Jackson Pollin is a seasoned operative in the secretive Temporal Observation and Reconstruction Agency (TORA), a clandestine organization tasked with monitoring historical events through advanced time-viewing technology. His role involves piecing together the true sequence of past events—often obscured by propaganda, lost records, or deliberate cover-ups—to aid in modern judicial proceedings, historical accountability, and preventing the repetition of crimes against humanity. While TORA's strict directive is observation only—no interference, no alterations—Pollin has always viewed his work as a form of quiet justice, using hindsight to expose what really happened so societies can learn and courts can convict.

A former historian and ethics professor turned field agent, Pollin is in his mid-40s, methodical, introspective, and haunted by the atrocities he's witnessed across centuries. He carries the weight of knowing too much without being able to act, a burden that has made him cynical yet fiercely principled. He believes education through unfiltered truth is the closest thing to redemption the past can offer.

During one fateful afternoon in the present day, a coordinated terrorist attack strikes TORA's primary temporal facility. Amid the chaos—explosions ripping through containment chambers, alarms blaring, and agents scrambling—Pollin activates a prototype emergency time displacement device meant only for evacuation. A surge of unstable chronal energy engulfs him, hurling him backward through the timestream.

He materializes in 1939, mere weeks before the invasion of Poland ignites World War II. Disoriented but quickly orienting himself, Pollin finds he has landed in a secluded Bavarian setting where Adolf is attending a private retreat. From mere yards away, concealed in the underbrush with a salvaged sidearm from the future, Pollin has a clear shot. One pull of the trigger could end the Führer's life before the Holocaust, before millions perish in the war.

But the moment stretches. Pollin knows the rules he once enforced: interference risks unraveling causality in unpredictable ways—paradoxes, worse tyrants rising in 's place, accelerated timelines, or even the erasure of the very knowledge that made stopping evil possible. Yet here, with history teetering and the screams of the future echoing in his mind, the observer faces the ultimate temptation: to become the executioner. Does he fire, or does he hold back, preserving the timeline at the cost of unimaginable suffering?