ARC 2: THE DESPERATE CHASE
(OPENING)
**Mud.** Thick, sucking, cold enough to burn. It filled Elias's boots, caked his stolen khaki uniform, and stank of decay and cordite.
Sound. A relentless, deafening orchestra: the *crump-thump* of artillery, the *snap-whine* of bullets, the guttural screams of men, the ceaseless drumming of rain on tin helmets.
Smell. Blood. Gangrene. Wet wool. And beneath it all, the acrid tang of **chlorine gas** clinging to the stagnant air.
World War I. Trenches. Hell on Earth.
Elias hauled himself up against the slimy timber revetment, gasping. The pocket watch was a frozen lump against his chest. He'd wound it with his tears in the burning snow of London. It had spat him out *here*. Into a nightmare mirroring his own past, yet infinitely worse.
A hand clamped on his shoulder. "Easy, mate! Fritz's got this sector zeroed in! Keep yer bleedin' head down!" A grimy face, young but ancient-eyed, peered from under a dented Brodie helmet. "New replacement? Look like death warmed over."
Elias nodded mutely, his throat raw from Lily's name screamed into fire. *Replacements. Cannon fodder.* He knew this script.
"Name's Jenkins. Stick close. Don't stand up straight. Don't touch the wire. Don't breathe deep if the wind shifts." Jenkins's instructions were punctuated by a nearby explosion that showered them with foul mud. "Welcome to the Somme, pal. God help ye."
(THE NURSE & THE SHATTERED REFLECTION)
The stretcher bearers came at dusk, slogging through the knee-deep muck of the communication trench. Carrying broken men. Leading them was a nurse.
Even in the twilight gloom, smeared with mud and exhaustion, Elias knew her. The set of her shoulders. The way she moved – purposeful, gentle, yet radiating a fierce, quiet strength. Her brown eyes, scanning the wounded with sharp compassion, were Aria's eyes. *Lily's* eyes.
Her name tag read: *Sister Eleanor Vance, QAIMNS.*
*Eleanor.* Not Aria. Not Lily. Another name. Another life. Another death waiting.
Elias's breath hitched. He watched her kneel beside a whimpering boy missing a leg, her voice low and soothing as she tightened a tourniquet. "Hold on, Private Miller. Just hold on. We'll get you sorted."
The tenderness in her voice, the focused intensity – it was *her*. The artist restoring a crumbling wall. The woman laughing under an umbrella in the rain. The soul he kept finding, losing, and chasing through the shattered corridors of time.
A shell screamed overhead, detonating with a ground-shaking *CRUMP* fifty yards down the line. Mud and debris rained down. Eleanor Vance didn't flinch. She finished securing the tourniquet, patted the boy's shoulder, and stood, her gaze sweeping the trench. It landed on Elias.
For a fraction of a second, their eyes locked. Recognition? Not of *him*. Recognition of shared horror, shared burden. Her eyes held the same deep sorrow he saw in his own reflection in the stagnant trench water. The sorrow of bearing witness to endless, senseless destruction.
Then she looked away, calling orders to the bearers. They lifted the stretcher and vanished into the dripping gloom towards the casualty clearing station.
(THE WATCH & THE TRENCH MADNESS)
Days bled into weeks. A grinding cycle of terror, boredom, and bone-deep cold. Elias fought. He survived bayonet charges across No Man's Land lit by flares that turned mud crimson. He huddled in waterlogged shell holes as machine guns scythed the air overhead. He watched boys turn into corpses, their eyes staring blankly at the weeping sky.
The pocket watch became his secret compass, his curse. It remained cold and silent, the crack in its glass like a frozen scream. He never wound it. He feared what his tears, shed silently into the mud for Eleanor, for Lily, for Aria, for all of them, might unleash *here*.
But the trench madness whispered. It wore Jenkins's face one night as they shared a tin of cold bully beef.
"See things sometimes, Elias," Jenkins mumbled, his eyes wide and unfocused in the flickering candlelight of their dugout. "Out in the wire. Shapes. A… a shop. Weird-like. Sign like an hourglass. Blink and it's gone." He shivered violently. "Told the Padre. Said it were fatigue. Or gas dreams."
Elias's blood ran colder than the mud. *The shop.* It was here too. Watching. Waiting at the edge of perception.
(THE ATTACK & THE SACRIFICE)
The Big Push came on a morning shrouded in freezing fog – perfect cover, perfect hell. Whistles blew, a shrill, suicidal sound. Men clambered over the parapet, stumbling into the grey void. Elias went with them, rifle slick in his grip, the watch a lead weight against his heart.
Chaos. Machine gun fire ripped through the fog. Men fell screaming. Elias ran, lungs burning, towards the shattered skeleton of a farmhouse that was their objective. He saw Jenkins go down, clutching his stomach. He kept running.
He saw *her*.
Sister Eleanor Vance. Not at the clearing station. *Here.* In No Man's Land. Dragging a wounded sergeant towards a shell crater, oblivious to the bullets kicking up mud around her. Her cap was gone, her dark hair plastered to her face with mud and sweat. Pure, reckless courage.
"ELEANOR! DOWN!" Elias bellowed, the name tearing from him.
She looked up. Saw the German machine gun nest zeroing in on her position from the farmhouse ruins. Her eyes widened, not with fear for herself, but for the man she was trying to save.
Elias didn't think. He threw himself forward, tackling her and the sergeant into the relative safety of the deep crater just as the gun roared. Bullets shredded the air where she'd been standing.
They landed hard in the icy water at the bottom. The sergeant groaned. Eleanor gasped, her face inches from Elias's, her breath warm against his frozen skin. Mud streaked her cheeks. Her eyes, wide and shocked, searched his face.
