“This sucks.”

“Jake, don’t say things like that in front of Gem,” Elizabeth Morgan admonished. Fourteen-year-old Jake Morgan rolled his eyes.

“Mom, she’s five. She can handle the word suck,” Jake insisted.

“What’s suck?” Grace-Emily Morgan asked her blue eyes wide with curiosity. “Is it a bad word?” she asked, in a hushed voice.

Elizabeth sighed and set a bowl of cereal in front of her youngest child. “Not all the time,” she explained.

“When’s Dad coming home?” Jake demanded. “He’d let me go.”

“You’re not going,” Elizabeth said firmly.

“But Ryan’s going!” Jake whined. “He’s only a year older than me.”

“I don’t care. You are not Ryan and I am not Carly,” Elizabeth replied. She took a sponge from the sink and started to wipe some crumbs from Jake’s toast. “Carrie!” she called. “You’d better get down here or you’re not going to be able to eat before the bus gets here!”

“Ryan and Addie get driven to school in a limo,” Jake remarked scornfully.

“I don’t care what Ryan and Addie do,” Elizabeth retorted, trying to control her temper. “You are not some spoiled rich kid. I rode the bus when I was your age and I think I turned out just fine.” She tossed the sponge back into the sink. “Caroline Audrey Morgan!”

“I’m coming!” Carrie called. “I just need to brush my hair.”

“She was brushing her car when I passed her room,” Gem reported dutifully.

“That was ten minutes ago!” Elizabeth sank into a chair. “I need a vacation,” she grumbled.

“Ryan says you’re an uptight person who hates Dad’s job and that’s why we never get to do any cool stuff,” Jake reported.

Elizabeth’s head snapped up, her dark blue eyes burning with anger. “Excuse me?” she demanded.

Jake gulped. “That’s what Ryan said,” he reminded her. “Not me.”

“What’s uptight?” Gem asked her mouth full of cereal.

“Don’t speak with food in your mouth,” Elizabeth told her, ignoring the question. “And where did Ryan pick up this lovely nugget of information?”

“Uh” Jake frowned, not wanting to get Ryan in trouble. “I don’t really remember.”

“If you want to go to Boston this weekend, you’ll remember right now,” Elizabeth warned.

“I think maybe from his mother,” Jake said carefully.

“I am going to kill her,” Elizabeth muttered.

“That’s not nice, Mommy,” Gem admonished, waving her spoon at her mother.

“Sorry, baby,” Elizabeth murmured, holding her head in her hands. “Mommy’s just tired.”

Six-year-old Caroline Morgan entered the kitchen then. “Where’s breakfast?” she chirped.

After Elizabeth had sent Jake and the girls to the bus stop, she moved around the kitchen deftly, cleaning up the remnants of breakfast. Jason had wanted to hire someone to help out while he wasn’t in town, but Elizabeth had staunchly refused. She was pregnantthat didn’t mean she was incapable of taking care of their rambunctious children.

She was beginning to regret that decision.

She was just about finished and ready for a nap when the kitchen phone rang.

“Hello?” she yawned.

“It’s me,” Jason said. “You sound tired.”

She smiled and leaned against the kitchen wall. “I am. You try cooking and serving breakfast to three children.”

“I’ll be home tonight,” Jason told her. “And tomorrow, you can sleep in.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “Don’t tease me.”

Before he could reply, something strange happened. The entire ground seemed to shift, the walls started to shake. Jason heard some things crashing in the background. “Elizabeth, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” she replied, panicky. “It’s like an earthquake!”

“We live in New York!” Jason shot back.

“I know that!” A few moments of panicked silence passed before she was back on the line. “It’s over. Whatever it was.”

“Are you okay?” Jason demanded.

“I’m fine,” Elizabeth replied. “Just a little shaken up. I’m going to call the school I want to check on the kids. I’ll see you tonight.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

—–

While Elizabeth had experienced what felt like a minor earthquake back home, Jake and his sisters had quite a difference experience altogether.

