Though more than willing to put his life on the line for his friends, Wyatt also knew that it would be foolish to race into the conflagration if they weren't actually inside. So before attempting any heroics, he first did a quick recon of the outside perimeter of the complex. Relief couldn't begin to touch how he felt when, rounding into the rear parking lot, he spied a small crowd of Mason's staff gathered there to watch the firefighting crew at work. His relief was short-lived, however, as he took in the remainder of the scene.

At the opposite end of the lot, a large tent surrounded by ambulances had been set up, under which paramedics were busily triaging and treating injured men and women. Wyatt felt terrible for those who had been wounded, but it was what lay to the left of the tent that really set his gut to churning. There, in the spaces normally reserved for oversized vehicles, lay a large grouping of sheet-covered bodies.

Terrified that one (or all) of his friends might be among the deceased, yet even more fearful of learning the terrible truth, Wyatt turned his back on the gruesome sight. No. They had to be alive. They just had to. He'd know if they were gone. He'd feel it, wouldn't he? Purposefully jostling his way through the milling mass of onlookers, Wyatt scanned face after face in search of his teammates, shouting their names repeatedly in turn.

Just as all hope was beginning to wane, he finally spotted Agent Christopher near the outskirts of the gathering, engrossed in what appeared to be a heated argument with half a dozen suited men and women (fellow agents, by the looks of it). Desperate now to know the status of the others, however grim it might be, he sprinted to her side.

"Master Sergeant! Thank God you're here!" She grabbed Wyatt by the shoulder, and dragged him well out of hearing range of anyone who might care to listen in.

Grateful that his boss appeared to be unharmed, yet gravely concerned for the rest of his friends, Wyatt wasted no time on pleasantries. "What happened? Where's the rest of the team?" he demanded.

The agent's hands trembled visibly as she reached to tuck a few loose strands of salt-and-pepper hair behind her ears. "All hell broke loose right after you left, that's what. Flynn somehow escaped custody, and blasted his way in here with some of his guys, ranting about how we needed to move both time machines to a more secure location, evacuate the building, and bring in a bomb squad. Before I could even blink, something exploded in the hangar, Mason pulled the fire alarm, and everyone started scrambling like rats to get out. And that's when the team I had guarding the Mothership…."

She pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head repeatedly, as if unable to believe the words that she herself was about to speak. "They turned on us, Wyatt — just started firing at anything that moved. Jiya…they shot her twice. And then they took Rufus — dragged him into the Mothership at gunpoint. Flynn and his guys managed to take out a few of them, but…." Again she shook her head, dislodging a handful of tears that had gathered in her eyes. "Rittenhouse is now in control of the Mothership, and they made certain that we have no way of following them."

Wyatt reeled at the news, feeling as if he'd utterly failed his team. Things were seriously FUBAR, and he had no idea how to even begin to make them right. How the hell were they going to get Rufus back? Would they even be able to at all?

While he felt fairly certain that Rittenhouse wouldn't kill his friend (they'd need him to pilot the Mothership) Wyatt doubted that that would keep them from torturing the poor man. Especially since Rufus wasn't likely to willingly go along with their demands. Then again, Rufus might cooperate if he believed that doing so would keep his family or his girlfriend safe. "Jiya — is she…did she make it?" Wyatt croaked.

Agent Christopher nodded quickly, and gripped Wyatt's shoulder reassuringly, relieving him of one burden, at least. "She's far from out of the woods, but that girl's a fighter if I've ever seen one. Mason went with her in the ambulance to the hospital about 10 minutes ago. He'll keep us posted."

"And you're sure this was all Rittenhouse? Flynn had nothing to do with it?" Wyatt wanted to be certain of who exactly they were up against (and who he needed to kill for endangering his friends).

"If you mean trying to buy your little rag-tag band of heroes enough time to get out, then yes, I did," a familiar (if much-despised) masculine voice asserted. "But you can thank our old pals Rittenhouse for the rest."

Wyatt stiffened and whirled to face Flynn. "And how the hell did you know what was going to happen if you had nothing to do with it?" he snarled.

Flynn took a few swift steps backward, giving Wyatt a wide berth. "Lucy's journal," Flynn reminded him, shrugging as if that much should have been obvious.

Meeting Wyatt's questioning gaze, Agent Christopher nodded solemnly in confirmation of Flynn's claim. "Apparently our little Rittenhouse round-up wasn't as successful as we thought. According to Mr. Flynn, we missed all of the biggest players, and as you can see, they're done playing nice."

"So what, we're just trusting Flynn now? The terrorist who's been trying to kill us for the last year?" Wyatt scoffed. "You do realize that he could have warned us a lot sooner that this would happen, including before we pissed Rittenhouse off in the first place? And how is he even here, by the way? Last I heard he was shackled and on his way to a maximum security prison on charges of treason."

"What, after everything we've been through together, you doubt my ability to get out of a simple pair of handcuffs?" Flynn feigned hurt feelings. "Besides, thanks to the generous tips from Lucy's journal, I was able to put a few of my guys in place ahead of time to assist. As for trusting me, well, that's entirely up to you, Wyatt. But you know what they say — the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Like it or not, we're fighting on the same side now."

The man made a valid point. Shared enemy or not, though, it would be a cold day in hell before Wyatt ever counted Flynn among his friends. While the current fiasco might not be Flynn's doing, the creep had still kidnapped Lucy, and tried to wipe out the team on multiple occasions. Those weren't the kinds of things that Wyatt could simply forget. "Right. Well don't go adding me to your Christmas card list or anything. If I had my way, I'd have put a bullet through your brain back in D.C."

