Chapter Text
What The Hell Just Happened?
The corridor was eerily quiet, either the battle was already lost, or the estate was emptying for one final offensive line. She didn’t care, all that mattered was behind that reinforced steel door.
She reached the panel and swiped the security card she'd pulled from one of the fallen guards. It beeped.
ACCESS GRANTED.
She slipped inside and slammed it shut behind her, fingers flying across the console to manually override the lock . Metal seals hissed, bolts shot into place. She was alone now with it, but with a clock ticking like a time bomb.
The room still smelled like scorched metal and sterilized wires. The arc reactors pulsed like a giant heartbeat in the dark. The machines sat like a beast in slumber.
Her fingers danced over the primary terminal, sweat dripping from her brow as she bypassed layer after layer of encrypted controls. This wasn’t new to her. WISE trained her for tech warfare, and if there was one thing she did learn from them, it was how to kill a machine.
But as her eyes scanned the control code, her blood went cold.
“Destruction Protocol: Locked. Authorized Users Only.”
And beneath that, an automated system with a password.
[Authorization: Damian Desmond] [Enter Password]
[Authorization: Demetrius Desmond] [Enter Password]
“Fuck,” she hissed.
It made sense. Of course the final fail-safe would be in their hands too. If she tried to brute-force it, the failsafe could activate the machine instead of killing it. She couldn’t risk that. She could destroy this place, but not without potentially opening a tear in time itself. Whatever they’d done to this tech... it wasn’t stable.
Then the door behind her shuddered . A loud clang erupted the room. Then another. And another.
They were coming, she was running out of time.
The intercom crackled to life above her head. “Give it up, Agent Starlight,” Demetrius Desmond’s voice rang with cruel amusement. “You’ve lost. You can’t destroy it. Only I can. And I assure you, I won’t.”
Anya froze for half a second, her hands balled into fists.
And then... she smiled. The realization struck her hard. She couldn’t end the machine, but maybe she could outplay them with it.
“Then maybe I don’t destroy it,” she said aloud, staring at the console. “Maybe I use it.”
Without another word, she quickly yanked another cord into the auxiliary port, overriding the main interface to access the machine's destination history and input logs . What she found made her chest tighten.
They had coordinates. Dates. They had already been testing it.
Anya worked with precision, like a surgeon digging into corrupted flesh. She cracked through the first two layers of encryption, then the third. The interface opened. Wow, if an amateur could do that, then maybe the scientists weren’t as smart as they seem.
Destination Coordinates: 10.13.1998
Location: Ostanian Parliament—Unity Accords
Her hands froze over the console.
1998.
That was the year the unification started to take shape. Her heart thudded in her chest. That was the moment Ostania and Westalis were beginning to talk about peace treaties. The moment when the war started to boil down. The beginning of fragile peace.
They wanted to rewrite it, WISE had been right all along. Demetrius and Damian weren’t trying to rewrite personal history. They were trying to annihilate the world’s present. Undo the peace that held everything together.
“You Ostanian bastards,” she whispered. “You were never interested in saving anyone. You really wanted war.”
The machine had already been programmed for power . A second chance to dominate history. To revert back to the old ways when Ostalis never existed.
The pounding at the door grew louder. Something slammed against it with brutal force. Steel groaned under the weight. They were getting closer.
She yanked open another panel and dug into the malfunction logs, desperate to find a weakness, literally anything that would let her shut it down before it activated. Time was slipping. Her hands burned against the keys, but she pushed through, scanning lines of corrupted code.
She made her decision , she wouldn’t destroy the machine. She would use it. Her fists clenched over the keyboard. She no longer cared about preserving the timeline. She didn’t care about her original mission, the world was already bleeding outside. Dawn was dead, WISE is gone, Nathaniel was gone.
She had to go back, and the only way to stop it… was to end it at the source. She input new coordinates.
She inputed her destination, September 13, 2025. Just a day after her mission was given. She would go back, inform WISE of the plan, then retrace her steps so that she wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Three weeks, she’d go back just three weeks before everything happened.
