2026-01-19 23:05:16The visions came all at once.
Not flashes. Not fragments. A flood. Vincent dropped to one knee as the world tilted violently around him. His hands slammed into the floor, breath tearing out of his chest as images stacked on top of each other, faster than his mind could separate them. Fire. Glass. Screams. Metal twisting. A train derailment. A gas explosion in a mall. A high-rise elevator failure. Same time. Different locations. Hundreds of deaths. Engineered. “Vincent!” Lara shouted, grabbing his arm. He looked up at her, eyes unfocused. “They’re doing it,” he said hoarsely. “This isn’t correction. This is punishment.” “For what?” “For me not breaking.” He forced himself to his feet, every muscle screaming as the visions continued to assault him. The first event was less than thirty minutes away. “Tell me where,” Lara said, voice tight but steady. Vincent swallowed, forcing order into chaos. “Central transit hub,” he said. “If the train goes, the others follow. It’s the keystone.” Load-bearing deaths. This time, load-bearing lives. The transit hub was packed. Rush hour. Thousands of people moving through polished steel and glass, unaware they were standing on the edge of a statistical massacre. Vincent pushed through the crowd, Lara at his side. He didn’t slow. Didn’t apologize. His eyes scanned everything, faces, reflections, shadows. Endings were everywhere. So many that his head throbbed. “They designed this perfectly,” he muttered. “No single trigger. No single culprit.” “Then how do we stop it?” Lara asked. Vincent’s jaw tightened. “We don’t stop all of it,” he said. “We break the chain.” They reached the platform just as the incoming train’s lights appeared in the tunnel. Vincent froze. The vision sharpened. Sabotaged track switch. Train jumping rails at full speed. Cascade failure. He saw the exact second it would happen. Vincent didn’t think. He jumped. Security shouted. People screamed as he landed on the track bed, sparks flying as he sprinted toward the control panel at the far end. “Vincent, stop!” Lara yelled. He ignored her. The countdown in his head hit zero. Vincent slammed his shoulder into the panel and tore it open, fingers moving on instinct, guided by a future he was actively rewriting. The train screamed past him, too close, wind ripping his jacket, metal roaring like an angry god. The switch shifted. The derailment didn’t happen. For half a second, the world held its breath. Then fate struck back. A deafening boom echoed through the station. Not here. Elsewhere. Vincent staggered as a new vision forced itself into place. The mall. Fire. People trapped. He had saved one node. The system rerouted the damage. Lara was at his side instantly. “You did it—” “No,” Vincent said, shaking his head. “I delayed it.” Sirens wailed overhead. People were shouting now, panic spreading as news alerts exploded across phones. Vincent looked up. Screens around the station flickered to life. Breaking News. Explosion at Riverside Mall. Casualties unknown. Vincent’s fists clenched. “They want me to choose,” he said. “Who lives. Who balances the equation.” Lara met his gaze. “Then don’t choose.” Vincent laughed bitterly. “That’s still a choice.” Darius Vell watched the chaos unfold from his penthouse, jaw tight. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The system was supposed to correct quietly. Cleanly. Vincent Drake was tearing holes in it. “Casualty projections?” Darius asked. “Down,” the voice on the other end said. “But unstable. He’s interfering faster than we can compensate.” Darius slammed his glass onto the table. “Then expose him,” he snapped. “If he wants to be a variable, let the city see it.” Vincent felt the shift before he saw it. Cameras turned. Phones lifted. Someone had recorded him on the tracks. The footage spread in minutes. A man standing where no one should survive. Stopping a train with his own hands. Social media exploded. Who is he? Hero or terrorist? Was this staged? Vincent stared at a screen in a nearby shop window, watching himself become a headline in real time. “They’re making you visible,” Lara said. Vincent nodded slowly. “Good.” The final vision hit him then. The third disaster. The elevator failure. High-rise downtown. People he recognized now. People he’d saved before. People fate clearly wanted back. Vincent’s chest tightened. He turned. “Come on,” he said. “One more.” The high-rise was already locked down when they arrived. Fire alarms blared. Security shouted. Smoke curled from upper floors. Vincent pushed past barricades. “They’re dropping the elevators,” he said. “If they fall, it’s over.” “And if you stop it?” Lara asked. Vincent didn’t answer immediately. Because this one was different. This time, the vision showed him dying. Publicly. Brutally. Necessary. He met Lara’s eyes. “If I stop this,” he said quietly, “they kill me instead.” Lara’s breath hitched. “And if you don’t?” “Hundreds die,” Vincent replied. For the first time since this began, Vincent hesitated. Not out of fear. Out of weight. Lara grabbed his hand. “You once told me they don’t get to decide,” she said. “That includes your life.” Vincent closed his eyes. Then let go of the future. He ran. The elevator cables snapped as he reached the shaft. Vincent leapt. Pain exploded through his body as he grabbed the failing mechanism, muscles screaming, bones threatening to shatter. The vision fractured. Fate screamed. For one impossible moment, the ending vanished. The elevator stopped. Vincent fell. Everything went black. He woke to sirens. To shouting. To hands pulling him onto a stretcher. To a city that had not collapsed. Lara was there, tears streaking her face, laughing and crying at the same time. “You idiot,” she whispered. “You absolute idiot.” Vincent smiled weakly. “Still here,” he said. Above them, screens flashed the headline everywhere. UNKNOWN MAN PREVENTS MULTIPLE DISASTERS , CITY DEMANDS ANSWERS Somewhere far away, something ancient and hidden recalculated. The system had failed. And for the first time, it was afraid.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Truth Bleeds
