*-------------------*
The dust storm over Mars' southern hemisphere raged like a curtain drawn by angry gods, veiling the surface from orbit. Deep beneath this fury, in the underground labyrinths of Aeonis Outpost, silence reigned. Nova stood before a rusted panel, fingers hesitating over controls that hadn't been touched for decades.
Beside him, the terminal blinked—a message in a dead language:
ACCESS PROTOCOL 9-A: ARCHON VEIL INITIATED
ERROR: TEMPORAL KEY NOT FOUND
"I've seen this code before," Nova muttered. "Buried in the sublayers of the Final Horizon archive."
His voice echoed against the tunnel walls, walls lined with dormant conduit tubes pulsing faintly, like veins waiting for blood. Nova's breath misted in the frigid air. The silence behind him was broken only by the slow approach of footsteps.
It was Captain Lin Yara. Her eyes were sharper now, skepticism peeled back, replaced by grim acknowledgment of what they were stepping into.
"I ran diagnostics on the echo signatures," she said. "There are fluctuations… in time."
Nova turned. "You mean distortion?"
"No. I mean something from the future is feeding data backward—some kind of temporal echo."
"Temporal bleed…" Nova's voice trailed off, the possibilities unfolding in his mind like a cascade of black dominos.
*------------------------*
Elsewhere in Earth orbit, Chairman Mark Patreon's private comms chamber glowed with the holograms of world leaders. Each looked tired, cornered.
"The Project is unraveling," said General Amina Kovich of the Russian Republic.
"No. It's evolving," Patreon's voice was steel. "We built Final Horizon to respond to an unknown threat. And now we know it wasn't just alien. It wasn't just war."
He paused. "It was time itself."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
"Are you saying we're not fighting a species… but causality?"
"I'm saying the wormhole isn't a tunnel—it's a knot. And we're the ones who tied it."
*-----------------------*
Back on Mars, the lights in the Aeonis Outpost flared to life. Nova's touch had awakened something—an old system, forgotten by design.
A voice, synthetic yet ancient, echoed from the intercom:
"PROTO-CORE INITIALIZED. DESIGNATION: HORIZON PRIMORDIUM.
WARNING: TEMPORAL CONTAMINATION DETECTED."
Yara drew her weapon instinctively, as the walls began to shift—seams appearing where no doors had existed, stone peeling back like pages in a forbidden book.
A hidden chamber opened.
Inside, a single figure stood suspended in liquid stasis—silver eyes closed, body glowing faintly with blue runes that pulsed in a rhythm unfamiliar to biology. The figure looked human. But only barely.
Nova approached the tank. "It's him."
"Who?" Yara asked.
"Project origin… Subject Zero. The first one to enter the wormhole. They said he never returned."
Nova's voice trembled. "They lied."
*-------------------------*
Within Earth's Strategic Command, Dr. Ilya Moravec, head of Temporal Anomalies Division, reviewed a sequence of images projected on an analog screen. One of them was Nova—his younger self. But it wasn't from any current camera feed.
It was a picture dated Mars Year 4, exactly 78 years into the future.
"How is this possible?" he muttered.
Patreon entered the room, casting a long shadow. "Because he was always there. Nova's timeline… is looped."
"You knew?"
"I suspected. That's why I chose him. That's why I allowed Protocol Black Horizon to happen."
Moravec turned, his voice sharp. "You let his family die."
Mark's eyes didn't flinch. "Yes. And he needed to become who he is. The wormhole doesn't just distort time—it selects."
"Selects for what?"
"For resolution."
---------------
Yara stared at the frozen figure in the stasis pod. "If this is Subject Zero, then who's been sending the data from the future?"
Nova didn't answer. He was locked in a trance. Lines of ancient symbols flickered across the console. And then—his eyes widened.
"It's… me."
The realization hit like thunder. The future version of himself—the one who never returned—had returned. And had left messages encrypted in time, embedded in the wormhole's fluctuations, hidden in quantum echoes.
Suddenly, the lights went dark. Emergency power flickered red.
"WARNING: TEMPORAL BREACH DETECTED IN SECTOR BETA-12."
Yara readied her sidearm. "We're not alone."
From the corridor, a shriek—non-human, layered with unnatural harmonics—rippled through the air. Shadows moved with impossible geometry.
Nova whispered, "Entities from between."
*-------------------------*
Inside a military council room on Luna, a quiet voice interrupted the chaos.
It was Ambassador Rael, a former theoretical metaphysicist. "Have any of you considered that the wormhole isn't a gate… but a mirror? That what we see is not a future to be feared, but a past we failed to remember?"
Silence.
Rael stood and placed a strange device on the table. It pulsed faintly.
"This was recovered from the Martian ruins by Nova's team yesterday. But it predates Earth civilization."
"How?" someone whispered.
"Because time isn't linear. And because someone—or something—is rewriting it."
*----------------------*
Nova and Yara ran. Behind them, the walls twisted, pulled apart by unseen forces.
They reached the central chamber of Aeonis. Nova slammed the override switch. The stasis pod hissed open.
Subject Zero's eyes opened—silver, hollow, ancient.
He looked at Nova. "You were never supposed to return."
Nova stepped back. "Who are you?"
The figure's voice was layered with echoes. "I am what happens when time forgets."
With a gesture, he summoned an interface in mid-air—lines of code spinning faster than the eye could follow.
Nova watched as his own past, his family's death, his every decision was displayed like a tapestry. And at the center: a single thread leading into the wormhole.
Subject Zero turned to him. "You have one chance left. Go back, but not to change. To understand."
Nova whispered, "What am I supposed to find?"
The figure's answer chilled the marrow in his bones.
"Your origin."
*-------------------------*
In the command center on Earth, alarms blared. A new signal was emerging from the wormhole—an encoded stream unlike anything seen before.
Chairman Patreo stood in silence, watching the waveform evolve into a message.
INITIATE PHASE TWO: PROJECT PARADOX
He turned to his generals. "It's begun."
"What has?" one asked.
Mark looked up, eyes tired.
"The war… against time."
*-----------------*