Chapter 42
My father's body blocked the restaurant's back door, arms crossed over his chest, the flour dust on his apron catching the late afternoon light. "You're not closing my restaurant with another one of your convenient emergencies."
"Dad, please." I kept my voice level, aware of Sophia standing three feet behind me, silent but present. "The gas company called. They detected a leak in the building's main line. They need everyone out for at least two hours while they—"
"The gas company." He said it like he was tasting something rotten. "The same gas company that somehow never sent a follow-up report after your last 'emergency inspection' three months ago?"
My phone buzzed in my pocket. David, probably. Eighty-seven minutes until detonation, and I was stuck arguing with a man who'd built his entire life on reading people's tells.
"This is different."
"It's always different." My father shifted his weight, and I recognized the stance—the same one he'd used when I was sixteen and tried to convince him I hadn't been the one who'd reprogrammed the restaurant's POS system to give free desserts to my friends. "You think I don't notice? You think your mother and I are blind?"
Sophia moved closer. I could feel her presence like static electricity, ready to intervene. I shook my head slightly. This was my mess.
"Notice what?"
"The patterns, Marcus." My father's voice dropped, the way it did when he was truly angry rather than just disappointed. "The convenient warnings. The lucky guesses. The way you always seem to know exactly when something bad is about to happen."
The kitchen behind him was empty—I'd timed this for the lull between lunch and dinner service, when the prep cooks took their break and my mother ran errands. But the dining room beyond held four tables of customers, and Mrs. Chen from the dry cleaners next door was at the counter picking up her usual order of dumplings.
"I'm trying to help."
"No." My father's mouth went flat. "You're trying to control. There's a difference."
He pulled a folded piece of paper from his apron pocket, the creases worn soft from repeated handling. My stomach dropped before he even opened it.
"June fifteenth," he read. "You told me to switch suppliers for our cooking oil because you had a 'feeling' about Golden Dragon Imports. They declared bankruptcy June twenty-third. Eight days later." He looked up. "How did you know?"
"I didn't—"
"August third. You insisted your mother cancel her dentist appointment and reschedule for the following week. The dentist's office had a carbon monoxide leak that exact day. Twelve people hospitalized." His finger traced down the list. "September nineteenth. You told Lily not to take Highway 101 home from her friend's house. There was a pile-up at the exact exit she would have used. Three cars. Two fatalities."
The paper trembled slightly in his hands. Behind me, Sophia's breathing had gone very quiet.
"You've been keeping a list." My voice came out flat.
"Your mother started it." He refolded the paper with precise, angry movements. "She thought maybe you'd gotten involved with something illegal. Insider trading. Corporate espionage. I told her no, our son wouldn't do that. But I couldn't explain the alternative, could I? Because the alternative is that you somehow know things before they happen, and that's—"
"Impossible," I finished.
"Yes." He met my eyes. "So tell me which impossible thing I'm supposed to believe. That my son is a criminal, or that he's something else entirely?"
The question hung between us like a blade. In seventy-three timelines, I'd never had this conversation. I'd always managed to stay just subtle enough, just lucky enough, that the pattern never quite crystallized into proof.
"Here's the thing—" I started.
"Don't." My father's hand came up. "Don't give me one of your explanations that sounds reasonable but doesn't actually answer anything. I've heard enough of those to last a lifetime."
Sophia stepped forward. "Mr. Chen—"
"And you." He turned to her, and I saw the moment he made the connection. "You're the one from the photos. The girl who wasn't supposed to exist."
My blood went cold. "What photos?"
"The ones in Marcus's old room. The shoebox under his bed." My father's expression was unreadable. "Your mother found them when she was cleaning last month. Pictures of you and Marcus together. Dozens of them. Except Marcus has never mentioned you before three months ago, and in every photo, you're both older. Different haircuts. Different clothes. Like they were taken over years, not weeks."
I'd forgotten about those. Remnants from the timeline where Sophia and I had met in college, where we'd had four years together before everything went wrong. I'd kept them hidden in my apartment, or thought I had. Must have missed a box during one of the timeline shifts.
"Those aren't—" I couldn't finish the lie. Sophia was looking at me with an expression I couldn't parse.
"Aren't what? Real?" My father laughed, sharp and bitter. "Everything about you for the past year has been unreal, Marcus. The question is whether you're going to keep lying about it."
My phone buzzed again. I pulled it out: 82 minutes. Your father's still in the building. So is Mrs. Chen. You're running out of time.
"I need you to trust me," I said. "Just this once. Close the restaurant. Get everyone out. I'll explain everything later, but right now—"
"No."
The word hit like a physical blow.
"You don't get to do this anymore," my father continued. "You don't get to manufacture crises and expect us to dance to your tune without question. If there's really a gas leak, the company will send someone. If there's really danger, you'll tell me what it is and where it's coming from. But I'm not evacuating my business because you have another one of your convenient feelings."
"People could die."
"Then tell me why." He stepped closer, and I could smell the ginger and garlic on his hands, the scent of a thousand family dinners. "Tell me the truth, Marcus. Not a story. Not a convenient excuse. The actual truth about what's happening and how you know."
The kitchen door swung open. Lily walked in, her backpack slung over one shoulder, earbuds dangling around her neck. She stopped when she saw the three of us standing there like a frozen tableau.
"Oh. Bad time?"
"Lily." My father's voice gentled slightly. "I thought you had study group until six."
"Canceled. Jessica's sick." She looked between us, reading the tension. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," I said, at the same moment my father said, "Your brother was just about to explain why he's been lying to us for the past year."
Lily's eyebrows rose. She dropped her backpack on the counter and hopped up to sit beside it, legs swinging. "Oh, this should be good. Is this about the weird dreams?"
