Roy awoke in the middle of the night. The glow of the clock read ‘1 am’. He rolled over and noticed his bed lacked his girlfriend. Megan worked all night as a bartender, but he was too sleepy to realize she was still at work. He had only gone to bed an hour ago. There was a light coming from another room and that must have wakened him up. He questioned why he did not turn it off. Then he realized he had turned off all the lights in the apartment. The light he saw was dim and came from the front room, and he did not have any dim lights. He sat up, fearfully, and listened for sounds of someone else. The fear and panic awoken him fully. There was a noise, but he could not tell what it was.
  He prayed it was not a burglar, but he grabbed something that could be a weapon. He held it behind his back as he slowly peered around the corner to the front room. There was someone there, a woman. She was a beautiful redhead and was lounging in a sexy pose on a couch. He then realized the couch was not his. The couch was sitting in front of a fireplace which also he did not own. That was the sound he was hearing: the fire in the fireplace. He slowly realized that the front room was not his front room but had turned into a much larger and more lavish room. She laid on her side, comfortable, with a glass of wine in her hand. She was a natural redhead because he saw her eyebrows were the same color. The nightgown she wore exposed her cleavage, and her bare legs were white and lovely. It appeared to him she could have bathed in milk daily.
   "There is no need for the weapon. Come and sit, Roy," she said, commanding and disarming. He was sitting in front of her before he realized it, and his hand was empty of the blunt weapon.
   She took a drink and was staring at him.
   "I don't want to stay here all night. I like to enjoy myself," she told him. She spoke with a thick eastern European accent but also perfect English. "And I do not enjoy your presence." Her brutal and insulting tongue shocked him. Her beauty, calmness, and sexiness had disarmed him. Then her tone and words reminded him she was in his apartment, unannounced. This odd sensual dream became a slap in his face. "This is not a sensual dream. You are going to destroy the world, Roy, in fourteen days. I am here to ensure you do not."
   "What the hell are you talking about? How am I," he began.
   "Silence," she ordered him, cutting him off. "If I understood how, I would tell you, but alas. I have no desire to end Roy. I enjoy half-living too much." She drank from her wineglass. It looked expensive with gold wove into the glass.
  "Roy, you need to take better care of yourself. You need to eat more vegetables and less bread and meat," she said. She looked at him, full of disappointment and disgust. He thought she was drinking wine, but it looked thicker.
  "What the fuck is going on here? How are you in my apartment but not in my apartment?" he said, looking around at how his room merged with another.
  "Silence, you disgusting man! How dare you speak to me in that way! You are the one that is going to destroy the world, not I!"
  "How am I going to destroy the world? I'm in a band. I don't associate with anyone in the military or some secret scientist base," he told her, preposterous of the idea. She might as well claimed he was going to pick up a building or get pregnant.
   "Band? What is band? A group of men that go around and cause trouble?" she inquired.
   "Music," he explained, perplexed she did not know what he was talking about, "I write songs and perform music. You know... on a stage with people listening and cheering."
   "Darling, that is not music," she told him as though informing him that a pile of turds was not coq au vin with a deep crossed look on her face.
   "Fuck you lady!" he snapped back at her. She was so beautiful and graceful that he wished he could insult her more, but could not.
   "No! You is the fuck! You will not end me, stupid, stupid man. Gah!!" she stood up and put her wineglass down. She was panicking and started pacing. "I do not want to end."
   He stood up to calm her down.
   "Hey, it is ok. Try to calm down," he said reassuringly. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her. He reached out with his hand to touch her.
   She slapped it away. "No! I have told you. You are going to destroy the world. I have seen it, the future. I have seen your ugly face and then nothing, and I see nothing beyond it. You are the cause for its destruction."
   "Listen lady."
   "Silence!" she ordered him, "There is a man who is going to travel through time to stop you two days from now. You can not allow him to kill you."
   "A time traveler?" he replied with great uncertainty.
