Evelyn kade pov
I noticed the ripple three minutes before the system admitted it.
Three minutes is an eternity if you know what to look for.
The monitors in Sublevel C didn't alarm. They hesitated.
Data streams smoothed themselves where they should have spiked.
Predictive models recalculated without asking permission.
That only happens when causality has been nudged sideways...not broken, not reversed.
Adjusted.
I set my coffee down and leaned closer to the screen.
"Interesting," I murmured.
---
They think I'm the villain because villains are easier to understand than necessity.
Agent.
Director.
Architect.
Pick a title...titles are camouflage.
What I am is someone who learned early that reality does not care about fairness, only continuity.
And continuity, if left alone, rots.
Marrow was never meant to be permanent.
It was meant to last long enough.
---
I pulled up the timeline overlays.
Version Seven...our current, supposedly stable line , now showed variance clusters where there had been none yesterday.
Minor civic adjustments.
Behavioral drift.
Oversight committees where containment protocols once sat quietly unchallenged.
Someone had touched the past.
Carefully.
I smiled despite myself.
"That took courage," I said to the empty room. "Or ignorance."
Probably both.
---
They don't know my name yet.
That's fine.
I know all of theirs.
Sam-3's signal was the clearest.
It always is with repeat survivors.
There's a particular stiffness to their data, like reality keeps trying to sand them down and failing.
Iteration Three retaining self-awareness post-ripple was… inconvenient.
I flagged the file.
KADE EVELYN - PERSONAL NOTE:
Do not erase this one yet
---
People assume containment is about control.
It isn't.
It's about mercy.
I've seen versions of Marrow where the building finished forming.
Where it learned to want without limits. Where continuity became consumption. Entire neighborhoods smoothed out because they contradicted the future it preferred.
In one version, children learned not to ask questions because questions physically hurt.
That version lasted a long time.
Too long.
---
The teenagers think they've made the system kinder.
What they've done is make it curious.
Curiosity is far more dangerous.
I walked to the glass wall overlooking the core chamber.
The structure beneath Marrow pulsed faintly...not in distress, not in obedience.
In interest.
"You feel them, don't you?" I said quietly.
The pulse shifted.
Good.
---
Agent Harris will break when he realizes what's changed.
He always does.
He's loyal to procedures, not outcomes. Useful.
Predictable.
The children are neither.
One of them doesn't belong to this version at all.
One stabilizes what shouldn't hold.
One remembers through erasure.
And one...Sam-3 has failed to disappear twice already.
Patterns like that don't resolve themselves.
They escalate.
---
I keyed in a new directive.
PROJECT PALIMPSEST – PHASE II
STATUS:Reactivation
OBJECTIVE: Induced choice under temporal pressure
FAILURE CONDITION: Unbounded continuity
The system hesitated.
Good.
That meant it still trusted me.
"Let's not be sentimental," I told it.
"They want a future? So do we."
Just not the same one.
---
Outside, Marrow slept peacefully.
People always sleep best right before a correction.
The teenagers believe time is open now.
That's the mistake everyone makes the first time they change it.
Time doesn't open.
It pushes back.
And when it does, it chooses sides.
I watched the projections update...new branches forming, old ones collapsing.
Somewhere in the noise, six bright anomalies moved forward, unaware that they were no longer just variables.
They were leverage.
I smiled, already planning the moment they'd realize the truth:
The past can be changed.
The future can be negotiated.
But continuity?
Continuity always collects its debt.
And I intend to decide who pays it.
Authors Note:
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