Chapter 41
I pressed my forehead against the apartment floor, the camera's viewfinder digging into my eye socket as I adjusted the angle for the forty-third time. The coffee stain on my Stanford hoodie—spread across the left sleeve in a pattern that looked like a Rorschach test designed by a sadistic barista—refused to match the photograph I'd taken six days ago.
"Marcus?"
I didn't look up. The ruler needed to be exactly perpendicular to the stain's longest axis. "Not now."
"It's three forty-seven in the morning."
"I know what time it is." My hand shook as I clicked the shutter. The flash bleached everything white for a moment, and when my vision cleared, Sophia was crouched beside me, her hair pulled back in a messy bun that meant she'd been awake for hours too.
She picked up the photograph from six days ago. Studied it. Set it down and looked at the hoodie spread on the floor between us like evidence at a crime scene.
"The stain's bigger," she said.
My throat closed. "You see it too?"
"I see you haven't slept in three days." She stood, and I heard her moving through my apartment, opening drawers, the soft thud of objects being moved. "I see you've turned your living room into a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. I see—Jesus, Marcus, is that a timeline?"
I finally looked up. She was standing in front of the wall where I'd taped up everything: photographs, receipts, text message screenshots, a strand of hair I'd found on my pillow that was three shades darker than it should be. Red string connected them in patterns that made sense at 2 AM and looked insane in any other light.
"You weren't answering my calls," I said.
"Because you told me to trust you and then disappeared for four days." She turned, and her eyes were red-rimmed, furious. "David said you were having a breakdown. That you'd been talking about alternate timelines and—"
"David's a fucking traitor."
"That's not it." She crossed her arms. "You're not having a breakdown. You're documenting something."
I pushed myself to my feet. My knees cracked. The apartment smelled like old coffee and the particular staleness that comes from not opening windows because you're afraid fresh air will disturb your evidence.
"Here's the thing—" I started.
"No." She stepped closer, and I could see the exact moment she made a decision, her jaw setting in that way that meant she was about to do something reckless. "Here's the thing. I've known you for six months. In that time, you've predicted three major security breaches, stopped a corporate espionage attempt, and somehow knew my sister's medical history before I told you. You don't guess. You don't get lucky. So either you're the world's best cold reader, or something else is happening."
She picked up the hoodie. Held it up to the light.
"This stain," she said. "I was there when it happened. You were carrying two cups of coffee, someone bumped you, it went all over your sleeve. That was eight months ago."
"Seven months and nineteen days."
"Okay, seven months and nineteen days." She lowered the hoodie. "But in this photograph from last week, the stain is smaller. And now it's bigger again. That's not how fabric works, Marcus. That's not how anything works."
I wanted to lie. Every instinct I'd honed over fifteen years of corporate warfare and six months of desperate prevention screamed at me to deflect, redirect, make her doubt what she was seeing.
Instead, I walked to the kitchen and started making coffee, because my hands needed something to do and my mouth needed time to figure out how to say the impossible.
"I died," I said. "Fifteen years from now. In a timeline that doesn't exist anymore."
The the pause extended longer than comfortable so long I thought she'd left. Then I heard her footsteps, soft on the hardwood, and she was leaning against the counter beside me, close enough that I could smell her shampoo—something citrus that she'd switched to three weeks ago, though in the other timeline she'd never used it at all.
"Keep going," she said.
The coffee maker gurgled and hissed while I told her about waking up in my college dorm with a brain full of memories that hadn't happened yet. About watching Lily die in the original timeline, about selling my company and spending fifteen years wealthy and hollow, about the corporate espionage incident that had killed me in a hotel room in Singapore.
Sophia didn't interrupt. She poured two cups of coffee when the pot finished, added cream to mine without asking, and sat at the kitchen table while dawn started bleeding through the windows.
"You remember me dying," she said finally.
"No. I remember you never knowing me at all." I wrapped my hands around the mug, feeling the heat seep into my palms. "In the first timeline, we never met. You were just a name in a security report. Your sister died at nineteen from complications nobody caught in time."
"Lily's fine."
"Because I made sure you got hired at Vanguard. Because I knew which doctors to recommend. Because I've been playing puppet master with everyone's lives for six months, and it's working, except—" I gestured at the wall of evidence. "Except things keep changing in ways they shouldn't. Objects that exist in both timelines. Memories that don't match. The coffee stain that grows and shrinks like it can't decide which version of history it belongs to."
