Watch the screen.

Samantha Perry froze as the words floated on the black monitor in front of her. They were simple words, a very basic font designed to grab the attention, but they were words that sent goosebumps running across both arms and caused her to stare unblinking at the screen as if the act of blinking would make them go away. After a moment she realized that she was holding her breath, and forced herself to exhale slowly and carefully. Even then, she still didn't blink, examining the words on the screen, the first sign that her work of the past three months had been successful.

Watch the screen.

There were signs of degradation and heavy pixelation across the screen, caused by the decryption protocols she had thrown at the damaged footage that Kari Cheng had left behind. Wait, that was a lie: Kari had destroyed everything, including all of her hard drives. Most of it had been automatic due to Kari's own personal brand of genius and paranoia. When Kari hadn't entered a password by a certain time, a series of computer viruses and programs had been released and had set to work deleting all of her data. By the time Samantha and her team had gotten to Kari's apartment, all of the data had been destroyed. One program has unleashed a particularly nasty trick that had involved a drill press boring its way through the stack of drives in the server cabinet. There was quite nothing like physical destruction to kill data. It would take some kind of genius to recover anything at all from that mess.

To her credit, Samantha was exactly the right kind of genius.

"I've got you now," Samantha whispered and allowed herself a smile.

For a moment, anyone used to seeing the focused intensity that was Samantha's resting bitch-face would have called her beautiful. Even her mother would have called her beautiful, she who hated the heavy dark mascara and black lipstick that Samantha habitually wore despite the most stringent dress code at the office; that was a battle that even Ted in HR had decided wasn't worth dying over. Samantha was scary, intentionally scary, but even then in her moment of triumph, she forgot all of that and just allowed herself to feel, really feel the pleasure of finally beating Kari Cheng.

Watch the screen.

Samantha pushed the space bar.

Kari Cheng stares out of the degraded footage, frozen for a moment, framed by static and the running decryption software that Samantha still has running. She is in her living room, standing at her desk to record the video.

Just seeing her face caused Samantha to purse her lips in irritation, Kari's almost flawless Filipino face, petite and attractive to the point of distraction with those full lips, so kissable... and for a moment, she regretted that she had never gotten to know Kari the way she had always wanted to.

"Goddammit Kari," Samantha whispered to the image and shook herself out of her reverie, surprised at the effect Kari still had on her, even now. She looked at the frozen image wondering if her decoding had failed, but then—

Kari starts to move, static and glitches marring the video.

"Okay Chris! These are the limitations—"

bzzt!

"—rules to time travel—"

bzzt! crack!

"You can only travel to your own lifetime and to twenty-four places that you've actually been to, so no running off and killing Hitler."

bzzt! Static and the video jumps forward.

"Your mind is the only thing that travels back and because of the implant, you only have five minutes and fifty-five seconds—"

bzzzzt!

"Oh, and every jump brings you forward in time after the last jump. You cannot go to the same time twic—"

Bzzt! Bzzt!

"No do-overs. Once your implant syncs, you're done, game over. You're out of time."

bzzt! crack!

Samantha hit the keyboard harder than she had intended to and the video paused. She shoved herself away from the screen, her chair rolling her across the laboratory floor much faster than she had anticipated, but she didn't care. She was only aware of the panicky thumpity-thumpity-thump of her heart pumping way too hard in her chest. It was the kind of panicked thumping that almost hurt, the kind of thumping that would have convinced an ordinary person that they were having a heart attack. But no, not Samantha. As hard as her heart was pounding, she knew that it was just an increase in adrenaline, the start of what could be a full-blown panic attack—

"Holy shit!" Samantha spat the words, surprising even herself, but they were words that she needed to say before her mind exploded.

Kari Cheng had discovered time travel.

Samantha swivelled around in her chair to look at the mass of machinery, computers, and the very beautifully complex column of custom engineering that was at the core of her life's work. The same work that Kari had spoken of in her time travel explanation.

The implant.

The current version of that implant, the X-11 was currently held in place in the center of the column by very delicate machinery Samantha had designed herself. It was about the size of a quarter, but it somehow still dominated the entire lab, and now seemed to loom as Samantha looked at it in a completely different light.

"Fucking time travel."

Samantha got to her feet, forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly, truly aware for the first time just how empty the lab was, of how alone she was down there with the implant. Her solitude was by choice and by design, but for the first time, she wondered if that was such a good idea. She had a huge staff, but they largely kept out of her way unless she summoned them and truthfully, she could only remember one or two of their names; they seemed to come and go so quickly, so there was no point remembering anyone's name or face. They came to the company eager for a chance to work with the legendary and brilliant Samanta Perry, but by the first week, most of that eagerness had been stripped away when they had proven to be deficient in one area or the other. Most of them knew that when Samantha was working in her lab, she was not to be disturbed, even if the building was burning down. Not even Doctor Osbourne bothered her, and he was the de facto head of the lab, the visionary that he was. Samantha was the brains of the operation. She was the one who had designed the implants and figured out how to make them interface directly with the human brain.

The same implant that was now connected to time travel.

No wonder Kari didn't want anyone getting their hands on her work.

Samantha turned back to the frozen image of Kari, then walked decisively back to the screen. She had to know more. She had to know everything.

Knock! Knock! from somewhere off-camera.

Kari turns, startled by the knock. "Oh, okay," she says breathlessly. "Gotta go!" She reaches out to hit the space bar, meaning to stop the video, but she is clumsy and misses. The video continues to record as she runs offscreen to answer the door.

For a moment, there is only the empty screen and the distant sound of an opening door.

"Hello Kari." A woman's voice, gruffer. Meaner.

"This isn't supposed to happen yet..." There is some desperation and fear in Kari's voice.

A bright flash of light and the screen crackles, the signal disrupted. Another flash and Kari stumbles backward into the shot, falling to her knees, clearly injured. She struggles to look up at her attacker, who remains offscreen hidden by the wall.

"This is how it happens," the woman says. "This how it always happens."

Kari shakes her head no, defiant. She is in pain, but she knows that this isn't how it goes.

"Today... That changes..."

A flash of light as some type of energy envelops Kari. The video stutters, frame by frame, Kari moving as if she is a stop-motion animation showing the agony and fear on her face as the implant at the back of her head surges with the new energy—

Everything turns white.

Samantha blinked rapidly, unsure of herself for a long moment. The thought that she had just witnessed Kari's death sliced through, chilling her heart, but her curiosity had been pricked and her brilliant analytical mind was already working. There would be time for emotion later. She might even shed a tear or two, but that would be later. At that moment, she had data to analyze.

A thought occurred to her then and she turned to a second older computer, brow furrowed in thought. Kari had mentioned a name...

Samantha typed quickly and in a few seconds, she had the profile on the screen.

"Chris Allman," Samantha murmured as she examined the details of the file on the screen. A few clicks and the data popped up on a holographic screen behind her, complete with photos and diagnostics.

After a moment, Samanth turned back to Kari's footage.

She restarted the footage and watched it again.

When it was finished, she watched it again. And again.

Watch the screen.