Reinforced containment doors slid shut in front of me as the guards closed in from behind. Back flipping off the doors, I fired the laser pistols I held in each hand, lighting up the guards behind me with bolts of red while still in mid-air. Landing on the metal decking, I fired one shot into the locking mechanism to open the containment doors and continue forward, sparing not a glance toward the two dead men who had once been my clan.

I found the door to the cell where Rosha was held and blasted the lock without a moment of hesitation. The door opened, and I dashed inside. My lady love stared at me and the weapons I held. The clan wars had raged for a century, what difference did it make to our clans or the world if the two of us had found something better? She knew what my kind did to hers and what hers did to mine. The sensors of my cybernetic right eye showed her increased heart rate as fear pumped adrenaline through her veins.

What words could I say to her to chase her fear? Words meant nothing now. War was all that mattered. Between our people, it was all that was left. Indeed, it was no longer a means to an end, an elusive victory. War was a way of life. We lived to deliver death. She believed I would give it to her.

She was wrong. I had something better in mind.

I holstered my dual laser pistols and offered her my hand, but she simply stared at me, not knowing what I was doing.

"Trust me, one last time, my love," I requested of her.

Although she still hesitated, Rosha accepted my hand and willingly followed where I led her. We took the back way out of the base, avoiding the fighting taking place outside; their wars were no longer ours, and soon, their world wouldn't be either.

Dropping into a maintenance tunnel, I reached up and caught Rosha around her slender waist as she stepped off the edge of the floor above. I lowered her down until her boots touched the dusty metal of the floor, but I didn't release her immediately. An explosion nearby forced me back into action. I took her hand and led the way through the darkness of the abandoned tunnel.

My cybernetic eyepiece glowed red in the lightless space of the corridor. I could see perfectly well, the pipes and phased particle conduits covering the walls rendered in shades of crimson, but Rosha couldn't see anything as she lacked augmentation of any kind. She could only walk forward blindly, trusting I would lead her safely to our destination. After all that had happened, her trust was important to me, and I'd make sure it was not in vain.

A door blocked our way ahead, but I accessed a small data terminal mounted on the wall beside it. Powered by a salvaged quantum generator I'd managed to get running again, the terminal accepted my code and opened the doors. Rosha squinted against the sudden brightness as my temporal lab opened.

Centered amid the scaffolding climbing the walls and the electrical cabling crisscrossing the floor like a colony of snakes was a massive ring standing vertically in the middle of the room. White light spilled out of the vortex of energy in the ring's center.

"What is it?" Rosha asked when her eyes adjusted enough for her to look around.

"I've been working on this since I first knew I loved you," I told her. "It's a time portal to the past, and for us, it's the way out. We can escape the clan wars, no more of the mindless fighting between the cybernetically enhanced and the prime humans. Right now, both our clans want us dead for associating with the enemy, but on the other side of this portal, we can start a new life, together."

Rosha was silent for a moment as she looked over the portal. I knew she was considering the consequences of stepping through versus staying. She turned back to me.

"I don't know if I want to live my life in the past, but I do know one thing," she said. Rosha wrapped her arms around my neck. "From the ancient past to the distant future, I'll never leave you. Wherever and whenever you choose to go, I'll be at your side."

My arms went around her waist, holding her tightly as I covered her lips with my own. I never would've imagined that the woman I'd be willing to abandoned my clan and my time for would've started out as an enemy, but she was here and in my arms. The clans didn't matter. The wars didn't matter. Only Rosha mattered, and I'd spend the rest of my life showing her how much.

A crash echoed down the passageway, and an alert flashed across my optical display. It was time to go. Releasing Rosha for a moment, I knelt down and took a small disk the size of my hand from a duffle bag on the floor.

"What's that?" Rosha asked.

"A temporal scrambler," I answered. "It will destabilize the portal once we're through. The resulting explosion will seal the time rift and destroy the lab. No one will be able to follow us or use this tech for ill intent."

Pressing my thumb to the center of the scrambler, I activated it and slapped its magnetized surface to the outside of the time portal's encompassing metal ring. Taking Rosha by the hand, we stepped through the swirling vortex of light together.

***

"Do you have to go?" Rosha pleaded, clinging to my arm as I tried to leave the library. Dressed in a strapless gown of emerald green, a sleeve of matching material sheathed each of her arms, a frill at the cuff partly obscuring her hands. Her red hair was no longer the thin fuzz it had been when she and I had come from the future; she'd let it grow out and the loose strands of red spilled across the pale skin of her bare shoulders.

Finery and elegance were something that had been lost in the now distant future we had fled. Clothing was nothing more than functional in clan dominated society. Enjoying life had become secondary to ending it. Rosha and I both had commented to each other many times over the past year how much better it was in our new life.

"I'm sorry, dearest," I answered. "The Inventors Guild is having a high level meeting, and since I founded the Guild, I can't very well get out of it."

"I suppose not," she agreed sullenly. Picking up my top hat from an end table beside the sofa, she put it on my head as if I were a king receiving his crown. I took her hands in mine and kissed the backs of both of them.

"Do not worry, my love. I'll be home in a few hours," I promised. Drawing her close, I smelled of the perfume in her hair and whispered in her ear. "When I get back, I'll make it up to you."

"Say a few more things like that, dearest husband, and I won't let you out the door," Rosha replied with a playful smile.

Giving her another kiss, I departed through the double doors to the terrace where my steam balloon waited. The rounded oval of the hull provided a location for the steam engine and controls. A rudder on the ornate tail and slender wings to either side provided the means of guidance for the craft. It wasn't as fast or maneuverable as something I could've made with a gravity distortion drive, but with the technology level of the present age, it served its purpose.

I untied the balloon from the terrace and climbed aboard, setting my hat in a padded box to keep from losing it to the winds. I tugged down the bottom edge of my leather vest; taking my pocket watch out and flipping open the cover, I saw I still had plenty of time to reach the meeting hall. Engaging the front propeller, I guided the balloon in a slow and graceful turn around our home.

Rosha stepped out on the balcony to wave goodbye, and I suddenly remembered what I'd been planning to give her. Scooping the rose from the upholstered bench of red velvet ringing the perimeter of the flight deck, I wrapped one of the landing lines around my arm and over my shoulder. Stepping out on the wing of my airship, I leaned against the rope to reach as far as I could manage safely.

Rosha also leaned over the balcony railing, but the distance was still too great. I tossed the flower, and she deftly captured it without injuring herself on the thorns.

"Farewell, my sweet," I said with a bow.

She placed her nose in the flower and smelled deeply before waving to me, a loving smile upon her lips.

Returning to the controls of my balloon, I steered a course across the forested hills of my new homeland. The wind swept gently across the distant mountains, filling the valley below with a soft covering of white clouds that obscured many of the trees and mountain peaks. The morning sun touched my face with its warming glow, and I breathed deep the clean air of the open skies.

Rosha and I had escaped the clans and the wars of our own century. Because of the changes we'd caused in the timeline since, the clan wars would never happen. We were making a new future, a better future, and I couldn't imagine it being any better.