2025-07-06 17:49:46Bobby couldn't speak. The man’s grip on his hoodie was firm and unyielding, difficult for him to break free. It was not violent but it didn’t feel optional. His breath was shallow as if air couldn't help him further.
“Stop running,” the man said again. His voice had a low, measured quality and a mysterious weight, as though it had been used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He didn’t shout. Didn’t move aggressively. Just held Bobby there, on the cold concrete floor of the storm tunnel, as if waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. “I’m… I’m not who...who you think,” Bobby stammered, throat sore. The man's eyes were steady, focused and calculating, but not vicious, his eyes shone in the tunnel's darkness. “You’re Bobby Stokes,” he said flatly. Bobby's jaw jerked. Before the man could say anything further, a faint voice echoed down the tunnel. “Who’s over there?” The man turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing. Upon hearing the voice, he released Bobby and stepped backward into the darkness. “Mark my words. I’ll come for you again and next time, I won’t hesitate to kill you,” he said with a cold voice. Then—gone. No sound of footsteps. No echo. Just absence. It was as if the tunnel had consumed him. Bobby's heart sounded like a drum that had gone insane as he remained frozen and breathless. The last word, the one that resonated harder than the others, was: Kill. Why? Why would he want to kill him? What had Bobby done—or would do—that made him a target? His body finally obeyed. He swung backwards, shaking his legs as he attempted to stand, and then stumbled towards the voice that had been heard. It turned out that an elderly man was jogging his dog through the park near the drainage system. “You alright, kid?” the man asked. Bobby nodded stiffly, lying with his eyes. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… tripped.” He didn’t go straight home. He wandered through side streets and empty sidewalks for an hour. His mind was consumed by the man's still eyes and penetrating cold voice. --- When he finally returned home, he closed the door and locked it. Then—dashed to his room, breathing shallowly, and slumping into his chair as if it was a lifeboat. The phone buzzed. He nearly dropped it. One new message. No contact. No timestamp. Just one line: “Don’t trust anyone. Not even them.” – B His fingers trembled as he read it. Not even them? Who was “them”? Another message followed: “They’ll lie. They’ll come pretending to help you. Friends. Family. Teachers. Cops. None of them can stop what’s coming. You have to trap him before he resets the timeline.” Bobby’s mind reeled. Reset the timeline? What did that mean? A third message: “His name is Darius Cross. He’s a fragment—sent back to erase you before the loop begins. If he kills you now, the future changes. You must build a trap. You have the tools. I left the plan buried in your old science fair notebook. Page 47. You’ll know it when you see it.” Bobby threw himself at the bookshelf, pulling out the battered, spiral-bound notebook filled with scribbles and blueprints from last year’s failed science fair idea. He turned to page 47. There, under messy sketches of a homemade electromagnetic coil and scribbled formulas, were strange notes—ones he didn’t remember writing: “Entropy loop = feedback cage?” “Temporal bait: emotionally charged object??” “Reversed phase polarity to disrupt quantum echoes—capture window < 13 seconds.” It read like a madman’s brainstorming—but it was in his handwriting. Future Bob had been planning this for a while. He read it again. Slower. Then again. A plan started to form. --- He spent the rest of the night collecting parts—rummaging through junk drawers, old devices, scavenging resistors, wires, anything copper or magnetic. He dismantled an old microwave and retrieved the magnetron. Took off the antenna from a remote-controlled drone that was broken. His room seemed like a battlefield between RadioShack and chaos theory. The trap—if it worked—would act like a localized time snare. Based on feedback interference and microwave amplification, it would temporarily disorient or freeze anything synchronized with a shifted timeline signature. Like Cross. Bobby didn’t know how he knew that. But deep down, he did. The hardest part would be the bait. He needed an object emotionally tied to himself—something that pulsed with his memory, his presence. Something that would call Darius Cross toward it. He opened his desk drawer and gazed at the cracked phone. The one that had first received the warning. His fingers hovered over it. That thing had felt like death in his hand—but it was also the start of everything. He wrapped it in a coil of copper wire, taped it to a battery pack, and wired it into the trap’s core. --- By morning, he was exhausted. But the rig was ready. At least... ready enough. He had chosen a spot: the far end of the storm tunnel, where water dripped and no light reached. A perfect place to hide something… or someone. He stuffed the components into a duffel bag and waited until nightfall. He knew Cross would come again. --- The next evening, the trap was set. He wired it behind an old maintenance panel. His cracked phone was the bait and was placed on a milk crate in the center of the tunnel, emitting a faint glow. He connected a copper trigger wire to a handheld switch in his jacket. All he had to do was close the circuit. He backed away, hiding behind a corner where the shadows ate everything. And he waited. His heart was beating so loud—to the extent he feared that it might give him away. The phone sat there. Flickering. Calling. Time passed. Then… footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Echoing against the concrete. Bobby’s breath caught. A figure made its way through the tunnel—tall, sharp, and indisputable. Darius Cross. He strolled with purpose, his eyes fixed on the phone as if it was whispering secrets only his ears could pick. With each step he took, the air grew heavier. His coat swung behind him like it was partly a shadow of himself. One footstep. Then another. He stepped closer. Then closer—five steps away. Bobby’s thumb hovered over the switch. Please work, he begged in silence. Please freeze him. Cross paused. His head turned slightly. He sniffed the air—slowly. Then… smiled. A cold, quiet smile. He took one more step. Just one. Bobby pressed the switch. And then— CRACK. The tunnel exploded in white-blue sparks as the copper coil burst with static. The phone let out a mechanical whine. Light bent inward like something had folded space. Darius Cross froze. Mid-step. Mid-breath. His limbs shook violently—then held. Trapped. For now. But Bobby knew it wouldn’t last. Cross’s eyes slowly turned in Bobby’s direction. Even paralyzed… he was watching. And then, impossibly—He moved.
