The sky was too clear, too static. Clouds hung as if painted, unmoving. The city’s usual low drone—the hum of broken circuits, the soft buzz of airborne patrols, the groan of shifting metal—was absent.
Casen knew something was wrong before he even opened his eyes.
He rolled off the cot and moved to the safehouse window. Outside, the street was frozen. Not empty. Frozen.
A bird mid-flap. A man caught mid-step. A cart suspended in the air by its single wheel bounce.
"Elian!" he called. "Wynn!"
But the room answered only with static from the monitor.
He turned—and found Elian already awake, wide-eyed, standing in the hallway. She gestured silently. Wynn was gone.
They searched the entire safehouse. Nothing was touched. No signs of struggle. Just the faintest trace of ozone in the air, like after a lightning strike.
"She was here last night," Casen said. "She locked down the entry. She was... she was just here."
Elian picked up Wynn’s notebook from the table. Her equations were still there, hastily scrawled. So was the phrase:
Echo Drift.
But beneath it, new words had appeared in messy ink:
I remember you. Find the Anchor. Before they do. —W
Casen ran a hand through his hair. "What’s the Anchor?"
"Maybe not a what," Elian said, looking at him. "Maybe a who."
Casen’s thoughts spiraled. Wynn—gone. The girl in black—missing too. They’d secured the safehouse. No one had entered or left. No alarms triggered. No motion sensors. It was as if Wynn had just been erased.
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He remembered what the girl had said.
"They’re sending erasers."
They left the safehouse just after noon.
The city was moving again. Slowly. Awkwardly. Like a puppet remembering it had strings. Time hadn’t stopped; it had staggered.
Down the metro tunnel, they reached one of the old access hubs—places Wynn had marked as low signal zones. Places where Echo interference was weakest. That’s where Casen hoped they’d find traces of whatever had taken her.
Instead, they found him.
The boy looked maybe thirteen. Dirty face, buzzed hair, scuffed knees. He sat cross-legged in the center of the tunnel, calmly building a tower out of broken drone parts.
He didn’t flinch when they approached. He simply said, "You’re late."
Casen froze. "Do we know you?"
"Not yet. But you will. I’m the one they forgot to erase."
Elian knelt. "What’s your name?"
"Doesn’t matter. Names get overwritten. Memories too. What matters is the Anchor."
Casen’s heart thudded. "You know what it is?"
The boy nodded. He pointed at his temple. "It’s a person. Or it was. Maybe still is. Doesn’t matter. They hold the first tether. The point before the first fracture. The world was stable before them—and unstable after."
Elian glanced at Casen. "You think he’s talking about..."
"Wynn?"
The boy grinned. "Not Wynn. You two. One of you is the Anchor. Or maybe both. You’re the fracture point. That’s why they’re chasing you. Why the ghosts remember you in places you never died. Why the timelines bend around your steps."
Casen tried to breathe slowly. "What do we do?"
The boy stacked the last drone chip on top of the tower and whispered, "You run. You go to the city’s edge. Beyond the last return zone. That’s where the Faultline begins. And at the center, you’ll find what they buried."
Elian stood, voice steady. "What’s there?"
The boy looked up at her.
"Truth."
And just like that—he flickered. Once. Twice. Then he was gone.
By nightfall, the city’s tension had shifted again. Ghosts reappeared in clusters, but now they were muttering things. Words that didn’t match their time of death. Phrases like "It’s always been her" or "He split us in two" or simply:
"Run."
Casen and Elian took shelter in a rusted-out train car on the city’s fringe. Neither slept.
"If one of us is the Anchor," Elian whispered, "do you think that means we have to die to fix this?"
Casen didn’t answer right away. He watched the flickering lights outside. Glitches in reality. Stutters in movement. A city held together by static.
"Maybe we don’t fix it," he said. "Maybe we break it wider. Find what they’re hiding and use it to tear this thing apart."
Elian’s eyes glinted in the dim glow. Not fear. Determination.
"Then let’s go to the Faultline."
And as they stared out into the shattered skyline, the world around them began to whisper.