What if the past isn't something you can change-but something that's already happened, even when you haven't done it yet?
Seneca, South Carolina, 1995. Seventeen-year-old Jon MacFie and his best friend Mat Kallar discover something impossible buried beneath the kudzu beside an abandoned house: a wrecked machine containing the body of a dead soldier and technology decades ahead of its time. The dead man's phone identifies him as Captain John Talon, a traveler from Worldline 28-B whose final mission was to travel backward through time-and somehow find Jon. Joined by Ashley Spencer, a girl who has sensed for years that something about reality is subtly wrong, the three teenagers become entangled with Janet, an artificial intelligence from the future, and a sealed container that must eventually reach 2084.
But time travel has consequences. Every jump leaves a mark, every object carried into the past can reshape the future, and the trio soon discovers that their actions are creating measurable changes in the world around them. Familiar history begins developing unfamiliar details, alternate worldlines emerge, and the distinction between changing history and fulfilling it begins to disappear. As Jon, Mat, and Ashley follow the evidence through decades of time, they uncover a future shaped by war, political upheaval, institutional control, and a mysterious organization that has been waiting for them for generations.
At the center of the mystery is a terrifying possibility: Jon isn't fighting against the timeline-he is part of the mechanism that created it. The TALON Incident is a hard-science-leaning time-travel thriller blending paradoxes, alternate realities, garage-built technology, dry humor, friendship, and a mystery that keeps folding back upon itself. If you've ever wondered whether free will and predestination can coexist-or whether changing the past might actually be the thing that makes the past happen-this is a journey through time you won't see coming.