We didn't follow Ms. Reed.
Which sounds responsible, until you realize it was only because none of us could move.
Riley was the first to speak. "She said 'version'."
Sam rubbed his face. "I hate that word now."
Maya stood very still, like if she moved, something essential might fall apart. "She didn't mean metaphorically."
Jordan shook his head. "No. She meant literally."
Alex felt the ground tilt, not physically, but in that internal way where your understanding of things shifts and everything else has to scramble to keep up.
"One of us," he said slowly, "doesn't belong to this Marrow."
No one looked at Maya.
Which somehow made it worse.
---
They regrouped at Jordan's garage, the unofficial headquarters of bad ideas and whiteboards.
Jordan had already filled half of it with timelines.
Not dates....variations.
"Marrow isn't linear," he explained. "It loops. Resets. Soft resets. Hard ones when things go wrong."
Sam squinted. "Please tell me we're on the good timeline."
Jordan hesitated.
"That's a no," Lena said.
Jordan sighed. "It's a stable one. That's different."
Maya sat on the floor, knees pulled to her chest. "I remember things."
Everyone turned.
"Not clearly," she said. "Just… impressions. Like déjà vu with opinions."
Alex knelt in front of her. "What kind of things?"
"People," she said. "Who feel familiar but aren't here. Streets that don't exist but feel 'important'."
Riley nodded slowly. "Memory bleed."
Sam pointed between them. "So she's from another version of town?"
Maya swallowed. "I think I'm from one that didn't survive."
The garage went very quiet.
---
Jordan flipped to a new page.
"If that's true," he said, "then Maya isn't just a variable. She's an anchor."
Alex's stomach dropped. "For what?"
"For continuity," Jordan replied. "The thing beneath Marrow is trying to stop resets. To lock one version in place."
Sam frowned. "Why now?"
Riley answered, "Because it found something stable enough to hold onto."
Maya hugged herself tighter.
Alex felt a surge of something fierce and unhelpful. "It doesn't get to use her."
"No," Jordan agreed. "But it might not be asking."
---
That night, Maya dreamed.
She stood in a version of Marrow where the sky was the wrong color and the building wasn't hidden.
People walked past it like it was normal, like it had always been there.
In the dream, she wasn't afraid.
She was home.
When she woke, her phone was already in her hand.
A message blinked onto the screen.
Unknown Number: You remember more than you should.
She didn't reply.
Another message followed.
Unknown Number: That's why you're necessary.
Her heart pounded.
Maya: Necessary for what
The reply came instantly.
Unknown Number: For making this version last.
She stared at the words until they blurred.
Down in the buried dark, something adjusted, not testing, not waiting...
Choosing.
And above it, six teenagers stood at the center of a problem the town had solved before by forgetting.
This time, forgetting wasn't an option.
Because Marrow had found its anchor.
And anchors, Maya was beginning to understand, were not meant to be free.