Lowe had seen distress flares at sea before...sternlights...masthead lights...all-round lights...but none quite like this.

Reds and blues flashing and circulating, appearing and disappearing again... something about the way they dimmed in and died out unnerved him...He couldn't exactly say why, but they had quite a foreboding effect on him.

His heart raced, but he kept his breathing steady.

Calm and calculating as he gazed into the passenger's side mirror at the police brigade lying in wait behind the Honda.

"This is the P.D.," an amplified man's voice boomed, as if he were God almighty himself. "Put your hands up and get out of the car. Surrender the gun immediately."

Surrender his weapon?

How could he trust such an order when they cornered him like an animal?

He felt for the Browning 1910 in his inner coat pocket.

Having no intention of ever using it, but knowing he was none the less safer by keeping it.

Didn't these patrolmen know they were hunting the wrong man?

Lowe looked away from the fever dream of lights dancing through the passenger side mirror.

Turning his gaze to the lady shopkeeper, who still hadn't stirred in the driver's seat. Her bonneted head slumping against the shoulder of his own bench.

And after theoretically "dying in a shipwreck", Lowe was amazed to find he'd survived the collision without a scratch.

The shop clerk, however, had taken the brunt of the hit as her car swerved like an unbroken horse and smashed into the trees.

"Ms. Amberflaw," he tried again to awaken her, his eyes worriedly searching her pale face for signs of life. "Can you hear me, miss?"

Rubbing his icebergs for hands together, breathing warmth into them so he wouldn't shock her with his numbly cold fingers, Lowe gently grazed his fingertips across her brow. Sweeping back her disarrayed hair as his fingers dragged down to the closed lashline of her eye, and slowly rounded into a pause at her cool cheek. Wishing for the warmth of his touch to coax her back to life, as he traced her heartbeat lightly against his fingertips.

The discovery of its fixed slow beating being much to his relief.

Until at long last, the chill of his wintery touch carried her back from the empty dreams of lifelessness. Making her stir against his hand as she unconsciously leaned in closer to the lulling comfort she never knew belonged to him. Chasing his touch by her heart, rather than her eyes, as if an innate longing within her had waited more than a century for rest and was damned to wait for him any longer.

And in a manner of all care and consideration, Lowe gently drew his hand away again.

Kora's lashes slowly fluttered open.

Feeling strangely and ruefully emptier, she awoke to the world again, without that fading warmth of a dream her soul was convinced she'd once knew with someone else.

Though she understood fully that she never had.

"Lowe?" she whispered, surprised to find that, out of all the absurdities that had hit her today, the Titanic officer from 1912 staring back at her was still more real than anything. "What happened?"

"Easy now, Ms. Amberflaw," he urged her. "You took a right nasty hit, and moving too hastily may worsen any blood gathering in the head. It's brain congestion, I worry for."

"I'm fine," she said, though feebly enough to leave Lowe unconvinced.

Wincing as she pressed her hand against her throbbing head, the shop clerk appeared entirely confused by the flashing lights parked up the embankment behind them. "Did I really just crash my car?"

"Don't remember the way of it, do you?" Lowe questioned her. "Knocked yourself right out cold, I'm afraid."

But when?

It all happened so fast, she barely remembered it.

But Lowe could nevermore forget the pack of mechanical hellhounds that gave chase of the little Honda through the steep mountain roads.

Even the wailing the hellish beastly machines made sounded to Lowe like they were in perpetual agony and terror.

Until Ms. Amberflaw's motor car went feral, wildly swerving off the road after the wheel slipped a patch of ice. Fishtailing down a steep mountain embankment until the rear of the automobile slammed into a tree below. Narrowly saving them from dipping clear off the edge, into the 60-or-80-something drop of violent ocean below.

And consequently, by hook or by crook, Lowe had at last found the Atlantic Ocean.

But if he was wrong about his time theory, there was no going back from this, for either he or Ms. Amberflaw.

They'd reached a dead end.

And now Lowe had inadvertently made his nightmare hers.

If he hadn't fell by that shop and called upon her to help him, she'd never have found herself in such a perilous position.

He had no right to drag her any deeper into this breeding maelstrom.

