Arin didn't know where the noise ended and his thoughts began.
He only knew one thing:
Something was watching him.
Not from outside, not from inside—
but from a point in time he wasn't sure existed yet.
A whisper brushed the edge of his awareness:
"Follow the fragments."
He didn't know who said it.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe it was something wearing his voice.
— PRESENT —
He floated in a blank digital void, data scrolling like drifting snowflakes.
Every flake contained a piece of a memory.
He reached toward one.
It dissolved before he touched it.
— PAST —
A childhood living room flashed into existence.
Not fully formed—like a sketch someone forgot to finish.
His father was sitting with his back to him.
Watching the evening news.
Static fuzzed across the screen.
Arin stepped closer.
His father turned slightly, revealing half his face—
but the other half was a warped metallic mask, shifting like liquid metal.
"Why are you looking for answers," his father's half-voice asked, "when you already know who killed you?"
Arin froze.
"What do you mean?" he whispered.
But the room collapsed before the question finished.
— FUTURE? —
The floor beneath him turned into steel.
A corridor appeared—long, dark, humming.
Warning lights flashed red across the metal walls.
He saw a shadow at the end of the hall.
A figure walking toward him.
A robot?
A person?
Himself?
He couldn't see the face.
But he felt the gaze.
He felt terror crawl up his spine—the kind of fear you feel only when you're seeing something that hasn't happened yet.
The figure spoke, voice echoing as if from behind layers of glass:
"You're too late, AR-0N. You already made the wrong choice."
Before Arin could reply, alarms screamed:
[TIMELINE COLLISION DETECTED]
[SEQUENCE CORRUPTED]
The corridor shattered, folding like paper.
— BACK TO PRESENT —
Arin found himself standing on nothing again.
Just endless void.
A new interface flickered beneath him, drawn in faint blue lines like a ghostly blueprint.
MEMORY ECHO: INVESTIGATION MODE ACTIVATED
He didn't activate it.
It triggered itself.
A circle of screens formed around him, each showing a "moment" in his life—but jumbled:
His burnt corpse from the lab
A calendar with the date of the explosion
A future city skyline covered in smoke
A shadowy meeting between two men—one speaking his name
A digital map with a blinking red dot
A hand signing a document with the Nova Corp logo
His childhood bedroom light flickering strangely
A metal door marked "RESTRICTED CORE ACCESS"
A human silhouette, glitching like a corrupted file
Everything started rotating around him—too fast.
Arin tried to grab one of the images.
The moment he touched it, everything paused.
A voice—cold, emotionless—spoke directly inside his head:
[Begin analysis.]
The images rearranged themselves into a timeline…
Except the timeline was wrong.
Events mixed:
Things that happened
Things that could have happened
Things that should never happen
A single phrase appeared across all screens:
"The past is lying to you."
Arin's digital breath hitched.
He whispered,
"Who—who changed it?"
The void flickered violently, as if something didn't want him to keep going.
Another message forced its way into view:
[Suspect Identified]
[Identity: UNKNOWN]
[Location: ACROSS MULTIPLE TIMELINES]
Arin felt the digital world shiver around him.
Multiple timelines?
Someone moving through his memories?
Rewriting what happened to him?
Before he could process it, the screens suddenly snapped off.
Darkness swallowed everything.
But in that darkness, one image remained—
A hand.
A human hand with a scorch mark on the wrist.
Holding a remote detonator.
Pressing a button.
And Arin heard his own voice, but older… deeper… wrong:
"Forgive me."
Then the detonator clicked.
Then came fire.
And then—
silence.