DR. SHRIMPLY: OUT OF TIME

The mud took him like a body bag.

Adán Canto slammed down hard, knees first, the frozen Pennsylvania ground cracking under his weight. Ozone still hung in the air from the rift. His tactical suit was shredded ribbons across his shoulders and chest, leaving him shirtless against the wind. The gold medallion of Venezuela was the only warmth left on his skin. He stayed on all fours for three seconds, breathing through the pain, then stood up.

A scouting party of Hessian mercenaries watched from twenty yards out. Their muskets were already raised. One of them pointed at the medallion and muttered something about witchcraft. Another stared at the Glock 17 holstered at Adán's hip. They had never seen a pistol that small or that black.

Adán did not wait for them to decide what he was. He drew the Glock, calculated the angle, and dropped the lead scout with a single round to the T-box. The sound cracked across the field like a tree splitting. The remaining Hessians froze. One fired anyway. The musket ball went wide. Adán put the second man down with a shot to the throat. The third turned to run. The fourth raised his hands. Adán shot him through the forehead.

Four bodies in eight seconds. The silence afterward felt heavier than the mud.

He walked to the nearest corpse and stripped the heavy wool coat. The fabric stank of sweat and horse. He put it on anyway. The dead man's eyes were open and leaking oily black fluid. It ran down the temples and into the ears like sap from a bad tree. Adán recognized the pattern immediately. Viper's Crown had already crossed the rift. It had arrived before he did, and it was moving faster than any simulation had predicted.

"Of course it did," he said to the corpse. "You people are perfect hosts. No immunity, no concept of isolation. Just open mouths and open wounds."

He checked the Origin Engine strapped to his belt. The casing was cracked. Violet radiation leaked from the seam in thin pulses. Each pulse made the air taste metallic. That leak was a beacon. Malphas would send something to follow it, and the something would not be human. Adán wrapped the crack with a strip of leather from his ruined suit and hoped the temporary seal would hold for a few hours.

The nearest settlement lights flickered through the trees, maybe half a mile away. He started walking. The coat was too small across the shoulders. The medallion tapped against his bare chest with every step. He kept the Glock in his right hand, finger along the frame. The wind cut across the open field and raised gooseflesh on his arms. He ignored it. Temperature was just another variable.

Halfway across the field he stopped. One of the bodies behind him twitched. Adán turned. The dead Hessian sat up, black fluid pouring from his eyes and nose now. The man's jaw worked like he was trying to speak. Then the jaw unhinged farther than any human bone should allow. Something inside the throat clicked. Adán raised the Glock and put three rounds through the chest. The body dropped. Black fluid spread across the snow in a widening circle.

He kept walking.

The settlement turned out to be a small cluster of cabins and a single main road. No sentries posted. No barricades. Just lanterns and smoke and the distant sound of a blacksmith's hammer. Adán moved between the buildings, staying in the shadows. The coat helped him blend for a few seconds at a time. He passed a woman carrying a bucket. She glanced at his bare chest under the stolen coat and kept moving. People here had seen stranger things than a shirtless man with a strange weapon.

He found the largest building at the end of the road. Lantern light spilled from the open doors. The smell hit him first: gangrene, urine, and boiled linen. Inside, rows of cots held soldiers and civilians alike. Most of them coughed the same wet, clicking cough. Adán stepped through the doorway and paused. A local surgeon in a bloodstained apron was preparing to bleed a young soldier whose throat already showed the first black polyps of the Crown. The surgeon held a basin and a lancet. Two assistants held the patient down.

Adán crossed the room in four strides. He shoved the surgeon aside, hard enough that the man staggered into a table. The assistants let go of the soldier and backed away. Adán pulled the tactical light from his belt and shone it into the patient's mouth. The obsidian polyps glistened. One of them pulsed. The soldier made a wet sound and tried to turn his head.

"Moron," Adán said to the surgeon. "You're feeding it."

The surgeon recovered his balance and drew himself up. "Sir, this is my ward. I will not be handled by a stranger with no coat and no manners."

Adán ignored him. He looked at the two assistants. "Wash your hands in the strongest alcohol you have. Then wash them again. If you touch that fluid, you die before morning."

One of the assistants laughed, nervous. The other one looked at the black streaks on his own fingers and went pale. He moved toward the basin at the back of the room without another word.

A woman in a stained linen apron stepped out of the shadows near the supply shelves. She was young, maybe twenty-nine, with dark hair pinned back by bone needles. Her eyes were sharp and measuring. She had already seen the black fluid in the village. Adán could tell by the way she did not flinch when she looked at the patient's throat.

"Clara Vance," she said. "Apothecary's daughter. And you are not from here."

"Dr. Adán Canto. Combat medic. And no, I am not."

She studied the Glock, then the medallion, then the bare chest under the stolen coat. "You killed four men outside town. The whole village heard it."

"They were already dead," Adán said. "The fluid just hadn't finished the job."

She nodded once, like that made sense. She moved to the patient's cot and began cleaning the area around his mouth with a strip of clean linen. Her hands were steady. She did not ask permission or offer prayers. She simply worked.

Adán watched her for a moment. "You're the only one in this room who understands basic containment. That makes you a critical asset. Everyone else here is a pebble."

The surgeon sputtered. "This woman is my assistant. She cleans instruments. She does not diagnose."

Adán turned his head slowly. "Then your instruments are probably still carrying the last three patients you lost. And you are still bleeding a virus that feeds on blood."

The room went quiet except for the wet coughs from the other cots. Outside, the sky began to bruise with an unnatural violet hue. The color spread like ink in water. The rift was not closing. It was expanding, and something on the other side was paying attention.

Adán checked the Origin Engine again. The violet leak had slowed but not stopped. He needed a better seal, a proper lab, and time he did not have. He looked at Clara.

"We start with isolation. Move the worst cases to the back room. Burn the linens they used. Then we find something stronger than alcohol for the hands. Lye if you have it. Boiling water if you do not."

She did not hesitate. She began giving quiet orders to the assistants who were willing to listen. The surgeon stood frozen, his authority already stripped away by a man who had walked out of the mud with a weapon no one understood.

Adán stepped outside for a moment. The violet sky pulsed once, like a heartbeat. Something moved across the clouds, too fast and too smooth to be a bird. He holstered the Glock and pulled the coat tighter around his chest. The medallion pressed against his skin. He thought of Raul waiting in 3026, of the mission that had gone wrong, of the father whose legacy he carried in red tactical pants and a cracked piece of future tech.

The Crown was here. Malphas was watching. And the only person in this century who might help him stop both was a woman the local doctors treated like furniture.

Adán walked back inside. He had work to do before the next body sat up.