She took a sip of coffee. Set the mug down with a soft click.
"Wait, wait, wait—better idea," she said. "Tell me something you couldn't possibly know. Something specific."
"Your sister has a birthmark shaped like a comma on her left shoulder blade. You've never told anyone, but you used to trace it with your finger when she was a baby and you were scared she'd stop breathing in her sleep."
Sophia's face went very still.
"Your first kiss was with a girl named Rebecca Chen—no relation—behind the gym in eighth grade, and you've never told anyone because your parents had just started asking about boys and you didn't know how to explain that you weren't sure what you wanted." I met her eyes. "You think about her sometimes. Wonder if she remembers."
"Stop."
"You asked for specific."
"I asked for—" She stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. "How do you know that? Did you hack my therapy records? My journal? Did you—"
"I know because in the timeline where we never met, you wrote about it in a blog post after Lily died. You were trying to explain how grief makes you remember all the small moments of being alive, and you mentioned Rebecca as an example of a memory so vivid you could still taste her cherry lip gloss."
Sophia walked to the window. Pressed her palm against the glass.
"That blog doesn't exist," she said quietly.
"Not in this timeline."
"Because you changed it."
"Because I changed everything." I joined her at the window, careful to keep a foot of distance between us. "I've been so focused on preventing the big disasters—Lily's death, the corporate espionage, the security breaches—that I didn't think about the small things. The coffee stains and the blog posts and the thousand tiny moments that make up a life."
She turned to look at me, and her expression was unreadable in the grey dawn light.
"I don't believe in time travel," she said.
My chest tightened. "I know."
"But I believe you believe it." She reached out and touched my arm, just above the coffee stain that couldn't decide what size it wanted to be. "And I believe you're trying to protect people. I've watched you for six months, Marcus. You don't sleep. You don't eat unless someone makes you. You carry this weight like you're personally responsible for keeping the entire world from falling apart."
"What if I am?"
"Then you're going to burn out and die, and all your preventing will be for nothing." She squeezed my arm once, then let go. "I don't understand what's happening. I don't understand the coffee stain or the memories or any of it. But I understand you're in pain, and I understand you're trying to help, and that's enough."
"Enough for what?"
"To stay." She said it simply, like it was the easiest decision in the world, and something in my chest cracked open. "To help you figure this out. To—"
My phone rang.
We both stared at it on the counter, vibrating against the tile with a harsh buzz that shattered the fragile moment like a hammer through glass.
David's name lit up the screen.
"Don't," Sophia said.
I answered anyway. "What."
"Marcus." David's voice was tight, professional, the tone he used when he was trying not to panic. "I need you to listen very carefully. I'm sending you thermal imaging right now. Don't react. Just look."
My phone buzzed with an incoming file. I opened it, and the world tilted sideways.
The image showed my parents' restaurant in false color, heat signatures blooming red and orange against the cool blue of the walls. But there were other signatures too—bright white spots clustered around the gas lines in the kitchen, in the storage room, under the main dining area.
"C-4," David said. "Wired into the gas lines. Professional job. I only found it because I've been monitoring the building since—" He stopped. "It doesn't matter. What matters is they're set to detonate at six PM."
I checked my watch. Four hours and thirteen minutes.
"Dinner rush," I said.
"Peak capacity. Seventy, maybe eighty people." David's voice cracked. "Marcus, there's a note. They left it taped to the back door. It says this is your last chance to restore the AI project. That if you don't comply by noon, they'll move up the timeline."
Sophia was reading over my shoulder, her breath coming faster as she processed the thermal image.
"Call the police," she said.
"And tell them what?" David's voice came through the speaker, sharp. "That a secret society planted explosives based on a tip from a guy who's been investigating them illegally for six months? They'll evacuate the building, maybe, but the Society will know we're onto them. They'll disappear and try again somewhere else. Somewhere we can't predict."
"So what's your plan?" I was already moving, grabbing my jacket, my keys, my laptop. "Let them blow up the restaurant?"
"My plan is you give them what they want."
I froze. "What?"
"The AI project. Whatever they think you destroyed. Give it back. Buy us time to—"
"I can't give back something I never built." My hand tightened on my keys until the metal bit into my palm. "The AI they want doesn't exist. It never existed. They're chasing a ghost."
