Chapter 3
ELLIE
Iwoke to the rhythmic sound of the headboard against the wall again. I lay there in the grey dawn light, staring at the ceiling, and counted the thuds. Seventeen. Twenty-three. Thirty-one before the rhythm changed, quickened, peaked.
Then silence.
My chest ached and I felt like I’d been hollowed out. Scraped clean and left empty. I should have gone downstairs last night and requested a different room, but I’d felt stupid and pathetic. I'd thought I could handle this. Thought the numbness would protect me, but it hadn't.
I got up. Showered. Dressed in layers—thermal base, fleece, waterproof jacket and heavy boots.
The time of year on the other side would also be early spring, and just as cold, if not colder than here.
I packed my small bag with the essentials they'd listed: water bottle and protein bars. It was just for the hike to the cave. Our real supplies would already be there waiting for us. Dev had told me they were based on what explorers took to the Arctic, or when they were climbing Everest. That hadn’t reassured me.
Despite the numbness of my soul, even I was starting to get nervous now.
By the time I made it down to the lobby, Stephen and Dev were already there, drinking coffee and looking far too awake for six in the morning.
"There she is," Stephen said, grinning. "Ready to make history?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," I said.
Dev handed me a cup of coffee. Black, no sugar, exactly how I took it. He'd noticed. I managed a smile that felt more genuine than I'd expected.
"Did you sleep?" he asked.
"Some. You?"
"Barely." He ran a hand through his hair. "Too wired. This is actually happening."
"I know, right?" Stephen leaned back in his chair. "Time travel. Actual bloody time travel. My gran's going to lose her mind when I tell her. If I can tell her. The whole secrecy thing is still a bit fuzzy."
"You can't tell her," Dev said. "That was explicitly covered in the briefing."
"I know, I know. But come on. Time travel."
They were excited. I watched them talk, volleying theories and jokes back and forth, and felt that familiar distance open up. The glass wall between me and the world.
I sipped my coffee. It was too hot, burned my tongue, but at least it was something to focus on.
The rest of the team trickled in over the next twenty minutes. Researchers mostly, carrying equipment cases and laptops. They nodded at us but didn't engage. We were the carriers. The power sources. Not really part of the intellectual side of things.
Then Nathan and Megan arrived.
They came down together, close but not touching. Megan wore practical outdoor gear, hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Nathan had his project manager face on—controlled, focused, scanning the room.
His eyes found mine. Held for half a second.
I looked away first.
"Right then," Nathan said, addressing the group. "Transport's outside. We'll do final checks at the site. Stay together, watch your footing on the path down, and remember—no phones once we're inside. Electromagnetic interference could compromise the readings."
Professional. Efficient. Like we were colleagues and nothing more.
Maybe that's all we'd ever been.
We filed out into the cold. Three vehicles this time—proper 4x4s with heavy treads. I ended up in the second one, wedged between Dev and Megan, who looked out of the window and ignored me.
Stephen was in the front seat, chatting with Nathan. "So this cave," he said. "It's been studied for centuries?"
"Since the 1600s," Nathan said. "Maybe longer. The gateway's been documented that whole time. Same schedule—noon and midnight, every day. Like clockwork."
"And people have gone through before?"
"A few. Most didn't come back. The ones who did..." He trailed off, shook his head. "Different time. No preparation. They went mad, mostly. Couldn't process what they'd seen."
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"We'll be fine," Dev said quietly beside me. "We have preparation. Training. A plan."
I wanted to believe him.
The landscape changed as we drove. Rolling fields gave way to forest, then rocky terrain. The road narrowed, became rougher. Snow lay thicker here, pristine and untouched except for the tracks of whatever had come through before us.
After forty minutes, we stopped.
The cave entrance wasn't dramatic. No yawning mouth in a cliff face, no ominous darkness. Just a wide opening in a hillside, reinforced with modern steel supports, a metal door with a keypad lock. Professional. Contained.
Like they'd tried to domesticate something ancient.
Nathan punched in the code. The door clicked open.
"Watch your step," he said. "It's warm inside, but the entrance can be slippery."
Warm was an understatement.
Heat hit me as soon as I crossed the threshold. Not uncomfortable, but noticeable. Like walking into a house after being outside in winter. The air was dry, still, faintly mineral-scented.
