"I would come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you."

-

CHAPTER ONE — TIME TO RUN

Sometime in the Future...

I hummed to myself as I played with a makeshift ring on my wedding finger, sighing as I looked back at the man beside me.

"Five, can you stop ogling that mannequin?" I mumbled.

"What, can't I do something normal?" He chuckled, downing the mug of coffee in his hands.

"There's nothing normal about this, honey," I sighed, looking around the wasteland for the millionth time.

"Do you remember that little mansion just outside the city limits? Where we..."

"Yeah. What about it?" I looked over to the bearded man, who held up a cup.

"Well, turns out their wine cellar was untouched," he grinned. "Picked up a few cases of your favourite Bordeaux."

"EEP! Thanks, baby!" I threw my arms around him.

He chugged the wine in his cup. "They really are good."

I grinned as I took the other cup and poured myself a drink. "You are the best."

"I know, princess."

Something tumbled in the distance and we both reached for our guns at the same time, cocking it as we pointed them in the direction.

My finger hovered above the trigger as I spotted a figure in the distance. "Babe, there's someone," I said. "Want me to shoot them?"

"Not if I shoot this bitch first," he replied with his smirk.

The lady waved at us, her short curly blonde bob flowing with the hot breeze and the bottom of her black trench coat was coated with grime.

She was still smiling when she walked over to us, never wavering in her slick red heels as she stalked across the wasteland.

"Who the hell are you?" Five shouted, his gun still pointed at her.

My rifle followed the lady closely as she stood on the top of the ruined stairs of the Archdale Library. "I'm here to help!"

Five grunted. "Tell me why I shouldn't put a bullet through your head right now!"

"Because," she purred. "If you did, you wouldn't hear the offer I'm about to make you both."

Five looked over his gun curiously, mine was still pointed at her cautiously.

She took off her glasses and her black netted hat. "Which would be quite tragic, given your current circumstances."

We both lowered our guns as she continued. "I work for an organization called the Commission. We are tasked with the preservation of the time continuum through manipulation and removals."

"I don't understand," Five said, his eyes darting to me before looking back to the lady.

"Sometimes," she was smiling like a Cheshire cat by now. "People make choices that alter time. Free will, don't get me started."

The lady lit her smoking pipe. "-When that happens, we dispatch one of our agents to, eliminate the threat."

We both raised our guns on unison and pointed them at her. "You can try, but you won't succeed," I scowled, cocking back the safety.

She chuckled. "No, no, no, no. You misunderstand me. You're not targets, you're recruits."

"I've come to offer you two jobs, Number Zero and Number Five," she beamed.

"No thank you," I mumbled.

She laughed, waving off my words. "We've had our eye on you two for quite some time."

"And we think you have a lot of potential," she gestured to us. "Your survival skills have made you quite celebrities back at headquarters."

She inhaled from her pipe. "That, and your ability to jump through time," she looked at Five.

"And your power of shadow manipulation and intangibility, is that what it's called?" She stared at me.

Five looked at me. "So, you're saying that we, we could actually leave here? Go back?"

"In return of five years of service, respectively," she replied. "Once your contracts are done, you can retire to a time and place of your choosing, with a pension plan to boot."

I nodded. "I'll go if you go."

"Wait, love, I need to ask something," he murmured back.

"If you could alter time, why not just stop this from ever happening?" He asked, gesturing at the giant wasteland.

"That's quite impossible, I'm afraid," she smiled, pulling her pipe from her lips. "You see, all of this, it was supposed to happen."

Five scoffed. "That's insane, the end of everything?"

The Handler smirked. "Not everything, just the end of something."

Five looked at me.

"Your call," I murmured as the lady extended her hand.

"So... Do we have an agreement?"

He sighed as he held up his hand to the lady. "Done."