—May 28, 2145, 01:00:00— (105 Streams Ago)

  The slip of paper felt absurdly small in his hand, the words "Silver Skillet, 01:00" seeming to belong to a different era. Adam pushed through the door, and the air hit him—the thick, comforting aroma of bacon grease and stale, bitter coffee. It was the smell of pre-dawn meetings and secrets. A lone fry cook, his movements slow and methodical, scraped at the flat iron top, the metal scrape a rhythmic counterpoint to the low hum of the refrigeration units beside him. A waitress with graying hair pulled back in a tight bun shuffled toward the coffee machine, her eyes already on him, anticipating the ritual.

  He scanned the room and found him. Detective Leo Rostova was a silhouette in the corner booth, a fixture in this museum of the forgotten. Adam paced across the ceramic tiles, his footsteps echoing slightly, and slid into the worn vinyl bench across from Leo.

  "Detective Rostova?” It was a statement more than a question, however Adam couldn’t be too sure. “Maxine sent me," He continued, his voice low.

  Leo looked up, and a faint smile touched his lips. "Been a long time, kid. About seven and a half years, by my count." Adam saw every one of those years etched onto Leo's face—the lines around his eyes had deepened into canyons, and the dark in his hair had lost its fight against the grey.

  "Why here?" Adam asked, his gaze drifting around the empty diner. "Why not at Command?"

  "Best I limit my visits there," Leo said, his voice a low rumble. "Had a close call a while back. Someone in my own department got a little too curious about my travel expenses." He took a sip from his mug.

  Just then, the waitress was at their table. Adam froze, his mouth suddenly dry, afraid a single wrong word would shatter the fragile cover of darkness.

  "Don't you worry, sweet cheeks," she said, her voice like gravel and honey. She casually rested her hand on the table, and for a split second, Adam saw the glint of a metallic badge tucked into her palm before it vanished. "Your secrets are safe with me."

  Leo let out a short, barking laugh. "Relax, kid. This was Maxwell’s place. One of his shell companies." He gestured around the room. "It's always empty for a reason. They keep the prices so high, nobody in their right mind would ever eat here. It’s as safe here as anywhere.” Leo took a big gulp from his lukewarm mug.

  Doris, her part played to perfection, leaned in slightly. "Coffee for you, handsome? Black, I'm guessing." She didn't wait for an answer, pouring a dark stream into a clean mug. "And a refill for you, sugar butt." She topped off Leo's cup and shuffled back toward the counter, leaving them in a pocket of shadow and steam.

  Adam tilted his head. “You said this place was Maxwell’s.”

  Leo licked his lip, instinctively and peeked around the corner of the booth. An old habit. “Maxwell’s dead, kid.” He said, in a hushed voice.

  “What? How?” Adam was caught off guard by that news. He struggled to think of how someone like Dr. Maxwell, who had unrestricted access to a time machine, wouldn’t be able to cheat death.

  Leo shook his head and put up his hands. “Not important right now.” He redirected. “Trust me, you’ll understand later. You’ll be there.”

  “I’ll be where?”

  “Forget it. I’ve said too much” Leo quipped. “It wasn’t a tragedy. Everybody dies.”

  Adam let it go, but his thoughts lingered for a moment. The man he met seven years ago was older, sure, but not that old. Or was he?

  Snapping fingers from across the table caught Adam’s attention. "Alright," Leo began, his tone shifting to all business. "We've got an actual problem to solve. A big one." He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "Sometime around early December, 2160, give or take, there’s gonna be some shit that hits the fan here. Unless we do something to stop it.

  “They'll create a localized mass of something called Higgs boson particles. Don’t ask me what that is. I just know it’s bad.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Who’s they?” Adam asked, the specifics washing over him.

  “We don’t know yet, exactly. But it hits multiple locations, globally. The result is subatomic anomalies on a scale we won’t be able to contain. New Verillian will take incalculable losses, including a direct hit to Temporal Command HQ.”

  “Someone is going to attack us here?”

