Author's note: I was just going to write one small AU scenario somewhat similar to my first Continuum story, but this one decided to go its own way, and I ended up writing several different versions of the same scenario instead. The story has four chapters, three of them representing timelines that diverge from canon.

Warnings: Character deaths left and right. This is Continuum, after all.

"No one controls the future. It is an ever evolving organism, free to change and adapt as it sees fit."

-Kiera Cameron

Emily was dead.

Alec was so angry at the Freelancers, so angry at Escher, so angry at Kiera - so angry at the entire world - that he wanted to scream.

When he marched to Escher's office, he was half thinking that he should have brought a gun so he could just shoot the scheming asshole - and then he found out that Escher was his father. He really had no idea how to feel about that.

When Kiera arrived, Escher said, "There's something you need to see, Alec. You too, agent Cameron. I think you will find it quite enlightening."

Escher took them deep into Piron's research lab, through numerous locked doors, into a cold storage room.

"Normally, we use this to store the sensitive biological materials needed in our research," he said, but the room looked more like a morgue. In the middle of it, there was a body on a table, covered with a surgical sheet. Alec was starting to worry about the kind of research Piron might be conducting if they needed corpses for it.

Escher did not give him any time to prepare, no warning whatsoever. He lifted the cover, and Alec saw that the corpse was - himself. Alec Sadler. Dead as a doornail, with a bullet hole in his left temple. Aside from that and the unnatural color of his skin, he looked as if he might be just asleep.

Alec felt like someone had pulled the rug from beneath his feet. He wanted to lean on something, but nothing in the room seemed sturdy enough.

"What's going on here?" Kiera asked, sounding wary. "Who is he? Who killed him?"

"You know very well who he is," Escher answered, looking from dead Alec to live Alec. "And I didn't kill him, if that's what you're thinking. I would never do that to my son."

Kiera's eyes went wide at that, and she also glanced at Alec. He just nodded.

Escher went on, "Unfortunately, I don't know for sure who did, either. I had an autopsy performed on him, but the bullet didn't give us any clues. As for what happened, I think this will clear things up a little."

He walked to a corner of the room where a laptop rested on a table. "This is the surveillance camera feed from our antimatter laboratory."

The video showed the other Alec appear in the middle of the futuristic-looking lab in a flash of bright light, to the shock of two lab-coated researchers. Then, he just keeled over, dead.

"He came through using a certain spherical time travel device," Escher explained.

"But we - " Alec stammered.

"You have it, yes, I know, and of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to use it. Now, this footage is from a week ago. Both his belongings and the data we could glean concerning his time jump suggest that he came from today."

"Today? I die today?" Alec repeated, feeling at a loss for words. That wasn't something that happened to him often. Kiera was gazing at him with something in her eyes that looked suspiciously like tears.

"No, Alec," Escher said. Then, he took hold of Alec's shoulders and looked deep into his eyes, a gesture more fatherly than anything he had done so far. "In one timeline, you died, but it's not inevitable. Actually, it's highly unlikely. Your arrival caused significant damage to our antimatter lab, and that hasn't been repaired yet, so you wouldn't be able to use it if you wanted to. Still," he said, his voice turning softer, "I want you to promise me that you won't try anything like this. You're young and the chance to put things right is very, very tempting. Trust me, I know that better than you'd believe. But you have the proof right here that it won't work."

"Okay, I promise," Alec said.

"I know I haven't been there for you, Alec, but that will change now. We'll do great things together. Don't ruin it by doing something rash," Escher added. As if Alec hadn't been convinced enough just by the sight of his own dead body.

In another timeline, Kiera was witnessing the world fall apart at the seams.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" she asked Catherine.

"No, there isn't, but it's all right," the Freelancer leader answered. She made to take hold of Kiera's hand, but Kiera pulled it away. They may have caught her, but their pity was the last thing she wanted.

"Alec Sadler is gone from this timeline," Catherine continued, unfazed. "But whatever he tried to do, it did not work. The new timeline has assumed its correct course. Everything will work out as it should."

"The future will be as I remember? My Sam will be born?"

"Yes. It will be exactly as you remember."

Kiera did not dare to ask what that would mean for the other her. The Freelancers in the other timeline wouldn't want her to travel forwards in time to return to her family, and would probably try to prevent her from doing that if they could, but at least it was possible, in that other timeline, for that other Kiera.

For her, this was where it all ended, together with the rest of the world.

In the year 2077, Alec watched the crowd gathering to see the execution. Everything was in place, Liber8 had the pieces of the time travel device. Today was finally the day.

For the first time in years, he thought back to his dead other self from 2012, the one who had never lived to see his twentieth birthday. Alec was certain that he had jumped back in time to try and save Emily - he had been thinking about doing the same thing himself - but she had died anyway. That other Alec had been trying to change things, and he had failed. There was no telling how things would've changed had he been successful. With Emily alive, would he even have met his wife? Would Jason have been born? And was there any point in even asking, since he hadn't changed a thing?

Despite all the time he had spent on planning this little spectacle, Alec wasn't sure if he believed that he could change anything now, either. He had already witnessed everything that had happened in 2012 when Liber8 and Kiera and Jason had reached the past. This was where it had lead him: the very future that they had warned him about.

He had hoped he could avoid it. He had done his best. All he had ever wanted was to make people safe, healthy and prosperous. In a way, that was what he had achieved, but the cost had been too high. The world was not just safe, it was static, aseptic, poisonous to the human spirit, nearly devoid of free will.

Why would anything be different this time? Perhaps his plan was flawed from the beginning, nothing but a naïve fantasy, and they could only go back in time to do what had already been done.

Perhaps they were doomed to repeat the same events in an endless cycle, and nothing would ever truly change.