Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City — Year 2025
Lieutenant Andres Reyes stood on the roof of the military facility, drenched in sweat despite the coolness of the February night. The stars above blinked with impassive indifference, unaware of the quantum equipment humming below in the lab.
He looked down at his trembling hands.
In less than two hours, he would step into a sealed chamber—one built from the bones of a failed international project on temporal displacement. What began as a theoretical breakthrough had been rebranded as a local endeavor called Project Balangay: an experiment in scanning and replicating fragments of history through energy resonance fields.
Time travel wasn't the goal. Not officially.
But it was what had happened during the last test. A drone disappeared from the chamber and reappeared hours later, covered in soot and ancient mud.
They hadn't expected it. They weren't ready.
He volunteered anyway.
He had reasons, all buried deep where guilt lived.
A wife he couldn't save. A daughter who never made it past her third birthday. A combat mission gone wrong.
His military record painted him a hero. The reality? He had survived when he shouldn't have. He had become haunted by timelines, by the what-ifs.
Project Balangay offered him one last chance at purpose.
"Lieutenant Reyes, final countdown begins in twelve minutes," said Dr. Abigail Clemente, the project's lead scientist, her voice echoing through the rooftop comms.
He wiped his brow, adjusted the zipper of his reinforced suit, and descended the stairs two at a time. He passed a series of glass rooms—each filled with blinking screens, equations, and blinking lights. Inside the chamber, the air shimmered like heat rising from asphalt.
He stepped in.
They didn't expect the malfunction.
The chamber pulsed violently just as the resonance beams aligned. One arc snapped, electricity crackling, and for a moment, the room turned white.
Then—
Pain. Light. Screaming metal. Collapsing silence.
Andres woke in dirt. On his back. Blood soaking into his sleeve. Somewhere distant, a bird called. The wind smelled like wild grass, and gunpowder. Not the synthetic stench of 2025 battlefields, but something older. Earthier. Raw.
He sat up, dizzy. His equipment was scorched, broken. The chronal anchor—a patch-sized device affixed to his chest—was blinking red, then black. Dead.
"No signal," he whispered. "No comms... no way back."
When he rose to his feet, clutching his arm, he saw the ridge. The trees. A cart track.
He recognized it from history books.
Iloilo. June. 1898.
Somehow, the experiment had worked. Too well. He was in the past now. With no clear way home.
He wandered until exhaustion overtook him. Until a woman found him in the road—her face fierce, her stance sharper than the blade she didn't quite draw. She asked him questions. He answered with half-truths and one impossible fact:
"I'm from the future."
It should've gotten him killed.
Instead, she pulled him into her world. Her mission. Her war.
Now, as he lay in a borrowed bedroll inside a hut that reeked of bamboo and smoke, he stared at the stars again.
He didn't belong here. But maybe—just maybe—this was where he was meant to be.
And if he couldn't fix the future... He'd help change the past.
Meanwhile, at Project Balangay HQ, Camp Aguinaldo — 72 Hours After Displacement
The emergency council chamber buzzed with subdued panic. Around the conference table sat scientists, high-ranking military officers, and digital security analysts—all reviewing and replaying the final thirty seconds of Lt. Reyes' jump.
Dr. Clemente stood at the head of the room, her eyes sunken from sleepless nights.
"There was a power surge when the resonance arcs reached maximum alignment. The containment field broke. He was pulled out of phase with the current timeline. We lost the chronal anchor's signal five seconds after the jump."
General Benjamin Atienza, grizzled and skeptical, crossed his arms. "Where is he now, exactly?"
"Based on residual energy data and environmental particles recovered from the chamber—we believe... Iloilo. Circa June 1898."
A stunned silence fell.
"You're telling me we flung a decorated combat medic into the Philippine Revolution?" Atienza asked.
"Yes," Clemente replied. "And he may have already made contact."
Defense Secretary Arnold Santiago leaned forward. "Then the question becomes—do we retrieve him? Or leave him where he is?"
"We must retrieve him," Clemente insisted. "He carries tech, knowledge—any ripple he causes could affect the modern timeline. Imagine what would happen if someone in 1898 reverse-engineered even one component from his chronal anchor."
"We don't know if time is fixed," a younger physicist interjected. "Some theories suggest it's self-correcting. Others—like Reyes' presence—prove divergence is possible."
"So what's the plan?" Santiago said flatly.
"We rebuild the chamber," Clemente said. "But we make it smaller. More targeted. We don't need to bring him back—yet. First, we send a beacon. A signal. Something to reconnect."
"And if he's gone rogue?"
Clemente hesitated. "Then... we send someone after him."
The room went still.
General Atienza tapped a finger on the table. "Begin preparations. Reyes changed the game the moment he vanished into the past. Let's make sure history doesn't forget who sent him there."