The Corner café was exactly as in his memories , small wooden tables, mismatched chairs, a relaxed atmosphere that contrasted violently with the state of stress Marcus was in. It was exactly noon when he pushed the door, and he saw her immediately.
Red jacket, as promised. But that wasn't what had made him spot her instantly. It was her eyes.
Green eyes, an almost metallic green, that seemed to have seen too much for someone who must have been around twenty-five, twenty-six years old. She was sitting by the window, a half-empty coffee cup in front of her, and she was watching him with an expression he couldn't decipher.
- "You're late," she said without looking up from her cup when he approached.
- "I... I wasn't sure I'd come."
- "But you came. Because you need answers." She finally looked up at him, and Marcus had the impression she could read directly into his thoughts. "Sit down, Marcus. We have a lot to discuss and not much time."
He pulled the chair across from her and sat down awkwardly. Up close, she was even more troubling. Pretty, but with a cold beauty, with black hair pulled back and a way of holding herself that suggested she was used to controlling situations.
- "What's your name?" he asked.
- "Elena. Elena Vasquez."
- "And how do you know what's happening to me?"
Elena took a sip of coffee before answering, as if she was weighing her words.
- "Because it's not the first time I meet someone in your situation."
Marcus felt his stomach tighten.
- "My situation?"
- "You're not crazy, Marcus. These visions are not dreams. They're not premonitions or paranormal bullshit either. They are... glimpses. Windows into alternative realities."
Marcus almost burst out laughing. It came straight out of a science fiction movie.
- "Alternative realities? Seriously? You mean like in Star Trek?"
- "Do you prefer the psychiatric explanation?" Elena raised an eyebrow. "Early schizophrenia with vivid hallucinations? Or maybe the onset of stress-induced psychosis?"
Marcus fell silent. When she put it like that, the idea of parallel realities didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.
- "How is it possible?" he murmured.
Elena took a photo from her jacket and placed it on the table. It was Marcus, but not quite. The man in the photo was older, maybe by five or six years, with a scar on his forehead and something different in his gaze. Something harder.
- "This photo was taken three days ago. In a reality where you survived your three deaths."
Marcus took the photo with a trembling hand. It was indeed his face, but he was certain he had never posed for this photo.
- "Where did you get this?"
- "It's complicated. What you need to understand is that every time you make an important choice, a new reality is created. Normally, you only live in one. But some people... some people can perceive the others."
Elena leaned toward him, lowering her voice.
- "We call them the Archivists."
-"We?"
Elena hesitated, and for the first time, Marcus had the impression she didn't have all the cards in hand.
- "There's... an organization. People who study these phenomena. Who try to maintain stability between realities."
-"And you're part of it?"
- "It's complicated," she repeated.
Marcus put the photo on the table and stared at it. The man who looked like him seemed... tired. Like someone who had lived through too much in too little time.
- "This man in the photo... is it really me?"
- "A version of you. In a timeline where you made different choices that night."
- "And the man with the scar? The one looking for me at the office?"
Elena's face hardened.
- "We call him the Eraser. He... cleans up anomalies."
- "Anomalies?"
- "You."
The word fell between them like a stone in a well. Marcus felt a shiver run down his spine.
- "He wants to kill me?"
- "He doesn't mean you any harm, not exactly. But he thinks your existence poses a problem. A danger to... the general balance."
Elena looked at her watch , a gesture that seemed nervous, not calculated like the rest of her movements.
- "It's 12:15. In exactly six hours and seventeen minutes, if nothing changes, a red truck is going to hit you at the intersection of Park Avenue."
Marcus remembered his third vision. His Honda Civic, the light turning red, the impact.
- "Then I don't take Park Avenue."
- "It's not that simple. Fate tends to... adapt. If you avoid Park Avenue, something else will happen. The restaurant, maybe. Or the alley."
- "So what do I do?"
Elena took another sip of coffee, and Marcus noticed her hand was trembling slightly. For someone who seemed so sure of herself, she seemed curiously nervous.
- "You learn. You develop your abilities. And you hope it will be enough to survive what awaits you."
- "What awaits me?"
- "Marcus, you're not the first Archivist I've met. There have been others before you."
- "And where are they now?"
Elena's silence answered his question.
Marcus felt his mouth go dry.
- "All dead?"
- "Not all. But... many. That's why we need to help you develop your abilities quickly."
Elena got up abruptly, throwing a ten-dollar bill on the table.
- "We need to leave. Now."
- "Why?"
She was discreetly pointing toward the window. On the other side of the street, the man with the scar was watching them. He wasn't even hiding, standing there as if he was waiting for something.
- "Because if that one finds us together, all the alternative realities in the world won't be able to save us."
They left through the back of the café. Elena seemed to know the neighborhood by heart, guiding Marcus through a maze of alleys he had never seen. She walked fast, without running, but with an urgency that made him uncomfortable.
- "Where are we going?" he asked, slightly out of breath.
- "Somewhere where we can talk quietly. And where I can explain to you what's really happening to you."
They emerged on Washington Street. Elena hailed a taxi.
