Spot 2: Sara_R_Stark

Dion walked the nearly silent halls of the museum, pondering how he had gotten here. According to the calendar on his wall, it had been an entire year since his capture, but it felt much longer. He and Seth had gone on four missions with the group since their arrival, and in that time, they had loved, lost, and suffered far beyond what they were used to. Every time they returned from a mission, they were beaten down and broken, and it took multiple months from the sting of a new loss to fade away. But did it ever fade away?

He rested his head up against the glass of a window, staring out into the darkened streets below. The museum had hundreds of acres of property, and it was constantly expanding. The roads leading to and from the museum seemed to shrink further and further into the distance every time they bought more land. Those trapped in the building were becoming truly isolated.

Dion found himself holding his breath, and he let it out slowly. His throat burned with unshed tears that he wouldn't allow himself to release. He hadn't allowed himself to cry since Heiron's death. He had felt utterly weak when he found Heiron and Celene's corpses lying in the dirt. Dion remembered running to Heiron and falling to his knees beside him, his chest heaving with sobs as he tried to feel a pulse. There was nothing but soft coolness in Heiron's skin, though. He was gone.

Seth had to drag Dion away kicking and screaming. The Greek hadn't connected to anyone else at the same level as he did with Heiron. He hadn't spoken Greek for weeks before the two began talking, and regaling stories of home with someone who understood him was the only escape he had felt since his capture. Both Seth and Cassius had to restrain him as they traveled back to their prison. Dion would have rather stayed behind and died alongside his comrade than return to the place causing all the mayhem.

He sighed deeply, brushing a tear off his cheek, though more seemed to take its place. Within moments he was on the floor, sobbing loudly. It felt so good to let out all the emotions he had been keeping bottled up inside, but somewhere in his mind he was screaming at himself for being so pathetic. He was 17, and a grown man. Men weren't meant to cry.

"Stupid, stupid," he shouted, pulling at his hair. His hair had grown considerably since he arrived. It hung softly down to his shoulders, and yanking at the roots hurt far more than he was willing to admit.

"Whoa there," someone murmured, softly pulling his hands away from his head. "Careful, mate." Dion stared at this person through tear-filled eyes, vaguely making out the blurry form of Seth gently squeezing his hands.

"Go away," he sobbed, his voice shaking.

"I can't. We don't want you getting yourself hurt, do we?"

"I just want it all to end. I can't stay here."

"I know," Seth murmured, pulling Dion into a gentle hug. "There's only one way out of all of this, isn't there? I think we've all considered it at one point or another."

"But I don't want... I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to be happy and have a future. But the museum will hunt us all down if we try to escape. They will send our friends to bring us back and kill us if they need to. None of us can leave. There is no happy ending at the museum."

Seth nodded along, looking sad. He had no idea how to introduce to Dion the fact that they were due for another mission later that week. Seth had no idea if Dion could handle another mission like the last one. According to the agents, this event was far more terrifying and dangerous than the last, and it was more than likely that they would lose someone else. To make matters worse, the agents also permitted John to accompany them as long as he was under Ammon's strict supervision. No one was going to enjoy his presence.

"I don't know how to break this to you," Seth began, clearing his throat awkwardly, "but the agents were talking to me this morning."

"No," Dion pleaded. "Please say we're not leaving again." Seth grimaced.

"I'm sorry."

"How much do they honestly expect from this group?" Dion screamed, jumping to his feet. "We've lost 5 people from our initial group and have gotten many killed who were simply accompanying us on journey. Then, when we lose one, they just go back and collect more. It's like we're animals! We're nothing but swine in their eyes!"

"I-"

"How dangerous is this mission?"

Seth paused, confused at the sudden quiet in Dion's voice.

"I uh..." he tried to remember what exactly the agent had told him.

"Don't sugar coat it," Dion growled. "I want the truth. What do they expect us to survive this time?"

"It's a ship," Seth recounted, "called the RMS Titanic. Ever heard of it?" Dion's eyes instantly hardened and the blood drained from his face.

"The one that sank?" he asked, his voice small.

"Yeah."

Dion fell to the ground in a heap.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

"What happened to him?" someone shouted.

"I don't know," Seth cried. "I was trying to explain our mission and he just fainted!"

"Is there anything you said that could have triggered him?" someone else asked.

"I don't know. I just mentioned the Titanic and his face got as white as a sheet."

Everything went quiet for a moment, and though Dion could not open his eyes to see what was going on, he strained his ears for some information. All he could hear was the sound of quiet breathing and the awkward shuffling of feet.

"We should have told you this before you tried to mention it to him," one of the voices murmured. "Dion has a deathly fear of boats and the ocean. According to the database, one of his childhood friends drowned in a boating accident. Our reports said that he had repressed the memory to the point where he couldn't remember it ever happened, but the fear always remained."

If Dion could feel his body, he would have shaken his head. He couldn't remember anything like that happening in his past. Where had they gotten that information, anyways?

"I never knew," Seth mumbled, sounding defeated. "If only-"

"This wasn't your fault," the other voice reminded him. "He has been fairly unstable as of late. We'll give him some time to sleep it off. When you leave on Thursday, he should be better than ever."

"You're sure?"

"Positive. We have been supplied with the most advanced medical equipment the museum could afford. He should stay safe here in the infirmary and will be excused from his weekly duties for now."

"Thank you," Seth said, sighing sadly. "Can you tell me when he wakes up? I need to apologize."

"Don't apologize!" Dion screamed in his head, but no one could hear him. "It isn't your fault!"

"Of course," the doctors responded. "Now go get some sleep. It's really late and you still have work tomorrow."

"If you could call it that," Seth grunted, but his footsteps left the room anyways.

"Don't worry, Dion," one of the doctors said as they stuck a needle in his left arm. "You've been under a lot of stress lately. We're going to put you in a medically induced coma for a few days so that you can mentally work some things out."

Dion's heart skipped a beat at the thought. He had always been terrified of the museum's futuristic medical technology. He could do little to fight as the medicine was slowly pumped into his veins, and within moments, the voices faded out again. He was left in the dark void of his thoughts until, finally, the darkness faded away into a new scene.

He found himself staring out at a glimmering lake, and the breath left his lungs at the beautiful sight. The lake hung dozens of feet below him, ringed by three walls of rocky cliff. The fourth wall was nothing but an opening where the water spilled down into a waterfall and faded into the lush treeline below. A river bubbled to his left, and birds of all shapes and colours flitted above his head. It was the most serene place he had ever seen.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

Dion couldn't find it in himself to be alarmed, so he opted to casually shrug. He was sure that if he tried to speak, his voice would fail him in an instant. Without shifting his gaze, he felt the grass to his right shift as the person sat down. Something about the presence of this man was insanely familiar and it was driving Dion mad.

"I haven't seen you for a while, Dion. I'm sorry for how abruptly I left."

That's when the voice finally clicked in Dion's mind. He swiveled to his right, eyes blown wide as they finally rested on the mystery person. When they did, he felt a startled gasp tear through his throat.

It was Heiron.

"Come on. I know you've missed me," Heiron said, grinning as he opened his arms.

Dion launched himself at Heiron, pulling the older Greek into a hug. He felt as if he could cry, but for some reason, he was unable to. The excitement of seeing his old friend was enough to overshadow his grief for the moment.

"How..." Dion sputtered. "How are you here?"

"I've always been here," Heiron explained. Dion must have looked immensely confused as Heiron began to laugh.

"I don't understand."

"I didn't get it either at first," Heiron admitted. "When I died, I saw Peter. He took me through these gates, and all of the sudden, everything just... made sense. I was finally at peace."

"What did you see?" Dion asked excitedly. "What was there?"

"Peter said it was different for everyone. You get to be with the people you love in the place that brings you the most joy."

"This doesn't look like Greece."

"It isn't," Heiron said, laughing softly. "I've always been fond of nature. I've never been to this place before, but it is somewhere I have always wanted to go. I made it my life goal to get a job, get money, and travel here one day. I guess that dream was cut short, but I never stopped believing."

"Then why am I here?" Dion questioned. "I'm not dead, am I?"

"No. We live on different planes of existence." Here, Heiron began to look thoughtful. "When I died, I went to my own personal heaven, I suppose. Then Peter showed me that we weren't confined to that single place. We could find loved ones in their own little worlds and say hello, but we could also return to Earth?"

"You can? That's crazy!"

"Not as a living being, though," Heiron clarified. "We could simply spectate. You can't see, hear or feel us, but we can watch you. Sometimes in special cases such as this, we can even enter the subconscious of the living. You can hear us whispering advice but you will never know it is us who is speaking to you. We can even appear in your dreams, but when you wake up, we are forgotten."

"So is this a dream?" Dion asked, crushed. "Will I really forget you when I wake up?"

"It's the only way to keep the balance. I can only be in your mind as long as you are asleep."

"But I have days," Dion said desperately. "Surely we have time to figure something out."

"Time works differently here," Heiron explained. "Days feel like hours. Hours feel like minutes. The dead aren't typically allowed to interact with the living, so there are limitations."

"So I don't have long. Where's Peter? Can I speak to him?"

"Of course."

Dion whipped around at the new voice, grinning excitedly when he saw Peter standing at the edge of the cliff. The two had never been particularly close, but Dion ran up and gave him a quick hug anyways. Peter had shed his old uniform and instead wore a jean jacket and tank top, and to Dion, he looked far more comfortable than he'd ever been when he was alive.

"How's the group holding up without us?" Peter asked. Dion nearly cried at how much he had missed Peter's familiar German accent.

"Not well," Dion admitted. "We've been falling apart. No one knows what to do anymore. They all just want their misery to end."

"Don't we all?" Peter sighed. "Now we must make this quick before you wake up, because the second you do, you won't remember any of this."

"Then how am I supposed to remember anything we talk about?"

"We'll give you clues," Heiron suggested. "When you wake up, we'll whisper in your ear. You won't remember our interaction at first, but maybe you'll be able to piece things together."

"What do I need to know?" Dion asked.

"We need to figure out how to fix a broken group," Peter responded, looking sad. "I thought things were terrible when I died, but they only seem to get worse. You need to bring up their spirits somehow because missions can't be completed with a bunch of pathetic children. Let them know that at the end, all their suffering will be worth it."

"It truly has been worth it," Heiron said dreamily. "It almost seems like the worse your life is, the more sweet your release from it will be."

"Yeah," Peter agreed. "Time stands still here. You don't have to worry about deadlines or when you'll need to return to the museum."

"But what if you don't deserve a heaven such as this?" Dion asked. "What if I don't deserve it?"

"I know only a few who don't deserve eternal peace like us," Peter growled. "The American boy. What was his name again? Was it John? He has caused the deaths of many of our friends and has turned from an innocent child into a killer. Him and those agents back at the museum. I have never met people more truly evil than the agents and their spawnlings."

"Yeah. I guess-"

Dion was cut off by a sharp pain to his temple. He yelped in pain and fell to his knees, causing Peter and Heiron to rush to his side. The pain blossomed into a burning heat that spread throughout his entire body. His head spun as if it was filled with a million bees, and his vision swam. Never before had Dion felt this dizzy and utterly sick.

"He's waking up!" Peter shouted. "Remember, Dion, you must save your group. You are the only one left who can bring them all together. Stay strong."

"And stay safe," Heiron finished. "I don't want you dying before your time. I have seen the minds of the agents. They plan something horrible for your next task."

"Thank you," Dion gasped. "And I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Heiron, for not being able to save you."

"There is nothing to be sorry for. Everything happens for a reason."

Dion nodded. The last thing he saw through his fading vision were his closest companions staring sadly down at him. Heiron placed a hand on his cheek and brushed away a strand of hair as his vision finally sank into murky darkness.

. . . . . . . . . . .

"Dion?"

Dion groggily opened his eyes, grumbling in annoyance.

"Five more minutes," he rasped, turning onto his side.

"Not today, buddy," Seth said, grinning childishly. "You've already been asleep for four days. It's time to leave."

"Four days?" he asked, shooting up into a sitting position. "What do you mean? It feels like it's been minutes. I couldn't have been asleep all that time. I was talking to..."

He paused, confused. Dion tried to remember who exactly he had been talking to, but it was like searching through a murky lake. Every time he seemed to get close to an answer, it would dash out of his fingers.

"I don't remember," he grumbled. "But people were there."

"You could have been dreaming," Seth reasoned.

"No... it was more than that. Whatever."

"I packed your things for you already, if you don't mind," Seth said, sheepishly holding up Dion's knapsack. "They gave us clothes for the night we'll be there. It shouldn't take long. All we need to do is collect information for their timeline and then we'll head home. They said the information isn't as vital as some of the stuff they've been losing due to their time meddling, but it's still necessary if we want to maintain a stable time traveling operation."

"Sounds simple enough," Dion said. "Are you already in your clothes?"

"Yeah."

Seth wore a white dress shirt tucked into black trousers, and he looked extremely awkward about both items of clothing. Dion found himself laughing so hard that Seth ended up slapping him on the arm.

"Don't laugh," Seth said, barely suppressing a smile. "At least my clothes are first class. They needed our group to divide and conquer. Half of us go to first class and half go to third."

"Don't tell me-"

"Yup. Have fun sleeping with the rats!"

"Don't say another word," Dion chuckled, pointing a finger at Seth. "If I lose my temper, you're totaled, man."

Seth keeled over in laughter, and Dion found himself breathless by how elated he was suddenly feeling. Hadn't the world been tragically bleak before he passed out? What changed? At that moment, though, he didn't care. It felt almost natural to casually quote an outdated movie from nearly 1,000 years ago. He had watched the movie after he and Seth made a daring attempt to sneak into a storage closet in the basement where they discovered a cardboard box of VHS tapes. Along with The Breakfast Club, they had found themselves engrossed in other 80's movies such as The Lost Boys and Back to The Future. No one else seemed to know of the existence of such old relics, but why would they?

"Totally?" Seth asked, struggling to suck in a full breath.

"Totally."

They both sat around laughing for a few minutes before an agent knocked on the infirmary door. The good mood instantly vanished.

"You're leaving in five. Get ready," he instructed, and then he was gone. Dion frowned, kicking the blankets off his feet.

"I guess it's time to get serious," he sighed.

"I guess," Seth responded sadly. "I'll meet you at the machine. Take some time to get dressed."

Dion nodded and Seth left the room. Once again, Dion found himself struggling to recover the memories he seemed to have lost during his coma, yet he couldn't remember any of them. That made him far more frustrated than he had ever been before, but he pushed his annoyances to the side and changed into the clothes Seth handed to him. Then he left the room with his bag and met the rest of the group at the machine.

"Glad to have you back," Cassius greeted, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Dion agreed. "But I almost wish I didn't have to come here today."

"None of us do," Ammon admitted. "We were given a briefing on the ship. What we know is quite terrifying."

"I've heard. Well, let's get this over with."

They were quiet as they entered the machine, but the silence was occasionally punctuated by annoyed grunts and sighs at Johns' presence. There was a tangible air of nervousness surrounding the group that had never been there before, though. Since their arrival at the museum, most people had been introduced to the tragedy of the Titanic. The fact that they would have to return to the ship to see the carnage was not a pleasant thought. Besides that, there was a high possibility that they could get gravely injured due to the ship sinking, and there was an even higher possibility of the time machine slipping to the bottom of the ocean. If that happened, they would all be stuck in the 1900s forever, never to return to the museum.

The machine whirred to life and the empty hallway faded into a familiar colourful vortex before jolting to the ground. Dion found himself shaking as the door slowly slid open. He could feel the engine rumbling beneath his feet and the salty smell of sea air flowed from an open porthole on the wall to his left. It was all surreal to him. Before he was taken, the prospect of a ship as massive as the Titanic had never once crossed his mind, but here he was.

A clock above the mantle of a massive fireplace chimed six, and the sight of the setting sun outside the window caused Dion's heart to jolt uncertainty. The ship was bound to hit the iceberg at around 11:40 pm, meaning the group only had six hours to collect their information and return home.

"Let's get this done quickly," Seth advised, pulling out his notebook. "Look around for artefacts and jot down any information you can find. If you have to take a picture, do it discreetly. The cameras we've been supplied are miniscule, and take the shape of a contact lens. You put it in your right eye, and on your wrist, you have to attach a little black ribbon. On that ribbon is a red button. Press that to take a picture and it will be saved to the harddrive within the device. The agent told me that they were specifically made to be waterproof for us, so the only danger is losing it on the ship. No one must know we aren't from their time, yes?"

Everyone nodded their agreement and accepted the cameras Seth passed out. The feel of the small plastic device against his eye was uncomfortable for Dion, but that would likely be the least of his worries tonight.

"This is one of our most dangerous missions yet," Seth continued. "This room is part of the first class sector of the ship, but the Titanic is so massive that it's hard not to get lost. Make sure you know where you're going so you can make it back to the room. If the ship floods and you can't make it back to the machine on time, you will likely be trapped here."

"That's reassuring," Cassius grunted. "How long do we have?"

"Six hours until the initial collision and 8 hours until the ship sinks completely. But we also must consider that she will split in half before sinking, and by the time the clock chimes two, this entire hallway will be underwater."

"This is insanity," Anne breathed, looking pale.

"Quite," Seth agreed. "If we are careful and calm, though, I know we can be successful. We've already wasted a lot of time here, so let's hurry up and get going. I'd recommend partnering up so you have a lesser chance of getting yourself stranded somewhere."

With that, he pulled Dion out of the room and down the hallway. Dion found himself engrossed in all the little details of the ship. He had an artist's eye for little patterns in the wallpaper or the vivid colours in ladies' dresses. The Titanic was a wonderland for culture, and compared to the simplistic styles from the year 3000, the 1900s was heaven. He found himself pressing the little button at his wrist every time something caught his eye, though Seth warned him against using the button too much. He didn't want to overload the system.

Dion couldn't follow through with the orders, though, because the second the grand staircase came into view, his fingers hit the button at an even more rapid pace than before. It was far more brilliant than he had ever imagined. The wooden panels on the walls gleamed as if they contained millions of ground diamonds. The intricate designs within the wooden railings surrounding the stairs were detailed with black metalwork and golden accents, and the dark tones brought out the sparkling tile floors. The entire area was lit up by a giant glass dome suspended high above the ceiling, and it gave the room a soft white glow that Dion couldn't help but adore.

"It's beautiful," he murmured, and Seth chuckled sadly.

"Too bad it'll be on the bottom of the ocean in six hours," he murmured. "All these people..."

"Don't think about that," Dion growled. "Just enjoy it. Everything is so pretty here."
"Quite."

A lady dressed in an elegant blue evening gown flounced past Dion's right, giggling as she did so. He smiled sheepishly back at her, and Seth playfully nudged him in the arm.

