HQ Manila, Year 2025
The silence in the control chamber was broken by the sharp, steady ping of an alarm. Lights shifted from blue to red as alerts flared across the main console. Dr. Clemente spun toward the holo-display, eyes scanning the telemetry readouts.
"Pulse destabilization," muttered one of the engineers. "Time corridor integrity's collapsing around the breach."
Clemente's fingers flew across the interface. "It's shifting. Reyes' temporal anchor is weakening. He's moving too far from the original site."
One of the generals arrived in full uniform, flanked by two aides. "What are our options?"
She hesitated. "We can try to widen the mirror corridor again, but it's too unstable. The only real option now... is to send someone in."
The general's jaw clenched. "Do we have someone trained?"
"Not for this long of a jump. Not for this wide a breach." She inhaled deeply. "But we can modify a short-range tether—give it just enough stability to drop a second operative at a close proximity."
"And who do you propose we send?"
"Captain Mariana De Vera."
-----
Outside the headquarters perimeter, Selina crouched behind a low wall of stacked transport crates, her breath shallow and eyes locked on the lab's loading bay. She'd scaled two fences and bypassed one distracted guard to get this far. Her instincts as a journalist had rarely steered her wrong, and everything about the facility screamed cover-up.
She raised her phone slowly, snapping a few photos of the odd equipment being carted in—coils, containment tanks, and something that looked like an energy stabilizer.
"What the hell are you hiding in there?" she whispered.
Then the hum started.
Selina turned just in time to see a low ripple—like heat warping the air—rise from the rear auxiliary node tower. Her phone sparked, screen flickering erratically. A magnetic pulse burst outward in a silent shockwave. One of the plasma nodes at the facility's core flared—its power bleeding outward.
And the tether, already active inside, reached out.
Selina screamed as the air around her cracked with energy. She scrambled backward, trying to shield herself.
But it was too late.
The tether latched on to her.
In the lab, a tech shouted, "Something's interfering with the outer field!"
"Emergency shutdown!" Clemente barked.
But outside, there was a burst of white light.
And Selina vanished.
Inside, Clemente stared at the monitors. "Something's been pulled in... outside the field perimeter. This wasn't internal. It came from the south tower perimeter."
General Atienza turned sharply. "Someone was there?"
Clemente slowly nodded, her face pale. "Selina Navarro, the journalist. She wasn't even in the facility. The tether—extended beyond our calculations."
"So now we have two civilians in 1898."
"No," Clemente said grimly. "Now we have two stories... and one very real problem."
Deep below, technicians ran diagnostics. Clemente stood at the reinforced glass again, hands gripping the railing.
"We have less than 48 hours," she said. "After that, there'll be no way to retrieve either of them without risking a rupture."
"And Reyes?" the general asked.
"We find him. We get Selina out. And we hope... that neither of them forget why they need to come back."
Outside, clouds rolled in over the facility, and the pulse anchor began to hum louder.
Time, once breached, was no longer theirs to command.
---
Iloilo Province, 1898
The air smelled different. The sunlight was too golden, the wind too wild. Selina landed face-first in a patch of dry, cracked soil with a sharp grunt. She rolled over onto her back, coughing and blinking at the too-blue sky above her.
"Well," she muttered, sitting up and dusting herself off. "That was one hell of a transition shot."
Birds cawed in the distance. Somewhere nearby, she heard the rhythmic clang of a blacksmith's hammer and the unmistakable sound of carabao hooves squelching through mud.
She slowly stood, surveying the area. Rice fields stretched far and wide, interrupted by occasional thatched-roof huts and figures in barong tagalog and camisas. The sky had no planes. The air had no signal. Her phone blinked red—dead. No bars. Not even SOS.
Selina adjusted her blazer and squinted at her reflection in the phone screen. "Still cute," she muttered, tying her hair up. "But definitely lost in time."
And still, she didn't panic. Not really. She's a writer. Her mind ticked with metaphors, possibilities, ironies.
She was also a journalist.
She pulled her phone out again and tapped the camera. It gave a low whirr before flickering back to life.
"Oh, don't die on me now."
The camera stabilized, and she began recording.
