3 years and 4 days ago

An older Five, in the apocalypse, walks into a broken down building, with writing on the walls. He starts to speak to his wife of thirty years, Dolores, the mannequin. Though he wishes it was someone else.

"Do you remember that, uh," says Five chuckling, already drunk. "....little mansion just outside the city limits? Where we- yeah."

"Yeah, well turns out the wine cellar was untouched." says Five, to the mannequin. "Picked up a few cases of your favorite Bordeaux."

Five starts to chug back one of the bottles he brought back with him. He hears something from Dolores that no one else hears. "Hm...Ah, that's an exaggeration. I don't drink too much. You know, I work hard all day. I-" says Five, his voice now sad. "Why would you say that?"

Present Day

I woke up a few minutes ago with a pounding headache. 'I knew I shouldn't have had that last drink.' I think to myself.

I slowly look around trying to orient myself. I notice Luther sitting in a chair near me. He stands up and grabs me a glass of water to help with my headache. He asks about why I'm back, and with the little energy I have, I don't even try to fight him on this.

I tell him about the apocalypse, the handler, and working for the commission.

"When's it supposed to happen?" asks Luther, referring to the apocalypse I told him about. "This... apocalypse."

"I can't give you the exact hour, but..." I say, taking a sip of my water. "from what I could gather, we have four days left."

Luther looks hurt that I didn't tell him sooner. "Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"It wouldn't have mattered." I say, remembering how I found all of them, in the apocalypse.

"Of course it would." Luther says, determined to stop this and be Number One again. "We could've banded together and helped you try to stop this thing."

"For the record, you already tried." I say, seeing the image of my siblings dead bodies around me, all except for Marah.

"What do you mean?" asks Luther.

"I found all of you. Your bodies." I say, trying to forget the images.

"We die?" Luther asks quietly, slowly sitting back down.

"Horribly." I say, turning towards him. "You were all together, trying to stop whoever it was that end's the world."

Luther looks at me confused. "Wait, how do you know that?"

I grab out the prosthetic eyeball that I found in Luther's dead hand. "This was clutched in your dead hand when I found you. Must've ripped it out of their head before you went down."

"Whose head?" Luther asks, looking over the eyeball.

"Like I said, i don't know." I say, slowly losing my patience with him.

"Well, there's a serial number on the back." says Luther, turning the eye over and showing me the numbers. "Think maybe you could try-"

"No, that's a dead end." I say, cutting him off. "It's just another hunk of glass."

Suddenly, the door is slammed open as Diego barges in walking quickly towards me. "Piece of shit." he seethes. "Do you have any idea of what you just did?"

Luther grabs a hold of Diego before he can attack me. "Nope, let me--Get your ape hands off of me!"

"I can do this as long as it takes you to calm down." says Luther, calmly holding Diego up.

"Fine." Diego says, sighing. Luther then slowly sets him back down, trying to be the level headed one in this moment.

"Now, wanna tell us what you're talking about?" says Luther.

"Our brother's been pretty busy since he got back." says Diego, pointing towards me. "He was in the middle of that shootout at Griddy's, and then at Gimble Brothers, after the guys in masks attacked the academy, looking for him."

"None of which is any of your concern." I say calmly, glad that he doesn't know of Marah's involvement in the Griddy's shootout.

"It is now." Diego says, panting. "They just killed my friend. They kidnapped and tortured Marah as well."

My head suddenly looks up to the sound of her name. 'She was taken because of me.' I think, knowing how I've brought her into all of my messes.

"Who are they, Five?" asks Luther, back into leader mode. 

"They work for my former employer. A woman called The Handler." I say, mainly worried about my Rosie. "She sent them... to stop me."

"Then, as soon as Diego's friend got in their way, well, fair game." I say nonchalantly.

"And now they're my fair game." says Diego determined. "And I'm gonna see to it they pay."

"That would be a mistake, Diego." I try to warn him. "They've killed people far more dangerous than you."

"Yeah, we'll see about that." says Diego, striding towards the door. "Marah's on the couch out here. She has quite a few stab wounds but they look like they might be healing, if you take the knives out." Then he was gone.

Luther walks out of the room, picking up Marah who was indeed on the couch. He brings her back in the room and places her on the bed I was laying on. He goes to grab supplies to clean and bandage her up, when I yank out the two knives in her upper thighs.