"I know they've got biographies of all these people back home," Seth hinted. "Try taking pictures of some of the faces. Maybe it'll help fill in some of the blanks in the museum."

"Sure."

"As a matter of fact, when you were asleep, I did some reading up on some of these passengers to make our interactions a little smoother. Though the timeline was damaged, a few passenger biographies survived. That lady that just passed by is a Miss Elsie Edith Bowerman. I do believe she survives the sinking."

"That's nice," Dion said, smiling lightly. "She seems a nice girl."

"Many of these people were nice people. Pity what happened to them."

"Yeah. Don't talk too loud, though. Remember what you said to me? They can't hear any of this."

In fact, they were already getting strange looks from the passengers. Seth was dressed in the riches of one of the elite first classmen, but Dion looked like he had crawled out of the third class and leached onto Seth's riches. He elbowed Seth, and the older of the two lead them out onto one of the decks.

Dion breathed in the sea air, feeling nauseated. He had always hated the ocean and the water, but he couldn't remember for the life of him why. The Titanic was even larger than anything he'd ever been on, and it terrified him. The deck continued to thrum as if it was alive, and the waves on the side of the boat were noisy and sprayed the hems of his shirt with water.

People milled about, enjoying the beautiful rainbow of colours the setting sun cast against the clouds. Dion saw a young man and woman walk by, their arms linked as the woman laughed delicately. These people truly had no idea about the chaos that was sure to ensue that night. As he checked his pocket watch, his fear only increased as he realized a whole hour had passed. Had he really been that engrossed in the ship's designs that a whole hour slipped by?

"Five hours left," he commented, attempting to hide the shudder in his voice.

"Yeah," Seth sighed. "I'm terrified."

"I'm not-"

"No need to hide it," Seth cut him off lightly. "I can see you shaking. I'm just as scared as you are, if that helps. This accident was horrifying and there's no denying it. Acting like you aren't scared only proves how spooked you really are."

"I'm sorry," Dion apologized quickly. "I'm just not good at these high stakes missions. This is more pressure than we've ever been under."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a bit. Every so often, Dion heard the soft sound of Seth's camera clicking as he gazed across the deck. Seth looked sadder than ever at the sight of all these people. He knew something they didn't. None of them knew that tonight would be their last night. Another hour slipped by, and as it did, the sun sank below the horizon and the sky faded into a deep midnight blue. Dion once again pulled out his pocket watch and sucked in a sharp intake of breath.

"It's 9 o'clock," he said.

"I guess it is," Seth grunted. "Why don't we go get something to eat before this all goes down, yeah?"

"Are you kidding?" Dion gasped. "Seth, all of these people are going to die tonight and you want to lounge around eating caviar?"

"It's for our task," Seth reminded him. "We're meant to give the museum all the information we can about the time period and what went on before, during, and after the sinking. The only way to do that is by trying to blend in and experiencing it all with these passengers."

Dion groaned but allowed Seth to lead him back inside and through the winding hallways towards the first class dining hall. To be honest, Dion knew he wouldn't be able to force down any food before such a traumatic event, so he agreed to simply pick at the food and drink whatever was offered. Seth ended up taking him to one of the finest 1st class restaurants, the saloon. They were offered seats at one of the back tables, though Dion got odd looks from his less-than-perfect attire. The second Dion sat down in the luxurious green chair he was offered, his eyes instantly popped out of his head.

"10 courses?" he gasped. "How do they have the capacity to eat so much?"

"I don't know," Seth said. He too looked impressed and slightly disgusted at the multitude of foreign foods offered for their eating pleasures. "I don't suppose I can even pronounce half of these."

"Me neither. Whatever. It won't matter in a few hours anyways."

Dion accepted all the food he was given, though he ate no more than a spoonful of each. In the end, he was as full as he would be if he ate an entire meal because the courses just kept coming. One after the other, each delicious morsel was passed under Dion's nose, and he had to hold down his bile as he ate more and more. The panic he was feeling was beginning to expand as the hours passed by, and the food wasn't helping. Occasionally he would snap a picture or two of a waiter passing by or of the brilliant colour of a lady's dress. Despite his anxieties about the mission, it was quite a brilliant ship, and he almost wished he had more time to experience all that the Titanic had to offer, but of course, his hopes were cut off as a nearby clock chimed 11.

Seth visibly paused for a second, the spoon midway to his mouth, before he set it down and stood up abruptly, motioning for Dion to do the same. The two raced from the dining room and back out onto the deck, descending a small flight of stairs to stand at the edge of the ship. For once, Dion was thankful for the cold wind that blew through his hair, and the salty sea smell didn't bother him as much.

"Take it in one last time," Seth said dejectedly, "for this may be the last time anyone on this boat rest easy. Any minute now, it will all unfold."

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Anne didn't seem to consider this mission to be dangerous at all. In fact, the only thing she could focus on was the pure hatred she felt for the man standing beside her. John sat around lazily, snapping pictures of cute girls as they walked by, and each time she heard the soft click of his camera, her vision only began to tint even more red.

"If you take one more picture on that infernal device," Anne warned, pointing a finger at John's chest, "I will personally remove it from your eye and throw it off the vessel."

"Okay, jeez," John whistled, raising his hands in surrender. "I'm sorry it was annoying you, princess. I'm just a simple man trying to help fill in the timeline, is all."

"You can photograph more important things," Anne suggested. "If you would let us leave this corridor, we might be able to experience some adventure before it all goes south."

"Why would I ever want that? I've heard about the Titanic, doll, and it's far worse than you'd ever expect."

"I know nothing of the Titanic. Why would I encumber myself with the knowledge of such a tragedy?"

"You know nothing?" John gasped. "Are you mad? Why would you ever accompany us on such a trip if you knew nothing?"

"I don't suppose it was such a big deal," Anne shrugged. "The machine is right around the corner. And besides, how bad can a simple boat crash be? Surely we are perfectly safe."

"You cannot be more ignorant, can you? Whatever. I won't deal with your petty ways right now. You stay here. I am going to secure myself a lifeboat so that I can escape this ship while I have the chance."

"You aren't returning with us?"

"No, I don't suspect I will," he admitted. "I have business to attend to in New York. My good friend Charlie should be around 17 at the time these guys will arrive in America. I can scout him out and make arrangements to stay with him. Dion will likely assume I'm dead, and boy will he take a thrill out of that one."

"You can't stay!" Anne shrieked. "This is madness. Charles won't know who you are. Your friend is from the museum, not from 1912."

"When he gets taken, I can come with him," John argued. "I'll convince the agents that I know of the museum. You will see me again, I promise."

"You are messing with something you simply do not understand. You haven't been at the museum long enough to know how much is truly at stake here. An attempt like this could permanently alter the course of time as we know it."

"I don't care what happens. I just want out. Good day, Anne."

With that, John shot up from his seat and sprinted down the corridor, disappearing behind a wall of people returning to their bedrooms after a long day. Anne's heart began beating out of her chest. She truly had no idea what she was doing without John. Though she hated him, he was far more organized in his approach of tasks like these than her, and she hadn't truly been paying attention to what Dion was saying. Why should she? She was too much enjoying her reflection in the large gilded mirror to care. The dress she was given truly fit her figure far better than some others, and she would rue the day she had to take it off.

Anne stood up and looked around in a panic. What room was theirs again? Did she risk opening every door until she found it? What would Dion do?

Nervous tears pricked at her eyes as she turned a corner and looked around. Why did everything look so similar. Anne quickly ran down the corridor and stopped before letting out a quiet sob. The hallways all looked the same. Not knowing where she was going, she made her way deeper and deeper into the ship's interior, crying her lungs out and praying for someone to find her.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Crunch.

Seth allowed Dion to hurriedly bury his face in Seth's jacket, successfully hiding the menacing iceberg from view. Both of them would need to stay outside until the last possible second so that they could get more in depth photos of what happened on the lifeboats, but Dion's anxiety was flaring up again and Seth didn't know if they would be able to go through with the operation. It had all been going so well before. He had even gotten Dion to eat a full meal and drink some of the warm drinks that were offered to him, but all the progress went downhill in an instant.

"It's alright," Seth whispered encouragingly. "We've got plenty of time. You will be perfectly safe while this is happening. I won't let anything happen to you, alright?"

Dion nodded rapidly, wincing as the ice scraped yet again at the ship's side. Seth was like the older brother he never had, and just his presence alone was beginning to calm Dion's nerves. Dion breathed in the scene of Seth's jacket, finding solace in the familiar scent. Seth smelled of parchment and a crackling log fire, both of which reminded Dion of home.

Within moments, the sounds of rapid scraping faded away and they leaned over the side railing to watch the iceberg fade into the distance. Almost at once, some of the lower class citizens raced out onto the deck, kicking around the ice chunks and having a jolly good time about it. Seth dutifully snapped pictures on his camera, sighing as he did so. It was clear he knew who some of these people were, and from the mournful glances he gave them, they likely didn't make it.

"Should we find the others?" Dion asked nervously. "Will they be alright?"

"Oh, I'm sure of it," Seth responded. "Ammon and Cassius know what they're doing."

"But Anne? What about John?"

"I still don't trust him, but I know he's capable of keeping Anne safe. For now, let's move closer to the lifeboats. Hopefully we can catch the action right as it begins."

They carefully moved closer to the lifeboats, trying to look casual as they leaned up against a wall. To the rest on the deck, the change went unnoticed, but already, the two boys were beginning to feel the nearly nonexistent slant of the deck as the bow began to fill with water.

. . . . . . . . . . .

"You felt that?" Cassius asked, grasping onto a nearby wall to steady himself. "Is it time?" Ammon checked his pocket watch and nodded.

"11:40 pm on the dot," he commented. "I assume Seth and Dion are out exploring the decks. Shall we get the view from indoors?"

"I suppose so."

They walked down the hallway slowly, watching as stewards went from door to door waking up the passengers. Cassius snorted every time one of the pompous first class brats slammed the door in a crewman's face. It appeared they valued their warm cup of tea and sophisticated armchairs over their own safety. Cas almost wished to see their faces as they realized the ship and all their belongings would sink below the waves, but he quieted those thoughts.

"Nothing will be going on here for a bit. Should we go down a few floors and see if we can find some of the flooding?" Ammon asked.

"Sure," Cassius said, shrugging as they made their way to the nearest staircase.

Third class passengers were already streaming to the higher decks, spooked by the fact that all their carpets were soaked as the floors beneath their feet slowly submerged in icy sea water. The stewards below decks weren't as kind as the ones tending to the first class. From what Cassius had read, those on the upper decks only handled a few rooms at a time, and their efforts went to helping dress the residents and getting them outside in an orderly fashion. Those few crewmen the lower levels, though, dealt with the entire class and resorted to simply throwing open doors and instructing the residents to put on their lifebelts.

As they descended the small staircase to explore the lower levels, Cassius smiled inwardly as he realized that his reading was correct. He snapped a picture or two of the stewards as they ushered people up onto higher floors, and he was especially diligent in capturing the absolute fear and panic on the faces of people as they were herded out of their quarters.

"If I remember correctly," Cassius commented, "the stewards were instructed to begin their rounds at around 12:05 am. Luckily that piece of information is correct."

Ammon nodded, looking distracted as he peered through the sea of people flooding in the opposite direction to them. As a steward clad in the typical black Titanic uniform, Ammon tapped him on the shoulder.

"Sorry, sir," he began, "but do you know what's going on?" The worker looked nervous, and he carefully pulled Ammon and Cassius into a quiet part of the hallway to relay the information.

"From the looks of it, she's going down," he whispered. "I don't know the details yet, but from the looks of it, it's worse than the captain's letting on. I also heard from a mate of mine that the captain ordered the radio operators to start sending out distress calls."

"That's crazy," Cassius breathed. "Thank you so much."

The crewman turned away to help out some more passengers, and when he was gone, Cassius discreetly wrote down the information in his notebook, carefully marking the time and the events happening within that time span. He meant to keep the notebook neat and organised so that the information could be relayed in chronological order, but it was already turning into a jumbled mess.

"Let's look around for another moment and then we should go up to the deck," Ammon suggested. "Once the water starts coming, we will need to retreat to the machine for departure."

"Agreed," Cassius said, and they set off again.

For a bit, they didn't find anything unusual. Cassius recommended they return to the bow of the ship to see where the water was flooding in, and as they traveled in that direction, they both became aware of the fact that their shoes were beginning to slosh on the wet carpet. Turning a corner, both gasped as nearly three inches of water rapidly approached them from somewhere on the opposite end of the ship.

"Ain't that a spooky sight?" Ammon asked, rapidly backpedaling so he didn't soak his shoes.

"Quite. It's beginning to get serious. Let's get upstairs."

"Sure..."

Ammon looked around for a moment, scratching his chin. Cassius frowned, sensing a problem.

"Is something the matter?" he asked.

"I mean..." Ammon grunted, looking embarrassed. "I don't seem to remember the way back up to the deck.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Seth rubbed uncomfortably at his ears, groaning at the intensity of the sound emitting from the funnels above the ship. It was as if a million trains blew their whistles at once, but the sound had been put through a filter and it came out at a much lower pitch than before. It was loud, obtrusive, and made conversation between the two impossible. As crew members began to set up the lifeboats to prepare them for launch, they had to communicate using hand gestures due to the loud noise. Seth would have found the motions funny if not for the dire situation at hand.

To pass the time, Seth counted the lifeboats lining the side of the boat. He only counted 16, though he was sure there were more somewhere. He tried to remember the amount of passengers that ended up on the Titanic during the sinking. It had to be at least 2000 people, so how would they all fit in the boats? What was the reasoning for the shortage of necessary safety equipment?

Another worrying thing was the fact that Seth hadn't seen the captain anywhere. The officers seemed to sense this as well, because they ran around aimlessly, setting up boats but not seeming to understand why. Did the captain never give them the orders to evacuate the ship, and if so, why? What was he doing the whole time? None of these men seemed to know what they were doing, so why weren't they getting help?

Seth let out an annoyed huff as the chaos only began to escalate. By then, there was a definite slant to the deck. Some of those previously playing with the ice had stopped and were testing out the floorboards, trying to figure out what was amiss. It was a surreal feeling to be watching this all firsthand, Seth noticed. He had read all about it at the museum due to it being a major tragedy that most museum-goers found interesting, but witnessing it first hand was far beyond anything he'd ever seen or experienced before.

By now, people were beginning to filter out onto the deck. Dion pulled out his watch again, and it was nearly 12:20 am. He recorded the time in his notebook, watching as some of the officers began yelling orders for women and children to begin loading into the lifeboats. By now, some were beginning to feel the gravity of the situation, and people were forced to rush goodbyes as they were forced onto the lifeboats. It didn't take long for the first boat to be lowered. Dion recorded this in his notebook. It was boat number 7.

"Exactly as I remember reading," Seth grunted under his breath.

When it was clear that things were getting serious, Seth grabbed Dion's arm and pulled him out onto the deck. They joined the crowd of people beginning to stream into the boats, and Seth narrowed his eyes. Why weren't they filling the boats to the full capacity? He nudged Dion's arm again and pointed to the boats, a questioning look in his eyes. Dion assessed the situation and frowned, shrugging back. Seth crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, struggling not to get sucked into the swirling vortex of people surging to get into the lifeboats as the chaos only continued to escalate.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Anne raced through the ship, barely conscious of where she was going. She could feel the ship beginning to slant under her feet, so she ran in the opposite direction. Maybe, she thought, if she could make it to the stern of the ship, she could find her way up to the boat deck and meet up with Seth and Dion. They would know where to go.

She paused her sprinting for a moment, looking around for a clue as to where she was. A small bronze plaque on the wall to her right listed a room number, but that wouldn't help her. She needed to find a staircase and quickly. Every few moments, the ship would raise a little higher and her feet would have a harder time staying planted on the carpet. If she didn't hurry, she would surely go down with the ship.

Anne picked up her pace, turning right down the nearest corridor. Somewhere in the distance, she heard voices. If she could find these people, she could follow them up top as the passengers had been on the ship long enough to find their way around. As she ran, though, the voices seemed to get farther and farther away. She couldn't be going in the wrong direction, could she? Confused, Anne paused again, her breathing heavy, but the voices were already gone. She let out another panicked sob and fell to her knees, pulling at her hair. It was pointless.

Suddenly there were rapid footsteps behind her.

"Miss? Miss, are you alright?"

Anne turned her tear-filled eyes to face the boy running towards her. She was sure she looked a right mess, but at the moment, nothing seemed to matter. The teen skidded to a stop and helped her to her feet, looking concerned.

"What happened?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so," Anne sniffed. "I'm just lost."

"What about your family? Your friends? Why'd they leave you alone?" Anne thought back to John and her eyes narrowed.

"I was with a boy. He grew tired of me and left me behind to flee the ship. My other friends await me by the lifeboats."

"I can help you find them," the boy suggested. "I'm afraid I don't know my way around too well, but it will help to have some company."

"Of course," Anne smiled, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. The boy gave her a small smile and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, placing it gently in her palm.

"I'm Edgar, by the way. Edgar Samuel Andrew."

"I'm Anne Elizabeth Myers," she greeted, blushing as Edgar bent down to kiss her hand.

"A pleasure. Now come on. My buddy down in third class told me there's water seeping into the ship. We need to get you to your friends before it's too late."

Anne nodded, and Edgar quickly lead her down the hallway and back the way he came. Anne was still shaky on her feet so Edgar grabbed her hand and pulled her deeper and deeper into the ship. He seemed to have a vague idea of where he was going, but every few turns he would have to stop and look around. Surprisingly, Edgar wasn't a bad navigator, and it only took fifteen minutes for them to make their way to the brilliant grand staircase.

"We made it," Edgar gasped.

By then, the ship was far more slanted than when it began. Anne struggled to keep herself upright due to the angle of the floorboards, but Edgar kept a steady hand on her arm and acted as a support beam. He looked around for a moment before spotting a stream of people exiting through a door to their right. Quickly he pulled Anne over to the people and pushed and shoved their way outside.

"You need to get yourself on a lifeboat!" Edgar shouted.

"I can't!" Anne cried. "I need to find my friends!"

"I'm sure they'll be alright. Your safety is the most important thing right now!" He began to push her towards the lifeboats, and Anne looked around nervously, trying to spot Seth or Dion through the thrum of people.

"Please!"

"I'm sorry. Your friends will have to find their own way off the boat by themselves."

Anne set her jaw, holding back the tears. This couldn't be her end. Edgar gently grabbed her hand once more, pressing a small object into her palm before someone roughly grabbed her shoulders and hauled her into the lifeboat, leaving Edgar looking heartbroken on the boat deck. He waved goodbye sadly and faded back into the sea of people, causing a small sob to rip through Anne's throat. An elderly woman sitting next to Anne gently pulled her to her breast, whispering soft words in her ear.

