The wisteria outside the hospital swayed gently in the morning wind, petals drifting through the air like fragments of a forgotten dream. Yet within the walls of Wisteria General Hospital, something was wrong—terribly wrong.

  Anatoly Pervona stood in his office, his back to the window as he carefully arranged a stack of dissection diagrams with surgical precision. The light was dimmer than usual. Odd, considering it was morning. But he didn't look. Not yet. He was too absorbed in his usual ritualistic calm, oblivious to the fact that the world outside had shifted.

  Then came the sound: a slam, harsh and abrupt. The office door flew open.

  "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" Tankai’s voice cracked like thunder, panic laced through every syllable. His white coat flared behind him as he stumbled into the room, hair askew, breathing hard like he’d been running.

  Anatoly didn’t flinch. "Good morning to you, too," he said coolly, still not turning around.

  "No. No, no, you don’t get to act all cryptic right now, you—whatever-the-hell-you-are! The entire hospital is EMPTY. Every single room. No nurses. No patients. Not even that intern who microwaves fish at 7 AM!"

  That made Anatoly pause. Slowly, deliberately, he turned. His black eyes, almost never fully open, lifted to meet Tankai’s frantic expression. "Empty?"

  Tankai looked like he was about to explode. "YES. Abandoned. Like everyone just... vanished! It’s not just the hospital either. The streets are empty. Dead silent. No cars, no people, no birds, nothing. I walked six blocks trying to find anyone. It’s like we’re the only ones left."

  Anatoly moved to the window. He pulled back the curtain.

  The street outside was eerily still. Traffic lights blinked on cue, casting red and green reflections on an empty road. A newspaper fluttered by. But nothing else moved.

  "What time is it?" Anatoly asked.

  Tankai checked his watch. Then frowned. "It’s... 9:13 AM. But that can’t be right. It’s still dark out."

  Anatoly squinted at the sky. A thick grey hue hung above, like the clouds were made of smoke. "Strange."

  Tankai stared at him. "That’s all you have to say? STRANGE? We’re in a full-blown apocalypse and you’re just—"

  "It is unwise to panic before gathering data," Anatoly cut in calmly. "You said you walked six blocks?"

  "Yes. And I saw NO ONE. Not even the creepy guy who talks to pigeons. And you know he’s always out there."

  Anatoly’s lips curled into the faintest ghost of a smile. "Yes, I do."

  "This isn’t funny!"

  "I wasn’t laughing."

  Tankai dragged a hand through his hair and began pacing the office. "This can’t be real. Maybe we’re dreaming. Maybe someone drugged the water. Maybe this is one of your weird experiments."

  "If it were mine, I’d have invited you."

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  "...That’s not reassuring."

  The two stood in silence for a beat. Outside, the wind picked up. A loose hospital gown drifted past the window like a ghost.

  Tankai stopped pacing. "What do you think happened?"

  Anatoly turned back to his desk, picking up a scalpel and examining its edge. "Possibilities: One, mass evacuation due to an unseen threat. Unlikely—we’d have heard alarms. Two, hallucination or simulation. Also unlikely—we’re experiencing shared perceptions. Three..."

  Tankai’s eyes narrowed. "Three?"

  Anatoly looked him dead in the eyes. "We’ve traveled forward in time."

  Tankai opened his mouth. Closed it. Then slowly said, "You’re not joking, are you?"

  "No."

  "Time travel?! How?! When?!"

  "I don’t know. But we are in a state of temporal dissonance. The absence of humanity, the altered sky, the inconsistent lighting—these suggest a discontinuity."

  "So we—just casually skipped into the future? Together?" Tankai crossed his arms. "This is why I don’t go anywhere without coffee."

  Anatoly stepped past him and opened the office door. The hallway beyond was bathed in a cold, pale light. Wheelchairs sat abandoned. A blood pressure monitor beeped once, then went silent. Not a soul in sight.

  They walked slowly down the corridor. Every footstep echoed unnaturally loud.

  Tankai whispered, "I don’t like this. It’s like... the world is holding its breath."

  They passed the pediatric ward. Crayon drawings still hung on the walls. Anatoly paused at one. A child had drawn two doctors. One wore a long white coat. The other had black eyes and a shadowy aura.

  "We’re famous," Anatoly murmured.

