Lisa leaned back in her seat, watching the colors swirl past. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable, just heavy with everything unsaid.
Alex glanced at the timer. 4:23:17. Still hours to go.
"You know," he said, breaking the silence, "in 1453, Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Mehmed II. One of the biggest sieges in history."
Lisa looked at him. "So you read."
"I paid attention in school. Sometimes." He kept his eyes on the road. "The walls held for weeks. The Byzantines thought they were unbreakable. Then the Ottomans brought in massive cannons. Changed warfare forever."
"And you're telling me this why?"
"Because you're walking into the middle of it. Or right after it. I don't know exactly when you'll arrive." Alex's hands tightened on the wheel. "Just thought you should know what you're getting into."
Lisa was quiet for a moment. "So I'm being dropped into a war zone. That's comforting."
"You asked what happens there. That's what happens."
"Great. Just great." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "From investigating corrupt politicians to dodging Ottoman cannonballs. What a career trajectory."
"You'll figure it out."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
Lisa turned to look at him. "Why do you care? Your job is to deliver me, right? Drop me off and move on to the next poor bastard. Why does it matter if I survive or not?"
Alex didn't answer immediately. He watched the road, the impossible colors shifting around them.
"I don't know," he said finally. "Maybe because you helped save Mary. Maybe because you're not just some name on a mission brief." He paused. "Maybe because you deserve a chance to do something that matters there. Like you did in York."
Lisa stared at him for a long moment. Then she looked away. "That's surprisingly decent of you."
"Don't get used to it."
She almost smiled at that. Almost.
They drove in silence again. The timer counted down. 3:47:09. 3:47:08.
"Thank you," Lisa said quietly. "For Mary. For standing up to Edmund. For letting me be part of something good before I left." She paused. "It made this whole nightmare slightly less nightmarish."
"You did most of it. You got Thomas to turn. You had the plan."
"We did it together." Lisa's voice was firm. "So thank you."
Alex nodded. "You're welcome."
More silence. Comfortable now. Two people who'd been through hell together, sitting with the weight of it.
[One hour remaining until destination. Prepare for dimensional velocity shift.]
June's voice filled the cabin, clear and urgent.
"What?" Alex said aloud. "What velocity shift?"
[Entering high-velocity dimensional corridor in thirty seconds. Both passengers must be secured immediately.]
"Buckle up," Alex said sharply to Lisa. "Right now."
Lisa grabbed her seatbelt and clicked it into place. "What's happening?"
"I don't know. June said something about velocity—"
The truck lurched.
Not forward. Not backward. Sideways through reality itself.
The colors outside exploded into motion. What had been a gentle swirl became a violent screaming torrent. Purples and blues and blacks didn't just streak past anymore, they tore at the windows like claws. The whole world outside became teeth and chaos.
Alex's stomach dropped into his feet. "June! What the hell is this?!"
[High-velocity dimensional corridor. Required for temporal-spatial alignment to 1453 CE.]
The truck tilted forty-five degrees. Lisa slammed against her seatbelt, gasping. "Alex!"
"I know!" He gripped the wheel even though he wasn't steering anymore. June had full control and the wheel spun wildly under his hands. "Just hold on!"
A forest materialized outside Lisa's window. Not passing by. Right there. Close enough to touch. Then it ripped apart like paper and became an ocean, waves frozen mid-crash. Then mountains. Then a city made of glass that shattered into a desert.
All in the space of three seconds.
The truck spun. Actually spun. Three hundred sixty degrees of rotation while still moving forward through the chaos.
Lisa's hands were white-knuckled on the door handle. She wasn't screaming. She was too terrified to scream. Just breathing in short, sharp gasps.
Alex watched a sun birth and die outside his window. Watched civilizations rise and fall in the reflection of the side mirror. Watched colors that didn't have names paint themselves across the void and then unmake themselves.
His brain couldn't process it. Shouldn't be able to process it. But he saw it anyway.
Then the truck hit something solid.
Impact.
Both of them jerked forward against their seatbelts. The windshield cracked, spiderwebbing from the center outward.
Then they broke through.
And suddenly everything stopped.
The truck was moving normally again. Smooth. Steady. Rolling forward on an actual road made of actual dirt and stone.
The chaos was gone.
Lisa was breathing like she'd just run a marathon. Her hands were shaking. "What... the fuck... was that?"
"I don't know." Alex's own heart was hammering. He looked at the cracked windshield, then at the road ahead. "June, you could've warned me about that!"
[I did warn you. Thirty seconds advance notice.]
"That wasn't enough!" Alex's voice rose. "You could've told me before we left York! Before we even started the trip!"
[You never asked about dimensional velocity corridors.]
"Because I didn't know they existed!"
Lisa let out a shaky laugh. "Are you seriously arguing with your AI right now?"
"Yes." Alex took a breath, trying to calm down. "Yes, I am. Because that was insane and I'm never doing it again without more warning."
[Noted.]
"Thank you."
They drove in silence for a moment, both of them recovering.
Then Lisa looked out the window and went very still.
The landscape around them wasn't empty anymore. It was full.
Full of death.