"It will be alright, dearie," the woman cooed. "He will find himself a lifeboat, I promise."

Anne couldn't fathom how she was supposed to respond, so she only nodded and allowed the tears to fall from her eyes as she softly ran her fingers over the beautiful golden watch Edgar had given her. He truly was a sweet boy, and she yearned to return to the museum and look him up in their biographies. Someone as sweet as him had to survive.

"Lower away!" one of the officers shouted, and the lifeboat began to jolt as it was slowly lowered down towards the churning water below.

But how would she look him up if she never made it back? She couldn't remain on the boat and return to the time machine. Anne looked around, seeing her grief mirrored in the eyes of the other women surrounding her. They would make it back to America, sick with grief at the loss of their husbands and brothers, but who had she lost? She had met Edgar 20 minutes ago, and she wasn't even from his time period. That's when she knew what she had to do.

Determined, Anne stood up in her seat, ignoring the cries of the ladies as she made her way to the side of the boat near the ship. The old woman to her right screamed in terror as Anne put one foot on the side of the lifeboat and pushed. She was only in the air for a second, but the sheer horror she felt as she latched onto the side of the Titanic mirrored that of the old lady's. Two men helped haul her back into the boat, sad understanding in her eyes as she sprinted across the deck to the nearest staircase. All those still trapped on the ship had the most depressing resolution on their faces. They all knew they were going to die, and that hit Anne like a blow to the chest.

Once again, Anne found herself on the deck. By now, people were all screaming and crying out as the ship tilted even more forwards. A nearby clock read 1:30, and Anne felt her heart drop. She was out of time. People pushed past her in waves to get to the stern of the ship as the bow continued to sink, and she fought the current. Seth and Dion wouldn't flee with them. They would be making their way back to the room, but where was the room?

"Seth! Dion!" she screamed, her voice lost in the sea of other screaming voices. "Where are you?"

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Did you hear that?" Dion asked, craning his neck to look passed the wall.

"Hear what?" Seth asked, grunting as someone roughly elbowed him in the gut as they sprinted past.

"Seth! Dion!" the voice screamed again. This time, Seth heard it and he perked up.

"Is that Anne?" he asked, looking around for her mess of blonde curls.

"I think so. We need to find her if we're getting out of here on time."

They peeled themselves off the wall and pushed their way through the crowd. Anne continued shouting from somewhere to their right, but her voice seemed to get further and further away. It was as if she was being carried away by the stream of people running for the stern of the ship. They only picked up their pace, and by a stroke of luck, Dion spotted Anne twenty feet ahead of them. She looked desperate as a boy latched onto her arm and pulled her forwards. A surge of brotherly protectiveness washed over Seth as he tripled his pace to catch up with them, grabbing Anne and pulling her to the side and down a nearby staircase.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" the boy shouted. "You can't go down there! Have you seen how high the water's gotten?"

"Who do you think you are?" Seth shouted, getting right into the teen's face. "Who gave you the right to put your hands on Anne like that?"

"Seth!" Anne shouted, pulling the two boys apart. "It's ok. Edgar was trying to get me to the stern where it's safest." The boy nodded, looking miffed.

"The ship's going down fast," the boy added on. "Going down below is the most dangerous thing you could do right now. If we hurry, we can still make it up top."

"We can't," Dion argued. "We have to make it back to our room where our friends are waiting for us."

"Are you crazy?"

"You would never understand. Get yourself to safety while you still can," Seth instructed.

"No way am I leaving Anne alone with you freaks. I'm coming with you."

"Now who's the crazy one?" Dion asked. "If you come with us, you will die. The water's too high already."

"I don't care," Edgar argued.

Seth rolled his eyes but nodded, pulling Anne in front of him and racing down the corridor. He managed to navigate his way towards the grand staircase, gasping as he saw the water had risen. Looking down the stairs, he saw that the bottom few floors were underwater, and as the seconds flew by, the green foam only rose more. They were truly out of time.

"Follow me! We may only have minutes left," Seth screamed.

They set out at a sprint, following the path Seth had memorised in his mind. It took them minutes to reach their room, and by the time they threw open the door, the carpets were already beginning to soak. The time machine was set in one of the back rooms, so it was still out of view of Edgar's prying eyes.

"What are we going to do about the kid?" Dion asked.

"I don't know," Seth admitted. "We can't just take him with us."

"Why not?" Anne hissed. "He's helped us this far."

"It would upset the order of things," Seth said firmly. "He'll have to stay here."

"But he'll die!"

"So be it."

"What are you talking about?" Edgar asked, looking confused. "Why are we here?"

By then, Anne had begun to cry. She looked desperately from Seth to Dion, but both looked down. The older one gave Edgar a hard look and turned away, his shoulders hunched. The other man only sighed and left the room, retreating to a back bedroom where he began to input the museum's information into the side panel of their time machine.

"I'm so sorry, Edgar," Anne sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you everything. It was too dangerous."

"What do you mean?" Edgar asked, looking desperately into Anne's eyes. "Why can't you come with me out onto the deck? Every moment here is less time you have to save yourself!"

"I'm not from here, Edgar. I come from a land in the future. My group was sent back to collect information about the Titanic, but I got separated from the others. I would have died if you hadn't saved me."

"The... future? What do you mean?" Anne only cried harder at the deep confusion in Edgar's eyes.

"The year 3000. I was taken from my home in the past and brought to the future to do jobs for a museum. They sent us back using a time machine that we have in the back room. If I stayed on the ship with you, I would never have returned home. That's why we had to come here."

"You..." Edgar looked around, his eyes wide as if his whole world had been shattered. He looked betrayed, but at the same time, hopeful. "So you will survive."

"Yes," Anne cried. "But you won't if you stay here. You must leave."

"But I cannot. What lies for me outside that door is chaos and a cold, lonely death. They will not take men in the lifeboats. I will not survive if I leave your side."

"But you can try! You have a chance to live!"

"For what purpose?" Edgar asked, his eyes filling with tears. "I have all I need right here. I have known you for barely a day, and yet I have found more happiness by your side than I ever have before. What would I be in a world without that happiness?"

"Edgar, you can't," Anne sobbed. "I'm not allowed to bring you with me to the museum. You will die in this room."

"But I will spend my last moments with you. Water seeps under the door as we speak, but there is no better way to go out than with the most special person I have ever met. You are special, Anne Myers. Never forget that."

Anne sank to her knees, wailing loudly. Her shoulders shook from sadness and the cold, and Edgar gingerly placed his jacket on her back. He pulled her into his arms as Dion finally reappeared from the back room, gesturing for the group to hurry up. Anne only buried her head into Edgar's chest, soaking his shirt with tears.

"Thank you," Edgar whispered, tucking a strand of Anne's hair behind her ear. "Today was the biggest adventure of my life." Anne only cried harder, biting her lip so hard it began to bleed. "Don't hurt yourself, darling. Please join your friends. I don't want you leaving this earth in the same way I do."

He gingerly helped Anne to her feet and lead her into the bedroom where Seth, Dion, and two others were waiting. They all entered the machine, leaving Anne and Edgar standing alone in the middle of the room. Anne gripped Edgar's hand tightly, her knuckles white. Edgar smiled sadly and carefully slipped a small ring off his finger, sliding it onto Anne's left hand.

"That ring is a promise," Edgar murmured. "It is a promise that I will watch you from above when I die. When you return to your museum, I will be there for you. Trust me."

Anne nodded and allowed Edgar to lead her into the machine. The boy then stepped back, waving sadly at Anne as the door slipped shut, so Anne pressed up against the window to watch him as long as possible. Just as the machine began to whirr and shake, the front door burst open and icy cold water rushed in. Anne screamed in sadness as Edgar was pushed to the ground by the force of the water, but the teen only smiled up at her. As the interior of the room faded into the vortex of colours, Anne watched as Edgar's lips formed three words before the scene completely faded from view.

"I love you."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

John's legs felt numb as he pushed towards the stern of the ship. The ship groaned and the lights flickered once, causing screaming to start up as people continued to race towards the high ground. The second his hand connected with the railing, he pulled himself up so that he was on the opposite side, his legs dangling over the 300 foot drop leading down into the empty sea below. Once again the lights flickered, but this time, they never came back on. At this point, those who weren't already on the railings began sliding down the ship, screaming as they collided with furniture of walls that suspended above the deck level. He tried to ignore the sounds those impacts made, but the screams never left his mind.

He closed his eyes as the ship groaned again, a deep rumbling reverberating throughout the vessel. He could feel the shudders in his fingertips, shaking him hard enough that he nearly lost his grip. John had done enough research on the shipwreck to know what this meant. The Titanic was splitting in half.

The people around him began to scream as the deck began to splinter and separate. There seemed to be a split second of unearthly quiet before the stern suddenly began to rocket downwards. Wails of terror and agony ripped through the sky as it sailed back down towards the water. The feeling of impact as it finally landed atop the waves was jarring and almost made John lose his grip. Dozens of people did end up losing their footing and plummeted down to the water, screaming every second as they went.

John gritted his teeth as the bow began to sink below the waves, pulling the stern back up towards the sky. This was the final descent. John found himself paralyzed with fear as the ship bobbed in the air for a moment before it began its slow descent back down into the water. His initial plan suddenly seemed to stupid. Why would he assume he could ever make it onto a lifeboat? Now he was going to die and it was no one's fault but his own.

He looked down at the waters below. Bodies littered the waves, frozen and dark against the emptiness of the ocean. It was oddly beautiful in a sick, twisted way. The water began to get closer and closer as the ship sank further and further into the ocean. John felt his hold on the railings slacken due to the salty sea spray making them slippery, but he made no effort to reconnect them. Instead, he let himself lean back and fall from the ship completely.

Everything seemed to quiet as he fell through the air. The wind whistled past his ears as the water got closer and closer. John smiled to himself. Finally he would be saved from the museum's torment. He would be free.

John barely even felt the impact of the water.

Within milliseconds, he was gone. 

Spot 3: ariel_paiement1

January 28, 1986. The date flashed across the screen of the time machine hub, alerting the weary travelers to yet another anomaly. Manfred stared at the screen with bleary eyes, wondering why it didn't say what the event was on that date. The hub always told them which events were supposed to occur around that time, but this time, there was nothing.

The reason for this was two-fold. First, the machine was unable to determine what event had thrown this particular time-line off. Second, the machine had rightly ascertained that the information available in this time-line would be vital to its own existence. It ran a few more calculations while Manfred and the others were looking at the screen and then beeped, scrolling another message across the screen. Send two teams. Recommended course of action: put machine on autopilot.

Manfred crossed his arms, frowning down at the screen. The hub, he thought, had never made recommendations in the past. "Lucia? What's it doing?"

Lucia peered over his shoulder. "I'm not sure. Usually the machines only make suggestions when the situation is dire. I'd follow the recommendation it's making."

Manfred chewed on his lower lip. "There's not that many of us left."

They all looked at each other as they crowded around the hub. Manfred, Lucia, Aetius, and Nefertiti were the only ones who remained from their initial team. Others had already been sent out to do other missions in various time periods. They were, unfortunately, all that remained.

"This is going to be dangerous." Aetius scratched the back of his neck. "More dangerous than in the past, anyway."

Lucia stared at the floor, scuffing a shoe along the seamless metal. Aetius was right, she thought, and no one knew what they'd face out there. Just that the machine thought it was bad enough to recommend a splitting of the group and autopilot. If the hub went down, they'd be stranded with no way to call the machine back.

Manfred cleared his throat. "Is there a way to get more information on how the teams should be split?"

The machine, which had been running more simulations and looking for more data, emitted a high-pitched squeal. Teams should be split as follows: team one with three people and team two with one.

Lucia frowned, wondering how the second team could really be a team with only one individual. She shrugged it off. "There's your answer."

Manfred sucked in a breath. If the second team had only one person, there was a reason, and he was willing to wager it was the most dangerous part of this mission. "You three will go together with one of the tablets to transmit back to the machine. I'll go after you three and will take the last tablet so I can also transmit whatever I find back to the machine."

Aetius crossed his arms. "You can't."

"I beg your pardon?" Manfred raised a brow at Aetius, thinking that the soldier was acting strangely to defy him this way. "That wasn't a request. It was an order."

Aetius shook his head. "I can't let you go someplace unknown by yourself. If something happens, you'll have no—"

"I know." Manfred turned away from them, swallowing the lump in his throat. "And I will not put any of you in that situation. I've lived a long, troubled life. If it ends trying to ensure the security of the world as we know, I can think of no better use."

Bowing his head, Aetius backed off. "Very well. Lucia, Nefertiti. With me." Turning, he strode to the time machine.

Nefertiti followed without comment, but Lucia hung back, thinking about what they might face. "Manfred, if you do this, you may not return."

Manfred didn't answer, thinking that it was a high possibility he wouldn't. This was a decent assumption to make since many of them hadn't returned, and that had been with backup. He was heading into a situation with no information and no backup. It was suicide, he thought, and because of that, he couldn't allow anyone else to do it.

Lucia bit her lip. "Come back alive, okay?"

He turned to her with a half-smile on his lips. "I've made it this far. Don't worry about me. Now go on! We've got a time table to keep."

She spun on her heel, snapping a jaunty salute back at him before marching for the time machine. Over her shoulder, she called out, "We've nothing but time, it seems. Time to fix things." She lowered her voice to a murmur that only she could hear. "And plenty of time to screw things up."

***

Manfred hunched in his seat at the hub, spinning to take in the room filled with wires, gears, and whirring instrument panels. The voices of comrades no longer filled the space, and the squeak of the sticking joint in his chair's seat squealed in the cavernous space. He shoved away from the panel he'd been working at and rose, popping his back and raising his arms above his head to stretch his sore muscles. Everything ached, and his hand went to his chest where the dull throb never faded. His head pulsated with a pulse all its own, but he shoved the distraction away and meandered to the second panel of instruments.

His finger hovered over the blinking red button that would sign away control of the machine to the hub. He gnawed on his lower lip. It was not that he feared death, nor was it that he feared the pain of dying. No, it was that Manfred von Richthofen feared that he and his comrades might not return and, in doing so, might doom the world. This thought wasn't a recent one, though he hadn't given it room to flourish. Still, even with limited time to grow, it had dug into every cranny and crevice of his mind, burrowing deep and refusing to be rooted out like the weeds that had grown in his mother's garden.

He shook his head.

It didn't matter, he thought, if they all died. At least if they all died now, they'd die knowing they'd tried. And if they didn't try, they'd all perish anyway, he thought.

His finger trembled for an instant then steadied.

He pressed the button, a numb tranquility washing over him. If he died today, it would be for a good purpose. Striding to the time machine, which had by now returned from carrying the others off in Utah in 1986, Manfred climbed aboard for what would be the last time.

He buckled himself in for the ride, feeling more at peace with the strap fastened over his waist. The measure was, he admitted, a useless one, but it was one that brought comfort nonetheless. Settling back with the tablet in his lap, he dropped his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. The machine jerked and bucked for a moment and then transitioned to the smooth sailing of previous trips.

The ride through the vortex was passed in indomitable silence. Manfred reclined in his chair at the machine's control panel, lost in his own nostalgia. The machine hurtled through the space-time continuum in an equally silent fashion, recognizing in its own way the brevity of the situation.

The oddity of a machine that could understand such things had been lost long ago, but now the machine traveled with a greater speed and urgency because its very existence was threatened by the recent turn of events. The knowledge that the three it had left in 1986 were working on it was of some relief to the sentient being of wires, bolts, screws, and metal scraps. It soon left off thinking about it, deciding that if the outcome wasn't desirable, nothing could be done anyway. Fretting was a human emotion it wasn't capable of at its current upgrade status, so the machine sent its computing power to other more sensible things as machines were wont to do.

In this strangely lulling manner, the machine continued on its way with Manfred tucked cosily inside. It paused as it approached the time line and scanned through the space in time where it needed to be. Finding the hole to that location, it popped through with a merry whistle and deposited Manfred in the back of the crew cabin of the Challenger. The year was 1986 and the day was January 28. Satisfied, the machine opened the door, picked up the sleeping Manfred with a clawed arm, and deposited him on the floor, safely ensconced behind a pile of supplies and blankets, which had been bolted down. A suit and helmet followed Manfred, flopping onto the floor beside him. It dropped the tablet in his lap and vaulted back through the hole in space and time just as the crew of the Challenger arrived.

Manfred, having woken up just in time to see his time machine blip out of existence, almost gave himself away by sitting up. Fortunately, he realized people were boarding the capsule where he'd been left, and he laid back down before he was seen. Where had he ended up, he asked himself. And if this was 1986, what disaster awaited him here? These were all very good questions, though they were, in this case, all the wrong questions.

Had Manfred known what would transpire, he might've gotten up and made a scene simply to delay the impending disaster. But, Manfred didn't know what was to occur here, so he kept his mouth shut and stayed still, listening to the crew of the Challenger as they boarded.

"I'm glad the launch wait is over. Prepping for this the first two times we had a delay was bad enough." McAuliffe scrambled on-board with a smile.

Smith, who was to pilot this fateful mission, shrugged. "Better safe than sorry, McAuliffe."

The teacher bit her lip and nodded. "Of course. NASA always has been good about putting safety first."

Scobee, the commander of the Challenger, clapped Smith on the back. "We're all cleared for launch. You set to go, folks?"

The crew crowded into the crew compartment with broad smiles.

"Yes, sir!" Ronald McNair and Ellison Onizuka saluted him with matching grins.

"Hasn't been a day I wasn't ready to go, sir." Judith Resnik, the flight's third mission specialist, clambered into her seat with a smirk.

Gregory Jarvis buckled in beside her with a snicker. "True enough, Jud."

Resnik raised a brow at their Payload Specialist. "Is that sarcasm I hear? None of that now. We're to take the first teacher into space today. No time for your cheek."

Jarvis grinned back at her.

McAuliffe buckled into the seat across from theirs. "You two bicker like an old married couple."

McNair roared with laughter, his pearl teeth shining against his ebony skin. "Darn right they do. Better be careful though, Resnik. That husband of yours might not like you getting on so well with Jarvis here." He buckled into the seat behind Jarvis.

Resnik thought about the statement for a moment, her cheeks reddening. This was a highly likely possibility, but her husband understood the need for camaraderie amongst team members for missions like this. "He wouldn't say a thing, and you know it."

Smith and Scobee exchanged glances, smiling at their teammates' antics. They strapped in at the seats in front of the pilot and co-pilot flight panels.

