?General Zang’s cloudy eyes stared down at the object resting in Stone’s trembling, filthy palm.

  ?A necklace.

  ?Just a tarnished, cheap metal necklace, emitting not a single ripple of energy. It was so ordinary that if thrown into the trash, not even a mutant rat would bother gnawing on it. General Zang sighed softly, the wrinkles bunching together on his scarred, aged face.

  ?Over the years, he had always looked out for this foolish little janitor. Sometimes he'd secretly slip her half a ration bar, other times he'd sneak her a few antibiotics when she was deathly ill. Not because he believed in her messianic ramblings, but because he saw the shadow of Zin in her.

  ?Zin was his granddaughter, a brave female soldier, and also Stone’s comrade and only best friend. Three years ago... in 2063, during a bloody ambush, Zin was literally torn limb from limb by a living Crustacean, her head stomped to a pulp right before Stone’s wide, staring eyes. On that very same day, a massive explosion swept through, tearing hundreds of lives apart into slimy pools of blood that splattered across the ruined walls.

  ?Stone was thrown clear of the epicenter, surviving by some miracle. But the military doctor said the shockwave and shrapnel had embedded directly into her optic nerves, shredding the girl’s mind, leaving her with incurable, insane hallucinations.

  ?And now, that "patient" was groveling on the ground, clawing at her mud-caked hair, howling wildly:

  ?"Two of them! There are two exactly alike! I swear, General!" Stone slammed her head against the cold floor, holding up the necklace. "I picked this one up at the dump in 2060. But in 2063, on the exact day that explosion happened... I saw with my own eyes a comrade wearing the exact same one! I saw that they weren't blown to pieces... they disintegrated into blood dust, evaporating into nothingness! That wasn't a bomb! It was a time explosion! A time rift! If we can just find that fracture point, jump through it... we can go back to the past! We can change everything!"

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  ?The air in the underground bunker was dead silent. The stillness pressed heavily upon every chest. There was only the sound of Stone’s choked, ragged breathing.

  ?Broly, a ragged mercenary leaning against the bunker wall, spat a glob of blood-laced saliva onto the dirt. He looked at Stone with a gaze that was both pitying and cold:

  ?"Let's say your delusional conspiracy theory is real, Stone. Jump into a space-time explosion? The pressure of it would tear us all into minced meat before you could even open your eyes to see the past. We'd all still end up dead."

  ?... "No! Not dead!"

  ?Stone shook her head in a panic, frantically digging a handful of objects out from her tattered robes. A glass vial containing a murky liquid, and a dull gray metal box, intricately carved with bizarre mechanical grooves.

  ?"I scavenged this... from the Crustacean corpses... when their ship was shot down by another cosmic race! It's extraterrestrial tech! There has to be a way! Believe me... please... If we just jump through that explosion... please, everyone..."

  ?Broly narrowed his eyes. The mockery on the mercenary’s face suddenly faltered when he saw the faint, glowing grooves running along the body of the metal box. He staggered a step forward, staring intently at the object in the janitor’s hands. His voice dropped low, carrying a glimmer of hope that even he didn't realize:

  ?"Hold on... This material... I've seen it on the wreckage of a shattered cruiser. That box... don't tell me it's a spatial force-field generator? Can it deploy a protective shield to withstand the tearing pressure of a time explosion? Do you know how to activate its barrier, Stone?"

  ?Stone couldn't answer that highly technical question. Her entire being was consumed by panic. She could only sob, the hiccups shattering in her throat, her hands still stubbornly offering up the "treasures" scavenged from the garbage dump, bowing her head to beg for a little blind faith:

  ?"Please go mad with me... please... go mad with me just this once..."

  ?Standing in the corner of the room, Zelot glanced at Stone’s frail, violently trembling shoulders. She readjusted the rusted assault rifle on her shoulder, clicked her tongue, and dropped a dry, razor-sharp sentence that severed every patched-up ray of hope in the room:

  ?"This bitch has officially lost her mind."