(OPENING)
Pain was a constant hum in Elias's nerves, overlaid by the sharper sting of synth-skin grafts knitting over mustard gas burns. The med-bay of Neo-Paris Med-Sec Level 7 wasn't healing; it was **rebuilding** him. Cold polymer restraints held him to the bio-slab. Tubes snaked into his arms, pumping nanites and pain-suppressants that left a metallic taste in his raw throat. The air tasted recycled, sterile, dead.
Tech A. Reyes was his primary minder. Efficient. Distant. Her blue braids were sharp lines against the grey armor of her bio-containment suit, the data-chip in her temple pulsing a soft, rhythmic blue as she monitored holographic readouts above his slab. Her brown eyes, when they flickered over him, held professional assessment, not compassion.
"Vitals stabilizing," her synthesized voice reported to the room (or perhaps just to her internal systems). "Chroniton resonance persists at anomalous levels. Recommend extended observation in Quarantine Sector Gamma."
*Chroniton resonance.* The words meant nothing, yet everything. It was the watch. Tucked beneath the sterile gel-bandages on his chest, it felt different here. Not warm, not cold. **Static.** A low, digital buzz against his skin, like a corrupted file trying to load.
(THE CAGE & THE CODE)
Quarantine Sector Gamma was a step down from the med-bay – a transparent polymer cell overlooking a cavernous, multi-level processing hub. Below, drones zipped on mag-lines, sorting glowing bio-containers. Armored security patrolled catwalks. The only view was the endless, rain-lashed neon sprawl of Neo-Paris through thick, reinforced plexi.
A. Reyes visited daily. Scans. Injections. Silent data-entry via the chip in her temple. Elias learned to read the subtle shifts in her expression – a micro-frown when the chroniton readings spiked, a slight tightening around her eyes when his reconstructed lungs seized in a coughing fit that brought up black phlegm.
"Where... am I?" Elias rasped one day, his voice a ruined whisper. The effort sent fresh pain lancing through his throat.
Reyes paused her scan, her visor retracting with a soft *hiss*. Her brown eyes met his, clear and analytical. "Neo-Paris Central Medical Security Facility. Year 2147. You were retrieved from Sub-Level 9 of the Old Metro. Bio-signature flagged as pre-Collapse contamination. Severe Yperite exposure." She tilted her head. "Your DNA sequencing is... irregular. Pre-modification baseline. Rare."
2147. The number meant less than the watch's static buzz. "Old Metro?"
"Decommissioned transport tunnels. Hazardous waste dumping ground since the Corporate Wars." She reactivated her scanner. "Your presence there is statistically improbable. Hence, quarantine."
Elias closed his eyes. *Statistically improbable.* A lifetime chasing a doomed love through time certainly qualified.
(THE GLITCHES DEEPEN)
The world outside his cell wasn't stable.
Flickers: The towering hologram of a grinning synth-pop star advertising "Euphoria™ Mood Chips" would stutter, its face melting momentarily into a skull before snapping back. No one below seemed to notice.
Echoes: The rhythmic thrum of mag-lev trains beneath the facility would sometimes distort, deepening into the *crump-thump* of distant artillery, the sound echoing in Elias's bones before vanishing.
Shadows: Once, he saw it – clear as day. Reflected in the rain-slicked plexi of his cell wall. Not the neon cityscape. A gaslit London street, fog swirling around the familiar blue door of Lily Thorne's art studio. He blinked. Gone.
The watch buzzed violently each time, a jolt of digital discomfort.
One night, during a torrential downpour that turned the city lights into smeared watercolors, Reyes entered his cell. No scanner. Just a data-slate. Her usual detachment seemed frayed.
"Subject Kane," she began, her voice clipped. "Your anomalous readings are escalating. They correlate with... system instabilities." She hesitated, a flicker of something unprofessional – worry? – crossing her face. "Logs show localized chroniton surges preceding critical infrastructure failures in Sectors 5 and 12. Power fluctuations. Data corruption."