The machine whined to life. A high-pitched hum filled the room, the core spinning faster now, the arc reactor glowing with volatile heat.
Then the intercom flared, Demetrius’ voice gloating over the speakers again. “You won’t win, Starlight. Give it up. You can’t destroy it. You’re too late.”
Anya stared at the spinning core and whispered under her breath. “I’m not here to destroy it.” The light reflected in her eyes. “I’m going to use it to kill you.”
Anya stared at the interface, every breath ragged, chest heaving. Her blood smeared the console, drying around the edges of the screen in rust-colored streaks. The core suddenly stopped, then a warning sign came up the monitors.
"Authentication: Incomplete."
“What?!” She whispered, then tried restarting it again. It did the same like last time, but it wasn’t working at all. It spins, but then stops. “Ugh! What is wrong?!”
She slammed her palm against the control panel. “No! No, damn it—work!”
The machine just blinked back at her, steady and cold. Like it was waiting, like it was listening. She’d done everything she could. She cracked into the encrypted schematics, inputted the coordinates correctly , but the machine refused.
“Authentication: Incomplete.”
Anya staggered back, blood still dripping from her cut palm. Her eyes scanned the room wildly, searching for anything that could give her a clue. What was missing ? What more do you want from me?
Her hands trembled and her knees buckled, she slumped against the steel wall, staring at the flickering screen as if it were mocking her. Something primal and dark began curling in her chest.
She wanted to scream. “What am I missing?!” Her vision blurred and her blood roared in her ears.
Just then , the world fell away. Not in reality, but inside her mind. The silence was sudden. She stood, barefoot, in a vast white space, it was almost as if she was standing on water, her reflection staring back at her. Her wounds were gone, and the pain was gone.
When she turned, and there it was. The pool , still, silent, and almost sacred. The liquid shimmered like mercury, as if it held the reflection of something ancient. Wires slithered into the water like serpents. When she looked up, there was nothing. Just endless white light.
And then came the vision, she saw herself—no. She saw someone that looked like her floating in the pool. Her body, calm, lifeless, glowing. Her hair, fanned out in golden-pink tendrils around her like a halo, drifted and danced in slow motion. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, serene. And her arms were bloody.
The wires wrapped around her limbs, pulsing like veins. A soft hum thrummed through the water, like a heartbeat syncing with the machine. And then—her double opened her eyes. Glowing green met hers, then she whispered with her voice, from the water.
“You know what you have to do.”
Anya gasped and snapped back to reality. Her heart raced as she searched for the woman she saw floating at the pool.
Then, her eyes flickered to the pool inside the room. It looked eerily similar with the vision she just saw. Then came the realization, it was eerily familiar because it was the vision.
The pool was the machine. It wasn’t the console, or the arc reactor, it was never them.
She staggered to her feet, scrambling to get to the pool. The door was cracking, metal groaned as crowbars wedged into the seams. She heard guards shouting, heard Demetrius’ cold voice through the intercom.
“You lost, Agent Starlight. Stand down. You won’t destroy it.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she ran. Her feet pounded the metal floors. She rounded the corner and skidded to a halt before the pool. Six feet deep, still, wired and breathing. It hummed louder when she approached.
She stood at the edge, staring down at it. Her reflection looked back, wild-eyed, bruised, blood-soaked, haunted. Her hair stuck to her face with sweat and dirt. She knew it wanted all of her. Not just her blood, or her hair, everything.
The lab doors finally screeched open, metal bending under the pressure of crowbars and brute force. Anya stood alone by the edge of the pool.
The moment the reinforced door gave way, armed Desmond guards stormed in with guns drawn, steps precise, flanking like wolves around a dying star. The blue-white glow from the pool behind her bathed the room in something ghostly.
