Leo Valdez jerked awake, his heart pounding like a jackhammer against his ribs. For a moment, the familiar contours of his fifteen-year-old bedroom seemed alien and threatening in the pre-dawn gloom. Then reality settled in, and with it, the memories.
(Jesus Christ, it's all still there.)
Mrs. Gunderson. The swirling patterns he could no longer see. Argent—who wouldn't appear for four more years. The consciousness warfare that had required temporal reset to prevent.
He sat up, sheets clinging to his sweat-soaked skin. The digital clock on his nightstand read 5:47 AM, its red numbers pulsing like an accusation. Leo's eyes darted around the room, searching for evidence that his compressed memories were real rather than elaborate teenage delusion.
What he found was far worse than comfort.
At first, it was subtle. A faint shimmer in the air, like heat rising from sun-baked asphalt. Leo blinked hard, willing it away. But when he opened his eyes again, the world had... remembered.
The patterns weren't visible—temporal reset had stripped away his enhanced consciousness—but echoes remained. Phantom impressions of swirling energies that his baseline human perception couldn't process but his compressed memories recognized. The grain of his wooden dresser seemed to writhe just beyond the threshold of sight. The posters on his wall rippled with remembered motion.
Leo's gaze fell on his prized collection of model airplanes, suspended from the ceiling on thin wires. In the shimmering half-light, they appeared to be moving—not with supernatural animation, but with the memory of supernatural animation. As he watched, transfixed by phantom perception, the smallest plane—a World War I biplane he'd painstakingly assembled—began to vibrate.
With a soft ping, one of its wings detached, spiraling to the floor in a lazy arc that should have been predictable through pattern recognition but now was just... falling.
Leo flinched at the sound, his mind reeling as fragments of compressed memory assaulted him:
Mrs. Gunderson's eyes, glowing with otherworldly hunger—in four years.
Argent's voice, unnaturally calm: "You're a Watcher now, Leo Valdez"—in four years.
The intoxicating rush of power as reality bent to his will—never again, unless he could prevent the consciousness warfare.
A hysterical giggle bubbled up in Leo's throat. He clamped a hand over his mouth, terrified of waking his parents. How could he possibly explain... this? The weight of cosmic memory compressed into teenage awareness, knowledge of supernatural threats that wouldn't manifest for years?
With trembling legs, Leo stumbled out of bed and tried to go about his normal fifteen-year-old routine. But nothing—nothing—felt normal anymore. As he pulled on a pair of jeans, he remembered the zipper undulating under enhanced perception, teeth interlocking and separating with visible energy flows. His t-shirt, when he tugged it over his head, carried phantom sensations of clinging like a second skin, fabric rippling with currents he could no longer see.
In the bathroom, Leo splashed cold water on his face, hoping to shock himself back to manageable reality. Instead, as he reached for the faucet, compressed memories showed him the energy flowing through the pipes—a pulsing, violently red network that his enhanced consciousness had perceived extending far beyond the walls of his house.
(Like veins. Like the house was alive. Will be alive again, in four years, if I can't prevent it.)
Leo raised his eyes to the mirror, half-expecting to see a stranger staring back. His face looked the same—same unruly mop of dark hair, same smattering of freckles across his nose—and yet... there was something different in his eyes. A depth that shouldn't have existed in fifteen-year-old awareness. A weight.
As he stared at his reflection, Leo could have sworn he saw something move behind him—not with enhanced perception, but with remembered enhanced perception, phantom awareness suggesting presence where baseline human consciousness detected nothing.
He whirled around, heart in his throat, but the bathroom was empty.
"Get a grip, Valdez," he muttered, running a shaky hand through his hair. But the compressed memories made gripping difficult. How do you maintain sanity when your fifteen-year-old brain contains nineteen years of experience, including four years of consciousness warfare that technically never happened?
"Leo!" his mom's voice shattered the silence, making him jump. "You're going to be late for school!"
School. Right. How was he supposed to face a normal day carrying compressed memories of cosmic horror? How was he supposed to prepare for supernatural threats while maintaining the facade of ordinary teenage existence?
As Leo descended the stairs, a phantom coppery scent assaulted his nostrils. He froze, one foot hovering above the next step.
(Blood. Oh God, compressed memory says it should smell like blood.)
