"Looks like Mississippi, 1863," Sara told us where we had to go to track down the latest of the idiot Time Pirates we had come across.

Nate geeked out, "Height of the American Civil War."

Meanwhile Ray fretted, "It's also the bloodiest year in American history. We gotta watch each other's backs out there."

Sara spoke up to burst Ray's bubble, "Yes, which is why you will be watching ours from right here."

"Huh," Ray asked, so confused.

"If you don't mind, someone has to stay behind as backup," Sara quickly came up with a reason to not hurt Ray's feelings.

We were gathering the last of our supplies by the cargo bay door, Ray was presenting us with some additional supplies. "Along with comms devices, I also packed sack lunches. I figured the food in 1863 is pretty lousy."

I nuzzled into his side, "Thanks, Ray, that's really sweet of you," I said making him smile.

Sara reviewed our mission parameters briefly, "All right, the operation is simple. We isolate the target, we eliminate the timeship, and we get out of there."

Amaya moved forwards, grumpily indicating her period dress, "And all while wearing this dress."

I giggled, "it could be much worse."

"Come back safe." Ray said as we walked off the ship.

We walked towards the source of the time beacon as Ray narrated to us, "It's Mississippi, 1863. The weather is a temperate 58 degrees. Ooh, a little trivia, you guys are in Hinds County, which was named after General Thomas…" Sara reached up to her ear and hitting a button on her comm cut Ray off.

Nate started not able to finish his question, "Did you just…"

"Shut off his comms?" Sara finished for him before she answered, "Yep."

Before long we reached the smoking time pod, "I can't believe it," Amaya said amazed either as if we hadn't just got off a time ship or as if she hadn't believed Time Pirates were real.

Stein quickly analyzed the situation, "It looks to be some kind of escape pod. No doubt, it fell out of the Temporal Zone."

Sara said, "No sign of anyone."

I groaned, "Does that mean we have to track down the pirate or are we assuming he got himself killed?"

"Well, the power core looks exposed," Jax noted after he leaned closer to inspect the ship.

"That mean what I think it means," Sara asked idly.

"Only one way to find out," Jax said, gesturing to Mick.

Mick cheered, "Ah. Thought you'd never ask." He quickly pulled out his heat gun preparing to fire.

Stein quickly warned, "Back up, everyone."

Mick lit the pod on fire causing a small explosion before he sighed, "Ah, what's next?"

Stein bemoaned Mick's attitude, "Don't you think that's enough incineration for one day, Mr. Rory?"

"No, I do not, Professor."

Jax stood looking around smugly before he said, "This is turning out to be one of our easiest missions yet."

I groaned, "Oh, Jax, why would you jinx it like that?"

Right away we heard someone shouting, "Help me! Somebody, please!"

Stein sighed, "You had to say that, didn't you?"

We all looked around trying to find the person shouting, "It's over there," Amaya said as she moved to go help.

The guy kept shouting as he ran, "Help me! Help!"

Jax tried to stop Amaya from going to help, "Whoa, wait, we're not supposed to interfere with historical events."

She paused looking back at Jax seriously, "Try and stop me," she said defiantly before she turned and went to help.

Mick chuckled, "Women," as he turned to follow Amaya.

Stein sighed as he noted, "She certainly has a fiery spirit."

"Which is either gonna get her killed or completely screw up history," Jax lamented.

I laughed, "That just means she kinda fits right in, doesn't she?" I patted Jax on the back before I moved forwards. One of Firestorm's blasts knocked the confederates down before we could reach the guy fleeing for his life.

Amaya reached him first she spoke to calm him down, "Whoa, whoa. Relax. All right, you're safe now."

The guy quickly spoke up wondering about the weird that came with us, "What in tarnations was that? What did I just see?"

Nate scrambled to cover up Firestorm's appearance, "What was what? I, uh, I didn't see anything."

The guy pushed on demanding answers, "Who are you guys? What's going on, here?"

"Look, we're just passing through." Sara spoke as she came up behind us.

Jax spoke as he ran up out of breath, "Okay, guys, let's get the hell out of here."

"We can't just leave him here," Amaya protested.

"Well, unfortunately, we have to." Stein spoke desperately, "If we rescue one man, we could alter history in the wrong way." I could see the confusion blossoming on the guy's face.

Suddenly Nate spoke up, "You're dispatch, aren't you?"

"Wait, what's a dispatch," Amaya asked confused.

Nate quickly explained, "It's a former slave providing information to the Union Army."

The guy puffed up, "My name is Henry Scott. I'm a free man from Trenton, New Jersey."

"Well, you're a long way from home," Mick commented mildly.

Sara cut in before he could go on, wanting to get us out of here, "And we need to be getting out of here."

