It was 2004. The children were now fifteen years old. As every morning, their robot mother rang a little bell to summon the family to breakfast. Everyone approached the dining room quickly, standing behind their chairs, waiting for the old man to speak the key word:
—"Sit."
Everyone sat instantly. No one dared joke or break protocol. They already knew the consequences. Klaus had once been left without food for a week for speaking without permission.
At the table, Allison and Luther exchanged subtle glances. Ben was quietly reading a book. Diego spun a knife between his fingers. Suddenly, Number Five made a sharp noise with his knife against the table.
—"You know very well no one talks at the table," said Reginald Hargreeves, his voice firm but calm.
—"I want to time travel," replied Five, defiant.
He and Reginald argued in front of everyone. In the end, Five, frustrated, stormed out the door without another word. Moments later, he activated his power and disappeared in a flash of blue light.
But he didn't land in 2019 as planned. Due to a miscalculation, he arrived in 2020. And that one mistake was enough to alter the future.
At that same time, Zero —now Savitar— had also accidentally traveled to 2020 instead of 2019. From the shadows, he watched as the world looked different than he remembered. His presence, just like Five's, began to distort the time stream. The Commission noticed immediately.
—"An anomaly has occurred. The timeline has changed," warned one of the analysts.
Within minutes, a strike team was dispatched to eliminate Savitar. But the speedster was more than ready. In just a single second, he faced several agents in the Commission's entry hall. The fight was brutal and lightning-fast: each one was taken down before they could even raise a weapon. Time seemed to freeze around him. One agent tried to activate an emergency beacon, but Savitar disarmed him with a spinning kick, breaking his neck in one fluid motion.
With the room full of unconscious or injured bodies, Savitar looked up.
—"Who gave the order to kill me?"
No one answered. Savitar narrowed his eyes. He opened a time portal and traveled directly to 1950, to the original base of the Commission, seeking answers.
He appeared in the middle of an old supervisor hall, where the staff still wore gray suits and wrote in ledgers. Everyone turned at once as red lightning cracked through the air.
—"I'm looking for the supervisor who authorized my elimination."
Those present looked at each other, frozen in fear. No one spoke... until slowly, several of them pointed trembling fingers toward a single man in the corner of the room.
The supervisor backed away, sweating.
—"I didn't know who you were... I was just following protocol..."
—"Then let me teach you a new rule," said Savitar.
He vibrated his hand at a deadly frequency, plunged it into the man's chest, and pulled out his heart. He held it for a second, looked at it, then tossed it to the floor in disgust.
He then headed straight for the executive chamber. The heavy doors burst open, dragged by the force of his speed. His figure was surrounded by red lightning, like a living storm.
—"I am Savitar," he said in a deep voice. "And any change in time caused by me... or by my counterpart... is none of your concern."
The Commission's top officials, paralyzed by fear, said nothing. None of them knew that Zero and Savitar were the same person, and Savitar made sure it stayed that way.
That day, the Commission wrote a new rule:
"Any temporal alteration carried out by speedsters is exempt from intervention."
Thus was born an exception never before imagined in the time stream. A privilege reserved only for those who run faster than the rules themselves.