   "He will arrive from the year," she paused and seemed to peer away in thought or a trance, "the year 1991."
   "A man from the year 1991 is going to travel through time to come stop me from destroying the world. In the year 2018. Lady, they did not invent time traveling in 1991. I think we would have known about it. And how am I going to end the world? With my pick?" he asked, incredulous and sarcastic, implying his guitar pick.
   She ignored him, "You men these days. All you care about is destroying the world with your red buttons and bombs and missiles. You think you are so big and tough. It takes a big, tough man to push a button to fly a missile. Men from my era wanted to conquer the world, not destroy it. They were real men with vigor and strength. Those were great men. Have you ever been in a fight? You have not, I can tell," she said with disgust, looking at him, "Great men like Genghis Khan, who knew how to fight and kill, how to lead men into battle and into victory. Do you know what Genghis Khan would have done to a man if he had a machine gun?"
   "No," he replied, thinking about how ridiculous of a question that was.
   "He would have cut off his arm that held the machine gun! You disgust me with your stupidity and lack of talent. How dare you kill me in a few weeks! I have lived more than the history that you know. Now it is all over. I do not know how to cope." She picked up the wineglass and took a drink from it to settle her nerves. Her face twisted in disgust after tasting it. She must have forgotten what she was drinking. He became certain she was drinking blood.
   "You are older than history?" he asked.
   "I said I have lived more than the history that you know. What do you know of history?"
   "Well, there was world war two," he trailed off, unsure of the details.
   "See what I mean? What do you know of the 12th century?"
   "I," he began, and had nothing more to contribute to it.
   "Yes, you know nothing. GAH! Let me tell you about your future. Do not go to the corner of Calvin Street and Union Street."
   "Where is that?"
   "I do not know, but do not go there!" she told him.
   "If I am really going to destroy the world, then why don't you kill me. Kill me and save yourself and the world," he said preposterously. He considered the whole situation absurd.
   "I am from an era where women do not kill. They have men do their killing for them. I could have sent a man to kill you, but the future is complicated. I have tried to foretell if I had you killed, but the results would still be disastrous. You are the key to everything, but the rest I am greatly uncertain. Yet, you should also have a choice and an understanding. I know I am changing the future here and now by informing you of it. The future is set in the present. I am not the center of it. You will be soon. I hope that knowing everything, it will be different." There was a silence that came between them as he was realizing this was real. She was sincere and certain.
   "I know before you were uncertain, but now I can tell that you believe me," she told him. He did, and he did not know how she knew.

   He woke up and sat up straight. There was no light from his front room and it was silent. He was in bed. It all felt so real. He wondered if it was a dream. Then he felt a pain in his neck. He checked it and there were two holes there, as if something had bitten him. They were tender to touch and fresh. He withdrew his hand and his fingers were slick with blood.


   "What do you mean you haven't been working at DeFabs?" Roy asked Megan, his girlfriend, confused and getting agitated. "Where have you gotten the rent money from?"
   "I have been paying the bills, like you want," Megan said sternly. She then changed her tone to hushed and dismissive, "It doesn't matter where it came from."
   "It doesn't matter where it came from?" Roy asked her. He was getting suspicious and beginning to dread what she was going to say next.
   "Megan, where is the money coming from?" he insisted.
   "Look, babe, it doesn't matter where I got the money. I am here supporting you with it, like we agreed. So you can focus on your music," she told him, snuggling up to him.
   "What kind of job are you doing to get this amount of money?" he asked her. She was quiet, and he did not like her silence.
   "Are you selling drugs?" he asked.
   "What? NO! I wouldn't do that! Do you not know me? Why would you think I was a drug dealer?" she snapped back and parted from him.
   "Where then?" he asked, keeping at her. He held his breath, "Are you stripping?"
   "No, babe. I love you. That is all that matters. I know you will finish writing a great song and we will be mega rich!" she said, snuggling up to him again.