When she looked back at the guards, Demetrius Desmond stood at the front of the horde. His suit was immaculate, not a stain on him despite the bloodshed his orders had spilled. He stepped inside with the casual arrogance of a man who believed he had already won. Behind him, Damian followed his face pale, his eyes locked on Anya.
The guards began to spread out, raising rifles with precision. But then , Anya raised a knife , she held it steady, poised just above her wrist.
Every muscle in the room tensed.
“Wait.” Demetrius lifted a hand. His voice was sharp, commanding, urgent. “Everyone stand down.”
The guards froze instantly.
“She’s not allowed to die.” He stepped forward slowly, eyeing the blade. “You’re smarter than that, Agent Starlight. Don’t be dramatic. You think ending your life will stop us?”
Anya didn’t respond, her eyes flickered to the pool, then back to him. Behind Demetrius, Damian took a step forward.
“You don’t have to do this,” Damian said, stepping forward. His voice lowered, softening. “Anastasia… please. Don’t throw your life away.”
She looked at him with disgust and anger fused into one dangerous expression . Then she smiled , “Fuck both of you. I am not Anastasia. I am Agent Starlight, and it is my mission to stop you. So don’t you worry, Desmond. I am not here to kill myself.” she whispered. “Not until I kill both of you.”
Demetrius chuckled, amused, almost impressed. “Still holding on to that righteous fury, even now?”
Anya didn’t answer him. Instead, she took the small knife and with a sharp, practiced motion, sliced her wrist open. Blood spilled freely, dripping onto the pool’s surface.
The machine responded. It shimmered and it hummed as if it was awake.
Demetrius staggered back. “What…?” he muttered, blinking.
The humming intensified.
“What is that—what the hell is it doing?”
The cables sparked, then a surge of light burst from the center of the pool. From the look on their faces, she could tell that it never done that before.
“The machine—why is it reacting like that?” he barked at the scientists nearby, but no one had an answer. Everyone was backing away, shielding their eyes from the sudden brilliance. The machine, for the first time since its construction, looked… alive.
Damian’s voice cut through the chaos. “Anastasia, STOP!” he shouted, trying to push forward. But Anya, bleeding and bright, had already stepped to the edge. Her body was trembling, but her face was calm and certain.
“You built it for power. You built it for control,” she said, voice steady even as the light surrounded her. “But you forgot one thing, machines don’t pick sides—people do.”
And then, she let herself fall. Her wrist bleeding, her eyes blazing, her body arched back , I’ll see you in the past. Catch me if you can.
“NO!” Damian lunged, his fingers just grazing the air where she had stood. Her body plunged into the pool. The surface exploded with light. A sonic boom cracked through the chamber.
Guards were flung across the walls. Consoles shorted, sparks rained like fire. Demetrius stumbled, caught himself against a rail. He stared in disbelief. Damian crawled to the edge of the pool, shaking, staring into the blinding glow, but she was gone.
There was a splash, but there was no trace of her, just the soft, low pulse of a machine now activated. And time, roaring back to life.
Water.
It consumed everything. Dark, suffocating, cold. It coiled around her like iron chains, dragging her down into an endless abyss. Her limbs flailed, but they felt foreign, sluggish, like they belonged to someone else. Her lungs screamed for air, but the glowing blue liquid only slithered in, thick and unnatural, drowning the scream before it could escape.
Her vision blurred, colors bleeding at the edges, the world narrowing to flickering shadows. The pressure crushed her chest. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, frantic and fading.
She was slipping into darkness, into silence.
No... not yet. Not yet—
A sudden light exploded behind her eyes. Blinding, searing. Her body jerked.
Then, there was air. She broke the surface with a guttural gasp, choking and retching as water forced itself from her lungs. Her back arched violently. Every breath was a blade, stabbing her ribs as life crashed into her like a defibrillator. She convulsed, half-submerged, clinging to a world she wasn’t sure was real.
The hands gripping her were warm and steady.
“ Anastasia! Anastasia, look at me! Are you alright?! ”
She blinked, disoriented. Her vision swam, everything a blur of light and water and pain. Her lungs burned. Her throat was raw. She coughed again, harder, her body shuddering with the force.
