Chapter 3 3

Elias leaned over his workbench, smudged fingers smeared with ink, equations filling half a dozen notebooks. The pale yellow light of the overhead lamp fought only weakly against the shadows of the workshop, but he didn't care.

He was on the brink.

The prototype sat on his workbench, whirring softly-a small, finicky device no larger than a pocket watch. Six years of relentless toil had led to it. Six years of failures, of figures that never did add up. But now, finally, he had it.

An operational time-reversal device.

Not time travel, not in the sense people imagined. No jumping into the past, no altering history. Just a systematic rewind.

A means of reversing errors.

And tonight he was going to try it.

His heart racing, he turned the dial. Five minutes. That was all. A little, controlled rewind-nothing sensational. If it succeeded, he'd be back exactly where he was five minutes before, the memory of what had just occurred still with him.

He let out a breath. Pressed the button.

Click.

The machine hummed. The air changed, growing heavy like the prelude to a storm.

Elias felt it-a pull, a dragging, as though something was unspooling inside of him. The room flashed. The wall clocks stopped.

Then-release.

He breathed in sharply. The feeling whipped back, and he was dizzy but... present.

His eyes darted to the desk. The ink blur he had smudged on his papers five minutes ago was gone. The coffee cup he had moved was back where it belonged.

It worked.

It actually worked.

A grin creased his face. "Holy shit."

But before he could get his hackles up-

A creaking board echoed behind him.

Elias's eyes locked. His breath froze in his chest.

He wasn't alone.

Slowly, thudding heart, he turned his head-

And his blood ran cold.

Standing in the shadows, half-hidden by the dark glow, was himself.

Another Elias.

Same face. Same outfit. Same wide, scared eyes.

Elias's stomach churned. His mind stumbled for sense, for sanity. This was impossible. No copies existed in time-reversal theory. No alternate forms of himself.

And so why was he standing there staring at one?

The other Elias stared at him, locked up. Chest expanding and contracting in ragged breaths.

Then, near-whisper-"Don't use it again."

Elias caught his breath. His throat constricted.

The other Elias took a step back, shadows running across his face. His face was abject fear.

"You have to listen," said the duplicate, his voice scraping. "You don't know what you just did."

Elias attempted to speak. To say something-anything. But his tongue was leaden, his body planted.

Then-the duplicate flickered.

Not like a person coming into the light. Like a glitch.

For a moment, his form twitched, rent asunder, and reassembled-as if he weren't quite present.

Elias's stomach was knotted.

"What the fuck are you?" he panted.

The replica winced. His face screwed up-like he had something to tell him and couldn't.

Then as suddenly as he had appeared-he vanished.

No sound. No disintegrating.

Just-poof.

The silence that remained behind was deafening.

Elias sat, panting, staring at the spot where he had been.

This couldn't occur.

The mathematics didn't allow for this.

He staggered to his feet, knocking over a pile of books. His hands trembled as he grabbed his notebook, ripping through pages, seeking an answer.

But no matter how many formulas he went over, no matter how many theories he re-did, it all led to one frightening conclusion-

His machine hadn't merely rewound time.

It had left a remnant.

A thing that does not belong.

And, of all things?

That other Elias... had feared him.