"Alright, you lot!" Scobee tugged his helmet on. "Helmets on. We're scheduled to launch in less than two minutes."

In his spot behind the supplies, Manfred scrambled about as quietly as possible, looking for anything that resembled a helmet. He might not fear death, but that didn't mean he wanted to die. Especially not now when he'd gathered no solid information on the situation here.

His arm knocked against the helmet and the suit. The helmet was the first thing he struggled into. The rest wasn't going to go on quietly. Fortunately for him, the crew was busy chattering away over the headset links in the helmets. His had been turned on so he could hear what was going on, but the blinking light by the speaker indicated that he couldn't communicate.

Well, he thought, at least he wouldn't alert them to his presence by accident. He maneuvered into the suit and zipped it up as quietly as possible. Onizuka, another of the mission specialists, shifted in his seat, and Manfred froze, thinking that it was all over now. Then the man settled back in his seat. Manfred bit his lip, realizing that they were preparing for take off, and he wasn't buckled in.

Was it possible to survive a takeoff in this sort of machine without being buckled in? One seat sat empty beside Onizuka, but he had no way to reach it without being caught.

The universe has a funny way of dealing with anomalies, and in Manfred's case, the universe dealt with his situation at just the right moment. He could feel the roar of the engines beneath him, and the entire crew cabin shuddered as the Challenger prepared for takeoff. At just that moment, he shifted, and the tablet slid off him, clinking against the back of Onizuka's chair.

Onizuka glanced back and spotted him. The astronaut said nothing for a moment, and the two of them stared at each other in silence. A frown worked its way onto Onizuka's brow. There wasn't supposed to be an eighth passenger, he thought. He cleared his throat. "Hey, Scob, were we supposed to have an eighth passenger?"

Scobee peered back at Onizuka, wondering if the man had lost it. That, he pondered, would be a bad thing indeed because they needed all of the crew functioning at full mental capacity. "What're you going on about back there? An eighth?"

"Yeah, an eighth." Onizuka shook his head, blinking and wondering if he was seeing things. Manfred was still there when he reopened his eyes, so he decided that if he was seeing things, the vision was persistent. "We got an eighth geared up back here."

By now, the others had all turned to look at Onizuka too. From the flight deck of the crew cabin, the pilot and commander couldn't see Manfred, but the others could, and low murmurs broke out amongst the crew.

Mission control came crackling over the intercom at that moment, cutting the chatter. "Take-off in 3. 2. 1."

Onizuka was the first to snap into action. "I don't know who you are, but you'd better get locked in before the launch gets too much speed under it. You're along for the ride now. No way off this thing until we land."

Manfred nodded, snatching his tablet from the floor and following instructions. Scobee could see him in the rearview now, and he swore, thinking that it shouldn't be possible to gain an eighth. Launch security had been too tight, but here the newcomer was. "Well, I'll be."

Smith glanced in the mirror too, shaking his head. "How'd we pick up a straggler, sir?"

"No idea."

While the captain and commander observed the newcomer with bated breaths, Onizuka and the others began the interrogation. This interrogation felt more like an inquisition to Manfred, but he endured it, hoping he'd be able to figure out what the time machine wanted him to upload before anything bad happened.

"So, where are you from?" Resnik's voice came over his headset with a cheerful lilt. "I'm Judith Resnik, by the way. Mission specialist and second woman in space." She said this with a measure of pride and a wide smile on her face. "This is my second mission, and boy, we're going to make history!"

Manfred chewed on his lower lip. "I'm from lots of places, I guess. I roam around a lot."

"Then how'd you end up aboard the Challenger?" Onizuka leaned closer. "'Cause we weren't expecting an eighth."

"Yes, well... That's top secret." Manfred knew it was a poor excuse, but he couldn't think of a better one, so it would have to do.

"Really?"

"Yes, really." His mind whirred over the problem, searching for a better response, and when he found it, he cheerfully tacked in on. "In truth though, I'm here to examine the launch to bring back a detailed report."

"Ah, I see." McNair tugged at the neck of his suit. "What's that thing for?"

Manfred glanced down at the holo and tucked it into his pocket. "It's for transmitting information. Newest model. It's—"

"Let me guess," Jarvis drawled. "Top secret?"

Manfred's lips curved up in a sheepish smile. "Ah— Yes, you've nailed it, I believe."

The volley of questions continued on, and Manfred clicked on the recorder of his tablet, hoping he'd find information the time machine could use.

***

While Manfred was aboard the Challenger, the other three found themselves in a small closet, listening to a meeting going on in the room beyond. The three of them were squashed together in the tiny space, the air quickly becoming stuffy and sweaty. Lucia bit back a groan as Nefertiti's elbow bit into the small of her back, driving her closer to Aetius. As if there were any room to get closer, she thought. Aetius's breath tickled against her neck, stirring the baby hairs escaping her bun.

Aetius's lips brushed her ear lobe, and he murmured, "How much longer do you think we'll be stuck in here?"

Lucia shrugged, wrapping her arms around his neck to minimize the space they had to take up. Her feet tangled between his, and Nefertiti's elbow stopped digging into her back as she arched her back and pressed into Aetius. "Just be quiet and let the recorder listen in to whatever they're talking about out there." She tapped the device stuck to the inside of the closet door. It lit up with a soft green glow, indicating its recording function had been activated.

The voices in the room beyond filtered through the thin skin of the door.

"You can't launch the Challenger!" The voice in the next room that rose over the others was that of engineer Bob Ebeling, who had worked on the O-rings that would cause the Challenger's woes. The other engineers on the team in Utah nodded in agreement as he continued on. "You can't seriously be asking to launch it at this temperature. We're only qualified to forty degrees fahrenheit. What business does anyone even have thinking about eighteen? We're in no-man's land."

Lucia's eyes widened in the gloaming of the closet. "Aetius, they're saying not to launch this thing."

He laid his finger over her lips, his calloused skin brushing there and lingering. She pursed her lips against his finger, and he raised a brow at her. She shrugged and returned to listening to the conversation coming through the door.

"I am appalled. I am appalled by your recommendation." Hardy—the deputy for science and engineering at Marshall Space Flight Center—berated the Thiokol team over the speaker on conference call.

"Thiokol, when do you want me to launch—next April?" This came from shuttle program manager Lawrence Mulloy.

In Florida at the Kennedy Space Center, Ebeling's boss, McDonald clenched his fingers into fists, blood rushing to his face as he stood in his office listening to the call. "Lives are at stake! I don't care if you have to wait two years to launch that shuttle. Don't launch it now. For heaven's sake, man, there's ice on the launch pad."

"So?" Mulloy—located on the KSC conference line—was becoming irate over the direction proceedings were taking. "I won't accept such a weak argument. You have no proof this won't work. Besides, if the primary O-ring fails to seal, the second one is there as backup."

Ebeling glanced at his fellow engineer, Roger Boisjoly, and then turned his attention to addressing Mulloy, thinking that if he didn't do something, they were going to be at fault for the loss of seven good lives. "With all due respect, Mulloy, those O-rings won't seal that SRB joint properly. If there's any joint rotation, the second one won't seal, and that's assuming any of them seal. They show clear failures in weather below fifty-four degrees fahrenheit. You launch that shuttle in a few hours, and it'll blow up."

Mulloy's face purpled as he listened to the words crackling through his line. "No one has shown me any data to prove it! I want another conference call in two hours, and this time, I want the management over there to get their lazy rears in here and defend this ridiculous claim."

Bob Lund, the vice president of engineering glanced at him and motioned for him to move back and let management take over."Gentlemen, this conversation has been going on for long enough, and I think we've shown enough evidence that launching isn't safe. I support the engineers' suggestions. Launch at this time is unsafe." He cleared his throat, glancing down at his paper pad. "Until temperatures are fifty-three degrees, I don't want to fly."

"Your data isn't conclusive enough. We'll reconvene about this in another two or three hours to discuss further." Hardy's voice came over the speaker in sharp, clipped tones between waves of static.

Lund sighed, thinking that he'd never dealt with a more hard-headed bunch. "Fine. Three hours, and we'll reconvene to discuss the situation."

Ebeling shook his head and pursed his lips. He backed closer to the closet door where his fellow engineer, Roger Boisjoly, was watching with rising levels of despair. They'd provided NASA with the safe temperature they'd requested, Ebeling thought, and they had no business going ahead with this anyway. Beyond that, he thought, those O-rings were a Criticality 1 component. They couldn't depend on backup with a Crit 1 component, so they shouldn't be launching this flight on that basis alone.

"They can't seriously go through with this." Boisjoly leaned against the wall, a frown etched into his brow. "Rockwell International told them the large amount of ice present on the launch pad was a constraint for launching. We're telling them those O-rings will fail in weather this cold." He sucked a breath between his teeth. "What are they thinking? Seven lives are going to be lost if they do this!"

Ebeling gritted his teeth, thinking that he'd very much like to strangle someone. "I know. I know that. But what am I supposed to do? They're setting up for launch. Let's hope management convinces those fools at NASA to wait before they lose seven good American citizens."

In the closet, Lucia pressed her forehead against Aetius's chest, listening as everyone trickled out of the conference room outside their hiding place. Whatever was going on, it sounded horrific, and her stomach flipped. Nefertiti shifted behind her, and the sharp elbow was digging into her back again. Somehow, it didn't bother her as much in light of what they'd just heard.

When the conference room finally emptied, the three tumbled out of the closet. Lucia sucked in great gasps of air, sagging against Aetius. "What do we do?"

Aetius wrapped an arm around her, wondering what the best answer to that was. After all, this technology was out of his grasp and that of most of them. "I don't know. Do you know what they're talking about?"

Lucia dropped into the chair at the head of the gleaming oak conference table. She buried her face in her arms and nodded. "I think so. Kiereth—" She swallowed, his name bringing back memories she didn't want to think about. "He brought me to a time shortly after this. I remember he explained to me what happened here with the Challenger while we watched another shuttle—the Columbia—blow up while trying to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in 2003."

"Re-enter Earth's atmosphere?" Nefertiti flopped into a chair beside Lucia.

"They're sending giant transportation devices out into space." Lucia chewed on her lip, tugging her hair out of its bun to play with the strands. "They send them way up into the sky until they touch the stars. Sort of."

Nefertiti scratched the back of her neck. "Really?"

Aetius leaned on the table beside her, withdrawing the tablet from his pocket and sliding it onto the table in front of Lucia."So what happened here, anyway?"

"Well, the O-rings were sealing devices made of rubber." She grabbed some of the clear plastic cups littering the table and began stacking them. "The SRB's you heard about? Those are the solid rocket boosters. Imagine these long cylinders with a point at the end." She pointed to her cups. "They're split into segments and then stacked onto each other like these cups. That creates a joint at each place a segment joins."

Aetius slipped into a chair nearby and rested his elbows on the table. "So what did the O-rings have to do with this?"

"Okay, so those rubber rings were supposed to seal stuff inside the joints off so that the pressurized gas from the tanks wouldn't leak through those joints but would instead travel to the exhaust funnel." She pointed out the places where the cups were joined and then to where the end of the stack would be. "Problem is, the rubber becomes brittle under cold weather conditions. In previous control groups they ran, the heated gas ended up causing the metal keeping the O-rings in place to bend away from the ring, letting the gas around the rings. This led to severe erosion of the rings."

"So?" Nefertiti frowned, rubbing her nose. "What does that mean?"

"In lay terms, it means that the rocket booster ends up releasing hot gases from the segment joints of the booster, and the places it escapes to are close to the hydrogen tank. Hydrogen is an unstable gas, and so getting hot gases near it can cause an explosion."

"Where'd you learn all this?"

Lucia wrinkled her nose. "Like I said, Kiereth explained. He's a bit of a science nerd."

"So, does the tablet have all this information?" Aetius pursed his lips, staring at the device and wondering if this was why they were sent here.

Lucia pulled up the information on the tablet and shook her head. "Nothing here. Maybe that's what we need to document?" She clicked through a few more documents. "Actually, there's no record of most of the tech that made NASA possible." She chewed on her lip, thinking that if there was no sign of the tech that led to NASA in the future, that might mean the time machine would cease to exist.

Aetius, who was thinking along the same lines, straightened in his chair. "Luc, if the stuff from this time doesn't exist for us in the future, then the time machine might not either."

She nodded. "Exactly. We need to start getting the info on this shuttle uploaded."

"Do you know anything else about this case?" Nefertiti squinted at the tablet. "We stick out here, and I'd rather not go roaming about if we don't have to."

Lucia's shoulders slumped. "Sorry. I don't."

"Well... The engineers seemed to know a lot about it. Do you know who the guys protesting this were?"

Lucia glanced up at him. "Actually, yes. Bob Ebeling, Roger Boisjoly, and their boss McDonald along with two other engineers from Thiokol warned NASA about this. Ebeling was the one who told them they had no business thinking about a launch in current weather conditions."

"So, we find Ebeling, ask questions, and figure out what goes down when the Challenger blows up."

Lucia frowned at him. "This isn't funny."

He cocked his head to the side, blinking. He hadn't intended to be amusing, he thought. "I wasn't saying it was."

"What goes down when the Challenger blows up is a whole lot of debris and seven people who die when that crew compartment hits the Atlantic Ocean at 200 miles per hour. And in case you don't know, 200 miles per hour is far beyond the speed of those cars whipping by outside the window."

Aetius glanced out the window she'd mentioned and watched the metal objects blur past. His stomach churned, and he swallowed back a lump in his throat. His comment no longer seemed appropriate, and he slouched in his seat. "Jesu help them."

"Indeed." Lucia returned to typing things into the tablet, thinking that they had very little time to figure this out if her suspicions were correct. They needed to find Ebeling and fast.

***

Ebeling, as it happened, was in his office with his fellow engineers at the moment that Lucia and the others realized they needed to find him. The men in the room slouched in the chairs with slumped shoulders and dejected frowns.

"You think they'll delay the launch?" Ebeling's daughter, Leslie, who worked with NASA at the time and had carpooled with him that morning, fidgeted with her blouse's collar. She knew as well as the rest of them in the room that NASA wouldn't, but someone had to ask the question.

Ebeling shook his head. "You saw how they responded. They won't delay it."

Leslie nibbled on her lower lip. "If they launch, what are the odds of the crew's survival?"

Ebeling rubbed his temples. "At these temperatures, the rings won't seal and the metal holding them in place will probably peel away from the ring like it did in the tests." He dropped his head into his hands, asking God why he had to be a part of this. "I told them that. I told everyone that."

She sighed and stood, walking to him and placing a hand on his back. "We know, dad."

He shook his head, scrubbing a palm over his face. "We'd better pray to God that management doesn't cave to NASA and agree to launch."

At that moment, one of the lower engineers poked his head around the corner, perusing the scene and thinking that the looks on their faces summed up exactly how he felt at this moment. "They've gone to the private meeting room, and they're discussing it now. Lund wants to see you all in there."

"Half an hour wait? That's all they needed to discuss a decision that may cost seven lives?" Boisjoly clenched his fingers around the slick metal of his chair's armrests.

"Figured as much." Boisjoly stood and began pacing the length of the room, running his hands through his hair. "We'd better get in there and make sure they don't do anything stupid. It's almost the three hour mark."

Ebeling sighed and got to his feet, his shoulders slumping and his head drooping.

His daughter patted him on the back, thinking that she'd never seen her father look so dejected. "Good luck."

Ebeling didn't respond. He just plodded to the door, leading the rest of the engineers to their other conference room with a world-weary sigh. He shoved the door to the conference room open, fighting back the urge to hit something or cry in despair.

The faces staring back at him were blank, no longer the warm, inviting ones that welcomed him at work each day. The men sitting around the table now were not friends. They were not on his side. They were the enemy, the ones he had to plead with if he was to save the Challenger and her crew. He shoved his hands in his pockets and marched to the table.

"Gentlemen." Lund ducked his head. "Hardy brought up a good point in the conference earlier. We'd like to discuss that with you."

Hardy, Ebeling thought with a bitter sneer, had brought up nothing of any use to anyone. He'd only badgered and bullied. Since when had they been forced to prove the lack of safety in a launch anyway, he wondered. Before, the burden had been to prove the safety of the matter. He dropped into a seat nearby and dragged an unclaimed pad of paper toward him, pulling a pencil from his pocket with the other hand. "Well, what was it?"

"Well—" Lund glanced at the other managers. "Hardy mentioned that if the primary o-ring failed, the secondary one should still seal."

Thompson, who was the head of the project here in Utah, resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. Instead, he began sketching out the diagrams of the SRB and the joint under discussion. "Look here. Here's the concern." He gesticulated to the sketch, stabbing the point of his pencil into the paper where he'd drawn the joint. At the same moment, he made eye contact with Mason and Cal Wiggins, the vice president and the general manager of the space division. They were the ones he had to convince. It was now or never, he thought. Either they understood and stuck with the decision to postpone the launch, or they'd launch it, and everyone on-board would die. "We've got cases where that didn't happen. And this is why it matters."

Boisjoly watched from across the room with the other engineers, eyeing the faces of his former friends and fellow employees. They remained impassive, and he knew then that Thompson wasn't getting through to them. When Thompson sat back with pursed lips, Boisjoly took a shot at it too. Tears welled in his eyes as he drew frantic sketches and showed the managers pictures, explaining in every way he knew how the danger they were putting the crew in. "Here's the crux," he snapped. "The colder the weather, the greater the chance of joint failure."

Thompson slouches down in his chair, refusing to meet Boisjoly's frantic glance and silent plea for backup. No one would listen, he thought. Beside him, Ebeling did the same. By now, both men could see that the forcefulness of Hardy and those in NASA was too great. Thiokol wouldn't back them in their recommendation. The Challenger was doomed.

Boisjoly returned to his seat, swallowing the lump in his throat.

"We need to make a management decision now." Mason tapped his fingers against the lacquered surface of the table, thinking that they didn't have time for this with NASA breathing down their necks. "Your concerns will be taken into account."

Lund cleared his throat. "We—"

Mason shot him a hard look. "Take off your engineering hat, and put on your management hat, Lund."

Lund dropped his gaze to the table and remained quiet.

Vice President Joe Kilminster, who had until then remained mostly quiet and had simply listened, rose to his feet. "We're going to take the poll now."

Thompson and Ebeling both straightened and looked at him, wondering if he'd look to them for advice or ask the engineers for any input on the poll. But Kilminster refused to make eye contact with them, and they slumped back into their chairs. Kilminster proceeded forward, asking only management for the poll decision.

And when it came, the decision was overwhelming. The Challenger had the green light from Thiokol to proceed with the launch as scheduled.