  "That’s horrifying," Tankai replied.

  They reached the main lobby. The front doors were wide open, letting in a breeze that smelled of ash and ozone. Outside, the city stretched in unnatural silence.

  "It’s like the world ended without a bang," Tankai said. "Just... fizzled out."

  Then, a flicker of movement.

  Both men froze.

  Down the street, maybe five blocks away, something shifted. A silhouette. Humanlike—but wrong. It didn’t walk so much as it glided, limbs moving in stuttering jerks.

  "Did you see that?" Tankai asked.

  Anatoly nodded. "Not alone after all."

  The figure stopped. Tilted its head.

  And then ran—no, charged—straight toward them.

  Tankai slammed the hospital doors shut and locked them. "NOPE. Nope, nope, not today."

  They backed away from the doors, breath tight in their chests. The sound of pounding footsteps grew louder outside, then stopped.

  Nothing.

  Anatoly reached into his coat and pulled out a scalpel. Tankai looked at it. "What are you gonna do, perform surgery on it?!"

  "If needed."

  A sharp scraping noise echoed down the hallway.

  Both men turned.

  From the opposite end of the hospital, more movement. More shadows. Creeping.

  Tankai swallowed. "Okay. We’re in the future. Alone. Possibly being hunted by stuttery murder shadows. Great."

  Anatoly’s voice was calm. "This may be a pocket timeline."

  "A what now?"

  "An unstable branch of reality. Collapsed timelines sometimes trap anomalies—"

  "Okay, Professor Quantum Nonsense, can we focus on surviving first?"

  They bolted back toward the elevators. But the power was flickering.

  "Stairs," Anatoly ordered.

  They descended five flights in tense silence, footsteps echoing louder than they should. At one point, Tankai slipped on a discarded clipboard and nearly tumbled down the stairs.

  "You’re not allowed to die without my permission!" Anatoly snapped, catching his coat collar.

  "EXCUSE ME?!"

  They burst through the stairwell door into the basement. The air here was thicker, damper. Generators hummed softly.

  Tankai slumped against a wall. "Okay. We hide. Wait for the timeline to... fix itself. Right?"

  Anatoly didn’t respond. He was staring at a monitor. It was showing footage from a security camera.

  The main lobby.

  The creature had made it inside.

  And it wasn’t alone.

  Tankai’s voice dropped. "That’s more than one. That’s like... ten. Or fifteen."

  On screen, the creatures convulsed. Their limbs stretched in unnatural ways. Some were crawling on the ceiling.

  "I take it back," Tankai said quietly. "This is worse than any of your experiments."

  "Thank you," Anatoly replied absently.

  Tankai gave him a look. "That wasn’t a compliment."

  Suddenly, the screen flickered. Then turned off.

  "Power’s failing," Anatoly said. "We need to move."

  They slipped into the maintenance tunnels—narrow, low-lit corridors beneath the hospital.

  "If this is a pocket timeline," Tankai whispered, "how do we get out?"

  "We find the event anchor. Something that caused the fracture."

  "And what if we can’t find it?"

  Anatoly gave him a look. "Then we’re trapped here. Forever."

  "Cool. Great. Love that for us."

  As they moved through the tunnels, the lights continued to flicker. At one point, a low hum vibrated through the walls. Not mechanical. Alive.

  "Did you hear that?" Tankai asked.

  "Yes."

  "...I hate it here."

  Eventually, they reached a sealed steel door marked: ARCHIVE: RESTRICTED ACCESS.

  Anatoly’s hand hovered over the keypad. "This room shouldn’t exist."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I’ve worked here for decades. There’s no archive in the basement."

  He typed in a random sequence. The door opened.

  Inside: darkness.

  Then, flickering lights revealed... rows of vials. Files. Photographs. Machines neither of them recognized. And in the center—a glass pod.

  Tankai walked to it. Inside the pod was a person. Or... maybe not. The figure was pale, unmoving, with glowing eyes and a faint shimmer around its body.

  A plaque read:

  SUBJECT 000 – CHRONOHAZARD

  Anatoly’s voice dropped. "This... this may be the anchor."

  "Who is that?"

  "Not who. What."

  As Anatoly reached toward the controls, the pod blinked. Slowly, the figure’s eyes opened.

  And smiled.