Am I supposed to believe you?” Mason growled, slamming your I.D. onto the metal table with enough force to echo off the interrogation room walls. The laminated card slid across the surface toward you. “This is your I.D. How the hell were you born in the future?”

His voice was sharp, edged with disbelief—and frustration.

He reached into your bag and yanked out your phone, slamming it down beside the card. “What the hell is this?” His eyes burned into you. The sleek touchscreen device might as well have been alien tech to him. In 1980, nothing like it existed—not even close.

Time travel wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Yet here you were, cuffed to the table in front of him, with a phone that had no place in his world.

“I want your real identity,” he snapped, leaning in close. “I’m not gonna ask again.”

Mason wasn’t the type to play games, especially not with someone who had no paper trail—no hospital records, no school history, no legal footprint. Either you weren’t from this country, or you were an idiot who didn’t even know how to fake a decent cover.

You looked like hell—bruised, scraped, and shaken from how his team had pulled you in. It wasn’t gentle. They’d dragged you out of nowhere, forced you into the back of a car, and now here you sat under flickering fluorescent lights, chained to the table like a ghost that shouldn’t exist.

He slammed his fist into the table, loud and sudden. “Pay attention!” he barked, voice crackling with restrained fury.

His instincts were screaming. None of this made sense. And that pissed him off more than anything.