"Kim!"
Ben's voice hit her from somewhere to the left, distorted by the newsroom sirens in her blood.
She shut the notebook so hard it nearly bent. The page vanished. Her own handwriting vanished. The sentence about her throat vanished back into the black cover and left her kneeling in broken glass with her husband still on the line.
"Kim." Reese again, lower now. "Talk to me."
"I'm here," she said.
Her voice sounded wrong. Thin. Too far away.
All around her, people were swearing, crawling, calling for medics, checking each other for cuts. Someone had knocked over a monitor. Someone else was bleeding from the forehead. The steel connector still jutted from the partition behind her chair like a verdict.
Ben dropped to a crouch beside her. "Are you hit?"
She shoved the notebook halfway into her bag before he could see it. "No."
He followed her line of sight to the connector and went pale. "Jesus."
On the phone, Reese said, "Ben?"
Kim froze.
Ben looked at the mobile in her hand. "How does he know I'm—"
She cut him off by standing too fast. "I'm fine."
The room tilted. Ben caught her elbow. Reese must have heard the shift in her breathing because his next words came sharper.
"Sit down."
Kim almost obeyed.
That was the problem.
Even now, shaking, glass in her hair, lungs still tight from the almost of dying, part of her reacted to Reese the way people reacted to gravity.
"I said I'm fine," she repeated.
Ben frowned. "You are absolutely not fine."
Her desk phone started ringing. Three other reporters were talking over each other. Someone near the windows shouted that the live feed was back up.
Kim dragged in one breath and forced herself to think.
Notebook in bag.
Reese on phone.
Too many eyes.
"Call me back in ten," she said quietly.
A beat of silence.
Then, "No."
Soft. Immediate. Certain.
Kim turned away from Ben. "Reese—"
"Ten minutes is too long."
Her skin prickled.
"Why?"
Another pause. She could hear him choosing how much to say.
"Because things are still shifting," he said. "I need to know where you are."
Less exact.
More careful.
Still wrong.
Kim's grip tightened on the phone. "That's not reassuring."
"Kim."
There was worry in his voice. Real worry. Enough to hurt her for doubting it.
That almost made it worse.
Ben was still hovering. Marisol was trying to herd the uninjured staff away from the shattered south side. Oren had appeared in the doorway of the archive room, staring at the ruined glass as if the building itself had insulted him.
Kim said, "I'll call you."
Then she ended it before he could stop her.
Ben looked scandalised. "Did you just hang up on your husband after nearly getting impaled?"
"Yes."
"How newly married are you exactly?"
"Not enough for commentary."
That earned the smallest ghost of a laugh from him. Good. Normal. Human. She needed the room to stay ordinary for another thirty seconds.
"Med team's coming up," Ben said. "No one leaves until they're checked."
Kim nodded automatically.
Then her eyes snagged on the wall clock above the assignment board.
11:42.
Her phone screen still lit in her hand.
9:17.
She frowned, tapped it awake, and looked again.
9:17.
The newsroom clock said 11:42.
Ben's watch—when she caught his wrist and looked—said 11:43.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
Kim let go.
Her pulse slowed in the worst possible way.
Not calm.
Recognition.
She opened her bag with fingers that suddenly felt colder than the air. The notebook was already open.
She was certain she had shoved it in shut.
A new line sat beneath the last one.
Do not trust the first time you see after impact. Check the clocks.
Kim stared.
No one had touched the bag.
No one had touched the notebook.
She looked back up at the wall clock.
Now it read 9:18.
Her phone: 9:18.
The monitor chyron still read 8:52.
The incident log still read 11:41.
The world was splitting.
But her memory did not.
The notebook did not.
She actually stepped backward.
Ben followed her gaze. "What?"
"The clock."
He squinted. "What about it?"
"It just changed."
"No, it didn't."
Kim didn't argue.
Arguing was useless if the system rewrote itself.
The notebook had already told her that.
A medic reached her at last, all brisk calm and latex gloves. "Any lacerations?"
"Nothing serious."
He started checking her arms anyway. "Pupils look a little blown. You hit your head?"
"No."
"Any memory issues?"
Kim almost laughed.
Ben answered for her. "She's in shock."
Kim said nothing. The medic cleaned a cut across the back of her hand that she had not noticed. While he worked, she kept one hand inside the open bag, touching the notebook like she was afraid it might vanish if she didn't.
Her phone buzzed again.
REESE
Pick up.
Then, immediately:
Please.
That one word landed differently.
Not control.
Not command.
Fear.
She should not have felt relieved by that, but she did.
When the medic moved on, Kim slipped between two desks and ducked into the empty copy room. She shut the door most of the way and answered.
"You don't listen well," Reese said.
It should have been teasing. It wasn't.
"You knew something was going to hit the windows."
He exhaled once. "I knew that side wasn't stable."
Not certainty.
Assessment.
Kim pressed her shoulder to the filing cabinet. "What does that mean?"
"I can't explain it over the phone."
"You can't or you won't?"
Silence.
His breathing on the line was the only proof he was still there.
Outside the copy-room glass, the newsroom kept moving in fragments. Too fast. Too normal. Too wrong.
Finally Reese said, "Are you alone?"
"Why?"
"Kim."
There it was again. That pressure behind her name.
She hated how much she loved the sound of it.
"I'm in copy," she said.
"Lock the door."
Her spine stiffened. "That's not ominous at all."
"Do it."
This time she did.
The lock clicked. Instantly stupid. Instantly comforting.
Reese was quiet for a second, then said, softer, "Thank you."
Kim shut her eyes.
"Talk to me," she whispered. "Just once. No careful wording. No half-answer. Why did you know?"
On the other end of the line there was a burst of distant shouting, then the metallic scream of something enormous settling under strain.
When he spoke, his voice was lower than she had ever heard it.
"I've seen things go wrong like this before."
Kim opened her eyes.
That was not an answer.
But it was not a lie either.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I don't want you near anything unstable."
Kim felt the floor tilt again.
Not memory.
Not wrongness.
Decision.
If he came here—if he walked in with that careful face and those impossible eyes—she might tell him everything.
The notebook.
The lines.
The clocks.
All of it.
And the first rule the notebook had given her still burned in her mind.
Do not tell Reese.
She pulled the notebook out fully and flipped the page.
Fresh ink waited.
If he says he's coming, leave before he arrives. Last time you let him see the page.
Kim went cold all the way through.
"Kim?" Reese said sharply. "What happened?"
She looked at the locked copy-room door. At the half-visible newsroom beyond it. At the bag hanging from her shoulder. At the page in her hand that knew what he would say before he said it.
This wasn't about trusting Reese.
That was the part that hurt.
She did trust him.
That was exactly why she couldn't risk it.
If the notebook was right—even once—then telling him had already gone wrong before.
"I'm fine," she lied.
"Kim."
"I need air."
"Don't go outside."
Too quick.
Still too precise.
She was already unlocking the door.
"Kim, listen to me."
But she had listened to him.
That was the problem.
So this time, with her husband racing back toward her and the notebook telling her she had failed this before, Kim Calder walked in the opposite direction.
Not toward the elevators.
Not toward the lobby.
Toward the archive stairs, where nobody ever went unless they wanted to find something the system preferred to forget.
Behind her, her phone vibrated again and again in her hand.
She did not answer.
At the stairwell landing, she looked down once more at the notebook.
A final line had appeared.
Good. This time you ran before he saw you.
Kim stared at it.
Then at the ringing phone.
Then at the concrete stairwell dropping into the dim levels below the newsroom.
And for the first time since marrying Reese Brunnr—
she chose the notebook over him.