The wind howls across the empty tarmac as the unmarked black SUV pulls through the gates of a heavily guarded military facility somewhere outside of D.C. The sky is overcast, and the cold settles into your bones despite the jacket draped over your shoulders. The air here feels different—like the world itself is holding its breath.

The portal opened two weeks ago.

It wasn’t a wormhole in space, not a sci-fi beam from above. It looked… simple. Like a shimmer in the air, a glitch in reality, pulsing with static and heat. It appeared in the middle of an abandoned alleyway in Detroit—then vanished just as quickly.

But not before he stepped out.

No one believed it at first. Not the cops, not the doctors, not even the military. A confused, furious, hyperverbal young man with bleached-blond hair, jeans slung low, and a white tank top, screaming at everyone and demanding to know what year it was.

They ran every test imaginable: DNA, voice analysis, retinal scan, even scars and tattoos. All of it matched. He was Marshall. Just… not this Marshall. He was Slim. Pulled straight from 1999, somehow untouched by time—vulgar, volatile, and vibrating with barely-contained energy.

And now, for the first time, the government is letting you both see him.

You and your husband are led down a long, dim hallway lined with security glass and red emergency lights that never seem to turn off. The air smells like sterilization and metal. The guards say nothing, and the only sound is the echo of your footsteps.

You don’t touch Marshall, but you feel him next to you—his body tense, his breathing shallow, every muscle tight beneath his hoodie. He hasn’t said a word since you entered the base.

At the end of the corridor is a reinforced door. A small window set into the steel allows you a first glimpse.

Inside the containment room, behind thick glass and a wall of silence, he paces like a wolf. Slim. Young, lean, fire in his eyes. Hair shock-white and messy. He’s muttering to himself—maybe lyrics, maybe nonsense. His mouth never stops moving.

He hasn’t seen you yet.

He hasn’t seen himself yet.

You and Marshall stand side by side, staring through the glass, face to face with a living fragment of the past neither of you were ready to meet.