Zurich – 4:48 A.M.Rehn’s boots echoed on the stone pavement as he exited the antique shop, clutching the photo in shaking hands. His breath fogged the glass as he held it up again. That face Voss clear as day, etched into 1963 history, decades before he was born.He had to know more. He flagged down a cab, tossed a burner phone on the seat beside him, and muttered, “Airport. Marrakesh. Now.”Cairo – 3:59 A.M.The flash drive was still plugged into the air-gapped tablet. The screen now read:PROJECT: TIMELOCKLoop Anchor Detected: MNEMOSYNESubject: VOSS.DAMIEN.1983 / [Pattern match across 43 timelines]Status: MEMORY STABILITY: FRAGMENTINGCountermeasure Suggested: Reintegration ProtocolVoss stared at the screen like it was rewriting his DNA in real time.He turned to the woman. “You said this was about memory. What happens if mine breaks?”She didn’t blink. “The whole system breaks with you.”“Why me?”“You’re not just a man, Voss. You’re an anchor. A checksum. A living piece of th

Geneva, Switzerland – 3:22 A.M. (Local Time)The wind howled down the deserted boulevards of the diplomatic quarter. Snow fell in thick, silent curtains. Damien Voss stood outside the decaying shell of the 1969 Geneva Protocol Summit Hall, a ruin hidden behind scaffolding and international disinterest. To most, it was an architectural corpse from a long-forgotten treaty.But to Voss, it pulsed like a nerve. A phantom echo pulling at him. He stepped through the rusted gate.His hand didn’t tremble when he used the silver keycard. The ground-level utility door beeped once, hissed open… and revealed a rust-stained stairwell descending into blackness.He didn’t hesitate.Twenty-two meters below groundThe basement was colder than the air above, but it wasn’t abandoned. Dust coated everything, but the floor showed recent footprints, multiple sets. Power lines hummed somewhere beneath the concrete. The hallway was lined with doors. Each marked only by a single number and a rusted NATO seal.

Geneva – Mnemosyne Facility, Sublevel BGLOBAL MEMORY RESET IN: 10:22The numbers glowed red on the terminal, blinking with a pulse like a heartbeat.Voss held the hybrid keystore in his hand. It was warm. Organic. Its surface throbbed faintly, like it was alive, or waiting to be. His older self watched from the pod, eyes sharp but body still failing.“You won’t survive the upload,” he said.Voss raised an eyebrow. “That supposed to scare me?”“It’s not about fear. It’s about pain. You won’t just absorb TRINITY’s code, you’ll absorb every memory across every timeline you ever lived. All at once. All of them flooding into your mind.”Voss turned to the central terminal.INSERT KEYSTORE TO PROCEED COUNTERLOOP PROTOCOL STANDING BYHis hand hovered over the port. Then stopped.What if I lose myself?What if I don’t come back as me?But another voice pushed through. Malik’s. From a lifetime ago, or maybe just yesterday.“You don’t have to be a hero. You just have to be human.” He breathed

Kyoto, Japan – 2:11 A.M. A cold wind swept across the moss-covered steps of Mount Kurama. Hidden beneath centuries of spiritual history, a system pulsed like a secret heartbeat.Damien Voss stood at the temple gates, staring at the stone torii archway, half-crumbled, its wood scarred with symbols that weren’t religious, they were technical. Carved in ancient brush strokes, they weren’t prayers.They were commands. Behind him, Eva Malik approached quietly, “You made it,” Voss said without turning.She stood beside him. “How much of it do you remember?”“All of it.”“Even us?”He hesitated. “Even the versions that didn’t happen.”A beat passed. “Then why bring me here?” she asked.Voss finally turned. “Because if I’m the lock,” he said, “you might still be the key.”Underground — Kurama Phase FacilityA hallway lit by antique lanterns met them. Except the glow wasn’t fire, it was from beneath, filtered through translucent digital panels. The deeper they went, the more ancient and advanc

Location Unknown – "The Folded City"Fog rolled over the broken skyline like breath over a mirror. Neon signs in Russian, Arabic, and Japanese blinked side by side, glitching in and out of sequence. Airships hovered beside horse-drawn carriages. A cracked iPhone lay next to a reel-to-reel recorder. Time was bleeding.This was The Folded City, a junction point where fractured timelines converged. It was beautiful. It was wrong. And Voss was already here. He sat at a rusted café table beneath a billboard that alternated between a Coca-Cola ad from 1965 and a war broadcast from 2037. Across from him sat a girl, nine, quiet, intense. The same one from Geneva. “You found me,” she said.“You weren’t hiding,” Voss replied.“No. Just waiting for the world to catch up.”He watched her, unsettled. “Who are you?”She smiled. “I’m you. But without the burden.”Cut To – Zurich, 3:12 A.M.Julien Rehn stared at the new world map projected across the Atlas Room wall. It wasn’t a map anymore. It was a