   "Are you selling yourself?" he asked, afraid of her response.
   "Roy, I... It's not that big of a deal," Megan told him.
   "You are whoring yourself out and it’s not that big of a deal?!" Roy yelled at her.
   "Roy, babe, don't be angry. I did it for you. For us," Megan told him.
   "You are sucking dick and fucking other men!!! And it’s NO BIG DEAL??!!" Roy shouted even louder.
   She then got angry, "I knew you wouldn't understand. I knew you wouldn't get it. Chad was right."
   "Who the fuck is Chad?!!" he demanded and infuriated that another man’s name came to her lips. Imagines of the sexual acts she did with her lips spurred on his fury.
   "He is one of my regulars, and he told me you would be jealous. That you wouldn't understand."
   "You have regulars..." Roy responded. He was jealous, heartbroken, and wished to kill Chad. His love of his life was with other men. She offered herself for money. He was beyond angry and hurt. Those were only words compared to what he felt.
"You are out there kissing and fucking other men. You somehow think that is alright, that I would be ok with this. Are you fucking crazy?!!!"
   She went to the bedroom and started packing. The finality of them was about to occur. He couldn't take either facts: they were breaking up, and she had sex with multiple other men for money.
   "We haven't had sex in three months. Three months!! You don't want to have sex with me, but everyone else is fair game. Just spread your legs and Megan's open for business: a hundred dollars a fucking."
   "You don't get it. Chad said you wouldn't get it. Chad gets me. He understands me," she told him as she continued to pack.
   "Chad doesn't love you. He is just using you for sex! He doesn't care about you!"
   "Fuck you!" she screamed at him.
   "No fuck you," he told her. In his blind rage, he grabs and tosses her on his bed. He pulled at her clothes to get them off. He wanted the sex she gave out willingly to everyone else, and she denied him for three months. In their struggle, she slapped him hard across his face. It snapped him out of his attempted rape of her.
   He sat down between the bed and the wall of their apartment to hide his face from her as she continued to pack. Tears formed in his eyes because he could not believe everything that happened in the last few minutes: the reveal she had sex with many other men, their relationship was over, and he almost raped her.
   "You are a pathetic loser and your music sucks," she told him as she left their apartment and slammed the door behind her.
   He didn't know how long he sat there with his feelings consuming him. Time no longer mattered. Eventually, he got up and went to see his friend, that was five blocks away. He wiped his tears off his cheeks and started walking. Along his walk, he could not calm himself. He was so distraught and lost that he wanted to call or text her. He looked at his phone and saw the last text she sent him. It was of sweetness, love, and tenderness. He wanted her back and wanted it all back. They were together for seven years. Then he wondered how long she was having sex with other men.
   He walked up to a poster and stared at it. It was an ad for a concert that was a week old. The band that was head lining was of a picture of a cow and a moon. It was stupid. In his rage and heartache, he tore it down. He ripped part of it off, the part of the cow, and he threw it down on the ground. He stomped on it furiously. All he could think of was how many other men Megan had sex with.
   In the middle of this, something caught his eye. He looked up in the sky and saw something that looked like a bug, but was getting closer and bigger. It was hard to make out what it was. A thought occurred to him, a memory of the dream that wasn't a dream from nights ago. Corner of Calvin and Union but also what she said to him.
   "He will find you fighting a large mammal next to a bus stop," she told him. He lifted his leg and looked down at the cow and he looked behind him and there was a bus stop shelter. It read as the intersection of Calvin and Union. He wandered around in his rage and pain and somehow he stumbled into right where she said he would be. Then he realized, if he was supposed to be there, then the time traveler would look for him there.
He had to get out of there before the time traveler spotted him. The large bug in the sky caught his attention again. It wasn’t a bug, but a man that was flying towards him. The man stopped above him in midair, and he knew he was looking right at him. The man was the size of his hand now, floating in the sky of the early afternoon. He raised his arm to point at Roy. Roy did not know what the man intended to do. Except the words came back to him from the woman who visited him. "It is simply best to just run," she told him. So he did.

