"Where's Lucy? And what took you so long?" Agent Christopher was on them from the moment they came out of the Lifeboat. Wyatt still needed to see a proper Doctor and Rufus desperately wanted a long, hot shower.

"Where's the Mothership? Or, rather, when is the Mothership?" Rufus was more concerned with Agent Christopher's first question.

"I have an answer for both of those, actually." Jiya popped her head up from her desktop. "Present day. In a fifty square mile radius of San Fransisco. I'm guessing not in the ocean or the bay though so that narrows it down."

"I need to know what happened because Flynn was in 1865, then jumped back here for several hours before jumping back to 1865 and returning again around 2am. What? Did he forget something? And where's Lucy?" The Homeland Security Agent asked for the Historian a second time.

"He traveled back to 1865? He'd come back to the present and then made a second trip to D.C.?" Rufus looked to Wyatt.

"There were so many other chances to kidnap her, easier chances too. Why wait until she was surrounded by Secret Service?" The boys were talking amongst themselves.

"Hey! Someone better start answering my damn questions or things are going to get incredibly unpleasant around here." Christopher was loosing her already non-existent patience.

Rufus sighed before Wyatt began explaining. "Lucy saved President Lincoln, got herself engaged to Robert Todd Lincoln and then got kidnapped by Flynn from the White House before we could get to her."

"Hold on. Are you telling me Lucy was Juliet Shakesman?" As it turned out, Agent Christopher in this new timeline had idolized women like 'Juliet' since she was a child. Brave women who did the impossible and were trail blazers for future generations. A name that Lucy had made up on the spot was now one ingrained in the minds of historians and anyone else who'd read anything about that night at Ford's Theater.

The team all gathered around a computer while Wyatt was being checked out by a medic and Connor read out the new history. "President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the arm by a tall unknown gunman, using an unknown gun on April the 14th, 1865. The assassination attempt was thwarted by an obscure actress, Juliet Shakesman, Robert Todd Lincoln's fiancé who was kidnapped days later by the same gunman and never seen again."

"So if Lucy hadn't been Juliet, President Lincoln would have died?"

"That's the history we remember." Rufus answered Christopher. "When we went back, it was 'The Lincoln Assassination'. Not an attempt. A guy named John Wilkes Booth was the one who originally did it but then Flynn somehow took his place. Lucy was going to preserve how it happened and not do anything except save General Grant who wasn't suppose to be there in the first place but then she changed her mind." He remembered how happy the black soldiers had been that the President who freed them was saved. "How much sooner did all the civil rights for black people come about?" Connor pulled up a brief time table of all the major milestones in the movement and Rufus looked over his shoulder.

"What were they before?" Connor asked.

"Wait, that's not right. Lincoln was saved so all this should have been earlier. Didn't he do anything else for us after he survived?"

Agent Christopher answered him. "No, I'm afraid not. There's been speculation that Lincoln only signed the Emancipation Proclamation to weaken the South during the Civil War. He was part of the National Union Party which was another term for Republican. Historically speaking, Republicans were consistently on the right side of Race politics. They backed the Proclamation and movements like Civil Rights while Democrats tried to undermine most of the efforts. They don't tend to teach that in schools though. I'm voting for Hilary Clinton next month but that's only because Gary Johnson doesn't have a hope of winning and the other option is horrific." Everyone looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "What? I do know some history."

"Republicans fought for equality? Was that something we changed?" Rufus asked Wyatt.

"No, actually that's the same. Christopher's right."

"Anyway," she continued, "Lincoln did get reelected for a second term but he only lived two years into it. They say it was consumption but it was probably cancer or some other wasting disease. He was showing signs of it in his first term. Presidency noticeably ages people but the changes he had were extremely rapid even for the position. So who knows if he would have gone on to do more for African Americans."

Rufus looked defeated. All the soldiers he met that had thought their future was so bright just had to go through the same things they did before. Lucy saving Lincoln hadn't made much of an impact at all.

"I've read the accounts but did Lucy seriously get Robert Todd Lincoln to fall in love and propose to her in less than 24 hours?" Agent Christopher was still reeling from finding out that Lucy was a famous historical heroine.

"Yep," Rufus answered. "We were standing there when he proposed. I don't think Lucy really knew what else to do. She was just as shocked by it as we were and it all happened so fast. She'd gone to the theater mailboxes that morning to find Booth and ran into Robert. Then she saw him again later at the train station and that's when he asked her to the play. Her saving his Dad made him think they were meant to be or something. Have to admit, that proposal was pretty good."

"Whatever," Wyatt charged forward. "So they took her to the White House and we tried getting in to sneak her out but it was impossible. The place was like a fortress. How did Flynn even get her? That's what I wanna know. And what's he want her for? Leverage?"

