Elara's POV - St. Catherine's Hospital, Present Day
I wake up in Mira's hospital bed with my sister screaming.
"What are you? What ARE you?"
I sit up fast. Too fast. The movement makes me blink across the room—one second in bed, next second standing by the window.
Mira presses herself against the wall, eyes wide with terror. "You just—you just teleported—"
"Mira, it's me. It's still me." I hold up my hands. They're flickering. Solid, then transparent, then solid again. Like a broken video. "I know I look weird but I'm still your sister—"
"Your eyes are glowing. Like, actually glowing. And your skin—there's light under your skin—"
I look down at my arms. She's right. Faint light pulses through my veins like glowing blood. My mother's temporal energy. Now mine.
"I can explain—"
"You've been gone for six hours!" Mira's voice cracks. "Six hours! I woke up and you weren't here and the nurses said you never checked me in and I've been going CRAZY thinking you were dead or arrested or—" She stops. Stares at me. "What happened to you?"
Six hours? It felt like minutes. Is time moving differently for me now?
"Mira, listen—"
The door opens. A nurse walks in. "Ms. Chen, visiting hours are—" She sees me. Sees my flickering hands and glowing eyes. Her face goes white. "Security! We have an unauthorized—"
I panic. Think about being outside the room.
And suddenly I am. Standing in the hallway. Twenty feet from where I was.
I teleported again.
The nurse screams.
"Wait!" I reach for her. Try to explain.
My hand passes through her arm like I'm a ghost.
She runs.
Alarms start blaring. Red lights flash. A voice over the intercom: "Security alert, fourth floor. Unidentified entity. Lock down all exits."
Entity. They called me an entity.
I run back into Mira's room. She's already up, pulling on shoes, ignoring her IV.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"What does it look like? I'm getting you out of here before they catch you." She yanks the IV out of her arm. Blood drips but she doesn't care. "You're my sister. I don't care if you're glowing or teleporting or whatever. We're leaving. Now."
That's my Mira. Even after everything, even scared out of her mind, she's still protecting me.
"You're still sick," I say. "You need treatment—"
"Elara, I feel fine. Better than fine. I feel... normal. Like I was never sick at all." She looks at her hands. Solid. Completely solid. No transparency. "What did you do?"
Before I can answer, the window explodes.
Not from outside. From inside.
Agent-17—the empty-eyed man from the facility—materializes in the room like he was never not here.
"Elara Chen," he says calmly. "You are under arrest for unauthorized temporal manipulation, existence as an unstable anomaly, and violation of Timeline Integrity Protocol Section 7."
"Get away from her!" Mira throws a bedpan at him.
It passes through his head like he's not real.
"Your sister cannot help you," Agent-17 says to me. "Neither can your mother's stolen power. You are coming with the Bureau. We will study you. Stabilize you. Or, if necessary, terminate you."
"I'm not going anywhere with you."
"That is not your choice."
He moves. Impossibly fast. His hand reaches for my throat.
I think: Away. Anywhere away from here.
The world blurs. Colors streak. My stomach drops like I'm falling through empty space.
When reality solidifies, I'm on the hospital roof. Wind whips my hair. City lights spread below me like a circuit board.
I did it. I teleported on purpose.
But I also left Mira behind.
"No!" I spin around, trying to go back. Think about her room. About my sister.
Nothing happens.
I try again. Concentrate harder. Mira's room. Fourth floor. Go back.
Still nothing.
Why isn't it working?
Then I feel it. A pulling sensation. Like invisible hooks in my chest, dragging me toward something.
The hospital roof access door bursts open. Agent-17 steps out. Behind him, two more agents. Same empty eyes. Same perfect faces.
"Interesting," Agent-17 says. "Your temporal jumping range is approximately 200 feet per displacement. Limited, but problematic. Agent-23, deploy the temporal anchor."
One of the agents raises a device. It looks like a gun but wrong. Made of crystallized light.
She fires.
Something invisible hits me. Suddenly my feet feel like they're made of concrete. I can't move. Can't teleport. Can't even blink.
"Temporal anchor established," Agent-23 reports. "Target is locked to current spacetime coordinates."
"No," I struggle against the invisible chains. "Let me go. My sister—"
"Your sister is being secured," Agent-17 says. "She will be questioned about your activities. If she proves useful, she'll be recruited. If not..." He shrugs. "Collateral is regrettable but acceptable."
"If you hurt her—"
"You'll what? You cannot control your power. You barely understand what you are. You're a child with a nuclear weapon." He steps closer. "The Bureau has dealt with temporal anomalies before. Your mother was particularly difficult. But we always win eventually."
"My mother escaped you for ten years."
"Your mother was trapped in a tank," Agent-17 corrects. "Unable to act. Unable to cause damage. That was escape?" He almost smiles. "We allowed Victor Kane to imprison her. One less threat to timeline stability."
The truth hits me like ice water. "You knew. You knew Victor was murdering people and you did nothing."
"Victor Kane's operation was contained. Localized. Acceptable casualties for maintaining the larger temporal ecosystem." Agent-17 tilts his head. "But you, Elara Chen, are not contained. You are unstable. Dangerous. A infection spreading through spacetime."
"I'm a person! I'm human!"
"You were human. Now you are a temporal anomaly. And anomalies must be corrected."
The other two agents raise their weapons. Not guns. Something worse. Devices that hum with the same energy I feel in my veins.
