Dawn on the second day found Elias not asleep, but drilling.
In the empty space of his stripped-bare living room, he moved through basic hand-to-hand katas. The movements were awkward. His body was sluggish, unresponsive, a poorly tuned instrument compared to the weapon he remembered. His muscles burned with a healthy, infuriating weakness. Sweat soaked his shirt.
Left block. Right jab. Pivot. Low sweep.
He wasn't trying to become a master in two days. He was trying to forge a single, critical connection: convincing his new, soft neural pathways that the old, hard-won instincts were real. He needed his body to react on its own when the screaming started, not freeze in terror.
He pushed for an hour until his lungs screamed and his limbs trembled. The phantom pains from old wounds, the knee that had been shattered, the shoulder dislocated three times, were gone. The real pain of fresh exertion was a brutal comfort. It meant he was here. He was alive. He could still change.
Forty-six hours remaining.
After a cold shower and a calculated meal of high-protein foods from his dwindling pre-apocalypse stash, he returned to the laptop. The money was still flowing in, a digital lifeblood feeding his operation. He shifted to Phase 2: Logistics and the Art of the Lie.
He needed access to the Genesis Seed site. The construction site had 24/7 security. A bored guard in a shack. In the old timeline, that guard had died in the initial panic, trampled by workers fleeing the first minor tremor that signaled a Gate opening nearby.
Elias couldn't wait for chaos. He needed certainty.
He found the site manager's name through public permits: Frank Deroy. A few minutes on social media painted a picture: a man in his fifties, proud of his project, worried about his son's upcoming college tuition. A man with a pressure point.
Elias called the site office. He used a different voice this time, older, slightly officious.
"Frank Deroy, please. Tell him it's Gary from the City Planning Department's new Hazard Mitigation Audit wing."
A hold. Then a wary, "This is Deroy."
"Mr. Deroy, Gary Silas. Listen, I need to be brief. Our geotech scans from last week flagged a potential undocumented anomaly on your plat, grid NW-7. Could be an old utility vault, could be nothing. But with the new seismic code updates, if it's not characterized, your certificate of occupancy is frozen. Indefinitely."
He could hear the man's breathing quicken. "An anomaly? What does that mean? We're on schedule!"
"Means I need a two-man crew and a small borehole scan at that exact coordinate. Tonight. After hours, minimal disruption. We sign off, you move on. If we wait for formal channels... we're talking months of review."
"Tonight?" Deroy sputtered. "I can't just—"
"Or I file the preliminary hold notice tomorrow morning," Elias said, his voice turning cold. "Your choice. My crew will be there at 10 PM. They'll be discreet. You will have your night watchman let them in and leave them alone for two hours. They'll be gone by midnight. No paperwork, no delays. This is me doing you a favor, Frank."
There was a long silence filled with the sound of a man calculating ruin. "Two hours. Discreet. The guard's name is Ray. Don't make me regret this."
"Never do," Elias said, and hung up.
It was a gamble. A thin lie that would collapse under any real scrutiny. But it would hold for one night. And one night was all he needed.
He spent the afternoon on the move, a specter spending ghost money. He bought two high-powered, civilian-grade laser distance measurers and a ruggedized tablet. His "scanning equipment." He purchased black work clothes, boots, and a simple black cap. He visited three different electronics stores for the components to build a crude, but powerful, radio jammer. It would create a half-block dead zone, ensuring no accidental calls from the guard.
Each purchase was precise, purposeful. He was building the key to turn in a lock that didn't exist yet.
As evening fell, he drove the van to a quiet lot near the campus. He had one more piece to place.
He saw Aris leaving the biochemistry building, her steps quick, purposeful. She was carrying new, sealed boxes of equipment—a portable centrifuge. She was spending the money. Good.
He didn't approach. Instead, he sent a text from a burner phone he'd bought that morning.
Unknown #: The event will trigger at 3:07 PM Saturday. Biological anomalies will manifest within minutes in 5% of the population. The rest within 24 hours. Your research on catalytic protein folding is the key to stabilization. Be ready to move. Secure location needed. - V.
He watched her stop, fumble for her phone, read the message. She looked around, her face pale in the streetlight. She typed a quick reply.
Aris: Who is this? What anomalies? This isn't funny.
Unknown #: It's not. Check the news tomorrow evening. Then you'll believe. Have your mobile lab ready. I will contact you with coordinates.
He shut the phone off. The seed of urgency was planted. She would watch the news now with a terrified, scientific eye. When the first, confusing reports of "mass hysteria" and "contagious laughter outbreaks" trickled in tomorrow night—the early, mild symptoms of Mana exposure—she would connect the dots. She would be primed.
He drove back to his storage unit, his mind a map of moving parts. Leo. Aris. The Site. Sam. The Protocols. The Citadel Core.
He felt the first, familiar headache begin to pulse behind his eyes. A dull throb. It was the same pain that had preceded his "Chronicler's Migraines" in the old timeline, when he'd pushed his memory-manipulation too far.
But he hadn't used any powers. He hadn't even seen the System interface clearly yet.
Unless... just remembering is a strain, he thought. The knowledge itself is the paradox.
He swallowed two painkillers dry.
Thirty-eight hours remaining.
