Aiden didn't dream anymore.When he closed his eyes, all he saw were fragments—Elara's hand holding a brush, the slow turn of her head, the window light bending through the dust. Pieces of a life that had already ended.
He woke to the low pulse of the lab. The city beyond the glass dome was still asleep, wrapped in silver fog. Somewhere far below, trains whispered along the magnetic rails. Everything in 2234 was silent efficiency—no wind, no rain, no chaos. Just order.
He hated it.
Kellen Shaw's voice came through the intercom, clipped and weary."Rehn. You're still here?"
Aiden rubbed his eyes. "Observation cycle. I lost track."
"That's the third one this week." A pause. "You're not supposed to access the echo field without clearance."
"Just a test run," Aiden lied.
Kellen sighed. "You keep saying that. But the readings show ripple activity again. Whatever you're doing—it's starting to push back."
"Time doesn't push," Aiden muttered. "It resists. That's different."
He turned off the channel before Kellen could answer.
For a moment, he sat in the quiet, staring at the temporal array. The core shimmered faintly, alive with static. The hum of its circuits felt almost like breathing.
He told himself it was science. Research. Closure.But the truth was simpler: he couldn't stand not seeing her.
He loaded the coordinates again. The machine's screen flickered, showing her apartment—the one that didn't exist anymore.
"Session Eight," he whispered, almost like a prayer.
When the visor sealed around his head, the world dissolved.
—
Light. Color. Warmth.
Elara was sitting on the floor now, surrounded by half-finished canvases. Her hair was tied up messily, her cheeks streaked with paint.
She was humming again. Same tune as before.
Aiden smiled before he could stop himself.
She stopped suddenly, eyes flicking to the space near the window.
The same place where he always stood.
"Hello?" she said softly.
Aiden froze.
His throat tightened. She couldn't be talking to him—not really. But she was looking straight at where he stood.
Her fingers brushed the air, hesitating, then lowering again."I don't know why I do this," she whispered, half to herself. "It's like… someone's here."
Aiden took a slow step closer. The air shimmered faintly between them, the light bending oddly—like the heat off metal.
He reached out. His hand passed through her shoulder in a blur of static. She flinched—just slightly, like a chill down her spine.
The system crackled in his ears.Warning: Cognitive Drift Detected. Reduce Emotional Proximity.
He ignored it.
Elara shivered, looking toward the window again. "It's you, isn't it? The dream."
Aiden's pulse quickened. She remembered?
Then the timer appeared on the corner of his vision—00:45.
He wanted to tell her everything. To explain why he was there. But the words wouldn't come; there was no sound. Just his breath and the weight of time pressing in.
Elara smiled faintly, though her eyes looked far away."It's strange," she murmured. "It doesn't feel like a ghost. It feels like a memory that got lost."
The alarm buzzed.
The room began to disintegrate—color draining, light folding inward.
Before she vanished, she tilted her head one last time and said, almost too quietly to hear,"I'll remember you next time."
—
Aiden woke gasping, tearing off the visor.
The lab was dark except for the monitor light. His reflection looked hollow, his eyes bloodshot.
He sat there, trembling, replaying her words.
I'll remember you next time.
Impossible. The past couldn't retain information from a projection. Every observation was isolated. That was the rule.
And yet—her tone, her eyes—something had changed.
He stared at the readout. Temporal stability index: -0.003.Negative drift. That had never happened before.
In the glass, his reflection flickered for half a second—two images of himself, overlapping and out of sync.
He didn't notice. He was already preparing the next jump.