Novels by A.C

"Run."The voice was Adrian's own.Footsteps thundered through the darkness. Adrian caught Evelyn's wrist and dragged her toward the service entrance while Hale stumbled behind them, swearing. Something slammed into a wall. Somewhere, metal shrieked against metal.He didn't look back. He had seen his own face at the end of that corridor, and he had heard it say one of us has to lose."Left," Evelyn gasped."You know the way?""I know this building." She sounded certain, and that bothered him more than doubt would have. "Left. Then the stairs."His phone light swung across abandoned examination rooms, overturned trolleys, cabinets hanging open. Under the dust and disinfectant lay something sour.He slowed.A hospital bed stood in the middle of the hall. Restraints hung from its rails, their buckles stained brown. A sheet covered something beneath.The sheet moved.A hand slipped out, fingers twitching, then curling around the railing. A wet, shallow breath rattled under the cloth."Kee

The old Halcyon medical complex had been closed for eleven years.Adrian had searched for it before they left the storeroom. The official records blamed structural instability, contaminated equipment, and a funding dispute. The city had fenced the property off and moved its patients elsewhere. Nothing mentioned Meridian, experiments, or a man who had died on September twelfth and woken the next morning with the world still ahead of him."Remind me why we're not calling the police," he said."Because they'd ask why a man whose death was recorded on September twelfth is walking around asking questions," Evelyn said."I could lie.""You're terrible at pretending you're normal."They reached it a little after one. Concrete walls stained by rain, weeds crowding the lot, a faded sign above the entrance: HALCYON MEDICAL RESEARCH AND TRAUMA CENTER. Someone had scratched through the words medical research.Two cameras sat above the doors. One hung crooked, its lens pointed at the ground. The o

The storeroom held its breath.Adrian wiped the blood from his lip and looked at the two people who had every answer and kept handing him pieces.“The drive has a third file,” he said. “It’s locked. Hale, open it.”Hale looked up from his crate. “Not on a network.”“The burner has none. I made sure.”He set the silver drive on a pallet, fitted the adapter, and held out the phone. Hale hesitated, then typed a long string without looking at the keys. His hands shook.The folder opened to a single image.A laboratory under harsh white light. A steel examination table, instruments laid out on a trolley, a dark stain on the floor beside it. In the corner, a timestamp: SEPTEMBER 12, 2026. 11:47 P.M.A man stood by the table, half turned from the glare, one hand against a glass panel. His eyes were on whoever held the camera.Adrian’s face. His scar above the left eyebrow.Behind him, scratched into the glass, three words:DO NOT RESTORE.Adrian’s mouth went dry. He had spent a day believing

The phone had gone silent, but Adrian could still hear his own voice.I want my life back.It had the calm certainty he used when scheduling a drone run or calculating how long a shipment would last. It hadn't sounded like a threat. It had sounded like a man reclaiming something that had been taken.He turned to Hale. "Call him back."Hale stayed against the wall, one hand pressed to his ribs. "I can't.""Then give me the number.""There isn't one. That call came through the old internal switchboard. Only someone inside the project could route it." He swallowed. "I don't know who's on the other end."Adrian gripped the front of his shirt. "You answered it like you did.""I answered because I was afraid not to."For the first time, Hale looked frightened of the man in front of him."I don't know what you are," he whispered.Adrian let go.The words went deeper than they should have. He had spent three years surviving by reading rooms, measuring hesitation, knowing when someone was abou

"There was also a man standing beside the table. Alive. Calm. Watching me write. He had your face."Adrian stared at Evelyn.The words hung in the damp air of the ferry terminal, more disturbing than the certificate, more impossible than two records on a silver drive. A man with his face, watching a woman sign his death."Describe him," Adrian said."He looked exactly like you.""That isn't a description."Her fingers tightened on her bag strap. "Same height. Same build. Same scar above the left eyebrow."Adrian's hand rose to it before he could stop himself. He had gotten it at fourteen, falling against a broken window while chasing a football. It was a private memory, one he had never shared with anyone in this timeline.Either someone had copied his face, or someone had copied his life."Did he speak?""He told me not to put his name on anything. He said, If you write it down, they'll find me.""Find him where?""I don't know. An alarm went off. When security came in, he was gone,

The first person Adrian called after finding his own death certificate was the woman who had signed it.She answered on the fourth ring."You have thirty seconds to explain your signature."Silence. Through the burner, his ability gave him nothing, only the sound of her breathing."Where did you get that?" Evelyn asked."That's not an answer.""Neither is your question.""Twenty seconds.""Are you counting down like this is a negotiation?""It becomes one when you start lying.""Adrian." Her voice sharpened. "Are you alone?""Why?""Because if that certificate is genuine, someone made a mistake letting you see it. Not over the phone. The old ferry terminal, twenty minutes. Come alone. Don't bring the drive."The line went dead.Adrian photographed the certificate, sealed the paper in a plastic sleeve, and locked it in a compartment beneath the warehouse desk. Claire's copied files went into a different drawer. He had learned in the dead world never to keep everything in one place.Out