Zero returned to the abandoned building three days later.
He didn't know why.
Earth Zero had already taken most of the records.
The room should have been empty.
Yet Zero couldn't stop thinking about what he had seen.
Expected sequence.
The words had followed him everywhere.
At first, he had rejected them.
There was no reason for his life to follow someone else's sequence.
No reason for Hiro to be forced into a particular position simply because an unknown record claimed he belonged there.
People made choices.
Those choices changed things.
That was normal.
It had to be.
But Earth Zero had known too much.
That was what Zero couldn't explain.
He hadn't guessed that the battle against Aamon would unfold differently.
He had known.
He hadn't predicted that Mia would gradually become the symbol of victory.
He had recorded it as a deviation.
And the more Zero remembered the papers—
the more uncomfortable he became.
Because the changes did not begin with Mia.
