Their fight followed an intricate choreography, practiced for a decade in solitary independence, culminating in a mesmerizing, lethal dance as the two women met. Their punches and kicks missed by no more than a hair's breadth. Their dodges and twists had a fluidity and speed that turned their black silhouettes into blurring shapes, like two drops of ink quickly dispersing in a body of water.

Alyssa dove to the side to evade an upper cut, and swiped at the Other's legs, but she had already jumped back and out of reach. It was a frustrating fight. The Other seemed to anticipate her every move, and at the same time, her opponent's offense seemed almost comically obvious, her attacks too easy to evade.

"Stop this," she snapped at her other self. "You have to listen to me. We can still make a difference-"

"You think I care about that any longer?" the Other swung her leg in a high kick, and Alyssa rolled to the side and got back up on her feet just in time to duck again as another punch followed immediately.

"You have to die, so I can go back!"

Alyssa was almost inclined to agree with her – she probably had to jump back, go to room 57 and make her decision to jump to 2107 again, or she wouldn't be here, after all. Thinking about it was hard enough, but trying to figure it all out while being involved in hand to hand combat with herself was truly taxing. Either way, if the Other killed her here and now, it would all have been in vain.

"Calm down. We can find a way to fix this," she told her other self just as much as herself, "We can go and find Baker. I bet he could help."

"Or I just kill you," the Other suggested, a maniacal grin washing over her face as she took another swing.

She was angry, and that slowed her down. Alyssa caught her fist and redirected her momentum, sending her tumbling around her in a wide arc. She didn't want to hurt her.

The Other whirled around, and the two women faced each other breathlessly.

"Why would you even decide to come back here?" the Other asked. "If... if you got to be with him?"

Her insides tied themselves into a knot at the thought, tight enough to force the air out of her lungs and leave her speechless for a moment.

Why had she, indeed? She could have awaited death in Leon's arms, peacefully, blissfully. But not everyone in that future would be so lucky to die like that. And rather than die happily, she was willing to live the rest of her days in pain, if it meant that there was even the slimmest chance that she could make a change.

"I couldn't just watch them die," Alyssa whispered. "Everyone... Leon... the little girl and her father... Travis..."

The Other furrowed her brow. "Who?"

"The girl... she..." She realized that the Other hadn't met her yet and shook her head. "The guy I- we gave our key to. His daughter."

"Which key?"

They stared at each for a moment, the Other's face a perfect mirror of her own confusion.

"The key to our room," Alyssa said slowly. "The sick man. In the corridor, before the jump."

The furrow on the Other's brow deepened, then she shook her head violently.

"Stop distracting me and just... die."

With surprising speed, the Other charged at her again to take a swing at her head. With no time to dodge, Alyssa brought up her right hand to block her fist, mere inches before her face. Another punch followed, and she blocked again. The impact sent a jolt up along her left arm, and forced a scream from her lungs as she felt the nanofibers in her palm rupture. In a heartbeat, the pain raged through her entire body like a surge, leaving a throbbing ache in its wake. Under the glove, she could feel fresh blood seep from the wound.

Alyssa stumbled backwards, aiming to get some distance between herself and the Other, who had stopped her assault, probably startled by the sound of her own voice crying out like that.

"You're hurt..." the Other noted.

Her gaze flicked from Alyssa's hand back up to her face, and a smug grin appeared on her lips.

"So what makes you think you can win this?" she asked. "You're exactly like me, but injured."

Alyssa rolled back her shoulders and stood straight. The pain ebbed away, leaving behind nothing but a familiar, numbing sense of ease. That was what it had used to feel like, back in the day – at first, a rush of adrenaline, like a hot surge in her veins, tinting her thoughts in a red haze as she fought. But there always came a point when cold and calculating routine took over. The impassive side that was so stone-faced that she was more likely to pass as an inanimate object than a human. A machine, built for battle.

She was not going to die here, after all that she had gone through. She had done this all her life, in a way even before her military training, and then through her time in the army, through her time as an agent, and her time in the bunkers. She was perhaps not the greatest fighter or the greatest infiltrator, but if there was one thing she had always been exceptionally good at, it was surviving.

She shifted her stance, putting her weight on her left leg, ready to take on the next hit.

"I'm like you," Alyssa said calmly, "But with more experience."

A low growl came from her opponent as she charged again, and Alyssa knew that this would be her last chance. She shifted to the side fluidly, and grabbed the woman by the shoulder as she rushed past her in a frenzied craze. She yanked her back around and into a choke hold from behind. The Other struggled violently, and before she could jab her elbow at Alyssa's ribs with full force, she let her break free.

The Other had been right – after all, Alyssa was hurt, and she wasn't, putting her at an advantage. But there was something else that was different between them.

Vigilance.

That was what she had been lacking the first time she had come here. A sixth sense for danger and uncanny reflexes did not always suffice. Vigilance meant being fully aware of one's surroundings at all times, and being mindful of potential threats.