Vincent did not sleep.Sleep was a luxury for people who believed tomorrow was guaranteed.He sat at the small wooden table, laptop open, phone beside it, lights off except for the glow of the screen. The city outside was quieter than usual, like it sensed something was coming.Lara watched him from the doorway.“You do not have to do this tonight,” she said softly.Vincent did not look up.“If I wait,” he replied, “he controls the narrative.”She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around herself.“And if you speak now?”“They will try to destroy me,” Vincent said. “Completely.”Lara swallowed.“They already are.”Vincent finally turned to her.“That is the difference,” he said. “Right now, I am a rumor. After tonight, I become a fact.”Silence stretched between them.Then Lara nodded.“Then do not lie,” she said. “Do not soften it. Do not protect them.”Vincent’s jaw tightened.“I will not,” he promised.Across the city, Darius Vell rehearsed his lies in front of a mirror.“You acted
The Price of Standing Still
Vincent’s surrender broke the city.Not with noise.With confusion.People stood frozen in the intersection, staring at the man who had just offered himself to save strangers. Phones trembled in hands. Cameras zoomed in. The air felt thick, like the city itself was holding its breath.Lara stood a few steps behind him, heart hammering so hard she could barely hear the sirens anymore.“Vincent,” she whispered.He did not turn.He kept his hands open, empty, visible.“I am here,” he said again, voice steady. “You want control. Take me.”The enforcers did not move.They were not programmed for surrender.Their calculations relied on resistance, on motion, on optimization through conflict. Vincent had removed every variable by refusing to run.Deep beneath the city, in a room that had never seen daylight, the system stalled.Probability trees collapsed into dead ends. Risk models contradicted themselves. Every simulation where Vincent lived required mass death. Every simulation where mass
When the City Becomes the Weapon
Vincent knew the city was about to turn on him before the first siren sounded.Not from a vision.From the silence.Traffic slowed without reason. Streetlights stayed red too long. Phones around him vibrated at the same time, then stopped. The air felt tight, like the moment before lightning splits the sky.Lara felt it too.“Something is wrong,” she whispered.Vincent nodded. “They stopped hiding.”They were standing on the roof of an unfinished building, high enough to see the city stretch endlessly in all directions. Normally, Vincent would see thousands of endings overlapping, messy, alive. Now, he saw alignment.Too clean.Too organized.“They’re deploying more enforcers,” Vincent said. “Not one. Several.”Lara’s throat tightened. “How many?”Vincent closed his eyes for half a second.“Enough to make this look like coincidence.”Across the city, accidents began.A city bus lost control and slammed into a barrier, injuring dozens but killing none. A power substation exploded, plun
The Trap Tightens
Vincent had always known the system would escalate.He just didn’t think it would strike this close.The call came at 3:02 a.m.Not a message. Not a vision. Real-time, physical proof that the hunt had begun in earnest.Lara’s apartment, completely destroyed.Shards of glass sparkled under the pale streetlights. Furniture overturned. Flames licked a corner from a knocked-over lamp. The smell of smoke and terror hung in the air.Vincent’s heart skipped.He sprinted.Lara was gone. Not kidnapped. Not left behind. But gone. A note lay on the charred counter.If you want her alive, come alone. No tricks. No witnesses. Time is running out.The handwriting… precise. Mechanical. Cold.He didn’t hesitate.The rendezvous point was an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city.Rain poured as Vincent arrived, every puddle reflecting the neon glow of flickering streetlights. He felt the enforcer’s presence before he saw him. Calm. Patient. Like a shadow that never slept.Lara was tied to a
Shadows That Kill
Vincent didn’t sleep.Not because he wanted to be awake. He slept so little because the city itself had become a trap. Every street corner, every passing car, every flickering light could be a signal that the enforcer, or the system itself was watching.Lara had been restless all night.“They’re escalating,” she whispered as Vincent checked the rooftops from their new safehouse. “I tracked three accidents already this morning. Not random, targeted.”Vincent didn’t answer immediately. He was scanning the streets below, reading probabilities in people’s movements like a second sight. A child crossing too close to a parked van. A delivery bike weaving recklessly. None of it was coincidence.“They’re using the city against us,” he said finally. “Every movement, every choice, they’re turning it into a weapon.”Lara swallowed. “And us?”Vincent’s jaw tightened. “Especially us.”The first attack came shortly after sunrise.A pedestrian bridge near a crowded market collapsed, not entirely, bu
Every Step is a Trap
Vincent didn’t sleep that night.He didn’t need to. Sleep meant vulnerability. And right now, vulnerability would be exploited.The city had changed. Every alley, every street, every shadow felt wrong. Traffic lights blinked as if hesitating. Pedestrians lingered too long at crosswalks, as if time itself had stalled for inspection. Vincent could feel the system probing, testing, learning… and recalculating.Lara leaned against the wall of their safe house, coffee in hand, pale from exhaustion.“They’re moving fast,” she said quietly. “All over the city.”Vincent didn’t respond immediately. His eyes were scanning every reflection in the room. Glass. Metal. Even the quiet hum of the refrigerator could be listening.“They’ve sent someone,” he finally said. “Someone who can see… like I can.”Lara froze.“What do you mean?” she whispered.“The system doesn’t play fair anymore,” Vincent said. “It sent a human enforcer. One who can anticipate endings. One who can adapt.”“Adapt how?” she ask
You may also like
