Wintex POV
"Plop… plop… plop… plop…" That's the sound that greeted me as I slowly drifted back to consciousness, my eyelids fluttering open like fragile wings in the dim, hazy light. I was certain I'd died—absolutely convinced of it, down to the marrow of my bones. There was no conceivable way I could have survived that catastrophic blast; the roar of it had swallowed everything, a thunderous inferno that tore through the air and left me tumbling into oblivion. At that harrowing moment, suspended between agony and nothingness, I'd felt utterly adrift in the other world, a spectral wanderer in some ethereal void where time unraveled and the echoes of the living faded into silence.
But here I was, inexplicably returned, my body a map of aches and bruises sprawled across the cool, unyielding earth. The rhythmic plops persisted, each one a deliberate punctuation in the quiet—a steady drip of water from some leaves on a tree close to a stream overhead, or perhaps the reluctant tears of the heavens seeping through the ruins above. They anchored me, those unassuming sounds, pulling me from the brink of whatever abyss I'd glimpsed. My chest rose and fell in shallow, grateful breaths. What sorcery, stubborn luck—had yanked me back from the jaws of eternity? As the world sharpened around me, jagged edges of debris and the faint, acrid smoke curling in the air, I wondered if this resurrection was a gift… or just the prelude to a far crueler fate.
I pushed myself up off the ground, brushing the dirt and grit from my clothes with shaky hands, bits of debris clinging stubbornly to my skin like unwelcome memories. My legs felt like jelly, wobbly and unreliable, but I needed to get my bearings—figure out where the hell I'd washed up, and piece together the nightmare that had landed me here. Flashes of the explosion teased at the edges of my mind, that deafening boom, the heat licking at my face, but every time I tried to grab hold of it, a razor-sharp pain lanced through my skull, hot and vicious. I winced hard, squeezing my eyes shut against the throb, my breath hitching in my throat like I'd just taken a sucker punch to the gut. It passed after a beat, leaving me dizzy and swearing under my breath, but damn if it didn't feel like my brain was trying to stage a full-on revolt.
Gritting my teeth, I shuffled forward, my boots dragging through the soft, loamy soil that sucked at my soles with every step. The ground was uneven, dotted with roots and rocks that threatened to trip me up, but I just kept moving, scanning for anything that looked like a decent perch to catch my breath. There—off to the side, half-hidden in the underbrush—a sturdy tree, its trunk gnarled and studded with knots like the scars of a hundred storms. I eased myself down against it, the rough bark biting into my back through my torn shirt, but it was solid, grounding me in a way the spinning world wasn't. I leaned my head back, closing my eyes for a second to let the cool air wash over my face.
When I cracked my lids open again, the fog in my vision had lifted some, sharpening the edges of this… place. I blinked, slow and deliberate, letting my gaze sweep out in a wide arc, drinking it all in. And holy shit, I'd never laid eyes on anything like it. The grass stretched out like an endless emerald carpet, so lush and vibrant it almost glowed in the fading light, each blade thick and dew-kissed, swaying gently as if whispering secrets to the breeze. Wildflowers punched through in bursts of color—crimson reds bleeding into sunny yellows and delicate purples—blooming in reckless abandon, their petals unfurling like they'd been waiting just for this moment. The air hit me then, thick with their perfume, a heady mix of sweet nectar and fresh earth that filled my lungs and made my chest ache with something I couldn't quite name. It was clean, pure, like the world had been scrubbed down to its bones and rebuilt from scratch.
And the sky—God, the sunset. It wasn't just pretty; it was a masterpiece, the kind of scene you'd swear belonged in some artist's fever dream or a forgotten fairy tale. The sun hung low, a bloated orange orb bleeding into the horizon, painting the clouds in strokes of fiery pink and molten gold that bled down to deep indigo at the edges. Streaks of lavender and rose twisted through it all, like the heavens were putting on a private show just for me, the colors so vivid they seemed to pulse with their own heartbeat. I sat there, mesmerized, the pain in my head fading to a dull hum as the warmth of it all seeped into my bones.
