The Devil's Crossroads
FADE IN:
INT. NEW HIDEOUT - NIGHT (CONTINUOUS)
The hideout is a disaster zone. The Chronovisor is a smoking wreck. JULIAN is on the floor, shivering, his mind reeling from the psychic backlash of his contact with Echo Zero. He keeps seeing flashes of the Echo's lonely, maddening prison.
KENJI's face is pale, illuminated by the red dot on his laptop screen.
ARIS frantically tries to salvage the Chronovisor's key components—the lens, the processor, the regulator—from the wreckage.
EXT. KOWLOON WALLED CITY (REMNANT) - NIGHT
The labyrinthine alleys surrounding the hideout become a warzone. Three separate factions converge, each unaware of the others.
Malakor's Kill Team: A squad of futuristic soldiers, armed with advanced energy weapons, rappel down from a stealth hovercraft, moving with silent, deadly precision. Their orders: retrieve the technology and capture the princess.
The Curator's Mercenaries: A team of well-dressed, corporate mercenaries, armed with the latest 90s military hardware, emerge from luxury cars. Their orders: steal the "magic guns" and any other future tech, and eliminate the owners.
Anja Vogel: A lone figure in the shadows. The rogue Ghost, ANJA, watches both teams, her face grim. She is not here to fight. She is here to observe, to understand, and to wait for her opportunity.
INT. NEW HIDEOUT - NIGHT
The siege begins. The first attack comes from The Curator's mercenaries, a brutal assault of bullets and explosives. Julian, shaking off his trauma, becomes the warrior again, directing the team's defense, barricading doors, and finding choke points.
The fight is dark and desperate. Aris and Kenji are forced to use the "magic guns," their faces masks of terror as they fire the stun pulses.
Just as they repel the first wave, Malakor's team strikes from the roof. Their energy weapons slice through the walls. The team is caught in a deadly crossfire between two different centuries of warfare.
The situation is hopeless. They are outmanned, outgunned, and trapped.
Suddenly, a new voice echoes through the room, cheerful and completely out of place.
GLITCH is standing in the middle of the room, casually eating a bag of popcorn. He wasn't there a second ago. He just... is.
He points to a solid brick wall.
He points to the leather-bound journal Aris is clutching.
Outside, the fighting intensifies as Malakor's team and The Curator's mercenaries finally encounter each other and open fire.
Kaelen looks at Aris, her eyes filled with a terrible certainty. She uses her Temporal Sight and sees only two paths: one ends in their death or capture in this room. The other is behind that wall.
Aris, his face filled with anguish, looks at his grandfather's journal—his legacy—and then at his friends. He makes the impossible choice. He shoves the book into Glitch's hands.
He taps the brick wall. For a split second, a shimmering, shimmering doorway appears, revealing a place that is not Hong Kong—a windswept, alien-looking desert under a sky with two suns.
The team scrambles through the portal, carrying their damaged technology, just as a huge explosion rips through the hideout.
The episode ends with them tumbling onto red sand in a strange, new world. The portal vanishes behind them. They are safe, but they are stranded, with no resources, no plan, and now, no guide to the past. They are completely at the mercy of the most unreliable being in existence.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE 18