Three Minutes Later

E liza sped to her. She knew something was wrong. She never should have left her wife there alone. Lydia hadn't just dropped the phone and passed out, or the call wouldn't have disconnected. Something happened that caused her to hang up. And Eliza knew her wife's tones. All of them.

She'd heard them since they'd first met as teenagers and had become best friends at a time when Eliza hadn't thought she'd ever be able to feel human again. Lydia had been there when Eliza had been put on the anti-depressants after her father's death, which had made her numb like her mother and probably a very difficult person to spend time with. She'd come out to Eliza. She'd put herself out there and risked it all. They'd dated, and Lydia had still been there even after Eliza had been the cause of their breakup. Lydia had always been there, and they'd always been in love. Even when they'd dated others. Even when neither of them could say it out loud. Then, the device had finally allowed them to give voice to their feelings, and they'd been back together ever since. Soon after, Lydia had moved in, and they'd gotten engaged pretty much right after. Not long after that , they'd gotten married, and kids had followed, which had been what they'd both wanted.

Now, she was driving as fast as this beat-up car could take her down a gravel road, with hands that burned slightly because she'd hastily picked up the device and tossed all three parts into the passenger seat without putting on those gloves. The acid had indeed evaporated, but Eliza suspected that some of it lingered just enough to make her hands tingle more than actually burn. She'd have to wash them thoroughly later, but right now, all she wanted was to see her wife standing there, telling her that she hadn't charged her phone, which was something Lydia would do.

"Sorry, babe. It died on me. I'm okay," Lydia would say.

But Lydia couldn't say that because she was standing off to the side of the gravel road, and a man was holding a gun to her head. He stood mostly behind her, and even with the headlights aimed at them, Eliza couldn't see much of him. It was just enough for her to recognize him, though.

"What do you want?" she asked as she got out of the car and held her hands up, indicating that she had nothing in them. "You can put the gun down, and we can talk about this."

"I know you know," he said. "Where is it?"

"Put the gun down first. That's my wife. If you want something from me, you know I'm not giving anything to you while you have a gun to her head," Eliza replied.

"Babe, just go. I'll be–"

"Shut up," he said forcefully to Lydia, but he didn't yell, which Eliza thought was interesting.

"How did you find us?" Eliza asked.

"I've been behind you this whole time. It just took me a little time to find the motel you're staying in. You paid with cash, but it wasn't that hard. I was staking it out, but when you didn't come back tonight, I figured you might have left. Then, I felt something and saw lights. I drove here and found her." The guy nodded to Lydia. "You're not as smart as you thought you were."

"We're not trying to be smart. We're trying to end this. Whatever this is, we want out of it. We want it done," Eliza argued.

"Then, give me the device," he stated.

"We don't have it anymore," Lydia replied, likely thinking that Eliza had left it in the woods.

"But you did? At least, you admit it. Did you bury it out there somewhere? I'll find it in an hour."

"Why do you want it so badly?"

"Why did you use it?" he asked.

"We–" Eliza stopped herself and asked, "Do you know what it does? Did they tell you anything?"

"What? Did who tell me anything?"

"Whoever you work for," she said. "Did they tell you what it does?"

"It brings people back to life. Who did you just bring back out there?"

"What?" Eliza shook her head. "It doesn't do that."

"Yes, it does. Trust me; I'd know."

"What are you talking about?" Lydia asked.

The man released his grip on her, and Eliza gasped as he pushed Lydia toward her. She wrapped her arms around her wife but kept her eyes on the man who still held a gun now aimed at both of them.

"Did he hurt you?" Eliza asked.

"No, I'm okay," Lydia said softly .

"Tell me what you know. We'll start there," he said.

"This isn't the original device. That one was destroyed."

"I know that. They made a new one."

"It doesn't bring people back to life, though. I pressed it accidentally and it showed me a moment from my past. It did the same to Lydia. That's all it did."

"Showed you a moment? What do you mean?"

"It just showed us a moment in time," Lydia added, letting go of Eliza but only to take her hand and hold on to it tightly. "That's it."

"That doesn't make any sense," he said and appeared to both believe them and not believe them at the same time.

"That's all we know," Eliza said. "It showed me the man who murdered my father. I was able to find him because of the device."

She wanted to see his reaction to bringing up her father's murder.

"I know. I killed him."

"Who?"

"The man who murdered your father," he said. "You don't need to know the details, but he was dealt with."

"Why? He was in prison."

"Do you work for the CIA?" Lydia asked.

"What? No," he replied, sounding offended. "They're the ones that started this in the first place. Their stupid secret projects got people killed. I don't work for them."

"Who do you work for, then?"

"No one," he said loudly. "I am a police officer, but I don't work for the CIA. I'd never work for them after what they did to my family."

"What did they do?" Eliza asked, finding that she was really interested.

"Do you have it?" he asked back.

"It doesn't bring people back."

