From now on, please assume that my default update speed is supposed to be slow; if I'm suddenly updating rather quickly several chapters in a row this is an exception rather than the norm :P


SIDESTORY ALERT!

I'm going to be putting up a new sidestory called Aftermath, showing what happens after the dust settles at the end of each story arc. Don't expect fast updates on it; I won't be uploading new chapters until the relevant story arc in Temporal Fates is finished. Both for the sake of avoiding spoilers, and because it wouldn't make sense without the necessary context.


Robert didn't remember much more of what happened after that.

He vaguely recalled picking up Keith's body, bringing it outside. He didn't know how long it ended up taking to dig a grave with his bare hands, but he finally finished burying his partner. Without much else to use, Robert placed Keith's pistol at the site as a grave marker.

The other corpses scattered about the building, he left where they were. The cold conditions inside the laboratory would be enough to stop them from rotting horribly, and he couldn't muster up the strength to deal with all of them.

He dragged Richard's body out into the jungle to rot.

At some point, Robert made it off the island, heading back to New York.

He couldn't even get anywhere near the site where Headquarters had been.

The bombed wreckage of destroyed buildings was cordoned off for several streets, flames still rising high into the sky. The authorities were desperately trying to get the situation under control even as panicking civilians hindered their efforts.

VSSE Headquarters was right at the epicentre of the blast.

As far as Robert knew, there were no protocols for the total collapse of the VSSE.

As a VSSE agent, he should have been doing his part to help the authorities.

As a person who had just lost everything, Robert turned and fled, bitter tears silently beginning to flow.


Without anywhere else to go, Robert returned to the island. Richard's cryptic final words nagged at him. Despite the bitter voice inside his head telling him it didn't matter, since everyone was gone, a small part of him yearned to know what Richard had been talking about.

Finding a dormitory of sorts in the laboratory, Robert took up residence there, grateful to have at least some clean clothes and a place to sleep other than at a computer terminal.

Time seemed to stand still in the building as Robert returned to the room where Keith had died, working on the computer there day after day. It took some doing, but he finally managed to gain access to it and begin searching through the files within.

Understanding what he was reading took longer, but the pieces slowly started to come together.

The laboratory belonged to the research corporation responsible for the disappearances Richard had been sent to investigate on his fatal last assignment. The corporation apparently had rather shady dealings with criminal organisations to fund their research; hence why Richard had been hunting criminals to track down leads on the corporation.

The corporation's actual field of research was where things became interesting. The scientists were apparently researching the space–time continuum. If their reports were to be believed, they had succeeded in opening a crack in reality that allowed people to travel through time.

Of course, they had needed test subjects to experiment with it.

The disappeared villagers were apparently not the first to be abducted. Orphans, runaways, homeless people… Anybody whose disappearance would go unnoticed… They had been quietly taken and brought to the island to be experimented upon. Some of them were injured or cut open before being sent through the portal to see how it would affect their injuries. Countless other gruesome experiments were conducted upon these unwilling time travellers before they made the trip.

According to the reports, the experiments involving sending people forward in time had been successful. The test subjects had reappeared in the same room hours or days later, as they were supposed to. By gauging the subjects' physiological states after reappearing, the scientists theorised that the further a person was sent through time, the more painful the trip became. Sending someone too far through time might thus carry the risk of killing them upon their arrival.

However, experiments with travelling back in time had been far less conducive. The researchers had not encountered any cases of unknown persons appearing in the laboratory, which would indicate that they had been sent back in time.

Sporadic experiments with whatever test subjects they could get their hands on were insufficient for gathering data. The corporation had moved to abducting test subjects in an attempt to conduct a more sizeable experiment.

They had tried all sorts of different things on the abducted villagers. Tracking devices, in hopes that the device's location in the present day would give them an idea where the test subject had landed. Countless other options for tracking the physical location of the test subject to begin figuring out where and when they landed in the past.

The villagers had vanished without a trace regardless, with the tracking methods failing one after the other.

All at once, Robert understood what Richard had been trying to say.

If Richard could use the portal to travel back in time to before his wife's death and stop it from happening…

In the same instant, the answer to his own hopeless situation became clear.

Robert hesitated, doubts swirling about his mind.

The reports had made it quite clear nobody knew what happened to the people who travelled back in time. And he didn't know how far back he could safely go without risking getting himself killed. Yet, sending himself back to just the start of this chain of tragedies would not do much good; short of finding a way to stop Evan from dying during the Terror Bite incident, the entire cycle would just repeat itself.

But what other choice did he have? Stay behind alone in a world where the VSSE had been obliterated? He would rather fall into oblivion than suffer the slow onset of madness from isolation and grief.

5 years. He would send himself back by 5 years. That would give him sufficient buffer time to observe the key players involved in the events of the past several months. Then he could try to influence the situation and prevent it from happening again.

If he succeeded, he would have the time he needed. If he failed to land safely in the past… Well, the world was already doomed. It wouldn't get any worse than it had been before his attempt at time travelling.