The face above that was staring back at her made her entire being frozen in disbelief. For a brief, glorious second, her heart sang because staring right at her was Nathaniel.
No… it couldn’t be. Could it? Her heart seized.
Nathaniel?! Her first instinct was to ask. Was she hallucinating? Was she dreaming? Was she dead? Maybe this was the afterlife, gentle, cruel, and kind all at once. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe she never made it out of that glowing abyss. Maybe she never existed at all.
She tried to say his name, but her voice cracked and broke into a sob. She reached for him, trembling, and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face into the crisp white of his shirt. His scent was clean, he smelled like fresh soap and the faintest trace of aftershave, that hit her senses like a freight train.
She gripped his body tighter.
“Nate…? Is that really you?” she choked.
But then, something was wrong. The body in her arms didn’t relax into her hold the way Nate’s would. It stiffened, like it was confused. The hands on her shoulders didn’t curl instinctively around her the way they always would. They hovered, uncertain, like she was something fragile and foreign. Like he didn’t know her.
Her breath caught. No… no, no.
She slowly peeled herself back, her hands shaking as she lifted her head. Her gaze dropped to the blazer he wore, Eden Academy’s uniforms. The spring uniform, trimmed and pressed, a small crest gleaming on his chest. She blinked, hard.
She looked down at herself. She was also in uniform , not the one she wore in the lab.
She was dressed like a student. The skirt was a little too big, the shirt clung soaked and wrinkled to her body. Her tie stuck to her skin, and strands of wet hair framed her face, dripping steadily into her lap.
What the hell is happening?
When she looked back up to Nathaniel, she saw that his features were just slightly off. The eyes were the same color, but his brow had a faint scar. His jaw was sharper, and didn’t have the mole it used to have. His shoulders were broader, his lashes were too long and his lips were thinner.
Her mind screamed to make sense of it. Five seconds passed. Then ten. A full minute. Then two. She just stared, trembled, heart pounding and pulse spiking. Her body felt detached, as if it were floating underwater again.
Was she dead? Her eyes darted wildly. Gone was the Desmond Machines. Gone was the humming steel, the warping energy, the blue vortex of light.
Now there were tiles, steam and the smell of chlorine. There was a pool—a school pool. Eden’s crest glared down at her from the walls. Logos on every banner. She was in Eden Academy. Somehow. Somewhere.
What is this? Why am I here? Was that all a dream? Is this the dream?
She turned to him again, this not-quite-Nathaniel. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“What? Where are we, Nathaniel?” she whispered.
He tilted his head, confused. Then gave a small, nervous smile. “Huh? Who’s Nathaniel?” he said, cocking a brow. “It’s me. Damian. Damian Desmond.”
Everything shattered. Her heart caved in on itself. She jerked back like she’d been struck across the face. The back of her legs scraped painfully against the rough tile as she scrambled away, hands behind her like she was warding off a ghost. Her chest heaved, breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
No. No. Not again. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred again, not from water this time, but from raw, unfiltered panic. She searched wildly around the pool, hoping and praying that this was some hallucination. That she was caught in a side effect from the jump. But it was all real.
Students were beginning to gather. Eden Academy uniforms in every direction, neatly pressed blazers, pressed slacks and skirts, polished shoes. Girls whispered, boys pointed. Some were intrigued, while others were already calling for teachers.
She was the center of attention, disheveled and soaked. And the boy in front of her, the one she couldn’t stop staring at with utter heartbreak, was Damian Desmond. Her enemy, her target, and her past—no, her present? She didn’t know what was the past anymore.
He looked at her like she was no one, like he’d never seen her before. She stared at him again, heart clenched and crumbling. Was this really Damian? Was this the same man who tried to kill her? How? How could this be happening? How could it all be real ?
“Anastasia?” he said again, slower this time. “Are you hurt? How did you even fall in the pool like that?”
