Chapter 11: Hunted Through History

Chapter 11: Hunted Through History

The jump hit her without warning. One moment, she was standing in the dead red dust of a forgotten future, staring at the terrifying cracks spiderwebbing across her own skin; the next, she was seized by an invisible, cosmic hand and squeezed. The sensation of being ripped apart was no longer a shock, it was a familiar agony. Her consciousness was dragged through a screaming, infinite waterfall of moments, the friction of it all feeling like it was sanding her soul down to a raw, bleeding nerve. This time, there was a new, horrifying sensation: a feeling of being pulled in multiple directions at once, as if unseen things were tugging at the frayed edges of her existence.

She was spat out into cold, wet blackness, landing hard on a slick, uneven surface that knocked the wind from her lungs. She crumpled into a heap, a wretched pile of pain and disorientation, curling into a fetal position on the ground. The jarring impact sent a fresh wave of agony through her body, and she felt a sickening, tearing sensation along her forearms. The fissures were getting worse.

The air was the first shock. It was thick, heavy, and freezing cold, carrying a complex and foul bouquet of coal smoke, damp earth, horse manure, and the sour stink of unwashed humanity. The silence of the dead future was replaced by a cacophony of alien, yet familiar, sounds: the rhythmic clatter of iron-rimmed wheels and horses’ hooves on stone, the distant, mournful clang of a church bell, the shouts of men and the high, tinny laughter of a woman somewhere nearby.

Sara pushed herself up, her body screaming in protest. Her hands, when she placed them on the ground for support, slid on a patch of greasy slime. She was in a narrow, lightless alleyway, the stone walls on either side slick with moisture and grime. At the far end, a weak, flickering bubble of orange light illuminated a swirling miasma of fog, casting long, dancing shadows that writhed like tormented spirits. Gaslight. Cobblestones. Coal smoke. The pieces clicked into place with a sense of weary, academic dread. Victorian London. Or somewhere very much like it.

A fit of coughing seized her, her lungs rebelling against the thick, particle-laden air. When it subsided, she risked a glance at her hands in the dim, reflected light. The sight made her stomach clench with a fresh wave of nausea.

The fine, hairline cracks from the future city were now deep, pronounced fissures. The one on her right hand had split open, a ragged black chasm running from her knuckle to her wrist. It didn't bleed blood. It seemed to bleed nothingness, a sliver of pure void. The skin around the cracks was pale and translucent, stretched so thin it looked like it might flake away at a touch. The pain wasn't a cut; it was a structural failure, a deep, cellular tearing. The constant, high-frequency tremor in her limbs was more pronounced, an uncontrollable shudder that made her feel like she was vibrating apart.

The static in her head was louder, too. It was no longer a background hum but a constant, insistent buzzing, the sound of a thousand flies trapped inside her skull. It was the sound of her own impossibility, a frantic noise generated by a human body that should not, could not, exist here.

She had to move. To hide. The instinct was primal, overriding the pain and the disorientation. She was a wrong thing in this place, and every fiber of her being screamed at her to find cover. She hugged the damp brick wall, using it to guide her as she staggered deeper into the darkness of the alley, away from the faint light of the main thoroughfare. Her one goal, reduced from saving her family to simply this: find a shadow, curl up, and survive the next few minutes.

She found a small alcove where rubbish and discarded crates were piled high, the stench of rotting vegetables thick in the air. She squeezed herself behind a large, splintered crate, pulling her knees to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe through the pain, trying to quiet the buzzing in her head.

But the static wouldn't stop. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. And it was no longer just inside her skull. She could hear it now, an external, complementary crackle echoing faintly from the mouth of the alley.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. It was the sound of Milton. The sound of the thing he had become. He’d followed her. The thought was so terrifying it almost paralyzed her.

She forced herself to peek around the edge of the crate. The alley mouth was a murky rectangle of fog and flickering gaslight. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, a shape coalesced out of the smog.

It was a silhouette. A dark, man-shaped hole in the world, its edges fizzing with television static. It stood perfectly still, its featureless head seeming to scan the street. It was him. It had to be.

But as she watched, her blood running cold, another shape flickered into existence beside the first. This one was shorter, broader, its form more distorted, its glitching movements more erratic. Then a third appeared across the street, its silhouette unnaturally tall and thin, like a Giacometti sculpture carved from shadow and television snow.

Sara clapped a trembling hand over her own mouth to stifle a scream. The horrifying truth cascended over her. Milton hadn't been a unique abomination. He was just the first one she had seen. He hadn't created a monster; he had joined a species. A species of damned, unmoored souls, just like her.

She was a beacon. She could feel it now. The temporal energy she was bleeding from her cracked skin, the loud, insistent paradox of her very being—it was like blood in the water, and they were the sharks. The tugging she had felt during the jump… it had been them, sensing a new meal. They were predators, drawn to the scent of a fresh, new temporal disturbance. She wasn't just a lost traveler anymore. She was prey.

As if sensing her terror, the first silhouette—the one that looked so chillingly like the monster from her father’s garden—turned its head. It didn’t have eyes, but she felt its gaze lock onto her hiding spot with an absolute, terrifying certainty. The static crackling from its form intensified, a hungry, predatory sound that vibrated in her teeth.

Then, it moved.

It didn't run. It launched itself across the cobblestone street with the same unnatural, glitching speed she remembered with visceral horror. It vaulted over a discarded cart with a fluid, impossible grace, landing silently at the entrance to her alley. The other two silhouettes began to drift across the street, their movements slow and deliberate, flanking it, cutting off any chance of escape.

The hunt had begun.

Scrambling backwards, raw panic obliterating all other thought, Sara pushed herself away from the crate. Splinters dug into her palms. She turned and ran, blindly, deeper into the labyrinthine darkness of Victorian London, the sound of crackling static hot on her heels.