The photograph lay between them like an accusation. Lín Mò stared at his own face, impossibly preserved in the monochrome past, while Professor Chen watched him with the detached intensity of a scientist observing a rare specimen. The silence in the cramped archive room thickened, punctuated only by the relentless, silent subtraction on Lín Mò's wrist: 67:52:18. Less than three days. Six anomalies. And now, the bedrock of his existence had dissolved into quicksand.
"How?" Lín Mò finally rasped, the word scraping raw against his throat. His gaze remained locked on the grainy image, on the younger, cleaner-shaven version of himself standing awkwardly amidst the planners of a bygone era. The suit looked borrowed, the posture stiff, the eyes holding a familiar, unsettling distance – the same detachment he felt now, walking through a frozen world.
Professor Chen leaned back slowly, the chair creaking in the profound stillness. He steepled his fingers, the green numbers above his head – 214:06:55 – glowing steadily, a stark contrast to Lín Mò's dwindling crimson. "That," Chen murmured, his voice dry and precise, "is the central enigma, wouldn't you agree? Temporal displacement? Chronal duplication? Or perhaps," he paused, his sharp eyes boring into Lín Mò, "something less… corporeal? A psychic echo imprinted across decades?"
Lín Mò tore his eyes from the photograph, meeting Chen's gaze. The pain in his ribs flared, grounding him momentarily in the physical present. "Ouyu called me the Time Regulator. The anomaly on the roof… he said he was the real one. That my memories were altered." He gestured weakly at the photo. "This… this feels like proof."
Chen nodded slowly. "Ouyu. Fascinating woman. Driven. Terrified. She speaks of cycles, of resets. Claims she survived the last one. She mentioned you were the key variable." He tapped the photograph again. "But this… this predates any 'cycle' she described. This predates her, likely. Unless her lifespan is equally… elastic."
The implication hung heavy in the dust-filled air. Lín Mò felt a fresh wave of vertigo. Was Ouyu lying? Or was she, too, operating with fragmented truths? "The anomalies," Lín Mò pressed, urgency sharpening his voice. "Blue countdowns. I need to find them. The Vortex…"
"Consumes," Chen finished grimly. He pushed his chair back and stood, moving with surprising agility for his apparent age. "Come. Seeing is believing, and I have more than just photographs to fuel your existential crisis." He walked towards a section of shelves stacked high with cardboard document boxes labeled in meticulous handwriting. "Ouyu focused on the present catastrophe. My interest lies in the cracks. The moments where time… stuttered. Even before the Great Freeze."
He pulled a specific box down, its corners worn soft. Inside were not papers, but objects: a pocket watch frozen at 3:17; a child's drawing depicting impossible, multi-legged birds flying over a purple sky; a shard of obsidian glass that seemed to swallow the light around it. And more photographs.
Chen selected one, smaller than the first. It showed a bustling street market scene, likely 1970s. He pointed to a figure in the crowd, partially obscured by a vendor's stall. "Look. The posture. The hairline. Even blurred, the resemblance is uncanny."
Lín Mò leaned closer. It wasn't as clear as the 1953 photo, but the profile… the set of the shoulders… it could be him. A cold dread seeped deeper into his bones.
Another photo: a protest march in the 1980s. Chen pointed to a face in the back row, half-turned away. "And here. Notice the eyes?"
Lín Mò did. The eyes, captured in a moment of intense focus, held a depth, a weariness, that mirrored his own reflection in the frozen shop windows he passed. He wasn't just in 1953. He was scattered across decades, a ghost haunting history.
"These are just the instances I've found so far," Chen said, his voice low with a scholar's fervor. "Patterns within the chaos. Your presence… it's a constant. A glitch in the timeline's fabric, recurring at points of significant energy flux, societal upheaval. You are not merely in time, young man. You appear to be woven into its anomalies."
Lín Mò sank back into his chair, the weight of it crushing. He wasn't a man with false memories. He was… what? A temporal revenant? A living paradox? The anomaly's dying words – They altered it – took on a horrifying new dimension. Had he been placed here? Programmed? For what purpose?
"The anomalies," Chen continued, replacing the box carefully. "Ouyu believes they are fragments of corrupted time, destabilizing the continuum. But what if they are something else? Guardians? Markers? Or perhaps… fellow variables?"
"They attacked me," Lín Mò said, the memory of the rooftop fight sharp and painful. "The first one did. He claimed I was the anomaly."
"Did he?" Chen mused, adjusting his glasses. "Or was he defending himself against what he perceived as a threat? You wear the red numbers. They wear the blue. Opposing forces? Different sides of the same temporal coin?" He paused, his gaze sharpening. "Tell me, Lín Mò, what did the anomaly say before he died? Exactly."
Lín Mò closed his eyes, recalling the rasping voice, the desperate grip. "He said… 'They altered it. To make you compliant.' And… 'Find the seventh.' He kept repeating 'find the seventh' as he… dissolved."
Chen's breath hitched. "'Find the seventh'?" He moved swiftly back to his main table, shuffling through scattered notes covered in dense, spidery handwriting. "Yes… yes! Ouyu mentioned the number – seven anomalies. But the phrasing… 'find the seventh'. Not 'find the anomalies', not 'stop the seventh'. Find it. As if it were distinct. Separate." He looked up, his eyes alight with a terrifying realization. "What if the seventh isn't just another target? What if it's the key? The source? Or… the destination?"
Outside, the light filtering through the high archive windows seemed to dim perceptibly. The distant, ever-present drone of the Entropy Vortex deepened, a hungry growl vibrating through the stone foundations of the building. Lín Mò glanced at his wrist. 67:40:12. Time was bleeding away, faster than ever.