At 9:45 PM, under a moonless sky, Elias pulled the van into a dark alley two blocks from the construction site. He changed into the black clothes in the back, the space already feeling like a familiar command post. He loaded a small backpack: the jamming device, the tablet and lasers, a powerful flashlight, a compact shovel and pick, and a 9mm pistol he had not owned three days ago.
The pistol was a complication, acquired through a dark web contact he remembered from the early, lawless days after Integration. It was a risk, carrying it now. But the greater risk was being unarmed when he met the first predators of the new world.
He slipped the jammer from its case, an ugly brick of wires and batteries, and activated it. A small green light glowed. He pulled out his phone. No signal. Perfect.
He moved through the shadows, a student of urban decay from a future that made this neighborhood look like a paradise. The chain-link fence around the site was no obstacle. He was over it in seconds, landing softly in the mud on the other side.
The site was a chaos of silent machinery and excavated earth under the weak glow of safety lights. The guard shack was a lit cube fifty yards away. He could see the silhouette of Ray the guard, watching a small portable TV.
Elias moved like liquid night, using the bulk of a backhoe for cover, then a pile of I-beams. He reached the northwest corner, the spot he'd marked. The chunk of old foundation was there, a pale island in the dark earth.
He set the tablet and lasers on the ground, their screens casting an eerie blue glow on his face. If anyone looked, they'd see a man running a scan. He picked up the shovel.
The work was brutal. The clay was hard-packed, resistant. Every shovelful sent jolts up his untrained arms. His back protested. But he kept a ruthless, machine-like pace. He was digging for the future.
Sweat dripped into his eyes. The minutes ticked by. He hit a rock, had to use the pick. The sound was too loud in the quiet night. He froze, glancing toward the shack. The TV still flickered. No movement.
He dug deeper. Two feet. Three.
His shovel struck something that wasn't rock or clay. A hollow thunk.
He dropped to his knees, scrabbling with his hands. His fingers closed around a smooth, cool surface. He pulled it from the earth.
It was a stone. Perfectly ovoid, slightly larger than a goose egg. It was a deep, basaltic black, but as he wiped the clay from it, he saw faint, hair-thin lines of silver coursing through it like frozen lightning. It was inert. Cold. Just a rock.
But he knew.
The Genesis Seed.
In fifty-one hours and twenty-two minutes, at the moment of Integration, those silver lines would ignite with the power of a nascent world. It would bond to the first living thing that touched it with intent, granting the [Unique Item: Founding Citadel Core].
He tucked the heavy stone into his backpack, a thrill of fierce triumph cutting through his fatigue. First major objective. Secured.
He quickly filled the hole, scattering the excess dirt, erasing his work. He packed up his "scanning" gear. He was a ghost again, slipping back through the shadows, over the fence, into the alley.
He deactivated the jammer. His phone buzzed to life, immediately chiming with a notification. Not a text. It was a visual shimmer at the corner of his eye, bleeding into his physical sight.
A pale, translucent blue box, faint as a afterimage.
[Artifact of Temporal Significance Acquired: Genesis Seed]
[Status: Dormant]
[Integration Synchronization: 96.7%]
[Chronicler's Paradox Integrity: 99.1%]
The box faded. Elias leaned against the cool brick of the alley wall, his heart hammering.
The System was talking to him. Ahead of schedule. It was aware of him, aware of the Seed. And it was measuring something called "Paradox Integrity." It was at 99.1%. What happened at 0%? Did he unravel? Did the Null-Chronicler appear?
The headache returned, sharper, a needle behind his right eye.
He shoved the fear down. He had the key. Now he needed the fortress.
He drove the van back to the storage unit. He placed the Genesis Seed carefully in a foam-lined crate, surrounded by the mundane supplies. It looked like just another rock sample.
He sat in the driver's seat, too wired to sleep. He opened his laptop, connected to the unit's stolen wifi.
He began to research Sam Kincaid in earnest. School records were easy. He found the names of the bullies. He found a notice for a weekend "urban exploration" meet-up at the old, abandoned Fuller Mill on the edge of town. Saturday at 1 PM. In the old timeline, Sam had gone, seeking a place to be alone. The bullies had followed. The confrontation had happened just as the first System alerts hit global news, the chaos allowing their cruelty to escalate unnoticed.
Elias's plan solidified. He would be at the mill. He would let the cruelty play out, almost to its terrible conclusion. And then he would intervene. He wouldn't save the helpless victim. He would save the nascent [Silent Walker] from his first, defining trauma, and redirect his rage.
It was manipulative. Calculated. It made him feel filthy.
He looked at his hands in the dim light. They were soft, clean. They hadn't yet killed, hadn't yet dug graves for friends. But the mind that guided them had. He was planting the same ruthless calculus into this fresh timeline.
For the greater good, the ghost insisted.
The 24-year-old geology graduate wondered if he was just building a better monster.
He closed the laptop. The silence of the storage unit was absolute.
Somewhere, his sister Lena was probably watching a movie, laughing. She had forty hours left to live, unless he changed it.
He had the Seed. He had the team forming. He had the knowledge.
But sitting in the dark, the faint, metallic taste of his oncoming headache in his mouth, Elias Vane felt the cost of the future piling up around him, heavy as stone, and wondered what part of his soul he would have to spend next to pay for it.