The safe house felt crowded that night. All three teams had returned successfully, and the small space buzzed with the electric energy of survival and accomplishment. Jarek was recounting the chase through Milltown's tunnels, gesturing wildly as he described how he and Sylvia had split up to confuse their pursuers.
"—and then this maintenance worker, just some random guy, sees us running from Timekeepers and opens a door we didn't even know existed. Service corridor, leads right to the water treatment facility. We come out a mile away from where they're searching." Jarek shook his head in disbelief. "Just opened the door and said, 'Go. Quickly.' Didn't ask for time, didn't ask questions. Just helped."
"More people are sympathetic than we think," Martha observed. She was cleaning her equipment methodically, the ritual of a professional. "They might not join the resistance openly, but they'll take small risks. Open a door. Give bad directions to Timekeepers. Forget to report a sighting. Those small acts add up."
Ray sat in the corner, watching Sylvia. She'd been quiet since returning, her face pale beneath the makeup disguise. The close call had shaken her more than she was admitting.
"You okay?" Ray asked quietly, moving to sit beside her.
"I'm fine," Sylvia said automatically. Then, after a pause: "No. I'm not fine. We were seconds from being caught, Ray. Seconds. If that worker hadn't opened that door..."
"But he did. You're here. You're safe."
"For how long? Today we got lucky. Tomorrow we might not." Sylvia's hands were shaking slightly. She clasped them together to still them. "I knew the risks intellectually. But experiencing it, having Timekeepers chasing you through dark tunnels, hearing them getting closer, knowing if they catch you it's over—" She broke off, taking a deep breath. "It's different than I expected."
Ray understood. He'd been running for his life since the moment Hamilton transferred his time. But Sylvia had been wealthy and protected her whole life. This kind of fear, this kind of danger, was new to her.
"Do you regret it?" Ray asked. "Joining us? Leaving your old life?"
Sylvia looked at him, and despite the fear in her eyes, her voice was firm. "No. Never. My old life was comfortable, but it was built on thousands of people dying. I'd rather be terrified and fighting than comfortable and complicit." She managed a weak smile. "Ask me again tomorrow when the adrenaline wears off."
Across the room, Kira was setting up a laptop, connecting to encrypted networks with practiced efficiency. "You all need to see this," she announced. "It's spreading."
Everyone gathered around the screen. Kira pulled up a series of social media posts, messages from people in Dayton and Milltown, even some from New Greenwich. The posts were careful, coded, but the message was clear:
*Someone is giving away time in Dayton. Not selling. GIVING. Real time. Years of it.*
*My sister was down to three hours. A stranger gave her a year. Said it was free. Who does that?*
*Heard about distributions in three zones yesterday. People calling them Time Angels. Robin Hood shit. Is this real?*
*Weis Corp won't comment but Timekeepers are everywhere. They're scared.*
"Time Angels," Greta said with a laugh. "I like it. Better than 'terrorists.'"
"The narrative is shifting," Martha said, leaning closer to read the posts. "Philippe tried to paint us as criminals. But people are seeing the actual results—lives saved, time distributed, the poor helped instead of exploited."
"It's not all positive," Kira warned, scrolling down. "Look at these."
A different set of posts appeared:
*This is theft. Stolen time being distributed by criminals. They're not heroes, they're thieves.*
*The Time Angels are destabilizing the economy. If everyone gets free time, the whole system collapses. They're dangerous.*
*I heard one of them is Ray Shivers, the guy who murdered Henry Hamilton. Don't romanticize murderers.*
"Philippe's propaganda is still working on some people," Sylvia observed. "The ones who benefit from the system, or who've bought into the idea that scarcity is natural."
"That's fine," Martha said. "We're not trying to convince everyone. We're trying to help the desperate and turn the undecided. If some people hate us, that means we're actually threatening the status quo."
Dev appeared from the corner where he'd been working on something. "I've got news too. Not from social media, from Timekeeper communications." He held up a scanner. "I've been monitoring their encrypted channels. Lots of chatter about the distributions. They're calling it 'Operation Time Theft.' They've created a special task force specifically to hunt the distribution teams."
"How many Timekeepers?" Martha asked sharply.
"At least fifty assigned full-time. Maybe more. And they're coordinating across zones, sharing intelligence. They know it's the same group operating in multiple locations." Dev looked worried. "They're also offering rewards. Anyone who provides information leading to the capture of a distribution team gets ten years."
Ten years. That was more than most people in Dayton earned in a lifetime. The temptation would be enormous.
"So we assume we're being watched," Martha said. "Assume someone in every crowd might be an informant. Assume every distribution could be a trap."
"Then how do we keep operating?" Tessa asked. "If we're that paranoid, we'll freeze up."
"We adapt. Change our patterns constantly. Never hit the same area twice. Use different disguises each time. Vary our methods." Martha was already thinking through the logistics. "And we accept that eventually, some team will get caught. We need protocols for that."
The room sobered quickly. The celebration of today's success evaporating into the cold reality of future risks.
