Marcus Hale leaned over the polished mahogany of the bar, his weight resting heavily on his forearms. His shoulders were rounded, head bowed low as if he were trying to physically squeeze one last drop of meaning out of a morning that had offered him absolutely nothing.
On paper, he was twenty-five years old. To the locals who stopped for gas across the street but never came in, he was just a "kid" who had bought a dying business. To the debrief officer who had slid his discharge papers across the gray metal table in a windowless room three months ago, he was a man with "plenty of life left ahead of him."
But Marcus knew the truth. His spine felt decades older, fused with the kind of exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch. His joints ached with the memory of long marches and concrete floors, and his mind was a crowded room of ghosts that refused to leave.
His gaze drifted, as it always did when the silence got too loud, to the crooked photograph tacked above the condiment shelf. It was a Polaroid, the colors fading to sepia at the edges. Four faces stared back at him. There was Rook, grinning with a cigarette hanging off his lip. Jaro, trying to look tough but failing. And himself, looking impossibly young.
There was dust on their uniforms, sweat glistening on their necks, and smiles that were too wide, too bright for the hell they were standing in.
His squad. His brothers.
All gone.
He was the only one who had walked out of that shed. The only one breathing the stale air of a Texas diner while they rotted in the ground on the other side of the world.
His mind swept involuntarily to Raina. The memory of her was a physical intrusion, a phantom limb that still throbbed. He could still feel the phantom sensation of her skin against his, the intoxicating heat of the supply closet, the way she had tasted of mint and cheap beer. He remembered the desperate hunger in her hips, the way she had looked at him with eyes that seemed to promise the world.
And then he remembered her standing in the window across the street, pointing out his position to the snipers.
The betrayal gnawed at him, a rusted hook in his gut. He often wondered, in the dead of night when the whiskey didn't work, what her real motivation had been. Was she a monster? Was she a patriot fighting for her own home? Was she forced into it through torture, coercion, a gun to a family member's head?
Were any feelings they shared... real? Or had he just been the easiest mark in the battalion?
He snapped out of it, shaking his head physically to dislodge the image of her face.
"I did it, guys," he whispered to the empty room, pushing off the bar. The wood creaked under his weight, a lonely sound. "Opened the place. Just like we talked about."
The Slipgate.
It had started as a late-night joke in some overseas dive, fueled by bad liquor and adrenaline. "We need a place where people slip in from everywhere," Rook had said, gesturing wildly with a bottle. "A neutral zone. Nobody cares who you were before you walked in. You check your rank and your sins at the door."
Marcus had liked that. He clung to the idea of a door where the past stayed outside.
Instead, he got a mostly empty diner on the edge of Weedfield, Texas, a town that was barely a smudge on the map.
The front window still shouted GRAND OPENING in big, hopeful, red-and-white block letters that were starting to peel in the relentless sun. Inside, the diner was pristine. Every Formica table was wiped down to a streak-free shine. Every vinyl chair was tucked in with military precision. The napkin dispensers were full. The ketchup bottles were married and wiped clean.
The neon "OPEN" sign in the window buzzed like a tired, angry insect, fighting a losing battle against the daylight.
No seated customers. Not this morning. Not yesterday. Not for two solid weeks. It was takeout orders for truckers or locals who didn't want to make eye contact. It was a clean, retro-style roadside diner that smelled of lemon polish and failure.
The silence pressed on his chest like the humidity before a tornado. It was heavy, expectant, and cruel.
Marcus reached under the bar, his hand brushing against the rough, unfinished wood of the under-counter. His fingers found the small, concealed latch he had installed himself. He clicked it, and a false panel dropped open.
Inside, resting on a bed of oil-stained cloth, lay the tools of his old trade. A sawed-off shotgun. A combat knife. A spare box of shells. His "just in case." The same instincts that had told him where to stand in a firefight to avoid a cross-breeze had told him where to stash a weapon in a place that served pancakes. You could take the soldier out of the war, but you couldn't take the war out of the nervous system.
He'd come back here with a purpose. He couldn't bring his brothers home. He couldn't fix the hole in his chest where his unit used to be. But he could bring their dream to life.
Right now, that dream looked like polished chrome, cold fryers, and a commercial fridge full of food that was slowly ticking toward its expiration date.
He checked the clock on the wall. 10:45 a.m.
It was that dead zone—late for the breakfast rush that never came, early for the lunch crowd that wouldn't show up. It was prime time for giving up and flipping the sign.
Marcus sighed and headed for the kitchen, his boots thudding softly on the checkered tile. He moved through the swinging doors into the stainless steel heart of the restaurant.
Eggs. Bacon. Pancake batter.
His hands moved on autopilot, putting away things that had never been ordered. He capped the syrup pitchers. He wiped down the cold grill. The hiss of the walk-in fridge door opening was the loudest sound in the room, a pneumatic gasp that sounded like the building was dying.
He picked up a tray of prepped brisket, heavy and cold, and slid it onto the metal rack in the cooler. He looked at the meat, calculating the waste, the cost, the futility.
"Tomorrow," he told himself, the word tasting like ash. "Maybe tomorrow."
The bell over the front door gave a half-hearted, tinny jingle.
Marcus froze, his hand still gripping the silver handle of the cooler door.
Then, the front door shut. Hard. Hard enough to rattle the plate glass in the frames and send a vibration through the floorboards.
Two Strangers, Wrong World
Marcus stood stock still, head cocked.
Footsteps. Two sets.
They weren't the heavy, plodding steps of the locals or the confident stride of a trucker. They were light, fast, and edged with a frantic energy. It was the way people moved when they were either very late or running from something terrifying.
Customers.
He shut the cooler door with a soft click, wiped his hands on his apron to remove the condensation, and walked out of the kitchen. He forced his pace to slow down. Stay calm. Professional. Pretend your place isn't a ghost town and you haven't been talking to a photograph for the last hour.
He pushed through the swinging doors, stepped into the dining area, and stopped dead.
Two young women stood just inside the doorway, huddled together like they had stumbled in from a different genre of reality.
They weren't from Weedfield. They weren't from Texas. Looking at them, Marcus's brain did a stutter-step, because they didn't look like they were from this world at all.
Both were blonde and slim, possessing that tall, almost weightless build you usually only saw in high-concept fantasy art or heavily edited fashion magazines. One was clearly older, protective; the other was younger, looking around with wide, saucer-like eyes.
Their clothes were wrong. Wrong for the town, wrong for the stifling Texas heat, wrong for the decade.
The older one hooked his attention first. She was standing slightly in front of the other, her body angled defensively, her head turning to check the window almost non-stop.
She wore a short green dress made of a material Marcus couldn't identify—something that looked like woven leaves or silk that had been spun from moss. It was cut longer in the back and high in the front, clinging to her body in a way the fabric seemed born to do. It showcased pale, flawless legs that did not belong in a dusty roadside diner.
She had subtle curves over a frame of quiet, whip-cord strength. A heart-shaped face, a soft jawline, a small, straight nose, and full, pink lips that were parted as she fought to catch her breath.
Her eyes were bright green. Not just green—bright. They caught the overhead fluorescent light and held it, glowing with an internal luminosity that was startling.
And then, he saw them.
Her ears.