Studying the lab reports one last time, Robert made his way to the strange control panel on the other side of the room and activated it. Inputting his destination time, he left the date and month blank, setting the portal to take him to 2009.

The archway opened up, revealing a portal that glowed with an unearthly violet light. Robert peered apprehensively into it, but he couldn't make out what lay within the swirling light.

Swallowing, he gathered up every last shred of his courage and stepped into the portal. The door to the archway slid shut a moment later.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the light seemed to rush towards him and swallow him up and suddenly he realised he had miscalculated horribly; his molecules were being ripped apart as he dissolved into nothingness until he couldn't even scream for it to stop because his throat was gone and there was nothing but pain pain pain…

The air abruptly slammed back into his lungs. Desperately, he took a deep, shuddering breath, opening his eyes as the wave of agony subsided.

It took a few moments for Robert's disorientation to fade. When it did, he realised he was staring up at a familiar ceiling.

He was lying in bed in his room at VSSE Headquarters.

Staring around his room in bewilderment, it took him a few more minutes to realise that someone was pounding on his door and shouting.

"Hey! Robert! What's going on? Open the door!"

Shakily, he scrambled out of bed, trying to pull himself together.

When he saw who was standing outside, his confusion only deepened.

Keith was staring at him, annoyance and worry warring for attention on his face; but he was alive, not bleeding out after being stabbed in the stomach trying to comfort Richard.

"Keith?" Robert tried to sound nonchalant, but he could hear a tinge of hysteria in his voice.

"What the hell, Robert? I could hear you screaming bloody murder from next door! I thought I was going to have to force my way inside to see if you were dying." Despite Keith's flippant comment, there was an undertone of concern to his words.

The same foolish concern which got him killed…

Shaking off his uneasy thoughts, Robert hurriedly tried to find an explanation to give his partner. "I… It's nothing. I just dropped a glass and freaked out a bit when I stepped on it."

Fortunately, Keith seemed to accept his flimsy excuse.

"Getting clumsy in your old age?" He teased. "Do you need to go to the infirmary?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Robert snapped, trying to cover his unease at seeing Keith alive and well. "It was just the initial shock; I didn't cut myself badly or anything."

"Suit yourself." Keith grinned. "By the way, what happened to being ever vigilant?"

"Excuse me?"

"I know it's our day off, but you look like you just rolled out of bed." Keith gestured at Robert with a smirk. "Thought you usually like to get up early and 'keep your skills sharp in preparation for our next assignment'."

Though Robert knew Keith's somewhat mocking imitation of him was meant fondly, he was already on edge from trying to get his bearings and in no mood to play along.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" He shot Keith an unamused glare.

"Geez, someone's grumpy when they've just woken up." Keith backed off a step, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, I'll leave you be. Just don't start screaming again; you're lucky nobody else was around to hear you."

Shutting the door as Keith finally left, Robert breathed a sigh of relief.

What the hell is going on here? Was everything that happened just one long nightmare?

Heading into his bathroom, he splashed some water on his face, trying to calm his racing heart.

He happened to glance up at the mirror as he did so.

As soon as he caught sight of his reflection, he froze in shock.

Physically, he appeared to be the right age for 2009…

But he was wearing the clothes he had borrowed from the dormitory before using the portal.

What the hell…?

Robert made a beeline for his bedside, scooping up the phone sitting on his nightstand.

A quick glance at the screen confirmed that it was mid–October 2009.

Scrubbing a hand across his face, Robert tried to collect his thoughts.

Alright. Let's see. It's 2009. Keith is alive, and Headquarters is still standing. I'm the right age for 2009. But the clothes I'm wearing are from the future I came from. Which means it wasn't just my consciousness that travelled back in time. Maybe… using the portal deaged me, and I physically replaced my younger self at this point in the timeline.

Robert swallowed as the reality of his situation began to properly sink in.

Everyone was alive. The VSSE was still standing strong. Richard Miller hadn't gone insane and tried to destroy everything yet.

He had a chance to save everyone.

Robert felt hot tears of relief beginning to form, but he pressed his lips together firmly, forcing himself not to break down.

He needed a plan. He needed a way to influence what would happen.

He needed to record what he had been through, so that he didn't miss anything that might trip him up afterwards.

Seating himself at his desk, Robert opened up his laptop and began to type.

To shape the future, we must learn from the past. This report shall attempt to trace the origins of this entire tragedy, in hopes of preventing it from repeating itself. As far as I can tell, the entire series of events began with the Terror Bite incident, which Agents Giorgio Bruno and Evan Bernard were assigned to handle…


Incidentally, at one point in TC5, Keith asks Robert what he's planning to do, to which Robert replies he's doing this to "reset the world". That was what gave birth to the idea of him being a time traveller, although that was (obviously) not what he meant, especially since he was talking about his plans for the Zombie Drug :P Still no idea what his motivations were in canon, so I'll stick to my own headcanons until they give us an explanation (if ever).

It'll be a while before we return to Robert's story, by the way. The next couple of chapters are going to follow a few key players who are quite closely entwined with the unfolding events.