Carlos

"Jesus!" Distracted, he didn't see the next shot coming at him until it was too late. Fortunately, it dissipated around the shield Keira had thrown up using that super suit of hers. Hopefully no one had noticed. Too late if they had. If he had to, he'd work on coming up with some kind of explanation tomorrow. For right now, he was just happy he hadn't been hit again. "Where did you come from? And what the hell is going on?"

"These are soldiers sent back from the future to destroy Matthew Kellogg," she said, pulling out her gun and taking position next to him. "We believe they're from the unit Brad belonged to when he was sent back-they came through some portal, following a signal he was given when he left. He's gone to try and make contact and try and stop this before it gets any worse."

"Right, because an army of machines from the future firing stun guns is a walk in the park." Rolling his eyes, he lined up and took another shot. "What exactly are we supposed to do in the meantime?"

Keira looked over at him, exasperation and fear on her face. Before she said anything, however, an eerie silence fell over them. All he could hear were the sounds of the shots being fired by his own men. Looking back, he realized that the machines had stopped firing at them. Turning, they got a running start, then launched themselves into the air. In another breath, they were out of sight.

For a minute his team just stared in silence. Then he heard the other officers on their coms, radioing in their position and reporting what had just happened. In a matter of minutes he heard the SWAT copters flying low overhead.

"Nothing more to do here until SWAT nails their location," he called over to the officer on his left. "Have a few teams canvas the area, talk to the residents. See if you can figure out what they saw." Pointless, he knew. Witness statements would trip all over themselves, and none of it would make any sense. How the hell could it? What they saw didn't even exist yet. There was only one person who knew what the hell was going on, and she was going to give him some answers. Now.

"C'mon Cameron." Wrapping his arm around her elbow, he walked her around the front of the car and held open the door to the passenger seat, adding softly, "You've got some explaining to do."

Keira

It seemed like only minutes before they were sitting across from each other at an all night breakfast restaurant. She'd assumed he was taking her back to the precinct, and had been surprised when he'd pulled into the well lit parking lot instead.

"What are we doing?" she'd asked, surprised when he came around and opened her door for her.

"Getting something to eat."

He hadn't spoken since, simply slid into one of the sticky, greasy seats and pulled a menu out from behind the salt and pepper shakers. She followed his lead, wincing when she saw him unconsciously reach up and rub his chest. If she lived another hundred years, she'd never forget the icy hand of fear that had gripped her watching her partner go down for the second time.

"How are you?" she asked softly, trying to push back the guilt. This wasn't her fault, damn it. She had no way of knowing what was going to happen when she and Brad had decided to send that signal. 'But you should have', a little voice in her head whispered. Since when had anything about this gone down easy? Every time something tampered with the timeline, all hell broke loose…and her partner wound up paying the price.

"I just got shot by a stun gun from some freakishly large piece of machinery that isn't even supposed to exist right now," he said without looking up from the menu. "I still don't know why I'm not dead. Damn it Keira, what were you thinking? Do you have any idea how many people could have died tonight?"

"Nothing was supposed to happen!" she hissed, leaning forward and looking around. "That signal was supposed to reach empty space-the changed timeline. We just wanted to prove to ourselves that we did it. That we'd changed the future Brad left. That way we'd know."

"Know what?"

"That what we did mattered." Frustrated, she leaned back, shoving the menu away from her and crossing her arms across her chest. "That we didn't leave our families behind for nothing."

"Yeah, well, didn't work out that way, did it?" Carlos still hadn't looked at her. Keira felt her heart sink. Was this it then? Was this going to be what broke them for the last time?

She knew her partner didn't like Brad. Didn't even blame him, really-since Brad had come into their lives, Carlos had been the one having to pick up the pieces of the destruction the two of them had left behind. They'd pulled him into Alec's abduction without any consideration for what it was going to do to his position on the force, just what it would mean for the timeline. Then, before the dust had even had time to settle, they'd sent out that stupid signal and nearly gotten his entire team killed.

In his place, she wouldn't want to talk to her right now either.

"Listen, it's not too late to walk away from this."

He snorted, looking up at her for the first time. "Right. Exactly how the hell am I supposed to do that? I've got every cop in the city out looking for those things, and not the first freaking clue what to tell them when they find them. What am I supposed to tell my team, Keira? Just put their guns away and let the great Agent Cameron and her freaky sidekick from the future handle it? Yeah, that won't land me in the looney bin." He rolled his eyes. "So what the hell am I supposed to tell them, huh? You tell me."

Keira frowned at him. "Carlos, I didn't ask for this, so stop taking it out on me."

"Would you prefer I take it out on your new partner?"

"No, I'd prefer you calm down so we can figure out how to handle this!"

The two of them glared at each other across the table. Keira saw a waitress start walking their way, then change her mind and do an abrupt about face. Great. They were scaring the locals. What the hell was wrong with Carlos? She wasn't surprised he was pissed. The man had been shot tonight, after all.

Damn it. Her partner had been shot tonight, and she was expecting him to be calm and rational about the whole thing. In his place, she wouldn't be very rational either.

"Forget it." Sliding out of the seat, she threw a couple of dollars down on the table to cover the coffee she'd ordered. "Clearly we're not going to get anywhere. You should go home and put some burn cream on your chest. It will help. I'm going to find Brad, see what the status is."

"Yeah, you do that." Slumping back in his seat, Carlos very deliberately didn't look at her when he repeated, "You do that."