Every muscle in my body locked. "What dreams?"
"The car crash ones. I've been having them for like three months now." She said it casually, like she was discussing the weather. "Same dream every time. I'm driving home from Sarah's house, taking the 101 exit, and there's this truck that loses control. Jackknifes across three lanes. I can see it happening in slow motion, see exactly where it's going to hit, but I can't stop in time." She paused. "Except then I wake up, and I remember that I didn't take 101 that day. You told me to take surface streets. And there really was an accident at that exit, exactly like in the dream."
Sophia's hand found my arm, her grip tight enough to hurt.
"It's not just that one," Lily continued, oblivious to the way the room had tilted sideways. "There's the one about Mom's dentist appointment. The one about the restaurant fire that never happened. The one about—" She stopped, her expression shifting. "Wait. You're looking at me like I just said something important."
"How many dreams?" My voice came out hoarse.
"I don't know. Ten? Fifteen?" She tilted her head. "They're always about bad things that almost happened but didn't. I thought it was just anxiety or whatever. My therapist said it's normal to have disaster fantasies when you're stressed about college applications."
"They're not fantasies." The words came out before I could stop them.
My father's attention snapped back to me. "What?"
The kitchen felt too small, the walls pressing in. Seventy-six minutes until detonation. Mrs. Chen was still in the dining room. The prep cooks would be back in twenty minutes. And my sister was sitting there describing memories from a timeline I'd erased, bleeding through her subconscious like radiation through lead.
"Here's the thing—" I started, then stopped. My father was right. No more deflections. No more careful half-truths. "I can see things. Timelines. Possibilities. Things that might happen or have happened or could happen depending on the choices people make."
The neither spoke. Lily stopped swinging her legs.
"That's not possible," my father said, but his voice had lost its certainty.
"No, it's not." I met his eyes. "But it's true anyway. And right now, in this timeline, there are people who want to hurt our family because of what I can do. They've planted explosives in this building. They're set to detonate in—" I checked my phone, "—seventy-four minutes. And they're using you as bait to draw me out."
"Explosives." My father said it like he was testing the weight of the word.
"In the basement," Sophia added. Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact. "Probably near the gas line to make it look like an accident. They've been watching the building for three days."
Lily slid off the counter. "This is insane."
"Yes," I agreed. "But it's also true. And I need you to leave. All of you. Right now."
My father hadn't moved. He was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen before—not anger, not disappointment, but something closer to grief.
"How long?" he asked quietly.
"What?"
"How long have you been able to do this? See timelines?"
I thought about lying. Thought about giving him a comfortable answer, something recent and manageable. But I'd already crossed the line into truth.
"Since I was nineteen. Since the night of the Stanford fire."
"The fire where you saved those people." My father's voice was barely above a whisper. "The fire where you somehow knew exactly which rooms to check, which hallways to avoid. They called you a hero."
"I'd already seen it happen. Seen everyone die. I just—ran it again. Made different choices."
"Ran it again." He repeated the words like they were in a foreign language. "You're talking about people's lives like they're—what? Simulations? Variables in an equation?"
"No. Yes. I don't—" I ran my hand through my hair, feeling the weight of every timeline pressing down. "I'm talking about trying to save people. That's all I've ever been trying to do."
"By lying to us." My father's voice hardened again. "By manipulating us. By treating us like pieces on a board that you're moving around without our knowledge or consent."
"I was protecting you."
"No." He stepped closer, and I saw the anger in his eyes, the hurt beneath it. "You were controlling us. There's a difference, Marcus. Protection means trusting people with the truth and letting them make their own choices. What you've been doing is—"
The front door chimed. Mrs. Chen's voice called out a goodbye. Seventy-two minutes.
"We don't have time for this," Sophia said. "Mr. Chen, I know this is a lot to process, but Marcus is telling the truth. There are people who want to hurt him, and they're willing to use you to do it. We need to evacuate this building now."
"And go where?" My father's attention shifted to her. "If these people are watching, won't they just follow us? Won't they just try again somewhere else?"
"Yes," I admitted. "Probably. But at least you'll be alive."
"To live in fear? To spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, wondering when the next threat is coming?" He shook his head. "That's not protection, Marcus. That's a different kind of prison."
Lily had gone very pale. "Are you saying we should just stay here? Let them—"
"I'm saying we should face this together." My father looked at each of us in turn. "If there are really people threatening our family, then we deal with it as a family. Not with Marcus running around trying to fix everything alone while we sit in the dark wondering what's real."
"You don't understand what you're up against."
"Then explain it to me." He crossed his arms again, but this time the gesture looked less like defiance and more like bracing for impact. "You want me to trust you? Start by trusting me. Tell me who these people are. Tell me what they want. Tell me why they think threatening us will get to you."
My phone buzzed. I looked down at the screen, and my heart stopped.
Unknown number. A text message with a photo attached.
The photo showed Lily's car in the parking lot behind the restaurant. Someone had drawn a red circle around the front driver's side wheel well, right where the brake line would be.
Below the image: Your father's right. You can't save people who don't want to be saved. 45 minutes.
I looked up at Lily, at her pale face and wide eyes, at the car keys hanging from her backpack.
"When did you get here?" My voice came out strangled.
"Like five minutes ago. Why?"
"Did you drive?"
"Yeah, obviously. My car's out back—"
I was already moving, shoving past my father toward the back door. Sophia was right behind me, her footsteps quick and light on the tile floor.
"Marcus!" My father's voice followed us. "What's happening?"
I hit the back door at a run, the afternoon sunlight blinding after the dim kitchen. Lily's car sat in its usual spot, a beat-up Honda Civic with a dented bumper and a Stanford sticker in the rear window.
I dropped to my knees beside the front wheel, my hands already reaching for the wheel well, and—