Chapter 2: Unnatural Clarity
The next morning, the office looked exactly the same.
White lights. Soft machine noise. Rows of desks in neat lines. Two coffee machines that were always either empty or "cleaning." An open floor where everyone could see everyone, but almost no one really mattered.
Arin sat at his desk, monitor glow on his face, a half-finished coffee by his hand.
On the outside, nothing had changed.
His inbox was still full of requests, follow-ups, and "quick checks" that were never quick. Team chat was still full of jokes from people who did less work than he did.
Inside his head, everything felt different.
He didn't have someone else's memories. He didn't suddenly know this man's childhood or secrets.
It was quieter than that.
His thoughts had… structure.
Data used to feel like a wall he had to climb. Now it felt like a map he could see from above.
"Arin."
He blinked and looked up.
The colleague at the next desk, Jace, waved a hand. "You spaced out. Meeting. Glass room."
Arin turned.
At the end of the row, his team lead, Damon, leaned back in his chair, one arm over the backrest, the other holding a mug he never refilled himself. Early thirties. Confident smile. He liked being the smartest person in the room, even when he wasn't.
"Vale," Damon called. "Stand-up. Conference room. Let's move."
Arin checked the time.
9:02 a.m.
For half a second, his mind flashed to last night.
Rain on glass. Screeching metal. A pale face. A glowing screen.
He forced the image down.
"Coming," he said.
He grabbed his notebook and followed the team into the small glass meeting room. The city skyline outside looked washed-out and clean, as if nothing bad had ever happened on its roads.
The team sat around the table—six people, laptops up, phones face-down but never off.
Damon stood near the screen, a spreadsheet open behind him.
"All right," Damon said, clapping once. "Quick update. Our client, Cobalt Metrics, is panicking. Their Q3 risk model is showing a big spike. Their board wants answers before lunch."
He tapped the screen.
Columns of numbers and colored cells filled it. Arin knew this data; he had cleaned it last week.
"We did a pass yesterday," Damon went on. "Didn't find anything huge. Might be a false alarm. But their head of risk is… intense. So we have to show we're on top of it."
He marked three sections on the sheet. "We're missing the reason for these spikes. They want to know why their risk jumps here, here, and here."
Arin's eyes passed over the rows.
Normally, he would have to test filters, run checks, stare at trends.
Now, the answer snapped into place.
The three spikes weren't real risk. They matched a delay in one vendor's reporting plus a small change in how a sub-team tagged a type of transaction.
He didn't know how he saw it that fast.
He just did.
Damon looked around the table. "Ideas?"
Silence.
Lena frowned at her laptop.
Jace picked at a pen cap.
Arin felt the pattern sit in his mind, solid and clear.
Peak Strategic Insight.
He heard the words again, not in his ears, but in memory.
"Vale?" Damon said. "You did data prep. Anything?"
The old answer almost came out.
"I'll check and get back to you."
He swallowed it.
"The spikes aren't from real risk," Arin said instead. "They're from timing and labels."
Heads turned toward him.
Damon lifted an eyebrow. "Walk me through it."
Arin pointed at the screen.
"Vendor Delta changed their reporting delay last month," he said. "They batch over two days instead of one now. At the same time, the client's team started tagging one type of trade differently—here, in that column. The model treats it like new risk. It isn't. It's delayed input plus a label change hitting the same window."
The room went still.
Lena's fingers flew over her keyboard. "If I sort by vendor and date…"
Numbers shifted on her screen.
Her eyes widened. "He's right. The spikes line up with Delta's reports and the new tag."
Jace leaned forward. "How did you see that so fast?"
Arin had no good answer.
He gave the only one he could.
"I worked with their data last quarter," he said. "The pattern looked off."
Damon stared at the main screen, then at Arin.
His usual easy smile faded for a heartbeat, then slid back into place.
"Good," Damon said. "So we tell Cobalt the spike comes from a reporting delay and a tagging change. We suggest cleaning the labels and updating the model. That should calm them down."
He tapped the table.
"Arin, write a short note and one slide. Clear cause, clear fix. I want it in my inbox in twenty minutes."
"Okay," Arin said.
"Nice catch," Lena added.