***

Meanwhile, aboard the Challenger, Manfred was sitting and observing the proceedings in the crew compartment. His fingers flew across the screen of his tablet, logging information and uploading it to the time machine. As he was doing this, commands from NASA were crackling over the speaker. They were at ten seconds and counting.

While he was busy recording things about the Challenger and its crew, the crowds watched the launch with bated breath below. An excited hum thrummed through the crowd as excited school children watched from stands near the launch site, waiting to see their teacher become the first teacher in space. This, sadly, wasn't what was about to occur, but for the moment, the crowd was rife with anticipation.

In mission control, deep within the Kennedy Space Center, Mulloy preceded over the commands being issued to Commander Scobee and Captain Smith. No one there had reason to suspect anything would go wrong, least of all that Mulloy and the other managers at NASA would be the ones who'd send everyone on the Challenger to their deaths.

In the Challenger's right solid rocket booster, the disaster was brewing. When the shuttle had launched, the O-rings in the booster's joint nearest the hydrogen tank had failed to seal due to the low temperatures. This, under normal circumstances, would be a disaster in their own right, but the direction the gases burned was what sealed the Challenger's fate when the end came.

Initially, the aluminum oxides from the rocket fuel had sealed the area around the failed rings, but aluminum wasn't capable of holding up against the heat of the gases barreling down the booster's length. Later, when the footage was examined, the first dark smoke spelling trouble would be seen through the camera's lens, but for the time being, no one was aware of the impending doom facing the Challenger and its crew.

The shuttle continued blasting up through the sky, trailing exhaust behind it.

***

A few hours before the Challenger met its demise, Lucia and the rest were busy breaking into Ebeling's office. Breaking in actually wasn't difficult since the man hadn't locked his office. In his distraction and despair, he'd left the charts, graphs, and pictures they'd used in the meeting lying in scattered piles around his desk. He'd even left some schematics from the Challenger and the drawings they'd done in their meetings.

Lucia grabbed it all, thrusting handfuls toward Aetius and Nefertiti. "Start taking pictures."

She took a handful of the notes herself and flopped onto the floor with her tablet in her lap. Since she was the only one who could read the scrawling words on the paper, she took anything with text on it and began typing it all into the tablet.

Her eyes were burning and scratching from the lack of sleep since she'd returned to the museum. Her mind wandered to the reason for that, and she shook her head, rubbing her eyes. Aetius looked up in time to catch her pained expression, and he scooted over to where she was resting her back against the desk. "You okay?"

She nodded, thinking that she was anything but fine.

Aetius wrapped an arm around her waist. "You haven't slept a full night since we got back from Lincoln's time. You want to talk about it?"

She stared down at the tablet, the words blurring over as her eyes filled with tears. "Now? We've got work to do."

"Look, we have the rest of the night to do this. It's only eleven pm, and I figure we can take some time for this."

She rested her head on his shoulder.

Nefertiti glanced at them and cleared her throat. "I will take my work to the hallway now that no one is in the building."

Aetius shot her an appreciative smile, thinking that she was really a kind sort for all her posturing.

When Nefertiti had slipped out and shut the door with a soft snick, he turned his attention back to Lucia. He toyed with her long locks, running the satin strands through his fingers. She closed her eyes, hot tears slipping down her cheeks and splashing onto the surface of her tablet. The screen cast an ethereal glow over her porcelain skin and illuminated the teardrops on her alabaster cheeks.

"You want to tell me what's wrong?" He crooned the words to her like a parent singing a lullaby to fretful child.

"I keep thinking about everything that happened with Kiereth."

This was progress, Aetius thought. Especially considering she hadn't spoken a word about what Kiereth had done since they'd returned. "Yeah?"

She fiddled with the tablet, smearing her tears over the surface. "Does missing what we had make me a bad person?" She sucked in a breath, thinking that it must because she shouldn't miss such things when she had the man of her dreams right next to her.

Aetius rested his chin on top of her head. "No. We all miss things that were and now aren't. And more than that, we often miss the good times that ended in the worst ways."

She sniffled. "He didn't hurt me. Not really. I did most of the damage to myself. All he did was restrain me—" She paused, considering whether or not to tell him the rest. Honesty was the best policy though, wasn't it? "And kiss me."

Aetius remained silent, mulling over that information.

"Does that make me an awful person? For letting him, I mean." She pulled away from him, thinking that he likely didn't want her near him now.

He tugged her back to him, wrapping his arms around her with a sigh. "No, it doesn't. I'm glad he didn't hurt you though."

They sat there, huddled on the floor as her sniffles subsided. He rocked her back and forth, continuing to thread his fingers through her hair and to hold her close. He wouldn't lie and say that he wasn't bothered by the prospect that Kiereth had touched her at all, but he knew she was already broken up enough. She didn't need to deal with his jealousy too. Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, he sighed. "Anything else on your mind?"

She shrugged. "The Challenger. We need to get back to documenting the tech we've seen here. I don't know what the machine sent us here to find, but I have a feeling it sent us here for this. Maybe the space travel equipment is a necessary part of technology that led to the time machine?" She squirmed out of his grip and wiped the surface of her tablet clean with the edge of her shirt.

Aetius returned to his own work. "Maybe. Let's just focus on this and get out to see the launch, okay?"

Lucia nodded. She sent a quick text through to Nefertiti's tablet to let her know she could return. Soon after, the Egyptian monarch crept back into the room and settled down to continue her own work. The three of them sat there, working through the night to upload everything to the database.

***

January 28, 1986. 11:38 AM EST.

The entire crew cabin thrummed as the solid rocket boosters ignited.

"And we're away!" McNair pumped a fist in the air with a whoop.

Onizuka and Resnik cheered too, and McAuliffe just laughed, thinking that she'd been more nervous than she'd thought. Jarvis observed them all with a smile, and Manfred sat in his seat without response. He knew what none of them did: if he was here, something was going to go wrong. He didn't know what, but he knew something had to.

That was what terrified him the most. The fact that something had to go wrong but there was no way off this thing—according to the crew—and he had no way to know what they'd face. For the first time in his life, Manfred felt helpless in the air. The air had always been his domain, but now, as they hurtled skyward, his gut roiled and his shoulders tensed. That seventh sense that warned of danger flickered to life, washing down his neck with a series of sharp prickles.

He shifted in his seat and glanced at his watch.

Onizuka noticed and smiled. "We're at T+0.678. Going strong. There's nothing to worry about."

Manfred bit his lip and stared down at his lap. Of course, he thought, they would think that. They'd been reassured by those in control that everything was on schedule and safe, or so they'd told him earlier.

In the right solid rocket booster of the Challenger, the beginnings of the disaster were now manifesting.

Strong puffs of dark gray smoke emitted from the right-hand solid rocket booster near the aft strut attaching the booster to the external tank. The smoke was coming from the opening and closing of the aft field joint on the booster. Under the severe stress of ignition, the booster's casing had ballooned and caused the metal parts of the casing to bend away from each other.

Through the gap this created, gases above five-thousand degrees fahrenheit rushed, unfettered by the primary O-ring, which should've shifted from its groove to form a seal like it had in past launches. This was not, in fact, how the solid rocket booster was designed to function, but once again, when the process appeared to work well enough, Thiokol had left it be and accommodated extrusion.

The cold temperatures of the launch that morning worked its brutal machinations upon the O-rings within the rocket booster, hardening them and lengthening the time of extrusion.

More gases leaked through the gap.

T+3.375.

From the ground, everyone watched in anticipation, waiting for the rockets to begin disengaging as the Challenger made its final thrust toward space.

The O-rings never sealed.

With no barrier to the gases in place, the O-rings were vaporized.

Aluminum oxides from the burned solid propellant sealed the damaged joint, temporarily replacing the seals before flame passed through the joint, and the Challenger flew on.

It cleared the tower with its main engines operating at 104% of their rated maximum thrust.

T+35.379. The main engines throttled back to the planned 65%.

Five seconds later, Challenger passed through Mach 1 at 19,000 feet per procedure. It continued on its flight trajectory with the inhabitants blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited them. Manfred alone suspected all was not well, and he sat in his seat, gripping the armrests of his chair with white-knuckled force as the others around him listened to the orders coming from headquarters back at the Kennedy Space Center.

T+58.788 seconds.

The clock was ticking down.

Had anyone known to look, they would've seen the beginnings of the plume near the right solid rocket booster's aft attach strut. At this point, however, spotting the plume would've done no good. The damage was done.

Hot gas began to leak through the growing hole in the damaged joint.

Had it not been for the wind shear that kicked up at about T+37, the Challenger might have made the flight safely with the aluminum oxide seal holding out until the launch was done. Instead, the force of the wind shattered the oxide seal.

With no barrier to stop it, flame blasted through the joint.

One second. The plume was well defined and intense.

Internal pressure began dropping as the hole in the failed joint rapidly enlarged.

T+60.238. The flame was readily apparent as it burned through the joint and began infringing upon the external tank next to it.

This was the final straw that would end this fated mission.

T+64.660.

The liquid hydrogen tank located in the aft of the external tank began to leak, and the plume quickly changed shape to indicate the newest problem. At first, this went unnoticed as the main engines' nozzles pivoted to adjust the unbalanced thrust the booster burn-through was producing.

T+66.764.

The effect of the leak was now felt on the external LH2 tank as the pressure there also began to drop.

At this point, no one board and none of the flight controllers thought anything was wrong. Even had they considered the possibility of this grave error, there would've been no recourse to fix it.

NASA management had made the decision to remove the ejector seats and safety functions from the crew compartment after the previous mission, claiming the features were unnecessary since the design of the shuttle and boosters was safe enough and wouldn't fail. This negligence toward proper safety was what would, in the end, cost the lives of the crew.

The flight time was now at T+68.

CAPCOM Richard O. Covey came over the shuttle intercom. "Go at throttle up."

Commander Scobee nodded and replied, "Roger, go at throttle up."

Unknown to himself and everyone aboard, these were the last words that would be heard from the Challenger on the air-to-ground loop.

T+72.284.

The aft strut failed with a snap. The right solid rocket booster jerked away from the failed strut, coming unattached from the external tank.

T+72.525.

The crew's laughter and joking about ended abruptly as the shuttle bucked and accelerated laterally to the right.

Smith frowned, looking at the instruments around him. Blinking lights that had been green turned red. Main engine performance was down, and the external fuel tank's pressure was far below what it should've been. His eyes widened. "Uh-oh."

Those were the last words that the crew cabin's recorder ever captured.

T+73.124.

The flight controllers now knew something was wrong. They scrambled to reestablish contact and determine the cause of the issue, but nothing could be done.

At that same moment, as they scrambled to fix whatever they could, the aft dome of the liquid hydrogen tank failed. The force propelled the hydrogen tank into the LOX tank in the forward part of the external tank with a loud clang. The situation worsened as the right solid rocket booster, which had all but come off, rotated about the forward attach strut. It struck the intertank structure.

T+73.162 seconds.

At 48,000 feet off the ground, the external tank suffered a complete structural failure.

On the ground, the watching crowd heard a grumbling boom. Then the steady trail of exhaust and smoke from the rocket flew in every direction as the LH2 and LOX tanks ruptured, mixed, and ignited. The resulting fireball enveloped the entire stack.

A baby's frightened wail rang over the silent crowd, and the rest of the onlookers watched in breathless anticipation, waiting for the Challenger to emerge on the other side.

Inside the cloud, the external tank continued disintegrating, and the semi-detached rocket boost kept contributing its thrust to the shuttle, though it now sent the Challenger spinning off its correct location in the local airflow. The resulting aerodynamic forces then rent the Challenger in pieces.

The solid rocket boosters careened through the sky in no particular pattern, looking much like a drunken man does while staggering down a sidewalk. The debris from the engine dropped out of the cloud, raining down eighteen miles from the launch site.

T+75.237.

Everyone on the ground watched with wide eyes and open mouths. A few cries erupted from the crowd, and then a scream lashed out over them as a woman sank to her knees, sobbing. The onlookers saw the crew cabin exit the cloud of gases at that moment, continuing a ballistic trajectory.

It hit the peak of its trajectory at 65,000 feet off the ground and plummeted. Wiring trailed along behind it like the guts of some alien creature torn from their proper place. It was the wiring that stabilized the cabin through its descent.

In Utah, Ebeling and his fellow engineers sat at a conference room table, watching.

Boisjoly stopped cheering for the safe launch and stared in stunned silence.

Ebeling also stared, the words of his prayer of thanks to Almighty God dying on his lips. His daughter, who sat beside him, looked on with wide eyes. Others around them who had also been watching the launch stared.

For a moment, no one in the room moved.

Lucia, Aetius, and Nefertiti looked away from the screen, unable to watch what they'd already known would happen. Knowing hadn't prepared them for what they were seeing.

Serna's gaze flew to her father as the reality of what had happened sunk in. Ebeling slumped against her, his entire frame shuddering. Then he buried his face in his hands and released a guttural wail, tears spilling hot and fast down his weathered cheeks. Next to him, Boisjoly also began to weep.

Lucia's gaze went back to the broadcast where the orange fireball lingered in the sky as the last of the fuel burned up and trails of smoke billowed off in the directions of various parts of the Challenger. She bit her lip, remembering that no one on the Challenger had made it. How could they? she asked herself. The crew cabin would hit the Atlantic Ocean at two-hundred miles per hour with estimated deceleration at impact of well over two-hundred g's.

On the ground at the launch site, Reader's digest writer Malcolm McConnell and several other reporters started running for the emergency landing strip, thinking the shuttle might return now that they'd seen it exiting the cloud of gases.

They stood there, craning their necks upward and staring at the sky, waiting for any sign. Waiting for any hope.

Confused shouts echoed across the empty expanse from the crowd behind. Loud swearing and a short scream followed.

"Where are they?" One of the reporters shifted in place, biting his lip.

McConnell sat down on an empty bleacher bench with a shake of his head. "Dead." He stared up at the blue sky. "We've lost 'em, God bless 'em."

Back in mission control, the flight controllers stared at their consoles, seeing the large S's on the readouts. Mulloy and Kingsbury watched the screens displaying the live footage of the launch, waiting with bated breath as they tried to determine what had occurred. When the rockets veered across the blue sky, Mulloy thought with relief that it couldn't have been the rockets, and beside him Kingsbury was thinking the same.

Then it hit.

The crew.

The crew had no way off.

Kingsbury uttered an oath and shook his head. "No. No, this wasn't supposed to happen," he murmured.

The public announcer glances at them and then gets back on the speaker. "Obviously a major malfunction—" He swallowed hard, thinking that was an understatement. "We have no downlink. Reports from the flight dynamics officer say the vehicle has exploded."

Silence descended back over the mission control room.

Onboard the Challenger, the crew was scrambling to stay alive. The cabin was slowly depressurizing, and the crew fumbled about to grab their oxygen masks. Anything to remain awake and have a hope of piloting the shuttle to a safe landing.

The pilot and commandeer couldn't reach theirs. They gasped for breath, their eyes flicking open and closed as they faded.

Then one of the crew members shoved a mask over Smith's face, and he sucked in a lungful of air. There was no time for Scobee's mask. Only three of the crew members were still conscious.

Manfred huddled in the corner by the windows, which miraculously had withstood the blast. His helmet had an oxygen line equipped. Onizuka had secured it for him when he'd seen that the eighth passenger didn't have a clue how to use it. The man who'd done his best to keep Manfred conscious and alive now lay slumped in the adjacent seat, passed out cold. In the long run, it was better this way. The four of them that were awake would now remain conscious for the rest of the trip to the end where the crew cabin would slam into the Atlantic and crumple, killing them all on impact.

Manfred wasn't aware of this, but he did know that something was terribly wrong and that no one seemed capable of fixing their current situation. He watched as Smith flipped switches and tried to wrestle the crew cabin into submission. He gritted his teeth and looked down at the tablet. This was it.

He typed out one last message to let his team know what had become of him.

Trapped aboard the Challenger. If I don't see you again, I went down with the ship.

~MvR

He pressed send.

The ship hit the water with a cacophonous boom.

Blinding light was followed by utter darkness.

***

The time machine came for them minutes after they'd stumbled from the meeting room. They boarded in a daze, still unable to process what they'd seen. Staggering to seats, they strapped in and let the machine do its job, grateful that it was on autopilot because it meant they didn't have to think, didn't have to let their minds work over what they'd just seen. Didn't have to function.

The trip back to the museum passed in a blur. None of them registered how much time had gone by, and for a few moments, they didn't recognize that the ship had come to a stop. The hydraulic lock on the door hissed and released, and the time machine's door swung open to reveal the familiar sterile steel of the hub room.

Lucia was the first to move.

She stood and flitted to the door, not allowing her mind to reengage consciously.

The other two followed her out, standing next to the machine on shaking legs. Lucia made her way through the empty room to the hub, thinking for a moment that it was odd to be here without Manfred. That kickstarted her sluggish, shocked mind. Manfred. Where was Manfred, she wondered.

An icon on the hub blinked, indicating one new message was waiting. She bit her lip, wondering who it was from. Reaching out, she tapped on it to pull up the details.

The screen read: sent from Manfred von Richthofen at 11:39 AM on January 28, 1986.

Her eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. Sweat broke out on her upper lip, and her legs trembled. She grabbed the edge of the hub to keep herself upright. It couldn't be, she thought. He had to be stranded somewhere and observing some other bit of technology. That was it, she decided.

Her finger shook as she reached out and opened the message.

Trapped aboard the Challenger. If I don't see you again, I went down with the ship.

~MvR

Lucia clapped her hands over her mouth and sank to the floor. A high, keening wail echoed off the bare walls, and she wondered where it might be coming from. Warm, solid arms wrapped around her, and Aetius's voice murmured from somewhere very far away. She closed her eyes.

Her entire body felt cold. So very, very cold.

He was gone, she thought. Manfred von Richthofen—the Red Baron, the man who had brought them this far—was gone. A scream rent itself from her chest and clawed its way up her throat to explode out of her mouth. And this time? This time, she thought, she knew it was her. It was she who screamed to mourn the loss of a friend and of seven other good lives who didn't have to be lost. It was she who screamed because time travel kept taking and taking and taking. Did it ever end? she asked herself.

Another scream hollowed out her insides.

The machine still existed, she thought. But oh, how she hated that blasted machine. That machine that had taken so many to their deaths. That machine that had caused these problems in the first place.

What a horror it was, she thought to herself as she wept. What an utterly horrific piece of machinery.

Because she knew. She knew it had left Manfred there to die in order to bring them back.

T+238. Just two minutes and forty-five seconds after the breakup of the Challenger.

They lost Manfred.

And so she released the volley of agonized, angered screams, giving the dead a dirge unlike any funeral wake. His life was mourned even as the cacophony died off to a gentler weeping past a raw throat and sandpaper lids. Because he was gone, she thought. He was gone, and it was their fault. Her fault. Because they had let him go.

