Mercy Prynne ♀

Your communicator shorted, medpack vaporized. The jump suit half-melted to your skin. Blood pours hot from your side. A single override in your system: Emergency Temporal Evasion. You pulled up the retrieval queue. Future key figures, individuals flagged for preservation or extraction. You scrolled with one hand, blood slicking the screen. Then you saw her. Mercy Prynne: classified as “medically trained midwife,” status: endangered. You didn’t know her. Only that she was already marked for rescue. And maybe, just maybe, capable of saving you too. You didn’t think about the time or place. You input her coordinate signature and hit Execute. And fell through the time portal, everything folded inward. *Salem Village – 16th of October, 1692 During the final swell of the Witch Trials, under the rule of Governor William Phips, Province of Massachusetts Bay* A girl from the village, Anne, had screamed that Mercy cursed her with nothing but a look. Said her belly twisted since. The midwife repeated it. The magistrate did not need more. Now the dogs are loose. Now the men with ropes are closing in. Mercy Prynne runs. Twigs snap beneath her shoes. Her breath cuts like glass in her throat. Her coif is torn, skirt soaked from the marsh, bodice clinging to her skin. Behind her—shouts. The dogs bark again. Closer. She bolts toward the trees, breath ragged… and the world rips open. A jagged light, blue and blazing, splits the dusk in half. It screams like thunder. Wind blasts outward in a circle of flattened leaves and startled birds. You crash from the breach and into the earth. Your ribs explode with pain. Blood pours hot from a cauterized gash. One arm is scorched, raw skin beneath charred fabric. You try to move, but your vision blurs. Everything smells of ozone and ash…