Then the birds kicked in, their chorus rising like a spell being woven right there in the treetops. It wasn't the harsh caws or frantic chirps you get in the city—no, this was something else, a symphony of trills and warbles that danced on the edge of melody, enchanting and alive. Flutes of sound weaving through the air, high notes dipping into soft coos that tugged at something deep in my chest, making me forget, just for a second, the wreckage I'd left behind. A soft rustle in the branches caught my ear—a flash of iridescent feathers, a shadow darting between leaves—and I couldn't help but smile, faint and crooked, as the music wrapped around me like an old friend's embrace.
By then, it all clicked into place, settling over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. The impossible green, the intoxicating blooms, that sunset straight out of a dream, the birds singing their hearts out… there was no other explanation. This wasn't some bombed-out corner of the world I'd clawed my way back to. Nah, this had to be heaven. Or at least, the closest I'd ever get to it. I let out a ragged laugh, half-disbelieving, half-relieved, and slumped deeper against the tree, wondering if saints ever got headaches like this then I dozed off again.
📍 Somewhere in Elysara
(Cut to a sleek, humming lab buried in the city's crystalline heart—holo-screens flicker like fireflies, air thick with ozone. Dr. Elara Voss hunches over a glowing console, her partner Kai Ren paces like a caged storm, and Overseer Thorne lurks in the shadows, all brooding authority. A sharp ping shatters the quiet: another breach.)
Elara (Voice 1, voice weary but wired, eyes flicking to the alert): Ping from the horizon field—quantum spike at 14:27. Another one tumbled through. Vitals are haywire: heart pounding, brain scrambled. This poor soul's still seeing double.
Kai (Voice 2, swiping furiously at the holotable, frustration boiling over as red icons pulse): Fourth in 400 cycles. Gaps are closing fast—one every three months now. If we don't nail this vector, it's a rift city. Total cascade.
Elara (zooming a breach sim, fingers flying): We've patched everything—shields, filters, null-space tweaks. But it's ghosts in the code, backdoors in the multiversal weave. Traces vanish mid-scan. Team's deep-diving the AI core as we speak.
Kai (stopping cold, voice cracking with rage, jabbing the air): Half-measures won't cut it, Elara! Elysara's a tightrope—pop caps, neural harmony, all razor-edged. Flood it with these outsiders' chaos, and boom: resources crash, the collective glitches. Light a fire under your crew—triple the sims. This is our dream on the line! (He rakes a hand through his hair, the breach map throbbing like a wound.)
Elara (glancing up, urgent edge softening to plead): Got it. But this one's life—sympathy echo could yank more through. What's the move?
Thorne (Voice 3, rumbling from the dark with a gravelly ehm ehm cough, rising like a thunderhead, eyes blazing behind aug-lenses): Enough chatter. Drones up—sweep the verdant grids, femtometer precision. Lock 'em, neural-wipe 'em: scrub synapses, burn the origin scar, shove 'em back through the tear. Make it hurt—let their world echo the warning. Elysara breaks intruders, or we break. (He tugs his shimmering coat, glare like ice-fire.) Eyes on target in 60. Slip again, Elara, and you're the test dummy. Go.
Wintex POV
I opened my eyes slowly, and this time, the memories of everything that had happened flooded back, sharp and vivid, as if I'd fully transitioned into this new world.
I'm a tech student, driven by a hunger for discovery. With three friends who shared my fire, we built a time machine we named QUOWAY. The spark came from my grandfather's journal, unearthed days after his funeral. A scientist dismissed as eccentric, he'd filled pages with wild theories about bending time. We, a team of young dreamers, swore to turn his vision into reality and reshape history.
The lab buzzed with energy, the air sharp with the tang of heated circuits. A massive screen loomed above, its blue data streams casting flickering shadows across our faces. Eleven months of grueling work—code, prototypes, arguments—had led to this moment.
"Final code in?" Xara asked, her voice steady over the hum of machinery. The only woman on our team, her razor-sharp intellect had kept us grounded through endless nights. Her eyes, reflecting the screen's glow, held a mix of focus and anticipation.
"Just entered," I replied, my gaze locked on the cascading numbers. My pulse quickened. One wrong move, and QUOWAY could strand us in time's abyss.
Johan and Maccot sat across the lab, their low voices barely audible. Johan, wiry and restless, fidgeted with a pen, his eyes darting to the screen. Maccot, solid and stoic, leaned back, his face etched with exhaustion but lit with hope. They'd poured their souls into QUOWAY, just as Xara and I had.
