Over the next few days, the rumor spread like a disease, a festering cancer eating away at the already weakened tissue that held the underground society together. Civil unrest erupted throughout the city and spread like a wildfire. Brutal robberies and lootings left the decrepit bunker city in even more disarray than before.

Alyssa spent all that time in a daze. When she went to bed at night, she couldn't even remember what she had done all day. As she lay awake, too restless to sleep, but too exhausted not to try, she listened to the sounds of the fighting outside. Screams, shouts and gunshots echoed through the corridors, as Security quelled the riots. In the morning, on the way to the market hall where she would look for work, she stepped over corpses.

She felt nothing.

In hindsight, she was glad for the utter numbness that the shock had left her with. Otherwise, she might have taken desperate, drastic measures to ensure that she wouldn't be around to die from suffocation. Surprisingly few others chose that path - the authorities were quick to refute the news as outlandish rumors and somehow managed to quell the fears of the citizens, like they always did. The people wanted to believe, because the truth was too devastating, and so, at the edge of a total collapse, humanity miraculously recoiled and settled back into their meager, pale shadow of a civilized society once more.

In the end, when a horde of security guards with their guns couldn't stop the fighting, all it took were some placatory words, numbers, statistics and positive projections. Boring but reassuring things that nobody would bother to double check. Except people like Computer Guy perhaps, but he was one among the few, and had been found with his veins cut open with a jagged metal scrap.

And the riots? There were riots all the time. Within a week, nobody could tell what they had been about any longer anyway.

But Alyssa saw through that charade. She had once been on the other side, she had once worn one of those white uniforms, and had stood guard before closed doors behind which the rich and powerful plotted the fate of the bunker city. She wondered what kind of plans they were making now.

Her only comfort was the thought that no matter if rich or poor, they would all die, long before the surface would be habitable again. She just hadn't yet made her mind up about how she herself would be going about the dying part.

Her decision was postponed, when a week after the incident in the canteen, she came upon the card. Amidst all the trash that littered the corridor before her doorstep, she considered it refuse, but somebody had lodged it into the crack between her door and its frame on eye level. And it had her name printed on it.

As she pulled it out, her touch left dirty fingerprints on the unblemished white paper. She unfolded it, and found that it was a message. A location, a shady, abandoned corner on one of the lowest levels of the bunker city, and a date, two days from then. And on the backside, three more words: Project Last Hope.

The message intrigued her in its mysterious minimalism. At first, she thought it might be a joke, or perhaps some sort of trap. Then, she realized that she was just as desperate to believe in something as the rest of the people down here, and that she was willing to go to the meeting either way.

Over the following two days, she began to spin fantastic theories about the sender of that message. She imagined them as saviors with a secret plan and powerful ace up their sleeves, to save humanity from its demise. Perhaps stockpiled resources. Perhaps some secret technology. Perhaps a plan to make all of the things that were going so terribly wrong in this place right once and for all. She was so enthralled by the prospect of being given new hope that she forgot to stop and wonder what these mysterious saviors might want with her, specifically.

When the day of the invitation arrived, she was eager to make her way to the secret hideout of Project Last Hope. She had double checked the floor plans to make sure she wasn't heading in the wrong direction, because the location they had given her was not just abandoned, it was cut off from ventilation.

Luckily, she still had an oxygen mask left over from one of her previous jobs. If they had realized how valuable every breath of air would soon be, they'd certainly have made her give it back.

As she walked the abandoned corridors towards her goal, the only sound was the raspy noise coming from the mask with her every breath, and her footsteps, echoing through the narrow space. These parts were even more derelict and run-down than the levels above. Rust was eating away at her surroundings, here and there the walls had been cracked open, cables and other material had haphazardly been torn out from underneath, and debris of such endeavors littered the floor.

Since there was no breathable air, she knew that she was extremely unlikely to run into anybody. Yet the place filled her with a sense of apprehension. In her experience, the most hostile, seemingly abandoned places often bred the most dangerous threats.

But as she descended deeper into the bowels of the bunker city, she noticed something strange. The angry orange of rust on the walls gave way to a calming coat of white paint. The debris that had in some parts piled as high as her ankles became less and less. Around another corner, she suddenly found herself in front of an enormous airlock.

She stopped before it, wondering for a moment what to do, until there was a soft hiss and a click. The mechanism was new and well-maintained, there was none of the exhausted creaking and screeching of the machines and infrastructure up above.

She stepped into the airlock, and just as the first door closed behind her, a soft, cool breeze wafted across her skin. It would have been a reassuring feeling, if it wasn't for her sense of foreboding and anxiety. She took off her mask tentatively. Just then, the airlock opened up in front of her and revealed a sight more marvelous than she could have ever imagined.

Beyond the door was a massive, circular room of a pristine beauty she hadn't seen anywhere in the bunker city, except perhaps for the topmost levels, where the authorities dwelt. The dark grey floor was shiny, and contrasted beautifully with the impeccable white-painted walls. At the center, two twisting stairways made from metal and glass wound their way upward to various suspended walkways and platforms. The structure spanned three floors, and the walls were lined with innumerable doors. On the upper levels, most of them led to offices with massive windows looking out towards the center.

