I didn't wait for Mr. Das to finish his sentence. I turned my back on the terrified security guard and pushed through the heavy glass doors of the lobby, stumbling out into the morning light.
The streets outside felt wrong. Not dangerous, exactly. Not chaotic.
Just… watched.
Every curtain in the apartment complex across the street twitched. Every door seemed half-open, not welcoming, but wary. The world wasn't acting like it was ending in fifty-eight hours. It was acting like I was ending it.
I walked fast, hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets, keeping my head down. My heartbeat echoed louder than my footsteps.
The city should've been awake by now. Usually, the morning rush was a kaleidoscope of blue light—thousands of people moving with their Echoes trailing ahead of them, a visual symphony of the immediate future.
But today?
No Echoes. No future shadows. No hints of what anyone was about to do.
It felt like I'd dragged the world into my own static condition.
A woman on a second-floor balcony was watering her hanging plants. She stopped when she saw me. She didn't look at my face; she stared at the empty space hovering around my shoulders.
"He's the blank," she whispered. It wasn't meant for me to hear, but in the unnatural silence of the street, it carried like a gunshot. "He's the one from the vision."
She dropped her watering can. It smashed on the pavement three feet from me, wet earth exploding across my shoes.
I didn't stop. I kept walking. Keeping eye contact felt like a threat.
I had made it two blocks, aiming for the subway tunnels where the sensors were older and slower, when the air pressure shifted. A low, vibrating hum rattled my teeth.
Drone.
Not a delivery bot. Not a traffic cam. This was an S9 Pursuit Unit.
It dropped from the smog layer like a stone, leveling out ten feet above my head. Its turbine scream was deafening, kicking up dust and trash from the gutter.
Usually, S9s moved with liquid grace, following the predictive path of a suspect's Echo. But this one was twitching. It jerked left, then right, its camera lens dilating frantically as it tried to lock onto a future that didn't exist.
"SUBJECT: KAIRO. STATUS: UNREADABLE."
The synthetic voice cracked through the speaker, distorted by static.
"ERROR. PROBABILITY MATRIX FAILING. HOLD POSITION."
"Get away from me!" I shouted, backing toward a construction barrier.
The machine didn't listen. It couldn't process 'no.' It only processed patterns, and I was a chaotic void. It lunged forward, confused, its rotors slicing the air inches from my face.
I didn't think; I just reacted.
I grabbed a heavy orange hazard cone from the construction pile and swung it upward with everything I had.
CRACK.
The hard plastic shattered against the drone's delicate sensory array. The machine shrieked—a digital death rattle—and spun out of control. It slammed into a parked scooter, exploding in a shower of sparks and black plastic.
I stood there, chest heaving, holding the jagged remains of the cone. The smell of ozone and burnt wiring filled the air.
I had just destroyed government property. That was a felony. But before I could even drop the weapon, the shadows on the street stretched long and dark.
A sharp hiss split the air.
A sleek, matte-grey transport silently touched down in the intersection, blocking my path. No wheels, just anti-grav hums. The side door slid open before the landing gear even touched the asphalt.
Three figures stepped out.
They weren't police. Police wore blue and shouted orders. These men wore charcoal armor that seemed to absorb the sunlight. Their faces were hidden behind smooth, black glass visors.
And, like me, they had no projected Echoes.
I froze. I knew that insignia—a white circle bisected by a single vertical line.
The Obelisk Division.
The people who managed the timeline. The ones who made "glitches" disappear.
The leader stepped forward. He moved with a terrifying fluidity, calm and unhurried.
"Kairo," he said. His voice was modulated, stripping away any human inflection. "You have caused a significant amount of processing errors this morning."
I took a step back, my heel hitting the curb. "I didn't do anything. The world... it just broke."
"The world is deterministic, Kairo. It doesn't break. It follows a script." The agent tilted his head, the black visor reflecting my terrified face. "You are the only unscripted line of code in existence. And with the terminus event approaching in fifty-eight hours, we cannot allow unscripted variables to roam free."
"I'm not going with you," I said, my voice shaking.
"We aren't asking."
The two agents behind him unholstered weapons. They weren't guns; they were Stasis Rods, vibrating with a frequency designed to paralyze a nervous system instantly.
"You have two choices," the leader said. "Walk into the transport, or be dragged into it."
I looked left. A brick wall. I looked right. The burning wreck of the drone. There was nowhere to go.
The leader took a step forward, raising his hand to signal the takedown.
Chime.
A soft, digital sound cut through the tension. It didn't come from the agents. It came from the narrow alleyway behind me.
"I wouldn't touch him if I were you," a voice said.
I spun around.
A girl was leaning against the brickwork of the alley entrance. She looked about my age, wearing a worn-out flight jacket and heavy combat boots. She looked bored.
But it wasn't her clothes that made the agents freeze. It was the air around her.
She had an Echo. But it wasn't the standard translucent blue ghost that hovered ten seconds ahead.
Her Echo was blinding white.
And it wasn't hovering ahead of her. It was split. Three different white shadows flickered around her body, each doing something different—one reaching for a weapon, one turning to run, one standing perfectly still.
She was projecting multiple futures at once.
The Obelisk agents hesitated. The leader took a wary half-step back, his scanner whining in protest.
"Who are you?" the agent demanded, his composure cracking.
The girl pushed off the wall, ignoring him completely. She looked straight at me, her eyes dark and sharp.
"You want to live past the countdown, Null?" she asked, nodding toward the open sewer grate at her feet. "Stop staring and jump."