Dunworthy is stricken by the disease but survives, awaking after the new year when the worst of the epidemic has passed. Influenza overwhelms the medical staff of the 21st century. The last one is Father Roche, who dies believing that Kivrin is a Saint sent by God.
Despite every effort, Kivrin watches all the people she has come to know die from the plague. Kivrin’s arranged retrieval date passes with neither side able to make it. Within days, many residents of the village fall ill, and Kivrin attempts to help Father Roche treat them. In the 14th century, two weeks after Kivrin's arrival, a monk infected with the Black Death comes to the village. Ahrens and Dunworthy discover Badri contracted the influenza virus from human remains at the archaeological dig, starting the epidemic at future Oxford. Though there was no slippage (the time shift between a traveler's intended and actual date of arrival, ensuring they cannot change history), it is discovered that that Badri, delirious with illness, input the incorrect coordinates. Kivrin and Dunworthy realize that she has arrived in England in 1348 during the Black Death pandemic, more than 20 years later than intended. This causes acting head of Balliol College Professor Gilchrist to order the net closed, effectively stranding Kivrin in the past. Fears grow that the virus causing the epidemic has been transmitted from the past via the time travel net. Dunworthy befriends Colin, the grand-nephew of his friend Mary Ahrens, a doctor. In 2054, Dunworthy tries to determine if Kivrin is safe as Oxford collapses into panic. She becomes semi-integrated into society, bonding with the children Agnes and Rosemund.
Kivrin fakes amnesia as she tries to find the drop point. Kivrin discovers many inconsistencies in what she knows about the time: the Middle English she learned is different from the local dialect, her maps are useless, her clothing is too fine, and she is far too clean. The narrative switches between Kivrin in the 14th century and 2054/2055 Oxford during the influenza epidemic. She loses track of the "drop point," the location where she arrived and must return at a prearranged time in order to get home. She awakens after several days of fever and delirium at a nearby manor whose residents have nursed her. Kivrin also falls ill as soon as she arrives in the past. Shortly after sending Kivrin to the 14th century, Badri Chaudhuri, the technician who set the time travel coordinates for the trip, collapses, an early victim of a deadly new influenza epidemic that disrupts the university and leads to the city being quarantined. This period had previously been thought too dangerous, because it stretched the time travel net 300 years earlier than it had ever been used before.
Kivrin Engle, a young historian specializing in medieval history, asks her reluctant instructor, Professor James Dunworthy, and the authorities running the project to send her to Oxford in 1320 near Christmas. Some periods theoretically accessible can also be deemed too dangerous for the historians by the authorities controlling time travel. The time-traveler arrives at the nearest place-and-time suitable for preventing a paradox variance can be anything from 5 minutes to 5 years. In other cases, "slippage", a shift in the exact time target, occurs. Typically the machine used for time travel will refuse to function, rendering the trip impossible.
In the book's fictional universe, history resists time travel that would cause the past to be altered by preventing visits to certain places or times. The research is conducted at the University of Oxford in mid-21st century England. Willis's mythos is a near future, first introduced in her story " Fire Watch" (1982), in which historians conduct field work by traveling into the past as observers.
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