The Chronos Effect
Chapter One: The First Death
The thing about watching someone you love die is that it happens in slow motion and at light speed all at once. Amy's eyes found mine in that last second before the truck hit us, and I swear I could see her entire life flash across her face. Not her life flashing before her eyes—that's something different. This was her life reflecting in her eyes, like looking into a pool of water and seeing the sky.
Then everything went black.
When I woke up, I was still in the car, but something was wrong. The dashboard clock read 7:23 AM, which couldn't be right. The accident happened at 11:47 PM. I knew because I'd been checking the time constantly during dinner, worried we were staying out too late on a work night.
I turned to look at Amy, expecting to see blood and broken glass, but she was just sleeping. Peaceful. Her chest rising and falling with each breath. Her dark hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink.
We were in our bed.
I sat up so fast my head spun. Our bedroom. Our apartment. Morning sunlight streaming through the blinds, creating zebra stripes across the hardwood floor. The smell of coffee drifting in from the kitchen, which meant Amy had already been up for a while.
"What the hell?"
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand. September 15th, 2023. 7:23 AM.
But that was impossible. The accident happened on September 15th, 2023. That night. Amy died on September 15th, 2023 at 11:47 PM when a drunk driver ran a red light and slammed into the passenger side of my Honda Civic.
I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face. In the mirror, I looked exactly like I had that morning. No cuts from the broken windshield. No bruises from the airbag. No blood.
But I remembered everything. The restaurant with the brick walls and flickering candles. The way Amy had smiled when I ordered wine. How she'd reached across the table to take my hand when she told me about losing our baby. The tears in her eyes. The anger in my voice. The headlights blazing through our windshield like the eyes of some metal monster.
"Damian?" Amy called from the kitchen. "You okay in there?"
Her voice hit me like a physical blow. I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles went white.
"Yeah," I managed to call back. "Just woke up weird."
"Well, hurry up. I made pancakes."
Pancakes. She'd made pancakes that morning—the original morning. Blueberry pancakes because we'd run out of regular syrup and she'd used the fancy stuff her mom had given us for Christmas. I remembered teasing her about saving it for special occasions.
"What's the occasion?" I'd asked.
"Do I need an occasion to make my boyfriend pancakes?"
I walked into the kitchen on shaky legs. There she was, standing at the stove in her purple robe, hair piled up in a messy bun, flipping pancakes like she'd done it a thousand times. Like she was going to do it a thousand more.
"You look terrible," she said without turning around. "Bad dreams again?"
Again. She'd asked me the same thing that morning. I'd told her it was nothing, just stress from my thesis defense coming up. But it hadn't been stress. It had been dreams about her dying. Dreams that turned out to be true.
"Something like that," I said, sitting down at the kitchen table.
She slid a plate of pancakes in front of me, then sat across from me with her own. Same purple robe. Same messy bun. Same little crease between her eyebrows when she was thinking about something serious.
"Want to talk about it?"
I stared at her, trying to figure out what was happening. Was I dreaming now? Had the accident been the dream? But everything felt so real. The taste of the pancakes. The morning light in her eyes. The way she tucked her feet under her in the chair.
"I dreamed you died," I said.
She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. "That's morbid."
"It felt real."
"Dreams usually do." She took a bite of pancake, chewed thoughtfully. "Want to tell me about it?"
So I did. I told her about the restaurant, about the conversation in the car, about the truck that came out of nowhere. I told her about holding her in the rain while sirens wailed in the distance. I told her about the blood and the way her eyes had gone empty.
By the time I finished, her pancakes were cold and untouched.
"Jesus, Damian. That's... that's really detailed."
"I know."
"Like, really detailed. You described things that..." She trailed off, staring at me.
"Things that what?"
"Things I was planning to tell you today."
My blood went cold. "What things?"
She set down her fork and folded her hands in her lap. The same gesture she'd made in the car right before she told me about the baby.
"I went to see my parents yesterday," she said quietly. "To talk about something that happened. Something I haven't told you yet."
"Amy..."
"I lost a baby, Damian. Our baby. Three weeks ago."
The kitchen tilted sideways. I gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling.
"That's not possible."
"I know I should have told you sooner, but—"
"No, that's not what I mean." I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the floor. "You can't know that. You can't know that because I dreamed it."
"You dreamed what?"
"You telling me. In the car. On our way home from dinner." I started pacing, running my hands through my hair. "This is insane. This is completely insane."
Amy stood up too, moving toward me with her hands out like I was a wild animal she was trying not to spook. "Damian, you're scaring me."
"I'm scaring myself."
"Maybe you should sit down—"
"What restaurant?"
"What?"
"In my dream, we went to dinner. What restaurant?"
She hesitated. "Café Amelie. The place with the brick walls where we had our first date."
My legs gave out. I sat down hard in the chair, staring at her.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
"What's impossible?"
"I dreamed the exact conversation we just had. Word for word. And now you're telling me the same things you told me in the dream."
Amy sat back down across from me, studying my face like she was trying to solve a puzzle.
"Maybe," she said slowly, "it wasn't a dream."
"That's crazy."
"Is it? You're getting your PhD in quantum physics. You've told me about all those theories. Multiple dimensions. Parallel universes. Time being more flexible than people think."
She was right. I'd spent three years studying theoretical physics, writing papers about quantum mechanics and spacetime. But that was all theoretical. Abstract math on a chalkboard. Not real life.
