Shanghai, 2030

Hu tried to avert the disaster so many times she had lost count. Each attempt gave Shanghai a few more days. She had pushed back disaster from June to August. A sizeable improvement.

“Dr McEnroe…,” she sighed.

She was lead to believe the explosion was a terrorist act. Though she knew nothing of the people who put her here, torn between worlds, her mission was set in stone. She had to save Chengdu.

“Okay,” she said, suddenly alert again and free of her negative thoughts. “So if it’s the Dr’s research that caused the explosion, how can I convince her to delay the principle test?”

She opened a new tab, her eyes shining with the flicker for the screen as much as her nerves. Her mind wondered to coffee. A quick search revealed the current testing window to be two weeks at the end of July. She had just short of three weeks to try to change McEnroe’s mind. No easy task given she had been preparing the Hadron Collider for its initialisation for four years.

Shanghai’s future depended on the energy the Hadron Collider was going to provide and without it, the future of the city was a bad one. She had seen chronograph reflections of the projected future, courtesy of John, and that had only focussed her efforts more keenly. Even if John was not to be trusted, they seemed to want the same thing. They still wanted Shanghai to stand tall a century from now.