Somewhere Between
Eros fell.
Not through space or time, but through meaning itself. Memories weren't just revisited—they were rewired. Names lost their weight. Colors bled into sound. For a moment, he was a child again. Then an old man. Then both.
Then—silence.
And darkness.
Barcelona – One Hour Later (Local Time)
Rain poured in steady rhythm over rusted rooftops. A marketplace in the Gothic Quarter lay quiet, its vendors long since gone. A storm had blacked out half the district. But beneath one flickering streetlamp, something sparked.
Reality bent.
And Eros reappeared.
He hit the ground hard, coughing water and static. The cube rolled beside him, still pulsing with faint light. Around him, no one noticed—this timeline hadn't been alerted yet.
But someone had.
His phone buzzed with a message. No number.
"You're two hours behind the collapse marker. They're converging."
Zero.
Eros staggered to his feet. The Thread Splice had dropped him into another forked timeline—one where Barcelona still had power outages and paper money. A quieter version of 117-VK.
But that quiet wouldn't last.
He needed shelter.
Safehouse Echo-9
An hour later, Eros found himself in a forgotten bookstore beneath a church. The door required both a voiceprint and the cube's harmonic frequency to open. Inside: dust, dim light, and old terminals from before the Internet of Everything.
He scanned the room. Shelves filled with analog backups. Printouts of timeline anomalies. Handwritten journals signed only "V."
On the desk, a tape recorder.
He pressed play.
"If you've reached Echo-9, you've survived your first splice. That means your thread resists correction—just as predicted. But it also means the Fragment Hunters will follow."
"You have 72 hours. Use the cube to locate the Anchor Site in the Pyrenees. If they find it first, they'll seal the gate—and this version collapses."
The tape clicked.
Eros sat back, exhaling slowly.
The Fragment Hunters.
He remembered them—barely. Agents of the Deep Protocol that didn't just erase you, but shattered your timeline into untraceable remnants. The Interstice had only hinted at them, like shadows outside the field of view.
But if they were real...
He had to move now.
Meanwhile – Continuity Command
A dark room. Monitors arranged in a fractal. Twelve silhouettes watched a red dot blink across a digital map.
"He used a Splice," said one.
"He survived."
"Then upgrade his classification. Thread 117-VK is now Omega-Tier."
"Send the Hunters."
A hiss of static.
Barcelona Rooftops – Night
Eros climbed the metal stairwell of an old hostel. Rain soaked his jacket. Below, he saw them for the first time.
Not people.
Not quite.
Three forms, tall and too still. Faces covered in lattice-mesh. Eyes glowing with synthetic memory light. They didn't move like humans—they twitched in perfect synchronization.
And then—
They turned toward him.
The Fragment Hunters had arrived.
Eros ran.
The cube flared with panic. It began projecting a pulsing beacon—coordinates. Latitude. Altitude. Pyrenees, exactly 278 kilometers away.
He didn't have time to think.
Only to run.