- "Municipal Archives," she told the driver.
In the taxi, Marcus observed Elena from the corner of his eye. Now that they were away from the café, she seemed less tense, but there was still something vigilant in her posture.
- "You said you weren't sure about being part of this organization."
- "I said it was complicated."
- "Complicated how?"
Elena turned her head toward him, and he saw something pass in her eyes. Guilt? Fear?
- "You're not the first Archivist I've contacted, Marcus. But you're the first I'm really trying to help."
- "What does that mean?"
- "It means I lied earlier. I've known who you are for longer than three weeks."
The taxi stopped in front of a perfectly ordinary-looking administrative building. Elena paid the driver and they got out.
- "How long?" Marcus insisted.
- "Three months. We've been watching you for three months."
Marcus stopped dead on the sidewalk.
- "We?"
- "The organization I told you about. They... we... we monitor potential Archivists. To determine if they represent a threat."
- "So? Do I represent a threat?"
Elena looked him straight in the eyes.
- "It depends on the choices you're going to make."
The Municipal Archives building looked like all administrative buildings , fake marble, tired neon lights, employees who looked bored. But Elena didn't head toward reception. She led Marcus to a service staircase and went down to the basement.
- "Do you come here often?" Marcus joked to hide his nervousness.
- "More than I'd like."
In the basement, Elena stopped in front of an armored door that had no business being in a public building. She entered a code on a digital keypad.
- "Welcome to Section 7," she said, pushing the door open.
Marcus was left speechless. The space behind the door had nothing to do with the rest of the building. It was a mix between a high-tech laboratory and a military operations room. Screens everywhere, powerful computers, world maps covered with red pins.
And on the walls, photos. Dozens of photos of different people. Men, women, young, less young. Each marked with a red stamp: "TERMINATED."
- "The previous Archivists?" asked Marcus, his throat tight.
- "Seventeen in three years. You're the eighteenth."
Elena sat down in front of one of the computers and started typing rapidly. Marcus approached the photos, studying the faces. They all had something in common , that same troubled look he had seen on the photo of himself.
- "What happened to them?"
"Different things. Some were killed by the Eraser. Others... lost their minds. The power to see alternative realities, it can drive you crazy if you don't learn to control it."
- "And some?"
Elena paused in her typing.
- "Some chose to disappear. To permanently cross into another reality. We don't know what happens to them after that."
The screen in front of Elena now displayed surveillance images. Marcus immediately recognized the man with the scar in different places, on different dates.
- "Look at this," said Elena.
The images scrolled by. The man on a New York street, in front of a café in Chicago, in a park in Los Angeles. But something was wrong.
- "There's no reflection in the mirrors," Marcus murmured.
- "It's even worse than that. Look at the biometric data."
Elena clicked on a facial analysis. The result displayed: NO MATCH FOUND.
- "He doesn't exist in any database. No name, no birth certificate, no fingerprints, no medical records. Nothing. As if he..."
- "As if he came from another reality?" Marcus finished.
- "It's a possibility. Or as if he was... something else."
Marcus was studying the photos when something struck him. The man's expression. He didn't look mean or crazy. He looked... sad. Desperately sad.
- "Elena," said a voice behind them.
They turned around as one. The Eraser stood in the doorway, but he no longer looked like the threatening man Marcus had fled from this morning. He looked exhausted, aged, and his eyes...
His eyes were exactly the same color as Marcus's.
- "Marcus," the man said in a broken voice. "I'm sorry. But you can't become what I've become."
Elena had pulled a weapon from her jacket , when had she had time to arm herself? , but the man raised his hand in a peaceful gesture.
- "Elena, tell him. Tell him what you've been hiding from the beginning."
Elena was trembling, the weapon pointed at the Eraser, but Marcus could see in her eyes that she wouldn't shoot.
- "Marcus..." Her voice had become weaker. "There's something you need to know. About who you really are. About why you have these visions."
The Eraser smiled, but it was the saddest smile Marcus had ever seen.
- "Tell him, Elena. Tell him that I am him. In forty years. After he destroyed three entire realities trying to save a single person."
Marcus's world tilted. The walls seemed to spin around him, and he had to lean against the desk to avoid falling.
- "It's impossible," he murmured.
- "I wish it were," said the man who claimed to be his future. "But look at me carefully, Marcus. Look at my eyes. Look at this scar on my cheek , the one you'll have in fifteen years after your first failed time travel. Look at this way I have of holding my left hand when I'm nervous."
Marcus looked down. His left hand was indeed clenched, exactly like the man's.
- "Why?" His voice was barely a whisper. "Why do you want to kill me?"
The Eraser took a step forward.
- "Because if I don't stop you now, in two years, you'll meet a woman. Elena. You'll fall in love with her, and when she dies in an accident, you'll do everything to bring her back. Everything, Marcus. Including destroying three entire universes and condemning billions of innocents."
He looked at Elena with infinite and terrible tenderness.
- "And even after all that, even after bringing back versions of her from other realities, she will never love me. Because she'll be afraid of the monster I've become."