"If I'm captured," Martha continued, "I'll try to hold out for twenty-four hours before breaking. That gives the rest of you time to relocate, change procedures, burn compromised contacts. After twenty-four hours, assume everything I know is in Timekeeper hands."
"Same," Greta said. "Twenty-four hours, then assume I talked."
One by one, everyone agreed to the protocol. Twenty-four hours of resistance under interrogation, then the assumption that all information was compromised.
"Let's hope it never comes to that," Jarek said quietly.
Elena arrived late that night with supplies and more news. She looked exhausted, her face drawn with stress.
"The city is going insane," she reported, setting down bags of food. "Checkpoints everywhere. Random searches. People being arrested for 'suspicious behavior.' But it's also energizing the lower zones. People who've accepted poverty their whole lives are starting to ask why. The distributions are making them think."
"That's good, right?" Ray asked.
"Good for revolution. Bad for safety." Elena pulled out a tablet showing news footage. "Philippe Weis gave another press conference today. Watch."
The screen showed Philippe behind a podium, his expression grave and authoritative. But Ray noticed something—the man looked tired. Older. Stressed in a way he hadn't been at the party just days ago.
"—criminals who call themselves Time Angels are not heroes," Philippe was saying. "They are thieves distributing stolen property. Every year they give away is a year taken from honest, hardworking citizens. They destabilize the economy, create false hope, and threaten the very foundations of our society."
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was harder. "I am therefore implementing emergency measures. Effective immediately, all time zone crossings will require enhanced security clearance. Curfews will be enforced in high-risk areas. And anyone caught receiving time from these criminals will have that time confiscated and face prosecution as accomplices."
The room went silent.
"He's criminalizing the victims," Sylvia said, her voice hollow. "People who accept distributions will be arrested. He's making it illegal to receive help."
"It's a smart move," Martha admitted grimly. "If people are too afraid to accept distributions, we can't operate effectively."
"It's also desperate," Kira countered. "He wouldn't be implementing emergency measures if he wasn't genuinely threatened. The distributions are working. He's scared."
Ray studied Philippe's face on the screen. This was Sylvia's father, the man who'd built an empire on manufactured scarcity. And now that empire was showing cracks.
"We need to accelerate," Ray said suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. "Philippe's expecting us to slow down, to be cautious because of his new measures. Instead, we hit harder. More distributions, more zones, make it impossible for him to suppress."
"That's extremely risky," Martha warned.
"Everything we do is risky. But if we slow down now, we let him control the narrative. Let him make people afraid to accept help. We need to show them that the fear is worth overcoming."
"He's right," Greta said from her cot. She could walk now but still needed rest. "This is the moment. Either we press the advantage or we lose momentum."
Martha was quiet for a long moment, thinking. Then she nodded slowly. "Alright. We accelerate. But we also need bigger impact. Forty-five years distributed is good, but it's not enough to sustain a movement. We need hundreds of years. Thousands, eventually."
"Which brings us back to the time transports," Kira said. "I've been researching them. There's a shipment moving from New Greenwich to Milltown in three days. Twenty years in physical capsules, being transferred for 'security redistribution.'"
"Twenty years," Jarek whistled. "That's more than we've distributed total."
"It's also a huge risk," Martha said. "Time transports have armed guards, armored vehicles, tracking systems. It's not like approaching someone on a street corner."
"No, it's bigger," Ray said. "But the payoff is bigger too. Twenty years could sustain our operations for weeks. And hitting a transport sends a message—we're not just giving away time we already stole, we're actively taking it from their system."
Martha looked around the room at her team. "Show of hands. Who thinks we should try for the transport?"
Ray's hand went up immediately. Then Sylvia's. Greta's from the cot. One by one, everyone voted yes.
"Then we plan it properly," Martha decided. "Kira, I need everything about that transport. Route, timing, guard schedules, vehicle specifications. Dev, we need equipment—weapons if necessary, though I'd prefer non-lethal. Tessa, Jarek, you're on logistics. And someone needs to coordinate with Caron. This is big enough that he should know."
The next three days were a blur of preparation. They couldn't do distributions while planning the transport heist—too much risk of exposure—but the downtime felt like torture. Every day they didn't distribute was a day people died.
But Martha insisted: "Better to wait and do the transport right than rush and fail. Twenty years in one operation is worth the pause."
Kira's research revealed the transport route: departing New Greenwich at 14:00, arriving Milltown at 16:00. Two hour drive through relatively empty industrial areas between zones. The transport vehicle itself was armored but not military-grade—resistant to small arms but vulnerable to focused attack.
"Four guards," Kira reported. "Two in the transport, two in an escort vehicle. All armed with time-draining weapons and conventional firearms. They'll have communication with Timekeeper headquarters, probably checking in every fifteen minutes."
"So we have fifteen minutes to execute the robbery before reinforcements arrive," Martha calculated. "That's tight but doable."
"Where do we hit them?" Jarek asked.
