Lin Xiu's tactical glove had barely touched the trigger switch of the first resonance node when the Oracle System's alarm exploded like a swarm of bees.
"Abnormal spacetime entropy fluctuations. Current area time-flow deviation: +370%." Rare static crackled through the mechanical voice as the data stream projected by the Nanite Swarm onto his retina suddenly twisted into spirals. "Recommendation: immediately terminate the activation procedure—"
"Continue." Lin Xiu ground out the two words through clenched teeth. The Nanite Swarm at his fingertips was burrowing along the Vibranium patterns on the node's surface, like countless fine needles piercing the fabric of reality.
He could feel the quantum fragments that had lain dormant beneath Brooklyn waking up, like a hive stirred awake, crawling into his consciousness through the channels built by the swarm.
The newsstand at the end of the street was the first to show abnormalities.
The old man selling papers held a copy of the Daily News suspended in midair, while the headline "New Site for Stark Expo" stretched into a blurry double image.
A schoolgirl's half-bitten croissant suddenly returned to her lips. Chocolate sauce trailed translucent threads through the air, as though someone had hit rewind.
Click—
The crisp shutter sound made Lin Xiu whip around.
A girl in a denim jacket was holding up a Leica M10, its lens still speckled with dust thrown up by the earlier spacetime turbulence.
She was Alison Gray, the street photographer he had found outside the laboratory ruins yesterday. Dust scraped from the wall when the shockwave had thrown her still clung to her eyelashes, yet she smiled as if she had discovered treasure.
"Third one." She waved the camera screen. In the photo, a man in a plaid shirt appeared simultaneously in front of the newsstand, beside a fire hydrant, and at