Chapter 7 - What Margaret Really Saw
Margaret had one more secret.
In 1974, after Evelyn vanished, she saw a second face inside copper glass.
Not Elias.
Thomas Reed.
She had suppressed memory.
Why?
Her father Charles told her Thomas was dead.
Then showed her grainy photograph from 1896.
Same young technician.
Margaret panicked.
Charles said:
“If you tell anyone, they’ll take the house apart and never let Evelyn come back.”
Seventeen-year-old Margaret believed.
But before chamber went dark, Thomas raised one hand.
He held something.
A white card.
Margaret could not read.
Until Lucas enhanced an old Polaroid taken seconds before blackout.
Charles’s camera had captured reflection.
On white card:
1974?
Thomas somehow knew year.
That meant he was conscious between crossings.
Not frozen.
Could observe.
Could perhaps communicate.
“How?” Ethan asked.
Lucas theorized field created intermittent visual contact at resonance peaks.
Thomas may see glimpses into destination times before emergence.
Evelyn remembered something.
When trapped in 1896 chamber, Thomas shouted:
“I can see another room!”
She thought he meant reflection.
Perhaps he saw 1974.
Then why did Evelyn emerge but Thomas not?
Elias notebook offered clue.
Node B.
Primary chamber could generate field.
Node B acted “return anchor.”
Only one anchor channel completed.
Evelyn happened physically nearer anchor side when circuit surged.
Thomas became unanchored.
So Evelyn bounced:
1896 → 1974 → 2026.
Thomas remained in field.
Could he anchor now?
Possibly through primary chamber.
Risk:
Activating could pull Evelyn back instead.
Or destabilize structure.
No guarantee.
This created real moral choice.
Evelyn insisted:
“We have to try.”
Ethan said:
“You don’t owe Thomas your life.”
“I entered to save him.”
“In 1896.”
“I failed.”
“You were twenty-five and got trapped too.”
She glared.
“I am still twenty-five.”
That hit.
Emotionally Evelyn had lost world in less than a day.
Her father gone 118 years by calendar.
Mother gone.
Friends gone.
Language changed.
Everything erased except house.
She needed agency.
Not protection through decisions made for her.
So Ethan changed question.
“What do you want?”
“To understand enough to choose.”
Exactly.
Independent physicists and electrical engineers reviewed system.
Most skeptical.
Some thought readings were equipment artifact.
One found impossible synchronization:
old copper coils emitted narrowband oscillation without power.
Energy source unclear.
No one could explain.
They agreed remote activation tests first.
No person inside.
Test 1:
low current.
Result:
temperature drop.
No displacement.
Test 2:
frequency matching 1896 note.
Result:
brief image on reflective panel.
Not ghostly face.
A room.
Different wall arrangement.
Thomas stood inside.
Alive.
Twenty-something.
He looked directly toward camera.
Evelyn screamed his name.
No audio passed.
Thomas lifted white card.
This time digital camera captured clearly:
DO NOT OPEN MAIN DOOR.
Then another line:
ELIAS IS HERE.
Everyone froze.
Evelyn stared.
“My father?”
Lucas whispered:
May you like
“That’s impossible.”
But they had already learned impossible was only a description of missing mechanism.
