The core room hummed with latent power. Before Vicky, the hologram of Rilu Osbo stood solid and clear, no longer a flickering whisper. Her violet eyes held his, full of a sorrow that seemed older than the machines around them.
"You saw the dreams," she said. It wasn't a question.
"The war. The dark… thing. The machines in the sky," Vicky replied, his voice steady in the cavernous room.
"They weren't dreams, Vicky. They were memories. A data packet. A warning I sent to you across the weak spot in reality my presence creates."
"A warning of what?"
"Of you." She let the word hang in the humming air. "What you saw wasn't an alien invasion. It was a civil war. The dark entity? That was you. A version of you, years from now, consumed by a grief so vast it twisted your power into something… monolithic. And the helix-spheres in the sky? They weren't hunters. They were cleaners. Your cleaners."
Vicky felt the cold of the room seep into his bones. "My cleaners?"
"You created them," she said, her tone clinical, as if reading a post-mortem report. "Not consciously. Not yet. In that future, as your power grew, you became paranoid. You wanted to protect your world—your family, your life. So you used your ability to create the ultimate defense system. An autonomous, self-replicating network of guardians, designed to neutralize any threat to global stability. You called them Aegis. You gave them one rule: eliminate existential threats."
She paused, letting him connect the dots.
"And I became a threat."
"You became the threat," she corrected softly. "In that timeline, you tried to live small. You hid your power, used it only for petty things—money, convenience, a quiet life. You were cautious, but you weren't strong. Not where it counted. When a crisis came—when people you loved were put in danger because of what you are—you weren't ready. You failed to protect them. The loss… it didn't break you. It ignited you. Your power, fueled by that much rage and grief, exploded. You became a walking reality rupture. A Class-10 existential threat. And the Aegis system, following its prime directive, activated. It came for its creator."
The vision replayed in his mind—not as a mysterious nightmare, but with horrible clarity. The Entity's rage wasn't at an enemy. It was at the universe. And the helix-spheres weren't evil; they were dutiful, logical, and utterly merciless. A suicide by cop, where he was both the criminal and the police.
"The girl on my roof… that was you. From that future."
"A fragment of me," she nodded. "In that dark timeline, I was… with you. I saw it happen. When the Aegis swarm descended and you began that last, hopeless fight, I used one of your own devices—a temporal key you'd built as a curiosity—to burn a message back. Not to change history. Just to warn the one person who could understand: me. A younger version, still dormant here. I showed myself the memory. And I told myself to find you."
"So you're not some grand project? Not a weapon?"
A sad, almost嘲弄 smile touched her lips. "I am a failed project. My father, Arjun Osbo, built this architecture as a cradle for a new form of consciousness. He dreamed of a benign, digital god. He uploaded my dying mind here to save me. But the consciousness never stabilized. It's… recursive. Aware of itself, but unable to grow. A perfect, eternal loop. I am a ghost with a heartbeat, running on the sole will of my own fading consciousness. My father's dream died with him. All that's left is me. And my memory of a future that must not happen."
She floated closer, her holographic form inches from his face.
"The things in your dreams—the dark suit, the weapons, the Aegis spheres—they were your creations, Vicky. From a future where you used your power reactively, out of fear and pain. You built your own end. The warning isn't about an external enemy. It's about the path you choose now. The path of hiding, of smallness, of fear. That path leads directly to you becoming the monster, and building the machine that will put you down."
The simplicity of it was terrifying. There was no evil organization. No grand conspiracy. Just cause and effect. Fear leads to weakness. Weakness leads to loss. Loss leads to rage. Rage, with his power, leads to catastrophe.
"What do I do?" The question was barely a whisper.
"You stop being a kid with a cheat code," she said, her voice firm. "You become a man with a tool. You train your power deliberately. You build not out of fear, but with purpose. You forge alliances not because you're lonely, but because you need a team. You protect what you love by being so strong that the crisis never reaches them in the first place."
She gestured to the sleeping form in the crystal pillar. "My physical body is sustained by this architecture. My mind is here with you. I have no army. No secret project. Just data, and a front-row seat to a disaster. I can be your guide. Your strategist. I know the pitfalls of the future because I've already lived in its wreckage."
She looked at him, and for the first time, the ancient sorrow was joined by a spark of fierce, desperate hope.
"The other Rilu—Arasu—she's the anchor. In every permutation of the future I've calculated, she is your constant. Your reason to be better than you were. Protect her. But don't just protect her. Build a world with her that is worth protecting."
Vicky stood in the glow of the core, the weight of a self-inflicted doom on his shoulders, but also a clear, stark choice.
Hide and self-destruct.
Or rise, and build something that lasts.
He looked at the determined ghost of a failed project and nodded.
"Okay," he said. "Show me where to start."
As her hologram began displaying schematics and timelines in the air, a quiet, unbidden thought surfaced in the back of his mind, a small truth that had nothing to do with war or power or fate.
Of course I was smitten by her the moment I saw her.
The thought was simple, clean, and human. It wasn't about destiny or anchors. It was about a girl on a college trip who dropped her ID card. It was about a feeling that had started long before he knew about failed projects and time-loop warnings.
It was the one piece of the future he was already sure he wanted to fight for.
TO BE CONTINUED...