When you're dropped into the timeline to kill Five Hargreeves, you're really not expecting to encounter the apocalypse. You're also really not expecting to not want to kill him. Yet, somehow, here you are: pining over a lost boy who has probably gon...
The Handler insisted this would be an easy, routine job. It already feels like anything but.
"We're having technical issues with the briefcases," she explains, walking you down toward the briefcase room. "So, Theodor will assist you with departure."
You can't just grab a case and go like usual; something about it leaves a funny taste in your mouth. But it's a standard mission. An easy, standard mission. Right?
"Who's the target?"
"His name is Five Hargreeves." She passes a so-thin-it's-practically-nonexistent file to you, voice full of false cheer. "He's a... loose end that we need tied up."
"And you're sending me?" The addition of alone goes unsaid, but you're certain the Handler can hear it in your tone. You settle for flipping through the file.
"It should be easy enough for you. Really, (Y/n), you worry too much."
Theodor stands in the back of the briefcase room with two cases and a set of jumper cables, and something tells you that you're worrying just enough.
It's a quick setup, though, and you hold the briefcase with one hand, your backpack with the other. Your signature blade is strapped to your back: something you can't risk losing in the shuffle.
The familiar feeling of time travel hits you like a truck. Your arms tingle. Cold prickles against your cheeks. Your hair whips around you in a frenzy. The world spins and churns in a blinding whirl with such violent intensity that you hardly feel like your limbs are all still attached. And then it stops. Just like that. And you have to orient yourself in the world yet again.
Well, 'world' might be an overstatement.
There are hardly any buildings in-tact. The desolate splattering of rubble stretches on for miles and miles—rolling hills of desecrated architecture.
You feel dizzy. Something terrible has happened here. And you're supposed to kill more people? It hardly seems right. But it's your job and your last mission, so you'll do it just to retire somewhere pretty.
The first step is figuring out where you are. You assume it will take a while, since you've apparently landed in bum-fuck-nowhere. However, the first hint toward your location comes surprisingly quickly. It's a gas station. A gross one. So gross that you wonder if it's ever seen better days. Though, the gas fire surely hasn't helped matters. It looks fresh, like the blaze started recently. Yet, the gas station itself is awfully worse-for-wear.
The blaze has claimed the worst of the maps. It's shit, absolutely, but there's one atlas book that seems to have survived—all fifty damn states; why did America have to make so many?
All of this does nothing to tell you where you are. However, the sign above the bathroom—which you won't even consider entering—says "Best Bathrooms in the North!"
It's not much, but it's a start.
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