“Honey! Please understand I cannot simply abandon everythi— Yes yes I know, I promised. I’m terribly sorry you know that. These things just happen, accidents happen.” Dr Dornier paced through the room, trying to salvage an already difficult marriage. Work had torn him apart from his family for considerable weeks if not months, he had missed the birth of his child, their first steps, their first words… the list was unending. Yet Dornier justified it to himself by trusting that his work was crucial, world changing even—all he needed was more time.

“Listen, Just one more week, I swear. This breakthrough—it changes everything. You’ll see. Then maybe… maybe I can finally come home.. Please trust me, one la—.” Before he could finish his sentence, the call cut short by the other side, leaving him in the deafening silence of his office.

The man strode towards his desk and grabbed onto a picture frame, in it a time he remembered fondly—before everything.

He then sat onto the chair by the large glass wall, still picture in hand. The city’s night lights shone through, even at the 63rd floor, basking him in a somber neon blue.

“Soon… You’ll see. A better world is within our grasp, I can almost touch it. Then You, Darius and I will have our time back—just trust me…”

Words echoing in an empty room, almost empty.

“Dr Dornier?”

He leaped from his chair, dropping the frame onto the floor and turned towards the voice. All he saw was a figure hidden by darkness, features lost in shadows.

“Holy F— Who are you?! How did you get in?!”

“Dr Dornier?”

“Y-yes that’s me? Now who are you?! I’m going to call security!”

“No one yet.”

Before any other word left the man’s lips, with single pop, a bullet entered the man’s neck and pierced through the brain stem, immediately killing him.

As the body hit the floor, the assassin took out a thin, transparent device—alien to this time—and aimed it at their fresh kill.

Then satisfied with their work, they simply walked out of the office before disappearing into the darkness, leaving Dornier’s body to grow cold in a pool of his own blood, next to the broken picture frame. A family shattered by ambition—and a war waged across time they never chose to fight.