She could feel it again, hurtling across the aeons…

Septimus Quintus looked on as the barbarian hordes were caught in the trap. The Celts lead by Boudicca were caught between the advancing roman Legion and their own families. What had started as a battle was quickly turning into a slaughter.

He spurred his horse forward, trying to follow his fellow soldiers as much as tact could allow. He knew that protecting the general was a great honour, but it chafed him to watch the Legionaries fight without him. He had hoped to find an enemy worth fighting on this sodden field but the gods had seen fit to punish him this day.

Suddenly, almost as if appearing from thin air, a Briton stumbled on his path. She was wearing strange clothes and bore no weapons, but her hair was spiked in the Celtic fashion. At this point he didn't care. All he wanted was to feel like he made a difference this day. He drew his sword and charged after her.

When she spotted him she started running away, desperately trying to make it to the nearby wood line. Septimus followed at a leisurely pace, confident that he would be able to run her down before she could find shelter. As he leaned forward to deliver the deathblow she screamed in a foreign language before disappearing again in a flash of cobalt light. Septimus almost fell out of his saddle from the momentum of the swing but was able to right himself in time. He had heard rumours that the Celts had powerful druids capable of terrible sorceries, but he had never expected to see one on the field of battle. Shaking from such a near encounter with death, he swore to make the proper sacrifices to Jupiter when he got home…

A tug, only a tug, but no resistance could be offered to it…

Jean-Luc was dying and he knew it. His guts were spread over the ground where the cannonball had hit him and he could feel his lungs welling up with blood. Still he called out to any who would hear.

"S'il vous plait, aidez-moi !"

Nobody heard him. The air was filled to the brim with the sounds of battle and death. He could hear voices cry out for lovers, mothers and water, comrades, friends and death. He could hear British voices too, but he wished no ill will on them. They were all bound together in that they had all lost the battle.

In the gunpowder fog he could see a figure reeling towards him. He called out to it, hoping it would help him.

"Amis, s'il vous plait !"

As the figure left the fog, he could see that it was a woman, yet her hair was strangely cut, and her clothes were like nothing he had ever seen. Still, if she could help him, he couldn't care less if she had appeared in a leopard skin cloak.

"Madame, s'il vous plait ! De l'eau, de l'eau !"

She just looked at him in horror and vomited on the ground. As quickly as she had appeared she vanished amidst blue flashes, leaving only a pool of vomit on Jean-Luc's boots as proof that she was ever there. He started crying in earnest now, his last hope snatched from him by cruel fate.

"S'il vous plait, une balle ! Une balle !"

He died in agony the following night.

It couldn't be resisted, it made her follow it towards entropy…

As Ahmed watched his house burn before him, he cursed whoever piloted the bombers that were pounding his village into the dust. He was powerless to stop them as they dropped bomb after bomb, but he would be damned if he would give them the satisfaction of rolling over like a good dog without a fight. Then the screams diverted his attention.

His wife and children were stuck inside the house, and there was nothing that could be done to save them. He knew they would die. He turned his head towards the heavens and shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Kill me! You've taken everything from me, finish me!"

Still the bombs maliciously refused to destroy him. He was forced to listen to his loved ones burn to death while he could no nothing to stop it.

"Do it! What are you waiting for? DO IT!"

Then from his windows emitted a blue light, such as he had never seen before. An instant later someone crashed through them, holding his two children in their grasp. As he stared dumbly at them, the mysterious person put down her burden and climbed up the building back into the window she had previously exited, heedless of the fire that lapped her body. This time when she jumped out she was holding his wife. As she landed she dropped Kainat and rolled on the ground, trying to putting out the flames that devoured her. Ahmed ran up to her and tried batting of the flames as best he could, and together they managed to save her.

As she stood up he realised that she was a European. Her face hadn't been sunburned recently and her clothes were like the fighter pilot harnesses he had seen in pictures.

"Who are you? Where do you come from?"

She didn't answer, fixated by the planes that buzzed over her head. One in particular was of interest to her, and slowly a look of horror eased itself onto her face. Desperately she turned around to Ahmed and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

"I'm so sorry."

She disappeared, leaving behind the village that she had helped destroy.

So many if onlys. So many whys. Except here. Here, there was only the pull...

Samuel was rushing to the office laden with papers. He had woken up late that morning. If he hadn't woken up when he did he might have been late to work. Being a clerk was a thankless job, but pen pushing was one of his hew skills, and he certainly didn't relish trying to find a new profession. Because of that he ran to work with his suitcase hastily packed and an empty stomach, all of which only served to stretch his already thinly strung temper. So when a woman bumped into him (he swore he hadn't seen her) and his suitcase fell to the floor and exploded he couldn't help but snap at her.

"You idiot! Look where you're going!"

He scrabbled on the floor, desperately trying to recover his papers. The strange woman got down too, seemingly trying to help him, when she suddenly grabbed one of his pens and started madly scribbling on them.

"What are you doing?! Stop that!"

He grabbed the papers from her hands and roughly pushed her away from him. Too late he realised that he had pushed her towards the train track, and though he leaped forward to try and grab her she disappeared onto the tracks just as a Northern Line train screamed in. In that brief interval of time he saw her eyes.