And there were stairs.
Proper stairs. Metal, with railings, descending in a gentle spiral into the earth. Electric lights lined the walls at regular intervals, casting everything in a warm, steady glow.
"They've been maintaining this site for centuries," Dev murmured behind me. "Protected it. Studied it. This isn't just some random cave—it's a threshold. A place between times."
Between times. The phrase made my skin prickle.
We descended in single file. The air grew warmer. I could hear water somewhere—a distant trickle, echoing. My footsteps rang on the metal stairs, echoing as we got deeper, and then the stairs ended and the main cave opened up before us.
It was massive. Circular, or near enough, the walls curving up to meet in a domed ceiling maybe fifteen meters overhead. The electric lights continued here, mounted on stands, flooding everything with clear, clinical brightness.
And the walls—
"Oh," I breathed.
Paintings. Cave paintings, like the ones I'd seen in textbooks from Lascaux, from Chauvet. But these were different.
Animals, yes. A massive bear, rendered in ochre and charcoal, mid-roar. A wolf, sleek and powerful, caught mid-leap. A lion with a mane that seemed to flow like flame. A mammoth, trunk raised, impossibly detailed.
But there were figures too. Human-shaped, but not quite. The bear stood on two legs in one panel, arms raised, caught between forms. The wolf's eyes held an intelligence that was too knowing, too aware. The lion's posture was wrong for an animal—purposeful, deliberate.
Shifters.
They'd painted shifters.
Nathan looked across at me. “They’re hunters. They think shifters would hunt prehistoric humans like prey back then, that they were closer to their animals, less civilised than we are today.” I looked back at him. Nathan was a strong alpha, was that what I’d been to him, I wondered. Just prey?
"These are the only cave paintings ever found that depict shifters," Dev said quietly, moving to stand beside me.
"The proportions are wrong for normal animals.
See?" He pointed. "The limbs are too long.
The postures too human. And here—" He gestured to a series of smaller figures.
"These are the transition stages. Half-human, half-animal.
It's unmistakable once you know what you're looking at. "
I stared at the paintings, trying to process it. Shifters had been here. Twenty five thousand years ago, they'd stood in this cave and painted their stories on these walls.
And we were about to meet them.
There was another figure too. Smaller, easier to miss among the larger animals.
A human—fully human, no animal traits—standing in the centre of a group of shifters.
The paint was faded, harder to make out.
Were the animals attacking, or protecting, I couldn’t tell.
Were they a human living with the shifter community, I wondered, or maybe one of those rare ones born to a shifter line but who never inherited the ability.
I wondered if they were valued, or shunned.
Whether they also lived on the edge of society, never quite part of it. I looked away.
In the centre of the cave stood an enormous stone circle, six meters across, maybe more, made of massive standing stones that looked like they'd been there since the earth cooled. It was older than Stonehenge, we’d been told, and yet whereas Stonehenge was plain, theses stones were carved—spirals and symbols I didn't recognize, worn smooth by time but still visible in the electric light.
Computers surrounded it. Monitors displaying graphs and readings I didn't understand. Cables snaking across the cave floor. A digital clock mounted on a tripod, its red numbers glowing: 11:47.
Thirteen minutes.
Nathan was checking something on one of the computers. Megan stood beside him, reading off a tablet. The rest of the team moved around them, efficient and practiced. This was their routine. They'd done this before.
Well. Not exactly this. But close enough.
"Final checks," Nathan called out. "Power levels?"
"Stable," someone answered. "All three carriers reading optimal."
I felt that presence in my chest again. The borrowed magic, dense and heavy. Still not buzzing or crackling. Still just... there.
"Gateway status?"
"Active. Readings match yesterday's test."
"Good." Nathan straightened. "The robot returned without issue. Same temporal coordinates we're targeting. The gateway is stable, the destination is confirmed safe, and we have a twelve-hour window before the next cycle."
He looked around the cave, meeting each person's eyes in turn. When his gaze reached me, something flickered across his face. Too fast to name.
"This is it," he said. "We're making history today. Literally. Stay focused, stay together, and trust your training. Any last questions?"
Silence.
Stephen cleared his throat. "Just... thanks. For letting us be part of this."
Several people nodded. Dev squeezed my shoulder briefly.