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Priya doesn't know the name of the child in the photograph, the girl with her mother's smile, with her uncle's single dimple. She doesn't know her name and she feels a moment of maternal terror, because this child is her daughter and she's never met her before in her life.
"What have you done?" she says out loud, a horrified rasp, but she doesn't know and it could be anything. It could be something that they could never put right again.
Abandoning her desk, she races down to the window, even though it shows her nothing but the entry point, even though she's looking at a field of grass blowing gently in the wind and nothing of what Shaun and Danny are actually doing on the other side.
"Ellis? Ellis!"
He's already there, having tracked her frantic progress the whole way. "What? What is it?"
She didn't realise she grabbed it, but she has the photo in her hand and she holds it out to him. "This isn't my son."
"Or if it is, he's sure not how I remember him from his birthday party," says Ellis.
"Something's changed on the outside. What happened?"
"Nothing," says Ellis. "Nothing that Shaun or Danny noted to me, anyway."
"Well something happened," she says. "Find out!"
"I'll do what I can," he says, and he's on the comm to them right away, true to his word. They run through every move that they made, everything they touched, everyone they made contact with, sending the information straight back to Charlie who's working it from both ends, both the contacts they made and the sequence of events that had led to Priya having her son.
It's an hour before he has anything for her.
"Okay, here's what I think happened," says Charlie, "and bear with me because this is mostly conjecture."
"Get on with it!" says Priya. "Just tell me!"
"It's your sperm donor," says Charlie. "I think Knox just prevented his parents from meeting."
"What?" says Priya.
"There's no way we could have predicted this," says Lyndsay. "Passing through the crowd at the track should have been an inconsequential act."
"There's no such thing as an inconsequential act," says Priya. "I want my son back!"
She could learn to love a daughter, if it comes to that. She could meet that little girl and learn her the way she knows her son. But she is not a replacement, and the idea of losing her son, of being forced to mourn someone who no one else remembers, is unbearable.
"They can't go back, Priya," says Lyndsay gently. "They're already too far gone on their mission. And even if they weren't, just trying in the timeframe we have could send more ripples. Wider-spread ripples."
Priya understands that this single effect is not significant in the grand scheme of things. Except that it is. Except that is' everything to her.
"Then let me go," she says. "I'll go. I'll fix this."
"I...don't know," says Lyndsay, looking from Ellis to Charlie and back to Priya again.
"It could work," offers Ellis, "if we're minimally invasive. Priya can outfit herself faster than I dress myself in the morning."
"It's my only chance," says Priya, jumping on it. "Whatever it takes. Please. I can't lose him."
Had there been someone with medals on their chest nearby, they probably would have vetoed it on the spot, but there weren't. Not with the mission already in progress. And so Lyndsay finally nods her head. "Go," she says, "We have to do this fast."
"I'm on it," says Priya, and she doesn't think about it as she goes, tells herself it's just another mission. Tells herself whatever it takes to keep her calm and focused. She can't change until she puts the photo down, though, and she very nearly has to pry her hand from it. She has to go now, though, right now, before the moment is gone. Before everything changes forever.
She meets them back at the window in ten minutes. She is ready to go.
"Are you sure about this?" says Ellis, and Priya has to think about it but she nods. One misstep and she could change someone else's life irrevocably, and that's going to weigh on her, but he has to try to get her family back. She'd never forgive herself for not trying.
"Just in and out, right?" she says. One person won't destabilize it enough to close the window before they can all complete their missions. She hopes.
"Just in and out," says Ellis, and Priya takes a deep breath and steps through.
It's like floating, not serenely but violently, like she's in a windstorm. No description of the experience could have prepared her for this, because there isn't anything to compare it to, there's no simile or metaphor to be made. She lands hard on the grass, her hat falling off, and she's disoriented enough for a moment that she's standing unsteadily and shaking out her dress before she realises she's hearing Ellis in her ear.
"Straight into the building," he says. "Talk to no one but the man in the blue jacket. Tell him the Barbie Esset was asking about him, and she's over by the stands. Say goodbye, and leave again."
"I've got it," she says, and prays that she'll know the man in the blue jacket when she sees him, that Barbie Esset will still be by the stands, and that they'll hit it off under slightly different circumstances than the first time around. And that she won't prevent the birth of an astronaut or a movie star along the way.
The blue jacket is more of a navy, but it's the only blue in a sea of taupe and grey, and so she fixes her hat one more time and hopes she doesn't stand out any more than any other woman at the track and approaches him.
"Good morning," she says, shading her eyes from the sun. Well, at least she got his attention, if that leer is anything to go by. "I shouldn't be doing this, but my friend Barbie? Well, she's too shy to come over her and talk to you herself."
"Barbie?"
"She's over by the stands. I think you know her? Barbie Esset?"
"Little Barbie?" he says. "I knew her dad. Boy did she grow up nice, huh?"
"She was hoping," says Priya, moving on quickly, "that you might've noticed her."
"You sure you weren't coming over her hoping I would notice you?" he says, and Priya is grateful she's still wearing her wedding band.
"Taken, I'm afraid," she says. "My husband's waiting. Don't tell Barbie I sent you, all right? Let her think it was your idea."
He doesn't answer, apparently because he's already checking out Barbie Esset. Priya doesn't wait around, she turns on her heel and very carefully doesn't so much as nudge anyone else on her way out, doesn't even make eye contact, and heads straight back for the window. She followed instructions to the letter. She can only hope that it made a difference, in the end.
The trip in the other direction is just as disorienting, but this time she hits the ground running, slipping right out of the zone of the window and smacking into a concrete barrier before someone lets her out.
"Show me," she says. "Show me, please."
Ellis is smiling when he hands over the photo, but Priya won't let herself believe it until she sees it for herself, the beautiful smiling face of her little boy.
"Let's hope the other mission is as successful as yours was, shall we?" says Lyndsay, and giving herself only a few moments for her heart to stop pounding, Priya heads straight back to her desk. She'll deal with the ramifications of everything later, the idea that it could happen again, to her or to anyone, so easily. That she travelled back in time.
But right now there's work to be done.