For the next few minutes, Michael kept firing prying questions at me.
I kept most of my answers intentionally vague, carefully establishing a pattern of giving just enough truth to keep him engaged, and just enough ambiguity to keep him guessing.
To be clear, I didn't tell him a single lie. Not outright, at least. I simply relied on… selective honesty.
Whenever his questions edged too close to something I didn't want to answer, I redirected.
Whenever he pressed for specifics, I brushed it off as fragmented visions or incomplete glimpses. As dreams that felt real, but unreliable.
I established that my knowledge of the future wasn't perfect.
He caught on fairly quickly.
Michael wasn't as stupid as I liked to give him credit for.
"So you're saying you don't know when it happens," he said at one point, arms crossed as he paced a slow circle in front of me, "but you're sure that it does happen."
"Exactly," I replied.
He frowned, chewing on that. "Convenient."
