Moscow, 1963. Deep within the Kremlin's underground archive, Alison's pocket watch core melted into liquid gold, its countdown plummeting from 72 to 68 hours. She phased through the metal detectors of the nuclear treaty signing hall as a phantom, KGB agents' radio waves weaving a spiderweb in her ears.
In the archive's depths, Soviet nuclear minister Alexander Ivanov's eyes flared with the embryo's telltale blood-red flecks as he input encrypted files into a Soviet IBM knockoff. Alison advanced behind a serum-formed and discovered the treaty text had been —the disarmament clauses now embedded with Charles' incantations. If signed, global nuclear facilities would automatically trigger the embryo's "Fission Rebirth Program."
"Temporal disturbance detected!" Ivanov's vocal cords tore as embryo tentacles erupted from his throat, transforming into ten mechanical arms to hack the computer. KGB commander Leonid Gorbachev stormed in with guards, their bullets coated in Soviet "anti-entropy particles" that briefly froze Alison's serum shield.
She anchored Ivanov's temporal coordinates with the watch, marrow incantations stabbing into his cerebral cortex like silver snakes. Embryo fragments laughed with Charles' voice: "I've awaited you here, Alison Jones—the entropy trap weaves your coffin!"
The floor abruptly liquefied into a mirror, sucking Alison into Charles' trap. She fell through infinite overlapping Moscow reflections: Kremlin domes spun into black holes, signing hall chandeliers hung inverted as gallows, every mirrored space infested with embryo parasites. The entropy trap's law was cruel: Each mirror touched eroded her existence in reverse—left hand vanishing in Mirror A, right hand rotting in Mirror B, memories fading in Mirror C.
"Charles wove this entropy web from hydrogen bomb fission energy," the watch's spirit hissed. "Find the 'Prime Coordinate'—the source of all mirrors—before your timeline is fully consumed in 72 hours."
Alison cleaved the membrane between mirrors with a temporal blade, but parasites flooded through the rift. Gorbachev's guards lobbed anti-entropy grenades, trapping her in a 0.5-second time-stasis field. She ,the watch erupting in a mirror storm that sucked half the parasites into temporal rifts—but at the cost of her right leg vanishing in Mirror D, requiring serum to regenerate.
In Mirror E's archive, she unearthed Ivanov's original memories: Embryo fragments had parasitized his brain since 1955, spreading via the Soviet nuclear network. Gorbachev wasn't the enemy—his left ear hid Charles' "entropy venom," which would turn him into a mindless killing machine if triggered.
Alison risked rewriting Gorbachev's neural impulses, suppressing the venom with marrow incantations. Regaining clarity, Gorbachev used KGB tactical knowledge to guide her through the mirror maze: "Prime Coordinate lies in Mirror Z, but there awaits Charles' personal 'Temporal Strangler.'"
In Mirror F, they faced Grey Fox Vasily Korov, brandishing a hydrogen bomb embryo fragment. "Lord Charles foresaw you'd cleanse Ivanov," he sneered. "The trap has consumed 40% of your existence. Go further, and you'll become your own temporal ashes." Korov fired "entropy-corrosive darts," dissolving Alison's left arm across Mirrors G, H, I faster than serum could regenerate.
Finally, they reached Mirror Z—a void constructed from treaty texts, Charles' hologram standing at the entropy vortex's core. The Strangler was a reverse-fission engine sucking her scattered body parts from all mirrors to reform as embryo sacrifice.
"You stopped the H-bomb metamorphosis but accelerated my entropy collection," Charles' projection her auditory nerves with each word. "When the 72-hour countdown ends, I will devour your marrow and restart global nuclear chain reactions."
Alison embedded the watch in the Strangler's core, activating "Temporal Reverse-Collapse"—sacrificing her existence to reverse-pump collected entropy into Charles' projection. Her body sanded away from the feet up, but the projection screamed as the Strangler spewed black smoke of embryo fragments.
"Think sacrifice ends me?" Charles' voice warped into a thousand frequencies. "The trap was bait. The embryo has parasitized—"
The projection shattered under Gorbachev's anti-entropy particle cannon, crucial info. Alison seized the Strangler's control module at the last second, new clues emerging from collapsing coordinates: Embryo parasites' neural maps matched the 1967 U.S. missile base circuitry.
The watch countdown hit zero, her existence 15%—but new marrow energy oozed from dial cracks, Charles' projection's destruction activating the watch's latent repair. Gorbachev teleported her to 1967 America via KGB emergency temporal channel, sacrificing himself to the trap.
"Survive, Ms. Jones," Gorbachev whispered before vanishing. "Under the shadow of nuclear war, we are all Charles' prey."