And so long as he did, he deemed himself responsible for Ms. Amberflaw and her safe-keeping.

Should any harm come to her on his behalf, it would be on his hands.

And so, Lowe decided that he must find a way to negotiate with the police brigade to deescalate this terrible misunderstanding, for both his and Ms. Amberflaw's sakes.

"Don't be frightened," he said to the shop maid.

"I'm not," she whispered back to him.

"Well, you've certainly proven what an eager powder keg you are, Ms. Amberflaw. All the same, never mind you them, as I mean to turn myself in. If it's me the brigade is after, I will go quietly," Lowe said. "I won't tow you along further than this."

"Is that really your plan?" she questioned him. "Ask them out for tea and crumpets as you very politely explain, 'Right, listen to me, men, I came about here from 1912 and I have to go back'."

"Is that honestly how you judge me to sound?" he objected to her rather cartoonish performance of his accent. "Straight away, miss, I wouldn't ramble so bluntly those exact words. I'd say to them..."

Kora waited expectantly.

But no matter what alternative Lowe strung together to counter her satire, it all sounded like the ravings of a dingbat loony.

Which proved her point quite nicely, he supposed, though he cared very little to admit it.

Any which way, he was still an early 20th century man trapped in a 21st century world, and there was no excuse for it.

"The point is, miss," he went on purposefully. "It is ill-founded that you should take the fall with me. I hardly know you, and you scarcely know me. And so, how can I ask so much of you for my sake alone? You've your entire life to live and I...my life has long ago been lost with the Titanic, if that be the truth. By surrendering, I risk nothing anymore. And so, I expect that it's here we best part ways."

"But you can't tell them you're from 1912. They won't believe you," she warned him. "Because when you tell them what you told me, you'll end up some place worse."

"Well, we can't blame them now, can we?" Lowe smiled in a sad sort of knowing way. "I'm not sure I can believe it myself, to be fair. All the same, I'm a seafaring man, and I've always come through the worst of fates."

Kora sighed, too far down the rabbit hole to dig herself out now.

Feeling for him, but knowing that beyond driving him out to Bitter Tears Cross, she couldn't help him any more.

This thing had already gone way too far, and Lowe's plan to give himself up seemed like the most logical thing to do next.

But how could she just let him, knowing what hell he'd be walking into by being wrongly charged with brandishing a gun in public?

This man needed help, not a prison sentence.

If she could just explain that to the cops, she wouldn't feel so guilty about leaving Lowe in their hands.

Because no matter the risk of her controversial immigration status, she'd always feel guilty for not speaking up.

Could she really let this man take the fall for something he didn't do, if only to save herself in the end?

Perhaps there was some loophole in the law she could use to help her fight deportation, if she were arrested tonight.

But Lowe?

What rights did he have in the world of 2022, where society could call him insane and lock him up like an animal, or buy his story, by some slim chance, and then lock him up anyway as a lab rat for the rest of his natural life?

No one deserved such a fate.

And should anything happen to Lowe after he was handcuffed, Kora would never live it down.

"No," she said decidedly to the officer. "You're not going."

"Miss?"

"I wrecked my car to get you this far, and since you can't exactly pay me back in shillings to fix it, it's my rules we're playing by now," she said. "Besides the cameras back in the shop, I'm the only witness you got. I can make up a good story. The most they can do is hold me for questioning, and then I'll get a lawyer. You, however, will never make it out of wherever they take you. So, I suggest you start swimming, if you plan on getting back where you came from."

"This is madness," Lowe shook his head. "Why should I be chased into the night like a ruffian when I've done nothing wrong? Anyone who knows me would swear I'm an honorable man."

"This isn't 1912 anymore," Kora informed him. "Times have changed."

But the only thing more wishful than a criminal defense built on a good reputation was finding a way out of that car.

Kora's eyes dragged ahead to the dark roaring sea lying in wait beyond the hood of her totaled Honda, paralleling along the cliff's edge. Realizing how precariously her car leaned against the mercy of the tree she'd just clipped.

Her stomach flipped, and she suddenly felt nauseated.

One careless move, and it'd be the end for them.