"Even if time travel was possible," I said, "and I'm not saying it is, why would I go back? What would trigger something like that?"
Amy reached across the table and took my hand. Her fingers were warm and solid and real.
"You watched me die," she said softly. "In your dream, you watched me die and couldn't do anything to stop it. Maybe that kind of trauma, that kind of desperation... maybe it could do something to a person. Especially someone who understands the math behind how time works."
I stared down at our joined hands. Her engagement ring—which she wasn't supposed to be wearing yet because I hadn't proposed—caught the morning light.
Wait.
I looked more closely. She wasn't wearing an engagement ring. Her hands looked exactly like they had that morning three months ago, before everything went to hell. Before the fights about money and the silences at dinner and the way we'd started living like roommates instead of lovers.
"What's today's date?" I asked.
"September 15th."
"What year?"
She frowned. "2023. Are you okay?"
I wasn't okay. I was the opposite of okay. But I was also getting an idea. A terrible, wonderful, impossible idea.
"Amy," I said, squeezing her hand, "don't go to your parents' house today."
"What? Why?"
"Just trust me. Stay home. We'll order takeout and watch movies and just... stay here. Safe."
"Damian, you're really freaking me out."
"Please. Just this once, trust me without asking questions."
She studied my face for a long moment. Then she nodded.
"Okay. I'll call Mom and reschedule."
Relief flooded through me so intense I almost cried. "Thank you."
"But you have to promise me something."
"Anything."
"If this is some kind of breakdown, if you're having problems with stress or depression or whatever, you'll get help. Professional help."
"I promise."
She squeezed my hand and smiled. "Good. Now finish your pancakes before they get cold."
I ate the pancakes, but I barely tasted them. My mind was racing, trying to process what had happened. If I really had somehow traveled back in time—and that was a big if—then I'd just changed history. Amy wasn't going to her parents' house. She wouldn't be on the road at 6 PM when the drunk driver left Murphy's Bar. She'd be here, safe, with me.
The rest of the day passed in a strange, dreamlike haze. We did exactly what I'd suggested—ordered Chinese food and binge-watched Netflix shows on the couch. But I couldn't relax. Every time my phone buzzed, I expected it to be news of some other accident. Every siren in the distance made me flinch.
Amy noticed my nervousness but didn't push. She just curled up against me on the couch, her head on my shoulder, occasionally glancing up at me with worried eyes.
At 6 PM—the exact time she would have been driving on Highway 61—I held my breath. Nothing happened. No phone calls. No sirens. No breaking news reports about fatal accidents.
At 11:47 PM—the exact moment our car was supposed to be T-boned by a Ford pickup—I was watching Amy brush her teeth in the bathroom mirror. Alive. Healthy. Perfect.
"You've been staring at me all day," she said around a mouthful of toothpaste. "It's sweet, but also kind of creepy."
"Sorry. I just..." I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, resting my chin on her shoulder. "I love you. So much."
She spit out the toothpaste and turned in my arms. "I love you too. But seriously, what's going on? You've been acting like you thought I was going to disappear."
In the mirror behind her, I could see both our reflections. Real. Solid. There.
"I was afraid I was going to lose you," I said.
"You're not going to lose me." She kissed me softly. "I'm not going anywhere."
But even as she said it, even as I held her close and breathed in the familiar scent of her shampoo, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. The day had gone too smoothly. Life wasn't supposed to be this easy to fix.
I was right to be worried.
The next morning, I woke up to my phone ringing. Amy was still asleep beside me, one arm thrown across my chest, her face peaceful in the early morning light. I checked the caller ID. Marcus Webb—Amy's brother.
I almost didn't answer. Marcus and I had never gotten along. He was a cop, suspicious by nature, and he'd never quite approved of his little sister dating a broke graduate student. But something in my gut told me this call was important.
"Hello?"
"Damian?" Marcus's voice was tight, strained. "Is Amy with you?"
"Yeah, she's right here. Why?"
A long pause. Then: "There was an accident last night. A bus accident on Highway 61. Multiple fatalities."
My blood turned to ice. "What are you talking about?"
"The 6 PM bus to Metairie. It was hit by a drunk driver. Four people died, including..." His voice cracked. "Including Mrs. Chen."
Amy's mother. The woman she'd been planning to visit yesterday before I convinced her to stay home.
"Oh my God."
"Amy was supposed to be on that bus, wasn't she? She told Mom she was coming over for dinner."
I looked down at Amy, still sleeping peacefully beside me. I'd saved her life by keeping her home. But in doing so, I'd killed her mother.
"Marcus, I—"
"Just tell me she's okay, man. Tell me my sister is okay."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of what I'd done settle on my shoulders like a lead blanket.
"She's okay," I whispered. "She's safe."
But even as I said the words, I knew they weren't true. Amy would never be the same after losing her mother. The woman who'd raised her, who'd taught her to cook, who'd given her the strength to become a doctor. Gone, because of a choice I'd made.
I'd saved Amy's life, but I'd destroyed her world.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a terrible thought was forming. If I could go back once, maybe I could go back again. Maybe I could save them both.
I just had to figure out how.
The phone slipped from my numb fingers as Amy stirred beside me, her eyes fluttering open.
"Morning, babe," she mumbled, snuggling closer. "Who was on the phone?"
I looked down at her beautiful, sleepy face, knowing that in about thirty seconds, I was going to have to destroy her entire world.
"Amy," I said softly, stroking her hair. "We need to talk."