   He turned away from the man in the sky and ran. The man had taken aim at him and extended his left arm. His hand was open and circular yellow rings shot out of his hand. They missed Roy but hit the bus stop shelter. It exploded in debris and Roy was close enough to be launched away from it, unscathed, but landed hard on the pavement. He panicked and took out his phone. Knowing that he had to get away, he opened an app for a ride share. He got to his feet, but then he heard footsteps behind him.
   Roy was in his mid-twenties and a little taller than the average man. He didn't exercise and his big arms were mainly fat. The man approaching him was a head shorter, but covered in combat gear that looked technical. Only his lower face was partly visible: chin, cheeks, nose, and mouth. His helmet had a red visor that covered his eyes. He wore a metallic vest that was grey, almost silver, and the rest was black. The man took no hesitation and went into a swing with his right arm. Roy turned around at that moment and the man's hand hit his phone. Roy thought it odd that the glove he wore had small blue lights on it.
   The phone shattered in Roy's hand and scrapped across his face. The man had missed twice and Roy so far had been lucky.
   "What is your name?" he demanded to Roy. The man's thick metallic glove no longer held blue lights on it. Roy remembered something else from her conversation.
   "He does not know you, only knows where you will be and when. He till try to gain information to continue his pursuit of you across time for if he loses you at that moment. Whatever you do, do not give him your name, birth date, any numbers, parents’ names, anything. This is his first encounter with you. Make sure you have no information on you," she told him.
   "What is your name?" he demanded again. He punched him in Roy's stomach and Roy doubled over in pain. The man started searching Roy's pockets. Roy feared the worse from the man. He knew he would find his wallet and it would be over.
   "Where is your wallet?" the man demanded. Roy didn't know. He must have left his wallet at his apartment. The man grabbed his keys from Roy's pocket. "Where do you live?"
   The street had been empty, but a man walked from behind a corner and saw what was going on.
   "Hey man, what is wrong with you? Why are you trying to jack this man for?" His attacker faced the man that approached them both.
   He replied, "This does not concern you."
   The man pulled out his phone and started recording it. "You crazy white motherfucker. This ain't Halloween with you crazy looking get-up. Leave this man alone."
   Roy took the opportunity and ran. She told him to run and run he did. His hand that had held the phone hurt a little, but not as much as death would, as he ran around the corner and out of sight. He did not know how far he ran or where he was going. He took a few turns to hide his route from the man and did not look back.
   He ended up in an abandoned warehouse that felt safe and was sitting down, trying to catch his breath. He couldn't believe any of it. The vampire, her prediction, him fighting some strange future man. It was all absurd, but it was happening. He did not know what to do. The man had his keys, but that was all it was: keys. It could fit a lock to any door. It may even unlock a door at the warehouse he was it. All he could do was breath and his side hurt. His hand was a little numb and bled a little, but nothing bad.
   Then the wall behind him exploded. The man had punched through it with his right glove, and the blue light faded after the punch. The exploding wall surprised Roy and his heart jumped into his throat. Roy could not believe the man had tracked him. He got up and ran. The man shot yellow rings at him and continued to miss. The explosions from it filled the air with debris and dust. He stopped firing as Roy got deeper into the warehouse and the dust made it harder to see.
   "I am not enjoying this. I don’t even like hunting. The only reason I am here is to save the planet which you are going to destroy in less than two weeks."
   "How? How do you know?"
   "I am from the year 1991. I am a man of science, and I created equipment for time travel. From this, I saw into the future. There was nothing past 2018, one week from now. All I saw was you and then nothing. You are responsible for the end. You are at the center of this."
   Roy moved his position from when he last spoke to continue hiding. "Did she tell you? The red head?"
