THE SHATTER POINT

Dr. Eliza Chen had always believed that time flowed like a river—constant, unwavering, and singular in its direction. Now she knew better. Time wasn't a river; it was a pane of glass. And she had just watched it shatter.

The quantum laboratory at Meridian Research Institute hummed with tension. Banks of monitors displayed cascading errors as alarms blared throughout the facility. Eliza's colleagues scrambled around the central chamber, desperately trying to shut down the quantum resonance engine—her life's work, the device meant to revolutionize energy production by tapping into the temporal momentum of subatomic particles.

"System failure imminent!" Dr. Park's voice cut through the chaos. "Dr. Chen, we need to evacuate!"

Eliza ignored him, her fingers flying across the holographic interface. "We can still stabilize it. The temporal flux is just—"

The air around the engine shimmered, like heat rising from asphalt on a summer day. Then came the sound—not an explosion, but something worse. A high-pitched crystalline noise, as if reality itself were cracking.

"Everyone out!" Eliza finally shouted, but it was too late.

The resonance engine collapsed in on itself, and a pulse of blinding white light erupted from its core. Eliza threw her arms up instinctively, but instead of burning heat, she felt a strange coolness wash over her skin. The light enveloped her, and for an instant—or was it an eternity?—she existed everywhere and nowhere.

When her vision cleared, the lab was still there, but different. Her colleagues stood frozen in various poses of panic, like statues. Outside the reinforced windows, birds hung suspended in mid-flight.

"Jin?" she called to Dr. Park, but he didn't respond. She approached him cautiously, noticing how the air around him seemed to bend and distort. When she reached out to touch his shoulder, her hand passed through a strange resistance, like pushing through gelatin, before making contact.

At her touch, Jin suddenly animated, completing his previous movement before freezing again in a new position. The realization hit her: time around her had stopped, or nearly stopped. Somehow, she was moving at a different temporal rate than everything else.

The effect lasted less than a minute. With another sound—this one like glass being struck by a tuning fork—time snapped back. Her colleagues resumed their panicked evacuation, the alarms continued wailing, and chaos erupted again.

But something had fundamentally changed.

---

Three days later, Eliza sat in a secured government facility, watching footage of what the media was calling "temporal anomalies" spreading across the globe. A coffee shop in Tokyo where patrons aged five years in the span of an afternoon. A small town in Brazil where yesterday's rain was falling upwards, back into the clouds. A highway in Nevada where drivers reported the same eighteen-wheeler passing them over and over, trapped in some kind of loop.

"Dr. Chen," the stern-faced general across the table spoke her name like an accusation. "Our scientists confirm that the epicenter of these disturbances traces back to your laboratory. To your experiment."

"It wasn't supposed to—" Eliza began, but was cut off by another official sliding a tablet toward her.

"These are reports from your own colleagues. Several of them experienced... displacements. Dr. Jin Park claims he lived an entire week in the span of what you experienced as twenty minutes. Your assistant believes she was simultaneously in the lab and at her childhood home."

Eliza pushed the tablet away. "The quantum resonance engine was designed to create a controlled temporal bubble—a microsecond of decelerated time to harvest energy from the differential. But something went wrong. The field collapsed, and instead of a bubble, we got..."

"A shatter," came a voice from the doorway.

All heads turned to see a man Eliza didn't recognize. Tall and lean, with dark skin and close-cropped hair, he carried himself with military precision despite wearing civilian clothes.

"Marcus Webb," he introduced himself. "Former Army Intelligence, current temporal anomaly." Without waiting for permission, he approached the table and set down a small device that projected a holographic model of Earth, crisscrossed with glowing fracture lines.

"What we're looking at," Marcus continued, "isn't just localized time distortions. It's a complete fracturing of our timeline. Different fragments moving at different speeds, some even moving backwards. And it's getting worse."

"How do you know this?" the general demanded.

Marcus fixed him with a steady gaze. "Because I'm experiencing all of them simultaneously. Every possible timeline that's branching out from the shatter point. And I'm not the only one affected."

Eliza studied him, noticing the faint shimmer in the air around him—the same distortion she'd seen around Jin in those frozen moments after the accident.

"You're like me," she said quietly. "Temporally stable."

Marcus nodded. "The military calls people like us 'anchors.' There are others. Not many, but enough that they've started finding each other. People who can move between the fractures without being torn apart."

"Torn apart?" one of the officials echoed.

"What do you think happens when part of your body experiences Tuesday while another part experiences Friday?" Marcus asked grimly. "The human mind and body weren't designed to exist across multiple timelines."

Eliza stood, ignoring the protests of the officials. "Take me to them. These other anchors."

