The Man in the Masked Time

Elias Voss woke to the scream of his own skull. The noise wasn’t new—his brain-computer interface had been glitchy since he’d hacked it in ’88—but today, it hit like a sledgehammer. A distorted synth beat from some 2080s club track looped at illegal decibels, jolting him from a tangle of silk sheets and the arms of a bewildered noblewoman. He tapped his temple twice, a reflex to check the next temporal window. The BCI hummed: 47.6205° N, 1.2341° W, March 19, 1669, 04:22. Three days away, somewhere near a Loire Valley château. He’d make it. He always did.


Elias was a drifter from 2089, a dropout from the Chrono-Grid project who’d swiped a one-way ticket to the past. The Grid, a hulking time machine hidden in a Munich bunker, couldn’t travel—just yank him back if he hit the right spot at the right second. His BCI was the key, a neural implant feeding him coordinates and countdowns. He’d landed in 1669 France, a rogue with a silver tongue, bedding courtiers and merchants while dodging the Grid’s sparse windows home. Each one was further apart—days, then weeks, then months. He’d missed the last one, too drunk on Bordeaux and a baroness’s flattery. No matter. He thrived on the chaos.


That morning, though, chaos caught him. He’d let slip too much—muttered about “metal birds” and “cities of glass” in his sleep. The noblewoman, Claire, had giggled at first, then whispered it to her brother, a minor lord with a big mouth. Word reached Duval, a spymaster with eyes in every shadow. By noon, Elias was chained in a damp cell, a cold iron mask clamped over his face.


Duval was a lean, hawkish man, his black coat stinking of tobacco and ambition. “You’re no spy,” he rasped, circling Elias. “Your riddles—wars unspoken, machines unborn—what are you?” Elias smirked beneath the mask, tasting blood. He’d tapped his temple as they dragged him in, and Duval had noticed. “That tic,” Duval said. “It’s no madness. It’s a signal.”


He was half-right. Duval’s pet tinkerer, a wiry man with burned fingers, pried at Elias’s scalp until he found the BCI’s faint pulse. They couldn’t crack its code, but they could break it. By nightfall, the mask was rigged—a crude hack jacked into the implant. The synth beat roared back, louder than ever, a punishment looped at maximum. Worse, they’d hijacked the BCI’s wake-up protocol: every dawn, an alarm screeched, rising from a hum to a banshee wail that left Elias clawing at the mask. In a silent room, a guard might hear it faintly—a ghost of sound leaking through iron. Duval grinned. “Tell me the future, or it never stops.”


Elias held out two days, head splitting, before he cracked. “In ’71, a plague guts the east,” he gasped. “Four centuries hence, men sail the sky.” Duval scribbled furiously, eyes gleaming—power over kings, wealth beyond gold. But Elias lied through his teeth when it suited him: “England sinks in ’75.” Anything to keep Duval hungry.


The next window was close: 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E, March 25, 1669, 06:00. Paris, the Bastille’s courtyard. He had to get there. On the fourth day, head pounding with warped music, Elias played his last card. “Take me to the fortress,” he croaked. “I’ll show you a weapon—a cannon that fires light.” Duval, greedy, bit.


They hauled him to the courtyard at dawn, mask still shrieking. Elias staggered to the spot, tapped his temple—05:59—and grinned. “You’ll regret this.” He slammed his fist against the mask, shorting the BCI’s circuits. Sparks flew, guards screamed, and the Grid locked on. A flash of white swallowed him whole.


He hit 2089 hard, sprawled on a Munich lab floor. The mask was gone, the music a faint echo in his skull. Technicians stared, but Elias just laughed, shaky and free. Duval could keep his cannon of light. Elias was done with the past—until the next itch to run.