"Uh, guys," Nate spoke pointing out the confederates rising off the ground.

"Oh, my God," Stein gasped in shock.

Jax spoke astounded, "Those Confederates look a lot like…"

Stein freaked out at the supposition, "Don't... don't... don't say it! Quick, quick, just merge!" The fight moved quickly, we worked together pretty fluidly for us and dispatched the zombie confederates.

"Is everybody okay," Sara asked as the dust settled.

Nate stammered, "What the hell was that?

Mick started, "You ask me, they look like zo…"

Stein cut him off shouting in fear, "No! Please, don't say it. I know they're essentially a myth, but I have this irrational fear of…"

"Zombies," Mick chuckled from behind him.

"Please, don't say it," Stein said angrily.

We heard groaning coming from behind us. Jax looked over before running towards the Scott guy where he was bleeding out, "Oh, God. Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey." We all stood back as Jax tried to save him. Scott desperately gasped out some words to Jax pushing his bag at him. "Hey. Hey," Jax cried as Scott finally died.

We reached the bridge solemnly after the incident, "Nice job blowing up the Time Pirate's escape pod. Put another win in the mission column," Ray cheered as we entered.

"Did you not see what happened next," Jax asked frustratedly.

"No, I took a break. Had to go to the bathroom," Ray explained. Jax threw up his hands exasperatedly, Ray asked worriedly, "You okay?"

"We were attacked by zombies." Mick said from where he sat on the steps of the study, "And someone put sprouts on my sandwich."

Sara and Stein turned from where they were looking at one of the screens, Stein spoke, "The Time Pirate's distress call referenced something called a TX-90. It's a futurist bioweapon. The infected's condition represents strongly those things... that... I can't say."

Sara kept going, "And if that infected Time Pirate is out there spreading this virus, then our work is not done here."

Nate spoke up aghast, "No kidding. Having zombies, or whatever they are, running around the Civil War is not a good thing."

I rushed to kneel by a collapsed Mick as Ray said, "Speaking of not good."

"Get him to the MedBay."

"Oh, my God," Sara spoke as she, Nate, and I looked over the changes to history in the library.

I groaned at the news reports, "I think I'm going to be sick, if we can't fix this."

"Yeah, it's pretty disastrous." Nate said, going on, "I'm guessing, thanks to the zombies, the Confederacy won its independence from the Union."

Jax walked into the library holding out Scott's stuff, "It wasn't just them. That guy, the dispatch, these are his mission orders. From General Ulysses S. Grant." Jax handed the papers to Nate.

Sara, Nate and I sighed. "My God," Nate gasped as he unfolded the papers before he moved to the screen.

Jax went on to explain why they were important, "He was supposed to infiltrate the Collins Plantation and steal Confederate troop movement orders."

Sara commented on the information Nate had pulled up on the viewscreen, "They named a high school after him?"

"That's because in the original version of history, the plans Scott stole helped Grant win the Battle of Champion Hill." Nate answered Sara's question.

Sara turned around, "And I'm guessing none of that happened because Scott was bayoneted by a Confederate turned into a zombie by a future virus," she said with dismay.

I looked to Jax, "You just had to jinx it didn't you," he just rolled his eyes at me.

"Okay, so…" Nate breathed deeply before turning to face us, "how do we fix it?"

"We don't. I do," Jax said determinedly. I tensed worry starting to crawl up my spine at his words.

"Jax," Sara said at the same time I asked, "are you sure about this?"

Jax explained the validity of his decision that was justified by the confederates' backwards logic, "There's a reason black people were used as spies. Because we were invisible. That's why I'm going in there. Don't worry. If anything happens, it's on me," he said going to back out.

Sara immediately tried to veto Jax's plan, "No, Jax, it's on me. Look, Mick is already hurt, and I don't like the idea of putting anyone else in harm's way."

"And I don't like the idea of having a flag that has 20 stars on it," Jax snapped back.

"I'm definitely not letting you go in there alone," Sara conceded to his plan.

"Fine, I'll take Amaya and Chloe."

"All right. Nate and I will go warn the Union Army about the infected soldiers."

Jax, Amaya, and I looked up at the plantation house from our position in the woods, "So, what's our plan," Amaya asked Jax.

Jax answered simply, "Well, if things go easy, we sneak in while everybody's asleep, find the Confederate plans, and grab them."

"Are things ever easy with your group?"

"No," I said to Amaya before turning to Jax, "so, do we have a back up plan or are we just going to improvise?"

"Eh, good point," Jax conceded our point but before we could get to a back up plan there was a commotion closer to the plantation house.

"Please, don't! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to burn the table cloth! It was an accident, I swear," a woman screamed as she was pushed against a tree.

