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EUDAEMONIA
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☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

Five

Five peeked out from behind his brother, finding the world had stopped moving, everyone frozen in a state of movement. Bullets yet to reach their destination hung in the air, everyone besides himself stopped in a carnival of different poses.

It was almost like walking inside a photograph. Time had done the unthinkable, no longer moving forward, the present moment not yet becoming the past, and the future not yet arriving.

"Neat trick, isn't it?"

Where nothing but asphalt stood moments ago, stood the Handler, in all her vintage styled glory.

Removing her cat eyed sunglasses, she gazed upon the man she once new, the placid smile that hid her true emotions plastered on her face. "Hello, Five. You look good...all things considered."

"It's good to see you again." He lied.

"Feels like we met just yesterday. Course, you were a little bit older then. Congratulations on the age regression, by the way. Very clever. Threw us all off the scent."

"Ah, well, I wish I could take credit. I just miscalculated the time dilation progressions and...we'll, you know. Here I am." His facade of pleasantries never wavered, but neither did hers, despite the fact that they both new why he had called. He was desperate.

"You realize your efforts are futile. So why don't you tell me what you really want?" She crossed her hands behind her back.

"I want you to put a stop to it." He copied her pose folding his hands behind him.

"You realize what you're asking for is next to impossible, even for me. What's meant to be is meant to be. That's our raison d'être."

Taking out a gun he'd successfully hidden from Luther and Hypatia from his waistband he aimed it at the Handler, though she showed no visible reaction to seeing it. "Yeah? Well how about survival as a raison?"

"I'll just be replaced. I'm but a...small cog in a machine. This fantasy you've been nurturing about summoning up your family to stop the apocalypse...is just that. A fantasy."

She stepped closer to the gun, unfearing. "I must say, though, we're all quite impressed with your initiative, your...stick-to-itiveness, really quite...quite something. Which is why we want to offer you a new position, back at the Commission, in management."

He laughed at the absurdity of her offer. "Sorry, what's that now?"

"Come back to work for us again. You know it's where you belong."

"We'll, it didn't work out too well the last time."

Her hands relaxed to her sides. "But you wouldn't be in the correction division any longer. I'm talking about the home office. You'd have the best health and pension, and an end to this ceaseless travel. You're a distinguished professional in...schoolboy shorts."

She took a step further towards his gun, her presence icy cold. "We have the technology to reverse the process. I mean, you...you can't be happy like this." She gently pushed his gun down and out of the way.

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