Elias stared at her. *He* was causing this? His presence, his fractured timeline, was breaking *this* world?
"What... are chronitons?" he forced out.
"Hypothetical temporal particles," she recited, but her eyes betrayed unease. "Theoretical physics. Not... not something that registers on standard Med-Sec scanners. Yet here they are. Linked to you. She tapped the slate. "Corporation HQ demands answers. Or termination of the anomaly."
The word hung in the sterile air. Termination.
(THE WATCH AWAKENS)
Pressure mounted. Corporate auditors arrived – sleek, chrome-plated figures with mirrored visors and no names, only designations (AUD-7, AUD-9). Their scans were invasive, painful. They spoke in cold binary bursts Reyes translated tersely.
"Anomaly destabilizing local chronal field."
"Recommend immediate neural purge and matter reclamation."
"Prepare subject for transfer to XK-Class Containment."
Reyes argued, citing protocol, incomplete data. Elias saw the strain in her shoulders, the way her data-chip pulsed erratically. He was a problem. A dangerous glitch. And glitches were deleted.
The transfer order came. Two hulking security drones, armed with stun-prods and containment fields, entered his cell. Reyes stood stiffly by the door, her face a mask, but her knuckles white on her data-slate.
As the drones clamped cold polymer restraints around his wrists, Elias felt it. The watch beneath his medical tunic. The static buzz sharpened. Became a whine. A demand.
Wind it.
His tears weren't for Aria this time. They were tears of rage, of helplessness, of the crushing inevitability of it all. They welled, hot and bitter, blurring the harsh lights of the cell. One tear escaped, tracing a path down his scarred, grafted cheek.
It struck the polymer restraint on his wrist.
The pocket watch ERUPTED.
Not light. Not cold. Not heat.
DATA.
A torrent of shimmering, corrupted blue glyphs – jagged, alien symbols – exploded from beneath his tunic, engulfing the cell in a strobing cascade. The glyphs slammed into the drones. They shorted out with violent sparks, collapsing like puppets with cut strings. The containment field generator on the wall fizzed and died.
The glyphs swirled, coalescing for a split second into a massive, fractured image in the center of the cell:
The Hourglass Shop.
But corrupted. Its sign flickered erratically. Its windows bled static. Behind it, glimpses of other eras bled through – trench mud, Victorian fog, burning snow – before the image dissolved back into the storm of glyphs.
The glyphs surged towards the cell's control panel. It exploded in a shower of sparks, plunging the cell into emergency red lighting. The polymer door hissed open.
Alarms blared, deafening. Red lights strobed.
Elias stumbled free of the paralyzed drones, his body screaming in protest. Reyes stood frozen by the open door, her data-slate dropped at her feet, her eyes wide with pure, unprofessional terror and awe, fixed on the fading storm of temporal glyphs.
"What... are you?" she breathed, her voice stripped of its tech-cool efficiency, trembling.
The watch's static buzz settled into a low, insistent **pulse**. Like a beacon. Like a countdown.
Down. It was pulling him *down*. Towards the Old Metro. Towards the source of the instability. Towards the Shop.
He looked at Reyes – Tech A. Reyes, the efficient corporate bio-tech, now seeing the impossible. Seeing *him*. Seeing the cracks in her world.
There was no time. The alarms screamed. Heavy footsteps pounded down the corridor outside.
He lunged past her, out of the cell, into the chaotic red-strobed hallway. The watch pulsed against his chest, a digital compass pointing towards the deepest, darkest levels of Neo-Paris. Towards the only thing that remained constant.
He didn't look back. But he knew. The fear, the awe in her eyes… it was the spark. The terrible, beautiful beginning of the end. Again.
The chase was on. Through the belly of a dying, glitching future. The Hourglass Shop was waiting. And death wore chrome.
(END CHAPTER 6)