A big disaster leads Frank to Backstep, but when he comes to, he finds the sphere is buried alive, and the project Backstep team cannot find him.

Bradley takes his first vacation in a decade and in doing so, is kidnapped. During questioning he takes a suicide pill, which ultimately leads to a Backstep. Trying to juggle two deaths, Frank experiences what he calls "time burps", where time just seems to go back by itself, and he uses these to repeat events again and again in order to get the desired outcome.