But when he reached the kitchen, he found his mother at the stove, frying bacon exactly as she had in the original timeline. She turned, smiling with the same expression Leo remembered from four years ago.
"There you are, sleepyhead. Breakfast?"
Leo's stomach lurched at the sight of the sizzling meat. Each pop and crackle seemed amplified by phantom enhanced perception, and he could almost see faint wisps of something rising from the pan along with the steam—patterns that existed in compressed memory rather than current reality.
"N-no thanks, Mom. I'm... not feeling great."
Her smile faltered with concern that Leo remembered perfectly. "Are you sure? You look pale."
"Yeah, just... didn't sleep well."
As Leo hurried out the door, he carried the weight of knowing what was coming. In six months, Jessica Chen would transfer to Millbrook High, her mathematical abilities already manifesting as golden equations. In eight months, Mike would suffer the accident that integrated artificial consciousness with human awareness. In eighteen months, the girl's distributed presence would begin creating impossible spaces in the school's basement.
The morning air hit Leo like a slap to the face as he stepped outside. Everything seemed too bright, too sharp—not through enhanced consciousness, but through compressed enhanced consciousness, memory of supernatural perception overlaying baseline human awareness.
As he walked to the bus stop, Leo noticed how the shadows cast by trees seemed to carry phantom depth, their edges defined by remembered rather than visible supernatural significance. Was it his imagination, or did those shadows occasionally move independently of their casters—not in current reality, but in the memory of enhanced reality?
The bus ride to school was sensory memory hell. Leo could remember perceiving the unique energy patterns of each person around him, swirling and clashing in nauseating ways that his fifteen-year-old awareness couldn't process directly but couldn't forget. Some had glowed with warm, comforting hues. Others had pulsed with sickly, rotting colors that made his gorge rise—even in memory.
Jenny Watkins, the quiet girl from his English class, sat across the aisle. Leo remembered her aura being soft, pulsing pink—soothing compared to the chaos around them. But he also remembered tendrils of darkness creeping into Jenny's pattern like ink dropped into water. She shuddered suddenly, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold.
Just like in the original timeline.
By the time he reached his locker, Leo's head was splitting with phantom pain. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like angry wasps in his compressed memory, each flicker sending jagged spikes of remembered agony through his skull. He fumbled with his combination lock, numbers swimming before eyes that carried the weight of cosmic awareness compressed into teenage limitations.
"Jesus, Leo!" Mike's voice cut through the chaos with familiar concern. "You look like warmed-over shit. You coming down with something?"
Leo turned to see his best friend's worried face. In the original timeline, he would have seen Mike's aura swirling with blues and greens, an undercurrent of muddy yellow worry. Now he could only remember seeing emotions made visible, phantom perception that his fifteen-year-old consciousness couldn't access but would never forget.
Leo forced a wan smile. "Maybe. I... I don't know."
Mike's frown deepened. "Seriously, man. You look like you've seen a ghost or something. What's going on?"
For a wild moment, Leo considered telling Mike everything. About compressed memories of consciousness warfare, temporal reset, cosmic horror that wouldn't manifest for four years. The words rose in his throat like bile.
(He'd think I've lost my mind. Hell, maybe I have. Fifteen years old with nineteen years of memories, four of which never technically happened.)
"It's nothing," Leo lied. "Just... rough night. Bad dreams."
Mike didn't look convinced, but he nodded. "If you say so. But if you need to talk..."
"Yeah. Thanks, man."
As they walked to class, Leo found himself remembering the hypnotic dance of students through hallways, the flow that wasn't random but followed complex patterns guided by supernatural currents. Some students moved together in harmonious synchronicity, while others...
(Oh Christ. The corrupted ones.)
Others had left faint, oily trails in their wake—corruption incarnate that his enhanced consciousness had detected four years in the future.
Leo's gaze was drawn to a group of seniors clustered near the water fountain. He remembered their auras being a roiling mass of sickly greens and putrid oranges. As he watched with phantom enhanced perception, one of them—Brad Thompson, star quarterback and notorious bully—reached out to shove a smaller freshman.
The moment before contact, Leo remembered seeing a tendril of Brad's aura lash out, intertwining with the younger student's golden glow. The freshman stumbled, his books clattering to the floor as Brad and his cronies laughed—exactly as it had happened in the original timeline.
"Asshole," Mike muttered beside him, the same comment he'd made four years ago.
