Her grip was like iron.Bobby barely had time to scream before Margaret’s hand was around his throat, slamming him backward into the alley wall. Pain exploded behind his eyes. His breath caught in his throat, strangled by panic and pressure.Margaret’s face hovered inches from his—expressionless, eyes glowing faintly in the dark like embers buried under ash.“You run like a child,” she whispered. “But you belong to time now. And we're running out of time.”---Bobby clawed at her hand. Kicked at her shins. Nothing worked. Her grip tightened.Spots flickered in his vision. The world tilted. He could barely hear her now—just fragments through a buzz of blood in his ears.“Bob’s shadow is growing,” she said. “You either fade… or become it.”Something cracked in Bobby’s chest. The weight of those words—and the literal pressure on his lungs—felt like the end.---Then a blur of motion—metal glinting.CRASH!Margaret was knocked aside like a ragdoll, her body slammed into the dumpster with

Bobby didn’t sleep that night.He lay wide-eyed in bed, the blanket tight around him, the final message from Future Bob repeating like a siren in his skull.“It begins tomorrow.”Every hour, he checked the time.Every creak in the house made him flinch.Every shadow that passed under his door stretched too long.But morning came like it always did.---The sun shone through the blinds. Birds chirped as if time hadn’t been threatened the night before. Bobby rose from bed, moving like a ghost.He got dressed. Ate something without tasting it. Walked to the door.BF-85 was already there, waiting like a sentinel.Nothing felt different.And that made everything worse.---School passed in a blur of white noise.He didn’t hear the teachers. Didn’t notice who sat beside him in class. Didn’t laugh at the jokes that used to make him crack a smile.He kept expecting something—someone—to burst in.A Looper. Lyra. Margaret. Someone to say, “Time’s up.”But the day went on.The final bell rang.A

For a moment, time itself seemed to stop.XX-66’s voice echoed through the empty field, each word like a blade dipped in ice:“Would you like a demonstration?”Bobby’s breath hitched. His heart pounded so loud he could barely hear anything else. Darius didn’t move—but his hand subtly inched toward the pulse gun holstered at his side.XX-66 turned fully now, its polished black body glinting beneath the moonlight.“Secondary entity identified: Darius Cross. Threat classification pending.”Its arms extended. Not a weapon, not yet—but something was shifting, humming low in its chest. Energy gathering.“Wait!” Bobby shouted, stepping in front of Darius. “Don’t.”The robot froze.A perfect stillness.“Explain,” it said.Bobby stood his ground, chest heaving. “He’s not a threat. He’s with me.”“He is not part of the protected timeline. His record diverges from Core Protocol.”“He’s trying to stop what I become!” Bobby snapped. “That should make him part of the protocol!”The lights on XX-66’

Bobby didn’t move for a long time.He stood in the alley long after the Echo Looper had vanished, after the last of the blue glow had dissolved into the night air, after XX-66 retracted its arm with a smooth click of metal and stepped silently aside.The words still echoed.“It’s far from over. Just you wait and see. You will definitely be killed sooner or later.”They clung to his thoughts like oil in water, impossible to separate, impossible to ignore. The man had been dead the second he stepped into that alley—erased from time—but his words lived on.Bobby’s fists trembled. Not with fear. Not completely.With pressure.With the weight of too many questions and not enough answers.XX-66 didn’t speak. It simply turned, scanning the area, as if Bobby’s reaction wasn’t even part of the equation. As if the robot had completed a task and was now waiting for the next directive.But Bobby couldn’t just move on.That Looper hadn’t been just threatening him—he’d sounded sure. Certain. Like h

The air was thick with smoke and static, the aftertaste of ozone clinging to Bobby’s tongue. His ears rang from the chaos of the last few minutes—the capture, the fight, Lyra’s shocking return. But the only thing that mattered now was the gleaming black shadow standing in front of them.XX-66.It loomed over the cracked concrete floor of the warehouse, its obsidian plating gleaming in fractured beams of moonlight, faceless except for that eerie blue ring of light circling across its polished visor. Beside it, were four other robots that seemed much like BF-85. Darius had his pulse gun raised. Lyra had positioned herself between Bobby and the machine, her breathing ragged, one hand clutching her side.And Bobby… Bobby couldn’t even breathe.He had been yanked around too many times in too few days. First, Lyra was an enemy. Then she was dead. Now she was alive—alive and pulling him away from XX-66 like she had always been on his side.None of it made sense.“Move,” XX-66 said, voice a