There was a bright, nearly blinding light and when it disappeared, the trio was completely alone in an empty room.

“Uh” Jake looked around. “This doesn’t look like the bus stop.”

“Where are we?” Carrie demanded her voice high and shrill. Instead of being confused or complaining, Gem started to cry.

“Aw, hell,” Jake muttered. He kneeled down in front of his sister. “Come on, Gemmie. Don’t cry. It’s not that bad. I’m sure this is just a hallucination or something.”

“Or something is about right.”

The strange voice had Jake lunging his feet and shoving his sisters behind him out of instinct. “Who are you?” he demanded of the dark-haired man who’d entered the room. “Where are we?”

The man smirked. “Just like your father. Confrontational and protective. You’re safe, don’t worry.”

“What’s going on?” Jake asked, not letting down his guard.

“You three are here to correct a minor little problem we seemed to have come across,” the man remarked. “I probably look familiar to you”

“Hey, that’s Uncle Sonny’s old lawyer!” Carrie announced gleefully. “I seen pictures of him. The ones Daddy threw out.”

The man smirked. “Yeah, Jason was never too fond of my brief attraction to your mother.”

Jake narrowed his eyes. “What do you want?”

“I’m Ric Lansing, an old friend of Sonny’s,” Ric introduced himself. “Now, back in Port Charles, most people experienced something that felt like an earthquake. It wasn’t anything of the kind. We at the WSB”

“WSB?” Gem interrupted. “Is that like the FBI?” she asked curiously. “Because if it is, I don’t think Daddy would want us talking you.”

“Be quiet, Gem,” Jake instructed. “I know what the WSB is,” he said.

“I work in a division that oversees time travel,” Ric said.

“Time travel doesn’t exist,” Jake replied confused.

“Yeah, that’s what we want you to believe. In any case, the earthquake was actually a shift in the time line,” Ric explained. “We had a minor computer glitch and it kind of screwed with the past.”

“So fix it,” Jake said.

“It’s not that easy,” Ric said. “See, the minor computer glitch was actually someone who sort of…well, for the lack of better word, hacked into the system to change a specific event. We’re not sure what the event is, but we do know that it has something to do with your parents.”

“I want my mommy,” Gem demanded. “Where’s my mommy?”

“Someone didn’t want your parents to get married,” Ric continued. “We don’t know who it is at this point, but whoever it was, they went back in time and did something to change the outcome of your parents’ relationship.”

“Why do you care?” Jake asked. “And what do you expect us to do about it?”

“I care because preserving the timeline is my job. We never ever change anything that happened in the past,” Ric explained, some slight frustration becoming evident in his voice. “We can’t even change the Holocaust or any World Wars because it would screw up too many things. I care because the sanctity of my life’s work has been disrupted and my job’s on the line.”

“And where do we come in?” Jake asked. “Shouldn’t you have some agent fix it?”

“We’re trying to keep this contained,” Ric went on. “Only myself and few agents know about it. We decided that launching a full fledged investigation was not prudent at this time. It would take too long and in the progress, you and your sisters would cease to exist. We can’t take the chance that someone else might figure this out.”

Jake frowned. “So you want us to go and fix it?” he asked, curiously. “Why us? We’re only kids.”

“Who else knows your parents better?” Ric asked. “Look, I don’t like it. It’s not the best decision my team’s ever made, but it’s the best we can do. We’ve contacted an old agent back in 2002. He’s gonna help out, so why don’t we get the three of you briefed and get this taken care of.”

“You realize that Carrie and Gem are only six and five, right?” Jake reminded him. “That I am only fourteen?”

“Yeah, your ages are a drawback, but we’re running out of time and options,” Ric finished. “Let’s get this over with.” He pressed a button and a door appeared in the wall. “You ready?”

Jake eyed his younger sisters behind him. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”