The sun had long dipped behind the crumbling skyline, casting the outskirts of the city into a somber twilight. Roman Ravenscroft stepped off the bus, the weight of another fruitless day dragging at his shoulders. Seven job applications. Three interviews. No callbacks.
He didn't mind the silence that followed.
He needed it.
Roman's body wasn't just tired—it was braced. Being around people did that. He felt too much. Not in the emotional sense. In the literal one.
He could feel other people's emotions bleeding into him—clawing, scratching, changing things inside him.
So he lived in this quiet fringe of the city. A broken neighborhood too small for government attention and too poor for gentrification. The perfect place to be left alone.
Tonight, however, something disrupted his isolation.
A man was collapsed outside the rusted gate to his boarding house.
Roman stopped cold. The man looked barely alive—thin, drenched in sweat, breathing shallowly.
He hesitated. He knew better than to get involved. People were dangerous. Not in the usual sense—but in the emotional noise they carried with them. Even the wrong feeling could twist his body, set his skin crawling, his bones shifting.
Still.
Roman sighed and knelt beside the man. "You alive?"
The man groaned softly. Roman felt a flare of fear from him—flickering and faint, but real.
"Damn it."
He hoisted the man up and carried him up the stairs to his tiny room. The boarding house manager never looked twice at guests, especially not if you slipped a few bills under the door.
The man lay on the mattress, wrapped in Roman's old blanket. He was around thirty-five, gaunt and weathered. Roman wiped his face with a damp towel and forced some water into his mouth. It took time, but eventually, the man stirred.
His eyes fluttered open.
"You're… not one of them," he rasped.
"One of who?" Roman asked.
The man winced and shook his head. "Never mind. Thank you."
Roman studied him. There was something in the way he spoke—measured but wary, as if constantly listening for footsteps no one else could hear.
"You live alone here?" the man asked.
Roman nodded. "Yeah. Been that way a while."
"Peaceful. I envy that."
A silence followed.
But the air… thickened.
Roman felt it again—that strange pressure in his chest. Not his own, but someone else's. It sank into him. The man's envy twisted something unseen inside Roman.
And then, before his eyes—
A glowing symbol shimmered into existence.
A translucent, pulsing string of light hovered inches from his face.
[LOOKING BACK AT TIMES]
His breath caught.
Roman reached out and touched it.
Everything vanished.
Then returned.
But it wasn't his life anymore.
He was someone else.
It felt like a memory—but not his. A life unfamiliar.
He was happy. Successful. Respected. Friends visited, and neighbors waved. A normal man living a quiet life.
Then one day—police stormed in.
"you're under arrest for drug trafficking."
He laughed. "What the hell? You've got the wrong guy!"
But they didn't listen.
He was taken. Questioned. Accused. Alone.
Even in this false life, he had no one. No one to vouch for him. His face was plastered across screens—criminal, liar, manipulator.
His assigned lawyer didn't even look at him properly.
"Just confess," the lawyer said. "You'll get a lighter sentence."
"I didn't do anything!"
"You're not the kind of person people believe."
Days passed. Then weeks. Months. Years.
The trial was swift.
Guilty.
Death sentence.
Two years in solitary, slowly unraveling. The injustice ate away at him, piece by piece.
And then—cold metal against his neck.
Execution.
The moment the blade came down, he screamed—
And Roman shot upright in bed, drenched in sweat, heart hammering like a war drum.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
That was no dream. It felt too real. Too human.
He scrambled to the bathroom, splashed water on his face. When he looked in the mirror, his eyes were bloodshot, haunted.
The man was gone.
That night marked the beginning of his insomnia. Every time he closed his eyes, the dream returned. Always the same. Always the end.
After a week of sleepless nights, Roman did what he always did—he analyzed. Dug deep. Picked at memories like scabs.
There was only one thing different that day: the man outside. And the moment he felt that... envy.
That's when the mutation occurred.
He had seen that glowing text. He had touched it. And then he had lived someone else's life. Not in a vision, not like watching a video—he was in that man's soul, in his trauma.
A stolen power.
He remembered the feeling that triggered it.
Envy.
