As the zombified crew of the Galene start attempting to board the small lifeboat, Fred‘s voice shrieks through the air. “Angel, I’m open to ideas!” She’s defending herself with an oar, which can swat them away, while Angel, useless in the sun, cowers behind her and his barrel shield.

As Fred kicks another zombie from the side of the boat, another comes up on Angel’s side. He pushes his hand out towards the creature, punching him in the face and knocking him back, but his hand takes the full force of the sun for a moment and it sizzles as he pulls it back.

More zombies, one after the other. One grabs Fred’s arm. Angel doesn’t think about the sun after that. He throws himself towards the zombie, hurling his barrel shield to one side and pushes him from Fred, knocking them both into the ocean.

“Angel, you can’t!” Fred yells in alarm, both for her friend and the idea of being alone on the ocean. She can already see his face starting to blister. He punches the zombie twice in the water and then disappears under the surface.

For a moment, Angel is gone. Fred looks down. She waits two seconds, then another three. Still no Angel. Then the boat starts moving, away from the crowding zombies, and darts, as if propelled, in the opposite direction.

Fred looks back at the zombified horde, yelling Angel’s name. She jumps as a hand comes from the water at the side of the boat and touches her fingertips.

When Angel, who’s been swimming and pushing the boat out of danger, pokes his head above water, Fred feels her heart stop pounding and smiles.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he explains. “But if you could maybe cast some shade over here, that would be appreciated.”

Fred shields him with her body as she stretches, reaching for the barrel shield. “That looks really painful.” She holds the shield over his head the best she can, with Angel staying in the water.

“It’ll heal a lot faster than you would have. Especially if they’d dragged you to the bottom.”

Fred looks at him, slight despair creeping into her tone. “What now? I don’t think they’ll just give up, and we can’t lead them anywhere inhabited.”

Angel immediately gives her a solution. “There’s an island nearby. Tiny, just volcanic rock, but taking a stand there could buy us some time.”

Fred wonders how he knows it’s there: did he see it in the past? Angel tells her he can smell the different rocks, but then reveals he’s only kidding. It’s a guess, but a good one.

“I’ll start rowing.”

Angel smiles and then disappears again. He appears behind the boat. “No need.”

Then he dives back under, with Fred alone aboard the lifeboat, clutching his coat in her arms. She looks at the vast ocean, with nothing in view. She feels the sun on her face, warm and welcoming. It would be pleasant if she were anywhere else.

Exhausted by the last few hours, Fred Burkle begins to doze.

She’s awoken by Angel calling her name from the water. She has no idea what time it is, but the sun is going down. Angel tells her that it’s been a while. The zombies are still heading in their direction, but at least they’re ahead of them. Fred picks up the oar, readying it as a weapon. Angel tells her to keep it close by.

As their boat moves quickly towards the island, the pull of the shore starts to draw it in. Fred spies a familiar-looking boat smashed against some rocks, with the word Galene on the side.

“Oh good,” she sighs. “It looks like Angelus and Darla also caught the scent of the island.” She whispers to the Old One inside her, hoping for the best. “Wonderful. Illyria, I really do hope you’re paying attention to this situation…”

When they reach the shore, Fred hands Angel his jacket. It’ll keep his body warmer at least, even if he’s used to the cold. Angel looks up at the mountain in the middle of the island. Definitely a volcano. “We’ve got to get away from the water. Or rather, what’s going to come out of the water.”

Fred barely hears him as they move up the rocky terrain. “You said this island would be volcanic. I kinda hoped you’d be wrong.” Angel turns to her, asks why.

“It’s just that we keep seeing, I don’t know, echoes of past events. Illyria’s volcano in the deep past, and this? Like, you remember Angelus and Darla killing the crew, but we saved them and then they died anyway…”

They keep moving, but Angel lets her talk, listening intently to her theory.

“Which is odd, because they were killed by bugs. The very thing that started all this, and that we’re trying to avoid in the future. It’s like we can change events easily enough, but changing the course of history itself is harder.”

Angel stops and turns towards her now. “I’m not sure I like where this is going. Are you trying to say we’re fated to lose? Where would I be now if I had just accepted vampirism as my fate? Getting my soul back wouldn’t have fixed that. I had to fight, still have to fight, against that every day.”

He hears something, a buzzing noise. He asks Fred if she hears it, but she carries on, engrossed in the science.

“Well maybe it’s the same. You’re a good person, Angel. The fact that doing good isn’t easy for you proves it. Maybe history wants to take the easy path. It’s up to us to push hard enough to force it to take the hard one. And by noticing patterns we might be able to figure out where to apply pressure.”

Angel considers her points and then starts to question them, but then a beetle flies between them as they scale the now-steeper cliff face. Angel yells at her to watch out. Fred sees it, but Angel has looked below them now. At the bottom, following them in their own slow, lumbering way, are the crew of the Galene.

Fred looks at them, pulling a disgusted face. “Being immersed in salt water for a full day didn’t improve them any.”

“Too bad it didn’t slow them down any either,” Angel says. He and Fred turn and find a big enough boulder and then proceed to push it together down the way they came, hitting the zombie crew back to the bottom.

“Not exactly a precision instrument,” Fred smiles.

“At least we won’t run out,” Angel grins. But then more rocks come from above them, smaller but still raining down. “What the?” Looking up, Angel’s words trail off.

