January 10, 2012. I'm with Emily at the factory training my rift teleportation when her phone buzzed in her pockets. She called a time out and went outside to answer the call. I keep practicing, I've finally controlled it enough to teleport another person aside from entering and reappearing on the specific destination. Earlier, Emily went through and appeared on the balcony above head. She even wanted me to open a rift to some place in Asia to really see how well I handled it. Of course, if I went by myself, I could easily move to any place in the world, but I'm not ready find out about putting someone else into the rift for that far. I'm scared that I might accidentally send them to the moon… or worse.

I'm sitting against the nearest column when she returns with a flustered look. She releases a huff and slams down beside me. "What got you so depressed?" I asked. She just shakes her head and then stand up again, clasping her hands like a mischievous little child.

"I'm in the mood for traveling, that's all" she says. She extends out a hand and I take it. I'm still not completely capable to teleporting two or more people at the same time through a rift but I still open one in front of us. Before, the rift was just barely visible, but now, you could see clearly the destination you were going to. It acted like a two way mirror, a passable two-way mirror. I step in and instantly appear on top of the Big Ben in London. I hear the rift make a sound and I turn to see Emily appearing right behind me. I'm surprised it didn't sent us to some other desolated place like before.

"London" she says under her breath. The snowy horizon was merged with the brown and grey color of the buildings. It looked serene but that façade only lasted a moment.

"What are you doing here and where'd you come from?" a voice in a heavy English accent asked from behind us.

We both jumped in surprise and all I could do was flare up my ability. I'm still not sure why my time manipulation isn't working properly, by properly mean stop time and heal injuries. We turn at the same time to see a young girl, probably eleven, staring at us and… hovering in the air a few inches from the floor.

"You're Conduits, too" she says excitedly. "Oh lovely! Just lovely!" she twirls in the air and floats towards us. She examines as she circles us. "What are your powers? Teleportation? Probably, because you just appeared out of nowhere, oh what's it like to teleport? Does it make you sick like sea-sickeness, or maybe—

"Can we get down from here?" Emily broke her constant questions. She nods vehemently and points towards a building rooftop leveled enough for us to stand properly without sliding over the edge. The top of Big Ben might've been not the worst of places to test my rift abilities but it certainly wasn't also the greatest.

"I live in that building with my brother, you guys can teleport there. No one will see us" she says before diving downwards unto the street. Whoever the girl was, she certainly looks like she was far more experienced in using her powers than me. I hold Emily's hand tight and I open a rift, I see the little girl appear from the edge of the rift, she's just landed on the rooftop. I take in a deep breath and walked through.

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

Brooke Augustine was furious at me. So furious that she threw me in a large Chromium plated room void of everything except for a bed and toilet. She knows I can get out through phasing but Chromium makes me nauseous after phasing. I try to develop any new power but this wasn't a threat worth escaping, I can't develop a new one. I sit on the foot of the bed, even the bed's made of chromium. I can use Polar Shifting to bend the door down or… oh yeah, Chromium also affects me in any power I use. I hate Chromium and its metallic smell that makes me scrunch up my nose. I lay on the bed, at least the mattress wasn't made of metal, too.

"I hope you'd learn to be more respectful to people who don't have powers. They can't defend themselves from you. No one can, but I at least hope you could at least give them a dime of your mercy" I hear her voice booming through the corridor as she walked away from the door of my room.

"I'll develop something from Chromium, Augustine. You'll see" I say. I know she can hear me, I'm projecting my threats to her mind. I already suddenly feel dizzy, like the walls were bouncing some of my powers back at me and that it was somehow making me sick.

I hear her footsteps become more silent until she's finally opened the door at the far end of the hall and exited to her own little Seattle Empire. Emperor. Yeah, that's what I should be called, Emperor. I should be the one ruling over Seattle, heck the world! I grow silent in the time I've spent pacing around the room, trying to facilitate my Adaptation Manipulation to work, but nothing seems to work against Chromium. I shake my head, trying to rid of the haziness that has taken over my mind, its clouded and all I can think of was to lay down and let it pass. I'll get out eventually, that or it'll be another whole month here in my Chromium cell.