Anastasia? What the hell? Her soaked shoes squeaked against the tile as she reeled away from him, legs nearly giving out beneath her. Her balance faltered, hands flailing midair before she caught herself against the edge of the pool. Her breath hitched and her eyes darted wildly between him and the crowd forming around them.
“Anastasia…”
He’d called her that, that wasn’t possible. Anastasia Adler was dead. If this was 2025, Anastasia Adler is dead. So why…. Wait.
Her heart pounded so violently it drowned out the rest of the world. The laughter, the whispers, even the splash of the nearby pool seemed to fade under the sound of her panic.
Why had he called her Anastasia? And why did he look like Nate ? Too much like Nate. She knows there must have been some resemblance between them since he was his father but this was some next level look-alike. If anything, he looked the exact same, a carbon copy, a doppelgänger.
Her hands gripped the concrete ledge behind her like it was the only thing keeping her from falling into the sky. Her mind raced, his jawline, the curve of his eyes, the tilt of his smile, it was all wrong but so painfully close. Nate’s ghost in a younger shell.
She could barely breathe. Her eyes locked on his face again, searching, hunting for a clue or some divine explanation. Why? Why did the man she had jumped through time to kill now look like the man who had died trying to save her?
“Are you okay?” he asked again, stepping forward slowly, palms slightly raised. Like she was something wild, something fragile. His voice was calmer now.
“Anastasia… do you—do you need to go to the infirmary?”
She flinched again. That name. That cursed name.
"Stop calling me that," she whispered, more to herself than him.
He blinked, confused. “But that’s your name.”
“No—” She shook her head, her vision clouding. “No it’s not.”
Her eyes darted to the students gathering nearby. Their faces blurred. Their mouths moved, but she couldn’t hear them. Her breath came in ragged stabs of air. She clutched the soaked fabric of her uniform, fingers digging into it like she could tear herself out of this moment—out of this body—out of this wrongness.
She was shaking. No, she was unraveling. Her mouth opened and the question fell out in a cracked whisper, “What… what day is it?”
Damian blinked, confused, glancing back toward the group of boys behind him who watched with the kind of silent fascination reserved for train wrecks and public meltdowns.
Then, carefully, he turned back to her. “Thursday. The 14th.”
She swallowed, but her throat was sandpaper. Her skin felt too tight, her heart was climbing up her ribs like it wanted out. She forced her mouth open again.
“…What year?”
He frowned. “What?”
Her head snapped up, her voice sharp now, rising with panic.
“ What year is it? ”
There was a pause, a silence so long it made her want to scream.
And then softly, uncertainly, he answered “…it’s 1979.”
The world collapsed, the air left her lungs in one violent, audible gasp so forceful it bent her forward, her body folding in on itself. Her knees gave way, slamming hard against the wet tile. Somewhere, someone in the crowd gasped, but it might as well have been miles away. She didn’t hear them.
1979. Not 2025. Not a few weeks before the mission. Not before she got kidnapped. She was four decades too far and she wasn’t just in the past, she was before the war. Before the unification, before her parents ever met and before she even existed.
“No,” she whispered, pressing her hands to her face. “No, no, no—this isn’t right. This isn’t what I meant to do.”
Her thoughts spiraled. The jump must have malfunctioned. The machine… Something must’ve gone wrong. She’d calibrated it herself, she set the target date carefully. She was supposed to be weeks back. Not… this.
She heard her name again, that name.
Damian Desmond (apparently ) reached out gently. “Anastasia—”
“Stop calling me that!” she shrieked, swatting his hand away. “Stop calling me that, you’re not—”
You’re not Nathaniel. She didn’t say it because he looked just enough like him to make her want to scream. And somehow, this world thought she was someone else, too. She was Anastasia .
She looked at him one last time. Nathaniel’s face in another timeline , but it was Damian Desmond. Her enemy, her ghost, her tether to the future she’d lost. And he didn’t even know her.