2025-07-05 01:23:10Bobby couldn't sleep that night. He lay in bed—his body covered with a blanket—all the way to his chin. He was staring at the ceiling as faint cracks divided the paint like lightning veins. His heart was still pounding. Every creak of the house made him flinch often. He was haunted by fear.
The shattered screen of his phone lay next to him. It was as lifeless as the silence. The message still played repeatedly in his mind: "Your life is in great danger. A tall black man with a bald head, and a brown stylish mustache is coming after you. Please, avoid him at all costs. I’ll contact you again. —Bob, from the future." He’d tried everything—restarting his phone (no luck), scanning it with his laptop (no connection). The message was gone. Wiped. Like it had never existed. But Bobby knew what he saw. What he felt. The lights flickering. The radio hissing. The phone screen cracking in his hand. It doesn't seem like a prank. It wasn’t a dream—it was real. And it didn't seem like a coincidence either. Someone—or something—had broken the rules of reality just to talk to him. And that someone had been… himself. “Bob, from the future.” He whispered it loudly, testing how it sounded. It didn’t feel real to him. Not yet. But it would. --- Bobby showed up late for school the next morning. He walked quickly, cutting down the side alleys behind Maple Street and avoiding the main roads. He kept his hood up. Head down. Eyes darting to every car, every stranger. He kept waiting to see him. The man from the message. Tall. Black. Bald. Stylish mustache. It was all burned into his brain now. What if he wasn’t a stranger? What if he’d seen him before and just hadn’t noticed? What if he was already watching? --- School passed in a blur of paranoia. In Chemistry, Bobby couldn’t focus. The beakers might as well have been made of fog. He stared out the window the entire period, watching a delivery van sit parked too long across the street. In History, he flinched when the projector buzzed and cast a glitchy red image on the wall. He kept checking the power sockets beneath his desk—hoping to spot or find another spark, another flash, another clue. Just something helpful. In the cafeteria, he was seated in the far back corner, his back closer to the wall, barely digging into his sandwich while acting as if he is scrolling through his broken phone—a pretense he decided to indulge in. He could barely even tell why he brought it in the first place. The screen was still cracked. The top corner flickered sometimes, and phantom inputs made it behave like it had a ghost of its own. But it felt like a relic now. A symbol. Proof that something had changed. That he had changed. --- The notebook became his anchor. He filled it between classes, during lunch, even while pretending to pay attention. Page after page of theories, warnings, and diagrams: EM pulses = temporal triggers? Digital time-stamping = loophole for message embedding? Did the signal piggyback on microwave traffic? Wi-Fi? 5G? He even started sketching out a new device—something stronger than his signal-scanner app. Maybe a modified SDR (software-defined radio) rig with a dedicated quantum noise filter. Something capable of scanning not just space, but time. If Future Bob could send a message… maybe Bobby could send one back. But the questions wouldn’t stop. Why was he in danger? Why had he sent the warning? And most important of all: Was the man actually trying to hurt him? --- When the day ended, Bobby's hoodie was already soaked in sweat. His palms were clammy. His thoughts were undergoing a relay race he couldn’t stop. He told himself he won't head straight home. If there was a possibility that someone would follow him, he didn’t want to lead them to his doorstep. He felt that would be very risky. So he explored other routes home, crossed through the alley by the Dollar Matt, and eagerly climbed up to the overpass closer to the train tracks— such is a spot where he sometimes came to think and relax mentally. It overlooked the main road, a sluggish river of cars slowly moving towards rush hour. Down below, horns honked and tires screeched while the wind tossed trash around from a distance above. He sat on the concrete edge, watching traffic crawl beneath him while his legs were dangling. The afternoon sun decorated the atmosphere in dusty gold. Distant sirens wailed like some mechanical banshee. He tried to breathe through it. Tried to find calm in the chaos. But everything felt sharp—edges on every sound, every thought. His nerves were live wires. Was he being watched? Was someone really after him? He kept seeing that message in his head. “Hey, freak!” The voice snapped him out of it. Derek again—football jacket, smug smile, flanked by two of his goons. Like some bad dream that refused to end. Bobby stood up fast, his legs stiff from sitting. “Not today.” “Aww, come on,” Derek mocked. “We missed your genius lectures on wormholes or whatever.” His friends snickered like backup singers to his every insult. “I said not today,” Bobby repeated. He tightened his fists, trying to prevent them from shaking uncontrollably. His voice was low but sharp. Derek moved further, closing a slight distance between him —nostrils blazing like he smelled something pungent—weakness. “Or what?” For a moment, Bobby didn’t answer. He just stared. Then something inside him cracked and flared. Not fear—something else. He stepped forward. Closer than he usually dared. “I know what you are,” Bobby said softly. “And I know what I’m going to be.” Derek frowned. “What?” “I don’t need your permission to matter.” He didn’t shout it. He didn’t flinch. He just stared into Derek’s eyes, let the words hang there like smoke in the air. And then Bobby shoved past him. And for once… they didn’t follow. He didn’t turn around to check. He just walked. Maybe they were confused. Maybe they were too stunned to react. Or maybe—for once—he scared them. --- The sun was almost down by the time Bobby started walking home. The shadows were longer now. Stretching across the sidewalks like claws. He stuck to quieter streets, still paranoid. Every car that slowed made his stomach twist. Every stranger made his hand curl into a fist. He glanced at storefront reflections. Windows. Anything that might show someone behind him. Nothing. The further he got to home, the feeling grew worse. A pressure. Like something was about to snap. --- He turned towards the corner of Greenvale Street, a few distance from his house. And that’s when his eyes met him, standing firmly across the street that is closer to the bus stop. Tall. Black. Bald. Brown stylish mustache. It was like the message had stepped off the screen and into reality. Bobby froze. His heart pounded heavily. This time, it felt like a nail was hammered toward his ribs. His breathing went shallow. His mind screamed desperately to move but his legs refused to yield. They were locked in place. The man stood perfectly still. He wore a black coat. Not cheap, either. Something heavy, tactical. It swayed tenderly in the breeze. His shoes were neatly polished. His posture? Impeccable. He wasn’t talking. Wasn’t walking. Just watching. Not like a predator. Not like a friend. Just… studying as if trying to decide something. The street between them was empty. No cars. No sounds. Just wind. And then— The man took a step forward. Bobby blinked. That was all it took. He turned and ran.
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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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