Chapter 1: The Emergence
"Discovery begins where understanding ends."
Day 0 – 04:17 a.m. – Global Tremor Event
Okay, first off—this wasn't your run-of-the-mill earthquake. Not even close. It all kicked off with this weird spike in the magnetosphere; forget tectonic plates, this was something else. Tech freaked out everywhere—clocks skipped like a scratched record, and birds just noped out of their usual flight patterns. Creepy.
Fast forward a few minutes, 4:21 a.m.: boom, brand new island just pops up in the South Atlantic. You could only see it on old-school sonar and analog gear. Satellites? Nada. Ocean looked boring as ever. But the land was there, plain as day, like the world was glitching out.
By six, the UN's all hands on deck, scrambling to throw together a science dream team. By 2 p.m., they'd rounded up the best of the best: Dr. Aanya Das, who messes around with time physics; Captain Reeve Carson, ex-military, probably eats nails for breakfast; Dr. Malik Okoro, a biogeneticist with too many degrees; and Dr. Yara Myles, who can probably have a conversation with a rock in any language. Smart folks, sure, but none of them had a clue what fresh hell they were marching into.
Day 2 – 08:00 a.m. – Briefing at Base Harkness
The debriefing tent smelled like stale coffee and old socks. Reeve hung out at the back, arms crossed, glaring at everyone with his one good eye like he was daring them to mess up. Guy hates surprises—good luck with this assignment.
Commander Zhao finished up the video feed, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.
"The island doesn't show up on GPS. Satellite says open water, but our analog sonar's picking up terrain. Something's there—or maybe it's just pretending not to be."
Aanya leaned in, all business. "Is it cloaked, or are we talking about a spacetime meltdown?"
Zhao shrugged. "That's why you're going. Go find out."
Day 4 – 05:30 a.m. – En Route Over Ocean Null
Out over the water, the sea looked like a mirror—totally dead, kind of eerie. The team's in this old jet, running on inertial navigation because, surprise, digital stuff just nopes out forty miles from the island. Reeve fiddles with a battered compass. "Still north," he mutters.
Yara's voice barely a whisper: "Still wrong."
Then, at exactly 5:47, the island just—bam!—shows up. One second it's empty sea, next thing you know, there's black cliffs, weird glowing plants, wind that doesn't seem to touch anything. Like someone just dropped a memory onto the horizon.
Radio? Dead as a rock.
Day 4 – 06:02 a.m. – Descent
Landing was... rough. Like the ground was breathing under them, which is a sentence nobody ever wants to say. Trees shifted around, but there wasn't any wind. It was like the whole place was fidgety.
Reeve started barking orders. Malik and Yara got to work setting up gadgets. Aanya crouched by some dirt, frowning. "This isn't volcanic. These particles—magnetically polarized."
Malik scanned it. "And alive."
Turns out the soil's got bioactive stuff in it—like, memory-wires mixed with roots. Real Frankenstein vibes.
Reeve tapped his comms—pointless, but it made him feel better. "We set up camp. Nobody wanders. We don't try to map it—we anchor it."
Yara, deadpan as ever: "What if it doesn't want to be anchored?"
Day 4 – 10:00 a.m. – The First Shift
Malik was staring at a fern, looking like he'd seen a ghost. "I just watched it grow, rot, and turn back into a seed. Ten minutes."
Yara was off to the side, squinting at carvings on some rocks. Not ancient, but weird—future English?
"It says, 'You return because you remember. You remember because you return.'"
Aanya touched the stone. It thumped under her hand, like a heartbeat.
Day 4 – 12:30 p.m. – Discovery of the Loop
Launched a drone. Bad idea? Maybe. Footage came back corrupted as hell. After some fiddling, the video showed the team standing in a clearing—same people, same gear, same everything, except it's from a different angle.
Reeve cursed. "That's us."
Nobody had any memory of being there.
Yara checked the timestamp. "This says it's from tomorrow."
Aanya felt something inside her snap. "We're inside some kind of recursive field."
Malik just sat on a rock, staring at the drone like it had insulted his mother.
"It's not just that the island moves through time. It makes time."
Day 4 – 02:00 p.m. – The Journal
Aanya found a journal on her cot. Old, beat-up, with her initials. Written in her own handwriting. Dated three years into the future.
First entry? Tomorrow.
She opened it up:
"We land today. I feel the loop forming again. I must find the others before we forget. One of us betrays us. One of us becomes the island."
She snapped it shut, looking like she'd seen a ghost.
Reeve eyed her. "That yours?"
Aanya nodded, but her voice was barely there. "Not yet."