Heat slapped Sam as soon as she stepped out of the portal. 2285 was a time of advanced technology, yet the air was thick with tension. She stood in a metropolis, but something was very off. The sky - now a brilliant azure - had a strange reddish hue. Sleek, metallic buildings were festooned with flickering holograms of warnings in multiple languages.
Sam's chronometer beeped, homing in on the anomaly. That was close.
"Finn, I'm here," she spoke softly, her eyes scanning her surroundings. "The rift is somewhere around the city center. I'm moving in."
Finn's voice came over the comms, crackling. "Copy that. Be careful, Sam. I've picked up some strange movements in the surrounding areas. I think the locals are already onto something not quite right."
Sam ran through the streets, the chronometer leading her towards the tear. While approaching the center of town she begins to pick up on some irritations: Citizens are scurrying quickly whispering nervously with one another and the constant red glow seemed to throb ominously overhead.
Then she saw it.
The rupture flopped and contorted in the middle of the city square, like a wound in reality. Edges frayed and sparked with temporal energy. But what Sam was actually paying attention to wasn't the rift-it was the figure standing in front of it.
Tall, robed in a flowing black robe that seemed to shift and warp with the air around him, was the man-or at least, something that resembled one. His face obscured, the air about him crackled with power. He stood with one hand raised, as though manipulating the rift, feeding it energy and keeping it open.
Sam's heart pounded in her chest. This was it. This was the one Jackson had warned her about.
That was the one ripping the timeline in half.
Sam raised her stabilizer, thinking nothing of it, to close the rift. Just before she could act, the man had turned; his gaze locked onto hers.
And then, with a voice that seemed to echo across all time, he spoke:
"I've been waiting for you, Sam Baxter."
The battle over the timeline was just getting started.