Eli Kaine's morning started with the sound of something cheap breaking. Again.
The alarm clock – fourth one this month –hadn't malfunctioned. It rang exactly on time. Which, naturally, made Eli grab it, mumble something unprintable, and hurl it into the wall.
The clack echoed in his apartment's hollow space. A faint flicker, one last holographic number dying in the air.
He groaned into the pillow. "Another forty creds gone."
He lay there for a few seconds, trying to bargain with himself. Five more minutes. Ten. Screw work. Screw Helios. Let the capsule implode on its own.
But the sirens outside ruined the fantasy.
Same pitch every morning — two tones rising and falling over the city's hum. Once, it signaled fire drills. Now it signaled something worse: "Stay indoors. Do not panic. This is routine."
Routine, Eli thought bitterly, had become a synonym for "hope the sky doesn't fall today."
Dragging himself upright, he shuffled across the apartment. Neon light filtered through slats of broken blinds, painting the floor in strips of magenta and blue. Outside, New Babel pulsed – the last "safe" megacity humanity claimed to own.
From up here, thirty-two floors high, the spires looked endless. Towers layered on towers, traffic streams between them glowing like veins. Propaganda banners scrolled on every vertical surface:
HUMANITY FIRST. HUMANITY FOREVER.
No one looked at them anymore.
Eli rinsed his face in the sink, drank water straight from the tap, and stared at his reflection. Same black hair in desperate need of a cut. Same tired eyes. Same faint burn scar along his jaw – gift from Prototype #2's meltdown last year.
At least Lin never mentioned it. She only teased him about the hair.
His phone buzzed. A single message.
Lin: Bring coffee or don't show up.
No "good morning." No emoji. Just blackmail.
Eli smirked despite himself. "On my way, boss."
The Streets of New Babel
By the time he hit street level, the smog tasted metallic. The air scrubbers hadn't cycled properly again - another "routine" malfunction.
Crowds moved like exhausted currents through ration lines. Vendors hawked gray protein bars at triple price. Kids darted barefoot through puddles of neon rainwater. Military drones hummed overhead, cameras swiveling in mechanical arcs.
Above it all, a skybridge carried traffic toward the Helios Research Complex — the single shining blade at New Babel's center. Ten stories of mirrored steel, ribs of reinforced alloy stabbing into the clouds.
People whispered about what went on inside. Energy weapons. Mind uploads. Rumors of cloning.
Eli knew the truth.
Time travel.
Or something close enough to call it that.
The checkpoint was as cheery as a funeral. Guards in gray armor scanned IDs with dead eyes, rifles slung low but ready. Eli stepped through the biometric arch; blue light crawled over him, humming as it mapped bone and blood.
Identity confirmed. Clearance: Level Three.
A pause.
Reminder: Level Three personnel are prohibited from accessing floors seven through ten.
"Yeah," Eli muttered. "Wouldn't dream of it."
Helios Complex
Inside, the smell hit him first: sterilized metal and recycled air. Helios always smelled like this – as if someone had bleached the soul out of the place.
Holo-screens floated between workstations, lines of code cascading down like waterfalls. Engineers hunched in silence. Somewhere, a plasma torch hissed. A guard's boots clicked on polished floors.
Eli wove through the chaos toward the only room that mattered — the capsule chamber.
Calling it a chamber felt wrong. It was a cathedral.
The prototype sat at its center: a seamless metal cocoon threaded with cables, coolant mist hissing faintly from its vents. Scaffolding climbed toward the ceiling in jagged tiers. Banks of consoles ringed the edges like an altar choir.
People called it the "time machine." Lin hated that term.
"It's not magic," she always said. "It's just physics we don't understand yet."
Lin Zhao
He found her exactly where expected — hunched over a holo-screen, hair tied back in a messy knot, stylus moving like she was stabbing the equations into submission.
"You've been here all night again," Eli said, leaning in the doorway.
Lin didn't look up. "Morning, Eli."
"You sleep?"
"Define sleep."
"Unconsciousness. REM cycles. Dreams that don't involve quantum math."
"Then no."
He walked over and set the coffee beside her elbow.
"Bless you," she muttered, grabbing it without breaking eye contact with the code.
"You sure you don't want an IV drip at this point?"
"Thought about it. Haven't ruled it out."
"How unstable are we talking today?"
Lin exhaled through her nose. "If someone climbed in right now, they'd either disintegrate instantly or… accidentally skip forward three seconds and vomit for an hour."
"So… progress?"
"That's what I keep telling the board."
Eli chuckled, but his chest felt heavy.
He'd seen what happened when tests failed. Two prototypes gone already. Prototype #2 had taken half the lab with it — the day Eli got his jaw scar. Lin nearly quit then. Instead, she doubled her hours and stopped going home.