   The man from the past continued to search the warehouse, slowly walking around. "What red head?" he asked. "Is that who you are working for? Is she somehow involved? Does she want to destroy us all? You don't seem like someone capable of destroying us all. You don't even have ID, unless I destroyed it and in the future they have no physical IDs." After evading and searching for several minutes, he asked, "Why are you doing this? Why do you wish to destroy us all?"
   The man from the future was attempting to find Roy’s position through conversation. Roy remained silent and wanted to attack him from behind. He snuck around him and saw him. Roy carefully snuck towards him on all fours. Then he stopped moving. Roy quickly launched at him, however, Roy did not come into contact with him and went through him.
   "Hologram," the other man simply said and punched him hard in his face. Pain exploded in Roy's jaw from the strong punch. It was not his glove or he would have had his jaw shattered like his phone.
   The man stood over him, staring at him. Roy knew better than to be deceived again by a hologram. He slowly reached out to touch his shoe. It was real.
   "You are not much of a fighter, are you?" the man questioned Roy.
   Roy ignored him and launch himself at him and the man sidestepped him easily. Roy missed him, clumsily, and was on the ground again.
   "Get up, and take your best shot," the man teased him. Roy became angry at the tease. "Come on, get up!" Roy got to his feet and stared down at the man. "Hit me," he told Roy, "Hit me!" Roy tried to punch him in a surprised move in the middle of his second 'hit me' phrase. The man dodge it but also grabbed his wrist and tripped Roy. Roy landed hard on the floor, mostly using Roy's own momentum.
   “It took me a few months to learn that move. Honestly, I did not know what I would be dealing with when I would travel here. I created weaponry and practiced fighting techniques because I feared the worst. You are the end of everything; I expected a James Bond villain. When I looked into the future, I didn’t have much details to go on. It looks like I greatly over prepared. You are not a villain or even a threat. You are just a regular guy. How the hell are you going to destroy us all?”
   Roy said in utter defeat, "I don't know," as he laid there on the ground, not attempting to get up. The other man raised his right arm that had a small keyboard on it and pushed a few buttons. A blue portal opened beneath Roy and he fell in. It closed behind him. He looked around to understand what was going on. He was in a dark blue cage and in a light blue environment.
   The cage seemed to be translucent but was solid, and the same for the floor he was lying on. The cage was not big enough for him to even stand up in. He could not even stretch out or fully lie down. The time traveler arrived through a blue portal door.
   "This is another dimension. It exists outside of regular time. I created or discovered it by accident, but I learned I could control it. I came to realize it is the ultimate prison. Time can pass slowly or quickly here compared to real time. Your cells are still decaying or you are still aging. However, you will not have any need of food, water, or even the toilet. If you were to break out of the bars I made, where would you go? It just seems to extend on forever here, doesn't it?" He said, looking into the far distance. He was right, it went on forever, but there also was nothing there; just emptiness. The dimension was interesting and depressing with its nothingness.
   "I don't know what the hell is going on,” the time traveler exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. “I am not a killer. Especially kill someone in cold blood that can barely defend themselves. I really can’t do that. I just want to prevent the end. That is my mission. It seemed the best way was to kill you, but since you are not a threat, I am locking you up. You will remain here until the ‘end time’ has passed us. I will be back. Later-gater..." and then a door of light opened, and he left through it. The door vanished behind him and Roy was alone in his cage.
   Time did passed different where Roy was. The man would return sometimes within minutes and the man thought he was gone for hours; and vice versa. He brought books for Roy to read. Roy was not much of a reader, but he had nothing else to do. He never got hungry or sleepy, but he was tired of sitting and wish he could stand up. He could not even lie down straight, since the cage was so small. In his time in the cage, his mind and heart were all on Megan. Out of all the odd and strange things to happen to him, his separation bewildered him the most. His thoughts were like a ping-pong ball that bounced back and forth between him missing her and her infidelity. Those were his only two thoughts, and they circled him and brought him down to a new level of depression.
