We stopped in a place that might have once been a transit hub. 

“Where are we going?” I finally asked.

“You mean, who are we meeting?”

“Okay, so who are we meeting?”

“You’ll see.”

I rolled my eyes.

The ceiling had collapsed in layers, concrete resting on rusted steel like bones stacked out of order. Someone had strung lights between exposed beams. Someone else had claimed the corner with a cooking rig that smelled faintly of grease and scorched metal.

The Shadow leaned against a pillar and watched the movement below us. People bartered. People argued. People waited.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m thinking,” I replied.

“About?”

I looked at him then. Really looked. The way he stood was as if he expected the ground to shift under him at any moment.

“You weren’t supposed to bring me here,” I said.

“No,” he agreed. “I wasn’t.”

“I was supposed to leave the timeline.”

“Yes.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No.”

The word settled between us.

I wrapped my arms around myself. “Then why does it feel like everything already moved on without me?”

He exhaled slowly, like he’d been deciding how much to say.

“Because it did.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does,” he said. “Just not the way you’re used to.”

He nodded toward the city below us. “Inner Earth doesn’t react. It predicts. Once the system decided you were leaving, everything adjusted around that assumption.”

I shook my head. “You can’t just erase a person and expect nothing to change.” I stared at him. “You’re saying the timeline is already behaving as if I’m gone?”

“Yes.”

“They use AI to predict crime,” I said slowly. “Behavior. Outcomes. Who becomes what?”

“Right.”

“But the AI doesn’t decide on its own,” I continued. “It needs human direction. That was my job. I didn’t tell it who was good or bad. I told it how much variation a timeline could absorb before it fractured.”

He looked at me sharply now.

“They called it stability,” I went on. “But it was really about tolerance. How much complexity a system can survive.”

I swallowed.

“And once it decided I was leaving,” I said, “it recalculated everything without me in it.”

“Yes.”

I felt sick.

“So what does that make me now?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“You ever balance something carefully,” he said, “then remove a piece you think doesn’t matter?”

“Yes.”

“And the whole thing shifts,” he said. “But it doesn’t fall immediately. It sways, it leans, and then it finally collapses. That’s what you are. The sway before the fall.”

I looked out over the Outside again. The noise. The movement. The hunger.

“The projection has continued without me in it,” I said.

“Yes.”

The word finally landed.

“I’m the error,” I said.

“No,” he replied. “You’re the variable.”

The title felt wrong in my mouth. Clinical. Disposable.

“The system identifies variables all the time,” he continued. “People who don’t fit the predictions. Witnesses. Outliers. Anyone who might cause divergence.”

“And it removes them.”

“Yes.”

“But I wasn’t removed,” I said.

“No.”

“Which means the projection was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“And the system doesn’t know that yet.”

His expression tightened.

“Or it does,” he said quietly, “and it doesn’t know how to fix it.”

I turned back to him. “Well, can’t I jump again?”

He shook his head, “It wouldn’t be the same timeline, the exact moment you arrive is the exact moment the projection begins, and the timeline shifts to adjust the change. No matter what. You missed your chance.”

“What if I stay?” I almost whispered.

“That depends,” he said. “On how much you change.”

“I don’t want to change anything,” I said.

He gave a short, humorless laugh. “That’s not an option.”

I thought of the execution room. The polished floor. The way that decision had already been made before anyone spoke.

“I saw what happens when the system decides something is acceptable,” I said. “I don’t want to become that.”

“You won’t,” he said. “You’re not inside it anymore.”

“That’s worse,” I replied. “Because now nothing is accounting for me.”

He was quiet for a moment, then shook his head.

“Short answer?” he said. “You’re out of luck.”

I waited.

“Longer answer,” he continued, “you’re standing in a reality that already thinks you’re gone. That’s not something you fix cleanly.”

I swallowed. “So what happens?”

He glanced down at my clothes. Too clean. Too wrong.

“First,” he said, “we get you out of Inner Earth gear. You look like a question.”

I frowned. “And then?”

“And then,” he said, “I know someone who understands problems like yours. Or at least pretends to.”

“That’s comforting.”

He almost smiled.

“Don’t get excited,” he added. “This is well outside my jurisdiction.”

“So you can’t fix it.”

“No,” he said. “But I might know someone who can make it less bad.”

I looked back at the Outside. At the noise. The movement. The hunger.

“And if that doesn’t work?” I asked.

He started walking.

“Then we find another way,” he said. “Or the timeline figures it out without us.”

I followed him.

Either way, staying still wasn’t an option.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You broke the math.”

I looked out at the Outside again. The weight of my existence was heavy on my shoulders. 

I shivered.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said.

He pushed off the pillar and motioned for me to follow.

“Variables never do.”

“I have one more question,” My voice lowered. “No one has ever explained to me why this timeline can’t break.”

The Shadow smirked devilishly as a woman with long black hair emerged from behind a large rusted pillar and began approaching us, “Because this one is the original.”

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