The smell of overcooked noodles hit him first—steam rising from a cafeteria tray that hadn't existed moments ago. His fingers twitched against a plastic fork, its tines digging into his palm like an anchor to reality. Around him, first-year students chattered obliviously, their conversations identical to the ones he'd overheard weeks ago. No—months ago? Time folded like a misprinted page.
A fork clattered to the floor somewhere to his left. The sound snapped his gaze upward, where the overhead monitors flickered in unison. Lunch menus dissolved into static, then reformed into two words: **FINAL WARNING.** The text pulsed crimson for three seconds before vanishing. No one else reacted.
His coffee cup trembled when he lifted it. The liquid inside was cold—just like it had been on the first day, before he'd known about Lin, before Zhang's fists had tasted concrete. Before the *Narrative Integrity Division* had erased them all.
A shadow fell across his table. "You gonna drink that or perform a séance with it?"
Lin.
Not the Lin who'd whispered *find me* as the world dissolved. This Lin wore her hair slightly shorter, her glasses smudged with a fingerprint on the left lens. Her expression held none of the razor-edged recognition from the rooftop—just mild annoyance at his frozen stupor.
Exactly like their first encounter in the original timeline.
His throat went dry. "Do I know you?"
She snorted, sliding into the seat opposite him. "Doubt it. You've been staring at your phone since orientation." A lie. The original him had never owned a smartphone—just a cracked Nokia with prepaid minutes.
The monitors flickered again. **FINAL WARNING** reappeared, this time mirrored in Lin's lenses as she unwrapped a sandwich. Her fingers stilled mid-motion. A blink, and her gaze sharpened. "You see it too."
Not a question.
A notification buzzed in his pocket. His hands shook as he pulled out a phone he didn't remember buying—a sleek flagship model with a single unread message:
**SYSTEM OVERRIDE INITIATED. CHARACTER #1305: REMAIN IN DESIGNATED PARAMETERS OR FACE PERMANENT TERMINATION.**
Lin's sandwich crumpled in her grip. "Show me."
He turned the screen toward her just as the message dissolved into gibberish—then reformed into Mandarin, then binary, then a string of emojis. Lin's breath hitched. "They're scrambling the transmission." Her finger stabbed at the last coherent symbol: a tiny skull. "This isn't just a reset. It's a *quarantine*."
Across the cafeteria, Zhang Wei entered with his usual entourage, laughing at some joke that would've been scripted months from now. Except Zhang's laughter died the moment he spotted them. His steps faltered. His eyes—wide, panicked—locked onto Lin's hand where it gripped the phone.
He *remembered*.
The monitors flared one last time: **FINAL WARNING.** Then every screen on campus went black.
Lin stood so fast her chair toppled. "We have twelve hours."
"Until what?"
Her smile was all teeth. "Until whatever's rewriting this story decides we're not worth the trouble."
Outside, a car horn blared three times. The heiress's signal.
But the silver Porsche idling at the curb had its passenger door already open—and the girl behind the wheel was staring straight at *him*.