Dottie takes a step forward, and a second, and a third. The walk down the hallway to the room at the end feels like the longest twenty seconds of her life. She struggles to keep her expression neutral and her pace steady as she enters the laboratory.
She sees Whitney Frost first, her hand casually gripping Sousa's arm. But he isn't even looking at Frost; he's looking across the room at Peggy leaning up against the wall. Her face is white as a sheet, lips pressed tightly together in pain. Her right arm is limp and her bloody left hand is pressed up against a wound on her side—the other spy's handiwork, Dottie is certain.
In the middle of the room, the scientist she met earlier—what was his name? Sanders? Samberly?—is frantically configuring wires on a device that can only be the gamma cannon. His hands are shaking. "This is bad, this is bad, this is bad," he keeps muttering to himself.
"Samberly, stop," Sousa pleads.
Frost gives him a small shake. "I don't need to tell you what will happen if you stop, Dr. Samberly." She turns to Dottie. "Miss Underwood, how good of you to join us. You can put the gun down; you know it won't make any difference."
Dottie doesn't lower the gun. She keeps it trained on Frost as she works her way around the room to stand by Peggy. Even in this situation, she can't resist a dig. "Rough morning?"
Peggy's glare is worth it. "I'll deal with you later," she says through gritted teeth. Then she addresses Frost. "If you want to punish me, then punish me. Leave them out of it."
"Oh, Agent Carter, I am punishing you. I just didn't realize it would be this easy." She turns her attention back towards Samberly, tapping her foot impatiently. "Why aren't you finished yet?"
"Lady, with all due respect, I built this thing and what you're asking for isn't gonna work," Samberly says. Sweat is pouring down his face. "It doesn't have the capability to handle that much power; the core is gonna overheat—"
"It will work," Frost insists. "It worked before."
Sousa looks at her sharply. "What does that mean?"
"It means that those fools failed to realize there would be consequences down the line once they changed the past," she snaps. "You didn't seriously think the government would stop researching zero matter once they witnessed its true potential, did you?"
She breaks off suddenly. When the words rush out of her again, she seems to be in another world entirely, not paying attention to any of them. "And all this time, and the time before that, and they never once thought to come to me when I could have given them exactly what they wanted; this was my discovery and my work and they stole my notes and called me crazy and locked me away—"
"You killed people," Peggy says, a hard edge to her voice.
"And they deserved it!" Frost's grip on Sousa tightens and Dottie sees the flicker of fear cross Peggy's face. Then Frost smiles and shakes her head slightly. "Sometimes scientific progress requires sacrifices to be made, Agent Carter. Tell me, did you ever wonder what happens to objects that are absorbed by zero matter? The question troubled me for a long time, because matter cannot simply cease to exist—it must go somewhere else, perhaps in a distorted form, but it doesn't just disappear.
"Simultaneously, a second question occurred to me: what happens when zero matter is used to move objects not in space, but in time? Then I realized that these two questions were not so different after all. Objects absorbed by zero matter continue to exist, but simply in a different timeline; one that is invisible to us. Conversely, changing the course of time results in the distortion of space—hence the anomalies."
Samberly has stopped fiddling with the wires and is instead staring in awe at Frost. "We're living in a distorted timeline."
"Perhaps 'alternative' is a more accurate description," she agrees. "But the evidence is all around us. We can deduce that something—or more likely, someone—was sent into the past in a different timeline, which I hypothesize has resulted in a rather interesting cyclical effect. The anomalies grow increasingly larger as we approach the point of departure from the original timeline. Which we should arrive at very soon."
"What happens once we reach the point of departure?" Dottie asks.
Frost shrugs. "A series of controlled experiments will be necessary to test that. Fortunately, the alterations Dr. Samberly has been making to the gamma cannon have prepared us for this step—though if they had simply contacted me from the beginning, I would have been able to do it in a matter of weeks. How long have you been working on this project, Doctor? Six months? A year?"
"Samberly?" Sousa asks.
The other man hangs his head, refusing to make eye contact with any of them. "I'm sorry, Chief," he says. "I'm so sorry. Please accept my resignation."
"Tell us," Peggy urges.
"It was an order from Washington, Chief, the very top of the SSR," Samberly says hoarsely. "Almost a year ago, they came to me, to my apartment, and said they had a special project for me. They wanted to know how the gamma cannon could be used to allow a person to travel through time. I said no way, it wasn't possible. And they said yes, it was. They were certain of it."
"They were certain of it," Sousa echoes hollowly.
"And they said, this is an order and you're going to do it. I said no. They told me I'd be fired; they'd blacklist me and I'd never be able to find a job again. I still said no. And then…" he takes a long, shuddering breath, "…and then they showed me pictures. My parents, sitting in the living room reading the paper. My little sister, walking to school. I'm so sorry."
Sousa's eyes are bright with anger. "Don't be," he says. "I resign my position as chief of the West Coast Bureau, effective immediately."
"Daniel," Peggy breathes, "Are you sure?"
He shakes his head. "I can't work for people like this, Peggy. I won't be a part of that."
She swallows. "I resign too."
"Enough of this. You're wasting my time," Whitney Frost cuts in. "Now, doctor, are you finished?"
Samberly is making the final adjustment to the control. He wipes the sweat out of his eyes. "It's ready."
"No!" Peggy and Sousa exclaim in unison.
Frost smiles. "Go ahead, Dr. Samberly."
But Samberly shakes his head. "No."
Frost's voice is deceptively soft. "No?"
"You have to let Chief Sousa go first."
Both Sousa and Peggy give him an astonished look. Samberly's voice is trembling, but he plants his feet firmly and doesn't look away from Frost.
Frost doesn't relax her hold. "You realize your talents are wasted here, don't you, Dr. Samberly? Don't you wish you could work in a place where your intelligence would be respected; where your boss wouldn't undervalue you? What has this man ever done for you?"
A muscle jumps in his jaw. "Let. Chief Sousa. Go."
She rolls her eyes and shoves Sousa away from her contemptuously. It looks like a small push, but he goes sprawling. He scrambles over to join Peggy on the other side of the room. "Peg," he gasps, lowering her carefully into a sitting position. "You okay?"
"Fine." Her voice is higher than normal and she sounds like she's about to pass out. "Stop her."
"Turn it on, doctor," Frost says, stepping towards the scientist. Dottie begins edging that direction too.
Samberly is frozen in place as Frost approaches. She snatches the control out of his hands and he drops to the ground in a dead faint. As she presses the button, Dottie fires at the control and sends it flying out of Frost's hands.
She's too late. The machine is already whirring to life. Frost lunges forward with surprising speed and seizes Dottie by the neck. Her eyes are filled with rage.
Dottie's been burned, she's nearly drowned, she's been shot and stabbed and beaten within an each of her life. But none of that compares to being consumed.
No no no no nononononono…
Dottie doesn't hear the second shot ring out as Sousa hits the core of the gamma cannon. She doesn't realize that she and Frost are in the cannon's line of fire. She doesn't hear the explosion that shatters all the windows and caves in the ceiling. All she sees are Whitney Frost's eyes, and all she feels is absolute, mindless terror.