PROLOGUE
Melbourne, Year 2989
The air inside the Melbourne Retrieval Dome smelt of burnt metal, ozone, and desperation.
Evelyn Wynter adjusted the collar of her battered interface suit as the departure signal blinked crimson on the wall. Her team—six specialists clad in mirrored visors and dark suits patched too many times—moved with quiet precision around her. Each one was primed, ready to step through the temporal gate and into a past none of them belonged to anymore.
Outside the dome’s reinforced glass, a wasteland stretched for miles—cracked earth, polluted clouds tinged green, and the skeletal ruins of what had once been Victoria’s lush countryside. No birds. No wind. Just silence broken only by the distant groan of machines harvesting dead soil.
They were out of time. Literally.
“Gate opens in thirty seconds,” barked Jaxon Porter, the grizzled mission lead, flicking a switch on the console. Sparks flew. A whine built in the walls like a jet turbine screaming across the tarmac.
Evelyn steadied herself. Her mind reeled—not from fear of the jump, but the weight of what they were about to do. Again.
The year they were targeting was 2024—a time of vibrant skies, bustling airports, and people who still believed they had a future. But a plane that day was going to crash. Two, in fact. Doomed midair collision over the Blue Mountains. Everyone would die. Unless they got there first.
Their mission? Extract every passenger and crew member seconds before impact. Replace them with synthetics. Make it look like the tragedy history remembers.
No one in the past could ever know. The future depended on it.
As the Gate’s core pulsed bright, Evelyn whispered to herself, “Just one clean run this time.”
But time had other plans.