"The Vortex," Chen whispered, his earlier academic detachment replaced by raw fear. He pointed towards the window. "It's accelerating. Consuming the southern districts whole. Ouyu estimated days… I fear we have hours. Less." The green numbers above his head seemed to pulse faintly. "If the seventh is the key… you must find it before the Vortex consumes everything. Before time runs out."
A sudden, violent tremor shook the room. Dust cascaded from the ceiling, frozen books shifted precariously on shelves. A low, groaning sound echoed through the building, like ancient stone protesting immense pressure. The Vortex wasn't just distant anymore; it was approaching.
Lín Mò pushed himself up, ignoring the scream of protest from his ribs. The photograph, the impossible evidence of his fractured existence, lay forgotten on the table. The academic debate about his nature was a luxury he couldn't afford. Survival was paramount. Find the anomalies. Reclaim the fragments. Stop the Vortex. Ouyu's directives, potentially poisoned or not, were the only map he had.
"Where do I start?" he demanded, his voice tight with urgency. "The others… the anomalies I've encountered… they all said it. 'Find the seventh.' But where? What is it?"
Chen was already moving, grabbing a leather satchel and stuffing notebooks and a few select photographs inside. "Patterns, Lín Mò! Look for patterns! The blue countdowns… were they all identical? In duration? In… behavior?"
Lín Mò thought back. The first anomaly, the man on the roof: intense, aggressive, capable of manipulating time locally. He died without yielding a fragment. The others he'd sensed, fleeting glimpses of blue in the frozen cityscape – one near the river, shimmering like heat haze; another high on a construction crane, utterly still. He hadn't engaged them yet, focused on reaching Chen. "Different durations," he recalled. "The first had about two days left. Others… varied. But the blue… it wasn't uniform. Some seemed brighter, almost pulsing. Others were dimmer, steadier."
Chen paused, slinging the satchel over his shoulder. "Like a signal strength? Or… a proximity indicator?" He hurried towards the door. "This building won't hold. The Vortex feeds on temporal instability. This archive… the sheer weight of unresolved history… it's a beacon. We need to move. Now!"
Lín Mò followed him out into the main library corridor. The tremors were stronger here. Frozen figures of students and librarians seemed to vibrate in place. High above, cracks spiderwebbed across the vaulted ceiling. The drone of the Vortex was a physical pressure now, pressing against his eardrums.
"Where?" Lín Mò shouted over the growing noise.
"The city center!" Chen yelled back, heading for a side exit. "The highest concentration of temporal flux before the Freeze! Communications hubs, power stations, the old government nexus! If the seventh is a focal point, that's where it will be! And the Vortex… it's heading there too! Drawn to it!"
They burst out into the unnatural twilight. The sky to the south was a swirling maelstrom of darkness, devouring buildings, streets, light itself. It was closer, much closer, a towering wall of oblivion marching relentlessly towards the university district. Half the city was already gone, swallowed into that silent, hungry void.
Lín Mò's wrist burned. 67:30:01. Less than three days had become a desperate sprint measured in minutes.
As they ran, weaving through frozen traffic and petrified crowds, Lín Mò scanned the chaos. He needed an anomaly. Any anomaly. A source of blue light, a fragment of corrupted time to reclaim, a clue towards the seventh. His mind raced, collating the fragments: Chen's historical evidence, Ouyu's directives, the dying words of the first anomaly, the Vortex's hunger.
Find the seventh.
The phrase echoed, not just as an instruction, but as a terrible realization dawning in the pit of his stomach. The anomalies weren't just targets; they were signposts. And the seventh… it wasn't just another entity to be found. It was the culmination. The reason. Perhaps… the mirror.
He remembered the alien landscape from his dream, the figure with cold blue eyes. The variable must be isolated. Was he the variable? Was the seventh… his counterpart? His origin? His end?
A flash of brilliant blue light erupted two blocks ahead, near the skeletal frame of a half-constructed skyscraper. It pulsed once, violently, then vanished. An anomaly. Close.
Lín Mò altered course instantly, Chen struggling to keep pace. "There!" he pointed.
They reached the construction site perimeter. Debris littered the frozen ground – twisted rebar, sheets of polycarbonate, tools suspended mid-fall. The blue light had come from near the base of the main crane tower. Lín Mò approached cautiously, flashlight beam cutting through the gloom.
A figure stood in the shadows, partially hidden by a stack of I-beams. Unlike the others, it wasn't moving. It wasn't frozen in the act of something; it was simply standing, facing away, radiating an aura of profound stillness. Above it, the blue countdown glowed steadily: 00:12:47:22. Twelve hours.
Lín Mò raised his flashlight. "Hey! Turn around!"
The figure didn't move. Chen caught up, breathing heavily, his green numbers pulsing slightly faster.
"Careful, Lín Mò," Chen warned. "This one feels… different."
Lín Mò took another step. The beam of his flashlight illuminated the figure's back, the fabric of a dark coat. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, the figure began to turn.
Lín Mò's breath froze in his lungs. The beam trembled in his hand.
The face that emerged from the shadow wasn't that of a stranger. It wasn't twisted with malice or distorted by temporal energy. It was a face etched with the same exhaustion, the same desperate confusion, the same impossible burden of existing outside the flow of time.
It was his own face.
The blue countdown burned above the head of the figure standing before him – the figure wearing his face, his coat, his expression of stunned horror. Twelve hours. The same twelve hours bleeding away on Lín Mò's own wrist.
The Seventh Anomaly wasn't just another target. It was him.