Hacker just nodded dully and turned to pack his things back into his backpack.
“Ready?” Scorpio called over, Hacker nodded, looked around him for one moment more to check that he had not forgotten anything and made his way over to them.
Viper's actions of stepping out of the box had not been forgotten about, in fact they had changed more than any of them could have imagined. The General and Commander were watching the wave on their screens as it hit, and it hit hard. The General felt a pain tear through his body as the wave passed through their time zone, hit the present day and rebounded, the secondary wave heading back down the time line. The General doubled over, his stomach ached and his chest stung immensely.
“General, are you all right?”
The General groaned, “that time wave, I felt it... I felt it, how did I feel it?”
“I don't know-” she looked over the General at his hair, it had turned the most shocking silver from a deep brown, “General, you've gone grey.”
The General instantly put a hand on his head, turned to face his screen and flicked a button, he saw himself on the screen, “I've been changed.” Then he gave a shout of agony and held his hand over his chest.
Scorpio ran through her equipment one last time; primary weapon, pistol, medical kit, fresh clothes, water purifier tube, suppressor, wet suit, emergency equipment, survival kit, the works. Then, taking out her primary weapon she flung it and her backpack over her shoulder and turned to Viper. She assumed he had already checked his equipment and was now sat on an overturned log, hands together, looking around. His dark eyes flitted from place to place, rested on Scorpio for a second, he nodded to her, she returned the gesture and then his eyes were gone, losing interest in whatever he looked at the moment he did so.
“You ready yet?” He yelled to Hacker, Scorpio turned to face him and found him on his laptop again, she let out a sigh.
“Hacker put that away, we need to move.”
Hacker reached into his backpack to retrieve a metal pole. He extended it and put it behind his neck and grunted as he bent it around his neck to form a 'U' shape, then he bent the ends outwards at right angles and made two further alternate right angle bends further up. He crouched, picked up his laptop and rested it on the two metal bars, he had made a wearable laptop stand.
“God damn it,” Scorpio said.
“Hey,” said Hacker, taking his hands off the device and letting his neck take the strain, “hey! Not bad hey?”
“That is ridiculous,” Viper added as he stood up, “come on, let's get going.”
They trekked for a couple of hours before they got the coastline, and the purple and grey sky spread out before them. The stars were just starting to fade from the sky, the sun, just on the edge of breaking through the horizon. Below them the sea hit the rocks on the outline of the island and with a hiss folded back into itself, merging back into the endless purple of ocean, all the way until it exploded into a sun rise at the horizon. A breeze rattled the leaves on the trees and apart from the hiss and shush of the ocean waves there was a calmness, even Hacker had stopped typing.
“Can't get this sight on your laptop, can you?”
Hacker was gazing off into the distance and didn't answer, “what is that?”
The group turned to look at what Hacker was looking at.
“What?”
“Over there,” he pointed back into the trees.
