I hit the ground so hard that the shock knocked the air out of me.
A dull ache crawled up my spine as I rolled onto my back, staring up at a sky fractured like cracked glass – light bleeding through in jagged, broken lines.
Not clouds.
Not stars.
Cracks.
Actual, physical cracks in the sky.
"Oh… fantastic," I mutteredweakly. "Another apocalypse."
The divergence generator sparked beside me, its stabilization reading flashing dangerously:
3%
One more jump at most.
Maybe.
The air buzzed with a faint, eerie hum like the world was vibrating at a frequency only dying things made. The ground pulsed beneath my palms, as if struggling to remain solid.
This timeline was almost gone.
I pushed myself upright and stumbled forward, surveying the landscape. The buildings around me flickered in and out of existence...some half-transparent, others dissolving at the edges like sand blown away by invisible wind.
A sign above a shop blinked sporadically:
EVERETT SQUARE - TIMELINE 18-F
Another branching city.
Another world on the brink.
I swallowed, throat dry.
"V-0 did this too?" I whispered.
My voice echoed strangely like the air was hollow.
As I walked, I noticed something even worse.
It wasn't just collapsing.
It was being erased.
Entire blocks were fading cleanly, precisely, as though deleted by a surgeon's hand—not the chaotic destruction of an accident.
This wasn't natural decay.
It was controlled.
Directed.
The capsule in my pocket pulsed in response.
Right. The memory fragment.
I found a half-intact bench and sat down, pulling the capsule out. Its interior particles glittered like tiny shards of frozen light. Before I could think too hard about it, I pressed it to the interface port on my wrist console.
The reaction was immediate.
The world around me dimmed.
My vision blurred.
A faint whisper echoed inside my head...my own voice.
Then,
A flash!
I'm standing in a white room.
Circular.
Featureless.
Blinding light spilling from every surface.
A humming machine stands at the center...a sphere of intertwining metal rings spinning around a core of pulsing light.
The Multi-Memory Engine.
Lyra is there.
Riven is there.
Several scientists I faintly recognize.
And me.
The version of me in the memory is frantic—typing, shouting.
"This is too unstable, shut it down!"
Someone off-screen yells back, "We can't! It's locked!"
The machine grows brighter.
Brighter.
Then the core fractures.
A blast of light rips outward.
Lyra screams.
I reach for her.
Riven falls.
The world tears apart.
I gasped, ripping the capsule away from my console. My hands shook violently.
That memory…
It felt too real.
Like it happened yesterday.
"What did we do?" Iwhispered. "What did I do?"
The collapsing skyline groaned above me...buildings warping like melting steel. I forced myself to stand, breathing through the dizziness.
This timeline was dying faster now.
A sudden crack like thunder split the air.
The sky fractured further, a massive fissure stretching across the horizon. Through the crack, I saw nothing but void.
Not darkness.
Absence.
My pulse quickened.
This wasn't a collapse.
This was erasure.
My wrist console vibrated. A faint voice emerged – glitching, strained.
"Aren? Aren, can you hear—?"
My heart lurched.
"Lyra?!"
Static.
Then again, clearer:
"Aren...you need to get out...before"
Her voice cut off abruptly.
"Lyra? Lyra!" I shouted into the empty air.
She was speaking through residual quantum interference. Her voice traveling across timelines. Only possible during severe instability.
Which meant she was close to a breach.
Or in danger.
Or both.
I took a step forward.
...And the world around me froze.
Not like a pause.
Like a stutter.
Buildings halted mid-collapse.
Dust hung motionless in the air.
My breath turned thick and heavy in my chest.
No.
Not him.
Not now.
A figure emerged from a crack in the sky, walking down the vertical fissure as if gravity didn't apply.
V-0.
He stepped onto the fading street, hands clasped behind his back, face perfectly calm.
"Aren," he said warmly. "You're progressing."
My jaw clenched. "You destroyed this timeline."
"No." He tilted his head. "We destroyed it. Years ago. I am simply finishing what you began."
My stomach twisted.
"Stop twisting this," I spat. "You're the one killing worlds."
"Because they were already dead," he replied smoothly. "You just never wanted to accept it."
"I saw what the Engine did," I said, rage and fear burning under my skin. "I know what we triggered."
His smile widened.
"Good. And when you remember the rest… you'll finally understand why only one of us can remain."
"I'm not letting you erase the multiverse."
"Erase it?" He chuckled softly. "I'm trying to spare it. Divergence is agony, Aren. Infinite suffering. Infinite failure. Wouldn't one perfect path be kinder?"
"No," I snapped.
His expression flickered. Brief disappointment.
"I hoped you'd see reason by now."
The ground beneath us cracked violently. A massive section of the street vanished into the void.
I stumbled backward as V-0 walked toward me, unconcerned.
"You're running out of timelines to hide in," he said. "Soon, you'll have to confront what you were. What you built."
"Then tell me," I demanded. "Tell me the truth."
He smiled sadly.
"You're not ready."
Another crack split the ground, rushing toward me.
The world was seconds from total erasure.
I grabbed the generator.
V-0 raised a hand.
"Running again?"
I gritted my teeth. "Surviving again."
The generator flickered...its last threads of energy gathering.
As the void surged up to swallow everything, I triggered the jump.
And the ghost timeline died behind me.