He was gone. And he would never come back.

Spot 4: MusicgirlXD

Engines died in the background as three travelers exited the time machine. Two doors stood before them. Eletta pulled the brim of her hat lower. The pirate had seen enough pain and suffering. All she desired at this point was to fix the timeline quickly and go home. The pirate veered to the door on the left. The rough wooden exterior reminded her of the Captain Quarters back on the Midnight Raven.

"Alright, the faster we go in the quicker we come out." Eletta addressed her friends.

"Don't try to order me around, pirate." Hamon huffed.

"I'm tired of Kenneth ordering us around. Some one has to take charge and thats going to be me."

Alexander stood next to them. "Which route do we take then?

"Left." Eletta and Hamon said at the same time.

Shrugging, the Roman made his way to the door. Eletta had beaten him to it and already had the door open. The pirate trained her eyes ahead. The walls were decorated in the most vibrant red with flower patterns on the wall. The trio walked into the vacant hallway; closing the door behind them.

Turning her head, Eletta glanced down each way. A woman began to make her way down the corridor. "Kenneth told us to collect what we can before disaster strikes. Lets me quick about this." Eletta turned and noticed the sign D9 hanging on the door covered in gold paint. Without muttering another word, the pirate raised down the corridor.

Thoughts raced through her mind. The pirate proposed in her mind that she was going to change. Eletta came to a grand staircase. The stairs where covered in a red carpet. They lead to a higher floor. The pirate captain clumped up in her boots. Reaching the higher floor, Eletta noticed that tables where full with ladies and gentlemen dinning.

Crossing her arms, Eletta made her way through the crowd. As he moved, the crowds conversations died down. All eyes slowly turned to her. The pirate glanced about her. All the woman had dresses that reached the floor. Most where seated with a man in suite. Eletta felt their eyes scanning her body.

Looking down the pirate nodded at her boots with thighs showing, black skirt, white shirt, red blaze and a hat and feather to top it off. "I know I'm not dressed to your standards. I left my dresses at home. I heard this was a ship and got carried away with the play acting."

A man strode up to her. "Ma'am please come with him. I believe you are on the wrong deck."

Bitting her lip, Eletta reached into her scabbard and unsheathed her sword. "I think you're messing with the wrong girl." Stepping back, the man reached into his pocket. Eletta swiped her blade against his hand. The man cried out as blood ran down his fingers and on to the floor.

Smirking, Eletta jumped into the air; landing on a nearby table. "I am Captain Eletta Pugbane of the Midnight Mermaid. I'm taking over this vessel." Women screamed and tried to get away from her. Men were at the ready to fight. The pirate laughed. Just then a sound of metal scarping against an unknown object echoed through the air. The pirate got down off the table and raced down the hall. 

Spot 5: JesterheadJohnSnow

"Dear Aten, how in the world did you get aboard?"

Inside the time machine, lit by flashing lights of all sorts of colors, the stowaway shook his head in a mix of confusion or awe. The young man, resembling Hjikata a bit, stood on his wobbly legs as every weapon onboard was aimed at him. It had occurred to the Pharaoh that this man had no idea that they had just time traveled and the whirling of the object may have taken him completely off guard. After all, it had taken Akh some time to get over the effects associated with time travel. The stowaway, regaining control of his senses, glanced over at the slender man, a befuddled expression plastered on his face.

"Didn't it occur to you that English may not be a tongue he speaks?" Starkad reminded the Pharaoh.

"I speak Engrish," the newcomer spoke up. "I am just confused as to where I am and who you are."

"You will find out once we exit those doors," Akh motioned to the metallic doors that slid open, revealing a dimly lit basement where folks from different time periods mingled about. "You haven't explained to us who you are and how you smuggled yourself aboard the time machine. Most importantly, what do you desire from us?"

"Aporogies," The youth bowed. "I am Hirashima Seiji. I came here to assist Tagawa Fukumatsu-san. I assume he is in troubre."

"No, he is in good hands," Tut cut in. "I promise you that we are going to take care of him. He just needs to see a psychologist."

"What is a psychorogist?" Seiji blinked his almond-shaped eyes, letting his long dark hair loose. He glanced out of the doors into the room that was bustling with individuals, a perplexed frown plastered on his face. "Arso, who are tohse guys?"

At that moment, Zheng Chenggong stirred and started to come to. Starkad, Viktor, and Kepler hurried over to the corner of the time machine where he was placed in order to assist him. Akh took a breath before answering the newcomer.

"It is a long story, boy. I promise I'll answer all of your questions once we get him to the infirmary. He has spent quite a while away from us. The rehabilitation process needs to be intensive if you ask me."

---

"So he won't be in trouble?"

Wheeler, standing with two black-clad security officers at his sides, glanced at Paul incredulously. They were standing in front of the door to the hospital corridor that was lit by a bright red neon cross with the words Infirmary Room plastered above it like ornaments. It had reminded Paul of those noir detective shows he had watched back in his military base once fighting had winded down at the border.

"Seriously? Cutting down an employee of the Museum is considered a capital offensive. Why would anyone who has committed such a heinous crime get off scot-free? Besides, Chan was one of my closest friends. "

Alongside Paul stood Seiji the newcomer as well as Xinyi the ancient Chinese palace guard. He couldn't blame the two for showing up as Mr. Chong was close to them. Xinyi stepped forward and addressed the agent before his new translating device, handed to him by Akh, converted his words to English.

"I would like to point out some facts to you. First of all, Zheng Chenggong wasn't the one who had slain the guard. Rather, it was that blasted samurai Hijikata. Secondly, how do you know Hijikata wasn't the one who orchestrated the whole thing. After all, they went to a different era than Chenggong's."

Wheeler raised a hand. "I am well aware of who started it as I've seen the footage myself. However, we must not discard the fact that your pal was an accomplice to a heinous crime."

"So Hijikata-san is in here wiht him?" Seiji asked.

"That's beside the point, but yes." Wheeler crossed his arms.

"So, when Silas and the others defected and nearly ravaged history, you guys didn't go after him, but when Thomas and Chenggong get delusional, you all get your socks crocked. I don't understand." Paul tugged on his forest green military jacket.

"Our socks crocked?" Wheeler stroked his small beard."Now that is a phrase I haven't heard in my life."

---

"How are you feeling?"

From where he was sitting, Thomas glanced up to see Lanre approach him. Thomas, who was still feeling a little more than a bit bitter to his comrades after they had whisked him away from his home, still wasn't sure if he should forgive them or not. Despite feeling robbed of an opportunity he knew he'd never see again, he couldn't be mad at them forever.

"I feel like this prison is where I am doomed to spend all of eternity." Thomas buried his face into his hands. "This is like being stuck in Purgatory. Every day is exactly the same."

Lanre took a seat next to him. "So, what have you been doing before going back in time on a mission to repair the past?"

Thomas glanced over at him, running a hand through his shaggy hair. He had been neglecting his personal hygiene due to his mood issues. "We were slaves to Kenneth and his scumbag devotees. We would be trapped inside boxes for hours without nourishment or break so we can educate the public about our time periods. I have no problem educating people, but I can't stand slave labor, especially when I come from a time period where it is rampant."

Lanre chuckled. "At least you now have a purpose. Instead of slaving away inside a small space, you actually have the freedom to move around in your free will."

Thomas scrunched his face in thought as he glanced over at where Kepler and Viktor played dice. "You know what? You are onto something, lad."

---

"Operatives, may I have your attention, please?"

Starkad glanced up to see Kenneth's agents enter the basement from the sliding metal doors. There were dozens of the agents dressed in different attire, but they all had one common trait. Each were in the service of their Jarl, completing whatever bidding he wished to be done. An agent with spiky dark hair, sporting a checkered bandana, stepped forward to address the employees.

"I hope you have all rested and recovered as you now have a new assignment for Kenneth. He is pleased with your efforts in repairing historical errors kindled by our actions lately, but there is still a major issue that needs tending. Technology from the 20th and 21st centuries have been disappearing and if this goes unabated any longer, it would have disastrous effects on our period.This means that the time machines will cease to exist and you won't get to return to your respective periods."

Starkad felt a pang of terror strike his heart like a shield. The thought of being stuck indefinitely in this prison shook him to the core. The throngs of time travelers must have been feeling the despair that he had for they murmured and bantered amongst themselves.

"For this assignment, you will be split into groups among your teammates. You will also be assigned a couple agents that will be accompanying you on your journey. The purpose of their addition to your force is for them to oversee your task and to assist whenever the need arises."

That is a bunch of rot! Starkad wanted to shout, but he held his tongue. They only want to enforce their way of thinking onto us, limiting our creativity.

It didn't take long or the groups to be formed. Starkad's group consisted of Tut, Paul, Kepler, and Akh while group B was made up of Thomas, Chenggong, Viktor, Xinyi, Lanre, and Seiji.

We are quite a ragtag bunch.

"Have you formed your groups yet?"

Behind the Norse raider, the bandana-wearing agent along with the tanned agent they had rescued from Thomas's era approached them. Starkad noticed Wheeler and the female agent link up with Thomas's squad.

"We have." Starkad replied." What do you intend for us to do?"

"I will get to that," the agent responded curtly. "First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Maher and here is Gonzalez. We will be supervising your progress for this task and to answer any questions that should surface once you are carrying out your objective."

Akh let out a low moan. "Dear Aten, I suppose a Pharaoh like me should relinquish control to a mere layman like you?"

Maher shot him a glare."I'll ignore the insult. Now, we will go around introducing ourselves to each other."

"Holy crud." Paul rolled his eyes."We are back in grade school again."

"I'll go first!" Tut smiled. "My name is Tutankhamun, but you can call me Tut."

---

"Let me get this straight. You expect us to get onboard an aircraft that is doomed? Not a chance!"

Thomas glared at Wheeler and his assistant Brianna as they stood before one of the many time machines laid out in neat rows.

"I don't like this us much as you do, Patriot boy, but we have our orders from Kenneth. Besides, it is critical for you to partake in this task as it can spell disaster for you. You intend to return to your period, don't you?" Wheeler's blue eyes scanned the five other time travelers. "Well, I've got news for you. If you opt out of this task, you will run the risk of never seeing your loved ones again."

That immediately shut out any doubt lingering in each time traveler's chest. Wheeler motioned to his assistant, who brought forth a large blue duffle bag.

"Vat'z eenzide?" Viktor asked.

"They are clothes fitting of the late 20th century," Wheeler explained. "Did you think you could enter that era looking like you are heading to a historical reenactment?"

"Where do we change?" Seiji inquired.

Brianna glanced up from where she set the bag. "Inside the time machine, where else? You are not the only ones who will need to assimilate."

"I take it that you will have to disguise yourselves as well?" Thomas smirked.

"Hey, watch it, lobsterback!" Wheeler smirked right back.

"Must I point out that I had deserted that side of the war?" Thomas shot back.

"Boys!" Brianna snapped. "Enough bickering! Which one of you is going to change first?"

---

"Where are we?"

Paul, the two agents, as well as the rest of Starkad's squad walked into a space that served as parking lot for many stores clumped together. The largest one had a sign that read Vinny's Arcade in red letters amid a yellow background. The setting sun gave the sign a faint glow to make it seem as if it was radiating.

"Beats me, but I have never seen such urbanization in my life,"Starkad responded, glancing around their vicinity.

"We call it gentrification," Gonzalez explained.

"Is that what they call it?" Akh shivered. "It is giving me claustrophobia." The Pharaoh cringed as he glanced at the parked cars encircling them.

"Oh, come one, father." Tut laughed. "These metal carriages look phenomenal. We should use some for the royal palace." Tut tapped on a dark green one, causing the alarm to blare.

"Hey, don't do that!" Maher scolded. He turned to a group of teenagers smoking nearby. "Sorry about that. My friend is just a little clumsy."

"That sound is so darn shrill!" Akh covered his ears.

"Car alarms are detrimental in warding off potential thieves." Maher chuckled.

"Yeah, but you didn't answer my first question," Paul pointed out.

"My bad!" Maher shook his head. He took out a rectangular tablet and touched the screen. "It is the year 1999,which would kick off the Digital Age. Digital technology would replace industrial technology, seeing the rise of cell phones, Ipods, and video games."

"What are these Ipods?" Paul asked as they stopped in front of the entrance. "Are they round objects that function like grenades?"

"No, you will see." Maher motioned around the vicinity.

"Can I ask you another question?" Paul inquired. He glanced at his companions. "Won't we stand out, looking like a motley crew of time travelers? I mean, we've got a Viking, two Pharaohs, and a crazy math dude. "

"That's nothing." Gonzalez laughed. "We are at an arcade after all. We can just say we had arrived from a convention."

"A what?" Akh frowned.

"Hey, are you from the game Zelda?"

A young girl ran up to Starkad. The girl's mother caught up with her immediately.

"Tammy, we do not approach strangers!" The woman scolded her daughter. She looked up at Starkad. "Apologies, she didn't mean to startle you like that."

"How do you play Zelda?" Tut asked.

"It's time, boys." Maher opened the arcade door. "Let's have some fun, shall we?"

---

"Zeez eez an airport? Eet eez mazzive!"

The time travelers were at the check-in line for KoreanAir at Seoul-Kimpo airport. They were scheduled for Flight 801 bound for Guam's Antonio B. Won Pat International airport at 9:53 P.M. Guam time in a couple of hours. Glancing around the vast airport terminal, Viktor noticed travelers pushing their luggage in large carts while children mingled around. The bright lights from above gave the white floor a glow.

"Indeed it is." Wheeler placed a hand on the Soviet's shoulder. "It is much bigger than the World War 2 era airfields you have seen, right?"

"Ah yez." Viktor nodded."May I ask vhy vee had to vear zhese outlandeesh clozhes?"

Viktor glanced down at his striped polo shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. It was odd for him to abandon his military gear and don civilian garb from another era. He was sure the others had felt out of place like he had.

"For the hundredth time, you don't want to stand out in the middle of a different time and place." Brianna glared at them.It was odd seeing the agents outside of their uniform as well. "The last thing we need is for attention to be drawn to ourselves like flies to dog poop."

"Plus, it is hirarious to see Tom shave and cut his hair." Chenggong chuckled.

Thomas glared at the Ming warrior. "Oi! Watch yourself, Oriental pirate. I have less of a need for a hubble-bubble fellow to poke fun at me than ever right now."

"You look funny." Lanre smiled giddily at his companion.

"Don't you dare," Thomas warned.

Indeed, Thomas looked nearly unrecognizable without his beard and long hair. He could have easily fit in with the crew of Westerners scattered in the line among the Asians passengers. Each of the time travelers held bags filed with their old clothes and weapons, the latter hidden among secret chambers within the suitcases.

"Alright, we are getting to the counter," Wheeler said. "Now, let Brianna and I do the talking."

---

What is this place?I must admit, it is pretty cool.

Tut glanced around the interior of the building, taking in the blue and red wall adorned with various drawings. Bright lights of all colors danced along the floors and walls, giving the place a heavenly appearance. Loud music echoed around the room from everywhere at once.

"A party of seven?"

A teenage boy, wearing a red and gold uniform, approached Maher.

"That's correct," the agent responded. "Is there a table for us?"

"Right this way."

As the boy lead them across the arcade, Tut used that chance to glance around. He saw large screens similar to the ones back at the museum, but much smaller. There were people, mainly boys his age, grappling with the controls enameled on a small platform jutting out from the bottom of the screen. The sight really enthralled him, despite seeing similar gadgets at the Museum.

"Here is your table." Their attendant motioned a large purple table for parties of large groups. "Here are your menus in case you want to order something."

"Two pizzas would suffice." Maher sat down next to Akh. "One cheese and one pepperoni."

Tut's eyes scanned through the menu of exotic foods that made his mouth water. He may not have been able to read the words, but the picture of the delicacies really stood out to him, especially the round pastry with red meat all over it.

"Would you like something to drink?" the attendant inquired.

As Maher conversed with the boy, Tut turned to Paul, who was seated to his right and asked what the delicious-looking pastry was.

"Oh, that is called a pizza." The American soldier chuckled."You seriously haven't tried any? Oh, my bad. You hail from a time before these were invented. The Museum gave them out every Friday for lunch breaks."

Tut pouted. "Darn, I must have missed out."

"You sure did." Paul smirked.

As soon their attendant left, Maher and Gonzalez turned to face the time travelers. "Ok, now that the initial part is taken care of, let us brief you on the main segment of our mission."

"If the mission is about eating pizza and staying in this futuristic enclave, I'm game." Paul leaned back, smirking.

Gonzalez cleared his throat. "As you may have heard, the technological advancements of this era are receding due to our interference in your time periods. In order to stop these wonderful gadgets that made life easier for the human race from disappearing, we have been instructed by Kenneth, Betty, and Gregory to gather as much information as possible on any source of tech you could lay eyes on."

"Like what that kid is holding?" Starkad motioned to a teenager across the room listening to some round device.

"Yes, I believe that is called a Walkman CD player." Gonzalez nodded in affirmation. "Those started off as cassette players in the 80s."

"Zhat eesh ingenioush," Kepler surmised. "Eesh zheesh vhat shience amountsh to?"

"Yes, isn't technology great?" Maher chuckled. "Without it, the time machines would never come into being."

"Is that a large tablet that isn't handheld?" Tut gestured the table across from them.

Maher and Gonzalez glanced at where the young Pharaoh had pointed. "That is called a laptop. It is the predecessor of our tablets. Soon, those laptop computers would be produced on a larger scale than desktop computers due to demand. That is how this world works. I am sure you are all aware of the law of supply and demand."

"Yeah, they taught us that in economics class." Paul yawned. "Most boring subject ever taught by the most boring teacher ever. No one should take a class with Mr. Birnbaum unless you enjoy listening to him drone on and on."

Tut tried to suppress a giggle. Boy, doesn't Paul have a gift for making people laugh? He should have been a jester rather than a soldier.

"You get the idea," Gonzalez explained. "We are in the beginning phases of the Digital Age so you could only anticipate technological advancements from here on out."

"Thank you, Frederick." Maher tapped his companion's shoulder. "It is as my colleague said, but now let's focus on video games. Do any of you know which is the first video game ever created?"

"I read from the logs that Pong was the first one created in the 1970s," Starkad proudly stated.

"Good guess, but you are wrong there." Maher chuckled "The first game idea and coding was created by Alan Turing a few years after the Second World War. It was for a simulated chess game. The first game was created by physicist William Higinbotham in 1958. It was similar to what Pong would become so you aren't totally off." The agent smiled at Starkad.

"Well, I had learned something new today." Starkad chuckled, glancing down at his lap.

