The command center had become a pressure cooker of fear. Forty-three people crammed into a space meant for twenty, their collective terror thick enough to taste. Workers huddled in corners, whispering prayers in Arabic, Berber, French—a patchwork chorus of desperation that did nothing to drown out the storm's unnatural shriek.
Damian stood at the reinforced window, watching the gate pulse with a rhythm that looked disturbingly alive. Each flash rippled through the air, distorting space like a mirage in reverse. The symbols crawled across the surface, forming patterns that made his eyes water if he tried to follow them.
"This can't be happening." Dr. Hassan, the geologist, clutched a small Quran to his chest. "Storms don't behave like this. They don't… target things."
"Tell that to the gate," Riley muttered, fingers flying over her laptop despite the flickering power. "I'm reading signals that shouldn't exist outside a particle accelerator. The electromagnetic field is structured—like it's talking."
"Talking to what?" Elara asked, though her gaze stayed fixed on Damian.
"With him, apparently." Riley pulled up an audio wavelength. The pattern was unmistakable—modulated frequencies spelling out Damian's name in multiple protocols at once. "It's like the gate learned every human communication method in seconds and decided to use them all."
Kane stationed his men at every entrance, weapons drawn despite their uselessness against weather. Old instincts. When soldiers faced the impossible, they fell back on what they knew.
"We need to evacuate," Kane said for the third time. "I can get choppers here in six hours—"
"In this?" Elara gestured at the window where the sandstorm raged like a living thing. "Nothing flies through that. And look at the eye. The gate is calm. Whatever this is, it's deliberate."
"That's what worries me." Kane's hand rested on his pistol. "Deliberate threats are the worst kind."
A crack like thunder split the air. Everyone flinched. The gate's surface rippled—not just the symbols now, but the stone itself. It flowed like water, then parted like curtains.
Behind it should have been sandstone. Instead, there was something else.
"Is that a city?" Riley whispered.
Structures materialized in the space beyond—buildings that bent into impossible angles, streets looping back like Möbius strips, towers standing wider at the top than at the base yet perfectly stable. It was a metropolis designed by someone who understood physics on a level that dwarfed human science.
"This isn't a projection." Riley's face was pale in her screen's glow. "The space is connecting to somewhere else. Somewhen else."
"That's not possible," Hassan said, but his voice lacked conviction.
"Look closer," Elara whispered.
Damian did, and cold fear ran through him. The city wasn't empty. Figures moved through those impossible streets—human-shaped, but wrong. They walked through walls, climbed from street to rooftop in a single step, aged and grew young again in seconds.
And at the center of it all, in a plaza that defied geometry, stood a figure that made Damian's breath catch.
It was him. Unmistakably him, despite the years. Twenty years older, hair gray at the temples, new scars etched into a face carved by battles Damian hadn't fought yet. The clothes he wore shimmered between fatigues and something alien, fabric that ignored gravity.
But the eyes were worse. Where Damian's were nearly black, this version's glowed amber—the same amber he'd seen in his vision of Elara.
"Jesus Christ," Kane muttered. "Is that—"
"Me," Damian said, hollow.
The older Damian turned, as if hearing them across the gulf of time. His mouth moved, and though no sound pierced the storm, Damian read the words:
"Come home."
The figure raised one hand, pointing through the gate—at Damian himself. The gesture was invitation and command.
"The distortion's spiking," Riley warned. Her laptop screamed alerts. "If it keeps climbing, the barrier won't hold."
"You mean that thing could come through?" Kane demanded.
"Not just him. The whole city could overlay onto our reality." Riley's hands shook as she typed. "The gate isn't just a door—it's a junction between timelines."
Elara grabbed Damian's arm, eyes bright with urgency. "The vision you had—you saw this, didn't you? The burning city?"
He nodded, unable to look away. "And you were there too. Changed. Your eyes were like his—amber, glowing."
She pulled her hand back as if burned. "That's not going to happen."
"How can you be sure?" Damian asked. "How can any of us?"
The older Damian stepped closer to the threshold. Behind him, the impossible city pulsed with a power that made the air scream. More figures emerged—some human, some not—but all striding with the same purpose, converging on the gate.
"They're coming," Riley said, panic edging her voice. "The barrier's failing. A minute, maybe less."
Kane barked orders, his men taking defensive positions—two at each entrance, another patrolling. It wouldn't matter, but it was all they knew to do.
"Wait," Elara said. She turned to Damian, gripping his shoulders. "The gate responds to you. It knows your name. Shows you visions of yourself. What if you can control it?"
"Control it? I don't even understand it."
"Neither do I. But it chose you for a reason." Her voice shook but didn't break. "That future version of you—maybe he's not invading. Maybe he's warning us. Or guiding us."
"Or replacing us," Damian said flatly.
The older Damian reached the gate. His palm pressed against the barrier, cracks spreading like shattered glass. The command center's walls flickered, becoming translucent. Through them Damian saw the impossible city bleeding into their camp.
"Thirty seconds!" Riley shouted.
Damian's chest tightened. He looked at the gate, at his older self, at the terrified faces around him. The weight of choice pressed like a storm front. He could stay and watch the world unravel. Or he could step forward.
"If I go to the gate," he told Elara, "I might stop this. Or make it worse."
"You might become him," she said softly.
"I might."
She held his gaze, then nodded once. "Then I'm coming too."
"Like hell you are," Kane snapped.
"You saw his vision," Elara shot back. "If both of us are part of this, then we face it together. That's the only chance we have."
The older Damian's hand pushed through the barrier, fingers scarred and aged, reaching into their reality. The storm outside roared, sand whirling into shapes that looked like screaming faces.
"Ten seconds!" Riley cried.
Damian made his choice. "Kane, keep everyone here. Don't let them follow."
Before anyone could argue, he grabbed Elara's hand and ran. They burst into the storm, sand tearing at their skin, the wind trying to throw them back. But the path to the gate was clear—a tunnel of calm air that hadn't existed before.
They ran toward the figure with amber eyes burning with terrible knowledge. Behind them, Riley's voice carried through the storm:
"Five seconds!"
The older Damian smiled—welcoming and infinitely sad.
"Three!"
Elara's hand tightened in his.
"Two!"
They reached the gate's threshold.
"One!"
The older Damian's voice carried across the impossible distance, clear as if whispered in Damian's ear:
"Welcome to the end of the world. You're the only one who can help us stop it."
The barrier shattered.
And time itself came undone.