The man envied Roman's quiet life—and that emotion awakened something in Roman's soul.
Something that wasn't supposed to exist.
He pieced it together.
The man he helped was a mutant.
Just like him.
And the glowing phrase he saw—Looking Back at Times—wasn't just metaphor. It was the name of the man's ability. A power that allowed him to witness any past event in the world, no matter how distant.
But the price?
Nightmares of tragic lives. Every time he slept.
Roman had absorbed this power through his own mutation. Or rather—his soul had mutated in response to the man's envy.
And now?
Roman had that ability.
And the curse that came with it.
He tested the limits of his own power.
When surrounded by rage, his body changed—thicker skin, boiling strength.
When near someone in mourning, he became light as smoke—his steps soundless.
Fear made him quick. Quiet. Sharp.
But envy—envy gave him their power.
At a cost.
And now, every night, Roman dreamed someone else's death.
What he didn't know was that across the sea, in a black site buried beneath Armenia's capital, his name was about to be spoken aloud.
But not because of his power.
Because of his blood.
A lab technician studied the list of flagged names on the old Mutant Registry—those linked genetically to the "Lost Batch." The mutants who had escaped Armenia's raid four decades ago in a storm of chaos and blood.
They breed another mutants, their offsprings are also mutants, a lot had been recaptured.
Armenia had continued tracking them through genealogy. Family lines. Blood markers. Ancestral fragments buried in databases stolen from countries they now controlled.
A red light blinked.
"Ravenscroft," the technician whispered.
"New match."
A suited man stepped into the observation chamber.
"Another second-generation?"
"Yes, sir. Genetic match to Subject 09—an Othernesia mutant who vanished during the tsunami 21 years ago."
"And the ability?"
The technician frowned. "No way to tell. We don't have real-time detection tech. We only detect mutants through genetics or obvious external mutations."
"This one?"
"Nothing visible. No records. No sightings until a few days ago. We only caught the connection because his name popped in a local welfare database. A fluke."
The man grunted.
"Invisible."
He didn't say it, but everyone in the room understood the problem.
There were mutants whose powers you could see.
And there were mutants like Roman Ravenscroft.
Silent.
Undetectable.
Infinitely more dangerous.
And now unknowingly—he had stolen a power they couldn't afford to lose.
The man Roman had helped that night—frail, fevered, barely conscious—was far from an ordinary drifter.
To the world, he was labeled an international criminal. The official reports accused him of stealing classified intelligence from Armenia—an act branded as espionage at the highest level.
But the truth ran deeper. Far more dangerous.
His so-called crime wasn't about stolen files or breached servers. It was his existence that posed the threat.
He was a mutant—one of the few who had mastered his ability with frightening precision.
His power, known only to those buried deep within the intelligence hierarchy, allowed him to witness any event that had ever happened on Earth. No barriers. No filters. Whether behind locked doors or under military command, if it had occurred, he could see it.
To Armenia, that power was priceless.
With it, they could reconstruct lost data, uncover global secrets, unravel encrypted negotiations, or expose hidden alliances. With it, they could know everything.
And in a world shaped by shadow wars and strategic deception, information was the sharpest weapon of all.
They didn't want to arrest him.
They wanted to own him.
Because through him—or someone like him—they believed they could restore what they had lost: their global dominance. Their hegemony.
Mutant powers, they believed, were the key to reclaiming the world.
And he was the key to them all.
Back in the boarding house, Roman paced his room.
He hadn't slept in two days.
His hands trembled from exhaustion—but he feared what he'd see if he slept.
A death he didn't escape.
He heard on his door.
Three soft taps.
Roman opened it with dread clawing at his throat.
She stood there.
Pale coat. Bare skin. Calm eyes.
"You don't know me," she said. "But they're coming."
Roman's voice caught. "Who are you?"
She looked at him with no emotion. No fear. No grief. No joy.
"I'm the only person you won't mutate around."
He stepped back, heart pounding.
"And why's that?"
"Because I don't feel," she said. "I'm your anchor."
She took a step forward.
"And if you want to stay human… you'll come with me."
"Because if you stay here, they'll find you. And they'll break you."