The island loomed through the mist—a labyrinth of sleek, angular structures pulsing with cold, artificial light. At its heart lay Chronos Corp’s sanctum, buried beneath layers of calculated desolation.
Lin Xiaoxia and Xu Yuan stepped ashore, the air thick with the sterile hum of machinery. The low-frequency drone of unseen devices vibrated through the ground like a synthetic heartbeat. Unnerving.
They moved like shadows, dodging patrols as Xiaoxia’s fingers flew across her hacked terminal, hijacking the island’s surveillance feeds. The screens revealed their target: a high-security underground lab, shielded beneath the island’s core.
The entrance was deceptively bland—a nondescript building housing a biometric vault. Disguises and spoofed codes got them through.
Inside, the lab stretched like a cathedral of data. Servers towered in rows, their flickering blue casts painting the air. Screens cascaded with streams of numbers, a digital deluge. The scent of overheated circuitry mixed with something sharper, metallic—like ozone and ambition.
Xu Yuan’s hands moved instinctively, drawn to the central server. His keystrokes were rapid, precise, peeling back layers of encryption. The core system yielded grudgingly, spitting out schematics of a sprawling temporal model.
Before them, time itself had been dissected into a web of luminous threads—nodes, branches, probabilities. A network not just to observe time, but to weave it.
Xiaoxia’s breath caught. They’d theorized, but this—
Then, alarms shrieked.
"We’re made!" Xiaoxia snapped, yanking Xu Yuan back.
Too late.
The lab doors hissed open. A man in a white coat stepped through, gold-rimmed glasses glinting. His smile was knife-thin.
"Welcome to the heart of Chronos," he said, voice smooth as chilled steel. "I see our work has… captivated you."
His gaze pinned them—not with anger, but the quiet hunger of a scientist observing specimens.
And behind him, the time-network pulsed, alive with stolen seconds.
ns3.148.180.219da2