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

The little girl led us through a maze of halls covered in articulated wallpaper and a carpeted floor. These halls looked like they belong to those with money and as we walked further and further into the girl's home, I begin to suspect that they were rich; a number of paintings start to cover the walls, paintings of women, landscapes, fruits; all painted by famous artists like Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci. She finally stops in front of a large wooden door, intricate designs riddled the surface creating patterns of spirals and thorns and waves. She turns to us with a smile. "This is my brother's room. He'll be delighted to meet you two" she says as she push opens the door.

The entire room was spotless. The marble floor shimmered against the fluorescent lights above, the walls were a dark wood, maybe maple or oak, bookshelves of books covered one side of the room and a bed against another, a large flat screen TV hanged on the wall opposite the bed and a burning fireplace was below it. In all my life I've only seen these kinds of rooms in old Victorian movies or rich mansions of celebrities. Never a Conduit.

A man, much older than me, stood in the center with welcoming arms. He seems to have seen our arrival because he had already prepared cups of tea and a platter of biscuits. "Welcome" he says with glee. He walks towards us and shakes our hand. A tiny jolt of electricity travels through my body when our hands touch, I look at Emily and I know she felt it, too. What was that just now? "I'm Seymour Jensen" he says as he ushers us to sit on lavishly designed couches. "You've already met my younger sister, Mariela" he says pointing a hand towards her where she gives a curt bow like old time women when introducing themselves.

"Ho—How did you know we were coming?" Emily asks him straightforwardly. I'm surprised that she could be so blunt at some points, but at least she asked the same thing I wanted to know.

Seymour gives off a hearty laugh. I notice he's rather… round. A large man, maybe around 25 of years with black-to-grey hair and bright green eyes. He's the oldest Conduit I know… except maybe the other one, the one that started this all. For a moment, I let my mind wonder to where that man is right now. My attention snaps back to the present when Seymour began to answer our question.

"Much like my sister, I too, am a Conduit" he says with pride. "I can see through the future and augment my chances of luck"

"Augment you luck?" Emily's voice seems doubtful.

"Yes. For say, I can take a person's luck and put it on myself to increase the chances of good things happening to me" he takes the platter of biscuits and pass it to us. We take a single piece. I take a bite and it's delicious. I take another piece.

Emily was quiet. She was too fascinated with what she was hearing to notice that she'd almost eaten all of the biscuits Seymour had intended to serve. "What exactly happens to the people you take your luck from?"

"Well…" he trails off. "They get bad luck for the duration of the day"

"I've never heard of Conduits who could take something from a pure… aspect of living" I'm surprised Emily could be this… smart, observing… intelligent.

"I, too, was surprised when I found about my Probability Manipulations but I think it's just a side effect of my real Conduit powers, Precognition"

I nod. I have given up on trying to question why was this man talking to us so casually, the suspicious glint in his eyes, in the sudden rise and low of his voice. I just listened and listened as he explained his past, his discovery of his power, the discovery of his sister's power and so on… he rubbed his hands together and I snapped out of my own fixation.

"I predicted you two would come here through your rift atop Big Ben" he says. "I sent out Mariela to fetch you because I want to tell you something grieve about our future"

"What?"

His mouth tightened into a firm line. He stroke his beard and exhaled a deep sigh. "There is an organization that is known to take Conduits and lock them in a unruly environment, yes?"

The D.U.P. I nod and he looks towards Emily. "She's not… a Conduit" I say.

Emily nodded to what I said and Seymour shook his head.

"There will be a time when the Conduits and Humans will exist in a prosperous peace. But I'm afraid that the time will never come unless this looming threat is dealt with" his voice had taken on a deeper tone, a depressed and saddened one. Maybe Fearful, too.

"There is a young man in Seattle" he starts. "His powers are slowly growing, rather becoming too unstable even for him. If he is undealt with, then he will grow to become a god amongst all of us, Conduits and men. I fear the war that will be upon us in the near future, where his forces will clash with another, a hero's tale will be born from the ashes of this conflict" he says it like it came from an old prophecy. He seems to notice what I just thought about and gave a hearty laugh. "Sorry, I start to talk in an old English kind of way once I start to recite my visions. I'm a historical literature professor, you see"

I shake my head. "I'm sorry if I was rude"

"No, no. Not at all. Some of my students would even sleep through my entire lecture because of my manner of speaking" his eyes stayed at a fixed point behind me and I thought about what he had said. The fight between two forces… mine and… Unknown's? Probably. He's the only one in Seattle who's both powerful and crazy enough to wage war.

