Lucas stopped walking when he realized he was being watched.
Not followed. Not stalked.
Observed.
It was the kind of awareness that didn't come from sight or sound. It sat under his skin, quiet and persistent, like a wrong note you couldn't unhear once it was played.
He stood at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, pretending to check his phone.
Nothing unusual.
People everywhere. A woman arguing into her earbuds. A teenager kicking at a loose stone. A man in a delivery uniform sipping from a soda can.
Normal.
The light turned green. Lucas crossed with the crowd.
Halfway across, his phone vibrated.
This time, he didn't jump.
He waited until he reached the other side, stepped into the shadow of a closed storefront, and looked down.
ENVIRONMENTAL ANOMALY DETECTED
Lucas frowned. "That's… comforting."
Another line appeared.
SOURCE: UNKNOWNRECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE
"Of course," he muttered. "Observe what?"
No answer.
Lucas slipped the phone into his pocket and kept walking, slower now, senses tuned higher than they'd ever been before. Every reflection in a window felt like a mirror that might blink back.
He replayed the hospital scene in his head.
Maya's face. Relief. Tears she hadn't wiped away yet.
That future required conditions.
Unmet.
Which meant something specific had to happen. Or not happen.
He needed data.
Not visions. Not fragments.
Patterns.
By noon, Lucas was in a public library three neighborhoods away, seated at a long wooden table beneath fluorescent lights that hummed like tired insects.
He didn't come here often. Too quiet. Too honest. Libraries didn't let you pretend you were busy.
He opened his laptop.
If his death happened on a specific street, at a specific time, with a specific person present, then it wasn't random.
Random was lazy thinking.
He pulled up city maps, cross referenced crime reports, filtered by location and time range.
No stabbing incidents. No unsolved homicides.
Interesting.
Either the future hadn't happened yet—
—or it wouldn't be recorded.
Lucas leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing.
"Personal," he murmured.
The woman in the vision hadn't been panicked. She hadn't run.
That ruled out a mugging gone wrong.
He shifted focus.
Hospitals.
If the alternate future involved surgery, it wasn't minor. Not outpatient. The machines, the tubes, the long recovery look—
Trauma.
Violent, but survivable.
Lucas searched local hospitals, emergency response stats, major incidents.
Still nothing concrete.
Frustration crept in, sharp and unwelcome.
"You're doing this backwards," he whispered to himself.
The future wasn't a puzzle you solved by staring at the ending.
It was a system.
He closed the laptop and stared at his reflection in the dark screen.
"What changes me enough," he asked quietly, "that someone decides I need to die?"
The answer didn't come in words.
It came as a feeling.
Attention.
People didn't kill nobodies.
They killed obstacles.
His phone vibrated again.
Lucas didn't touch it right away.
He waited until his breathing slowed, until the familiar edge of panic dulled into something colder.
Then he looked.
SECONDARY PATTERN IDENTIFIEDTRIGGER WINDOW: 280–310 DAYS
Lucas's stomach tightened.
"So the countdown accelerates," he said softly.
The phone responded with something new.
OBSERVATION: YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST VARIABLE
Lucas went still.
"…What?"
The words stayed on screen, unblinking.
HISTORICAL DATA INCOMPLETESIMILAR EVENTS: 6
Six.
Six people who had seen their futures.
Six people who had interfered.
Lucas's throat felt dry. "And how many of them survived?"
The pause was longer this time.
Long enough that Lucas considered standing up and leaving, like proximity alone might make the answer worse.
Then:
CONFIRMED SURVIVORS: 1
The library felt colder.
"And the others?"
No immediate reply.
Lucas's pulse ticked upward.
"Say it," he whispered.
The text appeared, slower than before.
TERMINATED PRIOR TO RESOLUTION
Lucas closed his eyes.
Five out of six.
Those weren't odds. They were a warning.
He opened his eyes again, gaze hardening.
"Who was the one?" he asked. "The survivor."
For the first time since this began, the response came with a delay that felt… deliberate.
ACCESS RESTRICTED
Lucas laughed under his breath, a sharp sound that earned him a look from a librarian.
"Figures."
He stood, packed his laptop away, and left the library without checking anything out.
Outside, the sky had darkened with gathering clouds. The air pressed heavy against his skin.
He walked without a destination, letting the city pass by like a simulation he was no longer fully part of.
If there were others—
If this wasn't random—
Then someone, somewhere, knew more than he did.
His phone buzzed again.
PROXIMITY ALERT
Lucas stopped.
"Proximity to what?" he asked.
The answer came with coordinates.
Not a name. Not a description.
Just a location.
Three blocks away.
Lucas hesitated.
Every instinct told him this was a mistake.
And every instinct he'd followed so far had led him to a street where he died.
He turned toward the coordinates and started walking.
The building was old. Brick. Narrow windows. A forgotten office wedged between a pawn shop and a closed tailor.
The sign above the door was faded enough to be useless.
Lucas stepped inside.
The hallway smelled like dust and old paper. A single light flickered overhead.
At the end of the hall, a door stood open.
A woman's voice drifted out.
"…no, you don't understand," she was saying, irritation sharp in her tone. "If he sees it too early, the divergence spikes."
Lucas stopped just short of the doorway.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
Another voice answered, calm, male.
"Or he stabilizes. That's the gamble."
Lucas stepped forward.
The room fell silent.
Inside, two people turned to look at him.
The woman was younger than he expected, hair pulled back tight, eyes sharp and calculating. The man beside her was older, gray at the temples, expression unreadable.
On the table between them lay a phone.
Black screen.
White text.
Lucas recognized the interface instantly.
The woman exhaled slowly.
"Well," she said. "You weren't supposed to find us yet."
Lucas didn't blink.
"Funny," he replied. "I was thinking the same thing."
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He didn't need to look to know what it said.
This wasn't a future.
This was the present.
And it had just become far more dangerous.