Pain was a jagged shard lodged beneath his ribs with every breath. Lín Mò stumbled down the fire escape, the metal groaning under his uneven weight, each jarring step sending fresh waves of agony radiating through his torso. The dead man's words echoed louder than the Entropy Vortex's drone: They altered it. To make you compliant. The rooftop gravel still clung to his clothes, a gritty reminder of the fight, the death, and the terrifying void of answers left behind.
He reached the alley floor, leaning heavily against the frozen dumpster, gasping. The blue numbers were gone, dissolved into nothing. Only his own remained, a relentless crimson countdown burning against his wrist: 67:58:03. Less than three days. Six anomalies left. And now, a chasm of doubt had opened within him. Was he the hunter, or the hunted? Was Ouyu his guide, or his jailer?
He pushed off the dumpster, forcing himself to move. Staying near the scene felt dangerous, exposed. The city stretched before him, a museum of arrested motion. A cyclist frozen mid-fall, a woman forever shielding her eyes from non-existent sun, a stream of coffee suspended in an impossible arc from a tipped cup. He walked, each step a conscious effort, his mind churning.
Ouyu. Her face, earnest and desperate, flashed in his memory. You are the Time Regulator. Find the anomalies. Reclaim the fragments. Stop the Vortex. Simple directives. A clear purpose. But the anomaly on the roof… he had claimed the same title. He had spoken of lies, of manipulation. Of altered memories.
Lín Mò paused beside the frozen cyclist. The man's expression was one of pure, startled fear. What if my memories are like this? Lín Mò thought, a chill spreading through him that had nothing to do with the stagnant air. Frozen fragments, arranged to tell a story that isn't true?
He remembered flashes – his apartment, the blaring alarm clock, the horrifying stillness that followed. The frantic search for answers. Meeting Ouyu near the crumbling edge of the Vortex's influence. Her explanation, delivered with urgent conviction. It felt real. Solid. But what if it was a construct? What if the foundation of his reality was sand?
The pain in his ribs flared, a sharp counterpoint to the existential dread. He needed shelter. Rest. Somewhere to think, to try and pierce the fog of uncertainty. He spotted a small, unassuming bookstore further down the street, its door slightly ajar. It seemed as good a place as any.
Inside, dust motes hung suspended in shafts of pale light filtering through the grimy front window. Books lay frozen mid-fall from shelves, pages caught in an eternal flutter. The air smelled of old paper and decay. Lín Mò navigated the chaotic stillness, finding a relatively clear space near the back, behind a counter piled high with unsorted volumes. He sank down onto the dusty floor, his back against a sturdy bookshelf, wincing as the movement jarred his injured side.
Exhaustion, deeper than mere physical fatigue, washed over him. The adrenaline surge from the fight had long since faded, leaving him hollow and trembling. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on his breathing, to ignore the insistent throb of the countdown on his wrist and the deeper ache of betrayal in his mind.
Sleep, when it came, was not restful. It was a descent into chaos.
He was running. Not through the frozen city, but through a landscape of shifting, impossible geometries. Jagged shards of mirror floated in a void, reflecting distorted fragments of himself – sometimes younger, sometimes older, always terrified. The air hummed with a high-pitched whine, different from the Vortex's drone, more mechanical, more invasive.
Compliance is optimal. A voice, synthesized and cold, echoed from everywhere and nowhere. Resistance necessitates correction.
He saw hands, clad in sterile white gloves, reaching towards him. Not Ouyu's hands. Impersonal. Efficient. He tried to scream, but no sound emerged. He saw a flash of light, blindingly white, accompanied by a wave of disorientation so profound it felt like his very self was being unraveled.
Memory sequence Alpha-Seven initiated. Subject shows elevated resistance. Administering neural dampening.
He was falling, endlessly, through layers of false history. A birthday party he didn't recognize, faces blurred and indistinct. A graduation ceremony under an alien sky. A woman's face, kind and familiar, whispering words he couldn't hear before dissolving into static.
Altered it. To make you compliant.
The dream shifted. He was standing on a vast, metallic plain under a bruised purple sky. Strange, towering structures pulsed with internal light in the distance. Figures moved, silhouetted against the horizon – tall, slender, moving with unnatural grace. They weren't human. A sense of profound loneliness, of being utterly out of place, washed over him. He looked down at his hands. They were his hands, yet… different. Younger. Unmarked by the countdown.
A low chime sounded, resonant and deep, vibrating through the metal beneath his feet. One of the distant figures turned. Its head was elongated, featureless save for two points of cold, blue light where eyes should be. It seemed to look directly at him.
The variable must be isolated.
Lín Mò jolted awake, gasping, his heart hammering against his bruised ribs. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. The bookstore was exactly as he'd left it – silent, frozen, dust motes hanging motionless. But the dream… the memory? It clung to him, visceral and terrifying. The synthesized voice. The white gloves. The alien landscape. The feeling of being corrected.
It wasn't just a dream. It felt like a fracture in a dam, a glimpse of something buried deep. Altered it. The anomaly's dying words rang with horrifying new clarity. Had those white gloves stripped away his true past and replaced it with the mundane life he remembered? The apartment, the job, the alarm clock… were they implants? Was his entire identity a fabrication designed to make him obey Ouyu's commands?
He pushed himself up, ignoring the protest from his ribs. He couldn't stay here. He needed answers, real answers, not Ouyu's potentially poisoned truths. He needed someone else. Another perspective. Another survivor.
He recalled Ouyu mentioning others, briefly, in their first fraught conversation near the Vortex. Scattered survivors, hiding, trying to understand the stillness. One name surfaced: Chen. Professor Chen. Ouyu had said he was a historian, holed up somewhere near the old university archives, obsessed with finding patterns in the chaos. A historian. Someone who dealt in evidence, in verifiable facts. Maybe he could offer something Ouyu couldn't – or wouldn't.