Christopher shrugged and shook her head. "I have no idea. We haven't received any threats or demands. And it's not like we can't get another Historian. I'm not sure why he would want or need her. He already has Anthony Bruhl so he doesn't need another hostage. And going back to 1865 to get her?" She trailed off not knowing what to make of it all any more than the rest of them.

Wyatt was the first to break the silence. "Lucy asked you after we got back from the Hindenburg, why you chose her. She said Flynn told her to ask. Is she more important in all of this than we know?"

"She came highly recommended by my superiors. Her profile suggested that she would be very receptive to something extremely unorthodox like time travel so that's who we went with. There really wasn't anyone else that was deemed a good candidate."

"That's all they gave you?" Rufus asked the agent.

"Look, I wish I had more but that's all I know. For now we just need to hook the Lifeboat up to charge, get another Historian lined up and be ready for Flynn's next move."

"Whoa," Wyatt jumped up, scaring the medic that was still trying to fix Rufus' handy work. "We're not replacing Lucy."

"Until we can find her and figure out a way to get her back, that is if she's still alive, you two need a guide. There still needs to be a historical and anthropological expert on the team. That hasn't changed."

Rufus and Wyatt were both frustrated. They knew she was right but they hated that they had no idea how to find or save their teammate. None of them knew the other two well but they'd come to depend on one another and bond a little. There was something very unifying about traveling through time and risking your lives together.

After a more detailed discussion of events, Wyatt and Rufus left to go home and get some rest and Agent Christopher set out to find a viable option for the third seat in the Lifeboat should they need to go after Flynn before they found Lucy. Fortunately, she found a replacement quickly because that afternoon the alarm went off notifying them that the Mothership had taken off again.

September 21st, 1962. Somewhere in or around Vegas. The Professor from Princeton they'd gotten wasn't a lot of help aside from mentioning that JFK was there at the time. Having the third member be a guy didn't feel right to Rufus or Wyatt but anyone aside from Lucy would have felt wrong. But they took off and hoped Flynn would have Lucy with him and that they could somehow rescue her.


Garcia was slightly amused at the 'time team' running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The new historian they had with them seemed useless and since Anthony wasn't having a moral dilemma this time around he never mentioned the Plutonium Core to Rufus by its other nickname nor did the two ever run into each other at all. Judith Campbell had informed him that the third man with Rufus and Wyatt had made a comment about how she wasn't 'significant' so that meant they never even recognized what Garcia could possibly want with her. He knew things would go smoother without Lucy with them but this was laughably easy.

When he returned, Lucy will have been released and she'd be back at Mason Industries awaiting the guys' return. That meant she would be back with them when they followed to Nazi Germany. Things would be back on track, or so he hoped.

Something that was way off track was what Lucy had uttered when she woke up with him. It had been the same words that she'd used the morning after she'd woken up in his room in the Bunker in the other timeline. And she had then mentioned the vodka. It had presented like the remnants of a dream but how would she even have such a dream? Garcia then remembered the feeling when she'd been touching him, still half asleep. There'd been this buzz of electricity, a connection. That's when it hit him: the sensation had been similar to what he felt when his younger self had touched him! Except that Lucy wasn't him so it hadn't threatened her like the Garcia Flynn from 2012. Did the younger him also have visions of the future before he died?

Could it really be possible? That her touching the skin of a man from her future while on a different plane of consciousness had given her insight into a timeline only he remembered? Whatever she had seen had disappeared with her becoming more alert but that didn't erase the fact that it had seeped into her somehow. For a brief moment, he heard the words of a Lucy that had known and cared for him. She would get there in this timeline too but in the meantime, it made Garcia's heart ache. He missed the way she use to look at him. She'd grown to trust him beyond what he thought possible and now she looked at him with confusion at the very best. And there were still threats and scare tactics to launch her way.

He took a fortifying breath and released it with difficulty. Some aspects of all this were easier but some were infinitely worse. There were bigger changes he would make later but for now, a lot of the things he needed to keep the same made him cringe.

It was probably best not to let Lucy touch him anymore for a while if it meant her learning things she shouldn't know yet. There didn't seem to be any transfer while she was awake when he'd firmly held her to make her calm down but best not to take chances if he didn't need to.

Judith Campbell then returned to the car after getting the keys he needed from General Milano. Now on to getting the ingredients for his 300 year time machine battery...


Lucy sat in the glass conference room at Mason Industries. She'd been released just as Flynn told her she would be. He was also right about there being no escape from the room she was held in but at least her stay was a comfortable one. She'd taken a hot shower and changed into women's clothes she found in the dresser. Just her size of course. A fact she found a bit creepy.

