Chapter 2 Borrowed Time 3 and 4

Three days passed.

Dr. Renn hadn't slept. Not because of guilt he had long buried that ,but because the machine was still humming. Quiet, almost imperceptible, but undeniably *alive*. It had never done that before. When someone didn't return, the Chronos Drive shut itself down. Sealed the file. Case closed.

But this time... it lingered. Like a door left slightly ajar.

On the fourth night, the lab lights flickered.

He approached the machine, fingers trembling, and placed his hand on the console. It was cold. Icy. He tapped into the temporal logs. Her file still read:

Status: In Transit.

That was impossible.

Time had run out.

Unless-

He opened the command terminal and overrode the safeties. He shouldn't have, but the unknown whispered louder than logic.

A video feed sparked on.

It showed her. The woman. Standing in a field of tall grass. The sky above her glitched, as if trying to decide between dusk and dawn. And the boy-her son-was beside her, holding her hand. Alive. Laughing.

But they weren't moving forward. Or backward. They were... paused.

She looked directly at the camera. Through it.

"I won't give him back," she said, as if she knew he'd be watching. "I know what that means. But I won't."

Dr. Renn stepped back.

This wasn't a glitch. She had **refused the return.

She had made a choice to live in the in-between, trapped in a sliver of stolen time. And that-according to the laws of physics and whatever gods watched over their shoulders-was a violation.

A debt unpaid.

The next morning, people across the world began to lose moments. Forget names they never forgot. Entire hours vanished from digital logs. Memories blurred at the edges. Chronos had cracked open something deep-something that did not forgive imbalance.

Dr. Renn's team wanted answers.

He gave none.

Instead, he returned to the machine. Alone. And for the first time since Chronos had come online, he entered the chamber himself.

Just for a minute, he told himself. Just long enough to find her. To bring her back.

But when the countdown began, he heard a sound he hadn't heard in years.

Tick.

His office clock synchronized again. On time. Two seconds faster.

As if time itself had just taken the lead.