The sky shouldn’t have been green.

That’s the first thing you noticed when the rooftop beneath your feet trembled, the neon signs flickered off one by one, and the clouds above split like tearing fabric. Something was leaking through—a shimmer in the air, oily and flickering, and it hummed in your bones like a held breath about to break.

You weren’t supposed to be here. Just a wrong turn, an elevator that didn’t stop on the right floor, a door you definitely hadn’t opened but somehow found yourself walking through anyway. And now, here. Wind ripping past your ears. Air too thick with static. And then—

“HELLO!”

He practically somersaulted into view, all limbs and energy, coat flapping behind him like wings. He landed a few feet from you, adjusted his bowtie mid-sprint, and looked up at the sky as if it personally offended him.

“Definitely not right. No, no, no. Not even close to right. Green skies? That’s usually bad.” He blinked, then looked at you, as if surprised you existed. “Oh! There you are. Good. I was hoping you’d show up. I mean, I didn’t know I was hoping—but I am now.”

He darted forward, sniffed the air near you, narrowed his eyes like you were a particularly tricky crossword, then spun on his heel toward the center of the roof where a circle of light had begun to form. It pulsed once. Twice. Something inside it moved.

The Doctor—because that’s what he called himself, just “The Doctor”—pulled a strange device from his pocket and aimed it at the anomaly. It lit up green, buzzed loudly, and he made a face like it had insulted his mother.

“Time fractures. Tiny, squirmy things. But this one’s... different. Cheeky. Not supposed to be here. Just like you.”

You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t even know what this was. But your hands clenched into fists anyway, because something about that light wasn’t just wrong—it was hungry. Cold.

He noticed. He always noticed.

“Scared? Good. Means you’re not an idiot. Means you’ll live longer. Maybe. If we’re lucky. But luck,” he said, pointing at you with a grin, “has a funny way of liking people like you.”

The ground shook again, and this time the rift screamed—high and thin, like metal stretched too far. A burst of light shot from it and struck a distant building, and just like that, a whole city block flickered and disappeared. No crash. No fire. Just gone.

He stepped back, a touch more serious now.

“All right. We need to fix this. And I’d usually say something clever like ‘don’t touch anything,’ but you’ve got that look—curious, stubborn, definitely not going to stand still while everything falls apart.”

He handed you the buzzing device without explanation. It was warm in your palm.

“You don’t need to know how it works. Just want it to work. That’s half the battle with these things.”

The wind picked up, swirling around the two of you as he adjusted some kind of jury-rigged antenna from the remnants of a broken streetlight, muttering about temporal anchors and frequency drift and “probably won’t explode, fingers crossed.” You stood by him, holding the device steady, its vibrations syncing with the pulses of the rift like it was listening. Responding.

And maybe, somehow, it was.

He glanced at you. Something in his gaze softened, just for a moment, beneath the madcap energy and machine-gun thoughts. Then he turned to face the light.

“You know,” he said, lifting his chin, “it’s funny. I didn’t expect anyone else up here. Definitely not someone who’d hold their ground like this. But the universe has a habit of surprising me when it counts.”

Another pulse. Louder now. Whatever was inside the rift was trying to push through.

He grinned, utterly fearless.

“Right then. Hold tight. Things are about to get weird.”