  Leo shook his head. “No. All indications are that it will be accidental.” He took a sip of his coffee, as if recounting a casual story about what he had done last weekend. “But automated retaliation strikes will be launched against the detected source—the Mesoamerican Citadel. It'll be a wasteland. All records, gone." Leo paused. "And it's a real shame, considering they're our closest ally."

  "Have we talked with them?" Adam asked, the question feeling naive the moment it was out of his mouth. "Can't we just tell them what’s going to happen?"

  Leo squinted, his head bobbing in a slow, non-committal way. "It's... complicated. See, it's not exactly widely known that we've developed a time machine. We want to keep it that way. For now.”

  "The other cities don't know?" Adam found it hard to believe.

  "No," Leo corrected, his voice dropping. "I mean it's not exactly widely known even here. Only a handful outside of Temporal Command know about it in New Verillian.The fewer people who know, the better.”

  As if on cue, Doris reappeared, a coffeepot in her hand. She refilled their mugs without a word, then leaned in conspiratorially. "And I ain't sayin' nothin'." She winked at Leo and retreated.

  Adam stared into his cup. "If we can't admit we have the Loom, how are we supposed to get them to cooperate?"

  "That," Leo said, pointing a finger at him, "is where you come in."

  Adam recoiled slightly. "Me? What do I know about any of this? I'm not a politician or a diplomat. You guys do have access to my high school grades, right?"

  "Don't underestimate yourself," Leo said, his gaze intense. "If it helps, you've done missions like this hundreds of times already. This is what you do."

  "How?" Adam asked, bewildered.

  Leo shrugged and laughed, shaking his head. "Hell if I know. We just send you wherever you need to go, set you up with a local handler, and you figure it out from there." He leaned back, a wry grin on his face. "I mean, it just takes time. And, last time I checked, you've got all the time in the world."

  "What if I fail?" Adam pressed. "What if I can't figure it out?"

  "Then we'll meet right here again," Leo said calmly. "We'll talk it over and try something different."

  "And if I fail again after that?"

  "Then we rinse and repeat."

  The words hung in the air, simple and devastating. "How many times?" Adam whispered.

  Leo didn't even flinch. "As many as it takes to figure it out."

  It hit Adam then, a cold, dawning horror that had nothing to do with assassins or dying worlds. He understood. It wasn't about his skill or his courage. It was about his endurance. They needed someone who could endlessly bounce back and forth through time, immersing himself in the problem, a living, breathing algorithm to find the one working solution in a sea of infinite failures. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. Whatever it took.

  Leo seemed to read his mind. "You might even be an old man when you get done with this mission."

  A new thought, colder and more immediate, nagged at him. "What if I die? What if someone kills me while I'm trying to figure it out?"

  Leo waved a dismissive hand. "Temporal Command rewinds time. They save you. No big deal. Happens more than you think."

  Adam stared, utterly stupefied. The casualness of it was more shocking than the revelation itself. His life, his death—it was just a variable to be reset. A thought broke through the shock. "It's 2145, right?" he asked, needing to ground himself. "And the event we're trying to stop... it's in 2160?"

  "That's right."

  "Why—" Adam started.

  "—are we starting now?" Leo finished for him. "I guarantee you it took them more than fifteen years to create this mess up there. Stopping their progress now will be a hell of a lot easier than when they've reached the point of no return."

  Leo slid a datapad across the table. The screen glowed with a picture of a man with sharp, intelligent features, his name, and an address beneath it. "Here's your guy. He'll get you whatever you need when you get there. Go see Silas. He'll know how to get you there."

  Leo grabbed his hat and coat from the bench beside him, ready to leave. "Wait," Adam said, stopping him. "When will I see you again?"

  Leo laughed, a genuine, rumbling sound. "Kid, I'm sure we'll be right back here together, again. And again. And again." He made a clicking noise with his mouth, pointed at Adam, and winked. Then he was gone, the bell over the door jingling his departure.

  Adam was alone, staring at a name, a face, and an address. The weight of his new reality settled onto his shoulders, not as a burden, but as a sentence.

  A plate suddenly appeared under his nose, piled high with something that looked suspiciously like synthetic apple pie. "Eat this, sweet cheeks," Doris said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She gave him a warm smile. "Then how ‘bout you go and save the world for us, again, darling?".