The headache didn't leave. It sat like a hot stone behind Elias's eyes, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. It wasn't a normal headache. It was a pressure, a sense of something vast and alien trying to press its way into a space that was too small, too human. The System was close. He could feel it breathing down his neck.
Twenty-nine hours remaining.
He spent the morning on final, critical purchases. The kind that drew no attention in a free country, but would be worth kingdoms in three days. From a farm supply store: heavy canvas tarps, miles of paracord, rolls of thick plastic sheeting, and a dozen fifty-pound bags of quick-set concrete. From a hardware superstore: every battery they had in stock—AA, AAA, D-cell, lithium packs. Generators, siphoning hoses, industrial-grade garbage bags, and a pallet of cheap, thick wool blankets.
He loaded the van methodically, a master planning the final pieces of his grim puzzle. Each item had a purpose. The concrete was for sealing the lower levels of the bunker he'd claim. The plastic sheeting was for makeshift clean rooms, for isolating the early mutated sick. The batteries were currency in a world where the grid would flicker and die.
As he heaved the last bag of concrete into the van, his vision swam. The world didn't go dark. Instead, for a split second, it doubled.
He saw the sunny hardware store parking lot, the cart of batteries. And overlaid on it, like a transparent film, he saw a memory: the same parking lot, but at night, lit by the burning wreck of a car. The air was thick with smoke and the shrieks of something that was no longer human. He saw himself, older, scarred, firing his rifle from behind the van's hood.
Then it was gone. The sun was bright. A mom loaded groceries into her minivan, laughing at something her toddler said.
Elias gripped the van's door, his knuckles white. His breath came in short gasps.
Memory Echo, his mind supplied, the term surfacing from his deep knowledge of his own decaying Class. Early stage. Caused by high Paradox Load. Reality is becoming… porous.
The System's blue box from last night glowed faintly in his mind's eye: [Chronicler's Paradox Integrity: 99.1%]. It had dropped by 0.9% just from acquiring the Seed. What would using his power do? What would simply existing as an anomaly do?
He forced himself to breathe. To focus. The foundation was laid. Now he had to deal with the human variable he'd been dreading: his sister.
He drove to a quiet park, sat on a bench overlooking a duck pond. The normalcy was a physical ache. He pulled out his phone, the cheap, pre-Integration model. He scrolled to Lena's contact. Her picture, smiling in the sun at that long-ago barbecue.
He had promised himself he wouldn't call. That the strategic choice was made. Secure the bastion, then save who you can. A commander's calculus.
But the man on the bench, watching the ducks, wasn't just the commander. He was the brother who had heard her die over a static-filled line. "Elias? The ceiling… it's coming down. I'm scared."
His thumb hovered over the call button. The headache pulsed, a warning beat.
He pressed it.
It rang four times. He was about to hang up, a coward's relief flooding him, when she answered.
"Eli? Wow, twice in one month. You checking to see if I'm still alive?" Her voice was light, teasing. It was a voice from a dead world.
He closed his eyes. "Hey, Lena."
"What's up? You sound weird. Are you sick? Did you finally get a job and now you're calling to gloat?" Her humor was a shield, just like his intensity was his. They were more alike than either wanted to admit.
"No job," he said, forcing a casual tone. It felt like speaking with a mouthful of sand. "Listen, I need you to do something for me. A big favor."
"Okay… shoot." Her tone grew cautious.
"I need you to come to Denver. Today. Pack a bag. Just… essentials. Clothes, any medicine you need. And then come to my place."
A long pause. "Elias, what is this? Are you in trouble? Do you owe money?"
"It's not like that. I… I've come into some information. Really serious information. There's going to be… a major event. A national emergency. Starting this weekend. It's not public yet. Denver will be safer than Colorado Springs. I have a place. A secure place."
The silence on the other end was profound. He could imagine her face, the playful skepticism hardening into real concern, and then into the familiar frustration she had for her "over-dramatic" older brother.
"Elias," she said, her voice flat. "Did you join a cult? Please tell me you didn't join one of those doomsday prepper cults."
"It's not a cult!" he snapped, the commander's impatience breaking through. He instantly regretted it. "Lena, please. Just this once. Don't ask questions. Just trust me. Get in your car and drive here. I will explain everything when you arrive."
"Or you could explain now," she shot back, her own temper rising. "What 'major event'? A terrorist attack? A storm? You're talking in riddles, and you want me to drop my life because you have a 'feeling'? I have work tomorrow. I have plans."
