The wind howled across the dead district of Gate. Ash danced like ghosts in the air, spiraling through the cracked windows and shattered towers. Thunder cracked overhead, but the storm was not from the sky.
It came from Lin.
He moved like a storm through the alleys, black combat jacket flaring behind him, eyes lit not with fury — but something worse.
Conviction.
His boots splashed through puddles of chemical runoff. His breath fogged as he passed the abandoned checkpoint to the ruins of an old Aseeter transfer hub — a forgotten station on no map.
Lin knew better.
They always came back to where they started.
The sigil he found on his wall, drawn in blood, wasn't just a threat. It was a message — a signature only one Aseeter would leave.
Time.
The name echoed in his memory like a wound.
An Aseeter from the old days. A phantom in the war-torn underbelly of South Gate. They said Time was untouchable — a being that moved outside consequence, unbound by the rules of the world. Reality bent around him. Bullets froze. Knives rusted midair. Screams looped and repeated until their owners went mad.
And once — long ago — Time was Lin's friend.
Now, he was the executioner.
Lin slammed a black capsule into the door lock. The old steel hissed, melted from within. He stepped into the shadows of the base, dragging a blade across his palm. Blood sizzled on the air.
They would smell him now.
Let them.
He wanted them to.
Inside the base, the halls were clinical — sterile white — filled with the hum of machines that replaced souls.
Monitors blinked. Cables snaked through the floor like veins. The air was too clean. Unnatural.
Lin didn't hesitate.
Three Aseeters stepped from a side corridor — their faces blank, movements clockwork-smooth. One raised a shotgun, another an energy blade.
Lin didn't stop.
He moved.
A blur of steel and speed — his twin pistols barking once, twice, thrice. The first Aseeter's skull erupted. The second was decapitated mid-leap. The third lunged — Lin side-stepped, snapped its arm at the elbow, and shoved a grenade down its throat.
The explosion painted the walls.
But the moment of victory didn't last.
A slow ticking sound filled the hallway.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Lin froze.
The air grew cold.
The lights flickered. His breath slowed. Everything... bent.
And then he saw him.
At the far end of the corridor, walking calmly through the flickering light —
Time.
He wore a dark trench coat embroidered with gold circuitry, and his face was a porcelain mask — smooth, inhuman, like a broken clock's dial. Where his eyes should be, spinning glass dials rotated endlessly, measuring every second of every breath.
"Lin," Time said, voice like a bell in a crypt. "I wondered when you'd come."
Lin raised his guns. "Give her back."
Time didn't flinch. "You always rush. You never learned."
The world paused.
For one second, Lin couldn't breathe.
Then —
CRACK.
He was slammed back into the wall, ribs crunching.
Time stood inches from him now. His hand gripped Lin's throat, and the air bent around him — warping, reversing, skipping.
"I missed you," Time whispered. "But friendship... was never real, was it? Not when you chose to abandon the mission."
Lin coughed blood. "You... became monsters."
Time tilted his head. "We became efficient."
He threw Lin like a ragdoll down the hall. Lin rolled, spat blood, and reached for a blade — too late.
Time stepped on his wrist.
Lin cried out.
"You think she matters?" Time said. "You think the girl is yours to save?"
He bent down, placing two fingers on Lin's temple.
"Let me show you what's already happened."
**
Lin's mind fractured.
He saw Hina, strapped to a cold table.
He saw Time, standing over her, tearing open her memory with gleaming tools.
He saw the pendrive — the one Lin used to short-circuit A1 Caterial — embedded in her spine. Not by accident.
By design.
She was carrying something.
Not data.
A key.
A fragment of the Gate.
The Gate that once turned Lin and Time into gods.
The Gate that made the Aseeters.
And Lin had given it to her without knowing.
"She was chosen," Time whispered in Lin's mind. "By the Gate itself. And now... she must be unmade."
**
Lin screamed.
Reality snapped back.
He lunged — jamming a blade into Time's stomach.
For a heartbeat — the world buckled.
Then rewound.
Time stepped back, completely unharmed, watching Lin with mild amusement.
"You're predictable."
But Lin was already gone — sprinting down the corridor before Time could reset again. He knew the layout now. He remembered the cold white rooms, the hidden cells, the observation decks. He knew where Hina would be.
And he only had one shot.
Because every time he fought Time, he lost seconds.
Minutes.
Pieces of his own life.
Hina's scream echoed through the hall.
He found her.
Strapped to the core altar — a circular machine that pulsed with alien light. The memory wipe had begun. Tubes slithered into her head, leeching thoughts.
And standing beside her — two other Aseeters.
One was A1 Caterial, half his face melted from the flash drive blast.
The other was Time, already waiting.
Lin raised his pistol.
And fired.
BANG!
Time didn't move.
The bullet froze in the air and shattered.
"You can't win," Time said calmly.
Lin looked at Hina.
She wasn't screaming anymore.
She was singing.
No — not singing. Murmuring.
A prayer.
Or maybe a code.
Her lips moved, and the tubes hissed violently — sparks crackling through the air. The machine rejected her. Reality trembled.
The Gate fragment was awake.
And it was fighting back.
Time's eyes spun wildly.
"What... have you done?"
Hina's eyes snapped open, glowing white.
She whispered:
"Run."
Lin moved.
The altar exploded in light — knocking Caterial back, ripping through Time's coat and warping the floor. Lin dove and caught Hina mid-fall, her body trembling, blood leaking from her ears.
But her smile was defiant.
"I held it in," she gasped. "As long as I could."
Time stood from the smoke, his mask cracked.
"You don't understand," he said, voice shaking. "You've torn open the loop. The Gate will awaken."
Lin aimed his pistol.
"I'm counting on it."
He fired.
But not at Time.
At the core behind him.
The old reactor. The original Aseeter forge. The system powering Time's loop field.
BOOM.
Fire devoured the corridor. Time's scream was swallowed by the collapse.
Lin shielded Hina with his body as the ceiling came down.
Darkness claimed them both.
Hours later.
A different light.
Lin woke in the ruins. Dust in his lungs. Firelight flickering.
Hina lay beside him, alive — but unconscious.
Time was gone.
Vanished into smoke.
But the pendrive was still in her spine — glowing faintly now.
And etched in the metal beside it, written in Time's script:
"This is not the end."
Lin closed his eyes.
It never was.
But tonight — he had taken her back.
Even from Time itself.
And if the Gate wanted war?
Then Lin would give it one.
To be continued