The room smelled stale and it was clear no one had been in here for a while. Detective Stevens waited a few moments until her skin stopped buzzing, feeling as though an electric charge in the air were dissipating. Her stomach turned and she wavered on the spot until the nausea ended. Then she made her way slowly through the small apartment, taking notes with an audio recorder as she went.

“In the kitchen,” she spoke methodically and clearly, “the counters and dishes all have a fine patina of dust.”

She bent low over one plate on the counter that had some remnants of uneaten food, though it was no longer identifiable by sight as to what sort of food it had once been.

“Uneaten food on the dirty dishes no longer smell. They’ve had enough time to rot and desiccate fully. The food in the fridge,” she added as she opened the appliance with her gloved hand, “is the same. Power in this building has been cut off for years, but I expect I’ll find a generator here, possibly in a closet or the bedroom.”

More and more people were breaking into these old, abandoned buildings and making use of them in this way. The property owners were often so disconnected or in their own financial troubles that they didn’t spare the time to check in on these properties. It was often easier and financially less burdensome to just leave them anyway. Most police agencies didn’t bother with the buildings or their inhabitants either unless they had too. With so many buildings just like this one in the city, who could blame them. The apartments, many of them at least, had once been quite nice, but if there’s no one paying rent and no one interested in buying the property, it’s only a matter of time before they begin to suffer the effects of neglect.

Detective Stevens passed out of the kitchen and entered the hallway leading back to the bedrooms and bathroom. These were the areas she hated the most in buildings like this one. The living quarters were generally pretty benign. In her experience, most people, even desperate people, tended to keep those areas at least somewhat presentable. It was the private rooms where things got…interesting.

The first door she came to was the bathroom. There were no windows and she had to shine her flashlight into it to get a good view.

“Bathroom is clean,” she said into her recorder with obvious relief. “Single bar of soap on the counter. Not sure what they used for water. There’s a bucket in the tub. There was a bucket in the kitchen sink as well. Maybe they were carrying it in.”

She moved on. She wasn’t exactly in a hurry, but she did need to finish up in time to get back. Not to mention she didn’t like the idea of running into any of the other inhabitants of the building. Granted, they would all probably think she was with the police and try to avoid her.

The second door in the hallway was closed. Detective Stevens paused outside and listened. It was incredibly unlikely, given the state of the place, that anyone was in there but she had learned long ago that it was better to be careful.

“Second door in the hall is closed,” she recorded, “but it’s quiet inside.”

She tried the door knob and it turned freely with the barest metallic whine from disuse.

Dust drifted heavily through the sun rays that came in though the window; its blinds were pulled up and the drapes were thrown open. There was a bed and a dresser but not much else.

“The single blanket on the mattress is the only covering,” she noted, “There’s no pillows or sheets. The dresser is partly broken and looks like it has to lean against the wall to prevent it from collapsing. The damage looks to be from age and use. No signs of foul play.”

She carefully pulled one of the drawers out and looked inside.

“Clothing still in the drawers, though not much. Look like they’re for a female, late teens, though perhaps an adult. Medium build. They might have chosen to leave the clothing behind, maybe didn’t have time to pack. Maybe they just left what they didn’t want to keep. There’s not much here, just a few shirts, single pair of pants. No socks or underwear.”

The room was otherwise empty and so, after checking beneath the bed and looking into the closet, both empty, she went back out into the hall.

“Last room,” she began as she approached the third and final door.

Again she listened at the door before attempting to enter.

Silence.

“Room is quiet, opening the door.”

She grabbed the knob, tried to turn it, but couldn’t. She looked at the knob more closely. It looked like a standard bedroom doorknob with the tiny hole in the center.

“Door’s locked,” she murmured while she fished a small nail from her pocket. “Attempting to unlock it.”

She pressed the nail into the hole until she felt the gentle resistance of the pin that, when pressed, would disengage the lock.

She hesitated.

Why would they lock the door before leaving? If they wanted to hide something there were a number of better places and ways of doing so than leaving it behind this door. Perhaps they hadn’t left but had died instead? Sickness was not uncommon, particularly in these sorts of places. There was also the slight, but still possible chance that there was some sort of trap. A number of so-called abandoned buildings had recently been swept in other cities and the inhabitants of the last few had left improvised bombs and other traps for those forcing them out. The evidence here suggested this place had been abandoned long before those sweeps but the potential was still there and nagged at her.

“Checking beneath the door before proceeding with unlocking it,” she said and withdrew the nail.

From within another pocket she pulled out a small touch screen and a bundle of small cables and stiff wires. The cables terminated on one end in a tiny camera. She wrapped the wires and cables together into a makeshift, flexible stick she could poke and bend beneath the door.

The touchscreen flickered on and she plugged the camera cable into it.

“Camera probe is active.”

She slid it underneath the door and began slowly rotating it back and forth, eyes intent on the small display before her.

“The room’s dark,” she began. “The blinds are open but the curtains are drawn. Looks more lived in. Blankets and sheets on the bed, though it’s not made. Can’t see if there’s anything else on the bed. Clothes piled in the corners, along with a fair amount of trash. Trying to get a better view of the door itself.”

She bent the wire near to where it went under the door and used that bend to rotate the camera until it was facing the door. Her eyes widened.

“There’s something written on the door,” she squinted at the display screen, trying to make out the words. “’Knew you’d be coming, sorry for the mess, say hi to your mom for me.’”

Detective Stevens felt the buzzing on her face too late, as though the air had become suddenly electrically charged. It was a trap, but not the sort she had expected.

“Temporal rift is opening!” Detective Stevens shouted out, “Extract me now!”

It was too late and she knew it. Already her vision was beginning to blur, her heart was beating irregularly and her bowels tried to purge themselves. She was glad for the second time that day that she hadn’t eaten anything that morning.

“Must…have been…” Detective Stevens struggled to say as the temporal distortion continued to grow, “voice activated…triggered…when I spoke.”

The floor dropped out from beneath her and at the same time the walls and ceiling flew away, leaving her in the void. For a moment she feared the trap was such that she would be left there, forever stuck between the seconds of reality, but then the floor and walls rushed back in and she was slammed face first into the hallway.

The temporal distortion was crude but effective. She had no idea when she was and, since she’d been shunted so inelegantly, her body was wracked with spasms as random pieces caught up with the rest of her. She couldn’t see for a time, but she could hear voices shouting and felt the floor beneath her shudder with footsteps, sometimes closer sometimes farther away.

“…when….when…” Detective Stevens heard hear own voice repeat over and over

Finally, everything stilled around her and her vision began to return. Her body was weak and she knew she must have been lying on the floor for hours, if not days. Temporal distortions could leave a person in a coma if not done properly and judging from how she felt, she knew she was lucky she was alive at all.

The hallway looked very much the same as it had before, but now there were the smells of life rather than the stale scent of abandonment. She rolled over onto her back and noticed a hastily written note on the ceiling that she’d missed before.

Leave the door alone. Just go home.

“I’m alive,” Detective Stevens said into her recorder. “Not sure when I am. They left a warning to leave the door alone. I’m going to do as they’ve instructed. Have to come back with a sweeper team and…

Detective Stevens trailed off. From the look of things, she’d been shunted into the past, a few weeks at least, probably further. Plenty of time to get a sweeper team in here to deal with the temporal distortion generator. But she obviously hadn’t because it had triggered on her. What was more, that technology wasn’t suppose to have been invented yet.

Whatever the explanation was, it would have to wait. She couldn’t get any support until she knew when she was.