It’s the same dream again. No, actually, it’s a little different this time. Is this the day after? Everyone is doing well, still.

The dream is so vivid… It’s like I’m really there. I can walk around, it seems, and watch as life progresses around me.

But no-one acknowledges my presence.

It’s like I’m a ghost, a ghost haunting my previous life, unable to interact with the world. Oh, she just dropped something! But I can’t pick it up, or tell her that she dropped it…

Why am I even here if I don’t exist? But I can’t wake up. When will the morning come?

After another troubled night’s rest, the Ultimates gathered at the cafeteria for breakfast as usual. They talked about their dreams, but there didn’t seem to be anything new to add to the conversation this time. Soon forgetting about it, everyone left to go about their day.

Sometime later, a group of students headed for the Alabaster base to pick up some rations for lunch. As they were sorting through the various boxes and tins, however, Nicos came running over from the bedrooms. “Emergency! There’s an emergency!” he cried.

“What is it? There hasn’t been another…” Althea trailed off into silence, not wanting to complete that sentence.

“Someone’s been ransacking our rooms! And it wasn’t just me going wild this time!”

“If you’re saying that then this really is a problem…” Taylor muttered. “I hope they didn’t damage anything.”

They headed over to see, and stopped short as they encountered a scene of mild devastation. “Oh my! Did an animal come through here?” Evelyn asked, carefully stepping over a discarded duvet to look inside one of the rooms. “Good grief, whatever it was, they certainly caused a mess.”

“Maybe someone was looking for something?” Althea suggested, picking up a drawer that was lying on the floor. “I don’t think an animal could open a chest of drawers like that.”

“We should tell the others,” Taylor decided, turning away and heading out. “We’ll meet at the cafeteria again.”

A little later, everyone was sat in the cafeteria treehouse. Well, almost everyone.

“Is Annabella not here?” Kyoya asked, panning his camera around the room.

“Hmm, how strange,” Evelyn said, similarly looking around for the girl. “Did anyone see her?”

“I might have caught a glimpse of her heading into the temple,” Skylar volunteered. “She was moving pretty fast though.”

“I see. Well, I’ll just go over the details now, then we can go fetch her,” Evelyn said, before recounting what they’d found back at base.

“That’s awful! Did an animal get in?” Nana asked afterwards.

“I don’t think so. Which means… it was one of us!” Althea declared dramatically. “...right?”

“Whoever it was better be happy I didn’t have anything important there…” Rose grumbled. “I get the situation now, anyway. Should we go find Annabella?”

The others nodded, and they left to go take the winding nature trail up to the top of the cliff where the temple sat.

As they proceeded through the temple, they found more signs of frantic searching, and eventually found Annabella facing a large stone door, a strange key in her hand. As they watched, she used the key to open the door and then hurried inside, glancing around desperately.

“Hey, Annabella, what’s wrong?” Marshall asked, leading the way as the others headed inside the room as well.

“Sonia is missing! I have to find her before anything happens!” Annabella answered distractedly. Now that they could see her more clearly, the others noticed that she was indeed missing the one doll she’d had with her in the jungle.

“Well, I don’t think she’s in here,” Honda said kindly, trying to calm her down. “There’s really not much in here at all, actually,” he added, glancing in bemusement at the only object inside the otherwise bare room.

As a few of the Ultimates dealt with Annabella, the others took a closer look at the object. It looked a little like a fullsize, ancient mirror, but the mirror itself was pitch black and didn’t reflect even the slightest bit of light. “What is this thing?” Skylar asked, reaching out to touch it. Nothing seemed to happen.

“Allow me to explain!” Eve exclaimed, unnecessarily adding a dramatic roll as she entered the room. “What you see before you is… The Nexus!”

People were silent for a few moments, before Taylor sighed and said, “Okay, sure. ‘The Nexus’. And what is it?”

“I’m glad you asked! You see, The Nexus is a communication device! But it doesn’t allow for communication across space… it allows for communication across time!”

“What? Surely not,” Eli said, crossing his arms impatiently. “Isn’t that a scientific impossibility or something?”

Eve shrugged. “Don’t ask me. But it’s here, no point arguing against it! I think it’s an artefact from some ancient civilisation or something? But it’s the reason Alabaster stuck a base here, to research it. They’ve got a whole bunch of research notes on it in their network! Was a fun read.

“Let’s see… apparently it takes a huge amount of energy to even work. Not actually sure what powers it, but hey, Alabaster thought that was the case. Because of that it only works for a short amount of time before needing to shut down to recharge. What’s worse, it only lets you communicate up to one day in the past or future! How lame. Any more than that would require ‘a currently infeasible amount of power’, it says. It’s a two-way system - the other end is a smaller, handheld device back in the waterfall base - but it seems like the big old mirror here does the bulk of the work, so it’s what uses all the power.

“Anyway, if that wasn’t enough, there’s two side-effects to using it that even the guys who made the thing didn’t seem able to get around. Guess it’s to prevent paradoxes? First, once it’s used it can’t be used again until time has ‘caught up’. Let’s say I use it at 4PM to talk with myself two hours ago at 2PM. That time period from 2 til 4 is now ‘locked’, and no-one can ever use the mirror during that time, and neither can anyone send a message back in time to that period.

“Second, and let me tell you this is where it gets crazy, the dumb thing wipes your memories after use! What’s even the point, huh? Whoever was using it in the past loses all their memories of the conversation after just a few minutes, plus memories of some of the time leading up to the conversation to boot. Actually, it doesn’t just wipe that person’s memories, it wipes everyone’s memories in roughly a mile’s radius around the device! As a result people in the past won’t have memories of the conversation, so when they use it in the future they won’t already know how the conversation went or whatever.”

The room was silent as people tried to process this. Then Nana acutely summed up the thoughts of many of the students in the room and said, “I don’t get it.”

“Eh, well, I guess it’s not that important,” Eve shrugged. “You need a key of some sort to activate it. Different from the key Annabella found for the door. Without that the thing’s useless anyway!” After saying that Eve swiftly departed, job done.