The feeling had started small, which was the annoying part
Not small like something unimportant, small like a sound you keep mishearing and you can't find out if it's real or if your brain has just gotten bored and started making up things. Kaelen noticed it on a Tuesday evening. He was midway on a design doc. The cursor seemed to be blinking at him in that passive-aggressive way cursors had, and the thought that just arrived had fully formed: I have done this work before.
It held for about three days.
Then it stopped holding.
He had that thought before as well. Everyone had. That is what he told himself.
Not this exact task or this exact moment. The shape of it. The mild irritation with work he wasn't in the mood for, the hunger he'd ignore for another forty minutes, the way the monitor light would eventually start hurting his eyes and he'd still keep going anyway.
The problem wasn't the repetition. Life was repetitive. He wasn't an idiot. The problem was the precision. The feeling that whatever was repeating had started to be too precise. The sequence of minor events in his days had a kind of reliability to it now that felt less like habit and more like something following a schedule he never knew of.
He never mentioned it to anyone. There wasn't anyone to mention it to, not really. His social life had thinned out ever since he got a job, faintly, with no single event to blame. Everyone just gradually became a contact he texted less and less until texting felt like the kind of effort that required a reason, and the reason never quite materialized.
He made games. That was his job. Not for some big AAA game studio but an indie one. He got the job because the creator was a friend he'd made in college. Turn-based games mostly, ones that required high precision, one wrong turn and you lose.
He was good at maths, logical thinking, good at seeing layers beyond what normal people couldn't; sometimes it felt worse than being bad at those things.
The design his co-workers were stuck on for two days had just been sent to him this evening. Kaelen took a look at it and knew how to solve it. If he hadn't, they would have talked to him longer. And if he hadn't, then his boss would have scolded him.
He genuinely liked the problem-solving part. It always seemed so interesting to him how someone would sink hours into what he built and wonder if he'd given them anything real or just another drain on their evening that they'd mistake for fun.
He pushed back from his desk and looked around his room. Same desk, obviously. Same chair. Same glass of water he'd been meaning to refill since the afternoon. A hoodie on the chair in the corner that wasn't a chair anymore, for six months it had been hoodie structural support.
The room was filled with the aroma of electronics and a slight hint that someone had stayed inside for an extended time.
He glanced at his image in the dark window across the room. There he found it, that subtle detail he had been picking up on. A lag. Small, probably nothing, yet unmistakable once noticed. When he moved, his reflection followed, but the timing felt wrong, as if the mirrored image was getting the cue just a split second behind. It was like watching himself through a video call with bad internet connection, only it was his own face.
Kaelen sighed, looking at the ceiling. "1..2..3.." He raised his hand as fast as he could. Delayed.
Lack of sleep was his only reasonable explanation.
He noticed his breathing before he'd even lowered his hand. It felt off, not painful, not panic, just unfinished, as if each breath failed to complete. He tried a deeper one. Same. The lag hadn't stayed in the mirror. It had followed him out of it.
He'd been trying to find out whether this was worth worrying about for some time now.
He picked up a book from his desk, The Hidden Part of the Brain, which he'd been thinking of reading for a long time. The writing pretended to be calm about something that was clearly bothering them. He didn't complain about it, even when it was annoying.
He found the page he'd bookmarked. Actually, he'd folded the corner down, which he never did, but since he'd lost his bookmark somewhere in the blankets and never seen it since.
Repeated actions do not convey any meaning.
He read it twice, unsure why it stuck.
Then he closed the book and put it on the desk, and that was when his room got too quiet, the same quietness that comes after your friends or relatives leave.
He stood up.
At least he tried to. There was a delay.
A real one. Not the same as the reflection thing, not the faint perceptual flicker he had blamed on poor sleep and dehydration. He had made up his mind to stand, but his body responded a bit later than he expected. Like the message crossed more distance than it used to.
He ran the test again. "1..2..3.." His hand was slower this time, and his breathing worsened from the movement. The test lost its meaning mid-test, when Kaelen realized his hand was still in the air, refusing to move up or come back down.
The movement belonged to him, he could feel that, but it belonged to him too late, arriving to him from somewhere just outside himself.
He lowered his hand. Tried again.
Same.
Okay, he thought. Either this is something boring or, in other words, medical, or it's something I don't know the word for yet.
He grabbed his hoodie off the chair that wasn't a chair and went outside, because sitting in his room doing internet research on "why does my body feel delayed" at midnight was not something he was interested in doing.
The cold hit him when he stepped outside, but slowly. The feeling traveled a distance before reaching him. He stood under the porch light and raised his hand one more time, just to check.
Still wrong.
He stood there for a moment, feeling genuinely stupid, one hand in the air, and thought: at least it's not as boring as what he was gonna do otherwise.
Then he walked toward the street.
Kaelen caught his reflection in a puddle on the road. It had already arrived before he had. Realizing it was his own body made it worse.
He ran the test again. "1..2..3.." Failed again. This time even his counting was off, his brain resisting the rhythm, his hand moving in stages instead of one motion.
The convenience store was ten minutes away, which gave him enough time to feel like the hand thing was too embarrassing and enough time to notice it wasn't unnoticed.
He pushed through the automatic doors and stood in the refrigerator aisle trying to figure out what he wanted.