"Then make them think it exists." David's voice dropped lower, urgent. "You're good at that, aren't you? Making people believe in things that aren't real? Alternate timelines, dead man's switches, insurance policies that don't exist?"
The words hit like a physical blow. Sophia's hand found my shoulder, steadying.
"I'm trying to save lives," I said.
"So am I. And right now, the only way to save your parents and everyone in that restaurant is to give the Society what they want, or make them think you're going to." A pause. "I'm sending you coordinates. There's a warehouse in Oakland. They want you there by noon with proof you're restoring the project. I'll be there too. We can—"
"This is a trap," Sophia said loudly, leaning toward the phone. "David, if you can hear me, this is obviously a trap."
"Of course it's a trap." David sounded exhausted. "Everything is a trap. But it's a trap that keeps the restaurant from exploding, so we're going to spring it anyway and hope we're smart enough to survive."
I looked at Sophia. She was already shaking her head.
"No," she said. "Absolutely not. We call the bomb squad, we evacuate the building, we—"
"And my parents die in a car accident next week. Or a home invasion. Or a gas leak." I grabbed my car keys from the hook by the door. "The Society doesn't make empty threats. If I don't show up, they'll kill everyone I love, one by one, until I give them what they want."
"You can't give them what they want!"
"Then I'll die trying." I was halfway to the door when her hand closed around my wrist, hard enough to hurt.
"Wait," she said. "If they wanted your parents dead, they'd already be dead. This is a trap for you."
I looked down at her hand on my wrist, at the white pressure of her knuckles, at the way her pulse jumped visibly in her throat.
"I know," I said.
"Then why—"
"Because maybe that's the point." I met her eyes, and I could see her working through it, the same calculation I'd been running since David's call. "Maybe the only way to stop them is to give them what they want. Not the AI. Me."
"Marcus—"
"They've been trying to get to me for months. Voss, Keller, the whole Society. They want whatever's in my head, whatever knowledge I have from the other timeline. And they're willing to kill everyone I love to get it."
"So you're just going to hand yourself over?"
"I'm going to walk into their trap with my eyes open and see if I'm smart enough to turn it around." I pulled my wrist free, gently. "Stay here. If I'm not back by six, call the police. Tell them about the explosives. Save as many people as you can."
I reached for the door handle, but she moved faster, putting herself between me and the exit.
"That's not it," she said. "You're not telling me something."
"I'm telling you everything that matters."
"No, you're telling me everything you think I need to know. There's a difference." She crossed her arms, and I recognized the stance—the same one she'd used when she'd confronted me about the coffee stain, when she'd decided to stop accepting my deflections and start demanding truth. "What aren't you saying?"
The words stuck in my throat. I could feel time bleeding away, four hours and seven minutes now, every second bringing the detonation closer.
"Here's the thing—" I started.
"Don't." She stepped closer, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the small scar on her chin from a childhood fall she'd told me about in this timeline but not the other. "Don't give me your deflection phrase. Don't try to manage me like I'm another variable in your equation. Just tell me the truth."
"The truth is I don't know if I can stop this." The admission felt like pulling glass from a wound. "The truth is I've been pretending I'm in control, that I can prevent every disaster because I've seen the future, but I'm just guessing. Making it up as I go. And if I guess wrong, everyone dies."
"Then don't go alone."
"Sophia—"
"I'm not asking." She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair. "You said you remember a timeline where we never met. Where I was just a name in a report. Well, in this timeline, I'm here. I'm real. And I'm not letting you walk into a trap alone just because you're too stubborn to accept help."
My phone buzzed. David again: 11:47. You need to leave now if you're going to make it.
I looked at Sophia, at the determination in her eyes, at the way she was already moving toward the door like the decision was made.
"If we do this," I said, "you follow my lead. No matter what happens. No matter what they say or do. You trust me."
"I'm here, aren't I?"
It wasn't an answer. It was better than an answer.
I grabbed my laptop bag, checked that my phone was charged, and opened the door. The morning air was cold and sharp, carrying the smell of fog and exhaust from the street below.
Sophia followed me into the hallway, and I was reaching for my car keys when she grabbed my wrist again, her grip tight enough to stop me mid-motion.
"Wait," she said, and her voice had changed, gone flat and certain in a way that made my stomach drop. "If they wanted your parents dead, they'd already be dead. This is a trap for you."