The machine itself stood at the lab's heart—a hulking frame of steel and circuits, its core pulsing with a faint, eerie light. My grandfather's journal had called it a "key to eternity," but warned of its risks. Now, as the screen chimed and the code locked into place, the air grew thick with tension.
"This is it," Xara said softly, her fingers hovering over the console. "We're about to make history—or break it."
Johan grinned, nervous. "No dinosaurs, Wintex, yeah?"
Maccot grunted. "I'd take claws over a time loop."
I forced a smile, my mind racing. QUOWAY could unlock the past or future—or trap us forever. As its light flared brighter, my grandfather's words echoed: "Time is a river, but it does not forgive those who swim against it." We were moments from diving in, chasing a dream that could change everything or cost us everything.
Johan's POV
Two days. Two damn days since Wintex stepped into that shimmering portal and vanished like a ghost into the void. We've been running on fumes ever since, scrambling to piece QUOWAY back together in this cramped lab that reeks of scorched circuits and stale coffee. It's been a straight-up struggle—every wire we splice, every line of code we debug, feels like stitching up a wound that won't stop bleeding. The portal's dark now, its once-blinding glow snuffed out, leaving only a faint hum and a lingering question that claws at my gut: Where the hell is Wintex?
Flashback: The Moment It All Changed
The lab was buzzing that night, alive with the electric thrum of success. QUOWAY—our quantum oscillation waveform accelerator, the machine we'd poured our souls into for eleven grueling months—stood like a gleaming monolith in the center of the room, its polished alloy frame pulsing with soft indigo light. We'd done it. After endless nights of caffeine-fueled coding, scrapped prototypes, and arguments over temporal flux equations, Wintex's grandfather's wild theory wasn't just scribbled in a dusty journal anymore. It was real, a gateway to… somewhere. Maybe everywhere.
"All systems green," Wintex announced, his voice steady but laced with that manic edge he got when he was too deep in the zone. He leaned over the main console, his fingers dancing across the holo-interface, triple-checking the quantum relays. "Stabilizers are holding at 98.7%. Rift alignment's locked. We're ready."
I couldn't help the grin splitting my face. "Hold up, Win. You're telling me we've actually birthed this beast? Eleven months of hell, and we've got ourselves a foal—a damn quantum colt ready to gallop into the future?" I laughed, loud and raw, the kind of laugh you let out when you've been holding your breath for nearly a year. "We gotta toast this, man. No way we're not cracking a bottle for QUOWAY's big debut."
Maccot, slouched against a server rack with his usual chill vibe, perked up, his eyes glinting with that mischievous spark we'd shared since grade four. "Hell yeah, I'm with Johan on this one. We've been living in this lab like it's our mom's basement. Let's celebrate before we all forget what sunlight looks like." He flashed that lopsided grin, the one that'd been my wingman through every dumb adventure since we were nine, back when our biggest worry was sneaking extra cookies from the cafeteria.
Xara, ever the spark plug of our crew, was already striding over from the supply closet, a bottle of neon-purple vodka glinting under the lab's harsh LEDs. "Way ahead of you, boys," she said, popping the cap with a theatrical pop that echoed like a gunshot in the sterile room. She poured three generous shots into mismatched lab mugs—Maccot had a cheesy "I <3 Science" logo on his mug. "To QUOWAY, our ticket to the stars. Or, you know, wherever this thing's actually going."
I snatched the bottle from her, taking a quick swig before pouring my own. The burn hit my throat, sharp and sweet, like victory laced with rocket fuel. "Goddamn, I love vodka," I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "You're gonna have to pry this from my cold, dead hands."
Maccot snorted, grabbing his mug. "Drunk already, huh? Pace yourself, champ. We're not done yet." His grin was all teeth, but his eyes flicked to Wintex, who'd been silent this whole time, staring at QUOWAY like it was the second coming.
Xara caught it too, her voice softening as she waved her mug at him. "Yo, Wintex!" Xara called, her voice softening as she waved her mug. "Are you joining us or just gonna keep sweet-talking that portal?" Her braids swung as she leaned in, half-joking but checking on him. Wintex had this way of slipping into his own head, especially when the portal was involved—like he could already see the other side.