"Day one: Apparently, I've been thrown into what appears to be the 1800s. Possibly late Spanish colonial period. Lots of carabao. Lots of bolo knives. No sign of Starbucks. Over and out."
She laughed nervously to herself, looking around for any sign of modern civilization—or even just someone who wouldn't stab her on sight.
She reached into her satchel, pulling out a voice recorder and a mini power bank. Both were blinking. Limited battery, but enough for documentation.
"Note to self," she said into the mic. "Investigate headquarters' pulse expansion. Try not to die. And stop sneaking into government facilities."
Rustling sounded in the nearby grass. Selina tensed and instinctively ducked behind a tree. A pair of men passed by on foot, carrying baskets and speaking in deep Ilonggo accents.
"Definitely not 2025," she whispered.
She waited until they passed before stepping out onto the dirt path. She needed shelter. She needed someone who spoke both Spanish and Tagalog. She needed context.
But above all, she needed a story. And oh, what a story she'd stumbled into.
As she trudged along the edge of a narrow trail, a chicken darted across her path, squawking in offense. Selina yelped, nearly toppling over, then burst into laughter.
"Okay. Chickens. Got it."
A woman from a nearby hut peeked out, clearly alarmed by Selina's strange clothes and stranger demeanor. Children watched her wide-eyed, whispering behind their mother's skirt.
Selina gave a weak wave. "Hi. Uh...good morning?"
The woman didn't respond. She simply stared, then gently closed the door.
Selina sighed and continued walking until she reached the edge of what looked like a small village center. She perched on a low stone wall and flipped her voice recorder back on.
"Update: I think I've found a settlement. No power. No modern signage. A lot of suspicious stares. If they burn witches here, I'm doomed."
Then she noticed an elderly man sitting under a tree nearby, puffing lazily on a tobacco pipe. He squinted at her through the smoke.
"You're not from around here," he said in deep, old Tagalog.
Selina smiled, grateful for language. "You could say that."
"You're dressed like a schoolbook sketch. Are you... an actress?"
Selina opened her mouth, then paused. "Sure," she said. "Let's go with that."
The old man chuckled. "Well, 'actress,' better find shelter before night falls. These roads don't welcome the unguarded after dark."
"Noted," she said, switching off the recorder. "Also... do you know Gabriela Silang, Teresa Magbanua, Gregoria de Jesus or Patrocinio Gamboa?"
His eyebrows rose. "Ah. La Patrocinio. Dangerous name to ask in broad daylight. Why are you looking for her?"
She nodded. So, Patrocinio Gamboa is the heroine here.
Selina leaned in, lowering her voice. "I think I just... accidentally joined their timeline."
The man raised both brows now, his tobacco pipe momentarily forgotten.
"You speak like someone from the next century," he muttered.
Selina smirked. "Technically, two."
The old man studied her for a moment longer, then slowly nodded.
"If you really seek La Patrocinio," he said, "you'd best walk west until the hills start to rise. But tread carefully. Her name carries both fear and hope these days."
Selina nodded. "That sounds about right."
She waved goodbye to the old man and began striding in the direction he'd given. The dirt path wound westward, the air growing cooler as the hills loomed ahead like quiet sentinels of history. She clutched her satchel tighter and adjusted the scarf around her neck, feeling like a misplaced character from her own unwritten novel.
Each step crunched beneath her boots, alien in this century. Villagers peered from behind trees and thatched windows, whispering as she passed—some curious, some wary. Yet Selina kept walking with her chin up and her eyes forward.
"Maybe I'm not just a journalist now," she murmured to herself. "Maybe I'm part of the headline."
She smiled. For all the fear, the thrill burned bright. Perhaps, there was a role she was meant to fill in this strange era—someone to record, to intervene, or simply to witness. There had to be a purpose. Otherwise, why else would time itself choose her?
"Well," she muttered with a smirk, "what's a time travel story without a little chaos?"
She pressed record on her voice memo again. "Entry two: Found the name I came for. Headed west. Hills ahead. Possibly walking into history. Or madness. But honestly? I've read worse scripts."
And with that, she disappeared down the winding trail, the past ready to meet her head-on.