The interior of the ranger station at the base of the Seven Sisters was a tomb of freezing air and flickering blue light. It was November 9th, 2006. Elias Thorne sat on a crate of ammunition, his laptop glowing with the data-feeds of a world he was trying to colonize.
His 40.5°C fever had left him with a persistent, hacking cough that tasted of iron. Every time he coughed, a spray of fine, red mist hit the screen. He didn't wipe it away. He didn't have time.
"The Palo Alto wire is confirmed," Elias rasped, his voice a dry thread. "We own 0.4% of the company. It's not much, but it's enough to insert the 'Security Addendum'."
"Elias, you're talking about things that don't make sense," Sarah said, her voice a hollow, broken sound from the corner of the room. She was huddled under a pile of blankets with Mia, watching her son with a look of pure, unadulterated terror. "You're buying 'addendums' while we're freezing in a shack. We have no food. The guards are on rations. And you... you look like you're rotting."
"I'm building a cage, Mom!" Elias roared, the effort triggering a Memory Migraine that nearly sent him off the crate.
He gasped, clutching his head. He saw a flash of a woman's face—a victim from 2015—her eyes wide with the realization of what Julian Vane was. He saw the "Clockwork" signature on her arm.
"Tick... Tick... Tick..."
"He's here," Elias whispered, his vision returning in jagged, monochromatic frames. "He crossed the border. I saw the ping on the Vancouver node."
"How?" Witt asked, stepping into the light. The security lead looked haggard, his tactical gear crusted with frost. "We're in the middle of nowhere. No one followed us. The pilot is in a hotel in Vancouver being watched by my second team."
"He didn't follow the helicopter," Elias said, his fingers flying across the keys. "He followed the Money. Every wire I send, every stock I buy... it leaves a heat signature in the digital frost. I'm a millionaire in 2006, Witt. I'm a lighthouse in a dark ocean."
Elias looked at his balance. $522,090.42.
He had spent over $800,000 in less than two weeks. He was a "Financial Architect" who was bankrupting himself to buy a future he might not live to see. He was a detective who had forgotten how to solve a crime because he was too busy trying to prevent the world from existing.
"I need to buy the satellite," Elias murmured. "The Iridium network. If I can own a single bird over the 54th parallel, I can see him before he reaches the tree line."
"With what money?" Witt asked, his voice low and dangerous. "The men haven't been paid for next week. You're spending half a million on 'addendums' while the tiger is at the door."
"I'll get the money," Elias said, a cold, predatory light entering his eyes. "I remember the 2007 Gold Spike. It starts in forty-eight hours. A minor geopolitical tremor in the Middle East. Gold goes from $600 to $850. I'll leverage the remaining half-million. I'll turn it into five million."
He was oblivious to the fact that Julian was currently five kilometers away, sitting in a stolen Ford, watching the heat signature of the ranger station through a pair of primitive, analog thermal goggles. Julian didn't care about gold spikes. He didn't care about Palo Alto.
He saw the "Heat."
Elias looked at the monitor. He saw a flicker on the perimeter sensor—a motion tripwire at the 200-meter mark.
"He's here," Elias whispered, his hand reaching for the shotgun.
The Memory Migraine hit him with the force of a train. He saw a flash of the Fairmont roof—the explosion—the mock-salute.
"Checkmate, Elias," the future-Julian had said.
Elias vomited into the snow-dusted floorboards, his body shaking with the fever. He was a millionaire, he was an architect, he was a ghost. But as the heavy oak door of the ranger station began to creak under the weight of the wind, he realized he was still just a man with a gun, waiting for a monster in the dark.
"Witt! Positions!" Elias screamed.