His captor sensed his feelings and would ask him about it. He lied and hid those parts of his life as he did everything with him. The only solace was that since this man was from the past, he did not have sex with Megan.
   Roy did not understand why the cage was small, the space outside the cage seemed infinite. However, this all seemed like a work of fiction to Roy: vampires, time travel, the world ending. Yet, there he was, reading books on history. His captor had brought in a bookcase on dollies, and this was the least boring thing he had.
   "History, of course you would want to read history. Since you know time travel is possible. I don't think we are going to become friends and have adventures though, just letting you know," he told Roy.
   Roy really wanted to read the one music book from the bookcase, but he still wanted to keep his identity a secret. He also really, really wanted the man to bring a guitar. He resisted his musical urges.
   "Do you love history?" the man asked him.
   Roy loathed history, it was his least favorite subject in high school. "I love history, I was thinking about majoring in it."
   "Is history more important in the future?" he asked and then immediately replied, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know."
   "How can a man who can time travel not want to know or ask about the future?"
   "On September..." Roy began, but before he could warn the man about the historic "9/11" Roy fell through a hole that opened up beneath him. This hole was different from the blue portal doorways in and out of the prison dimension. It was simply as if a hole appeared beneath him. The time traveler had a look of surprise as Roy fell out of his cage. Roy fell into darkness with an eerie red light everywhere. The bright blue dimension had vanished instantly from his eyes. There was nothing for him to do but fall. Nothing to grab ahold of that could prevent or slow down his descent. He yelled out at the sudden floor beneath him. The floor was hard on his back and pain exploded in him. The faint red light that illumed everything was not bright enough for Roy to understand his surroundings. His eyes slowly adjusted to the light as he rolled on his side with the pain searing through him from his fall. He looked down at his legs and they moved some. His back was unbroken, but the pain was unbearable. As he laid there, hoping the pain would stop and go away, he noticed a man. The new man was in dressed in all white. He was standing by a long stretch of monitors and controls of buttons and switches.
   "You there! I need your help!" the man in white called out.
   Roy ignored him. His pain was more important than strangers demanding things from him. "Hello!!" the man shouted down at him.
   "What!?" Roy yelled back at him.
   "Get up and help. I need your assistance!" the man exclaimed.
   The pain was subsiding. Roy realized it hurt so much it had brought tears to his eyes. He said a quiet prayer to his god. His eyes had adjusted better in the dark room and he noticed that the entire room was concrete.
   "Where am I? How did I get here?" Roy asked the man.
   "I brought you here. I found you in another dimension, and I needed help, so I brought you here. Get up! Get up! Get over there and turn that key when I tell you to," the man insisted.
   Roy looked at him, confused.
   "What do you mean: ‘you brought me here’?"
   "It's hard to explain and we don't have time!" the man said, "Hurry up and turn that key!"
   "Why?" Roy asked.
   "If you don't, we all die!"
   Roy could not believe this was happening. The vampire and the time traveler were right. He was in this odd room with the screens filled with charts, diagrams, and video feeds. He saw people running around on the screen freaking out. Everything was in another language. He was uncertain which language.
   The man approached him and helped him up and over to where he wanted Roy. He handed Roy the key he talked about.
   "Ok, now on my count of three: 1...2..."
   "What the hell is going on!" Roy snapped, freaked out. "How the hell did you bring me here!"
   "We don't have time!"
   "What day is it?" Roy asked. The man responded it with the same date she told him it would happen.
   "She was right. How could she have been right!?" Roy said aloud.
   "Who was right?"
   "The vampire," Roy said. The man looked at him for the first time as Roy had been staring at the other man, bewildered in and in disbelief.
   "How did I come here?!"
   "We have two minutes until..."
   "Well, make it short!"
