An Inconvenience In The Laboratory
This was the third lab hit within the last week. The perpetrator looked nothing like what the lab assistant had pictured; he was well dressed, and moved in a manner that one could imagine he had come to finish only some mundane task. The efficiency and detachment of his actions were an unnerving contrast to the desperate glint in the otherwise half-dead eyes. Even after security and rescue had been called, and she had been rushed from the lab in flames, the assistant remained unaffected by the torn events. The destruction of their research was unavoidable; she had seen it in the man's eyes. He was to complete his task, and vanish once he had fulfilled his duty. Only ash was recovered from the ruins of the building.
The head researcher fell into despair immediately recognizable by the ravings of his sleepless nights and his new found predilection to keeping up a constant stream of apologies under his breath. Perhaps due to his failed predictions of the success of the research, he grew deeply mistrustful of the future. All clocks he encountered were immediately wound back as far as the gears would allow in an attempt to protect himself from the further betrayal of those he'd yet to meet. Eventually his efforts paid off. The past began to swallow him whole. He faded gradually until there was no doubt that the future could never catch him.
Faced with continued assaults on their labs and the diminishing morale of their scientists, the research committee was forced to pause until better temporal security could be obtained. Element 92.5 was stored carefully away in the most secure and stable facility available, seemingly to be forgotten until its true time arrived. For years it has remained entirely undisturbed and unobserved, though those hired to protect it from prospective saboteurs (and who ever stayed for long) have reported many unrecognizable persons that appear down the hall, merely looking apprehensive before disappearing, as well as a pervading sense of latent foreboding coming from behind the locked doors.
