Time Agent | ONC2024

21. Time Agent

Seven stood on the roof in the rain, waiting for the time gate to appear.

He'd spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning, running through all the arguments Jean had presented, in his head. But cutting through all the philosophy and moralising was the stark fact that he was supposed to kill three people. And he just couldn't do it.

He comforted himself with the thought that he could trust Jean and Sophie not to meddle any further with time and it seemed Marcel was out of his reach in any case. He had not returned home and his mother had reported him missing. Seven suspected that, if Marcel was still living, then it was in another time line.

As the rain dripped coldly down the back of his neck, his thoughts returned to his last conversation with Jean. They'd been sitting in the kitchen, holding hands, seizing those last precious moments together. Jack had tactfully disappeared.

"If you can't stay here with me, can I come with you?" Jean had pleaded.

If only! But Seven knew what would happen, even if the time gate could handle two of them. Jean would be hustled off to a laboratory before he could blink, to be tested and investigated down to the last brain cell, anything to discover how his ability worked.

As it was, he expected he, himself, would be subject to rigorous questioning when he returned. Perhaps he could continue working, but as a Librarian. They were bound to decide he was not suited to be a Time Agent if he couldn't follow orders and... They would send someone else.

The thought burst into his mind like a bolt of lightning. Of course they would. As soon as Seven told his superiors what had happened, they would send someone else, but to an earlier time, when the Millennials were still babies, or even before that.

Seven felt sick. He'd have to keep his mouth shut, come up with an entirely different explanation for his failure, he'd-

The time gate opened in front of him, the blue light pulsing, calling him home.

He was a Time Agent, sworn to destroy time machines whenever, and wherever, they occurred. As if in a dream, Seven took the package of nanobots from his utility belt, ripped it open and tossed it into the centre of the blue light.

~*~

(Author's Note : And so concludes my story! A wonderful ride with many sleepless hours at night while my brain tried to tie the threads together and paper over the plot holes. I never knew what I was going to write in each chapter until I started tapping away. Hopefully it all makes sense!  

Word Count on Wattpad, not including author's notes is 20,775)