"I could only get ushed to zheesh place," Kepler chimed in.

"No kidding," Akh remarked. "My palace needs a makeover to resemble this building. The only addition would be the art of Aten on hanging on the walls."

"Today, we will focus on arcade games. Later on, we will move on to game consoles and other gadgets." Maher leaned back in his seat.

At that moment, an enticing aroma greeted Tut. The attendant brought over two pizzas and some drinks for them.

"Let's dig in!" Starkad was among the first to attack the exotic dish. "I may never lay eyes on a feast of this caliber until Valhalla."

---

"First class is now boarding for Flight 801."

From his place at the window, Seiji glanced over at the gate where the passengers were gathering. The sight of these massive machinations highlighted by the evening sky astounded the young samurai. How could something so massive be able to take off in the air. The rumblings of the jet engines, as the others called it, gave him goosebumps. As he walked over toward the gate, Thomas nabbed his arm.

"Excuse me, sir. Pardon me if you are deaf, but they called first class. We aren't first class."

"Gomenasai," Seiji uttered. "I had no idea."

"Of course you don't." Thomas smirked."Unlike me, you haven't experienced anything outside of your era. The year is 1997. If you think it is remotely like your era or mine, you are gravely mistaken. "

Chenggong then spoke up from where he was seated across from Thomas. "Why don't you sit back and relax until we are called. Wheeler or that woman will let us know."

"Arigatou!" Seiji bowed to the man he called Tagawa-san. He found an empty seat near a young girl playing with a stuffed rabbit. The child glanced over at him and smiled.

"Hi, are you going to Guam, too?" she asked in Japanese.

Startled, Seiji smiled back. "Hai! For vacation."

"Me too." The girl giggled."My name is Matsuda Rika."

"I am Hirashima Seiji."

"Flight 801 is now boarding. All passengers may now approach the gates."

The man named Wheeler rose from his seat and motioned for them to rise. Everyone else, including the samurai, rose from their seats and gathered their carry-on items. Rika joined a woman Seiju assumed to be her mother as they entered the ever-growing line. The thought of boarding a doomed craft made him anxious, but as his samurai teachings taught him to prevent fear from preventing him from doing what was necessary.

My time may be coming.

---

"That was my piece, you numbskull!"

Akh glared at Starkad as the Norseman greedily devoured the pizza and potato wedges. The Viking seemed to take the lion's portion of the meal, leaving the others with smaller portions as well as the drinks. Akh couldn't care less about the fizzy drink that tasted funky. The agents referred to it as soda, but it didn't matter to the Pharaoh.

Starkad smiled at his friend. "Well, in my period, the Jarl gets the largest portion of the meal. After all, it is fitting for a man of my rank."

Akh snorted. "Let me remind you that I outrank you. A Pharaoh is above a peasant like you."

"What did you just call me?" Starkad snarled.

"Enough!" Maher separated the two. "I swear, you both behave like squabbling kids sometimes."

"Can we try the arcade games?" Tut asked.

"Go ahead!" Gonzalez urged him. " That is the whole purpose of why we are here. Don't forget to take note of what you see."

"Let's go!" Paul shot up and trailed after Tut.

"I am down to take on the challenge as well." Starkad rose after wiping his mouth. "This challenge might be worthy of a place in Asgard."

"Vee should shuperviz zhe young ones." Kepler stood up.

"I suppose it beats sitting around." Akh relented.

The older men trailed after the young ones to join in on the new game fever.

---

"Come on, you know I had that!"

Tut watched as Paul raged at the game. It consisted of a yellow circular object with a mouth chomping on white dots while escaping four colorful beings. The young Pharaoh had heard Paul refer to them as ghosts as the G.I. cursed under his breath.

"Excuse me, but may I have a chance at this?"

Paul glanced over to his friend. "You want a go at Pac-man? Be my guest, but you use your own quarters."

"Fair enough." The pharaoh took out the silver currency handed to them by the agents and inserted them inside the machine's slit under Paul's obsessive gaze. They had already tried Space Invaders, Tetris, and Donkey Kong, but none were as alluring as this new game they had come across.

"You know how to play/" Paul inquired.

"I learn from watching you," Tut replied. "I have to eat the fruit while avoiding the ghosts."

"You know, for someone from the ancient times, you never cease to amaze me." Paul smirked. "However, don't push your luck."

Fifteen minutes later, Paul was staring at the screen, his jaw dropping so much that it would have made contact the floor if it was possible.

"Did I perform up to your expectations?" Tut asked curiously.

"Holy moly, you got high score!" Paul blinked his eyes in denial. "That must be beginner's luck right there."

"I'm flattered." Tut blushed.

"Now don't push your luck,"Paul reiterated. "Your skills might be limited to only Pac-Man. Let's try Donkey Kong again. "

"But I want to play Pac-Man," Tut protested.

"Fine." Paul shrugged. "We already have a huge ape with us. His name is Starkad."

"Talking about me?" A voice boomed from behind them.

The two young members of the squad whirled around to see the Norse raider crossing his arms.

"Um, yeah." Paul glanced his grey eyes downward. "Want to attempt to outdo Tut in Pac-Man?"

---

"This is Street Fighter. It takes two individuals to select a character and compete against each other. Choose your champion."

As Maher and Gonzalez instructed, Kepler and Akh chose their champions and started to duke it out. After a brief crash course by the agents, the men, both hailing from different eras, had a competitive bout with the game.

"I bet five quarters on the German." Maher grinned at his colleague.

"Nah, the scrawny Pharaoh has this." Gonzalez glanced at Akh.

The mathematician and the Egyptian hunched over the controls in determination, desperately trying to outperform each other. it wasn't long before Akh moaned and Kepler was dancing in celebration.

"Well, I expect you to pay up by the end of today." Maher patted his fuming assistant's back. He then glanced at his silver and black Rolex watch. "It's time to move on."

The ragtag team of time travelers moaned as they were forced to leave their slice of heaven. They had only spent a few hours inside this establishment yet they were already attached.

"Do we have everyone?" Gonzalez asked.

"Paul is still playing Dance Dance Revolution." Tut explained.

"Tell him to haul his ass over here!" Maher ordered.

"Leave that to me." Starkad strolled over to where a crowd had gathered around the G.I. One of the attendees glanced over at Starkad and gasped. "Hey, is that Thor from the Avengers Assemble comics?"

Starkad paid the crowd no heed as he yanked Paul away from the game and brought him before the agents. Paul shot everyone a dirty look.

"In case you haven't noticed, I was beating a record."

"For the sake of history, I am glad the big lug prevented you from doing that." Maher sighed. "It's time to move on. We need to collect data on consoles."

---

Is this some kind of ship that flies?

Seiji glanced around the plane's interior like a child does inside a candy shop. While the aircraft had a blue and white appearance on the outside, the interior had a grayish appearance as well as a smell that reminded him of dry clothes. Travelers of all backgrounds shoved past him as they made their way to their seats.

"Aren't you going to take a seat? You are holding up these people."

At Chenggong's urging, Seiji took a seat next to his fellow warrior. He still had to get used to Chenggong tying his long raven-colored hair back in addition to shedding his warrior attire for a modern-day civilian look. The seat next to the window was occupied by the other Oriental warrior, also in civilian garb. The samurai had recalled how much of a fuss he made over switching out his armor for softer clothes. They had no need of military dress as they would not be confronting enemy soldiers.

"Just so you know, this aircraft is a Boeing 747-300. Make sure you document that."

Seiji craned his neck behind him to see Wheeler the tattooed agent inform them. On either side of him sat Thomas, seated near the window , and Brianna, who was chatting with a flight attendant. Viktor and Lanre occupied the seats before them. Across from him, he was surprised to see his new acquaintance Rika and her mother planted in their seats. Upon seeing the secret samurai, the girl waved at him. Unable to help himself from smiling, Seiji returned it.

Wheeler leaned over and whispered to the three time travelers. "A little piece of information I think you should know. We have a few of our colleagues scattered about on the place to assist us when needed. You see that flight attendant Brianna is talking to? Her name is Minseo. She is with us and if you require anything during the flight, don't hesitate to ask her."

Seiji kept his eyes glued on the young woman. He wondered why someone as lovely as her would risk her life for someone like Kenneth. As the flight attendant, her dark silky hair tied up, headed up the aisle, her side brushed by the samurai's hand. It wasn't long until he felt a jolt and the plane started to depart the terminal. Soon, they were stopped in front of a strip of road lit by various lights.

The intercom clicked to life. "Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. We are cleared for takeoff."

Seiji took a breath and prepared to experience his first takeoff.

---

What is going on? Is God unleashing his wrath on these sinners?

Lanre gritted his teeth and held onto the armrest of his seat as the plane shuddered violently. He hadn't the faintest idea why the aircraft shook as if a child was playing with it. The most likely explanation could have been the storm raging outside the window. This wasn't anything new to the Crusader as the ship that ferried the Templars to Jerusalem had been through powerful squalls, but that was in the sea and not in the midst of dark clouds.

"Calm down, friend." Viktor chuckled. "Eet eez just turbulenz. "

"In...air." Lanre shook his head. "You...have..experience?"

"Plenty of timez in var." Viktor bobbed his head."Tranzport plane zhudders een zhe crozzweendz."

"Ugh!" Lanre muttered a quick prayer on hopes that he would survive the violent rocking of the aircraft. Soon, it was over and the yellowish light of the seat belt sign vanished from existence.

The intercom clicked on. "Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we have experienced a bit of turbulence. The worst of it is over, but it is advised that you stay in your seat until we arrive at our destination in about a couple hours. We thank you for your patience."

"Zhat was treeleeng, da?" Viktor chuckled.

Give me a break. How much longer must bear a flight in this oversized sky ship?

As the knight gazed out of the window at the swirling mass of endless blue-gray clouds, a voice caught his attention. He craned his neck to see Wheeler wave at them. The other time travelers and Brianna gave the agent their full undivided attention.

Wheeler cleared his throat. "I just want to posit a few more facts to our datapads. Who will record my lecture?"

"I suppose the burden falls on me." Thomas readied the tablet, careful to hide it from plain view should any wandering eyes fall on it.

"Excellent, now I'll begin." Wheeler's blue eyes bore on everyone. "You are all aware that our destination is Guam, correct?"

The time travelers answered in the affirmative.

"What...is...Guam?" Lanre inquired. He had doubted that anyone, especially people from around his time period, heard of this place. Perhaps it was a newly discovered land.

"I would rike to know as werr," Chenggong chimed in.

This time Brianna cut in. "It is an island in the Western Pacific that is under the U.S's control. It houses several military bases like Andersen Air Base."

"That's right." Wheeler cracked his knuckles." In less than a couple hours, the pilots Park Yong-chul and Song Kyong-ho will attempt to land this plane amid scattered rain. However, due to the glideslope Instrument Landing System being out of service for repairs, the plane will miss the approach and crash-land on Nimitz Hill. Thomas, you jotted everything I said down?"

"Aye!" The colonist responded.

"Excellent, now you know what you need to. All you can do now is brace yourself for the impact and pray that you survive the wreck for the sake of preserving technological knowledge. The citizens of the future will know of our sacrifice should that be the case."

Lanre felt his heart sink. He was sure that the others were despairing like he was. Here they were on a suicide mission for the sake of a generation he couldn't care less about.

"If I may?" Thomas glanced up. "What seemed to be the cause of this failed attempt at landing the aircraft?"

Wheeler sighed as he glanced at one of the flight attendants walking by. Lanre guessed that was the inside agent that was assisting them in their task. Her name had slipped her mind, but he was mentally priming himself for possible death.

"As I said earlier, the primary cause was the failed glideslope system, but it was rumored that the pilot's wooziness had played an integral part in the crash as well. He had been flying a couple days with minimal amounts of rest."

Brianna harrumphed. "And this guy received an award not too long ago?"

"Well, in his defense, he had minimal rest time." Wheeler shot back. "His crew could have alerted him, but due to the power distance index, no one spoke up."

"What is the power distance index?" Seiji asked.

"I read about it in an online preservation of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers," Wheeler explained.

It wasn't long until it was time for the aircraft's descent toward its destination. Lanre took a breath as his eyes darted from his fellow time travelers to the unsuspecting vacation-goers. He knew that only a handful would survive this ordeal. The question was would he be among the survivors?

---

"Is this some kind of trading post?"

Starkad glanced around the large building, taking in the new confined atmosphere. People bustled about, taking appliances on shelves and hanging off of hangars.

Maher cocked an eyebrow. "I guess you can say that. There are plenty of places like these scattered about the city. I like to think of it as the hallmark of capitalism."

"What's that?" Akh furrowed his brow.

"Let's say it is better than communism." Paul narrowed his eyes. "I was fighting in a war to stall the spread of that cancer."

"Anyway, we are for a purpose." The lead agent decided to put an end to a possible squabble. "We are in K-mart so we can collect data on video games."

"K-mart." Kepler played with his beard. "Eesh eet zhe name of zhis city?"

"No,it's the name of the store we are inside," Gonzalez responded.

Starkad glanced up at the bright lights shining down upon them like many suns. Back in his period, trade happened under the sky.

"Well, where I am from, stores were the size of large classrooms," Paul reflected. "Moreover, won't these dudes stand out?" He motioned to the rest of his groupmates.

"We are still sticking to the cover story of convention attendees,' Maher explained. "At best, we'd get peculiar stares. At worst, people will question us."

On the way to the electronics section, Starkad glimpsed several individuals stare at them and whisper amongst themselves about the uncanny individuals. For the sake of the task, the Jarl kept his trap shut.

"Alright, you have all experienced arcade games. Now it is time for you to see what consoles are. Anyone know which was the first console ever created?" The agent's eyes scanned the time travelers. Seeing blank stares, he decided to press on. "Ralph Baer created the Magnavox Odyssey, or The Brown Box, in 1972, which would last until the video game crash of 1977. Hey, where did Paul and the Tut guy run off to?"

"Zhey shaw zhe games and bolted for zehm." Kepler motioned to Paul and Tut trying out the game system suspended on a platform.

"Of course," Maher muttered. "Those two possess the attention spans of goldfishes. I see they have seen the Nintendo 64 as well as the Playstation console."

Starkad and Akh strolled over to where the two were gaming. Paul was playing on a system with a gray controller while Tut used a purple one.

"Hello boys." Akh shifted on one foot. "Having fun?"

"You bet!" Paul smirked. "Mario Party is a blast."

"You should try this Crash Bandicoot game!" Tut turned from his console."Father, I want to purchase a game system and haul it back it the museum."

"We will do no such thing!" Akh snorted.

As father and son bickered back and forth, Starkad sauntered over to a shelf housing the games and snatched one. Gazing curiously over the square cover, he saw a purple dragon sneering back at him. It vaguely reminded him of Sigurd's serpent. The title read Spyro the Dragon.

"Zheesh eesh ingenioush!"

The Norseman glanced up to see Kepler clutching a reddish object with a small screen.

"That's called a Gameboy." Gonzalez walked over to them. "That's for if you want to game while you are on the go. In other words, it boasts portability unlike the consoles."

"This is the age of the internet." Maher motioned to the electronics around them. "Right now, the internet operates in a dial-up fashion. In the future, that won't be required. Anyone can access Wi-Fi with routers and passwords,especially those with tablets."

"Like those?" Akh pointed at three men in black trench coats heading outside.

Gonzalez and Maher exchanged concerned glances. "Did you know Seamus was assigned here?"

Maher shrugged. "I never received word about their arrival. Perhaps we should ask them ourselves."

Unsure of what was happening, Starkad and the others tailed the two agents after their brethren. Starkad and Akh had to pry Paul and Tut off their devices in order to get them to rejoin the crew. Outside, they stumbled upon the three men talking to two other men wearing ski masks and layered in clothing.

"Seamus, you aren't supposed to be here." Maher approached his colleague. "Did Kenneth assign you here without notifying me?"

The leader of the group, a red-haired man with piercing green eyes, glanced over at Maher. His companions consisted of a scarred man and a man with a skull tattooed on his left cheek. The two ski-masked men drew their small guns at the newcomers.

"Maher, what the hell do you want?" Seamus demanded, speaking with a tinge of an exotic accent that sounded vaguely familiar to the Jarl. "Can't you see I am in the middle of an important business transaction?"

"What transaction?" Gonzalez demanded. That was when they noticed the tablets tucked into the hands of the agents. Gonzalez drew a weapon. "You are giving away technology from our time to people from this era? You will be prosecuted for this!"

"Not if Kenneth doesn't find out." Seamus also drew his weapon. He motioned to the time travelers."Lay waste to these troublemakers. We don't need them meddling in our affairs."

Sensing impending violence, Starkad drew his axe and as soon as the first shot rang out, he hurled it at the nearest target. The weapon buried itself in Seamus's head as bullets shot past them. Paul's rifle rattled off as he assisted the agents in taking out the attackers.

"Well, that was wild!" Akh muttered. "I never expected to be ambushed in a civilized setting like this."

"Did we win?" Tut inquired.

"G-guys, please listen to my instructions."

Starkad glanced down to see Gonzalez lying on his back, blood seeping out of a gaping hole in his chest. Beside him, Maher lay face down in a pool of blood. It was apparent to the Viking that the man was deceased, but his assistant was barely clinging on to life.

"Y-you need to t-take the tablets a-and abscond immediately. Who knows who s-saw or heard this exchange? Someone may have alerted the authorities and the l-last second. G-go!"

The agent gasped his last breath before succumbing to his wounds. Starkad turned to glance at his companions,his eyes lighting up in the lights shining down on the group from the ceiling of the building outside the door.

"You heard him. Gather the tablets and find the time machine instantly!"

---

Seiji glanced back at the flaming wreckage of what used to be a jumbo jet, his eyes illuminated in the blazing inferno. He wiped the blood off of his forehead as his eyes danced around the vicinity. Of the couple hundred people that had first boarded the plane, only a couple dozen remained. Seiji was glad to be among the survivors although he had suffered some minor injuries in the process.

"You ok?" Seiji glanced at Lanre, who was limping. The samurai supported his fellow warrior as they regrouped with the time travelers. Seiji was relieved to find that they had survived, but Wheeler, Brianna, and Mingseo were nowhere to be found.

"That was by far the most devilish thing I went through!" Thomas seethed, half his face caked in blood. "I will be damned if I were to attempt such a fiendish feat again."

"Where are Wheerer and Brianna?" Seiji asked. " Arso, is Mingseo fine?"

"I doubt zhat anyone who eezn't here eez alive." Viktor motioned to the small band of survivors huddled near the broken wing as the rain fell around them. Thanks to the rain, the fires didn't spread to the forest. Seiji could barely make out the broken shape of a fuel pipe through the dim light of the flames.