And there was light. So much bright illumination that she had to squint for a moment, until her eyes adjusted to it. It was like a supernova compared to the dim and muted glow of the lights on her level, and the ones she frequented for work.

She was enthralled by her surroundings, captivated by the way in which the light reflected off all that glass and steel, and her head was sent spinning with ideas. These people, whoever they were, must have found a solution. A massive stockpile of resources. A bunker within the bunker. Some secret technology to clean the air. Something like that.

"Welcome, Miss Caine," somebody said next to her.

She turned to face the speaker - an old man with a crown of fuzzy white hair sticking out from the sides of his head like a woolly laurel. He wore a wrinkly smile on his face.

"Eh.... Hello?"

"Doctor Solomon Baker," the man introduced himself, stretching out his hand.

His skin was paper thin, and Alyssa was worried about breaking his spindly fingers. But his handshake had surprising force and energy.

"Are you... is this Project Last Hope?" she asked.

"This research station is our base of operations, yes. I believe you will have many questions..."

She looked at the man before her, who eyed her back with equal curiosity, and only nodded. He was wearing a pristine white shirt and dress pants, and she suddenly felt very self-conscious about her own grubby old clothes.

"Well, allow me to introduce my fellow researchers."

The old man gestured to the other side, to a younger man and a middle-aged woman that she hadn't even noticed before. Suddenly, she became aware of the presence of about a dozen more people in the enormous room. They had been passing on the walkways overhead, or moving along the stairways. Now all of them had stopped and were looking down at her.

"This is my colleague Doctor Bellamy. And this is Doctor Latrobe."

They both smiled at her as she shook their hands. She was too dumbfounded to say anything, so an awkward silence descended between them. She could feel countless pairs of eyes on her, and it made her nervous. Suddenly the light seemed too bright, the space too open. She took a half-step back, and her heart beat accelerated in her chest as she tried to come up with an escape strategy.

The younger man, Doctor Bellamy, cleared his throat. "So... would you like some coffee while we talk?"

"You have coffee down here?!"

The last time she had seen coffee up close was when she had worked for the authorities and stood guard before one of their meeting rooms.

"It's very strictly rationed," Doctor Bellamy explained with a charming smile, "But I believe for you we can make an exception."

They led her to the first upper level of the research station. The walk across the suspended, winding stairs made her feel dizzy, and she realized that she hadn't been in a space this wide and open in two years. But slowly, her sense of unease made way for excitement, and she allowed herself to take in her surroundings with wonder and curiosity.

In a small meeting room, they sat down around the table, and she was served the best coffee that she had ever tasted. It was black as tar and had no sugar in it, but she wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

"So..." She finally found her speech again after a sip of the concoction. "What's all of this about? Why am I here?"

"We would like to hire you," the old man said.

She let out a dry laugh. "Hire me? As what? I don't think I'm qualified for whatever it is you people are doing here."

"You are an assassin, are you not?"

Her smile withered. She slowly put down her cup, and eyed him warily. Whoever these people were, they had apparently done their research. Which probably shouldn't have surprised her, considering their obvious occupation as researchers.

"I... was," she said hesitantly.

Doctor Baker nodded appreciatively. "We want you to kill somebody."

"I'm no hitman." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Besides, in case the news haven't reached these parts yet, it wouldn't even matter. In a few weeks we're all gonna die anyway."

"Oh, but that's the thing," Baker said. "We're asking you to prevent all that from happening."

"And how exactly am I supposed to do that?"

"You will kill the man who is responsible."

"You mean one of the authorities?" She wracked her brain, wondering who they could mean. The head of Security? Resource Management? Health and Disease Control? None of their deaths would change the current situation, or magically make any more air appear. "How's that gonna help?"

"Oh, no, you misunderstand. The man you're supposed to kill is not one of the authorities," Doctor Baker said. "He is already dead."

"And we want you to kill him," the female scientist, Doctor Latrobe chimed in, almost cheerfully.

"Come again?" Alyssa blinked. "I don't understand. What are you even... what are you talking about?"

"Time travel." Doctor Bellamy said.

"Time travel?" She raised an eyebrow. A moment of silence passed between them, and then she asked, "Are you insane?"

Doctor Latrobe let out a laugh, but Doctor Bellamy stared back at her with a deadpan expression that made one thing very certain: he was dead serious.

"Time travel. We are asking you to kill a man who is already dead, by jumping back in time."

A.N.
This chapter has undergone major revision since I first uploaded it. Now we get to see the research station in a bit more detail, and the more extensive dialogue with the scientists has been moved to the next chapter. Overall it's not much longer but I believe it makes for a better chapter split now, introduces the side characters better, and it gave me an opportunity to describe this place and emphasize the contrast to her usual environment.

Word Count: 2106
Total: 4843