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Elias didn't flinch as Celeste moved closer. He'd seen augmented agents before—off-world spies, timeline enforcers, even a few black-market saboteurs. But something about her was… different. She wasn't just enhanced. She felt older—like she didn't belong to this decade… or even this century.
She knelt beside Bellamy's body, scanning his retina with a compact device. "Dead thirty-seven minutes ago. Time of death doesn't match atmospheric logs."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning something altered the flow of time in this room."
Elias showed her the note. Her eyes flickered. "Classic Bellamy. Cryptic until the end."
"You knew him."
"I studied under him," she said, rising. "Before he vanished into obscurity, before he started building illegal temporal tech for people who couldn't afford mistakes."
"And this?" Elias gestured to the backwards-running cube.
Celeste hesitated.
"That," she said slowly, "is a Temporal Inversion Key. It allows a person to reverse time locally for exactly sixty seconds. Bellamy never finished it. But if it's running… he did."
A low hum vibrated through the floor. The clocks on the wall began to flicker. One shattered.
Elias drew his weapon. "What was that?"
Celeste didn't move. "He opened a loop. One he couldn't close."
The air shimmered behind them. A figure stepped through the distortion—wearing Elias's face.
But older. Worn. Eyes haunted.
"I told you not to come here," the double said.
Elias stared, stunned.
Celeste just whispered, "Oh no. We're too late."
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