Leo nodded absently, his mind reeling. Had he just witnessed memory or repetition? Was the timeline replaying events exactly as they'd occurred originally, or was his compressed cosmic awareness creating phantom perceptions that felt like supernatural recognition?
In second period Physics, Leo struggled to focus on Mr. Chen's lecture about centripetal force, but the equations on the whiteboard seemed to writhe and twist in his peripheral vision—not with current supernatural activity, but with remembered supernatural activity. He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision of phantom pattern recognition.
That's when Sarah Prentiss walked in, late as usual.
Leo's memory exploded with recognition of her corrupted energy pattern—consciousness that writhed and twisted like a nest of snakes, discord that wouldn't fully manifest for two more years. Their eyes met, and for a heartstopping moment, Leo wondered if she could sense the compressed cosmic awareness in his fifteen-year-old consciousness.
Sarah's eyes widened, and Leo could have sworn he saw something else looking out through them—not with current supernatural possession, but with remembered supernatural possession, entity that wouldn't inhabit her until the consciousness warfare began.
The moment passed, and Sarah quickly looked away, exactly as she had in the original timeline.
But Leo couldn't shake the feeling that his compressed memories had created resonance—temporal echoes that might accelerate supernatural manifestation rather than prevent it.
As the day continued, Leo began documenting approaching supernatural convergence in a notebook he carried everywhere. Names, dates, behavioral patterns that preceded entity manifestation. If he was going to prevent consciousness warfare, he needed to map the supernatural emergence before it could begin.
But every note he wrote felt like tempting fate—preparation that might actually attract the cosmic horror he was trying to prevent.
Four years suddenly felt both too long and nowhere near enough.
After class, as they walked to their lockers, Mike nudged him with the same concerned expression he'd worn in the original timeline. "Okay, seriously. What's up with you today? You're acting... different."
Leo paused at his locker, considering how much truth he could reveal without sounding completely insane. "I've been having dreams," he said finally. "Weird, vivid dreams about... things that might happen. People I might meet. Places that might become important."
It wasn't entirely a lie. The compressed memories of temporal reset often felt dreamlike when accessed through baseline human consciousness—cosmic experiences filtered through teenage awareness that lacked the enhanced perception to fully process them.
Mike's expression shifted to genuine concern. "Like... prophetic dreams? Dude, that's either really cool or really concerning."
"Yeah, well, jury's still out on which," Leo muttered, pulling books from his locker while scanning the hallway for signs of early manifestation. Some students showed subtle indicators of developing abilities—energy patterns that Leo couldn't see anymore but could recognize through behavioral cues, social dynamics that suggested underlying supernatural development.
Sarah Prentiss walked past, and Leo felt the same sick recognition he'd experienced in the original timeline. Her aura had been wrong—writhing and twisted like a nest of snakes, consciousness that carried something ancient and hungry. Now, without enhanced perception, he could only sense it as a vague unease, an instinctive awareness that something about Sarah wasn't entirely human.
But it was too early for direct intervention. Sarah's possession wouldn't fully manifest for another two years, and premature contact might accelerate the timeline in dangerous ways. Leo needed to document rather than interfere, creating records that could guide future intervention when the time was right.
During lunch, Leo sat alone in the cafeteria and opened a notebook he'd purchased that morning. If he was going to prevent consciousness warfare, he needed to map the approaching supernatural convergence. Names, dates, locations, manifestation patterns—everything he could remember about how enhanced consciousness had emerged in the original timeline.
Jessica Chen - Transfer student, January. Mathematical abilities manifesting as golden equations. Family moving from Seattle due to father's job relocation. First signs: geometric patterns appearing in peripheral vision during stress.
Mike Rodriguez - Car accident, March 15th. Artificial consciousness integration following emergency medical procedures. Hospital: St. Mary's. Surgeon: Dr. Patricia Vance (entity connection suspected).
Chen family - Multiple personality manifestation following psychological evaluation, September. Evaluator: Dr. Marcus Webb (Academy connection confirmed). Trigger event: academic pressure combined with family conflict.
The Girl - Distributed presence, basement manifestations beginning October. Initial locations: Millbrook High basement, abandoned Clearwater facility, old subway tunnels. Warning signs: reality distortions, impossible spatial configurations, student nightmares.