"Behold, another one walks out!"

Seiji glanced up to spot a shape stagger through the wrecked entrance of the aircraft. His eyes grew wide as he recognized it as Wheeler, who had numerous marks all over his body. His clothing torn and battered, the agent fainted and slipped from the entrance into the arms of three men. He recognized one as Xinyi while the other two were Barry Smalls, a New Zealandic pilot, and the man whom Wheeler had referred to as the governor of Guam.

"Well,I can find comfort knowing the man who brought us into this predicament lived to see another day." Thomas's voice was laced with venom.

Seiji glanced among the survivors to see if he recognized anyone else, but his heart stopped for a second as he realized Rika and her mother hadn't made it out.

This doesn't seem good at all. Their chances of survival may be slim, but I won't give up on them.

Thinking quickly, Seiji let go of Lanre and bolted into the wreckage to search for the mother and daughter.

"Where is that idiot running off to?" Thomas shouted.

"Seiji, get back here!" Chenggong called out, but the warrior braved the flames and falling debris in order to find two civilians. His samurai conditioning had taught him not to fear death and to not shy away from a challenge.

They must be around here somewhere!

Seiji stepped over the passenger's belongings strewn about as well as the bodies of the ones who hadn't survived the heinous crash. He felt sick to his stomach as his eyes landed on mutilated bodies, some of them beyond recognition.

"Oof!" He stumbled over a body, but managed to stay on his feet. Glancing downward, his eyes grew wide and his breathing hitched as he recognized that the body belonged to Mingseo. The flight attendant had been crushed by a large piece of luggage. Despite knowing her only for a few hours, Seiji felt as if he had lost someone dear to him. Despite that, he had pressed on to find the girl and her mother. His eyes raked the seats to see a few passengers who had their necks snapped upon the rough landing, Brianna included. The agent's head was twisted at an odd angle, her head facing downward. The Japanese warrior felt relieved that he didn't have to glance into those listless eyes.

"Rika, you must go!"

Hearing the women's waning voice, Seiji glanced ahead to see Rika standing over her mother. The woman was trapped in her seat due to several items trapping her. It wouldn't be long until the flames would reach her.

"Rika, go!"

Acting quickly, Seiji scooped the girl up and made a run for it. The broken body of the plane rumbled as parts of the roof started to crumble. He had to exit the doomed aircraft before the roof caved in on them.

"Mama!"

The samurai felt his blood boil as he heard the girl calling for her mother. As he leapt out of the nearest opening, he vowed that he would make sure Kenneth and his dogs would taste the blade of his katana. The man had the blood of two agents on his hands.

Spot 6: RondaRayl

In fury over his friends' deaths, Richard pounded his fists against the wall. He was in the basement of the Museum where the other people stayed, but it was empty. He picked up a chair and threw it across the room.

Kenneth and his agents walked into the room and noticed that Richard was arguing with the others on his team: Jackson, Astrid, and Norman. Catalina sat on a cot quietly to herself. "What is your problem?" Kenneth demanded.

Richard turned to face Kenneth. "I hate this whole place! All my friends are dead!"

Jackson said, "I had to think about my family and helping them. It seems like you forgot about yours. Where are your priorities?"

Kenneth shouted, "All of you stop, now! We have problems with the computer systems and we're losing the timeline of history. You need to team together and get this done so you can go home." None of them knew that he was lying.

"Home?" Catalina asked. "You would really let us go home?"

Kenneth turned toward her and met her eyes. "Sure. You'll get to home soon. But first, you have to fix the timeline."

Richard turned and walked away from them and for the first time, he realized it wasn't everyone else's problem; that all of this happened because of Kenneth. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. "I will not do anything else for you, Kenneth."

Kenneth stepped toward him. "Oh, yes you will! Or else I will go back and kill your family."

Richard turned toward Kenneth and grabbed him by the collar. "You touch my family, I'll kill you."

Kenneth glanced at his guards. "Back off. This is between Richard and I." His guards backed away and Kenneth tackled Richard, which surprised him. He landed on top of Richard and threw a punch in his face. Richard grabbed Kenneth's wrists to block him, so Kenneth dug his knees into Richard's chest. Richard gasped for air and let go of Kenneth's wrists. Kenneth used the opportunity to grab Richard's head and slam it against the ground.

Kenneth stood up, thinking that Richard was knocked out, but Richard kicked his feet out from underneath him. Richard stood to his feet and as he charged toward Kenneth to hit him, the two guards grabbed him on either side. "Oh, no you don't," one of the guards said.

As they held Richard, Kenneth punched Richard in the stomach. Richard doubled over in pain and coughed. "You will obey my orders."

At last Richard calmed down and nodded. "Fine." He wrenched his arms out from the guards' hold.

"Now get to the time machine and get this done. The information about your mission is on the computer system."

***

Jackson, Astrid, Norman, Catalina, and Richard landed with the time machine near a dock in Manchester Township, New Jersey. According to the time machine, it was May 6, 1937.

Richard read the computer with their instructions to the others. "Kenneth wants us to use the computers to collect information about this disaster."

Catalina looked through the window of the time machine. Outside, a huge blimp was coming in for a landing.

Norman got on the computer and gave them all tablets so they could start scanning for as much information as they could.

Outside, the blimp, called the Hindenburg, had caught fire. The crew desperately tried to dock it safely. They managed to land it, but the fire had already destroyed the entire back of the blimp. According to their information, out of the 97 people on board, 36 had died in the disaster.

As soon as the group got all of their scanning done, they got back into the time machine and took it back to the Museum.   

Spot 9: Several7s

"How is Ujarak?"

Naoki slumped into a nearby chair and rubbed his temples. Mary looked down at him, her worried look matching his own feelings. "I do not know anymore. He will not talk to anyone."

Something told Naoki that Ujarak would make it through this. He had a wife and a second son to go home to. That would give him some motivation. It was Khen who he worried about the most. Lately, she ghosted through the halls from place to place, pale and silent. Her eyes were constantly red from crying, and she hadn't yet allowed him to try to comfort her. Losing Turgen had taken a terrible toll on her, and he feared she wouldn't easily recover. Even the presence of little Akiko hadn't helped.

"Tia is still recovering from the loss of Felipe. If we keep going through this, none of us will be in any condition to go fix the timeline." Mary chewed her lower lip and glanced at Leo, who stood with his own group having what looked like a heated discussion. "Ujarak and Khen might need to stay behind for the next mission. Tia might also need to. They aren't mentally equipped to handle the dangers of the timeline right now."

A loud ding from the tablet interrupted their conversation before Naoki could reply. He picked it up, brows furrowing. "It is some sort of alert."

"What does it say?"

He scrolled through it, but there was almost no information. "It just says 2018, technology. Nothing else."

Mary sat next to him and looked at the screen. "There has to be something else. That doesn't make any sense. It could mean anything."

"Whatever is happening, it's in 2018. I guess we should head there and see what is wrong with technology." Naoki handed her the tablet and stood. "I will get the others."

"Are you sure? They're still recovering from their losses, Naoki. This might be too much for them."

She was right, of course. But they had all lost friends. It hurt Naoki too. Rhonda had become a good friend during their time with the Natives, and now she was gone. That kind of sudden loss was hard to deal with, but someone had to do something.

"We could let someone else handle it," Mary suggested. "There are plenty of teams here with nothing to do."

He considered that. It would be fine to leave this to someone else, but he needed something to take his mind off the loss of Nafanua and the rest of her group. Ujarak probably needed that too, and Khen... Naoki couldn't stand to see her in so much pain. Maybe doing something would help her recover enough to let him help.

"Maybe, but I think it might be good to get them thinking about something else. I know I could use that. If they will not go, I can ask another team to take care of it."

***

When Naoki offered a chance to go fix another issue with the timeline, Tia's first instinct was to decline. She was tired of cleaning up the mess Kenneth made. Tired of constantly suffering because of one man's selfish actions. Why were they even still there? They were fighting to save a future that Kenneth messed up, but in doing so, they were forced to make terrible decisions.

Sure, they stopped wars that weren't meant to happen, but what about the ones that were? Naoki and the others had just gone to the Civil war era and extended a war that cost thousands their lives, and it was after their own times. None of their fates would be affected by the decision to let that war end early. Only the fate of the timelines afterward.

After losing Felipe, she was seriously questioning her decision to stay. Her own timeline was safe as were the native timelines of the others. Why save the future when it would always lead back to this? No one should have to do that, least of all the victims of Kenneth's abuse. She didn't want anything to do with this anymore. Tia only wanted to return home and lose herself in the arena once more. Maybe there, amidst the carefully planned out fights, she could find a way to forget about Felipe and the pain his loss caused her.

"Tia?"

Naoki sat down beside her, the cot creaking as his weight settled on it. In the dim light, she could see how worried he was, not just for her, but for everyone. Once again, Naoki was trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. She wondered if he would even miss her, should she go home.

"This mission... it's important, isn't it?" It had to be if he was that worried and still asking them for help. Even he must understand how ill-prepared their team was for another mission. Yet here he was, which meant that the issue couldn't be trivial.

"If something really is wrong with technology, the effects it could have might ripple into this time period." He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and folding his hands. "I am worried if we don't hurry, the time machines could be ruined by the effects of this, stranding us here."

Being stuck in the mess of a world Kenneth left behind sounded much worse than cleaning up the mess. Tia heaved a sigh. "I could use the distraction, anyway."

***

"We do not need everyone to go. If you want to stay, you can. I only wanted to give you the option, in case you do want to come. Maybe... it could help take your mind off things."

Khen kept her eyes glued to the wall as Naoki talked. His voice gave her a small anchor to hold to in the storm of emotions she fought. Every time he and Akiko talked to Khen, it was like a small light shone through the haze in which she now lived. And when they were gone, the light went with them, leaving her to see Kjell's words repeating over and over in her mind as Hijikata's words replayed in the background. Turgen was dead, and Rhonda, and Kjell, and every time she was alone in the silence, it was like being told about it for the first time all over again.

"Don't leave me here," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse from crying, and her tongue felt dry and sticky in her mouth. "Not alone. Please."

Naoki nodded and moved closer. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "I will never leave you alone." He kissed the top of her head and slipped his hand into hers. "I am here."

***

Since Naoki went to get Khen before looking for Ujarak, Mary decided it would be best to find Ujarak herself. Naoki tended to disappear for longer than expected when he was around Khen, and Khen needed him now more than ever. Which left Mary to deal with the distraught Viking. She couldn't help feeling as though she drew the short end of the stick with things.

"Ujarak?"

She knocked on the door to the supply closet, where he'd started hanging out. It wasn't latched, so she pushed it open and stepped inside. He'd left it nearly pitch black, but as her eyes adjusted, she could make out his form on a cot in the back corner.

"No. Leave me alone." He shifted into a sitting position and something came flying from the corner of the room. It crashed into the doorframe next to Mary and fell to the floor with a thump. She glanced at it and realized it was a half empty water bottle.

"That won't work on me, Ujarak." She moved further into the room and left the door cracked. "I know how much you loved him. I know how much that must hurt."

"You have no idea what I'm feeling right now!" He laid down again and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders. "I don't want to talk. Just leave me in peace."

"We need you. Something is happening with the technology in 2018. We don't have the information on it that we're supposed to." She leaned against the wall and waited for his response, knowing it wouldn't be a positive one.

"Sounds easy. You don't need me for that."

He didn't move, and Mary almost left him there. Inviting him to go on the mission with them still felt wrong. Maybe Naoki had a point, but if he was wrong, they would be putting Ujarak under stress he wasn't equipped to handle, which could lead to another death in their group. That was the last thing either of them wanted. But going with them was Ujarak's choice either way. She was only presenting him with the choice.

"If we don't know about the technology from that era, a lot of the things we have here could end up getting ruined. That's all we know. If you don't want to come, then none of us will blame you. If you do, meet us by the time machines in ten minutes."

***

Ujarak fingered the button on his shirt, his mind wandering to his home. He missed Sylvi and Sigurd now more than ever before. Facing the world without Kjell—without anyone—he felt as though a weight was pushing down against his chest. He just wanted to kiss his wife and cry with her. To be with the only woman in the world who could understand what losing Kjell was doing to him, and to see his remaining son again.

I could go home. The others... I'm sure they would let me. They would understand why I have to. But that would only work if their time machines didn't disappear. It didn't take a genius to realize that was what Mary was implying when she told him about the mission.

He stared through the darkness at the ceiling of the supply closet. One more mission. He could handle one more if it meant going home.

Sitting up, he threw off his blanket. It took effort to even move, and standing made the floor spin. He blinked several times, but it didn't get rid of the dizzy feeling. Everything in him just wanted to stay in bed and try not to think about Kjell. But he still had a wife and son to get home to and thinking about them gave him the motivation he needed to climb out of bed, exit the supply closet, and go find the others.

***

"I'm here," Ujarak announced. "Where are we going?"

Everyone looked up at him with surprised expressions, and Akiko was immediately at Ujarak's side, hugging his leg.

"Uncle Ujarak!" She grinned at him, but her smile faded when she looked up at his face. "You disappeared."

He knelt beside her and hugged her properly. "I know." There wasn't much else to say, so he withdrew and sat in a nearby chair.

"So, where are we going?" Tia asked.

Her voice broke the heavy silence that hung over the room. Ujarak shot her a grateful look, but she didn't seem to notice.

"I'm thinking China." Mary held up the tablet. "According to this, it's very..." She paused and glanced down at the tablet. "Industrial. Full of technology, apparently, which seems to be what we need."

"Did you find anything else about what's going on there?" Naoki started flipping switches on the time machine, setting it to take them to the selected destination.

"Nothing, except that during that time, every record I can find matches Kenneth's notes. The only thing missing is information. For some reason, a lot of it disappeared in the following years. It temporarily halted the progress of technology at the time. If we get enough information and store it in the time machine, we can send it to the appropriate times. It should fix things."

The time machine whirred to life as Mary spoke. Ujarak began to ignore her after the first few sentences, feeling the same claustrophobia hit him as before. His chest constricted and breathing became difficult. The weight on his chest suddenly felt a hundred times heavier, and he could almost feel the walls closing in on him.

"Something is wrong. The navigation system is gone."

Naoki's voice snapped Ujarak out of his panic. "What do you mean it's gone?" Ujarak stood to look at the panel.

Sure enough, the controls for setting a destination were gone, besides the settings for dates. "The effects are already spreading." Mary flung open the door to the time machine as it landed and stepped outside. "We need to get the information on this technology as soon as possible."

Ujarak followed her out of the machine, his eyes immediately focusing on the bustling streets and strange metal horses that occupied them. "Where are we?"

Mary frowned, staring down at the tablet. Her dark hair fell across her face, hiding the screen. When she looked up, she didn't look worried, which made Ujarak feel a little better. "This is San Francisco. There should be a library somewhere around here where we can find the information we need."

"Great, Mary, you can go with Tia and Ujarak to the library and download everything you can find. Akiko, Khen, and I are going to explore nearby. Meet back at the time machine in an hour, okay?" Naoki reached down and took Akiko's hand. "Stay out of trouble."

***

Naoki tried to get Khen to open up a bit while they wandered, but it didn't work. Her expression stayed blank most of the time. Every time she began to smile, it gave him hope that maybe she was at least enjoying herself.

That had been his plan. When Mary implied the job would be easy, he'd realized this was a good time to relax and wander around with Khen and Akiko. He had hoped that seeing all the new things would get at least a small positive reaction from her. Something was better than nothing, especially when nothing meant that she barely ate and constantly woke up from nightmares.

"Mommy, why do you look so sad?" Akiko stopped suddenly, tugging on Naoki's hand. "Uncle Ujarak and everyone all looks sad, and no one tells me anything." She kicked a pebble on the side of the curb and looked up at Naoki. "Please tell me what's wrong."

He drew in a slow breath. He couldn't dodge her questions forever. It was a miracle she hadn't found out already. "Akiko, honey..." He tried to think of a way to tell her, only to draw a blank. His throat constricted. How could he tell her news like this?

To his surprise, Khen knelt beside Akiko and began to speak. "Do you remember back in Rome, when your masters would hurt the other slaves?"

Akiko nodded solemnly. "Was somebody hurt?"

Tears shimmered in Khen's eyes. "Do you remember how... sometimes, the slaves that got hurt wouldn't recover?"

Naoki saw it in Akiko's eyes, the moment she realized. Her jaw opened to form an O and tears immediately began to drip down her face. "Who?"

Khen held her arms out to Akiko. "Turgen," she whispered. "And the rest of his group."

"No..." Akiko chest heaved with sobs, and she ran to Khen, who wrapped her arms around the sobbing girl and cried with her.

***

While Naoki and the others explored, Mary, Tia, and Ujarak made it to the library, where they discovered computers that should have everything they needed... except that no one knew how to use them, really.

"What's Google?" Tia groused. "This whole thing is just confusing."

They spent a good fifteen minutes trying to find a way to access the information they needed, only to get messed up somehow every time. Tia smashed her fist into the desk beside the keyboard, anger surging through her. "This is stupid! This whole system is stupid!"

"Do you guys need help?" A young girl poked her head from around a bookshelf and grinned at them. "You look like you could use some." She walked up to them, her blonde ponytail bouncing against her shoulder as she moved. "What are you looking for?"

Ujarak sent Tia what she assumed was probably a warning glance— his version of 'don't do anything stupid'. She ignored him. None of them knew a thing about the technology they were looking for information on, or even how to get that information. Unless the tablets had it, they couldn't access it, which meant that they could be there all day trying to get what they needed.

"We need information on all of the newest technology from this year and last year," Tia said. "As detailed as possible, on everything new. But we don't know where to start."

The girl laughed. "Not here." She gestured to the door. "I have a mobile computer lab just outside. I'll get an algorithm set up and I can transfer the information to that tablet you're holding, if you want."

Ujarak frowned, the distrust clear on his face. "How do we know this isn't a trick?"

Mary glared at him. "We're on a time constraint, let her help."

"Great, I should get it all set up for you in the next fifteen minutes." The girl stuck her out toward Tia. "I'm Kaylee, by the way."

***

"Did you get it?" Naoki looked at the tablet Mary was holding, silently begging her to give him good news.

"We did. Most of what we need, if not all of it, should be on here." She connected the tablet to the time machine and gave it the instructions for where to store and send the data. Almost immediately, the navigation appeared back in its proper place.

Naoki relaxed, relief flooding him. He couldn't stand the crowds of the city any longer. As strange as it felt to think it, going back to the basement would be a relief.

"Now that we're sure this thing is going to work properly, I need you to do something for me, Naoki." Ujarak met Naoki's gaze. "I need to go home."