"Hey," he said softly. "You hear the rumors?"
"Which ones?"
"Lights over the Pacific colonies. Whole satellites going dark."
Lin finally looked up. Her eyes were tired, rimmed red from too many nights staring at holograms.
"I heard," she said quietly. "But rumors aren't proof."
"Neither was the first impact in 2098, remember? Until it vaporized Manila."
***
The silence between them stretched — the kind that hummed louder than words. Around them, the capsule chamber thrummed softly, every machine heartbeat a reminder of what they were gambling on.
Eli leaned on the railing beside Lin's console. "So what's Plan B if the capsule doesn't work?"
Lin snorted. "You mean when it doesn't work?"
"Don't do that," he said. "Don't go nihilist on me this early. I haven't even finished my coffee."
Lin gestured toward the prototype with her stylus. "Look at it. We're supposed to fit a human being in there and fling them… what, decades back? Centuries? Using calculations I literally finished at three a.m. this morning?"
"Hey, credit where it's due – three a.m. math is your best math."
"Eli." Her tone hardened. "We haven't stabilized the wormhole generator. The energy field alone–"
"–is unstable, yeah, I've read the briefings," he interrupted, waving her off. "I'm just saying, worst case, you aim for the 2000s, miss by a few decades… maybe you end up king of the Goths or something."
Lin blinked. "You make medieval Europe sound like a vacation."
"Better than staying here when the sky burns."
She didn't answer. Didn't need to. The whole city knew something was coming – even before the official denials started flooding the feeds. Power outages. Black spots on radar. Strange weather over the Atlantic arcology.
And now? The silence. Too much silence.
"Lin," Eli said carefully, "you're still planning to go in yourself, right?"
She froze. That half-second pause was all the answer he needed.
"You're not."
"I can't." She set the stylus down, rubbing at her temples. "If I leave, who keeps the project running? Who fixes the capsule after launch? This thing needs constant calibration or it'll rip itself apart mid-jump."
"So what – you send some random lab tech instead?"
"No." Lin's gaze cut to him. "You."
Eli barked a laugh. "Me? Are you insane?"
"You have survival training. You know the capsule systems better than anyone except me. And…" Her voice softened. "…you're expendable."
"Wow. Love you too."
"Eli–"
"No, it's fine," he said, forcing a grin. "Just toss me into the time blender. If I come out alive, great. If not, hey, at least I die historically."
"Stop making jokes."
"Stop making them so easy."
Lin's hands curled into fists on the console. "I'm serious. If this works, you'll be the only one left who can change what happens. We can't stop the invasion now – but maybe we can stop it then."
"And if I land in the wrong century?"
"Then you improvise. You always improvise."
***
The overhead lights flickered. Once. Twice. A hum like static crawled across the walls.
Eli frowned. "That's new."
Lin was already at the console, pulling up diagnostics. "Power surge from the outer grid… no, wait–"
The sirens started.
Not the usual two-tone wail. This one was higher, sharper, a sound that made the air feel thinner.
"Attention all personnel," a synthetic voice blared overhead. "Level Zero breach protocol. Evacuate lower districts immediately. Repeat: Level Zero breach protocol–"
The voice cut off in static.
Eli stared at Lin. "What the hell is Level Zero?"
"I… don't know."
"You don't know?"
"It's classified."
"More classified than time travel?"
"Apparently."
Through the windowed ceiling, the first anomaly appeared.
A ripple. High above the smog – a faint shimmer, like heat distortion but colder somehow, eating the stars behind it. It widened in silence, stretching across the skyline until the propaganda banners outside glitched and died.
The city itself seemed to hold its breath.
Doors slammed open. Engineers poured into the chamber, shouting over one another.
"Power spikes on every grid!"
"Communications down!"
"Central command says–wait, we've lost central command!"
Lin grabbed Eli's arm, dragging him toward the inner catwalks. "We need to get topside. Now!"
"Topside? Are you insane? We just saw the sky glitch!"
"Better than being buried alive down here!"
They bolted through the corridors as alarms wailed. The Helios Complex had no "calm evacuation" mode; every hallway pulsed red, every door slammed open or sealed shut on random cycles. Guards barked orders no one heard. Somewhere distant, an explosion rumbled through the foundation.
Elevators were dead. They climbed thirty-two floors by emergency stairs, lungs burning, legs numb.
By the time they burst onto the roof access platform, the world had changed.
The ripple in the sky had torn open.
Beyond it, something enormous slid through – not metal, not even recognizable. Its shape shifted as it moved, angles folding in ways that made no physical sense. A city-sized shadow crawling across the clouds.
The ship – if it was a ship - emitted no sound. No engines, no roar. Just silence and light bending wrong around it.
Eli's throat went dry.
"…Lin."