"Cancel them." The words were cold, final.
"No. This is insane. You're being insane. If you're scared about something, call the police. Don't drag me into your…" she searched for the word, "your paranoid episodes."
The words cut deeper than any Phalanx blade. Paranoid episodes. To her, that's all his trauma, his hard-won, bloody knowledge was. The ghost of the Null-Chronicler seemed to chuckle in the back of his aching skull.
He had a choice. He could tell her the truth. In thirty hours, monsters will come out of glowing holes in the air. You will die trapped in concrete. She would hang up. She would block his number. She would die exactly as before.
Or he could lie better. He chose.
His voice broke, just a little. A calculated crack. "Lena… it's Mom."
The line went so quiet he could hear the faint hiss of the connection.
"What about Mom?" Lena whispered. Their mother had died five years ago. Cancer. It was their shared, unhealed wound.
"Before she died… she told me something. Made me promise something. About keeping us safe if certain… signs… appeared. The signs are appearing, Lena. The ones she warned about. I can't explain over the phone. It's not safe. But I promised her. I have to keep you safe."
It was a vile lie. A weaponization of their deepest grief. He felt a piece of his soul wither and blacken as he said it.
The silence stretched. He could hear her shaky breath. He had thrown the one punch she couldn't deflect.
"You're using Mom to get me to do this?" Her voice was thick with hurt and confusion.
"I'm using the promise I made to her to save your life," he said, the lie now a full armor around him. "Please. Come. I'll be at my apartment. If I'm wrong, you can yell at me for a week. If I'm right… you'll be alive to yell at me."
A sob escaped her, quickly stifled. "Fine. Fine! I'll come. But this better be the realest, most convincing thing I've ever heard, Elias. Or we are done. You understand me? Done."
"I understand," he said, his voice hollow. "Drive safe. Don't stop for anyone."
He hung up.
He sat on the bench, the phone limp in his hand. The ducks quacked. Children played. He had just emotionally blackmailed his only living family with the memory of their dead mother. To save her. To use her. The line was gone, erased.
The headache spiked, a white-hot lance through his temple. The world doubled again, longer this time.
—Lena, age 10, holding his hand at the funeral, her small face crumpled—
—Lena, in the dark parking garage, her voice choked with dust, "Elias, I'm scared—"
—The same voice, minutes ago, "You're using Mom…"
The memories collided, past and possible-future and manipulated-present, a snarled knot in his mind. He tasted copper. A single, warm drop of blood trickled from his nose.
He wiped it away with the back of his hand, staring at the crimson smear.
[Chronicler's Paradox Integrity: 98.4%]
It was dropping. Faster. Every lie that changed the timeline, every emotional wrench he threw into the gears of fate, was sandpaper grinding away at his own existence.
He stood up, his legs unsteady. He had set the hook in Lena. It would hold, or it wouldn't. He had other pieces to move.
Twenty-two hours remaining.
The next move was violence. Or the prevention of it.
He drove to the industrial area near the abandoned Fuller Mill. He parked the van in a copse of trees with a clear view of the decaying brick building. He had hours to wait. He used them.
He loaded the pistol. Checked the jammer. He changed into dark, durable clothing. He was not here to talk.
He watched through a small pair of binoculars as a few cars arrived. Teenagers, dressed in urban explorer gear, laughing. They headed into the mill. Among them, a lone, lanky figure hanging back. Sam.
Then, a beat-up sedan with three older boys. The bullies. They didn't go in immediately. They loitered by their car, smoking, laughing too loud. Planning.
Elias's phone buzzed. A text from the burner number he'd given Aris.
Aris: News channels are reporting scattered incidents. Unexplained seizures in Tokyo. "Mass psychogenic illness" at a school in London. The protein models… they match the early-stage catalytic reaction in my paper. What have you done? What is this?
He typed back, his fingers cold.
Elias: Nothing. I just saw it coming. The storm is here, Aris. Be at your lab. Keep the doors locked. I will come for you when it's time.
He put the phone away. The first tremors. The world was starting to feel the System's approach, its energy bleeding into reality, causing subtle, inexplicable malfunctions in the human brain and body. By tonight, it would be global news. By tomorrow afternoon, it would be panic.
The bullies finally headed into the mill. Elias gave them five minutes. Then he moved.
He slipped from the van, a shadow in the late afternoon light. He approached the mill from the rear, a collapsed loading dock his entry point. The interior was a cathedral of decay—rusted machinery, pigeon droppings, shafts of dusty light cutting through broken windows.