"That's why I'm here," Marcus replied. "We need you, Dr. Chen. You created this, even if by accident. Maybe you can help us fix it before—"

"Before what?" the general interrupted.

Marcus's expression darkened. "Before the fractures spread further. Before the timelines don't just shatter, but collapse entirely. Before time, as a fundamental force, runs out."

Eliza felt a chill run down her spine. "How long do we have?"

Marcus glanced at his watch—an old-fashioned analog timepiece with hands that spun erratically backwards and forwards.

"That's the problem, Doctor. In some timelines, it's already happened."

---

The helicopter deposited them on a remote facility nestled in the mountains. As they descended the ramp, Eliza noticed patches of snow that melted and reformed in rhythmic pulses, as if winter and spring were battling for dominance.

"Welcome to Chronos Base," Marcus said as he led her toward a bunker entrance. "The government established it when the first anomalies appeared, but now it exists in a relatively stable temporal pocket. A sanctuary of sorts."

"Relatively stable?" Eliza questioned.

"You'll see."

Inside, the facility was a blend of cutting-edge technology and improvised workstations. Screens displayed maps of anomalies, their numbers growing by the hour. But what caught Eliza's attention were the people—a diverse group working with focused intensity, each surrounded by that same subtle distortion she was beginning to recognize as a marker of temporal anchors.

A young woman with short purple hair approached them first. "You found her," she said to Marcus before turning to Eliza. "I'm Sasha Volkov. Continuum, when we're in the field." She extended her hand, and when Eliza took it, she felt a strange synchronization, as if their personal timelines were briefly aligning.

"She doesn't know about code names yet," Marcus chided gently.

"Right," Sasha grinned. "Sorry. We've got a bit of a superhero complex around here. When you're some of the only people who can move between fractures without going insane or dying, you start to feel special."

Before Eliza could respond, an alarm sounded. The screens around the room flashed red, focusing on a location in downtown Chicago.

A tall Black man in his thirties rushed to the main console. "Major fracture forming. Temporal differential is... Christ, it's a 30:1 ratio. A day inside for every hour outside."

"Civilians?" Marcus asked, instantly alert.

"At least two hundred in the affected zone. Office building," the man reported, then noticed Eliza. "Jamal Carter," he introduced himself quickly. "They call me Nexus. I'd say nice to meet you, but..." He gestured to the emergency unfolding on the screens.

"We need to move," Sasha said, already heading toward what looked like an armory. "Chronosuits charged?"

"Ready to go," confirmed a young man with an intricate mechanical device strapped to his back. "I've adjusted them to account for the differential. You'll have about forty minutes of stability before the batteries drain." He nodded to Eliza. "Dante Rivera. Parallax. I build things."

"Dr. Chen won't be going," Marcus stated firmly.

"Like hell I won't," Eliza countered. "If these fractures were caused by my experiment, I need to see them firsthand."

"It's too dangerous for a first run," Marcus argued. "You have no training, no—"

"I'm temporally stable, just like you," Eliza interrupted. "And I'm the world's leading expert on quantum-temporal mechanics. I need data, real observations, not secondhand reports."

Marcus hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod to Dante. "Get her suited up."

Minutes later, Eliza found herself wearing a sleek exosuit lined with what Dante explained were "temporal stabilizers." The team assembled on a platform in the center of the base.

"Stay close to me," Marcus instructed as they prepared for departure. "The chronosuits will help, but your natural stability is stronger. If anything happens to the tech, I can get you out."

"How exactly are we getting to Chicago?" Eliza asked, noticing there were no vehicles in sight.

Sasha smiled mysteriously. "That's where I come in."

She stepped to the center of the platform and raised her hands. The air around her began to shimmer and bend, like heat distortion but more pronounced. Eliza watched in fascination as Sasha performed what looked like a choreographed dance, her movements precise and flowing. With each gesture, the distortion grew, spreading outward until it enveloped the entire team.

"First time's a bit disorienting," Jamal warned Eliza, just before the world around them seemed to fold in on itself.

Eliza felt a sensation like being gently pulled in every direction at once. Her vision blurred, then cleared to reveal they were no longer in the mountain facility, but standing on the roof of a skyscraper in what was unmistakably downtown Chicago.

Except Chicago was wrong. The sky above half the city was night, stars clearly visible, while the other half blazed with midday sun. And at the boundary between them, reality itself seemed to ripple and distort.

"Welcome to the field, Dr. Chen," Marcus said grimly. "Now you see what we're up against."

Eliza stared at the fractured city, the weight of responsibility settling over her like a physical force. Somewhere in the quantum equations and temporal theories that had consumed her career lay the answers they needed—the key to mending what she had broken.

"Call me Meridian," she said quietly, embracing the code name they'd given her. "And let's get to work."