Kira pulled up a map. "There's a stretch of road here, in the buffer zone between New Greenwich and Milltown. Minimal traffic, no surveillance cameras for a two-mile stretch. The transport will be alone there for about eight minutes."
"How do we stop an armored vehicle?" Tessa asked.
"We don't," Dev said. He'd been working on something in secret, and now he unveiled it—a device that looked like a modified road flare. "This is an EMP generator. Crude, but effective. Knocks out electronics in a localized radius. Their vehicle will think it's had a critical failure and engage emergency stop protocols."
"That's brilliant," Martha said, examining the device. "Once they're stopped?"
"Then we move fast," Ray said. He'd been studying the transport specifications. "The rear door has mechanical backup locks. We bypass those, get inside, secure the capsules, and we're gone before they can radio for help."
"And if they resist?" Sylvia asked.
"We have time-draining weapons too," Greta said. She'd been training with one, practicing despite her injuries. "Drain them just enough to make them weak. Not kill them, just incapacitate."
"I don't want casualties," Martha said firmly. "The guards are just doing their jobs. They're not the enemy—the system is."
"Agreed," Ray said. "We're not killers. We're thieves with a conscience."
On the day of the heist, six of them loaded into two vehicles: Ray, Sylvia, Martha, Greta, Jarek, and Dev. Kira and Tessa stayed at the safe house as backup, ready to coordinate emergency extraction if needed.
They positioned themselves along the target stretch of road, camouflaged among abandoned industrial buildings. Waiting. Watching.
Ray checked his clock: 105:12:36:22. Still over a century, but the number kept dropping. Every distribution, every operation, every moment of this revolution was measured in time.
"Transport approaching," Dev said, watching through binoculars. "Right on schedule. Two vehicles, maintaining standard security spacing."
"Everyone ready?" Martha asked.
Affirmatives around the team.
The transport vehicle appeared—a large armored truck with the Weis Corporation logo on its side. Behind it, the escort vehicle, unmarked but clearly security.
Dev activated the EMP device.
Both vehicles immediately swerved, their engines dying, their electronics failing. They coasted to a stop in the middle of the empty road.
"Go!" Martha commanded.
Ray and Jarek sprinted toward the transport's rear door while Greta and Martha covered them with time-draining weapons. Sylvia was in one of their vehicles, engine running, ready for a fast extraction. Dev monitored communications, jamming any attempts to call for help.
The transport guards were already exiting their vehicle, confused, weapons drawn. They saw Ray approaching and raised their guns.
"Down!" Greta shouted.
Her time-draining weapon discharged with a distinctive whine. The lead guard stumbled, his clock rapidly depleting—not to zero, but enough to weaken him. He collapsed to his knees, unable to resist.
The second guard fired back, but Martha was already moving, her own weapon discharging. Another guard down.
Ray reached the transport's rear door. The mechanical locks were complex but not impossible. His fingers worked quickly, tools from Dev's kit manipulating the mechanisms. Thirty seconds. Forty-five. A minute.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, secured in protective cases, were rows of time capsules. More than Ray had ever seen in one place outside Weis's vault. Twenty years of compressed time, glowing green in the dim interior.
"Jackpot," Jarek breathed.
They worked fast, transferring capsules to reinforced bags. Twenty years was heavy—the physical form of time had mass, surprisingly substantial. They could only carry so much.
"Ninety seconds," Dev called out. "Security will be back online soon."
Ray grabbed the last accessible capsules. They couldn't take everything—too much weight, too little time—but they'd gotten at least fifteen years. Maybe more.
"Move!" Martha ordered.
They ran back to their vehicles, the guards still weakened but starting to recover. Engines roared to life. Tires screeched.
They were away, racing down the empty road, before the transport's communications came back online.
"Did we do it?" Sylvia asked from the driver's seat, her voice tight with adrenaline.
Ray looked at the bags of capsules in the back of the vehicle. Counted quickly.
"Eighteen years," he said, almost not believing it. "We got eighteen years."
Martha's voice crackled through the radio from the other vehicle: "Clean extraction. No casualties. Head to the dispersal point. We've got work to do."
---
That night, they didn't return to the safe house immediately. Instead, they drove to three different locations—Dayton, the Fringe, and a settlement beyond even the mapped zones. At each location, they distributed six years to desperate communities.
Ray handed time to a woman with twins who'd been two hours from watching her children die. Gave a year to an old man who'd survived seventy years and just wanted to see seventy-one. Transferred months to teenagers who'd just activated their clocks and faced their first taste of the system's cruelty.
Eighteen years. Gone in three hours. Distributed to dozens of people who would live because of it.
When they finally returned to the safe house, exhausted but triumphant, Kira met them at the door with a tablet.
"You need to see this. It's everywhere."
The screen showed social media exploding with a single story: Time Angels hit Weis transport. Stole years. Gave them away to the poor. No one hurt.
And below, thousands of comments. Some supportive, some horrified, all engaged.
The revolution was no longer underground.
It was becoming a movement.
Ray checked his clock: 105:12:32:44.
The countdown continued.
But now, the whole city was counting with them.
---