I could scent the overwhelming smell of the Alpha pushing her from the distance, "An accident? You just let yourself get distracted, that's all. While you should have been thinking about the ironing, you were probably daydreaming about Ulysses S. Grant marching down here to free all the slaves." Jax quickly snagged Amaya as she went to help, giving me the chance to slip away.

I circled around to the other end of the clearing the Alpha was in. I reached for my magic to cast a small spell to produce a wind to carry the pheromones I produced hoping to distract the Alpha from his task. I winced as the woman started to scream with each crack of the whip, I focused on producing stronger pheromones and pushed the wind I had created to carry them to the Alpha. "Chloe, where are you?" Jax called frantically over the comms, "I can scent you from here."

"Good," I responded, "because if you can then he most certainly does too." I focussed on thickening the scent of my pheromones as I noticed the Alpha start to falter as he scented me. I looked up as Amaya called over the comm, "Chloe, he's coming to find you." I cut the wind and pheromone production before I cast a cloak to slowly work my way back over to Jax and Amaya.

It was dark by the time I got back to Jax and Amaya the Alpha asshole having finally given up on trying to find me. "They're having some kind of party," Amaya said, noting the people coming and going around the house.

"Oh, a Cotillion, actually." Jax spoke as he took off his nicer fabricated outer layers exchanging them for ones he pulled from Scott's satchel, "According to Scott's mission papers, he was going to get in disguised as the help. Chloe even with the stunt you pulled with your pheromones is just going to walk in the front door."

"You mean slave?" Amaya snarked, "We shouldn't have had to sneak around to help her," she said referring to the woman who had been whipped earlier.

"Look, I've been doing this time travel thing for a little while now. And if I've learned one thing, it's you never know what's gonna change history and have massive consequences. What, you think this doesn't make me angry as well? But we have a job to do. And if we don't do it, we can make things a lot worse." Jax told Amaya before he looked at me pointedly. He gestured for me to go join the party going on in the house.

I paused before I went to enter the house, "just to let you know if one of them does anything to piss me off I am liable to kill them," Jax rolled his eyes as I told them.

"Just... just stay on comms, okay," he told both of us tiredly before he strode forwards to go in the back door.

I nodded at Amaya before I went in, sighing, "I need a drink."

I was lightly releasing pheromones as I made my way through the party knowing it would set off the Alpha asshole. I snagged a drink off a passing tray before Jax called over comms, "Amaya, Chloe, it's Jax. The study's a bust, I'm gonna check the rest of the plantation house." I didn't turn from my idle conversation as Jax passed behind me, but I did internally wince as he bumped into one of the women attending the party. "Oh! I am so sorry, ma'am," he said as he took her hand.

I wrapped up my conversation quickly, turning I heard the Alpha asshole speak to Jax, "Boy, what did you just do?"

I moved away from other people murmuring into my comm, I asked, "do you want me to step in Jax?" I was sure I could figure out the right mix of schmooze and Omega pheromones to deescalate the situation without blowing the mission.

"No," he stuttered as if he was talking to the asshole, he went on as I nodded towards him acknowledging his decision, "sir, I-I did not."

I turned to find another drink, thinking quickly I produced more pheromones and a quick breeze to disperse it quickly. I moved meeting eyes with Jax as I passed him letting him know that despite my better judgement I would let it play out, "Hey! Don't you turn your back on me, boy," was shouted making everyone in the house look over.

A giant Alpha stepped towards them from behind me. I froze as I could hear him snuffling the air despite his focus, "There a problem, Mr. Collins?"

"Just a house boy who don't know his place. And needs to be taught some manners," the Alpha said before he looked around a little wildly as he scented the air.

"Jax, Chloe, are you there?" I heard Amaya ask over comms. I ignored it for the moment, working to end the conversation about mating I had gotten caught in after a couple of older women had caught my scent. I quickly made my excuses as I caught sight of Amaya entering the house.

"We'll have to teach you a lesson on how to talk to your betters," I heard the giant Alpha say to Amaya as I walked up behind him.

"Ah there you are," I said happily, stepping around the Alpha I got close enough to make sure he caught a big whiff of my scent. "Did you find my bracelet," I asked, meeting Amaya's eyes I urged her to go with it.

Thankfully she did, "I'm sorry I didn't, it seems it was left at home."

"Hmm, a pity that bracelet just goes so well with this dress," I said idly.

The alpha looked down at me, drawing my attention he said, "excuse me, Ma'am, is she with you?"

I looked up at him, cringing at this cover, "yes, she's my personal lady in waiting," I said as I moved to stand slightly in front of Amaya. "Is there a problem," I said looking at him expectantly.

"No," he scrambled, "no ma'am, there is not."

I smiled tightly, "good," I said. I felt Amaya shift as I looked around the room as if I was admiring the interior design. I moved closer to him, "it's fortunate that I've run into you," I said.

