"He doesn't know it yet, but this is the last day he'll be certain he's real."
The rain over London that day wasn't rain, not really. It fell in perfect vertical lines, like lines on a ledger, clean and digital. A misting drone hovered overhead, artificially seeding condensation to match the tone of the symposium: serious, climate-aware, and unimpressed by nature's timing.
Elias Vale didn't like the way the air smelled. Filtered. Too sterile. Like history had been bleached.
He stood under the arch of the ChronoTech Institute, a temple of glass and steel and stared up at the massive banner unfurling above the entrance. Gold lettering glimmered against black silk:
HISTORY FORWARD: PREDICTION, PARADOX, AND THE CIVILIZATION ENGINE Featuring Keynote by Lucien Roe, Founder of SIBYL and the RELIC Initiative
Elias adjusted the collar of his charcoal coat and checked the time. Two minutes to start. Just long enough for second thoughts.
"Try not to look like you're casing the building," came a voice beside him.
He didn't turn. He didn't need to.
Rae Imani slid into view, wearing her usual burnt-orange scarf, curly hair pinned into a loose coil. She looked like she'd just stepped out of a revolution and had taken the train straight here.
"You're late," he said, watching as a scanning orb swept across the two of them. "Did you override the security check again?"
"I did. And I deleted your browsing history while I was at it." She tapped her tablet. "No more catacomb architecture forums at 3 a.m."
Elias let a breath escape his nose, almost a laugh.
They stepped into the building, past automated doors that opened without a sound. The interior was pure corporate modernism: hovering displays, holographic maps of ancient empires reprojected over modern cities, and AI drones dispensing coffee coded by mood.
Elias scanned the crowd. Suits. Professors. Intelligence analysts. A few tech priests from East Asia with glyph tattoos on their shaven skulls. No journalists. No press. Too curated.
He didn't like it.
"Rae," he murmured, "how did Roe pull this crowd together in secret?"
Rae glanced at him, then at the ceiling where hundreds of small cameras blinked.
"Same way he always does. With fear. He says the future's already happened, and that's a hell of a pitch."
They entered the main auditorium. The seats were deep crimson. On the stage, a giant rotating globe hovered in mid-air, digitally rendered, but imperfect. Elias noticed the continents weren't the same shapes. Not quite.
The lights dimmed.
Lucien Roe took the stage.
He looked nothing like his photos. Not slick or modern. No blazer. No glasses. Just a black turtleneck, gray slacks, and bare feet on a carbon-fiber floor. His voice, when he spoke, had the rhythm of someone used to commanding silence.
"Time," Roe began, "isn't a river. It's a bruise. And we keep pressing on the same spot."
The globe shimmered behind him, reshaping.
"Each civilization thinks it is new. But Sibyl, our historical intelligence engine, has discovered otherwise."
The crowd leaned forward.
Roe flicked his fingers, and a series of warzones flashed into view: Syria. Crimea. Congo. The AI's models overlaid them with ancient battles: Kadesh. Thermopylae. Tours. All nearly identical in scale, movement, even casualty projections.
Elias felt something shift in his gut. He recognized the battle of Carthage… but Roe had labeled it "Forecast 2032: Tel Aviv."
Rae leaned in. "Are you seeing this?"
"I've written about some of these correlations," Elias whispered. "But not like this. Not with this level of detail."
Roe continued.
"History repeats, not by mistake, but by force. By design. The question is, who's doing the designing?"
He gestured. The projection changed again—now showing a map of energy clusters, overlapping time periods.
"In 2023," he said, "a relic was uncovered in southern Turkey. It predates written history, yet contains a language no one should know."
Elias narrowed his eyes.
A new image appeared: an ancient bronze mirror. Roughly circular. Cracked in three places, but covered in intricate symbols. Not decorative. Instructional.
Elias stopped breathing for a moment.
That mirror.
He knew it.
Somehow, he knew it.
"This object," Roe said, "disproves time. It remembers. And it's not done yet."
He raised the mirror into the light.
And then the screen behind him glitched, twitched, flickered black.
Pop.
A single gunshot echoed through the auditorium.
Lucien Roe staggered backward, mirror in hand. Blood bloomed through his chest like ink in water. He crumpled to the floor. The mirror clattered beside him, untouched.
Screams erupted. A woman fell. A security bot snapped to life.
Elias ducked instinctively, pulling Rae down with him behind the seats.
"Stay low," he hissed.
Above them, a giant screen jolted back to life. Security feed. Hallway camera.
Elias looked up, and saw himself.
Clear as day.
On the footage, Elias Vale was walking calmly down a back corridor, ten minutes before the keynote. Wearing the same coat. Same expression. Carrying something.
A weapon.
"What the—" Rae choked.
"I wasn't—" Elias started, then stopped. He had been in the courtyard, smoking.
Hadn't he?
The lights above them went white-hot. Alarms. Automated voice: "Evacuate. Evacuate."
They ran. Down a side aisle. Through an unguarded exit. Into the service corridors.
They didn't speak until they were three floors down, in a concrete stairwell smelling of metal and bleach.
Rae turned on him.
"That was you."
"It wasn't," he snapped. "I swear to you, I've never seen that hallway before."
"Then how did you end up on that footage?" She stepped closer. "How the hell did you end up on the stage, on footage, and how the hell is this in your bag?"
Elias frowned.
"What?"
She yanked his satchel open and pulled out something wrapped in black silk.
The mirror.
The same bronze artifact Roe had shown.
It pulsed faintly in her hands. Once. Twice.
Elias stared.
"No," he muttered. "No, that's not possible. I didn't put that there."
She unwrapped it slowly. The mirror's surface was dull but alive, the symbols etched with precision no human hand could replicate.
Elias reached out, trembling, and touched one of the runes.
The mirror rippled beneath his fingers, like water disturbed.
And somewhere inside it, something moved.
Something old.
Something watching.