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Chapter Eight
Smoke still hung in the air when Bobby got back up.His knees wobbled, ribs burning with every breath. The explosion had knocked the wind out of him. He staggered, coughing rapidly before blinking through the haze that curled and danced like ghostly fingers around the wreckage.But there was no time to rest.His hands, scraped and trembling, moved on instinct—reconnecting wires, recalibrating what was left of the trap. He didn’t need to think anymore. The process lived in his fingers now, like muscle memory etched by desperation. Strip the copper. Twist the leads. Check polarity. Ground the coils.His heart thudded like a war drum. Too fast, too loud. He kept one ear tuned to the shadows, the other to the soft buzz of electricity.The woman was gone. Cross had vanished too. But Bobby wasn’t fooled. He hadn’t won anything. Not yet.This wasn’t over. It was only a pause in a longer game.He had one more trick. One last backup—one that didn’t rely on hope or chance or Future Bob’s warnin
Chapter Seven
Bobby pressed the trigger.The jammer in the lunchbox came alive with a low, vibrating hum—like a hornet trapped in a glass jar. A burst of compressed electromagnetic static filled the air, silent to the ear but deafening to anything even remotely electronic.Across the courtyard, Darius Cross jerked mid-step. His eyes widened—not in fear, but in surprise. His hand shot instinctively toward the device strapped to his wrist. The glowing symbols across its face flickered—then went dark.His body staggered as if gravity had shifted. One foot slid, unbalanced. He stumbled forward, caught himself, and looked up—straight at the library window where Bobby was watching.Bobby hid down immediately—his heart pounding.It worked.He didn’t know for how long. The pulse wasn’t strong—maybe five seconds of disruption, maybe less. But for the first time since this nightmare began, he had made Cross falter.He peeked back over the windowsill. The man was gone. Not teleported—vanished. No shimmer. No
Chapter Six
For a moment, Bobby thought the trap had worked. Darius Cross stood frozen, one leg forward, arms locked mid-stride like a statue struck in motion. The crackling feedback of the EM coils buzzed through the tunnel, the glow from the device pulsing in sync with Bobby’s racing heart. And then—He moved. Just a twitch. A slight tilt of the head. Then the fingers on his right hand uncurled slowly, mechanically—like a puppet breaking free from invisible strings. “No…” Bobby whispered. “No, no, no.” Cross’s eyes flicked up. Locked onto Bobby’s. They were no longer cold—they were angry. He stepped forward, snapping the last of the trap’s restraint as if it were nothing but cobwebs. Sparks exploded from the makeshift rig. The copper wire turned black and melted. The bait phone died instantly, screen going dark like a blink. Bobby turned and ran. His legs moved on impulse, dodging broken bricks, going under low pipes, feet splashing through shallow water. His lungs burned while his mind scr
Chapter Five
Bobby couldn't speak. The man’s grip on his hoodie was firm and unyielding, difficult for him to break free. It was not violent but it didn’t feel optional. His breath was shallow as if air couldn't help him further.“Stop running,” the man said again.His voice had a low, measured quality and a mysterious weight, as though it had been used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He didn’t shout. Didn’t move aggressively. Just held Bobby there, on the cold concrete floor of the storm tunnel, as if waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.“I’m… I’m not who...who you think,” Bobby stammered, throat sore.The man's eyes were steady, focused and calculating, but not vicious, his eyes shone in the tunnel's darkness.“You’re Bobby Stokes,” he said flatly.Bobby's jaw jerked. Before the man could say anything further, a faint voice echoed down the tunnel.“Who’s over there?”The man turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing.Upon hearing the voice, he released Bobby and stepped backwar
Chapter Four
The phone vibrated again in Bobby’s trembling hand, as if impatient.“Took you long enough. We don’t have much time. – B”He read it three times. Four. Each time his throat grew tighter."Took you long enough."So Future Bob had been waiting."We don’t have much time."Which meant something worse was coming. Or maybe... it was already here. Bobby didn’t move. He gazed at the screen as if the text itself might transform into something with hands and strangle him.Then the screen flickered. Just once. Barely noticeable. Like a blink. And then—it was gone. The message disappeared. No notification. No history. No trace in the inbox. Gone, like a whisper in fog.---He spent the next hour trying to retrieve it—scanning system logs, poking through cache directories. But the phone was too old, too basic. It didn’t even keep temp files without root access. And Bobby wasn’t about to root his one working connection to the future and risk bricking it.He eventually gave up on the search and sat
Chapter Three
Bobby ran until his legs gave out. Not metaphorically—literally. His lungs felt like they were on fire. His throat was sore from swallowing cold air. As he slowed down behind a dumpster near the old train station, his hoodie was saturated with sweat and his heart was straining to escape his chest.He collapsed behind the rusted metal, leaning against the brick wall. The image was still charred into his mind: the man standing at the bus stop, completely still. Neatly polished shoes. Tactical coat. Eyes sharp and cold as ice.And then… that step forward. Just one. That was all Bobby had needed.That, and the message from the shattered phone replaying in his skull like a warning bell:"A tall black man with a bald head, and a brown stylish mustache is coming after you. Please, avoid him at all costs"It didn’t feel real. None of it. The man’s presence had frozen time, like Bobby had stumbled into the middle of a movie scene—only this one was directed by panic and lit with dread. Was it a
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