Bitter gusts screamed up and down the deserted streets of New Manhattan. Above, Skyscrapers loomed-sleek, futuristic monuments to human ambition, yet their streets were deserted. Sam Baxter was an old time-traveler-the "chrononaut," as the operatives at Nexus called them-turned hunted streets with practice ease, her senses acute. Any step could send ripples through the fabric of time. But something seemed off today.
The air vibrated with a sick quality, a hum she had grown accustomed to over the years of leaping through centuries, millennia, even epochs. A telltale signature of a temporal disturbance - a rift. This one was different, pulsing more violently, more chaotically, as if time itself screamed for help.
Sam adjusted her wrist-mounted chronometer and tapped into the Nexus's encrypted frequency. "Finn, can you hear me?"
Static crackled, and Finn's familiar voice came through. "Loud and clear, Sam. What's the situation?"
Temporal rift. West quadrant of the city. It's unstable – something's wrong.
There was a pause on the other end. "You're not going to like this, but we lost contact with one of our operatives. Jackson. He was sent to track an anomaly in the same sector, but. he's gone dark. We're not sure if he's alive, dead, or lost in time."
Sam's heart skipped a beat. Jackson was one of the good ones. If he'd vanished in this chaos, it was much worse than just a small time-space glitch. "I'll find him," she said resolutely. "I'll get him back."
"Be careful, Sam," Finn warned. "This rift-it's not like the ones we've run across. The flow of time is. sloppy. Past, future, and present are all getting mangled together into nonsensical things."
"Got it. Baxter out."
As Sam upped her pace, eyes scanning the skyline of the city for the tear, it wasn't long before she saw it: a shimmering distortion hovering between two buildings, twisting and contorting in the air like a rip in reality. Waves of energy rippled from the epicenter, bending light, warping space, and distorting time itself.
She moved forward cautiously, her chronometer beeping wildly in response to the fluctuating energy. Sam reached out to steady her breathing as she prepared to flip the dial on her stabilizer-patterned chronometer. She had to close this rift before it caused irrevocable damage to the timeline-or worse, dragged her into some distant past or future.
Just as she was reaching out for the stabilizer, something inside the rift moved. A dark figure.
"Jackson?" Sam whispered over the thrumming energy, barely above a whisper.
The figure didn't say anything. It lurched forward in its stiff, jerky motion. As it came all the way out of the rift Sam's stomach rolled over, wrung dry. It was Jackson, but something was desperately wrong. His eyes were feral, his face chalky white as if he hadn't slept in days or years. His chronosuit was torn and seared, as if he'd fought through a thousand battles in a thousand timelines.
"Jackson!" Sam lunged at him, but he drew back, tripped over his feet, and fell. His eyes are full of fear.
"No. no, don't come any closer!" Jackson screamed hoarsely. "You don't understand what's coming!"
Sam froze in place. "Jackson, it's me—Sam! What did you do? Where have you been?"
Jackson's eyes skittered wildly across the room, his mind clearly cracked. "I've seen it, Sam. I have seen . . . everything. Every timeline, every outcome. It is collapsing. He's coming."
She tightened her grip on the stabilizer, her expression shifting from annoyance to dismay. "Who is? What're you talking about?"
Just as Jackson was about to try to answer, the rift leapt upward, pulling him back into its dark liquid layers with a force that nearly flung Sam to the ground. Jackson screamed at the top of his lungs, the sound vibrating through the distorted air as the rift swept him away.
"Jackson!" She charged after him, but she was too late.
The tear glowed eerily, seeming to grow unstable by the second. She had no choice. Sam triggered the stabilizer, sending a pulse of energy toward the tear. The rip in reality quivered and collapsed inward, sealing shut with a sharp crack, leaving silence behind.
Sam stood there, panting, her mind racing. Jackson had seen something—something that had cracked him. And now he was lost, left somewhere in the chaotic ebb and flow of time.
As she activated her chronometer to report back to Finn, a chill ran down her spine. Whoever—or whatever—Jackson had warned her about, it wasn't just a threat to him. It was a threat to the entire timeline.
And it was coming.