5:14 PM.
the only thing "wrong" was a strange tension in Noah's shoulders that hadn't left him since he woke up in the past.
"Noah, seriously," Mason said, leaning against the rooftop ledge with a bag of chips in his hand. He wasn't wearing tactical gear. He was wearing a hoodie and jeans. "We've been up here for an hour. If you're waiting for a solar eclipse, you're on the wrong floor."
"Shut up and watch the alley," Noah said.
"The alley? The one with the—"
Mason stopped.
The air in the narrow space between the two brick buildings shimmered. It wasn't a "rip" or a "hole." It looked more like a smudge on a camera lens—a blur that shouldn't be there. Slowly, a shape began to pull itself out of the blur.
It was small, no bigger than a medium-sized dog, with skin that looked like wet, violet rubber. It had too many joints in its legs and a head that looked like a smooth, eyeless pebble. It didn't roar. It didn't even make a sound. It just stood there, sniffing the air with a series of vibrating slits on its neck.
"What... is that a drone?" Mason whispered, squinting. "Is some tech company testing a delivery robot?"
Noah didn't answer. He felt a cold sweat break out on his neck. In his memory, this thing had killed three people before vanishing. This was the "Zero Event"—the one the government would later claim was a hoax or a freak chemical reaction.
The creature moved. It hopped onto a dumpster with a wet thwack, then onto a fire escape. It moved with a terrifying, liquid grace that no machine could mimic.
A stray cat at the end of the alley hissed, its back arching. The creature turned its pebble-like head toward the sound. In an instant, it launched itself—a violet blur.
Crunch.
The cat didn't even have time to yowl. The creature stood over the small pile of fur, its neck-slits pulsing as it fed.
"Noah, that's not a drone," Mason said, his voice finally cracking with real fear. He reached for his phone. "I'm calling the cops. Or animal control. That thing just—"
"Put the phone away," Noah snapped. "By the time they get here, it'll be gone."
Down in the alley, the creature suddenly froze. It tilted its head as if listening to a frequency only it could hear. Then, just as quietly as it had arrived, it stepped back toward the "smudge" in the air.
The blur intensified for a second, then snapped shut like a camera shutter.
The alley was empty. Except for a few tufts of cat fur and a smear of blood on the pavement, there was no sign that anything had ever happened.
"It's... it's gone?" Mason scrambled to the edge, looking down. "Where did it go? Noah, it just vanished!"
Noah let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for five years. He checked his watch again. 5:17 PM.
Across the street, a woman pushed a stroller past the mouth of the alley, completely unaware that a nightmare had been standing ten feet away from her seconds ago. A bus rumbled by, puffing out exhaust. The sun continued its slow descent toward the horizon.
"It was just a scout," Noah whispered.
"A scout for what?" Mason demanded, his hands shaking as he pointed at the empty alley. "That thing was real! We have to tell someone! We have to track it!"
"Track it how?" Noah asked, finally turning to look at his friend. "It's not on this plane of existence anymore, Mason. And if you call the police, what are you going to tell them? That a purple dog-thing ate a cat and turned into thin air? They'll put you in a psych ward before the sun goes down."
Mason looked back at the alley, then at Noah. The peaceful, mundane sounds of the city felt wrong now. The "normal" world felt like a thin sheet of paper covering a bottomless pit.
"We still have time," Noah said, more to himself than to Mason.
"Time for what?"
"To get ready. That was the first warning. The breach didn't hold this time, but they're poking holes in the fence, Mason. In four years, the fence is coming down."
Noah looked out over the skyline. Thousands of lights were flickering on as evening approached. Millions of people were settling in for dinner, watching the news, planning their futures. They thought they had decades.
Noah knew they only had four years of "normal" left.
"Come on," Noah said, heading for the roof door. "The monster is gone. Nobody is going to believe us, and the news won't report it. We've got a lot of work to do, and I just lost three minutes of it."