All he needed was something to disrupt the night's shape. Something that didn't fit his workstation, monitor, silent room, and delayed reflection thingy. That was the entire strategy. That there was no strategy.
A hand landed on his shoulder.
He turned fast. Too fast, probably. The cashier was standing behind him. Kaelen had seen him here before, one of those faces you unintentionally gathered, as familiar as a corner you pass through daily. He was composed in a way that didn't appear usual, as though he had intentionally made the decision to stay calm in this convenience store this time.
"What are you looking for?" the cashier asked.
Kaelen looked back at the drinks. "I really don't have an idea."
The cashier waited. He was used to it.
"Not sweet," Kaelen said. "Not, I don't need the same kind of energy drink. Just something unusual. I don't know."
He knew this was not a helpful answer. The cashier didn't seem to be bothered by it. He opened the refrigerator, reached for the back, not behind the drinks, actually to the back, deeper than Kaelen had expected the shelf to be, and pulled out a can he hadn't noticed or ever seen before.
He took it out and passed it to Kaelen.
Kaelen took it.
The design was plain. Almost aggressively plain, like someone had decided to remove everything that usually cluttered these things. Muted colors. Clean font. No logo working hard to tell you who you'd become if you drank it. It looked as though it had been designed for people who were tired of being sold an identity with their beverage.
"What is this?" Kaelen asked.
"You can read," the cashier said.
Something about the delivery, completely without edge or apology, caught him off guard, and a laugh escaped before he could stop it.
"Fair."
He grabbed a few other things more or less at random so he wouldn't run out of drinks and went to checkout.
The cashier was already there, drinks already registered into the server. "Thanks."
The cashier nodded back at him. Looking at the register, Kaelen saw that he had a can of every drink Kaelen had picked up. They hadn't come out after Kaelen entered, those cans had been waiting for him, and Kaelen would never know how long.
"Stalker," Kaelen said to himself, knowing damn well it wasn't even close to that. The meaningless thought was followed by another. Who would even stalk me, he thought. Even secret government agents wouldn't bother hiding themselves just to watch Kaelen destroy himself this badly.
He stepped back outside. Leaning against the wall beside the entrance, he cracked the can open.
The first sip was...
Hmm.
He looked at the can again.
Light. Clean. Faintly sweet, but not pushy about it. No aftertaste doing damage. No chemical kick trying to convince him it was energy rather than caffeine and hope. It tasted like someone had found the right balance and then, more impressively, resisted the urge to add one more thing.
He stood there drinking it, feeling marginally less like the night was a problem.
Marginally.
He was looking for a bin to throw the can into when he felt someone approaching.
Not aggressively. Not hesitantly, either. More like someone who had decided their destination mattered and hadn't found the concept of obstacles particularly relevant.
He looked up.
The man was... a lot.
Dark coat. Everything carefully chosen without looking carefully chosen, which took more effort than it appeared to. He had the quality of someone accustomed to being looked at and entirely comfortable with it. Not vain, exactly.
More like someone who understood presentation was a form of argument, and had already made his.
"Would you like to see a magic trick?" he asked.
Kaelen wanted to say no.
Instead, he said, "Sure."
The magician, well, what else was he, reached into a bag and produced a square of black cloth.
His movements had that particular smoothness Kaelen immediately distrusted. Not because they seemed suspicious, but because they looked rehearsed in a way genuine casualness never is.
One hand disappeared beneath the cloth.
A rhythm.
One.
Two.
Three.
He snapped it away.
A gun.
A real one.
Not a prop. Not a novelty. Just an actual handgun, resting in the man's hand as though it had always belonged there.
Kaelen looked at it.
Then at him.
His survival instinct kicked in immediately. But panic came first. "Will this be on YouTube?"
The magician tilted his head in silence and shook the gun.
"Cash or card?" Kaelen asked.
The magician smiled.
"Ooh. Then, sir, I prefer cash."
That should have been funny.
It should have broken the tension and turned into a story he'd tell years later, to friends over drinks or to his kids.
Instead, the parking lot remained too still.
The night too quiet.
The gun too real.
Kaelen pulled out his wallet and handed it over.
The magician flipped through it with the efficiency of someone looking for one specific thing. He found it, the twenty Kaelen had withdrawn from an ATM the week before.
He took the bill, returned the wallet, and slipped a small card inside before handing it back.
"This is enough," he said.
Kaelen pulled out the card.
Old Theater.
Three days.
Eight o'clock.
"Do you rob everyone into coming," Kaelen asked, "or am I getting premium treatment?"
"The experience of observing true magic is priceless."
His smile widened by barely a fraction.
"Faith costs more."
"Worth it?"
"That depends what you're hoping to see."
Then he left, no car, no cab, just walked off, calm as anything, straight from an armed robbery in the open.
Only the sound of footsteps gradually becoming part of the street.
Kaelen watched the space where the man had been.
Then he looked down at the card.
He should throw it away.
He knew that.
He was also aware that he was putting it into his pocket anyway.
He questioned himself. Should he throw the card away or not? He already had the answer. The only part left was getting rid of the guilt, now that it was resting comfortably in his pocket. After all, the card couldn't do any harm, right?
So.
The part of him, the part that had watched his hand move wrong all night, the part that had read the line about repeated actions producing conditions, not meaning, and hadn't been able to shake it, that same part wanted to know where this one went.
The delay in his movements had stopped.