"We don't arrest anomalies. We erase them."
— Agent Calyx Veil, Ministry of Temporal Control
Location: NovaLumen – Eastern Sector
Timestamp: 59:01:07
Rain slicked down from satellite clouds, bouncing off the chrome veins of the city.
Kade Drift—no, Rook Mason now—moved like a ghost through the underworld alleys, the Tether Broker's synthetic ID stitched into his bloodstream. His new chrono-sig blinked faintly on his wrist:
58:59:00
But something was wrong.
The seconds were slipping.
His life was bleeding out again.
Each step in the alley dimmed his lifespan by a fraction of a second.
He was being traced.
Location: Ministry Surveillance Grid – Tier Zero Access
Classified Alert: SOVEREIGN – Immediate Erasure Authorized
Lead Agent: Calyx Veil
Calyx's fingers danced across a translucent interface as data feeds spiraled through her optic implants. Dozens of chronological anomalies lit up the room like fireflies, but her focus was fixed on one: Elias Wren—dead, time-drained, signature erased.
And in the distorted recording feed from MidasVault, frame 413 pulsed with something that shouldn't exist.
A ghost protocol.
The vault should've looped clean. No breach. No trace.
But there he was. A flicker. A man descending from the ceiling, masked, moving with purpose—too fast, too precise to be a civilian.
Calyx enhanced the frame. "Override AI filters. Ghost Reader permissions – Veil 994."
The system obeyed reluctantly.
For a fraction of a second, she saw it: not a man, but an anomaly—outside the loop. Beyond Ministry surveillance.
A temporal black hole.
Her pulse spiked.
Someone had used a dead man's loop to enter a vault.
Someone had outmaneuvered the Ministry of Temporal Control.
Back in the Slums
Rook's new ID burned against his wrist. The Broker had promised a clean rewrite, but already the tether was cracking. A red pulse blinked inside his lens:
"Tether instability detected. Lifespan leak: -0.03/hr."
He gritted his teeth and ducked into a collapsing shuttle bay, rerouting his signal to mimic a sanitation drone. It wouldn't hold for long.
He checked the pulse-dampening bag again—empty. The orb was gone. Payment to the Broker.
But something still clung to him. A shimmer. A residue.
They weren't tracking the ID.
They were tracking the echo.
Suddenly, the HUD blinked red.
"MINISTRY SCAN DETECTED."
"AGENT CALYX VEIL: PROXIMITY – 2.7km."
"LIFESPAN LOCK ENABLED."
Rook's breath hitched.
Even without the orb, he was glowing like a flare on the Ministry's surveillance net. He'd touched a piece of time too pure, too dangerous—and now, he was marked.
Not just as a criminal.
As an anomaly.
Ministry Briefing Room – Level 47
The conference table buzzed as surveillance feeds shimmered into view.
Commander Rahm glared at the largest screen: Elias Wren's death replayed on loop. No signs of trauma. No attacker.
Just—drainage. As if his years had been vacuumed.
Veil stood still as stone.
"I found a ripple," she said. "A thirty-one-second blackout in the vault loop."
Rahm's face paled. "Impossible. That loop is protected by triple recursion."
"Exactly," she whispered. Then showed the glitch.
The flicker. The man. The breach.
No face. No ID. No time signature.
"He moved through the vault like he belonged there. Like time didn't apply to him."
Rahm leaned forward. "Are you suggesting he's a Clockwalker?"
Veil shook her head. "Worse. He's not walking time." She tapped the screen. "He's rewriting it."
Back in the Alley
Rook vaulted onto a rooftop and looked down at the city—its arteries of light, its skyscrapers glowing with stored lifespans.
Each citizen a candle.
Each breath a bargain.
Each second a cost.
And somewhere, buried beneath government encryption and military-grade silence, a secret project was ticking: Project ChronoLock.
If what the Broker said was true… the Ministry didn't just tax time.
They were trying to stop it.
Permanently.
Ministry Internal Log: Veil 994 – Private Entry
"Subject has breached a sovereign vault and accessed Wren's orb."
"What Wren was about to expose must've been enough to get him erased."
"And this thief—this glitch—walked right through it."
"I don't know if I want to catch him… or join him."
— Calyx Veil