"You… you saved us," she breathed. Then, a flicker of confusion. "How did you… know my name?"
Before he could answer, a terrifying new sound cut through the battle din – the hollow *thump-thump-thump* of a mortar launch.
**WHOOMF!**
The earth erupted just beyond the crater's rim. Not mud. Mustard Gas.
A sickly yellow cloud, heavier than air, began to roll *down* into their shell hole, clinging to the ground like a poisonous fog.
"GAS! GAS! GAS!" Elias roared, fumbling for his respirator. He yanked it on, the rubber smell choking. He grabbed Eleanor's, thrust it towards her.
She was struggling to get hers onto the semi-conscious sergeant. "Get it on him first!" she ordered, her voice muffled, her own mask still dangling.
The yellow fog pooled at their feet, rising. Elias saw the panic in her eyes – not for herself, but for her patient. He shoved the sergeant's mask on, sealing it roughly.
He turned to Eleanor. The gas was waist-high now, swirling. She finally had her mask in her hands, lifting it towards her face.
A stray shell fragment, screaming like a banshee, ricocheted off the crater's edge.
It struck her outstretched hand.
The mask flew from her grasp, landing *just* outside the crater, half-submerged in the yellow ooze.
Time stopped.
Elias saw the horror dawn in Eleanor's eyes. Saw her instinctively take a breath to scream.
He acted. Pure, desperate instinct.
He ripped his own mask off.
Before she could inhale the poisoned air, before she could protest, he clamped the rubber seal over her nose and mouth, securing the straps behind her head with frantic fingers. He sealed her in safety.
He held his breath.
The yellow fog enveloped him. It stung his eyes instantly, blinding him with searing tears. It burned his exposed skin like acid. He felt it clawing at his throat, his lungs, desperate to get in.
Eleanor's eyes, wide with terror and disbelief, stared at him through the fogged lenses of *his* mask. She tried to push him away, to give it back, but he held firm, pinning her arms, shaking his head violently. No.
He couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. His lungs screamed. His skin blistered. The world dissolved into yellow agony and Eleanor's horrified, tear-filled eyes.
He felt the pocket watch against his chest, under his tunic. It wasn't cold anymore.
It was burning. Like the gas on his skin.
The last thing he saw before darkness took him was Eleanor's hand reaching for him, and beyond the crater's rim, flickering like a mirage through the gas and smoke… the sign of the Hourglass Shop.
(THE FRACTURE & THE GLITCH)
Consciousness returned in jagged shards.
Light. Harsh, fluorescent, stabbing his gas-blinded eyes.
Sound. A low, rhythmic beeping. The hum of machinery. Muffled voices.
Smell. Antiseptic. Ozone. Something artificial, like burnt plastic.
He was lying on something hard. Strapped down?
He forced his eyes open, blinking against the glare. Blurred shapes resolved into a low, curved ceiling of dark metal. Wires snaked everywhere. Glowing symbols flickered on small screens embedded in the wall. A diagnostic display hovered in the air above him, projecting shimmering green text he couldn't read.
Not a hospital. Not a trench.
He tried to move. Pain lanced through his chest, his throat, his blistered face. He coughed, a raw, wet sound that felt like shards of glass in his lungs.
A figure leaned over him. Humanoid, but encased in sleek, form-fitting grey armor with glowing blue seams. Its face was hidden behind a smooth, featureless visor reflecting the harsh light. A synthesized voice, genderless and cold, spoke:
"Subject exhibits severe Yperite exposure. Pulmonary damage 42%. Dermal necrosis 18%. Ocular trauma significant. Recommend immediate dermal synth-graft and pulmonary flush. Neural scan shows… anomalous chroniton readings. Priority override: Containment."
A second figure, slighter, also armored, approached. This one's visor was transparent.
Brown eyes. Wide with professional concern, but utterly unfamiliar. Her hair was shaved on one side, the rest dyed electric blue and pulled back in sharp, intricate braids. A small, glowing data-chip was embedded in her temple.
Her name badge, projected in hovering blue text beside her shoulder, read: Tech A. Reyes - Bio-Maintenance Level 3.
Another name. Another face. Another era.
Aria. Eleanor. Now… A. Reyes.
She placed a cool, polymer-gloved hand on his restrained arm. Her touch was clinical, not comforting. "Easy. You're in Neo-Paris Med-Sec. You were found in the Old Metro ruins. Severe chemical burns. We're stabilizing you." Her voice was calm, efficient, devoid of Lily's warmth or Eleanor's compassion.
Elias tried to speak. Only a gurgling rasp emerged. His throat was raw meat.
Tech Reyes picked up a hypospray. "Morphine analogue. For the pain."
As she pressed it to his neck, Elias's gaze locked onto the large, grime-smeared window looking out from the med-bay.
Beyond, a towering, rain-lashed cityscape clawed at a perpetually twilight sky. Skyscrapers encrusted with flickering holograms – ads for synthetic food, cybernetic upgrades, off-world colonies. Aerial vehicles weaved between them like glowing insects. Neon signs bled Kanji and Cyrillic into the downpour.
Cyberpunk. Dystopian future.
The morphine flooded his system, a cold wave of numbness. As his eyelids grew heavy, Elias saw something else. Outside the window, superimposed onto the glittering, rain-slicked facade of a mega-corp tower, a massive, flickering **hourglass** hologram sputtered erratically for a split second.
Then it vanished, replaced by a roaring tiger selling energy drinks.
A glitch. Or a warning.
The pocket watch, tucked beneath the med-gel bandages on his chest, gave a single, feeble, digital-sounding *blip*.
Elias closed his eyes. The chase had entered a new, terrifying era. Death wore chrome and code now. And the shop… the shop was hiding in the machine.
(END CHAPTER 5)