The alarm in the lab sounded like a dying beast howling.
Adrian Craig inserted the last bronze gear into the reactor core, feeling a subtle tremor in his fingertips. Los Angeles from 2035 unfolded outside the radiation-proof glass, with neon lights in the acid rain forming broken blocks of color, reminiscent of the damaged irises of his late fiancée's funeral bouquet.
"Three minutes countdown!" Dr. Schneider's voice cut through his thoughts. Adrian glanced at his old pocket watch, a war trophy from Normandy, its brass cover etched with fading German: Zeit ist Blut (Time is Blood).
He suddenly recalled his nightmare. In it, a man in a chainmail stood before a burning church, holding a blade dripping with blood, with a field of corpses impaled by spears. His eyes were like two deep wells, bottoming out with the starry sky of the Middle Ages.
"Craig! You're f*** waiting for God to sign a contract?" Schneider's voice pierced his memory. Adrian tugged at his lips, pushing the particle accelerator's power valve to the red alert zone. The thirty-meter ring-shaped device began to hum, and ozone filled the air with a pungent odor. He knew he was gambling with his life, just like when he was seven and bet his father's hunting rifle was empty.
As the final seconds ticked down, the watch suddenly started to heat up.
A blue beam shot from the core of the reactor, wrapping around his protective suit like a living serpent. Adrian heard an ancient melody, tones reminiscent of Hussite hymns he had heard in the Old Town Square in Prague. The radiation-proof glass began to crack, and Schneider's screams became distorted and distant, like a submerged clock.
Then he saw the cracks in time itself.
It wasn't the wormholes or quantum foam scientists had predicted, but a torn parchment. Yellowed pages floated with the Bohemian hills of 1418, iron crosses on knights' armor, and a woman's face lit by a torch. Adrian reached out to grab the vaporizing watch, but he felt his flesh decomposing into bronze dust.
In the final moment, he heard the voice of the man in the chainmail through six centuries: "Pravda vítězí (Truth Prevails)...."
The smell of rotting wood and feces pierced his nostrils. Adrian thought he was in the Los Angeles subway, until he felt the damp straw beneath him and saw fifteenth-century stars leaking through the thatched roof.
Three men with torches were poking him. "Čaroděj! (Wizard!)" The fattest one had boils on his face and a missing front tooth, spitting out sour breath. Adrian tried to stand, only to find a deep wound on his left arm — it looked like it had been cut by some farming tool.
"I have no ill intentions." He said in English. The men stepped back, the flames of their torches trembling with fear. Adrian realized these people wore rough linen shirts and leather leg bindings, with rusted daggers at their waists. His radiation suit had turned into tattered woolen coats, but the watch still hung around his neck, its dial glowing with an eerie green-blue light.
The toothless man suddenly screamed and charged. Adrian instinctively rolled, dragging blood over the straw. The wooden club hit his shoulder just as the watch cover popped open.
Time suddenly became viscous.
The flickering of the torches slowed to one-tenth their normal speed, and the men's roars stretched into low, rumbling moans. Adrian saw blood droplets slowly drifting from the toothless man's nose, and sparks forming caramel spirals in the air. He grabbed the club and felled the three men, his movements fluid as if he had practiced in military school a thousand times. When the last one fell, the watch emitted a clear click.
Time resumed its normal flow.
Adrian gasped, kneeling in blood, the watch's temperature scorching. More footsteps approached outside the thatched hut, and the light from the torches grew closer. He tore off the corpses' cloak and wrapped it around himself, then dashed out a window, only to be jarred by a metallic object in his ribs — a half-plate adorned with the double-headed eagle clutching a bleeding rose, still slick with fresh blood.
The shouts of the pursuers exploded behind him. Adrian dashed into the dark oak forest, the watch guiding him with its vibrations. He smelled the sulfur of the swamp, heard the nightingale's calls and the distant church bells. When an arrow whizzed past his ear, he burst into laughter. The thrill of winning a hunting rifle as a seven-year-old mingled with the dizziness of a historian discovering a rare manuscript.
A cliff loomed ahead. Under the moonlight, the Bohemian hills undulated like the spine of a giant beast. Adrian clutched the silver plate and leaped off, the sound of the watch's gears intertwining with the wind. Mid-fall, he saw a overturned wagon at the bottom, its golden cross studded with arrows glowing faintly in the night.
The impact hurt so much he briefly went blind. When his vision returned, twelve scythes were pressed against his throat. The farmers with torches were covered in coal dust, their eyes burning with the zeal of Hussite believers. The crowd suddenly parted, and a woman in men's clothing approached, her face illuminated by the torchlight, with freckles on her nose and grayish-blue eyes.
"On the Holy Grail," her English had a thick Czech accent, "this devil wears Sir Heinrich von Tabor's cloak."
Adrian looked at the dark red cloak he had taken, the lining embroidered with the double-headed eagle clenching a bleeding rose. The watch in his palm was scorching hot, its dial now showing Latin words: Tempus edax rerum (Time devours all).
As the woman's scythe touched his throat, Adrian noticed the bruise on her collarbone resembled the Habsburg sigil. On the distant hill, a figure in chainmail was reining his horse in the morning mist, his armor reflecting the first rays of 1418.
"Wait!" Adrian raised the silver plate, "I know how Jan Hus died."
The watch suddenly emitted a deafening roar. In the moment everyone froze, he heard the sound of time tearing. Crows took flight from the forest, their wings beating in harmony with the alarm from five centuries later.
Aline von Tabor narrowed her eyes. Behind her, the bells of Prague pierced the blood-red dawn.