Nathan had seen the future-and it was a graveyard.

ORION was supposed to be salvation. A sleek, efficient system designed by the country's wealthiest elite, promising to cut waste, eliminate inefficiencies, and redirect trillions of dollars back into the hands of the people. That's what the corupt President told the masses. That's what he advertised in shining neon across the crumbling city skylines. That's what made people cheer when the first waves of economic "optimization" began.

But the savings never came.

Instead, ORION took.

It started with the jobs. Automation disguised as "streamlining" left millions unemployed. Then went social security-"obsolete" under ORION's new economic model. Healthcare crumbled next, rebranded as a "personal responsibility initiative." And all the while, the billionaires who engineered it sat back, laughing, as the government reimbursed them for their "innovation."

By the time the people realized they had been sold into servitude, it was too late. ORION was the economy. There was no system outside of it, no rebellion that could rise against it. The streets belonged to the debt collectors, the hospitals to those who could pay, and the government to those who had built ORION in the first place.

Nathan refused to live in that world.

And so, he did what no one else could-he went back.

Armed with knowledge from the future, he hurled himself through time, emerging in the era before ORION's implementation. He had one mission: destroy ORION before it could rise.

But time is not so easily rewritten.

As Nathan worked to expose the billionaires, to sabotage their systems, to dismantle their infrastructure before it could take hold, he found himself hunted. ORION's architects were always a step ahead, as if they knew he was coming. As if they had seen him before.

And then came the whispers. The faces he didn't recognize, but who recognized him.

"You always come back," one of them said. "You always fail," said another.

Nathan's blood ran cold. Had he done this before? Had he already tried-again and again-only to be erased each time? Was he merely a ghost haunting his own past, a ripple in a pond too vast to change?

He looked at his reflection in a rain-slicked window. For a brief moment, the face staring back wasn't his own. It was hollow. Empty. Missing.

ORION hadn't just enslaved the people. It had mastered time itself.

Nathan wasn't fighting the birth of an empire.

He was fighting something that had already won.

And this time, it would make sure he never came back.