[Arlie's POV]
"Temporal frequency… gone."
Seren's voice was soft, but the words...hurt.
I stared at the monitor, at the empty graph where Kiran's signal used to be.
A sharp spike to 100%. Then nothing. No decay. No echo. Just a flat, blank space.
"…What does that mean?" I asked, even though I already knew what it meant.
Seren's fingers hovered over the console, trembling just a little. "No trace of him," she said. "Not here. Not in any branch I can scan. His energy signature is… completely absent."
I swallowed. The air in the lab felt thicker than usual, like someone had turned the oxygen down.
"Maybe he's just out of range," I said quickly. "Or hiding from you know…The GD? Or maybe it's a damn glitch or something? You said the system isn't perfect, remember?"
She didn't answer.
I couldn't accept it either.
On the other screen, global readings flickered. No more temporal spikes. No more timeline deletions. No Nexus broadcasts. The Dyson rings were still feeding power, but the Empire behind them… silent.
Everything was suddenly… stable.
Almost too stable for this world.
It made me want to scream.
"So that's it?" I snapped. "We get a flatline on some pretty looking graphs, and we're just supposed to accept he's gone?"
Seren's jaw tightened. "I didn't say he's gone," she replied. "Just that we can't detect him."
"Same thing," I muttered.
She glanced at me. "You remember what he said," she murmured. "Three days."
I did.
"If I don't come back, open it exactly three days from now." I remembered his exact words.
I clenched my fist around the folded paper in my pocket, knuckles whitening.
I wanted to rip it into pieces… but couldn't.
Maybe I was afraid to even know what's in it.
"He'll be back," I said, the words coming out too fast. "He's probably just… stuck. Or overshot. Or arguing with some other version of himself, nightmare. It's him. He's too stubborn to just disappear."
Seren didn't say "no." She didn't say "yes" either.
"Three days," she repeated. "We wait."
So we waited…
Day one, we threw ourselves into work, or pretended to.
We went back to our lab, which was now destroyed.
Tried to salvage as many things as we could. We tried finding a new place, we eventually did. And settled there temporarily. Built a temporary lab.
Seren mapped the sudden collapse of Nexus infrastructure, the way their global control grid had gone dark like someone yanked the cord or something.
Martial law rolled across all continents as local governments scrambled to take over what was left Or hide to save their public image.
It was chaos, but it was human chaos—not dictated by a single man behind an empire.
Usage of AI went down by 60 percent, as the locals protested, but this time protests worked. There were no longer drone surveillance watching every move, but military. Still surveillance, but better.
I paced. Checked comms. Checked monitors. Checked the door, like he was going to just stumble in complaining about headaches asking for painkillers or something.
I really tried focusing on work, but couldn't.
Day two, I stopped pretending.
I yelled at Seren. At the empty test room. At the stupid console that still had his last readings saved like some kind of cruel souvenir.
"You call this stable?" I shouted. "He could be out there, stuck between timelines, and you're here labelling graphs!"
Seren just watched me, eyes tired, then let me run out of words.
I can't blame her…
That night, I fell asleep at the console and woke up with my face stuck to the keyboard and my throat hurting with my face getting printed with keyboard keys.
Day three, the anger burnt out.
The lab was quieter than I'd ever heard it. No alarms. No distortions. The hum of machines, the soft flicker of screens. It was peaceful. Just without him.
I hated it.
I dragged myself to the corner of the room near the wall, lowered myself down, and sat there with my back against the cold metal.
That corner felt comfortable.
Not too warm to make me feel something, not too cold to make me feel nothing.
My eyes stung. They'd stung all day.
At some point, tears had already dried on my cheeks, but I couldn't remember when I'd let them out.
Honestly I couldn't care…
My hand slipped into my lab coat pocket out of habit.
Fingers brushed against a paper.
I froze.
I'd thrown this coat on and off without thinking for the last two days. I'd yelled, slept, paced in it. But I hadn't taken anything out of it.
I had forgotten about it.
Slowly, I pulled the folded page out.
For a second, the urge to shove it back in and pretend I hadn't felt it, was overwhelming.
Too late.
He'd written this knowing he might not come back. Knowing he'd put this weight on us.
At this point I had accepted that.
On me.
I unfolded it, hands shaking just enough for me to get annoyed at myself.
"Alright, time-boy," I muttered. "Let's see what you had to say."
I read.
"If you're reading this, it's been three days.
Which means I'm dead.
These last days with you and Seren… they were the first time in my life I didn't feel like background noise.
If I got even a few real memories with you all, that's already more than I ever expected.In my last moments, I know I'll think about my close ones.
That includes you. Whether you like it or not.
If you're still reading… I'm sorry.
I'm sorry I didn't keep my promise to come back.
I'm sorry for dropping this mess on you.
I'm sorry for leaving you with one more person to grieve.