The university district lay across the city, a journey of several miles through the frozen labyrinth. Sixty-seven hours bled away on his wrist, a constant, silent pressure. He checked his makeshift bindings around his ribs, tightened his jacket, and stepped out of the dusty sanctuary of the bookstore back into the eternal afternoon.
The journey was a gauntlet of stillness and burgeoning dread. Every frozen tableau seemed to mock him. A couple frozen mid-embrace – was their love real? A shopkeeper caught in the act of handing over change – was his life just a script? The dream fragments intruded constantly: the cold blue eyes of the alien figure, the sterile white gloves, the echoing command for compliance.
He moved with cautious urgency, favoring his injured side, his senses heightened, scanning not just for physical threats like shifting debris or the ever-present danger of the slowly expanding Vortex, but for any sign of the other anomalies. Would they look like the man on the roof? Or something else entirely? And would they try to stop him, or try to tell him something?
Hours passed, measured in the slow, painful rhythm of his steps and the relentless subtraction on his wrist. The cityscape shifted from commercial districts to quieter, tree-lined streets bordering the university grounds. The grand old buildings of the campus stood like silent sentinels, ivy frozen mid-creep on their stone facades. Finding the archives building was easy; finding a specific survivor within it was another matter.
He entered the main library building, a cavernous space filled with the frozen aftermath of panic. Students and faculty were caught in various states of flight, books spilled, chairs overturned. The air hung thick with suspended dust. He called out, his voice echoing strangely in the profound silence.
"Professor Chen? Is anyone here? Ouyu sent me!"
Silence answered him. He moved deeper into the stacks, the towering shelves creating narrow canyons of shadow and pale light filtering through high windows. He passed frozen librarians, students forever reaching for books, a scene of scholarly pursuit abruptly halted.
Then, a sound. Not the Vortex. Not the wind. A soft, rhythmic tap-tap-tap. Like a pencil on wood.
He followed the sound, heart pounding, hand instinctively going to the heavy flashlight he'd picked up as a makeshift weapon. It led him to a small, specialized archive room labeled 'Regional History – Pre-Unification Era'. The door was slightly ajar.
He pushed it open slowly. Inside, surrounded by shelves laden with leather-bound volumes and cardboard document boxes, sat an elderly man at a sturdy wooden table. He was thin, with a shock of white hair and wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Unlike everyone else Lín Mò had seen in days, this man was moving. He was meticulously examining a large, faded photograph spread out before him, using a magnifying glass. His other hand tapped the pencil rhythmically on the tabletop. Above his head, unlike the blue of the anomalies or Lín Mò's own red, floated a steady, unblinking green countdown: 214:07:22. Over eight days.
Professor Chen looked up as Lín Mò entered. His eyes, sharp and intelligent behind the lenses, widened slightly, then narrowed with intense scrutiny. He didn't seem afraid, more… intensely curious.
"Ah," the old man said, his voice dry and papery, yet clear in the stillness. "The Adjuster. Or should I say, the Variable? Ouyu mentioned you might come. Though frankly, I expected you sooner." He gestured to a chair opposite him. "Sit. You look like you've been wrestling with time itself. Or perhaps," he added, his gaze lingering on Lín Mò's pained posture and the dust still clinging to him, "with one of its more… aggressive manifestations."
Lín Mò lowered himself carefully into the offered chair, the simple act sending a fresh spike of pain through his ribs. "You're Professor Chen? Ouyu said you might have… insights."
Chen chuckled softly, a sound like dry leaves rustling. "Insights? Perhaps. Mostly I have questions. Mountains of them. And fragments. Like this." He carefully slid the large photograph he'd been studying across the table towards Lín Mò.
It was a black-and-white image, clearly old. It showed a group of people standing in front of a large, official-looking building. Men in dark suits, women in modest dresses. A formal occasion, perhaps a government function or a corporate event. The style of clothing, the cars visible in the background – all screamed mid-20th century.
"This was taken," Chen said, his finger tapping a date handwritten in white ink on the photo's border, "in 1953. During the reconstruction period after the Great War. A meeting of regional planners."
Lín Mò frowned, not understanding the relevance. "Professor, I need to know about the anomalies, about the Vortex, about…"
"Look," Chen interrupted, his voice suddenly sharp. He pointed a bony finger towards the back row of people in the photograph. "Look closely. Third from the left."
Lín Mò leaned forward, squinting at the grainy image. The man Chen indicated was slightly out of focus, standing near the edge of the group. He wore a dark suit that seemed slightly too large, his posture stiff, his expression… distant. Unfocused. Almost as if he wasn't fully present.
Then, recognition slammed into Lín Mò like a physical blow. The shape of the jaw. The set of the eyes, even blurred by time and poor resolution. The way the hair fell across the forehead.
It was him.
Lín Mò stared, his breath catching in his throat, the pain in his ribs momentarily forgotten. The face in the fifty-year-old photograph was undeniably his own face. Younger, perhaps. Clean-shaven. But unmistakably him.
The world seemed to tilt. The dusty archive room, the frozen campus outside, the Entropy Vortex consuming the future – all receded, replaced by the impossible reality of the photograph. The anomaly's accusation, the fractured dreams, the synthesized voice demanding compliance… they coalesced into a single, horrifying certainty.
He wasn't just a man whose memories might be false. He was a man who shouldn't exist. Not here. Not now.
He looked up at Professor Chen, his voice a hoarse whisper. "How…?"
Chen met his gaze, his expression grim, yet tinged with a scholar's fascination with the impossible. "That, young man," he said quietly, tapping the photograph again, "is the question that has haunted me since the world stopped. Who are you? And more importantly… what are you?"