"Anyways, I've yet to learn of your names" he says. "I'd look it up in the future but that'll just be rude, right?"

"I'm Emily" she starts. "And this is…"

"Lee" I said. I've already told Emily this truth in the factory. There was nothing else I could do, I mean who would stop her from looking at the D.U.P website of its most wanted Conduits and find out Temporal's real name is Lee Schneider? No one. Certainly not me.

"Lee" he looks at me then to her. "Emily, it is nice to have met your acquaintance but I'm afraid our time is cut short. They are coming"

"What? Who are?" I asked, suddenly I was standing up readying myself to fight.

"The British branch of the D.U.P and their… Conduit puppets" he stood up and walked away from us. "I'll be more of a help if I was safe in my home. Mariela will help you deal with them outside" he says.

I'm taken by surprise to find out that this little girl has had her fair share of fighting off the D.U.P. She looks at me with a hard look in her eyes, she's ready… always has been. She leads us out into a large foyer on the first floor. It's a wide open space leading out into the street where a couple of black trucks and vans had already parked, closing off the entire street. Men in blue D.U.P uniforms and heavy army vests appear from the corner of my vision. They've already surrounded us. Two men wearing normal clothing stood in front of us. They must be the Conduit puppets Seymour was talking about. One of them had blond hair tied into a ponytail that swayed down to his back; the other one had jet black hair gelled and was cut short.

"Hey Trevor, you get the guy and I get the girl" Jet Black said to his partner while looking at Emily.

I create a wall of impenetrable space around her. I turn to her. "Whatever happens to me, don't step out of the field" she nods. I turn to Mariela and she's already hovering in the air. This garners a whistle from Ponytail but he doesn't get to say anything else because she was already diving for him. Ponytail retaliates by pulling out the rubber band that tied his hair. At first I didn't understand what he was doing until his hair started to twist and forms shapes and even grow longer. That's… a girly power. His hair becomes a webbing and Mariela has a hard time evading them. If only I could use time again. I try to concentrate, I feel it moving slower and I know somehow, I was able to use my time powers… for now. I open my eyes just in time to see Jet Black's fist coming right for me in a very slow manner. I easily dodge it and send an uppercut to catch him off guard. Time moves normal and he stumbles a few steps back… into nothing. He's literally disappearing like a ripple of water, his body starts to liquefy and turn into a pool of water.

The pool of water shoots out towards me and time slows again for me to move just fast enough to dodge it. It hits the far wall of a building behind me in a large splash. It spirals into one large pool of water and proceeds to go at me again. I easily maneuver around the place evading every move the puddle makes. I'm actually getting tired after my twentieth time of dodging the water. I run towards the other side of the street and wait for it to move. It swirls into one large pool and then into what looks like a harpoon aimed directly at me. Behind it, I see Emily with a scared and concerned face. I mouth her to not worry and she just closes her eyes holding her hands tight in front of her chest. The water harpoon shoots at me at an incredibly fast speed but thanks to my time manipulation, I easily slow time enough to create a sphere cage around it made of pure space, distorted. It slams into the invisible wall and becomes a gush of water. The pool, now hanging about the ground, starts to mold back into a solid form, Jet Black was punching at the air trying to break free from the space cage I made for him.

"Hey!" he shouts pounding his fist on the air in front of him. "Get me down from here!" he hisses as he trashed around more. I turn to see Mariela had dealt with Ponytail, she tied him with his own hair and even gave him a new hairstyle for that matter. She was giggling when she touched down beside me.

"What about the Soldiers?" I asked.

"No one except these two" she says. "We should get back to Seymour"

"I agree but…" I say turning my attention to Jet Black. "What do we do with him?"

Mariela looks at me for a moment before shrugging. "Bring him a long then. The more the merrier, right?"