The General stood looking at his screen as the message came in: Kramer is dead. Mission complete. Advise next move.
He turned away to face the Commander, “can we risk another time slip?”
She glanced at the machine, read the read out and shut her eyes, she put her hands over her mouth. Then she turned and shook her head, she spun on her heels and pulled a hand through her hair, “what else can we do-” she squinted at the far wall, on it hung a calendar. She marched over to it and tore it from the wall, “General, what is this?” She showed it to the General, the date read March 2040.
“Oh no. The time lines trying to correct itself for the current present.”
The Commander frowned, “you mean it's trying to make the war still happen?”
“It would be the easiest present to correct to, we need to do something to stop it. Where is the beginning of the change wave?”
She glanced at her monitor again, “2035, that's when we put them back to, it's them, they're damaging the time line. But we cannot afford to time slip them again, that would break the time line apart. What do we do?”
The General mopped his brow, “we try and flatten the time line, we developed something for this situation. It won't disturb the time line, it'll go back and then evaporate, it'll fix everything, it has to. We have to send it in.”
“But they did everything that we asked of them...”
“The past is a messed up thing Commander.” He slammed his fist down on the table, breaking through a protective glass shield. He tore the protector off and press the blue button underneath, the Time Worm had been released.
Hacker looked around, he had sent the message over a minute ago but yet he had gotten no reply. He tapped the message again and sent it off for a second time, then waited. No reply.
The General looked at the time line on his screen, a wave, similar to a heartbeat stretched from 2040 and the present day, the screen updated and the wave moved, changed, flattened in some parts until the wave before it caught up and disrupted it once more, the time line was changing, adapting, correcting.
There was a beep and a blue dot appeared on the wave, slowly travelling along the wave. The General tapped on the dot and then entered a time, the exact time that the Past Hunters had been inserted into the time line. A few seconds passed as the dot got closer and closer to the destination. And then the destination time changed, time was correcting. The destination time clicked backwards, faster and faster the years fell away.
“What's happening?” yelled the General, “why is it doing that?” His eyes flicked up to the screen as it updated, he gasped.
The wave had hit the present day and had rippled back towards the Past Hunters time. It had quickly caught up with the Time Worm and had swept it further and further into the past. “No, no, no... no, no, no, no! They had to have done something!”
Hacker was typing as furiously as he could with his left hand, he had found his way through his laptop, a way to connect to the Command Centre and had activated the time slip.
Suddenly the screen flashed red, SYSTEM COMPROMISED, TIME SLIP INITIATED, the screen read.
“Hacker's hacked the time slip, he's bringing them back here.” The Commander said, “we cannot let that happen, if they come back here it would rip the time line to pieces.” The General rubbed his head, he glanced at the screen again, the blue dot of the Time Worm had stopped along the time line, 365 million BC, the red dot of the Past Hunters was now moving forwards, 2036, 2037.
