This chapter takes a peek at some of the alternative timelines that exists somewhere in between and all around the plot... Thank you to all the lovely readers and commenters that made this possible! And I'm still collecting ideas for further scenes, so I might update this chapter once in a while.

1 | The one in which Espira's crimes are punished mercilessly.

Pandora's hands were shaking as she pulled the metal cap from the vial and broke the seal.

One more dose was all it would take. One last time she would force the poison down the sleeping President's throat. She had never wanted to kill him. But his reign of terror had to end. The atrocities he had committed, the horror she had to live with every day – it was too much to bear. She would become a murderer if only it meant that this insanity would stop.

"Freeze!"

With a shriek of surprise, she dropped the vial. It hit the floor and cracked, the yellowish liquid seeping into the carpet. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and at the same time, she felt like it sank. It was over. She had failed.

"Turn around slowly, hands up where I can see them," the voice behind her commanded.

As Pandora turned around, she came face to face with a shadow. A woman stood before her, clad in black head to toe, her face half concealed by a dark, mirrored visor. The weapon she held pointed at her looked odd – sleek and black, with two narrow blueish lines lighting up along the sides with a soft, pulsing glow. She figured the woman must have been with Special Forces. Somebody from the Agency of Internal Affairs perhaps, sent to keep the President safe.

Safe from people like her.

"Are you here to kill me?" Pandora whispered.

"No," the woman replied.

Her head turned slightly and she looked past Pandora, to the man sleeping on the bed. She had drugged him with sleeping pills to make sure he'd be out while she administered the last dose.

"I am here for him."

Pandora's back straightened. Perhaps this person was on her side, after all, whoever had sent them.

"Who are you? Internal Affairs?"

"No. I'm with... the Fashion Police."

Pandora gasped in surprise. "You... you really exist... and you came!"

Sobbing from relief, she collapsed on her knees before the stranger. "You really came! Oh thank you, thank you so much!"

The stranger ignored her. She stepped over to the bed and looked down at Espira.

"Frederic Espira. Your apartment is an eyesore and you shall be arrested for the crimes of atrocious taste in furniture, pretentiously calling worthless random heirlooms 'vintage antiques', and putting gold tassels on beige curtains. Furthermore, you have violated numerous articles of The Dress Code, by wearing several clashing shades of blue at the same time, socks in sandals, and combinations of velour and velvet."

Espira moaned in his sleep, much like anyone awake expressed their despair when they entered his apartment or beheld his wardrobe.

The woman ignored the fact that the man was sleeping, rolled him over to his side and cuffed his hands behind his back.

On the floor, Pandora continued to sob quiet tears of joy and relief. It was finally over.

"It's alright, ma'am," the Fashion Policewoman nodded at her. "You'll be alright from now on. Just steer clear of warm hues. They don't go at all with your skin tone."

(This timeline was born from a crazy comment thread with @floranocturna somewhere in chapter 5.)

2. The one in which the device breaks during the second jump, but for a different reason.

His room was only dimly lit, but as he sat up fully, he noticed a scrap of paper on the bed next to him. It was a sheet from one of his notebooks. He furrowed his brow as he picked it up. Why was it here?

That was when he noticed that the other side had been scribbled on. He turned it over and read:

Meet me at the jump spot.

A furrow appeared on Leon's brow. Why would she leave him a message and not wake him up? His heart sank and a dreadful anxiety took hold of him. She couldn't possibly be thinking of jumping once more?

He hurried to find her, and arrived at the jump spot a mere minute later. When he entered the room, she sat there, cross legged and with her back to him, staring at something beneath the edge of the platform. As she heard his footsteps, she got up to her feet and turned to face him.

He climbed up to her and looked at her, confused.

"What are you doing? Don't you want to come back to bed?"

"Couldn't sleep..." she mumbled. "But I had an idea."

The expression on her face was full of conflict as she took his hand in hers. She didn't look at him as she spoke, but down at their interlaced fingers.

"I don't want to die, Leon. Not any longer. I thought I was ready, but I am not. I... I cannot bear staying here and waiting for my death, but I also cannot stand the thought of losing you. So I thought... We jump together. You and me. We go back to 2107 and save the world together."

She raised her head to look at him, and the bittersweet but hopeful smile that washed over her face broke his heart. Because what she suggested was impossible.