He heard the voices echo in the vast space before he saw them.
"—think you're too good to hear us, freak?"
A thud. A grunt of pain.
"Maybe we need to write it down for him!"
Cruel laughter.
Elias moved silently, using the husks of old equipment for cover. He saw them in a cleared area near an old furnace. The three bullies formed a loose circle around Sam, who was on his knees, one side of his face already red. His headphones had been ripped off and lay crushed on the floor. One of the bullies, a big kid named Troy, held a metal pipe.
Sam's eyes were wide with fear, but beneath it, a fury was building. A silent, screaming fury. The fury that would one day let him walk through monster-infested forests without making a sound.
"I think he gets it now," Troy said, hefting the pipe. "Let's make sure."
This was the moment. The moment before the bone-breaking swing that would send Sam to the hospital and seed a lifetime of vengeance.
Elias stepped out of the shadows.
"The party's over," he said, his voice not loud, but it carried in the dusty silence.
All four boys jumped. The bullies spun, their bravado shifting to surprise, then to contempt as they saw he was alone, just a slightly older guy.
"Who the hell are you?" Troy spat. "Get lost. This is private."
Elias ignored him. He looked at Sam. "Samuel Kincaid. You have a choice to make. Right now."
Sam stared, confused, blood dripping from his split lip.
"You can stay here," Elias continued, his eyes locked on Sam's. "And these three wastes of oxygen will put you in the hospital. Or worse. And you will hate them. And that hate will eat you alive, until one day, you get a power, and you use it to track them down and leave them in a ditch." He saw the flash of shock in Sam's eyes. He'd named the secret fantasy. "Or you can walk away with me. And I will show you how to turn that silence inside you into a weapon that saves lives, instead of one that just ends these pathetic ones."
Troy's face flushed with rage. "You talking to him? I'm talking to you, asshole!" He took a threatening step forward, the pipe raised.
Elias didn't look at him. He kept his eyes on Sam. "Your world ends tomorrow, Sam. Everything changes. The rules these animals live by? Gone. I'm offering you the first rule of the new world: strength is the only truth. Make your choice."
For a second, Sam just knelt there, trembling. Then, a spark ignited in his eyes. Not just fear. Not just anger. Understanding. This stranger knew he was deaf. Knew his rage. And wasn't offering pity. He was offering a path to power.
Sam shoved himself to his feet.
"He's choosing!" Troy yelled, and charged, swinging the pipe.
Elias moved.
It wasn't the graceful, expert move of the Commander. It was simpler, uglier. He stepped inside the wild swing, his left arm coming up to block the boy's forearm, not the pipe. At the same time, his right hand, holding the pistol, came up not to shoot, but to slam the heavy metal butt directly into Troy's temple.
Crack.
The sound was horribly final in the quiet mill. Troy's eyes rolled back. He dropped like a sack of meat, the pipe clattering away.
The other two bullies froze, their faces masks of terror.
Elias looked at them, the pistol now held loosely at his side. "Leave. Forget this place. Forget him. If I ever see you again, I won't be gentle."
They didn't need telling twice. They turned and ran, sneakers slapping on the concrete, fleeing into the dark recesses of the mill.
Elias knelt by Troy. He had a pulse. He'd have a concussion, a headache. He'd live. A small, unnecessary mercy.
He stood and looked at Sam, who was staring at Troy's still form, then at the gun, then at Elias's face.
"Who are you?" Sam signed, his hands moving in sharp, stunned motions.
Elias understood. He'd made sure to re-learn basic sign in the old timeline. It was how they'd communicated in silent ops.
"I'm the man who knows what happens next," Elias signed back, his own motions slower, less fluent. "I know your value. No one else will. Come with me now, or go home and wait for the end."
Sam looked at the crushed headphones. At the bully on the ground. At the strange, intense man with the gun who knew sign language and spoke of the world ending. He made his choice.
He nodded, once.
Elias led him out of the mill, into the gathering twilight. He had his scout. The cost was a boy's innocence, and another fractional drop in his own crumbling integrity.
As they reached the van, his vision swam again. This time, the echo was not of the past, but a flicker of something else. A glimpse of a silver fractal, hanging in the air over the mill for a nanosecond, then gone.
The Null-Chronicler was patient. It was waiting for the paradox to ripen.
He started the van. Sam sat in the passenger seat, silent, watching the world he knew roll by for the last time.