"I see it."
"What… what is that?"
Her whisper trembled. "Not human."
The first beam hit without sound.
No warning. No thunder. Just a column of white that fell from the ship and erased an entire district in the distance. The skyline blinked out – towers, bridges, billboards – gone. Where the beam touched, matter didn't explode or burn. It simply… vanished.
The shockwave came later.
A wall of air slammed into the rooftop, knocking Eli and Lin to their knees. Windows shattered inward. Steel bent and groaned. The city's hum — traffic, voices, the constant low thrum of machinery — dissolved into screaming.
"Go, go, go!" Lin shoved Eli toward the stairwell.
"Where?!"
"Bunker level!"
"We just ran up thirty floors!"
"Would you rather die standing here?"
Another beam tore across the skyline, closer this time. A shopping district flickered like a dying holo-ad, then blinked out of existence.
"Holy–" Eli stumbled, catching himself on the railing. "They're not even shooting anything. They're… deleting us."
"Move!" Lin's voice cracked, more panic than command now.
They barreled back into the stairwell, sprinting downward against the tide of evacuees. Sirens wailed in languages Eli didn't even recognize — global distress alerts piped into one feed. The Helios Complex shook around them as the beams carved random lines through the city above.
Somewhere below, a fire raged. The air grew hotter with each level.
Halfway down, the building lurched. A beam struck nearby — not a direct hit, but close enough to rip half the stairwell open. Concrete gave way. A flood of people tumbled past them, their screams cutting short as they vanished into the smoke.
Eli grabbed Lin's wrist. "Jump!"
"To where?!"
"Other side!"
The gap was three meters. Maybe four. The drop below? Endless.
Lin hesitated — and that hesitation nearly killed her. The stairwell groaned, the last support beam snapping free.
"Lin!"
She leapt. Eli caught her forearm on the other side, nearly dislocating his shoulder as he dragged her up. Neither spoke. No time for thanks. Only running.
By the time they hit sublevel five, the hallways were empty — everyone either evacuated or dead. Smoke bled through vents. The air smelled of burnt ozone and metal.
Lin's keycard barely registered; half the doors had failed to lock anyway. The capsule lab was somehow intact — sterile white against the chaos outside.
The prototype stood ready in the center of the room, humming faintly. Its panels were open, wires dangling like veins. Improvised. Rushed. Barely finished.
Eli braced against the doorway, panting. "Tell me… you didn't… just drag me thirty floors down to get in that thing."
"Not yet." Lin darted to the console. Fingers flew over keys. "But if those beams breach this level, we're out of time."
"You said the capsule's unstable."
"It is."
"So what's the plan?"
She didn't answer.
The hum in the walls changed pitch. Louder. Higher. The kind of sound that made teeth ache.
Eli stepped closer. "Lin. What's the plan?"
She stopped typing. Turned to him.
"…I was supposed to go," she said quietly. "That was the deal. Send me back, fix the timeline."
"'Was'?"
"I can't. I have to stabilize it manually, or the capsule tears itself apart mid-jump."
"Lin–"
"You have to go, Eli."
"No." He shook his head. "I'm not leaving you here."
"You don't get it." Her voice cracked — a mix of exhaustion and fury. "There is no here. Look outside. Earth's gone in hours. Maybe less."
Another beam struck nearby. The floor quaked. Consoles sparked.
Eli grabbed her shoulders. "Then we both go."
"We can't."
"Why not?!"
"Single passenger only. Power can't handle two."
The wall behind them buckled inward. Something slammed against the reinforced door – not human. A slick, wet sound, followed by a screech that cut straight through bone.
Lin's eyes darted to the capsule. "We're out of time!"
Eli stepped toward it. "Then you go!"
"I can't calibrate from inside!"
"Then I'll do it!"
"You don't know how!"
"Then teach me!"
The door cracked. A long, serrated limb forced its way through the seam — pale and jointed wrong, glistening with some fluid that hissed on contact with metal.
Lin's hands flew across the controls, inputting coordinates – rough ones. "Target date… two thousand. Margin of error, plus or minus… decades."
"Decades?!"
"It's the best I can do!"
The door blew inward.
The creature poured through.
Eli didn't see all of it — only glimpses between flashes of light: too many limbs, no eyes, a mouth that wasn't a mouth but still screamed.
Lin shoved him into the capsule. "Eli!"
"Don't you dare!"
"GO!"
The hatch sealed.
Eli pounded the glass. "LIN!"
She smiled — small, tired, almost peaceful. "See you in another life."
The capsule fired.
White swallowed everything.
When Eli woke, there was no city. No sirens. No Lin.
Just silence. Trees where skyscrapers should be. A sky too blue to be real.
And a voice in his head – calm, familiar, impossible.
"Eli… can you hear me?"