Emil Dufort jolted awake, his chest tight, lungs burning with the acrid bite of coal smoke. He wasn't in a hospital bed, no monitors humming, no sterile white walls. Instead, a low ceiling of dark wooden beams loomed over him, a blackened iron stove squatted in the corner, and a desk groaned under papers, inkwells, and strange brass tools. His hands shook as he sat up, the coarse linen sheets scratching his skin. The room felt wrong, like a stage set for a play he didn't sign up for.
His last memory was clear: Paris, 2025, thirty-one years old, a mechanical engineer with a heart condition that laughed at modern medicine. Rare, they called it. Months to live, maybe. Then darkness swallowed him. Now, this.
He swung his legs to the cold floorboards, steadying himself on the desk. Papers scattered: invoices stamped 1914, orders for steam plows, iron fittings, and boiler parts. A ledger, embossed Émile Dufort in faded gold, stared back. His name, or close enough. He caught his reflection in a tarnished mirror by the stove—same lean frame, sharp jaw, but younger, maybe mid-twenties, with dark curls falling over his ears. His eyes burned with a clarity he hadn't felt in years.
Outside, the world roared. Smoke billowed from towering chimneys, and the clang of steel echoed from a sprawling factory yard. Men shouted in rapid French, hauling crates through a haze of soot. Dufort Ironworks. The name hit him like a punch, certain but absurd. This was his. Inherited, maybe, from a dead uncle—flashes of memory that weren't his flickered through his mind.
Emil pulled on trousers and a wool vest hanging on a hook, the fabric heavy with oil and sweat. Every step toward the door felt like crossing a century. The factory floor was a beast of industry, vast and alive. Furnaces glowed like dying stars, steam pistons hissed, and belts spun massive iron wheels. Workers moved in chaotic rhythm, but tension crackled. A boiler screamed, steam hissing from a cracked valve. A burly man with a mustache—foreman, Emil guessed—barked at a kid wielding a spanner. "Fix that leak, or we're all cooked!"
Emil stepped forward, voice steady despite the fog in his head. "What's wrong with the boiler?"
The foreman spun, scowl softening to confusion. "Emil? Thought you were dead. Been out three days, fever or something. Boiler's been a mess since yesterday—losing pressure, stalling the line."
"Three days?" Emil tested the waters. "You know me?"
The foreman snorted. "What, you forget you own this dump? Henriette's upstairs tearing her hair out over the books. Get moving, boss."
Henriette. Sister, maybe. The name sparked warmth, a lifeline in this madness. Emil nodded. "Get me the maintenance logs. And find Henriette."
The accounts office was cramped, shelves stuffed with ledgers and maps. A woman in her mid-twenties, dark hair pinned loosely, looked up from a desk buried in papers. "Emil," she said, relief mixed with exasperation. "I was about to send for a priest. Three days out cold, and you stroll in like it's Sunday."
"Henriette?" Emil sat across from her, piecing it together. "Tell me everything."
She leaned forward, eyes sharp. "We're drowning. Suppliers cut us off—coal's late, rails jammed by war. Fifty thousand francs owed, and workers are ready to strike. Orders for plows and harvesters? Canceled. Farmers don't need tools when their fields are battlegrounds. Two weeks, maybe, before we shut down."
Emil scanned the ledgers. Numbers were grim—margins razor-thin, debts piling up. His modern mind saw the Great War's shadow: trenches, stalemates, France bleeding. Corruption in government, he remembered from history books, would make it worse. He wasn't ready to fix a nation, but this factory? That he could do. For his workers. For France, quietly.
"Dad still in Paris?" he asked, fishing for family.
Henriette nodded. "Louis, grumbling as always. Claire's there too—your fiancée's worried sick. Sent a telegram yesterday."
Family. A fiancée. Emil's chest warmed, grounding him. "We'll fix this. I've got ideas."
Outside, a town crier's bell rang. "Germans at the Meuse! Verdun holds!" War was close. Emil stood on the factory balcony, smoke stinging his eyes. He wasn't just Emil Dufort, industrialist. He was a man out of time, with knowledge to change everything. Starting small. For now.