1990'S META'S POV:
A voice spoke, one that resonated with a chilling familiarity, yet my mind could not place it. The effort to identify the vocal signature resulted in a sharp, stabbing pain behind my eyes—a system override.
"I told you, Meta. Love would be your weakness. You never listen."
The voice was cold, triumphant. "Goodbye."
"Bang!"
The final gunshot was an echo in the rain, a definitive full stop. But the vision did not shatter. The sensory data of the bridge began to corrupt, the downpour intensifying into a violent static that washed over my visual input. The scene violently recalibrated.
The gritty asphalt dissolved, replaced by the cold, familiar marble of my family's main hall. The air was thick with the metallic scent of fresh blood and cordite. My gaze swept the room in a cold, tactical assessment. It was a scene of systemic annihilation. The bodies of my men—my most loyal assets and guards—were strewn across the floor, their positions indicating a swift, brutal, and failed defense. A catastrophic security failure.
Then I registered an audio anomaly. A sound that did not belong in my world, let alone my own throat: a raw, guttural sob of absolute despair. I moved through the carnage, my footsteps silent, tracking the sound to its source in the main parlor.
The source of the anomaly was another version of myself, kneeling amidst the wreckage. In his arms, he held the terminated form of the variable, Thyme. The boy's chest was a ruin of blood-soaked fabric, his eyes lifeless and staring.
"Why?" my other self choked out, clutching the body tighter. "I did everything right... I eliminated them all... Why did it have to be you?"
I watched this pathetic display, this complete system failure of a man who shared my face. The sight of my own form, broken by a grief so total, was a more terrifying spectacle than the massacre surrounding us. It was a variable for which I had no parameters.
"Thyme... wake up," he begged, his voice cracking as he shook the lifeless body. "That's an order! Wake up! I'm begging you... please..."
He lowered his head, his tears falling freely onto the boy's pale face. "I don't believe in gods," he whispered, his plea echoing the desperate confession from the bleeding book. "But I will now. To any god, any devil who can hear me... take it all. The territory, the power, my life... take me. Just give him back. Give me back my Thyme."
A logical paradox slammed into my consciousness with the force of a physical blow. The data sets were in direct conflict. One future where I sacrifice myself to save him on a bridge. Another, where he is terminated and I am left... dismantled. My mind, a machine built for order, was being fed two mutually exclusive outcomes.
Why are there more than one future? The question was a cascade failure in my predictive models. The pain behind my eyes returned, no longer a simple ache but a neural overload, as if my own brain were attempting to reject the contradictory data.
It was then I understood. In every simulation, every horrific outcome, there was one constant.
Thyme.
He wasn't the variable. He was the nexus point around which my own fate violently orbited. And I... I was the equation being solved for two different, impossible, and unacceptable answers.
The vision finally shattered, not fading, but collapsing inwards like broken glass. I was back in my office, on my feet, my hand braced against the desk. The shaman was watching me, her face impassive. The book sat silent, but I no longer saw it as an object. I saw it as a weapon, loaded and pointed directly at my sanity.
"The simulations I witnessed," I stated, my voice a flat line to mask the internal instability I felt as the vision shattered. "They were predictive models. Futures."
The shaman's face, previously impassive, was now etched with a deep, professional gravity. "They are potential outcomes," she corrected, her gaze sharp. "Probabilities. Including the one you withheld from me—the future where you terminate your own existence."
Her knowledge of the book's unspoken suicide entry was a chilling confirmation of her capabilities. The variable of her expertise was proving to be a high-value asset.
"This is a grave matter, Khun Meta," she continued, her tone severe. "A man's fate is a single thread. A powerful intervention might create a second, a choice. But your timeline is not a thread; it is a fractured mess. I can perceive three distinct outcomes clearly. Two more are... occluded. Veiled from my sight."
"Explain 'occluded'," I demanded. My world is built on absolutes; a hidden variable is an unacceptable threat.
"It means the path to those futures has not been paved. They are unwritten, dependent on a choice you have yet to make. Once you choose, that path will become clear," she explained. "But..." She paused, her eyes darting to the book on my desk. "There is another complication. A dangerous one."
She pulled a stick of crimson wax from her bag—a candle—and whispered a low, sibilant chant over its wick before lighting it. She dripped the molten red wax onto the knot of the white thread that bound the book. The flame did not consume the thread. Instead, the thread bled. A deep crimson wicked its way up from the book, saturating the white fibers, climbing the conduit tied to our wrists like a living vine of blood.
"CUT THE STRING! NOW!"
The shaman's voice, for the first time, was not calm. It was a raw shout of alarm. She produced a small, sharp knife from her bag and slashed the bloody thread at her wrist. Reacting with trained efficiency, I slid the hidden blade from my waistband and severed the conduit on my own arm just as the crimson stain reached my cuff. The severed ends of the thread did not fall limp; they writhed for a moment before turning to ash.
"What was that?" I asked, my voice cold and steady, demanding an analysis of the threat.
She took a deep breath, forcing her composure to return. "You are not the only one with access to this power. That blood was not from the book. It was a feedback loop... an attack."
My mind processed the impossible statement. "From where? An attack from a future variable is a logical paradox."
"From another timeline," she clarified. "This book is not a singular object. Think of it as a single point that exists in multiple times simultaneously. You hold the version from your present. But another version exists, held by another person who is also fighting for the boy's fate."
"This other person... is it another version of myself?" It was the only variable that made a degree of tactical sense.
"No," she said firmly. "It is someone else. Another soul bound to this same catastrophic equation." She opened her mouth to continue, but the sound that emerged was distorted, like a recording played backward. "He… is… the… ori—" The words dissolved into a painful static hiss that made my ears ring. She recoiled, pressing a hand to her temple, her face pale.
"The book is actively preventing me from revealing his identity to you," she stated, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and awe. "The specifics are forbidden. But the principle is brutally simple: You are in a race. Two players, one prize. Whoever solidifies their chosen future first, claims the boy, Thyme. The winner lives. The loser... is erased from all timelines. Utterly."
The clarity of the threat was absolute. A zero-sum game. I was expecting the session to be concluded, but she glanced at the corner of my desk.
"One final thing," she said, her voice regaining its cryptic authority. "Another object inside this room will help you in the future. It operates on the same principle as the book. A conduit through time. It is dormant now, but it may become your most critical asset. I can't identify which object it is as it still dormant."
I don't know why but my gaze fell upon the old, black rotary phone—a non-functional relic I kept for its sentimental value to my grandfather. Before I could demand further explanation, I realized the shaman was gone. She had vanished as silently as she had appeared. Sakda had already handled her payment; the transaction was complete.
I stood alone in the quiet of my office. The new data points swirled in my mind: a race for existence, an unknown opponent, and a ghost boy as the nexus of it all. The concept did not frighten me; it was a strategic problem of the highest order. The objective was clear: win.
But Thyme remained the core of the equation. My future self's attachment to him was a documented liability, a catastrophic emotional compromise. The logic of forming a romantic attachment to a male variable was… inefficient. A biological dead end. Yet, the book, my own future hand, had declared it a fact.
I will not be erased. To prevent that outcome, I must understand the variable that causes it. Understanding the ghost, the anomaly, and this illogical emotional response would require more data. And that meant more interactions with the boy himself. I needed to see him again. I needed to dissect the very nature of this weakness until it became a weapon.
"Or before I could grow attachment to you, I need to kill you, Thyme." I will not let you ruin my future. You might have tricked my future self, but that doesn't mean you can trick me, who already knows your future schemes.