"I can't do it alone..." she whispered, "I... I need you, Leon. Please..."

"I- I'm sorry, Ally. We can't jump together," he said. Her face fell and a shadow of pain and doubt flickered over her features.

"Not because I wouldn't want to. But the device won't have enough power to do that," he explained, "It creates a sort of field around you through the nodes that have been implanted into your body, so it can only transport matter that's very close to you, like your clothes and your weapons..."

"Close to me..." she mumbled. "How close?"

His breath caught as she fixed him with her gaze. The desperation following her plea and that momentary doubt had disappeared completely, replaced by pure determination.

"I can't stay here, Leon, but I also won't leave without you. We're going to die in the next weeks anyway. So even if this goes wrong... It's worth a try, don't you think?"

Her voice dipped down and reached a low pitch that caused her words to sound like a raspy whisper. She had talked to him in that voice the night before, and the memory of what had followed her words sent his blood rushing.

He gulped. "We... we'd have to be very, very close."

"Like this?"

She brought her arms around his back and locked him in an embrace so tight that it squeezed the air out of his lungs in a quiet gasp. She nestled against his chest, leaning her head on his shoulder. He could feel her breath fan over the side of his neck, and it caused a shudder to course through his body. Almost reflexively, with the natural ease of a gesture that felt as if they had been doing this their entire lives, and not just for the past twenty-four hours, he returned the embrace and rested his head against hers.

Behind his back, he felt her fumble with the bracelet. But nothing happened.

"Hm. It doesn't work..." she mumbled.

She loosened the tight lock of her arms around him to check the device. He was about to say 'I told you so' when she looked up at him again and his jaw snapped shut.

"We need to be closer, apparently," she concluded.

"Ally... I don't think this will..."

His voice trailed off as she looked up at him with a fierce stare from her lilac eyes.

It was in moments like this that she was most beautiful to him. When she had put her mind on something and was ready to give everything to achieve it. She was unyielding, unrelenting, and now, unwilling to accept that this just could not work.

And in that moment, he realized that it actually really didn't matter. Perhaps it was impossible. But he didn't care any longer. He would gladly let this woman try to tear both of their bodies apart into subatomic shreds, as long as he could stay by her side.

He could no longer hold back and captured her lips in a kiss, as desperate and mad as what she wanted to attempt. He wanted to savor her, to take things slow and revel in every moment, but he had grown so accustomed to the constant fear of losing her that every time they kissed his hunger for her increased the more he tasted her. He moved one hand up to cup her face, and she leaned against him, reaching up and curling her fingers into his hair. A soft moan escaped her, muffled by his tongue dipping past her lips. The sound reverberated through his body and left shudders of pleasure in its wake.

With a gasp for air, she suddenly broke the kiss, but she moved away no more than half an inch. He could still taste her breath as she spoke.

"Maybe... maybe we should try to get rid of any extra atoms. Maybe that would help..."

She tugged at his shirt, slipped her hands under the fabric and pushed it up, along with a tender caresses across his skin. He didn't hesitate one second and pulled it off completely.

"Excellent idea..." he agreed and pulled her shirt over her head too.

She nestled back into his embrace, as if the half-second of their loss of contact had been too long already. A low groan escaped him as he felt her naked skin against his. His longing was so intense that it seemed to cause every fiber of his being to tingle, as if every last atom in his body longed to be with her. Closer.

Her lips traced a path up along his neck until they found his again, and they continued their kiss where they had left off. His hands took in her form with all the gentleness and care that his lips and tongue could no longer manage, caressing the lean muscles of her back, following the slope of her waist, finally coming to rest on her hips. He slipped his thumbs under the waistband of her pants.

"I think we should better be really close," he whispered against her lips in a husky voice. "To...To make sure..."

"Awfully smart, Doctor Bellamy," she sighed back, already fumbling with the buckle of his belt. "Awfully smart..."

~ ~ ~

"Did you hear? That intern, Baker, messed up the coffee order. He was supposed to get 50kg to last us for the year. He added a zero on the order sheet and now we got 500! Half a ton of coffee beans sitting in that storage room..."

The scientist shook her head in disbelief.

"What a dolt," her colleague replied, sipping on his coffee.