"Extraction authorized," Agent-17 says. "Strip her temporal consciousness. Return her to baseline human. Store the energy for Bureau use."
They're going to do to me what Victor did to my mother. Drain me. Turn me into a battery.
The pulling sensation intensifies. The temporal anchor is crushing me, holding me in place while they extract my power.
I try to teleport. Nothing. Try to move. Nothing. Try to scream.
That works.
I scream with everything I have. Not words. Just rage and terror and refusal.
The light under my skin flares. Bright. Brighter. Blinding.
The temporal anchor shatters.
Agent-17's eyes widen—actual emotion for the first time. "Impossible. Her power level is increasing. She's adapting—"
I don't think about teleporting. I don't think at all.
I just feel. Feel my mother's sacrifice. Feel Mira's fear. Feel three years of rage at being powerless while powerful people destroyed me.
And I burn.
Temporal energy explodes from my body. A shockwave of pure time.
The agents are thrown backward. Agent-17 crashes through the roof access door. The other two age rapidly—forward, backward, forward again—flickering through decades in seconds.
When the light fades, I'm standing in a crater of melted concrete.
The agents are gone. Fled. Or erased. I don't know.
I look at my hands. They're not flickering anymore. They're glowing. Steady. Solid. Like I'm finally in control.
No. Not in control. Never in control.
But at least now I can fight back.
I hear sirens. More agents will come. More weapons. More people trying to capture me or kill me or turn me into a thing.
I need to get Mira and run. Run far. Run forever if I have to.
I close my eyes. Focus on my sister. Not her location. Her. The feeling of her. The connection we've always had.
And this time, when I teleport, it works.
I materialize in her hospital room.
But it's empty.
The bed is overturned. Medical equipment is smashed. Blood—Mira's blood—is splattered on the wall.
And on the floor, written in that same blood, is a message:
WE HAVE YOUR SISTER. COME TO THE BORROWED QUARTERS. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE OR SHE DIES SCREAMING. - K
Kade.
The real Kade. Not the fake voice that led me into Victor's trap. The actual enforcer who's been hunting me since this nightmare started.
My phone buzzes. A video message.
I open it with shaking hands.
The screen shows Mira tied to a chair in a dark room. She's gagged. Crying. A man stands behind her—tall, cold gray eyes, exactly like the voice described. Kade Ashford.
"Dr. Chen," Kade's voice is rough, tired. "I know you can see this. I know what you've become. I know the Bureau is hunting you." He pauses. "I also know you'll do anything to save your sister. So here's the deal: come to the old reactor facility in the Borrowed Quarters. Midnight tonight. Bring yourself. Bring whatever temporal power you have. And maybe—maybe—I'll let her live."
The video zooms in on Mira's face. She's shaking her head frantically, trying to tell me not to come.
But Kade continues: "Oh, and Elara? I know about Chen-01, 02, and 03. I know what happened to them. I know what you really are. And trust me—when you find out the truth about your family, you'll wish I had killed you."
The video cuts to black.
Then one final message appears:
Seven hours until midnight. Run fast. Time's running out. - K
I stand in the empty room, covered in my sister's blood, with temporal energy burning through my veins and a Bureau of agents hunting me.
And I realize the horrible truth.
I can't save Mira alone. I'm too new to this. Too unstable. I'll get us both killed.
I need help. Real help.
But who? Who would help a temporal anomaly that the government wants dead?
Then I remember something Agent-17 said. "We've dealt with temporal anomalies before."
Before. Plural.
Which means I'm not the only one. There are others like me. Others who survived. Others who escaped.
Chen-01, 02, and 03.
My family.
I need to find them. Before midnight. Before Kade kills Mira. Before the Bureau catches me.
I close my eyes and focus. Not on Mira. On the temporal energy in my blood. My mother's power. The connection to others like me.
Where are you? I think into the void. Where are the other Chens?
The energy pulses. Responds. Shows me something.
Not a location. A person. A feeling of someone else like me. Someone with the same temporal signature.
And a message, faint, like a whisper across dimensions:
Warehouse 7, Industrial District. Come quickly. They're watching.
Who sent that? Chen-01? Chen-02? Someone else entirely?
I don't have time to question it.
Seven hours until midnight. Seven hours to find my family, learn to control this power, and save Mira from a man who knows secrets about me that I don't even know about myself.
I take one last look at the blood message on the floor.
Then I teleport into the night.
The city blurs past. I'm getting better at this. Jump after jump. Rooftop to rooftop.
Heading toward the Industrial District.
Heading toward answers.
Heading toward people who might be family or might be another trap.
Behind me, I feel the Bureau agents tracking my temporal signature. They're coming. Getting closer.
And somewhere in the dark, Kade has my sister, counting down the hours until he either kills her or uses her as bait to capture me.
I land on the roof of Warehouse 7.
The door is open. Waiting.
I walk inside.
And standing in the shadows, watching me with eyes that glow exactly like mine, is a woman who looks just like my mother.
But younger. Stronger. And very, very angry.
"Hello, little cousin," she says. "Welcome to the family. Now let me tell you why the Bureau wants us all dead."
She smiles. And I see fangs.
Not human fangs. Temporal fangs. Made of crystallized time.
"Oh, and by the way?" she adds. "Kade Ashford didn't kidnap your sister."
"What?"
"We did."