He gulped, "it is," he asked, dazed at how deeply he had breathed in my pheromones.

"Yes," I smiled up at him enticingly, "I haven't had much luck finding Mr. Collins this evening. And I was so hoping for a tour of the property. As a man in your position, perhaps…" I trailed off looking at him hopefully.

"Of course, ma'am, I would be delighted to show you around the property in Mr. Collins' place," he scrambled, speaking in awe, he held out his arm for me "Right this way." I smiled triumphantly as I allowed him to guide me with Amaya trailing behind. I made sure to comment on the beauty of the property as we walked around. I made small comments about things that could be built to add to it as if I was considering becoming the lady of the land. "Mr. Collins is gonna love meeting you, ma'am," he spoke a little bitterly as we walked into the last structure on the property. I hummed as I looked around, spotting Jax I smiled and stepped away from the Alpha.

"I'm looking forward to it," I said, hoping I would get the chance to hit him.

"I hope he enjoys getting punched in the face." I smirked at Amaya's words. I turned laughing as I watched Amaya knock him down with a single punch. "And thank you ever so much for showing us where to find our friend," she said in a perfect imitation of a southern belle.

Jax shouted at us, "What the hell was that?"

"Don't you know a breakout when you see one," Amaya said as she came forwards with the keys off the idiot's belt.

Jax was quickly freed from his chains. He rubbed his wrists before he pointed to the other people chained up, "Okay. Good. Now let's free them." I smirked, happy to do anything that would frustrate the asshole who owned the property.

I paused as Amaya looked from them to Jax before she said, "I thought you said if we didn't do our job, we could end up doing more harm than good."

Jax turned to look at them angrily, "Yeah, that's still a risk."

"So what's changed," Amaya asked him.

"The way these people are being treated…" Jax started sounding mournful, "that's the real Aberration. I can see that now. This is the history that needs to be fixed."

"And we've never been good at following rules anyway," I spoke smiling at them as I reached to my magic to start unlocking manacles.

We all moved forwards to approach them. The first in line quickly stuttered, stopping our movements, "No, no, I'm obliged, ma'am, but I told you what happens if they catch us." He looked right at Jax, fear clear in his eyes.

Jax made eye contact with him, "Don't worry. We're gonna protect you. I know you're scared. I get it. Don't ask me how I know this, but it gets better," Jax said. Going on he worked to build their confidence in us, "Not perfect. Nowhere near close. But... better than this. But it starts right now with us not giving up."

Before we could do anything, the woman from earlier in the day spoke, "Zambesi. Your amulet. You are a warrior of the Zambesi," she said, gesturing to Amaya's totem.

Amaya reached up touching the totem, "You're familiar with it," she said a little shocked.

"That's where my mother was born." She spoke excitedly before turning to the rest of the people, "We must follow her. I believe in her. I believe in them."

The guy acquiesced allowing us to uncuff him, "Then I do, too."

We moved quickly Amaya and I uncuffed everyone in the building before moving to meet Jax at the door. Which he looked out a promptly slammed shut turning to lean on it. "What is it," Amaya asked worriedly.

Jax looked serious, "We got company."

Jax opened the door so Amaya and I could peek out, "We've gotta get out of here," Amaya said as we leaned against the door.

"Not without the Confederate plans," Jax said, remembering why we had come in the first place.

The lead guy spoke up, "I think I know where they are."

Jax spoke quickly, "Okay, you two, get everyone to safety." he told Amaya and I before he waved the guy forwards, "Come on," he said as he went to open the door.

Amaya stopped them before they could leave, "Wait, Jax. Good luck."

I reached forwards grabbing Jax's face, I added, "don't die."

"You ready?" Jax asked us all, not waiting for a reply he threw the door open immediately, kicking over a zombie. "Come on!" He waved the guy on to get the confederate plans.

"You lead, I'll bring up the rear," I told Amaya motioning her to guide everyone away from the zombies, "I'll make sure we aren't followed.

Amaya nodded at me before she stepped out of the building, "This way," she said leaning in slightly. I moved to make sure everyone made it out before I followed behind, occasionally knocking down a zombie that got too close for comfort.

Amaya led the group around to the front of the now burning plantation house. "Everybody good," Jax asked as he and the other guy ran up to us.

I nodded as Amaya answered him, "Yeah. Jax, we've gotta go." She said as she paused in her motion to turn and leave, "This fire is gonna attract a lot of unwanted attention."

"I know. I want to enjoy this for a moment," Jax said grimly.

Stepping up to his shoulder I said, "You know it is really pretty. It makes it easy to see why Mick loves fire so much." Jax cracked a smile chuckling at my words before he slung an arm over my shoulder as we started to walk away.