The subway tunnels became their world.For three days, Bobby, Lyra, and Darius lived in the dark beneath the city. The abandoned station smelled of damp rust and mold, the air thick and heavy, but it was the only place they could vanish.They lit no fires. Spoke only when necessary. Ate sparingly from whatever food Bobby had stuffed in his backpack, supplemented by stale crackers Darius had stashed.Every sound echoed too loudly. Every shadow looked like it could peel open to reveal a faceless machine stepping through.But XX-66 did not come.Not yet.---Bobby spent those days watching the others more than sleeping.Darius tried to hide how bad his injuries were, but the mottled bruises across his chest told the truth. His ribs had cracked like snapped branches; every breath made him wince.Lyra’s wound was no better. She’d managed to stop the bleeding, but the gash in her side was deep, and she burned with fever at night, shivering beneath the torn jacket she used as a blanket.Bobb

The strangers closed in.Their shadows lengthened across the gravel yard, stretching toward Bobby and Darius like claws.The tall man in the coat kept his hands raised, palms outward. His tone was calm, even reassuring, but his eyes never blinked.“We don’t want trouble,” he said.Bobby didn’t believe it for a second.He’d seen Loopers wear masks before, literally and otherwise. They’d passed for teachers, neighbors, friendly faces who lingered just long enough to cut him down.These strangers didn’t need glowing cracks or masks. There was something in their stillness—too precise, too sharp—that made Bobby’s skin crawl.Darius noticed it too. He adjusted his grip on the pulse gun, keeping it half-raised despite his injuries. His voice was a rasp, low but steady.“You’ve already found us,” he said. “So what now?”The man tilted his head slightly. “Now, we finish this.”---The others moved forward.Not with the uneven shuffle of scavengers, not with the cautious gait of survivors—but w

The phone screen glowed faint blue in the dark tunnel.Bobby’s pulse thundered in his ears as he forced himself to read the message again, making sure the words didn’t change, didn’t rearrange themselves into something less monstrous.“Kill Darius Cross.”The rest of the text followed like a blade twisting in his chest.“He will betray you. He already has. Don’t wait for it to happen. Do it first.”Bobby’s throat closed. His mouth went dry.It was one thing to hear Darius say the word deal, one thing to hear him tell the Echo Loopers he would end Bobby if the time came. But this…This was different.Future Bob wasn’t warning. He wasn’t predicting. He was ordering.---Bobby’s fingers hovered over the keypad. His chest heaved.No. Not him. Not Darius.He shut the phone off, tossed it down on his sleeping mat, and pressed his palms against his temples until his head hurt.Across the platform, Darius stirred in his sleep, coughing weakly. The man’s bandages were stained red, his breath s

Bobby barely slept after the vision.Every time he closed his eyes, the shards of light returned—flickering like broken mirrors in the dark, replaying those awful images of himself standing over cities in ruin, his golden-eyed reflection staring back.When dawn crept into the tunnels, thin and gray, he was still awake.And something pulsed in his skull.A low thrum.Not a headache. Not exactly.It was a rhythm, steady and insistent, like a heartbeat that wasn’t his own.He pressed his palms to his temples, breathing hard. But the rhythm only grew louder, until it filled his mind completely.And then he saw it.The ChronoCore.---It wasn’t like seeing with his eyes. It was deeper—etched inside his skull.A massive sphere of glass and metal, suspended in a void without walls. Its surface rippled with light and code, streams of glowing numbers that twisted like rivers. Symbols flickered across it—alien, unreadable, but somehow familiar.At its center, he glimpsed something darker. A sha

Bobby didn’t keep it from him this time.He couldn’t.The secret burned too hot, too heavy, gnawing at his ribs like fire. By dawn, when the pale light crept into the broken windows of the maintenance building, Bobby finally forced himself to speak.“I need to tell you something,” he said.Darius had just finished bandaging his side again, the rough strip of cloth spotted with old blood. He looked up, weary but sharp. “What is it?”Bobby’s throat felt dry. He pulled the folded scrap of paper from his pocket—the one with the coordinates scrawled in shaky ink—and set it down on the dusty floor between them.“He sent this.”Darius stared at it. His jaw tightened. He didn’t ask who. He already knew.“Coordinates,” Darius muttered, reaching out with trembling fingers. He unfolded the paper, scanned the numbers, and let out a long, tired breath. “Figures.”Bobby braced himself. “I want to go.”Darius’s head snapped up. “Absolutely not.”---Silence stretched. Dust hung in the air, caught in