Alyssa had often thought about death, and over the past months with Last Hope she had found herself thinking that ceasing to exist would probably be fundamentally different from it.

As she watched her own grandmother collapse before her, dead before her mother was even born, a sense of dread overcame her. A revolting feeling gripped hold of her entire body and caused her to shudder, and as it spread throughout her, she thought that this would be it. She thought that she would break apart into atomic fragments now, just like at the jump, and from there into less than that. Into pure energy probably, that would dissipate without leaving a trace in this place, in this time, except for perhaps raising the temperature of the room by a fraction of a degree.

But as she watched the blood around Pandora's body begin to pool and soak the crimson carpet with a slightly darker shade of red, Alyssa realized that her revulsion was a very visceral, real feeling. It was because of the sight of this woman, who looked almost exactly like herself, lying before her feet with a bullet hole in her head. It was like watching her own death without it actually coming to pass. It was all the fear and existential dread of mortality that she had pushed back for the past decade, welling up all at once.

She had seen so much death, pain and destruction - she had caused a lot of it herself - and had walked away from it unfazed, that it felt oddly selfish to feel so appalled, so deeply touched by this one dead body before her now.

"Pandora?"

In the bed, the President stirred between his sheets and tried to raise his head, but he was too weak.

"Pandora?" he asked again in a hoarse whisper.

Alyssa stepped over the body, and towards the bed, forcing down the urge to vomit. The guards at the far end of the floor didn't seem to have heard the shot, or they would have barged into the room already. She wondered if she ought to clean up the blood, or hide the body. The plan hadn't covered this eventuality, and the device on her wrist didn't seem to be able to adapt to this turn of events.

As for the President – she wasn't entirely certain if she still had to kill him, too, but from the looks of the man, if she just walked away right now, the job would do itself anyway.

Espira looked up at her with glassy eyes and a feverish gaze. His skin was a pallid yellow against the white sheets, and his breath was labored.

"Pandora, what happened?"

He didn't seem to notice the differences in appearance between Pandora and Alyssa, like her much shorter hair, and the black headgear with the visor resting on her head.

"Just a nightmare," she replied quietly. "But it will all be well from now on. So sleep now, Frederic."

She hesitated for a moment, then she leaned down and patted his hand reassuringly. The man closed his eyes with a raspy sigh and she turned around to leave. Behind her, she could hear him draw another deep breath, and then, just silence.

The quantum computer displayed nothing as she stepped out of the President's bedroom, and she realized that she didn't know where to go from here. She had only planned her mission up until this moment. She had suspected that something would go terribly wrong, and still there was a lingering ominous feeling when she thought about the body in the room behind her. Like a strange sense of a déjà-vu and a premonition mingled into one.

Her gaze wandered through the room aimlessly. Heavy, beige colored curtains adorned with golden tassels lined the entire wall behind the black desk, moving softly in a breeze. She moved them to the side. Behind them, the entire wall was covered by a window front, providing an excellent view on the city below, with its flickering, colorful lights dancing through the darkness and making the outside world look like a mesmerizing kaleidoscopic diorama.

One of the windows was partially open, and she pushed it up all the way, allowing the cool night air to caress her face. It had rained while she had been infiltrating the tower, and now the air smelled crisp and clean. She leaned out and looked up, along the façade of the building. The rooftop lay just above this floor, and she figured it might provide an even better view.

She climbed out of the window, and stepped on the small wall projection just beyond it. Shuffling along the wall she made her way towards the edge of the building, where a series of small nooks allowed her to climb upward. It was a precarious climb along the rain-slick wall. The wind picked up, pulling at her hair harshly, but she felt no fear.

In a way, the moment she had ended her mission, she had ceased to exist. She had no purpose any longer. But also no obligations. And so the only thing that occupied her mind in that moment was that one last dream she had held on to.

Pulling herself up on the rooftop, she turned herself around and sat down, legs dangling over the edge, hundreds of meters above the street below. For a while, she just sat there, thinking about nothing in particular and just watching the lights of the city that sprawled all the way towards the horizon.

The person who would bring about all this change for the country that would lead to the war was dead. So whatever the future held, it would not be the same as the one she knew. There would be no rain of fire, no bunker city. No need for Project Last Hope.

Maybe there would be another war, another day. It was a good a guess as any.

Her attention was drawn towards the east, where the sun was just about to rise. A fiery ribbon had appeared where the distant horizon met the sky, chasing away the shadows of the night and the gloominess she had felt just moments before. The future would change, she was certain of that.

Her gaze fell on the device on her wrist, and she thought of the man who had built and programmed it. She wondered what Leon had wanted to tell her, in that moment before the jump. Baker would be in his twenties right now, and Rosie was probably an infant. Leon wouldn't be born for about another twenty years. If he would be born at all.

She had killed her own grandmother, ready to suffer the consequence of not being brought into the world she was about to create, ready to sacrifice her existence for a better future. But what would it mean for Leon? Would he exist, in that different future? And if so, if he wasn't working on Last Hope, if he wasn't stuck underground with the rest of them – where would he be?

She could only dream about the amazing prestigious research he could be doing in a different 2157, advancing humanity and making the world a better place through his brilliant mind and endless optimism. Either way, even if he existed, he most likely wouldn't remember ever having met her.

But she hadn't ceased to exist, so whatever the future held, chances were that Leon might be around just as well. It was as good a guess as any.

Maybe, if she could just find him, and if she told him what had happened, he would understand. He was a smart man, and she had picked up enough about the technology to explain it to him, after he had explained it so well to her. He'd definitely listen. If only he was there, in the future.

There was only one way to find out.

She turned her back to the sun, and began her climb back down from her vantage point.

Leon clenched his teeth together as he bit back the words he had wanted to tell Ally. He hadn't had the courage to tell her before, when they had been alone in the old control room, so why did he feel the urge to scream it from the top of his lungs now?

The timing couldn't have been worse. Rosie had warned him, repeatedly, that he had to keep his emotions in check and keep his distance from Ally. It was easier said than done. Rationally, he knew that Rosie was right. The former special agent's role in this plan was too crucial, and unfortunately her compliance relied on her desperation and willingness to sacrifice herself. It was easy to convince somebody who had no hope to attempt something as insane as a jump through time. It would have been much harder if Ally had come to believe that she had something left to lose in the here and now.

Leon looked up at the woman he had fallen in love with, as she stood on the platform in that black combat armor, ready to give her life for the slim chance that this would work. All he could do was be grateful that half of her face was concealed behind that visor. He couldn't have borne to look into her eyes.

It was bad enough that she had agreed to this, even at the prospect of dying. But what was worse was his own guilt over knowing that he was doing this to her. He was sending her to what would likely be her death, so he had no right to any of the things he was feeling right now – the longing, the misery, the guilt. But above it all, the absolute worst part of it was that even now, in those last moments, he couldn't tell her about any of it.

Stone-faced, he watched as she moved her hand to the device. She hesitated for a moment, and their gazes met. And then she pushed the button on the display.

The flash of light that occurred at the moment of energy conversion only lasted a split second, but it filled the room with such an intense glare that all the scientists averted heir gazes and shielded their eyes in reflex. And when they lowered their hands and arms and raised their heads again, a gasp went through the group.

Because out of the multitude of things that they had imagined to happen, this looked suspiciously like the absolute worst possible outcome: nothing.

With her hand now on the display, Alyssa was standing on the platform, still as a statue, and Leon didn't know whether to feel boundless joy or endless dread.

Word Count: 1837

Total: 17502