Neo-Pandora, 2251
The city's rebirth had rewritten its scars into something softer, but not everyone believed the lie. In the shadow of the gleaming Temporal Museum, a new underworld thrived—one built on salvaged chrono-tech and whispered rumors of the Core's return.
Enter Zara Voss
No relation to Elias, though she'd stolen the name. A rogue chrono-hacker with a neural implant that let her taste time, Zara trafficked in fractured moments—selling glimpses of lost yesterdays to nostalgia addicts. Her latest client paid in black-market code, demanding a memory from the "Era of Fractures." She didn't ask questions. Until the memory bit back.
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The memory was a trap.
Zara jolted awake in her neon-lit den, static bleeding from her nostrils. The implant in her temple burned as the vision replayed: A woman in a lab coat (Lila, though Zara didn't know her) plunging a crystal Key into a man's chest. A scream that wasn't human. A compass spinning in a glass case.
"You look like hell," said her partner, Jax Maro, leaning against the doorway. A mercenary-turned-tinkerer, Jax wore a patchwork exo-suit and a perpetual scowl. His left arm was a relic from the Fracture Wars—a prosthetic that could phase through time, but only for 11 seconds at a cost.
"New intel," Zara coughed, wiping blood from her lip. "There's a vault under the museum. Something alive in there."
Jax raised an eyebrow. "Alive or alive?"
"The screaming kind."
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The Temporal Museum's underbelly was a tomb of forbidden tech. Zara disabled the security grid while Jax phased through walls, his arm glitching. They found the vault sealed behind a holographic mural of Elias Voss, labeled "Hero of the Reformation."
"Hero?" Jax snorted. "Dude's got a face like he's planning to steal your chrono-battery."
Zara ignored him, cracking the vault's lock. Inside, the air hummed with a familiar dissonance.
The chrono-compass floated in its case, needle spinning wildly.
"That's it?" Jax said. "A fancy paperweight?"
Then the compass shrieked.
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Lila Kane found them two hours later, surrounded by Institute security drones. Zara was unconscious, her implant sparking. Jax stood over her, phasing his arm through a drone's core.
"You're trespassing," Lila said, her voice edged with a weariness that hadn't existed in the new timeline.
"You're hiding something," Jax shot back. "And it's eating your city alive."
Lila's gaze fell to Zara's twitching form. "You brought her here. Why?"
"She's got your ghost in her head," Jax said. "Screaming about a Core."
Lila's composure cracked. "Follow me."
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In a sublevel lab, Lila revealed the compass's secret—a shard of the Chrono Core, dormant but dreaming. "The Reformation wasn't a victory. It was a quarantine. The Core's code is woven into this timeline. And it's… evolving."
Zara woke, her implant syncing to the compass. Visions flooded her: A child (Elias?) building sandcastles that collapsed into black holes. A woman (Elara?) singing lullabies to a shadow. And a new fracture—a door where none should be.
"It's making a paradox," Zara gasped. "A backdoor. Let it through, and everything unwinds."
"How do we stop it?" Jax asked.
Lila hesitated. "We don't. We outsmart it. And for that, I need a thief."
Zara standing at the fracture—a door in a dead-end alley, its frame pulsing with stolen time. Jax's arm phased in and out, counting down 11 seconds.
"You sure about this?" he muttered.
Zara touched the door. "It's not asking. It's screaming."
Behind them, Lila watched, the compass heavy in her hand. Elias, where are you?
The door opened.
To Be Continued…
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