Cogs Of Fate

A Story You Won't Believe

Present Day

The Lifeboat's engines whirred to a stop, just as the hatch opened. The four-man crew climbed out - Wyatt was the last one to emerge, a depressed expression lingering on his distant gaze. Agent Christopher saw it on his face the moment he lifted his head that something terrible had taken place. With her gaze locked onto him, she asked, "What happened?"

"Well," Rufus began, trying to hide the smirk on his lips. "Wyatt totally killed Hitler."

Mason, Jiya, and Christopher exchanged glances. "Who?"

"Seriously?" Rufus balked. He turned to the others. "Did we just stop World War II? The Holocaust? All of it?"

Agent Christopher cleared her throat. "I'm not sure who you're speaking of but the war still happened."

The team stared at her, eyes wide. Lucy finally asked, "So...what about the Holocaust? Please tell me that you don't know what I'm talking about..." Her hands were interlocked together tightly, almost praying silently as she waited on the answer.

Denise offered a sympathetic stare, head dropping slightly. "It did happen, unfortunately..."

"But who-"

Almost as if Agent Christopher knew what her question was going to be, she offered up the information freely. "The Axis was controlled by a man named, Josef Mengele. The Holocaust was one of the worst atrocities to ever take hold of the world."

Lucy's voice quivered. "D-Did you say, 'Josef Mengele'?" When Denise nodded, Lucy turned to the others. "In our timeline, Josef Mengele was known as 'The Angel of Death'...he was a horrible man who was in charge of horrific experiments on-"

"I hate to interrupt the history lesson," Agent Christopher said, hand raising out to stop Lucy before she could go much further. "But what happened? I'm still waiting for you to update us on the mission."

The team took the time to fill in the others on what took place. They discussed the strange behavior of Emma in the church when she approached them, the five-year-old boy in the river that turned out to be Hitler and who he was in their timeline before this mission - and the accident involving Wyatt when he shot the child. By the time they finished regaling their journey, Agent Christopher had a better understanding of why her soldier seemed a bit shell-shocked.

"All right," Christopher said, sadly. "Get some rest. Let's hope they aren't going to jump any time soon." She watched as the team dispersed but she stopped Wyatt. "Try to let what happened go, okay? You didn't know-"

Wyatt nodded half-heartedly. "Except that, I could have killed anyone...it just so happened that I killed that kid-"

"I understand that," she retorted. "But you didn't. You of all people know that you cannot live life by the 'what-ifs'." She sighed when she realized he wasn't listening. "Get some sleep."

She watched as Wyatt trudged down the hallway towards his room, shoulders slumped forward in defeat. She wondered how much longer the team could go on before they finally snapped and crumbled under the pressure of what they were doing. She found herself wishing that their doctor was back in the bunker.

Lucy found herself pulling her history books from the shelf, flipping them open on the bed. When Wyatt walked in, he had hoped to sleep but after seeing the six open books strewn about the gray comforter, he knew he wouldn't see sleep for a while. Even if the bed was free, Lucy would be reading to him from her books, sharing all the new information, and changed history, keeping him awake anyway.

Lucy's brown eyes scanned the words on the book cradled in her hands. "I can't believe just how much some of the things stayed the same...There are some slight differences but-"