His name is ‘Z’, or Zed to give him his full title. He’s one of the Protectors from the ‘Department of Historical Integrity’ and this is not his first mission. His job is to ensure the integrity of the ‘Perfect Present’ is maintained, the state that prevailed after the ‘Great Conflagration’. His job is to return to the past to manage ‘Events’ critical to the future and ensure that erroneous outcomes are avoided. He’s given an identity straight out of the ‘Archives’, has been trained in the relevant customs of the time, is armed with a weapon crafted for this time.
So it is that Troy Jones arrives in our troubled times.
His enemies? The ‘hags’ who would try to change ‘Events’ that were due to occur and which, if they were successful, would disrupt the future. ‘Hags’, rebels from his own time who have a dystopian view of the future that mankind has created, have to be stopped. The weapons he’s provided by the ‘Engineers’ should be up to the task. A GeneScan which will identify them, a Tracker to follow them up, a Stunner to quieten opposition and a Flasher to remove all trace of them. Two ‘hags’ are taken out before they can have any impact on the Event he has to protect but his escape from the scene brings him into the life of Tasha Wilson, a lawyer with concerns of her own, though her concerns are about events in the past.