"He's scatterbrained, sure, but seems pretty smart overall," she remarked. "He's just... really bad a math."

"Like most experimentalists." He smirked.

She playfully pretended to hit him over his head with her mug and they both laughed.

"Well, it's time to go back to work for me," she said with a sigh.

"You're heading back to the office?"

"I gotta check the cooling pond first. I think I actually forgot my tablet somewhere over there during the last inspection round." She waved as she stepped out of the coffee kitchen. "See you later!"

In the quiet of the room, he drank most of the remainder of his coffee in two big gulps. Suddenly, a scream tore through the silence, causing him to drop his mug in shock. He ignored the shards and the coffee stains on the floor, and bolted out of the room and towards the cooling ponds.

He found her frozen in shock in the doorway. He glanced past her and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw what she was staring at.

"Uhm... I can explain this!" the dark haired man called over to them.

"Really?" the blonde woman pinned to the floor underneath his body asked doubtfully.

"Well, I can try," he shrugged. "In the meantime..."

He looked down at himself and his female companion, and then looked back up to face the scientists with a sheepish smile. "Would you mind lending us some clothes?"

(The *ahem* idea for this timeline was sparked by a comment thread with @RainerSalt and @floranocturna in Chapter 10)

3. The one in which Leon speaks up before Ally jumps the first time

"I... I'll try to come back," she said quietly. "To a better future."

Leon's face fell for a split second. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Rosie put a hand on his arm and pulled him back. But he kept his gaze on her, wearing a conflicted expression and chewing on his lip.

"What?" she asked.

"I... I really didn't want to say anything..." he mumbled. "Rosie said I shouldn't, and..."

"Leon!" Rosie snapped, her voice sharp like a knife.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Ally," he cried out. "But your bob is just cut so asymmetrically, it drives me INSANE!"

(This timeline exists due to the fact that Leon's name was inspired by a real life person. He's a fantastic baker, very friendly, and gay. So in this timeline, I imagined what would perhaps happen if Leon was gay and didn't fall in love with Alyssa - and on top of it had a slight case of OCD.)

4. The one in which the cookie scene takes a different turn.

When his lips brushed against the tips of her fingers, her mind was wiped blank, and she lost herself in a dimensionless space without time.

A tingling sensation ascended along her arm, from where his lips touched her skin all the way to her shoulder, and from there down along her spine, spreading to all of her limbs. She quivered in its wake, but he didn't let go of her hand. He kept his gaze fixed on her eyes as he gently kissed her fingers, once, twice, and then trailing a series of soft, small kisses down to her palm.

He never flinched when he looked at her eyes, like most other people did. He met her uncanny gaze unwaveringly, and right now, his own look was filled with an unasked question that caused something in her chest and stomach to flutter violently. The feeling turned her upside down and inside out. Her heart was infinitely heavy and weightless at the same time.

He only closed his eyes when she placed her other hand at the side of his face, and brushed a few cookie crumbs from his lips with her thumb. He hummed quietly in response.

She leaned closer. So close that she could feel his breath on her lips. She wanted to taste it.

And so she leaned in and kissed him.

~ ~ ~

"Where the hell are they?!" Rosie tapped her foot on the floor in a staccato of impatience.

Baker shrugged his hunched shoulders. Then, his gaze suddenly went past her and up along the wall, to the windows to the former control room that overlooked the jump spot.

"Doctor Latrobe," he said quietly. "Did you remind Doctor Bellamy of the importance of his... discretion, for the success of this mission?"

"Of course," Rosie huffed. "Why?"

"I think he ignored your advice," Baker said flatly, and pointed up.

Rosie turned around and looked up, but only for a moment before her face turned bright red and she averted her eyes again with a curse on her lips. She turned her back to the windows and cleared her throat. As she noted that Baker was still staring, she elbowed him in the side and forced him to turn around too.

"So. What do we do now?" Baker asked, dismayed. "If she decides that she's not willing to risk jumping..."

"Baker," Rosie pulled her glasses from her nose and began to diligently clean them with her sleeve. "If she can still so much as walk after that, I'd be impressed."

(For those who were asking for <REDACTED> content and wanted to know what happened in that room... well, in some timeline where both Alyssa and Leon show perhaps a bit more bravado, this might as well have happened.)