Even though the room had been set up like a hotel room, it was indeed in an abandoned building. She wasn't sure why it was there or how Flynn had found it much less got in all the amenities but it was a nice way to return from the 1800's. The shower was heavenly and the modern clothes were a lot less itchy. He'd even pegged her style pretty well which only served to frustrate her.

"Lucy, good. I was told you were unharmed. Are you alright?" Agent Christopher walked in.

"I'm fine. Mason says the guys are in '62? Vegas?" She got a nod.

"Any idea what he's doing there?"

Lucy didn't need any historical knowledge to know the answer to this one. And she believed Flynn had told her the truth, just like she believed he was telling the truth about not having done anything to her while she was knocked out. Plus, with the location Mason told her the guys traveled to, the answer Flynn had given her now made complete sense. "The core of a nuclear bomb."

Agent Christopher froze. "Flynn's going after a nuke?" Lucy nodded. "How do you know?"

"He told me."

"Why would he-"

"I don't know."

Christopher seemed to mull this over. "Lucy," she began delicately. "Did anything happen while you were with him?"

At first, Lucy was confused but then the tone used finally gave away what was being asked. "Oh. No. Nothing like that. He didn't- uh, he didn't do anything like that. I'm fine. He doesn't have much regard for my personal space but I don't believe he's the sort of man who would do that to a woman."

"He killed his wife and daughter, Lucy. I think it's safe to say we don't know what kind of man he is or how far he would take anything."

Lucy didn't give a response to that.

"Did he tell you anything else? Like why he went back to 1865 to get you or why he had you held for a day?"

Lucy didn't want to say too much. She hadn't told anyone about the journal he had that was supposedly hers and she wasn't going to. She also didn't think it was wise to tell anyone here, including Rufus and Wyatt when they got back, how familiar he was with her. How would they react if they knew how tender he could be? It wouldn't do anything to help them trust her if they knew there was some connection between her and the villain they were chasing through time. He'd spoken cryptically and his actions confounded her but the one thing that came across loud and clear was that she meant something to him. He'd said as much and his actions backed it up. He regarded her with care even when his words hinted at danger. Somehow she knew she wasn't at risk of getting harmed by him.

"Lucy, stop. Settle down. I'm not going to hurt you. Easy, easy. It's okay. You're alright. It's just me," He'd said.

It's just me... Like he was someone she should be comfortable with. Someone she should feel safe with. Someone she was close to. No, she definitely could not tell Agent Christopher any of that.

"He just said that he didn't want me messing up history any more than I already had with Robert Lincoln and he didn't want me going with Wyatt and Rufus on this trip." A thought occurred to her. "What happened to Robert? He still became a lawyer, right? And had three kids? What about his father?"

Christopher took out her phone and started googling. "Robert Todd Lincoln... He did become a lawyer, yes, but he never married or had children. He spent years and quite a lot of money trying to find you. He offered rewards for any information. Even offered money and immunity to the 'gunman' who took you if he would just insure your safe return. Lincoln only lived two more years. Documented as Consumption." She looked at Lucy with regret. "For what it's worth, I think it's great that you saved President Lincoln. And you became an inspiration to women everywhere. Including me."

"That's just it. I didn't save the President. People think I did but the truth is that Flynn shot him in the arm on purpose. He didn't miss."

"Why would he do that? It didn't accomplish anything. Wyatt and Rufus said nothing changed significantly. Were they wrong?"

"I'd have to look, study over some materials as they exist now but no, I don't think they were wrong. Flynn never gave me an answer as to why he did it. He just told me he should have killed him."

Lucy could tell Agent Christopher had more questions but decided to hold them for later. There was also an air of suspicion. She found it just as odd as Lucy did that this terrorist would kidnap her and not harm her whatsoever. Even go so far as to have a conversation with her where he revealed things like going after a nuclear bomb. Afterwards he'd released her safely back to the people who had hired her to take him down.

"Alright, well, with any luck the boys will figure it out and stop Flynn from getting the nuke. I can give you a call once they come back or you can wait here if you'd like."

"I'll wait." Lucy wanted to be here when they returned.

Agent Christopher left her to make a phone call which is when Lucy thought to get her own phone from the lockers downstairs.

There were several missed calls and text messages. Mostly from her Mother and someone programmed in her phone as 'Noah'. They started out asking where she was and Lucy remembered her mother telling her not to forget something that was suppose to take place the night after she'd left for 1865. She was now finding out from her Mother's irate texts and voicemails that it was her engagement party. Apparently this Noah person was her fiancé now. His messages sounded more hurt than angry. The later ones were filled with concern and then panic so she hit the button to call her Mother back first...

To Be Continued...