A Spark in Time
Rory Flint was the kind of girl who never waited for anyone else to fix a problem. Growing up in the dusty industrial town of Iron Hollow, she spent most of her days tinkering in her father’s cluttered workshop. The town ran on ancient, sputtering machines that seemed like they could fail at any moment—and often did. Rory’s knack for coaxing life back into dying tech earned her a reputation as the town’s unofficial mechanic by the time she was sixteen.
The trouble began when the clock tower in the town square froze at exactly 2:22 p.m. At first, no one cared—after all, the tower had been unreliable for years. But when the crops in Iron Hollow’s surrounding fields withered overnight and neighbors started forgetting entire weeks of their lives, Rory’s gut told her something bigger was at play.
Late one night, she heard a faint hum, like a pulse, coming from the base of the clock tower. Armed with her trusty toolkit and a flashlight, she slipped out of her house and made her way through the empty streets.
Inside the clock tower’s hollow belly, Rory found more than rusted gears. A glowing, alien-like device sat at the center of a nest of wires and strange markings. The air around it felt warped, heavy. Her pulse quickened as she reached out to inspect it, her fingers brushing against its smooth, unnaturally warm surface.
Before she could fully grasp what she was looking at, a man in a black trench coat appeared as if from thin air. His cold smile chilled her to the bone. “Step away, girl,” he said, his voice low and commanding. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Rory didn’t listen. She never did. With a defiant glare, she yanked the screwdriver from her pocket and jammed it into the heart of the glowing device. Sparks erupted, and the man lunged for her, but it was too late. The device shattered with a deafening crack, its fragments dissolving into ash.
The man vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared, leaving Rory alone in the tower with her heart pounding in her chest. Whatever she’d done, it had worked—the hum was gone, and the air felt normal again. But her defiance hadn’t gone unnoticed.
The next evening, as Rory sat cleaning her tools, a stranger arrived at her door. She was tall and stern, with piercing green eyes and a silver wristwatch that glowed faintly in the dim light.
“You have a talent for causing trouble,” the woman said without preamble.
Rory raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”
The woman smirked faintly. “What you destroyed wasn’t just a machine—it was a temporal destabilizer. And the people who built it won’t let this go.”
Rory frowned. “Who are they?”
“Complicated,” the woman replied. “But they’ve been tampering with your timeline. If you want to survive—and keep your town intact—you’re going to need help.”
She held out a watch, its face glowing faintly in the dim light.
Rory hesitated for only a moment. “What’s the catch?”
“You keep doing what you’re good at,” the woman said. “Fixing things. Just on a much bigger scale.”
With a smirk, Rory took the watch and strapped it on. It would need some adjustments, some Rory touches, but it'd do for now. She didn’t have all the answers yet, but one thing was certain—she wasn’t about to sit back and let someone else wreck her town.
From that night on, Rory Flint wasn’t just a mechanic—she was a Time Keeper, hurtling through timelines to repair the damage left behind by forces she was only beginning to understand. And she never once looked back.
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