They frantic, almost crazed, as if she had endured hardship that ordinary people could only dream of. She looked scared too, and babbled incoherently. When she saw the train approach he could have sworn that she looked relieved.

When the train arrived it smashed his outstretched head like an egg.

In the news it was reported that Samuel Ernest had died in King's Cross St Pancras as his head had been hit by a speeding train. So far he has been the only casualty, but CCTV footage did capture a mysterious woman in a pilot's uniform appear out of thin air before she fell onto the tracks, but her body hadn't been recovered. Samuel's death was officially put down as suicide from overworking. His colleagues were interviewed and they all gave the same story; he had been a decent person, kept himself to himself, but always seemed to be too focused on his work. To their knowledge he didn't take any sick days, nor spent time with them after work.

Samuel had no existing family members at the time, so his possessions were claimed by Her Majesty's government, although no reason was given. Already the Internet was saturated by conspiracy theories.

Anthony Heather, an agent for MI5, looked at the papers that were strewn around Samuel's body, mercifully untouched by the blood. Most of them were boring figures and statistics, paperwork in it's purest from. These he would pass on to Samuel's coworkers who were better qualified to deal with them. Anthony put them back in the suitcase, but kept one on his desk. It was no different than any of the others, save for the scribbled message written on it.

HELP ME

TRACER

Anthony picked up his phone.

"Get me General Sanders. Tell him I have a possible lead on his missing plane."

So many stops, only one destination. Pulled towards the end. Again and again and again and AGAIN

Tracer opened her eyes. She had lost track of the number of times she had been thrown into history, and frankly she didn't care. She just wanted to go back home again.

Not bloody likely, she thought to herself.

Again she felt the same sensation of speed that heralded every re-entry back into history. She squinted towards her destination. If she concentrated, she might be able to get glimmers of whatever fresh hell she would end up in this time. Most of the time she was there only for a few seconds, but sometimes she could spend hours there too, and on one occasion days. It was best to be prepared. To her horror she saw only black studded with light. She had guessed this would happen eventually.

She was being sent towards empty space.

She began waving her arms, as if trying to fight a current of water. She knew that it wouldn't affect anything; no matter what she did, she always travelled at exactly at the same speed. As the blue walls that defined her new existence sped away from her, her destination grew and grew.

As she fell into the welcoming void, she wondered why she never got to visit her past self. The tales that she could tell…

Too late. With a cry, she appeared in the emptiness and began freezing to death.

Backwards was never allowed. Forwards, never back. Forwards, Never back. Never back, forwards. Forwards, back never. Back never, forwards.

Never forwards, back. Backwards was allowed.

As Winston looked down on the prone form in the confines of his latest invention, he realized that he might have been too late. Tracer's body was sheeted in ice, and underneath her new skin she looked haggard and malnourished. The doctors who were on standby rushed into the chamber, desperately trying to stabilise her condition. Winston paced outside impatiently wishing that he too were in there, but he knew better than to interrupt experts when they were at work.

Finally, the chief doctor left the room and approached Winston.

"Well?"

"She's in bad shape. Even without the ice she doesn't seem to have eaten since she disappeared, and she also is displaying some symptoms of sleep deficit. She's also in the early stages of hypothermia, and if she had stayed a second longer wherever she was I doubt we could have save her."

Hope flared in Winston's heart.

"You mean you can save her?"

The doctor allowed the smallest of smiles to spread across his lips.

"I can't guarantee that she'll be as she was before, and I can't attest to her mental health, but I am confident we can salvage something."

Winston grinned broadly. In contrast the general next to him frowned heavily.

"What about the plane, God damn it. I'm happy we saved an ace pilot like Tracer, but unlike her we sank millions of pounds into that fighter. Are you telling me that money went to waste?"

Winston slowly turned towards him and grinned even more. A big, toothy, grin.

"I have good news for you then. It seems that whatever time travelling capabilities your aircraft had have moved onto Tracer. That's why we were able to retrieve her, and why she is in her present condition."

The general furrowed his brows at Winston's smile. A man who had stared into the maw of a tank cannon wasn't about to be frightened by some monkey's smile.

"So you're telling me she can travel through time?"

He nodded.

"To a limited degree, yes. I'll have to build her a harness that will anchor her to this time period if she is to have any control of her powers, thus limiting her powers to small dashes forwards and backwards through time barely perceptible on a grand scale. It might take me months to invent such a harness, and much longer to build it, but I am confident she'll still be useful to you."

He leaned closer to the general.

"IF she lives."

The general met his stare and did not blink. Finally, the stocky man ceded first.

"We'll grant you full funding to use at your discretion, including for her wellbeing. Thank you for your cooperation. And don't make me regret it."

And with that he stomped off back to his room where he would undoubtedly tell his superiors what had happened. Winston didn't like him, but he knew that the general was honest and wouldn't try to sabotage his efforts. The big gorilla turned back towards the chamber where the doctors had setup a makeshift operating table, his head spinning with ideas and calculations.

The next months would be very interesting indeed…