The Temporal Drift

I could still feel the biting pressure of the zip ties on my wrists, the echoes of my parents’ screams ringing in my ears. Time travel was my lock and key—a temporary solace from the agony of my past. But now, it felt like something more. A last-ditch effort to preserve my soul. To outrun the ghosts of my mistakes.

I had never imagined that a time travel discovery—once a triumph—would come to haunt me, but there it was. George Walsh had entered my life under the guise of advancing my discovery, only to destroy the very essence of my work. Our captors, a part of International Security for Global Government, wanted nothing more than to exploit my discovery for their own gain.

Revenge was the one thing I craved. The one thing that consumed me completely. It was an equation, a system of cause and effect I could almost predict. George Walsh had taken everything from me; my parents—murdered, my work—destroyed, my life—in fragments of emotional turmoil. He deserved to vanish from existence, and in the stillness of my heart, I felt more certain that I could make that happen. And get away with it.

But I was no longer the same person I had been months ago. I was someone different—someone capable of far darker things than I had ever realized. And that terrified me.

I felt weight of the pocket watch in my hand like a leaden anchor, pulling me deeper into the darkness. Memories of my parents’ screams echoed faintly in my mind, but I knew that if I let them take control, they would destroy me. The time travel device had given me power, yes, but power was a dangerous thing. As a physicist, I understood the delicate balance of energy and entropy. I knew that any small disturbance could lead to catastrophic consequences—reality itself bending and breaking in ways I could not control. Emotions were over powering my logic.

Revenge was tempting, seductive even. It was a persistent force, creeping into my thoughts, pulling me back into the past—into the moments of pain and loss. It was intoxicating. I could almost taste it, feel it running through my veins.

If I allowed it to consume me, I’d be no better than the very people I sought to destroy. I was at war with myself—my mind telling me to focus, to fight the urge for violence, but my body trembling with the desire to strike. My nails dug into my palms, a small anchor in the raging storm.

I tried to breathe, to focus, but the thoughts were relentless. The mathematics of it all did not add up. I was trapped in a paradox of my own making. Every thought I had led to another, a series of equations that felt impossible to solve. Revenge would change everything, but I could not afford to lose control. If I did, I would make an irreversible mistake—again. That would be truly brilliant, wouldn’t it?

Sleep offered no comfort. But a pattern emerged in the dreams that plagued me. They were not mine—not entirely. They were vivid, pulling me into a past that was not my own—into a time of great resistance and rebellion. The Golden Age of Piracy. A period of defiance against oppressive forces, where violence and betrayal were everyday occurrences. I grasped onto that dream like a lifeline. Perhaps revenge was not my only option. Perhaps I could rewrite my own fate without destroying everything.

However, the dark urge refused be ignored. It whispered louder with every passing hour, its voice growing insistent and demanding. Revenge was cunning, it seeped into my bones, making it increasingly more difficult to think straight. It clawed at me, its claws like the jagged edges of a broken mirror.

My hands convulsed. My heart raced. Every inch of me screamed for action, but I knew better. I was a scientist, after all. I understood systems, the way one small change could ripple outward and cause unintended consequences. Revenge was an unstable reaction. It would explode, and I would lose myself in the process—but, I could not stop the storm inside of me.

Time travel had never been attempted before. No one had ever successfully crossed the threshold between ages, and yet here I was—stuck in limbo, in a place where the boundaries of time blurred and twisted. I should have been focused, should have been calculating every detail of my destination, but instead, my mind was adrift. It was as if the chaos inside me had spilled into the very fabric of time itself, distorting my path. And then, just as the chaos threatened to take over, I felt it—a cold, icy hand of dissonance. It was me, or at least a version of me that I no longer recognized. This version of me was lost in the darkness, a person forged by pain and revenge, someone I was terrified of becoming. It was as if my own fear gripped my heart, pulling me away from the edge of destruction.

I closed my eyes, fighting for control. I couldn’t think clearly. The rage was suffocating, like a fire that threatened to consume me whole. I tried to remember what I knew about systems. Could I control the chaos? I thought of thermodynamics, of entropy, and the second law—that everything tended toward disorder. Was this my own collapse? Was I simply a part of a greater, inevitable breakdown?

I clutched the pocket watch, the mechanism cold against my skin. The ticking, once a comforting sound, now felt like the ticking of a bomb. Time was slipping away, but I had to make my choice. The past was a tangled mess, and if I tried to correct it—if I tried to rewrite it—I might undo everything I had worked for.

But revenge was too tempting. It pressed against me, a living, breathing thing. I could not escape it—it was inside me. And yet, there was something else—hope. Hope had always been so distant, something I hadn’t allowed myself to believe in for so long. But in that moment, in that fractured, chaotic space, I grasped it with my fingertips. It was a lifeline, pulling me away from the precipice of vengeance. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I allowed myself to hold onto that warmth.

A flicker of it, faint but undeniable. Could it really be there, in the darkest recesses of my mind? I closed my eyes, listening to my breath, steadying myself. The time travel device was my escape, but it could also serve to be my salvation. I didn’t have to destroy everything to fix my mistakes. I could choose a different path—one that didn’t lead to annihilation.

The warm glow of hope began to spread from my fingertips, a tiny spark that grew with each breath I took. The darkness that had been clawing at me started to retreat, fading like a bad dream. The rage that had been consuming me felt distant now, as if it no longer had a hold on me. I focused on the past—on the Golden Age of Piracy, a time where resistance thrived. Not for vengeance, but for something greater—freedom. A different kind of rebellion.

I felt the now familiar pull of time travel as the world around me warped. My body shuddered, the vertigo setting in, but I held onto the flicker of hope. I could escape the grip of revenge. I could escape my fate, and choose something else.

The darkness around me deepened, but this time, I was not afraid. The weight of my decision was immense, but the warmth of hope anchored me. The past was waiting—but this time, I was not running toward destruction. I was running toward a new future.