A soldier lay face-down in the dirt ten feet from the road. His armor was dented inward on the left side where something heavy had caved in his ribs. Flies circled above him in lazy spirals. His hand was still reaching toward a sword that lay three feet away, just out of reach. He'd been crawling when he died.
Further ahead, a horse was on its side. Three arrows jutted from its neck at odd angles, the fletching still bright red. Its legs were stiff and angled wrong, stretched out like it was still running. The smell hit them even through the closed windows. Sweet and rotten.
Broken siege equipment littered the landscape. A battering ram lay on its side, the wooden frame scorched black. A siege tower had collapsed in on itself, bodies visible in the wreckage. Cannon craters pitted the ground every few dozen yards, some still smoking.
The earth itself looked wounded. Scorched black in places. Torn up in others. Blood had soaked into the dirt and dried, turning whole patches of ground dark brown.
"Oh my god," Lisa whispered.
Alex steered the truck forward carefully. He tried to avoid the bodies but there were too many. The wheels crunched over something. He didn't look down to see what.
They drove through the aftermath of battle for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes.
Then, rising in the distance: Constantinople.
The city emerged slowly, growing larger with each turn of the wheels.
Massive stone walls surrounded it, ancient and scarred but still standing. The walls were easily forty feet high, built from blocks of stone that looked like they'd been there since the world was young. Scorch marks blackened whole sections where cannon fire had struck. In some places the walls had crumbled, leaving gaps like missing teeth.
Behind the walls, the city itself rose up. Domes caught the setting sun and turned gold. Not metaphorically gold. Actually gold, like someone had dipped them in liquid metal. The largest dome sat at the center, massive and imposing, surrounded by smaller domes that clustered around it like children.
Towers and minarets reached toward the sky. Some were old, Byzantine, their architecture rounded and ancient. Others were newer, Ottoman, sharp and angular and crowned with crescents that gleamed. The old and new stood side by side, fighting for dominance.
The sun was setting behind the city, painting the sky in layers. Deep orange near the horizon. Purple above that. Then blue fading to black at the top where the first stars were appearing. The light hit the buildings and made them glow from within, turned every window into a point of fire.
Smoke rose from various points throughout the city. Some from cooking fires, thin and white. Others from buildings still burning, thick and black and angry.
The Bosphorus ran along the eastern edge, the water turned to copper by the dying sun. Ships dotted the harbor, some intact, others listing badly or already sunk with just their masts visible above the waterline.
It was beautiful and terrible at the same time. A jewel sitting in ruins.
"This is your destination," Alex said quietly.
Lisa stared at the city. She didn't say anything for a long moment. Just looked at it, her expression unreadable.
"So this is really it," she said finally. Her voice was steady. Resigned.
"Yeah."
"No going back."
"No."
Lisa nodded slowly. She unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for the door handle, then stopped. She turned to look at him.
"I'm scared," she admitted. "Terrified, actually. But I'm not going to beg you to take me somewhere else. That's not who I am."
"I know."
"I'll figure it out. Like I always do." She paused. "Even if I have no idea how."
"You will."
Lisa opened the door and stepped out onto the dirt road. Her boots hit the ground with a soft thud.
She stood there for a moment, looking at the city in the distance. The sun was almost gone now, just a sliver of orange on the horizon. The sky was turning purple.
Then she turned back to face him through the open door.
"You know what?" she said. "You're still an asshole for killing me. Nothing changes that."
"I know."
"But..." She paused. "You're not the worst person I could've been killed by. So there's that."
Alex almost smiled.
Lisa slammed the door. Then she raised her middle finger and held it there. "Fuck you, Alex."
She turned and started walking toward the city, her stride confident despite everything.
Alex watched her go. Watched her shoulders square, her head lift. Even terrified, even abandoned in a world she didn't understand, she walked like she had every right to be there.
The notification appeared in his vision.
[Quest Complete: Deliver Lisa Bonet to Constantinople, 1453]
[Congratulations! Mission Successful!]
[Reward: 200,000 dollars]
The money appeared in his account. The skills integrated into his consciousness, flooding his brain with information.
Then, before he could even process it:
[New Quest Assigned: Presidential Delivery]
[Objective: Locate and deliver a package to President Ruiz of Neo-Brasília, Parallel Earth Helix-7]
[Side Quest: Deliver secondary package to First Lady Ruiz]
[Location: Neo-Brasília, Presidential District, Parallel Earth Helix-7]
[Reward: 250,000 dollars + Advanced Skill Unlock]
[Note: High security environment. Extreme discretion required.]
Alex stared at the notification.
"A president?" he said aloud. "How the hell am I supposed to deliver a package to a president?"
[The same way you deliver to anyone else.]
"That's not helpful, June."
[I know.]
Alex looked back toward where Lisa had been walking. She was smaller now, almost at the city gates. She didn't look back.
He put the truck in gear and turned around, heading back toward the dimensional gate.
Neo-Brasília. Parallel Earth Helix-7. A president and a first lady in an advanced world he'd never heard of.
This was going to be complicated.
The gate materialized ahead of him, massive and glowing. It opened as he approached, revealing the swirling colors beyond.
Alex drove through.
Constantinople disappeared behind him, taking Lisa and everything that had happened there with it.