Number Five stormed angrily away from the academy, the old man's words still ringing in his ears:

"A spatial jump is trivial when compared with the unknowns of time travel. One is like sliding along the ice, the other is akin to descending blindly into the depths of the freezing water and reappearing as an acorn."

Number Five did not like to be underestimated. Especially not by him. Not by the man who claimed to be his father yet never treated him like family. The man who had always thought little of him. In a household in which the children, all the exact same age, are referred to by numbers rather than names, there can be no question of who the favourite is. Number Five didn't want Mr. Hargreeves' love – he didn't think the cynical millionaire was capable of such a passionate emotion – but he did crave his respect. Number Five considered himself much more powerful and intelligent than any of his "siblings." So why was he not at least in the top three?

Thus, he took those words as a challenge. I'll show him, he thought. He was determined, so much so that his bones ached, to prove the old man wrong. His plan wasn't to run away forever. He simply wanted to hop into a few different time periods and grab some souvenirs to bring back and shove in his so-called-father's face.

He pictured himself traveling in time, and then he did it. He successfully ended up in another time period. Then he tried again and succeeded once more. Smug with the knowledge that he was proving Mr. Hargreeves wrong, Number Five jumped again.

But this time was different. This time the streets weren't filled with people and lined with buildings. This time the world was devoid of colour. The once blue sky was a dull gray, and the grass had all died and turned from green to brown. This time the world looked as though it had been flattened. Barely anything remained standing, even the sturdiest of buildings had suffered some degree of damage. His first instinct was to run straight back to the academy, but even that massive house had been reduced to rubble. He called out for his siblings, searching for any trace of them amongst the ruins. He finally found them, older but still recognizable. Or rather, he found their corpses. It was not until that moment that he realized how much he had cared for them, despite their rivalry and strange upbringing. But they were dead.

He had dived headfirst into the cold unknown and now he was a tiny acorn alone in a world of ash. He was in the future... a dead future.