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Have you ever felt like leaving it all behind and starting again? Follow Darcy Shepherd to the lush remote Isle of Torridhan on her first case. How could three teenage girls just vanish from an island with round the clock CCTV of every person passing through the only ferry port out. The perfect closed-door mystery. Except with time travelling portals... and killer AI robots.
It could be a career defining case. Granted, this was unusual for a first case but the previous detective hadn't lasted for some reason. She guessed she was their second choice, or maybe even third, fourth, fifth... It was probably the isolation, three hours from the mainland, even that was stormy season permitting. Perfect, she thought. She's just the supporting detective anyway. Her new boss, the charismatic Jamie with his weather beaten looks and dimpled smile is taking the lead, leaving her to learn from his experience.
Darcy arrives at the small open plan office to find it unsettlingly quiet. No one is joking by the water cooler, something is off - Jamie's not there, they're all keeping tight lipped about it and she can guess why. With no one left to lead the case or even brief her on it, she gets to work alone, trawling through the cardboard box of evidence he'd put together. What did Jamie stumble on? Is she next if she doesn't figure it out soon?
The diary of one of the missing girls describes a magical snowy world through a gateway. Darcy comes across a momentary portal opening to a hazy landscape. She examines a snowflake between her fingers and thumb perplexed - it's too warm for snow. She watches as the flake disintegrates into a grey black smudge and realises in horror - it's ash. Darcy steps over some crumbling bricks and sees more clearly - the buildings are the same but are mostly rubble. Fires burn in the distance, the occasional thud of explosions can be heard but there is no background drone of traffic, cars are rusting with their doors open in the middle of the road, no one is around.
Then, hearing the clang of a scaffolding pole, she glimpses him just as the portal is closing. A dishevelled injured man has been struggling to hold back humanoid robots, stopping them from jumping across into the present from this dystopian future, so they can finish what they began with less resistance. He catches her eye and they recognise each other - Jamie?
With time travel possible, Darcy can go back to just before the moment her life took that fateful turn. She could erase the traumatic events that led her here, erase the "error" in her timeline, put her life back on that perfect track it was on before.
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