Jace let out a low whistle. "You didn't even open the file."
Damon laughed. "Don't make his head too big. He'll start asking for my chair."
Everyone chuckled.
But when they left the room, Arin felt Damon's eyes on his back for a moment longer than normal.
Back at his desk, Arin opened a blank slide.
Words came easily.
Problem. Source. Explanation in one simple chart. Fix in two clear steps.
No second guessing. No backspacing five times on the same sentence.
He sent it.
Ten minutes later, a message landed in the team channel from the client contact.
[This is exactly what we needed. Thank you for the quick, clear breakdown.]
A minute after that, their department head replied.
[Good work, Damon's team. Especially whoever spotted the pattern that fast.]
Jace twisted around in his chair. "That's you," he said. "You just saved our morning."
"It was just timing," Arin said.
He knew that wasn't quite true.
The rest of the morning blurred.
Every file he opened, the same sharpness was waiting.
He saw which column mattered before he sorted.
He saw which error would break the model before any warning popped up.
He saw which slide layout would work before anyone asked for a deck.
At lunch, he heard it.
Near the coffee machine, two analysts from another team talked in low voices.
"Did you hear about the Cobalt thing?"
"Yeah. Apparently Vale nailed the cause in under a minute."
"Arin? The quiet one?"
"He's not that quiet now, I guess."
Arin poured himself coffee, keeping his face neutral.
Inside, his thoughts ran in tight loops.
You made a choice.
He saw the wreck again. The countdown. His own fingers pressing the last option.
You took his future when he died.
He took a sip of coffee.
It tasted like nothing.
"Hey."
Damon walked into the pantry, phone in his hand.
He gave Arin a small, practiced smile.
"Good job this morning," Damon said. "The director forwarded your note to his boss. They're impressed."
"Thanks," Arin said.
"You've been sharp lately," Damon added, tone light but eyes not. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."
He clapped Arin on the shoulder, turned, and left.
As soon as the door shut, Arin's expression emptied.
Sharp lately.
He hadn't changed his food.
He hadn't changed his sleep.
He had changed one thing.
Peak Strategic Insight integrated.
He pressed his thumb into the side of the paper cup until it crushed.
"If I didn't cause it," he breathed, too soft for anyone else to hear, "is it really wrong?"
No answer came.
The coffee machine hummed.
Someone laughed down the hall.
He went back to his desk.
The afternoon followed the same pattern.
Tasks came in.
He cut through them like a knife through soft fabric.
Twice, he caught mistakes in Damon's work before it went out. The first time, Damon thanked him. The second time, Damon's jaw tightened for a heartbeat before he nodded.
By early evening, a new set of messages appeared in a small private chat.
[Heard they might put Arin on the next big client pitch.]
[Already?]
[Yeah. Damon said he "thinks like a senior."]
Arin stared at the words.
He should have felt proud.
Instead, his chest felt heavy.
He logged off close to nine, grabbed his bag, and left.
Outside, the roads were dry. The sky was clear. No sign of last night's storm.
In the metro, he closed his eyes for a moment.
The rain came back anyway.
The sound.
The smell.
The exact moment life left Elias Korrin's eyes.
He reached his stop, walked home, and unlocked the door to his small apartment.
One room, one bed, one desk.
Quiet.
Safe.
He showered. He ate. He lay down.
His body was tired.
His mind wouldn't slow.
Every time he drifted close to sleep, he saw things from strange angles.
Not memories.
Not quite dreams.
He saw a meeting room from above, people at a table like pieces on a board. He saw which person would break first if you pushed the right number. Which question would make them talk. Which silence would make them reveal more than they meant to.
He saw a price chart, not as a simple line, but as waves and points where a small push could cause a big move.
He woke up with his heart racing, breathing hard in the dark.
The room was still.
His phone screen was black on the nightstand.
He stared at the ceiling.
His mind felt too awake, too sharp, as if it were still running models on things that didn't exist yet.
"Probability shift confirmed."
The voice dropped into his head without warning.
Three simple words.
No screen.
No light.
Just the same flat tone as on the road.
Arin lay there, eyes wide open.
The system hadn't disappeared after the crash.
It was still with him.
And whatever had shifted, it wasn't going back.