United Kingdom, London, 1902
The sentence hadn't been any surprise: death by hanging.
He shouldn't have listened to Rosa Luxemburg when he and Felix had attended the conference in Berlin. He should have gone with Felix back to Russia instead of accepting the mission to go to Britain and spread the word by the propaganda of the deed.
He had done just that. Six people were dead before they had caught up with him. It wasn't dying for the course that he minded but he would have rather done it at Felix's side although the irony of being hanged in his hometown a couple decades before he was even born wasn't lost on him.
No, the surprise was the gateway that had appeared in his cell in the middle of the night.
Fifteen years after a monster had chased him through one of these lights into the wrong world and the wrong time it had come back for him.
"The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience," Ethan quoted to himself. The light was brighter than he had remembered and the shards flitted through his hands. It probably wouldn't take him to Switzerland but it would save his life.
Ethan smirked at the sheer irony of it.
Things had got really out of hand but he wasn't dead yet and he just might make it home.
The woman's face was tanned and her long brown tresses fell openly over her shoulders when she kneeled down next to him.
"Do you feel better?" she asked.
"Where am I?"
She shrugged. "Far away from home. Like the rest of us." She helped him stand up. "I'm Charlotte."
The future
"We found an anomaly back into the time before," Mandras told them, coughing heavily as he did. By this world's standard he was old but not as ancient as Matt's father. "I will send you back to set right what went wrong."
"Why me?" Matt asked.
"Because you came from that time. You can fit in where we can't."
"I haven't been there for 20 years," Matt argued. "It's too much for one man."
"You father will come with you," Mandras coughed again. "He knows our history better than anyone else. It is in your hands to save us."