The smoke is still rising.
It's coming from downtown—just past the plaza where all the lights flicker every time it rains. Except there's no rain now. Just fire. People screaming. Something collapsing.
Marcus and I stare at it from the overpass, frozen. My legs want to move, but my brain keeps screaming stay out of it.
Except… I can't.
"Stay here," I tell him.
He grabs my arm. "Are you serious?"
"Whatever this is—I think it's connected to me. Or people like me."
"Like you?"
"I don't know. I just—feel it."
He wants to argue. I can see it. But he lets go. And I run.
⸻
The closer I get, the more I feel it—like gravity's bending around me. Cars are flipped. The air smells like metal and ozone. I pass a girl crying into her phone, her voice cracking. "He just disappeared. He—he just vanished—"
Buildings are cracked. Streetlights flicker. Something's wrong with time here. I feel it in my chest, like pressure behind my ribs.
Then I see him.
A man—no, not a man. His body pulses like he's not fully in sync with the world. He walks through the wreckage, face calm, arms loose at his sides, but wherever he steps, the ground ripples. Not shakes—ripples, like time is bending around him.
And I freeze.
He looks at me.
Not like a stranger.
Like he knows me.
"You're early," he says, voice like thunder through a tunnel.
"What are you?" I ask. My voice sounds so small.
"A reminder. That time is not yours to command."
I don't know what he means. But I don't get to ask.
He raises his hand—and the world bends.
A blast of energy shoots toward me, and without thinking, I throw my hands up—and everything stops.
But this time… it's not clean.
The pause is jagged. Broken. I can still feel him moving through it.
He grins. "You're just beginning."
I run. I don't even try to fight. My breath is ragged, my vision swimming. It takes everything I've got to keep moving while time distorts like shattered glass around me.
When I finally break the hold, when time snaps back into place, I'm blocks away, barely able to stand.
That man—he wasn't human. And if he knew what I could do… there must be others like him. Or worse.
This isn't just about powers anymore.
It's about what comes hunting for them.