Glimpse of the Future
The first thing Aria Chen noticed was the silence.
Not the comfortable kind that settled after midnight, but the wrong kind—the kind that pressed against her ears until her thoughts felt too loud. The laboratory lights hummed faintly above her, long white panels stretching across the ceiling like artificial stars. Outside the reinforced glass walls, the city of Novus slept under a blanket of neon and steel.
It was past midnight. Again.
Aria rubbed her eyes and glanced at the digital clock projected on the wall.
02:17 A.M.
She exhaled slowly and turned back to the console in front of her. Lines of data streamed across the transparent screen, numbers and symbols folding into each other in hypnotic patterns. Most people would have called it chaos. To Aria, it was almost beautiful.
Almost.
"Just one more run," she murmured, fingers hovering over the activation panel.
Time research had been outlawed for seven years.
Everyone knew that.
After the Chrono Collapse—an experiment gone wrong that erased three city blocks and left behind distortions no one could fully explain—the Global Science Council had shut it all down. Any research involving temporal manipulation was classified, monitored, or quietly buried.
Officially, Aria was working on predictive algorithms—harmless simulations meant to anticipate market fluctuations and weather anomalies.
Unofficially, she had gone further.
Much further.
The device before her was small, no larger than a human skull, its surface smooth and dark, etched with faint silver circuits that pulsed softly, like a living thing breathing. It wasn't supposed to work. According to every law still allowed to exist, it shouldn't.
That was what made her hands tremble.
Aria adjusted the stabilizers and leaned closer to the screen, her reflection faint against the glass. Dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail. Tired eyes. A faint scar near her temple—an old reminder of why she never trusted "authorized experiments."
She hesitated.
If this failed, she could lose everything. Her position. Her freedom. Possibly her life.
If it worked…
Her pulse quickened.
She pressed the activation key.
The hum in the room deepened, vibrating through the floor and into her bones. The lights flickered once, twice, then steadied. Data spiked violently across the screen.
"Easy," Aria whispered, adjusting the parameters. "Just a glimpse. No displacement. No feedback loop."
The air around the device shimmered.
Then—
Pain exploded behind her eyes.
Aria gasped, clutching the edge of the console as the world tilted violently. The lab dissolved—not fading, but tearing, like paper ripped down the middle.
She was no longer standing in the lab.
She was standing in the rain.
Cold water soaked through her clothes, plastering her hair to her face. Sirens screamed somewhere nearby. The air smelled of smoke and ozone. Above her, the sky burned an unnatural red.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
This wasn't a simulation.
She knew the difference.
She turned—and froze.
The laboratory building stood ahead of her, shattered. Glass littered the ground like broken stars. Emergency drones hovered in the air, their lights flashing violently. And there, at the center of the chaos—
She saw herself.
Another Aria lay on the ground, blood spreading beneath her, eyes half-open and empty.
"No," she whispered.
Footsteps splashed through the rain.
A man knelt beside her fallen body, his face tense, jaw clenched as he pressed his hand against the wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.
His eyes lifted.
They met hers.
Shock rippled through her—not fear, not confusion, but recognition.
He could see her.
The world fractured.
Aria screamed as the rain, the sirens, the burning sky collapsed inward, folding into a blinding white void. Her body jerked violently—
—and she slammed back into the lab floor.
The hum cut off.
Silence crashed down like a physical force.
Aria lay there, gasping, her heart racing so hard she thought it might tear itself free. Cold sweat soaked her skin. Her vision swam as the lab lights flickered back into focus.
She was alive.
Alone.
The device sat inert on the console, its glow extinguished.
"That wasn't… possible," she whispered.
Her hands shook as she pushed herself upright. The clock on the wall blinked.
02:18 A.M.
One minute had passed.
Aria staggered to the chair and sat heavily, pressing her fingers to her temples. Her head throbbed, but the memory remained sharp—too sharp to be a hallucination.
The rain.
The sirens.
Her own lifeless body.
And the man.
She swallowed.
She had never seen him before. She was sure of it. Dark hair, sharp features, eyes like steel caught in shadow. The way he'd looked at her—not through her, not past her, but directly at her—
As if he'd been waiting.
A soft chime echoed through the lab.
Aria stiffened.
No one was supposed to be here.
She turned slowly toward the entrance.
The security doors slid open with a quiet hiss.
A man stepped inside.
He wore dark clothes, unmarked, his posture relaxed in a way that instantly set her nerves on edge. His gaze swept the lab before settling on her—and when it did, her breath caught.
It was him.
The man from the rain.
From the future.
"You ran it anyway," he said calmly.
Aria stood so fast her chair clattered to the floor. "Who are you?" Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "How did you get in here?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, his eyes flicked briefly to the device, then back to her face, something unreadable passing through his expression.
"Aria Chen," he said. "You just saw tomorrow."
Her blood ran cold.
She backed away slowly, her hand brushing the edge of the console. "You're not authorized to be here. I can call security."
He took a step closer.
"If you do," he said quietly, "they'll be here in under three minutes. And in under five, this lab will be sealed, your research confiscated, and you'll disappear into a facility that doesn't exist on any map."
He stopped a few feet away.
"I'm here to stop that."
Aria stared at him, her mind racing. "You expect me to believe you?"
A faint, almost sad smile touched his lips.
"You screamed my name," he said.
Her heart skipped.
"I didn't tell you my name," he continued. "But in the future you just saw—you knew it."
Her knees felt weak.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
"Kieran Vale," he replied. "And if you don't come with me right now…"
His gaze hardened.
"You won't survive the week."
The lab lights flickered again.
Somewhere deep within the building, an alarm began to sound.