Amira didn't cry.
There were no tears left.
She sat beside the sealed chamber where Ishan now lay suspended in time, the white sphere humming softly, gently illuminating the entire sub-basement with an eerie calm.
Ten years.
That's how long he had locked himself away. For the cure. For her.
For love.
Silas stood a few steps behind her, staring in silence.
"I've calculated over fifty potential risks," he finally said, "from power instability to molecular decay. But…"
"But?" she asked, voice brittle.
Silas exhaled. "Every simulation ends the same way. If we try to open the chamber before the countdown ends, he dies. Not ages. Not fades. Ceases."
Amira nodded, unsurprised. "Then we wait."
The Observatory changed over the next few years.
What was once a quiet haven became a fortress.
Amira turned the entire structure into a research institute. She named it the Aion Foundation, an open scientific haven protected from government control. Scholars, defectors, rogue engineers — all found shelter within its newly fortified walls.
She focused her life on defending two things: the cure, and the boy who had become her son.
And Rayan's legacy.
Every morning, she would descend to the lowest floor and sit beside the chamber, a silent vigil.
And every morning, she would read aloud from her journal. Updates on their work. Messages of hope. Things she wished he could hear.
But the Ministry hadn't stopped.
They were only evolving.
Reports came in—mass disappearances, encrypted broadcasts, anomalies in spacetime localized to major cities.
Silas found it first. He called it Loop Residue — a signature left behind from repeated attempts to alter time.
Amira knew what it meant.
"They're testing new machines," she said. "Trying to recreate what Rayan built."
Silas looked grim. "But they don't have the source material."
"They will," Amira said. "When he wakes up, they'll come."
Year 8 of the Wait
Amira woke one night from a dream she couldn't remember. Her heart raced. The air felt thick.
Something had changed.
She rushed downstairs.
And stopped cold.
The Chronostasis Chamber was glowing brighter than ever before.
Lines of data began scrolling across the monitors.
CRYOGENIC STASIS ENDING IN: 1Y 3D 17HGENETIC SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETESPECIMEN HEALTH: STABLE
Silas appeared behind her, blinking in shock. "It's speeding up."
"The machine?" she asked.
He nodded. "Something from the outside is pulling it. Time itself is adjusting."
"But why?"
They didn't need to guess.
Because miles away, in the Ministry's secret labs, another machine had just been activated.
And a man, once known as Rayan, opened his eyes.
But it wasn't him.
Not really.
The clone had taken decades to engineer. Crafted from the remains of Rayan's genetic code, enhanced, stripped of memory — then reprogrammed.
They called him Vektor.
His face was Rayan's. His voice was colder. Calculating.
And in his chest, beneath his skin, was a quantum anchor: a way for the Ministry to control time… through him.
"We need the boy," Vektor said.
"The original?" asked one of the scientists.
Vektor turned slowly. "Yes. But this time, I will bring him back."
Year 9
The countdown ticked faster now.
Months turned into weeks.
Security doubled. Then tripled. Artificial sentries guarded every gate of the Observatory.
And on the eve of the final week, a storm rolled in like the apocalypse.
Lightning split the sky.
Machines blinked offline.
And in the rain, a man walked toward the Observatory gates.
Face hidden beneath a hood. Gait familiar. Purpose unshakable.
Silas saw him on the security cameras first.
He dropped the tablet in disbelief.
"It's him."
Amira looked up sharply. "Ishan?"
"No." His voice cracked. "Rayan."
But it wasn't the man she remembered.
When she opened the gates herself — rifle in hand — she saw the truth.
His eyes were hollow. His posture mechanical.
And when he spoke, her blood ran cold.
"You are holding property that does not belong to you."
She raised the weapon. "You're not him."
"I am what he was meant to become," Vektor replied. "And I have come to correct the timeline."
Amira didn't hesitate. She pulled the trigger.
But Vektor moved faster than sound.
The bullet stopped in mid-air.
He looked at it. Then flicked it aside.
"You always were predictable."
The Observatory's alarms blared red.
Autoguns deployed. Security drones whirred into action.
And Silas slammed a button to activate the fallback sequence.
But it was too late.
Vektor phased through steel like mist, bypassed the gates, and walked into the core.
He didn't stop to fight.
He was walking toward Ishan.
Amira and Silas raced through the lower halls, breathless.
By the time they reached the chamber, Vektor had already arrived.
He stood before the glowing sphere, hand pressed to the surface.
"You stole time," he whispered. "But time always takes back what it's owed."
"No!" Amira shouted.
Vektor turned just as she raised her second weapon.
A plasma blade.
Something Rayan himself had once designed.
He smiled. "Ah. The relic."
Then they fought.
It was fast. Brutal.
Amira held her ground, channeling every memory, every ache, every loss.
She was not fighting to win. She was fighting to stall.
Because behind Vektor, the countdown had reached its final stage.
CRYOSTASIS TERMINATINGSYSTEM UNLOCKINGCORE STABILIZED
The sphere cracked with a hiss of steam.
Then dissolved.
And from the light…
Ishan stepped forward.
Eyes glowing. Skin pulsing faintly with residual time energy.
Alive.
"NO!" Vektor roared and lunged.
But Ishan raised his hand.
And with a force that defied gravity, he stopped him.
Vektor hovered in mid-air, frozen in a temporal lock.
Ishan stared at the clone of the man he had once called father.
"You are not him," Ishan whispered. "He loved her. You don't even remember her name."
Vektor's form began to destabilize.
Time unraveled inside him.
Then, like a broken projection, he vanished.
Amira dropped her blade.
Silas caught her before she collapsed.
And Ishan…
Ishan knelt beside her, touching her hand with trembling fingers.
"You came back," she said, voice cracking.
"I never left," he replied.
They wept.
That night, the sky cleared.
Stars stretched above the Observatory.
And in the ruins of the lab, the broken remains of Vektor's weapon pulsed once.
Deep within the wreckage… a seed remained.
A fragment of unstable time.
And somewhere far away…
A clock began to tick again.
To be continue...