The coffee tasted burnt. It always did at 7:18 a.m.
Lucas Hale stood near the office pantry, plastic cup warming his palm, watching the same three people pretend the same three conversations mattered. Someone laughed too loudly at a joke that wasn't funny. Someone complained about traffic like it was a personal tragedy. Someone mentioned a new show and waited for everyone to nod.
Lucas nodded on instinct. Smiled on autopilot. Then looked down at his phone again.
No new messages.
The screen went dark and reflected his face for half a second. He looked… normal. Too normal. Like the kind of man you'd forget five minutes after meeting him.
He wasn't ugly. He wasn't handsome. He wasn't remarkable in any way that made the world pause and say, There. That one matters.
He used to think that was safe.
Now it felt like a sentence.
"Lucas," his manager called from the hallway, voice sharp in a way that said I'm busy, so you should be anxious. "Conference room. Now."
Lucas set the coffee down and walked.
The company's walls were white and clean and aggressively optimistic, covered in posters about teamwork and innovation. He'd been here long enough to know those posters were warnings, not encouragement.
In the conference room, a man from HR sat beside his manager. A folder lay on the table like a small coffin.
Lucas didn't sit at first.
His manager gestured. "Sit."
Lucas sat.
The HR man smiled, lips stretched thin. "Lucas, thank you for coming in. This won't take long."
It never did.
They talked. Words like restructuring and realignment and not a reflection of your performance. The kind of vocabulary built to soften the impact of a boot.
Lucas listened, nodded, signed where they pointed. The HR man slid a paper toward him that looked like a lifeline until you realized it was rope.
At the end, his manager didn't meet his eyes.
"Good luck," the manager said, already halfway out the door.
Lucas walked out with a cardboard box, a stapler, a framed photo of a skyline he'd never visited, and a mug that said World's Okayest Employee.
He stepped into the elevator. The doors closed.
He looked at his reflection again.
Still normal.
But now there was something behind the normal. A pressure. A crack running through his thoughts like a hairline fracture in glass.
The elevator descended.
Floor 11. Floor 10. Floor 9.
His phone buzzed.
Lucas blinked and pulled it out.
A notification.
No sender. No app icon. Just a black rectangle on the lock screen with white text that didn't belong there.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HOW YOU DIE
His thumb hovered.
He waited for the second buzz, the follow up, the correction. The "Oops wrong number." The prank reveal.
Nothing came.
The elevator chimed. The doors opened to the lobby. People streamed in and out, laughing, living, making plans for dinners they assumed they'd reach.
Lucas stepped out.
The message remained.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HOW YOU DIE
A laugh rose in his throat, sharp and wrong.
He could almost hear himself telling a friend later, You won't believe what popped up on my phone today. Like this was the beginning of a funny story.
But he didn't have anyone he talked to like that anymore.
He stared at the screen until the letters seemed to pulse.
His life had been a series of small humiliations stacked politely on top of each other. Quiet disappointments. Doors that didn't open. Chances that went to someone louder, shinier, more certain.
He'd always told himself it was fine.
He'd always told himself there would be time.
Now the phone asked a question that made every excuse feel childish.
Lucas swallowed.
He tapped YES.
The lobby vanished.
Not like a fade. Not like a dream. It was instant, like someone had cut the world out with scissors.
For a fraction of a second there was nothing but darkness.
Then—
Cold air hit his lungs.
He could smell rain on asphalt. Metallic. Sharp.
His vision steadied and he realized he wasn't seeing through his own eyes anymore.
He was watching.
From above, slightly tilted, like a security camera mounted on a wall.
A street at night. Sodium streetlights. A convenience store sign flickering in the distance.
And there he was.
Lucas.
Same height. Same coat. Same slight slump in the shoulders, like his body had learned to apologize for existing.
He stood near the curb, looking down at his phone.
A car passed too fast, tires hissing on wet pavement.
Someone else was there.
A woman, a few steps away, half in shadow. Hood up. Face turned just enough that Lucas couldn't see her features.
But he felt her presence like gravity.
The version of Lucas on the street looked up.
His expression shifted.
Not fear. Not surprise.
Recognition.
Like he knew her.
The woman lifted her hand.
Something glinted.
A flash of metal.
Lucas's body jerked.
The sound arrived a heartbeat later—sharp, final.
Lucas stumbled back, hand pressed to his chest, fingers slick with dark liquid that spread too quickly.
He tried to breathe.
He couldn't.
His knees hit the pavement.
His phone fell from his hand and skidded across the wet street, screen still lit.
The woman didn't run.
She stepped closer, calm as a person finishing a task.
She leaned down.
Lucas tried to speak. His lips moved, but no words came out.
The woman's voice was soft. Almost gentle.
He couldn't hear what she said.
Then she touched his cheek with two fingers, like a strange kind of apology.
And Lucas died.
His eyes stayed open, staring at nothing.
Rain began to fall harder.
The scene froze.
Not a pause, not a still image. A lock, like a door clicking shut.
A line of text appeared across the darkness, white and clinical.
TIME UNTIL EVENT: 341 DAYS
Lucas sucked in a breath and nearly choked on it.
He was back in the lobby, staggered against the wall like he'd been punched. People walked past him without slowing. A security guard glanced at him once, then looked away.
Lucas's hand flew to his chest.
No blood.
No wound.
Just his own heartbeat, frantic and real.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold tile floor.
His phone trembled in his grip.
The screen was blank again, like nothing had happened.
Then one new line appeared, smaller than before.
YOU HAVE SEEN THE END.NOW CHANGE IT.
Lucas stared, mouth dry.
His mind tried to rationalize. Hallucination. Stress. A breakdown triggered by losing his job.
But the rain smell was still in his nose.
The exact angle of the streetlight. The way his own body fell. The feel of the moment when his lungs stopped working, even though he hadn't been the one breathing.
Too specific.
Too vivid.
Too cruel to be imaginary.
A tremor ran through his hands.
341 days.
Less than a year.
He looked up at the people in the lobby again, moving like they were immortal.
For the first time in his life, Lucas felt something clean cut through the fog of routine.
Fear.
Not the soft fear of bills and deadlines.
The hard fear of an ending.
He forced himself to stand. His legs felt weak, but they held.
He didn't know who the woman was.
He didn't know why she killed him.
He didn't know why he had been allowed to see it.
But one thing was suddenly, violently clear.
His life had been ordinary because he'd chosen ordinary.
And ordinary wouldn't save him.
Lucas shoved his phone into his pocket and walked out of the building, out into the daylight like a man who'd just returned from a place nobody else knew existed.
The city was bright. People were alive. Cars moved. The world pretended nothing had changed.
Lucas blinked against the sun.
He had 341 days to prove the world wrong.
And somewhere, in a future that now existed inside his bones, a hooded woman was already waiting.
He didn't notice he was shaking until he reached the sidewalk.
He didn't notice he was smiling until it was already there.
Because for the first time in years, his life had direction.
Not a plan.
Not a dream.
A deadline.
And Lucas Hale had never been good at meeting deadlines.
But this one—
This one would kill him if he didn't learn fast.
He started walking.
Not home.
Not to a bar.
Not to anywhere a normal man would go after being fired.
He walked like a man on a clock.
Because he was.
And he didn't have the luxury of being forgettable anymore.