he finds himself doing it: rotating his right wrist slightly and allowing the fingers of his left hand to follow the familiar path -- ducking under his pajama sleeve, dipping into the hollow of his right wrist, and passing over the unmarked skin there.
Unmarked for one more day. Just one.