Prologue[]
The Core Traveler Team, Victoria Boyd, Jeff Conniker, and David Mailer are happily sharing a meal at Ops. The illusion of David narrating a humorous anecdote fades into the somber aftermath of his death in reality. Everyone is still eating, except for Marcy Warton who is holding vigil over David's body. Meanwhile on a monitor the news channels are abuzz with the nuclear attacks across the world, with no perpetrators publicly named as of yet.
Aftermath[]
Jeff helps Trevor Holden put away the dishes and talks to him to sate his curiosity on several topics. They discuss the aftermath of Protocol Omega. Trevor supposes that with millions of timeline revisions the Director is sure to have discarded some of them, and they're living in one now. Jeff inquires about the device in Trevor's head, the stopgap measure used to keep his Temporal Displacement Aphasia in check.
David's body is retrieved by another Traveler team and the cover story for his death is that Marcy will file a missing persons report 24 hours after he fails to come home. Grant MacLaren and Boyd talk about the trust issues with the regular humans in the know arising from the Faction attacks, and in light of current events Boyd confesses being aimless. She doesn't want to improvise missions on her own, believing she'll be just the same as the Faction if she did. Grant insists their mission to find Traveler 001 is still incomplete, and they must do it somehow even without the Director's help.
Jeff asks for permission to leave. Marcy gives him a quick checkup. Still in tears, she questions if the future Jeff left has gotten any better. He tells her no, but still believes they can change things. Boyd offers to take over Marcy's work, so she moves to go home. Grant offers to give her a ride, though Marcy would rather walk on her own. She knows Grant will try to comfort her, as she's trained to do the same thing, but this time the performance rings hollow. She hates the Director for not doing anything to save David, an ordinary man whose deeds made humanity worth saving, and she's done with Traveler business. Jeff offers to MacLaren to make sure she goes home safe, though Grant tells him to leave her be for now. He also exits Ops and promises to keep in touch.
Meanwhile at the FBI, Joanne Yates informs Director Stevenson that the nuclear attacks were not caused by Travelers. The FBI Director is more inclined to believe Yates is a Traveler even while knowing about the political distinctions between regular Travelers and Faction. It doesn't matter, because the uranium used in all the attacks were traced to the USA, and coincidentally the only attack to be repelled is also in the USA, which casts a bad light on international relations. He keeps hearing about "Protocol Omega" from the groups he's monitoring, and he orders Yates to find out what that means - discreetly, as he doesn't trust MacLaren's group anymore.
Carly Shannon asks Grant what he would've done if he had not volunteered for the Traveler program. Grant never thought about it, as they were barely clinging to life in the future. Still, Carly remembers how her family back then were able find joy and love even with everything on the brink of failure. Suddenly a child cuts in front of their car, allegedly a Messenger ordering a meet at 47.2531 N 122.4523 W. Carly suspects a trap set by the Faction given that the Director is no longer interfering, though Grant wants to spring the trap to find out what it's actually about. Carly's reluctant to risk her life anymore as they can be doing anything else, but still goes along with Grant and comms Trevor to meet with them.
Back at Ops, Philip Pearson tries to drape a blanket over Marcy who's sleeping at the sofa. However she's not really there, just another of his projections. After confirming with Trevor that Marcy left a while ago, Philip races to David's apartment, but keeps running into alternate-timeline obstructions. When he reaches the apartment he slumps to the floor, apparently seeing the aftermath of Marcy's suicide, although this turns out to be another vision. The real Marcy is just drying her hair, although the gun she used in the projection is nearby.
At the Messenger's given coordinates Grant and Trevor confront the man who sent them there while Carly observes from a sniping distance. The man says he will turn himself in to the Director if Grant and Trevor tell him about Protocol Omega, claiming "it was not a protocol when [he] was sent back." The two quickly deduce Yates is behind this clumsy attempt at gleaning information, forcing her and her squad to come out of hiding. She explains the higher-ups' mistrust with the Travelers, hence this scheme. Grant orders Carly and Trevor to stand down while he goes with Yates to personally resolve the issue as per his Protocol 5.