"Guess it's a good thing for me, then, that Lucy keeps you on such a short leash." Flynn smirked, mocking Wyatt in a babyish voice. "Sit. Stay. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Wyatt's a good boy!"

"You bastard!" Wyatt growled, his hands clenching into tight fists. "You don't know the first thing about…."

"That's enough, gentleman!" Agent Christopher interrupted loudly, stepping between the two overgrown boys before things could get any uglier than they already were. "We don't have time for this."

Casting a quelling look towards Flynn, she pulled Wyatt further aside. "Though it pains me to say it, yes — we're going to have to trust Flynn for now, at least to some extent. I'll have extra eyes on him at all times, but the fact is, he's the only one who's read Lucy's journal, and therefore the only one who has the first clue about what Rittenhouse has planned. We need his intel on this, Wyatt, if we're to have any hope of getting Rufus back alive, let alone getting ahead of Rittenhouse."

"So make him hand over the journal," Wyatt argued heatedly, "And then lock his ass back up where it belongs!"

"I can't," Agent Christopher countered, though it was plain from the tone of her voice that she'd like nothing better than to do just that. "He apparently destroyed the journal so that Rittenhouse couldn't get their hands on it."

"That might not be entirely accurate," Flynn interjected from the sidelines, clearly eavesdropping.

Agent Christopher pivoted towards him. "Are you telling me that you lied in your signed confession?" she seethed. "You have exactly two seconds to explain yourself before my agents haul you out of here. And trust me — you won't be escaping this time."

"I, uh, might have actually given the journal to Lucy." Flynn admitted, avoiding eye contact with both Agent Christopher and Wyatt. "It seemed only fitting, after all, since she's the one who wrote it — or will write it, anyway."

"What the…?" Wyatt felt as if his heart had plummeted into his stomach. Lucy had the journal? Since when, and why hadn't she said anything to him or Rufus about it? Was she keeping secrets from the team again — somehow working with Flynn behind their backs? Wyatt had thought that they'd long since moved past all that. Had he been wrong to trust her? Perhaps they wouldn't need to have that little talk he'd had planned for tonight after all.

As if reading his thoughts, Flynn (oddly enough) attempted to reassure Wyatt. "Relax, soldier boy. I just gave it to her today. I'm sure she plans to tell you about it — maybe even let you read it, once she's had a chance to read it herself. Well, except for..."

He suddenly fell silent, as if lost in thought, or memory, or both. Wyatt and Agent Christopher watched in bewilderment as Flynn's face contorted in what appeared to be extreme pain. Abruptly turning his back on them, he paced slightly away. What was that about, they both wondered, exchanging a questioning glance.

"If Lucy has the journal," Agent Christopher insisted to Wyatt, "And it's as detailed as I've been led to believe, then we need to get it from her ASAP so my agents can start analyzing it, and we can figure out our plan of attack."

"Yeah, about that…," Flynn cleared his throat, and turned back towards them. (Was Wyatt imagining it, or did the man appear to have been crying?) "We should probably get going, because either future Lucy got her dates a little mixed up, or Rittenhouse isn't playing strictly by the book anymore."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Wyatt asked, more than a little confused by Flynn's statement, yet still not liking the sound of it.

"None of this was supposed to happen today," Flynn clarified, gesturing towards the blaze that was once Mason Industries. "It was just dumb luck, really, that I was already here to warn Agent Christopher when it did. And if this happened early, I can only assume that the rest will, too."

"The rest? What 'rest'?" Wyatt barked, his patience with Flynn's cryptic explanations rapidly dropping into the negative numbers.

"The rest of what future Lucy wrote in her journal. This is only Act 1 of today's play, after all."

Again with the drawn-out explanations. "Damnit, could you just get to the point?" Wyatt snapped.

"Lucy. If we don't get to her soon, it might just be too late. Rittenhouse has, shall we say, very special plans for her."

"You son-of-a-bitch!" Wyatt shoved past Agent Christopher and grabbed Flynn by the throat, squeezing as hard as possible with both hands until the man's face turned red. "You've known Lucy was in danger all this time, and you just freaking stood here and dicked around with us? Lucky for you I don't have my gun on me right now, or you'd be a dead man!"

Flynn clawed at Wyatt's hands, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge them from his throat.

"Stand down, Master Sergeant. Let the man speak," Agent Christopher ordered, though she, too, was tempted to strangle Garcia Flynn.

"According to what future Lucy wrote," Flynn choked out, gasping for breath as Wyatt finally released his stranglehold on him. "All this went down tomorrow in her timeline — minus my help, of course. Which means Agent Christopher and the rest of the crew were too busy fighting to stay alive to stop one Dr. Noah What's-his-face from stealing away his bride-to-be. Couldn't have Lucy be late to her own wedding, after all. Or the, uh, honeymoon."

Flynn's words exploded like an atomic bomb in Wyatt's newly healed heart. After Jessica's disappearance, and the seemingly endless, sleepless weeks of waiting for news of her, he'd thought that he'd learned everything there was to know about the darkest depths of fear. But the idea that someone could (or perhaps already had) steal Lucy away from him? This was all-new, completely unexplored territory in the realm of terror. Whereas losing Jessica had broken his heart and fractured his soul, losing Lucy might just kill him outright.

Not even waiting to be dismissed by his superior, Wyatt raced back towards his jeep. As far as he was concerned, the rest of this mess — including figuring out how to get Rufus back — could wait. He'd already lost one woman he loved, and he'd be damned if he'd let history repeat itself.