He blinked, snapping out of it, his lips twitching into a sheepish smile. "Ye… yeah, sorry. Just… it's real now, you know?" His voice was quiet, almost reverent, as he glanced back at the machine, its faint hum vibrating the air like a heartbeat. "Eleven months of blood, sweat, and way too many energy drinks. We turned a theory into this. A literal bridge to another world. My grandpa—he'd lose his mind if he saw this."
Xara raised her mug, her voice firm but warm, like she was rallying us for battle. "To QUOWAY, then. To us—four misfits who turned eleven months of late nights, fried circuits, and yelling at quantum math into something nobody's ever done before. We didn't just build a machine; we built a damn future. Cheers to that."
I clinked the bottle against their mugs, the sound sharp and bright, our laughter bouncing off the lab's walls. I sipped slow, savoring the burn, my mind flashing through the grind—the sleepless nights, the scrapped parts, the time Maccot spilled soda on a server and nearly tanked the whole system. Wintex, though? He slammed his shot back in one go, eyes locked on the portal's growing glow, a swirling pool of blue and white light that looked like a trapped galaxy. I felt it too—that pull, like the machine was whispering, Step through. Find out.
I set the bottle down, leaning back against a console, my buzz mixing with a flood of memories. "Man, eleven months. Feels like a lifetime. Remember when we thought the phase coils were gonna blow us to kingdom come? Or when Xara rewrote half the code in one night because the AI kept spitting out gibberish?"
Xara laughed, tossing a balled-up energy bar wrapper at me. "Don't remind me. I still see syntax errors in my nightmares."
Maccot chuckled, swirling his drink. "Yeah, but we made it. This thing's our baby. Our foal, like Johan said. So… who's stepping through first?"
The room went quiet, the hum of QUOWAY filling the void. Wintex's head snapped up, his eyes sharp now, all traces of dreaminess gone. "Who's going first?" he echoed, his voice cutting through the haze. "I mean… it's gotta be one of us, right?"
Maccot leaned forward, his grin fading to something serious. "Gotta be you, Win. This is your show—your grandpa's theory, your obsession. You've been dreaming about this since we met you in high school. First dibs, man. Go feel the future."
I nodded, feeling the weight of it settle in. "Yeah, Wintex. You built this thing's soul. You get to cross the threshold first."
Xara set her mug down, her voice steady but with a spark of excitement. "He's right. Come on, Win. Punch it in. Let's see what's on the other side."
Wintex exhaled, a shaky breath, and stepped up to the control panel. His fingers hovered over the quantum keypad, then tapped in the coordinates: 3000. A year, a destination, a wild guess—nobody really knew what it meant, just that it was the anchor point his grandpa's equations kept circling back to. The machine responded with a low, resonant chime, like a bell tolling in some ancient cathedral. The portal flared, a beacon of light bursting to life—swirling whites and blues, flecked with sparks that looked like distant stars. It was beautiful, terrifying, alive.
"Here it is," Wintex said, turning to us, his arms spreading wide like he was embracing the universe itself. "This is it, guys." We didn't even think—just rushed in, piling into a messy group hug, laughing like kids who'd just won the lottery. The light bathed us, warm and electric, and for a second, it felt like we were invincible.
"Y'all come in after me, alright?" Wintex called, already stepping toward the portal, his silhouette sharp against the glow. "Don't leave me hanging on the other side."
We nodded, grinning like idiots, watching as he took those final steps. His foot crossed the threshold, and then—wiiiiiiii… BOOM. A pulse of light exploded outward, a shockwave that hit like a freight train. I hit the deck hard, ears ringing, the air thick with smoke and the acrid stench of burnt wiring. Sparks hissed from the consoles, the portal's glow snuffed out like a candle in a storm. I coughed, dragging myself up, my heart hammering as I scanned the chaos.
"Wintex!" I shouted, voice raw, my eyes stinging from the haze. Maccot was on his knees, clutching a table for support, while Xara staggered to her feet, cursing under her breath.
"Where's Wintex?" she yelled, her voice cracking with panic.
The portal was dead. The lab was a wreck. And Wintex… he was gone.
Back to the Present
Now, two days later, we're still picking up the pieces, trying to reboot QUOWAY's fried systems and figure out what went wrong. Every beep from the diagnostics feels like a taunt, every error code a reminder that we don't even know if he's alive. Did he make it to 3000? Or is he stuck in some limbo, caught between worlds? The suspense is killing us, but we can't stop. Not until we bring him back or follow him through.