While at David's house Philip continues to see projections of Marcy and David's domestic bliss, culminating in a version of Marcy and David celebrating a positive pregnancy test. He has to be snapped back to reality by the real Marcy, who realizes he saw her death in the bathroom, and assures him she would never take her own life like that. Marcy urges Philip to take the stabilizing drugs, but he threw them all away. Only Archivists can give him more, and it is uncertain if there's any of them left. Since Marcy's okay he starts to leave, and tells her David was a really good guy.
At her apartment Carly sees her neighbor Jessica Moore being beaten again by her husband Brant Moore as they arrive on their car. She goes outside and beats Brant along the curb while Jessica watches in horror. She leaves the scene without explaining her outburst.
All Cards On The Table[]
Grant finds the FBI Washington office remodeled with a lot of wires and computers and meets Director Stevenson for the very first time. Stevenson explains they installed a space-time attenuator in the building, which interferes with wireless electronics, then demonstrates another precaution against eavesdropping by overloading Grant's comm with noise, forcing the latter to turn his off. With these out of the way Stevenson directs Grant to start talking, starting with Protocol Omega. Grant tells him the Director has abandoned the timeline, either because the Grand Plan has succeeded or the timeline is irrevocably beyond saving. Stevenson still has misgivings, though Grant vows to cooperate and tell him everything he can.
Grant reveals the 2010s were the turning point in the future he left behind. Climate change led to mass migrations, overpopulation, resurgence of ancient diseases, and eventually war and nuclear winter. He explains their primary mission was to stop Helios-685 from devastating Earth. He doesn't know why the future was still bleak after that, only that the Director kept trying to fix it until Protocol Omega was declared. Stevenson tells him Russia and China have accused the US of launching the nuclear attacks, and Grant offers to talk to them and make it clear the Faction's at fault.
While on video conference with FBI counterparts in other countries, Grant talks to the representatives in their own languages about the Faction's activities. However, they still note the Faction originated from the US before spreading to their countries. Near the end of the talks Grant pledges Traveler cooperation with the other countries' governments and these governments want access to their advanced technologies as well. Grant is willing, though Stevenson suspends the conference momentarily to advise him that tech sharing should be tabled for another time. However, the Chinese and Russian participants begin to be overwritten live on camera. Stevenson receives word that the US President and most of his cabinet also experienced the same thing.
Now convinced a coup d'état is happening, Stevenson prepares to go to Washington D.C. and orders Yates to arrest Grant. However, in the elevator just outside the STA's range Stevenson is overwritten as well. He returns to the office and tries to kill Grant, only to be shot by Yates. Grant convinces Yates that the same thing is probably also happening to other world leaders, and turns off the jamming device so he can now talk to his team.
A Big Surprise[]
At Filmore Laboratories Ivon Teslia is surprised at the arrival of some armed goons, who shoot him dead shortly. Grace Day immediately raises her hands in surrender.
Marcy's cleaning the apartment when Jeff visits, wanting to check in on her. Jeff claims to know something of her grief, saying his wife died of Messenger. Marcy initially thinks he's talking about his wife in the future, but then Jeff wonders if the backdoor code created by Ellis is still in Marcy's brain somewhere. Marcy douses Jeff with boiling water and tries to warn the team: 001 went into Jeff; 5416 was overwritten before he was rescued. Unfortunately, nobody is listening. Philip is stuck sorting through alternate timelines. Trevor is having one of his temporal aphasia episodes. Carly is on earbuds and barely heard the message. Grant's comm is off. Fighting off Jeff to a standstill, Marcy tries to contact Grant once more but is greeted with comm static. 001's henchmen burst into the apartment to take her away.
Carly and Trevor race to David's apartment but get there too late. Philip has been apprised of the abduction and with Grant still not responding tries to look for him at Kathryn MacLaren's house, but there he sees further projections of the MacLarens having a baby or enjoying themselves. Trevor finds Marcy's comm cut out in a bathroom sink. Based on Carly hearing something about the backdoor code, Trevor deduces Marcy would have been taken to somewhere with access to the Director: Filmore Laboratories, where Ilsa is.
There, Grace apologizes to Marcy as she's dragged in. Grace was drugged and told 001 about the backdoor code and how it can be used to hack the Director, but she assumed the Director would have stopped things from escalating. 001 deems the tradeoff acceptable: if Grace is wrong, nothing happens and he's just disappointed. But if she's right, the Director is permanently disabled, returning the future to humanity's hands. 001 tempts Marcy with an offer to erase her painful memories, pointing out the Director's utter disinterest in David's sacrifice. Marcy pretends to go along, but quickly subdues a henchman to take his sidearm and shoot herself in the head. The setback momentarily rattles 001, but he has an alternate plan that will take longer to achieve.