Darla and Angelus are standing just above them, blocking their path. “It’s time you told us who you really are,” Darla growls.

“We can’t do that,” Angel tells them.

“Your ‘can’t’ sounds a lot like a ‘won’t’,” Angelus’s hate-filled voice is next.

Angel looks at his former self and swallows hard. “Just trust me on this.”

“He’s telling you the truth!” Fred shouts, trying to reason with the vampires.

“There’s something very unnatural going on here, Darla,” Angelus says, not taking his eyes off Angel. “I don’t like it.”

“Nor do I. But I’d rather face it than run from it.”

Fred looks behind them at the once-again approaching zombies. “Um… Angel? I think we’d better do something.”

He turns to her, whispers. “Can you call up Illyria? No offence, but she might be better at dealing with this.”

Fred shakes her head. “I get the feeling she thinks she’s going to have a difficult task soon. But I can’t get through to her to learn anything more than that.”

Meanwhile, while Fred and Angel whisper, Darla and Angelus are conspiring too. Darla hears what her consort has to say and then questions his unheard theory. “No. That’s impossible. Even if you’re right, so what? It only means they can’t harm us. We can do what we like with them, if you’re right.”

“How do you account for them?” Angelus snaps at her. “The blue woman is more powerful than any being I’ve ever crossed paths with.”

“But she is no longer here.”

Angelus snarls. “Perhaps. But even if I am wrong, isn’t it obvious that they toy with us?”

Then Angel, deciding the lesser of the two dangers, yells towards them. “We’re coming up!”

Darla turns to greet him as he climbs towards her, a smile on her devilish face.

“Angelus has a theory about you. Would you like to hear it?”

Angel doesn’t look at her. It surprises him how much seeing her again hurts. “I already know what it is.”

She continues, eyeing him up and down. “Then enlighten me. Is it true? Because if it is—”

A bug flies past Fred, now arriving behind Angel. She squishes it in her hands.

“Charming,” Darla notes. “But if you’re trying to distract me…”

Fred is blunt, strength in her voice now. Scared no longer. “It was heading right for you. Which made me think… do we know they can’t hurt you just because you’re already dead? I mean, we could be in real trouble if they bored into one of your heads, right?”

Angelus again hasn’t taken his eyes off Angel and Fred. Darla points behind them, down the way they came, and a swarm of beetles surges towards them. “How did they multiply so quickly?”

The zombies reach their position, beetles crawling on their skin, popping from their skulls. They move as one coordinated attack — heading straight for Fred. “They’re targeting their attacks. Protect your heads. Don’t let them land on you!”

Fred thinks on Angel’s words, up against the far side of the rock face, the volcano beneath them. “Targeting their attacks… And doing it on a volcanic island, right next to what used to be a lava tube…” She then turns to Angel with urgency in her voice. “Angel, I have a plan!”

Angelus, meanwhile, is snarling in anger, held in place by four zombie crewmen, beetles swarming around.

Angel sees his counterpart and picks up a zombie. He throws it at the other zombies holding Angelus. Angelus is surprised by his other self’s actions.

At the foot of the volcano, Fred has found the best possible spot for her plan. She closes her eyes and whispers to Illyria inside. She begins to plead.

Angel tells his past self that Fred has a plan. He begs Angelus to help keep her safe while they enact it. Angelus, confused but overwhelmed by more crewmen, looks to Darla for affirmation.

She’s busy, fending off crewmen herself. “Careful. It could be a trap.”

He growls back, breaking the neck of one zombie. “I don’t know what this is, but a carefully choreographed snare it is not.”

“Illyria, I know you can hear me. And I know you’re probably thinking what I’m thinking. So please, let’s try to work together for once?”

At the rock face, Fred’s eyes are still closed. “I know you can hear me, and know you’re probably thinking what I’m thinking… So please, let’s try to work together please.” Nothing happens for a moment, but when Fred opens her eyes, Illyria rises in her place.

Darla stares at her in astonishment. “She is back.”

Angelus is also awed. “A riddle for which we should be—”

Then the Old One speaks, loud and commanding. “Quiet!” She reaches towards the rock face and it quivers underneath her touch. “My patience wears thin. Much like the walls of this lava chamber and the caldera seal beneath us.“

Then the ground splits apart in a booming roar, lava rising to fill the gaps, zombies falling into molten rock and leaving Angelus, Darla, Angel and Illyria safe on a large piece of rock, floating down the lava stream.

Angel looks around them and yells at Illyria. He’s not sure this is the best idea.

Illyria waves her hands, as if casting a spell. “Fred thought it important to close the loop. We stopped an eruption in the past. Now, ages later, that tension is released. And our enemies die in the process. Unless you have a more workable plan?“

She doesn’t give Angel time to answer. She slams her palm into the ground beneath her and turns to him.

“It builds. I am sorry, Angel. But this time there is no stopping what has begun.“

As more lava erupts, they fly through the air, propelled on the flow of the liquid rock. Angel yells at the Old One as loud as he can. “Illyria, this might be a good time to go to a different now.”

“I will do what I can,” Illyria says, a portal forming in front of them. “This will be uncomfortable. There are limits to even what I can do and bringing you both together through this may cause it to react as angrily as the caldera.“

Inside the portal, an image of a green field. Heaven compared to where they are. Angel thinks it looks familiar, like he’s been there before.

However, as they pass the threshold, the portal glitches. Illyria looks concerned, but continues.

“However, we will be away from here…“