"But it still does something that it shouldn't be doing. If what you said is true, it messes with time somehow, and humans shouldn't be able to manipulate the past. Imagine what would happen if someone got ahold of that and could go back to a moment where they needed to make a different decision, and that decision got–"

"People hurt. Yeah, we know," Lydia interrupted.

The man's hand lowered, and he held the gun at his side. Eliza sighed again, feeling relief hit her almost as hard as the energy had earlier. Something had shifted in this man, and he was no longer threatening their lives .

"That's why we put it in the ocean," Lydia went on. "We didn't want anyone else to find it, but we were told not to destroy it."

"Told?"

"A note," Eliza said. "We didn't expect it to be found, but… a salvage company located it, and we found out. Long story short, we went and got it back from them before they knew what it was. They hadn't even opened it yet. We held on to it after that, thinking it was safer with us because at least we knew that it was dangerous. We were fine until you showed up and ransacked our house," she lied, not wanting to reveal anything about Rosie and Felicity.

"I had to find it," he replied. "And you were my only lead."

"Why?" Lydia asked.

"My grandfather was killed because of this thing. He was an innocent bystander. My father was a kid at the time, and he wanted to know what happened to his dad. He found out what that building was used for, and ten years later, he tracked down the man who had run the project initially for the CIA. That man killed my father to protect this secret."

Eliza took the man in more now. He couldn't be more than forty years old, might have even been a little younger. If his father had been a kid when the initial project had run and then had been killed about ten years later, she wasn't sure how he looked so young now.

"I'm confused," she said.

"The CIA reinstituted their little project, and they had another device. They used it to bring my dad back to life. Then, they repeated it to kill him over and over again and used the device to bring him back over and over again. They used him as an experiment, wanting to know how many times it could work on one person. I have a long story to tell myself, but to keep it short, my dad was nineteen when he went in and got himself killed. Years later, they were still using him as a guinea pig, and someone involved in the program took pity on him and released him. She was my mother."

"Oh," Lydia said.

"And I've been looking for the device ever since he told me the story so that it could be destroyed. The man who killed your father was also looking for it, but he wanted to use it. I want it gone. I want it erased from this earth."

"So do we," Eliza offered. "We don't want it around any more than you do."

"But this device isn't the one that they used on my father," he said with a nod.

"No, it's not. We don't know anything about that one," Lydia said. "So, will you please leave us alone?"

"I still need to destroy–" He paused and nodded again. " That 's what I felt. You weren't bringing someone back. You were destroying it."

"Yes, it's gone," Eliza confirmed.

"Where is it?"

"We dissolved it in acid," Lydia shared. "We figured that was the safest way to do it. And I don't know if we hurt anyone like your grandfather, but I promise you, we tried to find the best way to do this so that no one got hurt."

"I believe you." He slid his weapon into his holster. "Where is whatever is left?"

"It's in the car. It's in pieces, but there's no way it works anymore."

"How can you be sure?"

"I tossed it in my car when I thought something was wrong with Lydia. There's no way that button, that's always so easy to press, didn't get pushed somehow. Nothing happened. It's corroded and in pieces. It doesn't work."

"I'd like to take it with me," he revealed.

"No," Eliza said.

"No?" he asked, but he didn't reach for his gun.

"You can take one piece of it. Lydia will take one. I'll take the other. You don't tell us what you do with your piece. Lydia will do something with hers and not tell me. I'll do the same."

"She's your wife. She's not going to tell you what she does with her piece?"

"I won't," Lydia replied. "I understand how important this is, and so does Eliza. She won't tell me what she did with hers. You just take yours far away from here, and no one will ever be able to even piece them back together to reverse-engineer anything."

"I still have to find the one they used on my dad."

"That doesn't involve us, though," Eliza insisted. "We don't want to know anything about it. You should probably assume that more people were used, like your father. If he escaped, they're probably–"

"They killed him," he interjected. "He ran, yes, but they found him a few years later and killed him. My mother and I disappeared. They haven't found me yet. She died a while ago, and I have a different name, which I won't be telling you. I thought your father got the device out, so I never thought they'd still have it and would be using it on other people."

"It's possible," Eliza said. "But I don't know. All I do know is that my dad died because of this thing, protecting it from getting into the wrong hands, but I also have the life I have because of it, and I won't risk that for anything. If anyone understands that, it should be you."

He nodded and said, "I do. You're safe from me."

"What about the people the guy worked for? He killed her father and told her they'd come for him. That was you , though," Lydia said.

"I got to him first, but he wasn't working for the CIA. They just wanted him gone because he knew about the project and was unstable. They won't come after you."

"You're sure?" Eliza checked. "We have three kids."

"I'm sure. They don't even know I'm out here, trying to track it down. You're safe. Go home. Go back to your life. I'll find it. The acid was a good idea, by the way. When I find it, I'll make sure no one else gets hurt because of this thing."

"What about your family?" Lydia asked.

"I'm the only one left," he shared. "And I'll end it. You can be sure about that." He took a few steps backward. "Keep the pieces. I trust you'll dispose of them properly."

"We will," Eliza said. "And good luck."

He nodded and said, "You too."