"What are you doing?" says Luther worriedly. "She's gonna bleed out."

"No, she won't. Her body will heal. It's part of her powers. Why do you think she never had to see mom?" I say, holding her hand and checking her pulse, to remind myself that she was in fact alive.

Once we know that Rosie will be okay, Luther continues with his questioning. "Former Employer?" he asks.

"What's this really about?" he says in a bossy manner. "And don't give me any of this 'it's none of your business' crap, all right?"

I sigh, sitting next to Rosie with her head in my lap. "Well, It's a long story."

3 years and 4 days ago

"Who the hell are you?" I ask, aiming my rifle at the strange woman's head.

"I'm here to help," she says in a cheery voice.

"Tell me why I shouldn't put a bullet through your head right now!" I yell, wondering if I've finally lost my mind.

"Because, if you did, you wouldn't hear the offer I'm about to make you." says the woman, walking closer to me and sitting on one of the broken parts of the building, her briefcase at her feet. "Which would be rather tragic, given your... current circumstances."

The woman goes on to explain who she is and who she works for. "I work for an organization called the Commission. We are tasked with the preservation of the time continuum through manipulation and removals."

I lower my rifle slightly, confused with what she's saying. "I don't understand."

"Sometimes, people...make choices that alter the time line. Free will, don't get me started. " she starts, causing the hairs on my neck to raise. "When that happens, we dispatch one of our agents to... eliminate the threat."

At that I raise my rifle, aiming once again at her head.

"No, no, no, no." she chuckles. "You misunderstand me. You're not a target. You're a recruit. I've come to offer you a job, Number Five."

"We've had our eye on you for quite some time. We were hoping your fire bending girlfriend would be here, but just one of you will do." she says smiling. "And we think you have a lot of potential."

"How do you know about Marah?" I question, not moving my gun.

She ignores me. "Your survival skills have made you quite the celebrity back at headquarters.  That and your ability to jump through time."

"You saying that I..." I stammer, thinking about seeing Rosie again. "I could actually leave here? Go... Go back?"

"In return for five years of service." she says, standing up and grabbing her suitcase. "Once your contract is done, you can retire to the time and place of your choosing with a pension plan to boot."

"If you can alter time, why not just stop all of this from ever happening?" I question, wondering why my family and Marah had to die if it could have been stopped.

"That's quite impossible, I'm afraid." she says. "You see...all of this, it was supposed to happen."

"That's insane. The end of everything?" I question.

"Not everything. Just the end of...something." she walks closer, wanting to make her deal. "So...do we have an agreement?"

Present Day

"They turned me into the perfect instrument for rehabilitation of the time continuum." I scoff, looking down I see Marah start to stir, but fall asleep once again once she get more comfortable lying on me. I look at her wounds to see one of them almost fully healed, and the other still getting there.

"Or 'corrections,' as they called them." I sigh, looking back at Luther. "I wasn't the only one. There are others like me. Beings out of time, fractured, extracted from the lives that they knew. I don't know how they got there. But I do know that none of them were as good as me.

I think back to the day I jumped back to my timeline.

"They didn't realize it, but I was biding my time, trying to figure out the right equation so that I could get back." I look down, seeing Marah starting to wake up. I lowered my voice in order to not spook her. "If I could just get back, I knew I could stop the apocalypse. Save the world." 'And Marah," I thought.

"So I broke my contract." I say, thinking back to the day that I first arrived, when I saw Marah again.

"So, you were a hit man?" asks Luther

"Yes." I say.

"Uh... I mean, you had a code, right?" asks Luther, already knowing my answer. "You didn't kill just anybody."

"No code." I say, holding Marah's hand as she tries to sit up. "We took out anyone who messed with the time line."

"What about innocent people?" asks Luther, appalled at the idea of killing 'innocent's'.

"It was the only way I could get back here." I say, not looking at Luther, only looking at Rosie.

"But... that's murder." states Luther, as if that changes anything.

"Jesus, Luther, grow up." says Marah harshly. "We're not kids anymore. There's no such thing as good guys or bad guys."

"There's just people, going about their lives." I continue. "But when the world ends, all those people die, including our family."

"Time changes everything." says Rosie quietly.