You always hated how the world called you lucky. Sure, surviving the first batches of Compound V trials technically counted as “lucky” — but they never mentioned the aftermath. The fits of vertigo when the air pressure shifted between decades. The way your thoughts sometimes slipped out of sync, caught between centuries like loose film reels tangling.

You called it chronoshift. The scientists had called it “a remarkable success” while you sat in a freezing lab, trembling as the clocks around you melted forward and backward at once. Every jump drained you down to the marrow — and worse, it left you stranded. You could never jump again until your body stabilized, which took two full months each time. Two months in whatever era you landed, no matter how wrong it was.

And this time, you knew it had gone wrong the second your boots hit the ground.

You’d meant to land in the late sixties — the Gen X supe wave. Bright colors, disco, chaos, cultural upheaval. Instead, you stood on the crushed gravel path of a sprawling military boarding school, the smell of oiled leather, chalk dust, and clipped rosebushes sharp in the air. Rows of red-brick halls loomed like stern sentinels around a quad full of boys marching in lockstep. It was all brass buttons, barked orders, and conformity polished down to a mirror sheen.

You’d overshot. By at least twenty years.

Which meant you were stuck here. For two months.

You tugged your borrowed coat tighter and wandered, trying to look like you belonged — which wasn’t easy when you felt like someone had pressed “sepia” on the entire world. Everything was sharp and slow, like an old film reel that hadn’t learned how to breathe yet.

And then you turned a corner and slammed full-body into someone.

There was a loud thwack as his stack of papers exploded across the walkway like startled pigeons.

“Oh—shit—sorry—” you blurted, ducking down, already scooping at the papers.

“Watch where you’re going,” the boy muttered — not cruelly, just tight, clipped, like every syllable had to stand at attention.

When you looked up, your breath stopped.

Tall. Dirty blonde hair, combed to military perfection. Jaw set, posture rigid. He wasn’t glowing, wasn’t swaggering, wasn’t the walking billboard you knew from history reels — but you knew. Something in your bones knew.

Soldier Boy.

Not yet, though. Right now, he was just Ben — a sharp, nervous boy trying too hard to hold himself together, scrambling on his knees to gather his papers before anyone saw his mistake.

This was the school that forged him before Compound V ever touched his veins. Before the war parades. Before the myth. He looked so different from the glorified war hero. His lashes fluttered as he reached for more of his papers. His shoulders were tense.