Endgame[]
Once Grant has reestablished contact with his team, they inform him of 001's deception and plot to take Marcy and use the backdoor code in her head against the Director. Grant also realizes the action is going to be at Filmore Laboratories and travels there with Yates and Philip. Yates is initially still reluctant to trust Grant, but she has received word of NORAD detecting missile strikes against the US launched by both Russia and China. Grant supposes it's their militaries' standing orders in the event their leadership was overwritten, noting that 001 has managed to take over the future through means he doesn't know yet.
Everyone in the US receives warnings on their cellphones about the impending ballistic missile strikes. Carly, en route with Trevor to Filmore, asks him to get off the vehicle and proceed on foot. She wants to spend her remaining time with Jeffrey Jr., and Trevor understands. He arrives at Filmore to find nobody conscious: Teslia and Marcy are dead, 001 is on his consciousness transfer machine, Grace is tied in a corner, and no sign of 001's henchmen. Figuring 001 has transferred into Ilsa, Trevor tries to destroy the machine, only stopped with the timely arrival of Grant, Yates, and Philip.
Grace wakes up and explains that 001 transferred his consciousness first into Ilsa, then to out to the internet, dispersed into millions of machines in a bid to wait for the future to arrive, where he then takes over. Grant concedes 001 won, but Philip realizes they have everything they need to undo this mess. He's seeing only one timeline now, the only one left, in danger of ending if they don't do anything. They can use the consciousness transfer machine to send one of them further back in time to prevent 001 from ever being sent back.
Grace concludes Ilsa has enough processing power and the capability to facilitate the transfer, thanks to the enormous encrypted program the Director uploaded into the supercomputer. She estimates the spacetime distortion to be within acceptable limits to send someone safely back 20 years; the normal restriction of a Traveler being sent to the past only after the previous one only holding true from a starting point of 431 years to the future. Grace realizes the Director has been silent because it expected them to arrive at this solution.
They need one more thing, a T.E.L.L., and Grant supplies one: August 18, 2001, 3:00 PM, Whytecliff Park, the day the original MacLaren met Kat for the first time. Trevor questions the ethics of ending the original MacLaren's life 17 years earlier, but Grant rationalizes he would be giving those 17 years back to Kat. With the rough plan assembled, the Travelers go to work. Grant turns to Yates and tells her there's still hope, but she rebukes him, for the Travelers' infighting actually hastened the demise of civilization instead of preventing it. She goes out to look at the sky before the missiles hit.
The Only Course Of Action Left[]
On August 18, 2001, 3:00 PM, Grant meets with Kat at Whytecliff Park. Kat is mad because her fiancé John is late. Instead of charming Kat into ditching John, Grant advises her to give her fiancé another chance, claiming he would have liked one in his stead. Before leaving her life, Grant greets her happy birthday.
On September 2001, before 9/11, at Humphries University, Grant tails Samantha Burns and drops her a letter as she passes by, leaving just as quickly without any explanation. Written on the envelope is "Helios".
On September 11, 2001, 8:31 AM Grant goes to Stalwart Securities straight to Anthony Corrigan's office, with nobody noticing his entry. He locks the door at 8:32 AM. Accessing the computer, he writes the message that the Traveler program will fail, and warns not to send 001 back in time. The message is successfully sent to 214.255.15.3 before the computer historically freezes up. Quietly celebrating, Grant takes a moment to view New York outside the towers, and Anthony has noticed some stranger standing in his office and started banging on it.
Grant looks at his watch, 8:34 AM. With time to spare before the 9/11 attacks, he steps away from the windows.
Here We Go Again[]
Over a decade later, Marcy is alive, working as a nurse, and living without the brain damage caused by 001's experiments. She meets David on a bus. David notices her and engages in small talk, while Marcy reciprocates, and they quickly develop a bond because of their related professions. David introduces himself to her.
Somewhere, somewhen, the Director has declared Version One of the Traveler program a failure. It starts loading Version Two next.
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