"If you got any other ideas, now would be a great time to say so," she mumbled to Lowe, as she stared into the crushing death trap below her driver door.

"Right, you best not look down," Lowe advised her, as he inspected the damage of the doors and windows for any sign of an easy exit point. "Fix your eyes on anything, save the height, and you'll be nanty narking in no time."

Whatever he meant by that last part was anyone's guess.

But Kora took his rough advice anyhow, and turned to look at him, so she wouldn't have to look at the sea.

Taking refuge in his astute face in a way that forced Lowe to pause his inspection of her car and meet her eyes directly.

And for only a moment, they remained there.

As if doing such a thing could reallymake the danger evanesce.

And watching the red and blue lights come and go across her face, Lowe knew it wasn't entirely proper to gaze so long at a stranger, but something about it brought his soul rest.

In such a way that his soul might know before he did, that this moment wasn't so stranger to him after all.

Just as though they'd found each other there, many times before, in a lifetime no longer theirs.

A freakish kind of dream, with no definite beginning or end.

How might sharing such an intimate moment with someone he hardly knew leave Lowe feeling so...wistful?

Maybe "crossing over time" did exist, as he seemed to be evidence of such a phenomena. Maybe there was a rational explanation for the possibility that just hadn't been discovered yet, even in the future-or the present of the future-as it were.

But what argument could be made for this disquieting sense of incompleteness?

This unsettling and unfounded idea, that maybe it hadn't been the first time he'd locked eyes with someone like Ms. Amberflaw before?

Hadn't he enough on his hands at present without inventing more drivel for himself?

And so, he willfully shut her and the fantastic idea out of his head.

"Have you taken ahold of yourself now, Ms. Amberflaw?" Lowe asked her, finally breaking the silence between them.

And realizing how awkward things quickly turned, Kora dropped her eyes immediately to her radio instead.

"Don't take it the wrong way," she informed him. "You were just the closest distraction to me."

"Rest assured, I took it no way," Lowe was happy to move on. "And now that you're adequately consoled...Shall we?"

He tried the passenger door, only finding that it stubbornly wouldn't budge. The damage incurved around the hinge preventing him from pushing it open properly.

Leaving Lowe with no other choice but to use force, using the butt of his pistol to fracture a complicated spiderweb into the glass.

And with the window thus weakened, he knocked out the rest with his elbow, and found his way out.

"Come through, miss, and I'll pull you over," Lowe encouraged her, reaching back into the car to offer his hand across the seat to Kora. "Nice and steady now. Take care not to upset the balance."

As carefully as she could, Kora scooted from the driver's seat to the passenger door, squeezing Lowe's hand tightly as she nervously watched the car rock and groan against the tree trunk. Praying it didn't snap before she made it out.

But before Kora could think too long about what might happen if it did, Lowe swooped her out the car, and she dropped to the ground with him. Clinging onto his coat sleeves to steady her balance.

And having her so unexpectedly close to him, her white bonnet brushing the brim of his officer's cap, Lowe felt it again, so strong that he couldn't ignore it this time.

That haunting premonition that he'd done this all before.

But before he could really chase down any reason for it, Ms. Amberflaw was already paces ahead of him.

Marching out into clear view of the police brigade, who dropped down in a defensive position, with guns pointed at her loaded and ready.

"Get out of here, Lowe," she ordered him, braving the flashing red and blue lights alone. "I'll keep them busy."

But it was so much like deja'vu, the way her blonde hair fell out of her bonnet against her neck, that Lowe felt a sudden and fierce protectiveness over her that he couldn't quite fathom.

All he could think to do was stop her.

"Wait."

But remembering that their plan was for him to stay hidden, Lowe hesitated to keep going.

"Suppose it turns out for the worst?" he asked her. "I'm not keen on letting you go alone. Please allow me to accompany you, for good measure."

"No, stay there, " Kora told him. "I'll be ok. I always come out ok in the end. It's you who has to go back now and make sure you come out ok too. So, good luck to you, Lowe. I wish you a full and happy life in the past."

And then she turned and walked on.

Because by and large, he knew she was right.

He did have a life waiting for him in the past and it was time he returned to set it straight.