Just as the Other had struggled out of her choke hold, Alyssa pushed against her back and ducked. The Other stumbled a step forward and then suddenly, a gunshot rang through the room. The Other screamed out in surprise and pain.

Both Alyssas turned to face Pandora. While they had been busy fighting, their grandmother had picked up the gun the Other had dropped on the floor, and now pointed it back and forth between the two with shaking hands.

"You better explain yourself right now, or I will shoot you both!"

Pandora's look was frantic, almost feverish. Gone was that air of arrogance she had shown during their first encounter. This woman was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

"Look who's injured now," Alyssa remarked with a glance to the side, where the Other was pressing a hand against her profusely bleeding shoulder. "Seems like grandmother has evened the odds for us."

"Fuck you," the Other snapped back. "And you, you bitch, you've really done enough damage. Time for you to die."

"No!"

Alyssa stepped forward to stop the Other, but it was too late. Her arm slipped from her grasp as she charged at Pandora. Their grandmother's eyes widened in surprise at the speed of the attack, but to Alyssa it all seemed to play out in slow motion. The Other reached Pandora long before she could react and pull the trigger again, and slapped her hand with the weapon to the side. She went straight for Pandora's throat, and pushed her back against the wall behind her with enough force that the woman's cry of surprise escaped her throat as nothing but a faint gargling. Something cracked beneath her fingers, a nasty, wet sound of cartilage being compacted.

The Other seemed to sense the motion behind her back and turned around, just in time to see Alyssa draw her gun from the holster at her thigh.

She aimed for the face that looked like hers, right between those lilac eyes.

The shot rang out, tearing through the air in the room like a sonic guillotine, and the Other sank to the floor.

Free from her grasp, Pandora stumbled forward, eyes bulging and gasping for air. Her face was a distorted mask of confusion and fury, but to Alyssa's surprise, not a trace of pain. Her grandmother came down on her knees, and just as Alyssa was about to wonder how she would fix this giant mess, and get this timeline back on track, Pandora reached for the gun the Other had slapped from her hand just moments ago, and pointed it at Alyssa.

Red tinged the white clouds in her mind. She had thought she couldn't let Pandora die tonight, or everything would be in vain - no more planning with hindsight. As long as the device didn't work, she couldn't jump back and just try again. And even if she could, perhaps there would be three of her and everything would get even more complicated. But in that moment, none of that mattered any longer. Pure, ferocious instinct took over and she raised her own gun.

Two shots rang through the room simultaneously, but one missed.

Two pairs of lilac eyes stared up blankly at the gold painted stucco on the ceiling, and the third stared down at the lifeless bodies.

For what seemed like an eternity, she just stood there. And as the adrenaline in her veins subsided, Alyssa realized that her actions making a difference meant that she would have to find a way to deal with the consequences.

A faint blinking at the periphery of her vision drew her attention.

REBOOT COMPLETE.

She wiped the blood from the screen, and skimmed over the report the device displayed for her. It informed her that the anti-time crystals were broken beyond repair due to an overload during her second jump. There really was no way back.

She swallowed back a wave of emotions that threatened to fill the void left behind by the passing adrenaline surge. It was too late to have any regrets now - which was perhaps somewhat ironic considering the subject of her regret wouldn't be born for another twenty years. If he was going to be born at all.

It didn't matter any longer. She had willingly chosen a lifetime of pain over a few days of happiness. She couldn't have borne the guilt of not acting when there was still something she could do. And yet, at the same time she felt like she had abandoned the people in her past-future, and that weighed on her conscience too. It was as if no matter when or where she existed, her intentions always paved the way to her personal hell, a world of suffering. But that was what she was good at, after all: suffering, sacrificing all she had, and surviving another day. It had always been like that.

The question that remained was how to survive.

A silent rustling startled her, and drew her attention to the bed, where Frederic Espira was still in a feverish dream. How dreadfully ironic that after all of this, the original target of her mission was left alive, completely oblivious to what had just transpired. She sat down on the bed with a weary sigh, wondering what to do now.

Her gaze fell on the corpse of her grandmother at her feet. Her sleek hair lay fanned out on the floor beside her face, strands of bloody red amidst the light blond. Other than the bullet hole in her head, it really was like looking in a mirror. Except for the healthy glow to Pandora's skin, her hair reaching to her waist, and the expensive grey suit, of course. Really nothing that with a little bit of real sunlight and effort Alyssa couldn't pull off.

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

I'm like you, she thought, but with fifty years more experience.

_______

A.N.

Dedicated to gechochamber because the idea of "What if she didn't just have to kill her grandmother, but herself?" was his fabulously complicated brain child, and I somehow made it work... I think.
I'm not 100% happy with this chapter, but I can't really work on it any further without external feedback... In the next chapter, you will probably see why!