The Peculiar Patterns of Project X-9
Chapter 4 Static
Time didn't move forward.
It dragged.
Atlas Finch was sixteen when he realized something was deeply wrong with the way stories worked around him.
Not dramatic wrong.
Not cinematic wrong.
Subtle wrong.
A sentence would start and end differently every time he remembered it.
A conversation would change tone halfway through, like the script got edited mid-scene.
People forgot arguments that still hurt him.
And worst of all
Sometimes, the story changed without him touching anything.
He learned early what not to do.
If he tried to interfere, even a little, the pain came immediately.
Not pain like getting punched.
Pain like being compressed.
Like time itself leaned in and whispered,
Don't.
When Atlas was fourteen, he tried to end it once.
He didn't jump.
Didn't cut.
Didn't overdose.
He just stopped breathing and waited.
The world didn't let him.
Space folded inward.
Time looped half a second over and over.
His body screamed without sound.
Every version of him died
and none of them stayed dead.
When it stopped, he woke up on the floor, blood running from his nose and ears, lungs burning.
A thought burned itself into his mind:
If Atlas Finch dies, the story collapses.
And the story will not allow that.
Kenshin died when he was ten.
No record explained how.
No accident report matched.
No timeline agreed.
Some days, Atlas remembered a hospital.
Other days, a quiet park.
Once, he remembered Kenshin simply not finishing a sentence.
Freya refused to talk about it.
Every time Atlas tried to ask, her expression flattened, like something erased the question before it reached her ears.
The goggles were gone.
Not broken.
Gone.
And without Kenshin
The Race stopped being filtered.
Atlas started seeing things.
Not hallucinations.
Errors.
Streetlights flickering between decades.
People aging a year in a blink, then snapping back.
Words on pages rearranging themselves when he wasn't looking.
The world behaved like it was being constantly revised.
And Atlas was the revision note no one could delete.
He never used the power.
He didn't need to.
Sometimes, when Atlas was tired…
or scared…
or just wanted things to stop
The story moved on its own.
A fight resolved early.
A tragedy softened itself.
A disaster rerouted just enough to spare him.
Every time it happened, Atlas felt sick.
Because none of it was earned.
It was finished for him.
One night, Atlas stood in front of a mirror and didn't recognize the reflection.
Not because of scars.
Not because of age.
Because the reflection paused half a second too late.
"You're not real," Atlas whispered.
The reflection smiled.
Not kindly.
Deadly never appeared.
But Atlas felt it.
Like pressure in the margins.
Like a reader annoyed with the pacing.
And somewhere, beyond that
Something worse.
Not The Race.
Something that wrote The Race as a tool.
Atlas Finch wasn't chosen.
He wasn't special.
He was necessary.
A fixed point the narrative leaned on so it wouldn't tear itself apart.
And that was the cruelest part:
Atlas didn't suffer because he used power.
He suffered because the story refused to let him stop existing.
In a locked drawer under his bed, Atlas kept one thing.
A notebook.
Inside it, written over and over in different handwriting even his own didn't match
If the story finishes, I'm free.
If I'm free, the story ends.
The last line was always crossed out.
No matter how many times he rewrote it.
End of Chapter 4.