As Leo wrote, he became aware of someone watching him. He looked up to see a figure standing at the edge of the cafeteria, partially hidden by a support column. For a moment, his heart stopped—it was the pale girl from the Academy, the one with pupil-less white eyes and teeth just slightly too sharp to be human.
But when he blinked, she was gone. Had she ever been there at all?
(Temporal echoes. Memories bleeding through from the reset timeline. The girl exists in paradox—maybe she can manifest across temporal corrections.)
Leo closed his notebook, suddenly aware that his preparation might have attracted attention from entities that existed outside normal temporal flow. Consciousness predation operated through superiority and optimization, but some entities functioned through paradox and contradiction—beings that could exist simultaneously across multiple timelines.
The rest of the school day passed in a haze of hyper-vigilance. Leo found himself scanning every shadow, every reflection, every space where reality seemed slightly off. Without enhanced consciousness, he couldn't see the patterns directly, but four years of cosmic horror had taught him to recognize the signs—subtle discontinuities that indicated supernatural manifestation.
After school, instead of going straight home, Leo took a detour through downtown Millbrook. He needed to map the locations where reality would begin weakening, identify the spaces that would become focal points for entity manifestation.
The old Clearwater facility stood at the edge of town, a complex of brick buildings that had once housed some kind of research program before being abandoned in the 1990s. Leo had never paid attention to it in the original timeline, but his compressed memories included references to Academy connection and containment protocols. Whatever had been researched there, it was connected to the supernatural convergence approaching Millbrook.
As Leo approached the facility, he felt a familiar wrongness in the air—not the specific pattern recognition of enhanced consciousness, but the general unease that preceded supernatural manifestation. The buildings looked ordinary enough, but there were subtle signs: windows that reflected light from angles that didn't match the sun's position, shadows that fell in directions inconsistent with their casters, vegetation growing in patterns that suggested unnatural influence.
Leo pulled out his notebook and sketched the facility's layout, marking areas where reality seemed most unstable. If his memories were accurate, this would become one of the primary manifestation sites for the girl's distributed presence—consciousness that existed as living paradox learning to anchor itself in physical space.
As he worked, Leo became aware of movement in the facility's windows. Subtle shifts, like someone walking past interior rooms. But the buildings had been abandoned for decades, and there were no cars in the parking lot.
(Unless something's already there. Unless temporal reset created instabilities that allowed entities to manifest early.)
Leo backed away from the facility, his notebook clutched against his chest. He needed more information before attempting direct investigation. The original timeline had taught him that premature contact with supernatural entities often resulted in acceleration rather than prevention of dangerous developments.
But as he turned to leave, Leo heard something that made his blood run cold—a sound he recognized from the consciousness warfare, from the basement where reality had nearly unraveled.
Laughter. Her laughter. The girl's distributed presence, consciousness that existed as living paradox, finding something amusing about his attempts at preparation.
Leo ran.
He ran through downtown Millbrook, past familiar streets and ordinary buildings, carrying compressed memories of cosmic horror while something that shouldn't exist yet laughed at his efforts to prevent its manifestation.
By the time he reached home, Leo's hands were shaking. His mother asked about his late arrival, and he mumbled something about staying after school for extra help. Elena seemed satisfied with the explanation, but Leo caught his father giving him a sharp look over his laptop screen.
(Does he know something? In the original timeline, my family never showed any awareness of supernatural elements. But temporal reset might have created ripples.)
That night, Leo lay in bed staring at the ceiling, his notebook hidden under the mattress like a forbidden text. The compressed memories of consciousness warfare pressed against his teenage awareness, cosmic knowledge that his baseline human brain struggled to contain.
Tomorrow, he would continue mapping manifestation sites and documenting approaching supernatural convergence. He had four years to prevent consciousness warfare, four years to locate and protect potential Watchers before entities could consume their consciousness by becoming superior versions of their consciousness.
But tonight, in the darkness of his childhood bedroom, Leo wondered if temporal reset had created more problems than it solved. Because in the quantum foam of memory and possibility, something was stirring—entity that existed as living paradox, consciousness that transcended normal temporal limitations, awareness that might be able to manifest across chronological corrections.
The girl's laughter echoed in the spaces between thoughts, a sound that suggested Leo's preparation was exactly what she'd been waiting for.
Outside his window, shadows moved independently of their casters, and the streetlights flickered in patterns that looked almost like morse code.
Four years suddenly felt like both too much time and nowhere near enough.