"Stealing time should be impossible. But here I am two minutes ahead of everyone else, and still late for work."
Juno Vale ducked under a frozen drone, its rotors suspended mid-spin like a fan caught in a sneeze. The city shimmered around her in fractured motion traffic lights blinked half-red, half-green, pedestrians wavered like holograms, and distant clock towers rang in perpetual delay.
This was Drift State, a temporal fog only seasoned Time Hackers could move through without losing pieces of their minds. Or their souls. The risk? Medium-high existential collapse.
But Juno wasn't seasoned. She was just desperate.
Clutching her stolen Chrono Shard a thumb-sized crystal pulsing like a second heartbeat, she sprinted across the broken street, boots cracking time-warped glass. In her earpiece, static screeched to life.
"Juno. What did you do?"
"Something brilliant," she panted. "Or criminal. Same difference."
"You accessed Year Zero. That's forbidden tech! That's—"
"Yeah, yeah, paradox soup, world-ending consequences. Save the lecture, Doc."
Her contact, Dr. Salene, was a retired Clockwork Division temporal engineer with the patience of a caffeinated mosquito. And today, she sounded scared.
"They're coming for you."
"I figured." She rounded a corner just as the sky cracked open like a cracked mirror. Out stepped the first Chrono Runner tall, silver-armored, face hidden beneath a mask of shifting numbers.
"Citizen Juno Vale," it intoned, voice echoing in all directions. "You are charged with temporal breach, unauthorized drift traversal, and possession of illegal seconds. Surrender."
She flipped it off and ran faster.
The Runner moved—no, blurred across her vision, skipping space like bad film. Juno twisted her shard. Click.
A Jump Second.
Reality bent.
She teleported thirty feet mid-stride, landing hard on the hood of a frozen cab. Her boots skidded, her knees burned, but she laughed anyway. "I love illegal tech!"
Another crack split the sky.
Three more Runners emerged. One of them didn't blur like the others. He walked. Calm. Deliberate. Eyes like ticking bombs beneath messy brown hair. A scar ran down his cheek, and a large silver watch wrapped around his forearm, ticking out of sync.
"Juno Vale," he said, voice human and annoyed. "You're my new partner."
"What?"
"Welcome to Clockwork Division." He tossed her a badge. "Your choices are prison, paradox deletion, or working with me."
She caught the badge. Time resumed.
Suddenly, noise crashed back honking cars, panicked screams, a flock of pigeons that had been frozen mid-poop now finishing their dive.
Juno blinked. "Who the hell are you?"
He gave her a tired half-smile. "Milo Kane. I've died fifty-two times in the past forty-eight hours. Don't make it fifty-three."
Behind them, time cracked again.