   "I have these powers. They allow me to sense things. I could sense you. So I pulled you here to help me. Please, you have to help me! We have to save the world!"
At first, Roy thought the man’s outfit was a uniform, but now he realized it was clothes from an asylum. His brother was locked in an  asylum and he visited him regularly. Sadly, his brother eventually killed himself from massive delusions. He would recognize those clothes anywhere. The pain and the dark lighting had prevented him from realizing this.
   "I don't believe you," Roy told him.
“Listen to me. My name is Chad and…” Roy’s concentration broke at that moment at the utterance of that man’s name. Chad was the name of a man that was one of Megan’s regular clients. Roy’s heart filled with fury, heartache, and jealousy. His emotional pain mirrored his physical pain he felt from the fall.
   "Please, we don't have time. Turn the key!" Chad told him. The loud words that Chad yelled at him broke through his torment. He knew this probably wasn’t the same man. There are many people with that name. A part of him thought it was, though.
   "How do I know you are not lying?!" Roy asked with the duplicate meaning behind the question of also whether it was his girlfriend’s Chad. The phrase “his girlfriend’s Chad” infuriated him more.
   "We don't have time!" Chad told him.
   Roy saw there was some blood on the floor. It was not his, nor the other man's. He looked at Chad who held a desperate and wild look in his eyes.
   "I don't want us to die!" Chad told him.
   Roy just stared at, him uncertain of what to do.
   "Please..." Chad pleaded.
   Roy stepped away from the console. The man looked at the clock and then back at Roy.
   "These people have experimented on me. They gave me my power. They also have created a weapon, but it is too powerful. We have to shut it down."
He did not know this Chad or if he could trust him. From the large amount of blood on the floor, someone was killed. Chad was probably the one who had killed that person. Roy wondered if the killing was justifiable.
   "Who are these people?" Roy inquired.
   "I don't know! They are German!" Chad told him.
   "What year is it?"     
  "2018!" Chad said incredulously.
   "Why are Germans trying to kill us?" Roy asked, confused at the out of context the Germans were a threat to the world, again.
   "I don't know. Just turn the key!" There were thirty seconds left on the clock. There were multiple thoughts and emotions running through Roy’s mind and heart. In the small time frame he was uncertain if he could process them or filter out the garbage in an attempt to find clarity and a solution.
  In Roy’s emotional state, he did not know if he could trust himself. He was in pain and wanted others to feel his pain, but he didn’t want the world to end. The vampire’s words echoed through his mind about destroying the world and not wanting to die. Looking back in his mind, it felt like more of a plea for help than a demand. His thoughts also wandered to the time traveler who had devoted so much to save the world. In Roy’s void of twisted pain from betrayal, adultery, and deceit that seemed to forge a dagger and repeatedly stabbed himself in the heart; those two people floated forward. They provided clarity of survival and humanity. The vampire lived all those centuries and to still not wanting to die but wished to continue to live. No one lives an easy life, and she has survived. Everyone else in the world also has the right to carry on. The time traveler who sought to stop the person that would end the world, him, and when he was given the chance, he offered the man who was destined to destroy all of mankind refuge and hospitality. He could have simply killed him, but instead showed him humanity. Roy needed to think of them.
  But also, what about the circumstances surround this person who calls himself Chad.
Was Chad a madman wanting revenge? Did he want revenge on the entire complex that experimented on him, like the guards/technicians he killed in this room? How many others did he kill? He sounded panicked and nervous, which could be a sign of being sincere, or was he anxious and just wanted to be done with them? It all came to a question of: was Chad deceiving him?
Then there was the mystery of the key and what it would do.
  Every instinct was telling him not to turn the key. However, he wondered if he did not turn the key that would destroy the world. They never told him how he was going to do it. He walked closer to the console and saw the clock ticking down. He did not know what to do. Roy held his hand close to the key. Would turning the key end the world or would not turning the key end the world? Five seconds left.