The truth is, if I somehow made it back, I'd probably snatch this letter out of your hands and tear it up, pretend I never wrote something this dramatic, and then cry like an idiot when no one's looking.
But since you're reading it… I couldn't come back.
There might be a timeline where I'm alive again.
Back in my house. Before we ever met.
At the very beginning. But it's not guaranteed.
And even if it is—Please promise me one thing.
If you ever find a version of me out there, don't come find me.
Don't try to fix this by dragging him into this nightmare.
If my plan worked, that Kiran deserves a normal life.
He doesn't need to remember any of this. Or you. Or me.
I know it's selfish to ask that. I know it hurts.
But if you break this promise, then everything I did really was for nothing.
And one more thing…Don't cry while reading this, okay?
You wouldn't want to ruin the paper with tears, would you? Haha.…
If it was in my power to meet you all again, I would take that chance. Every single time. No matter how many timelines it broke.
Thank you.
For making my life mean something right at the end.
Regards,
Kiran Awasthi"
His apologies. His stupid self‑deprecating lines.
I snorted. "Nice confidence," I said under my breath.
Then I got to the part about him thinking of his "close ones" at the end, and how that included us whether we liked it or not.
My throat tightened.
I forced a little laugh at his joke about tearing the letter up and crying in secret if he survived. It sounded exactly like him.
"Yeah," I whispered. "Would have loved to see that."
Then the promise. The part I hated the most.
The part where he begged me not to come find another version of him if the plan worked.
Don't drag him into this mess. Let him have a normal life.
"You really want me to just walk away if I see you again?" I murmured. "You idiot."
His last lines were the worst.
If it was in my power to meet you all again, I'd take that chance every time.
Thank you. For making my life mean something right at the end.
That did it.
The dry laugh I tried to push out came out fractured.
I covered my mouth with my hand, but it didn't stop the first tear from slipping out.
"No," I whispers, wiping it away angrily.
Another one fell anyway.
"Damn you," I whispered. "You don't get to give orders when not to cry from the afterlife."
The words on the page blurred. I blinked hard, sniffed, forced my face back into something resembling neutral.
I made it to the end. Folded the letter once, then again. My hands were steady this time.
It had to be steady.
I think it's time.
There was a small metal box below the bed—a boring, scratched up box.
He once almost opened it, before I hid it away.
I was too embarrassed, afraid to get close or personal with him.
He never did find out what was inside.
In my room. It was the same mess as always, clothes, cans, tools.
Only now it felt a little emptier.
Some things really don't change, huh?
I sat on the bed and held the box precious to me and flipped the latch.
Inside were snapshots of a life that didn't belong to a cold, distant person like me.
A small, faded photo of me as a kid, missing front teeth, holding a medal. It was bronze but who cares.
A graduation picture I'd pretended not to care about.
I wonder where they are now.
A worn ticket from the first time jump.
A leftover fabric of my first lab coat.
A folded note from Seren which simply said "Good work"
That was the first time I learned about her warm side.
I stared at them all for a second.
Then I added the letter.
It felt natural keeping it there.
I tucked it underneath the photos, like I was filing him into my own history. Not on top, not hidden. Just… there. With the rest of the things that mattered enough for me to carry.
I closed the lid.
The click of the latch sounded too loud.
A long breath slipped out of me, half sigh, half something else.
I left the room and headed for the outside platform.
The world above the lab was different now.
Not fixed. Not healed. But different.
The Nexus broadcast towers had gone dark.
The great holographic banners declaring loyalty to the Empire were gone, replaced by hastily drawn flags, temporary checkpoints, martial law announcements worldwide.
Soldiers, not enforcers, patrolled the streets.
People moved like they weren't sure if they were allowed to breathe yet.
The sky was clear.
No fractures. No red pulses. but the light that filtered through felt… softer.
Safer.
I stepped forward until I was at the edge of the platform, the night air cool against my face. The stars were faint, drowned out by city glow, but they were there,
glimmering.
I reached up, fingers spread, like I could close that last bit of distance.
"I won't forget you," I said quietly.
The wind didn't answer. The sky didn't crack.
Time didn't rewind.
Good.
Maybe it's natural that way.
I let my hand fall back to my side.
Kiran Awasthi no longer existed in any timeline.
But in this one… we remembered.
Seren, somewhere behind me in the lab, probably still staring at the empty part of the graph where his signal had been.
Or helping the victims of the empire, providing shelters, funds and other things.
And me.
A girl who dragged him into this mess…
"Time's moving forward now," I murmured. "Without you."
"Only that's missing."
I forced a small, crooked smile.
"We'll try not to waste it."
I turned away from the stars and headed back inside.
The door slid shut behind me with a soft hiss,
sealing the night out and the memories in.
Somewhere deep in the lab, machines hummed, quietly rewriting logs to match a universe where he never existed.
But my pocket felt a little lighter.
And that was enough.
-End of Novel-