Chapter 2: Forced Reflection
The security alert pulsed on Jed’s phone screen, a tiny, frantic red heart beating against the cool glass. Gallery Storage Bldg. 6:42 PM. Elara wasn’t supposed to be there. The ice in his veins spread, locking his breath. His older self watched him, a statue carved from grim anticipation.
"Elara...?" Jed choked out, the name scraping his throat raw. "What happened? Is she—"
"Not yet," the older Jed cut in, his voice like gravel under a boot. He snatched the phone back before Jed could react, his movements economical and brutally fast. "But she will be. In that building. Tonight. Unless you move that useless ass." He pocketed Jed's phone. "Keys. Now."
The command brooked no argument. Jed fumbled blindly in his jeans pocket, fingers numb, and thrust his car keys towards the older man. The older Jed snatched them, his knuckles white.
"Follow." He spun towards the apartment door, a dark vortex of purpose.
Jed stumbled after him, legs still trembling from the earlier shock, the phantom pressure of the granite counter replaced by a chilling dread. The cluttered warmth of Elara’s apartment – the worn wooden table scattered with art magazines, the lingering scent of yesterday’s garlicky pasta sauce mingling with the fresh coffee Jed had abandoned on the counter – suddenly felt cloying, suffocating. A sanctuary violated.
They burst into the dimming hallway. Older Jed moved with terrifying certainty, not towards the elevators, but down the fire escape stairs. Jed scrambled to keep up, the metallic clang of their footsteps echoing harshly in the concrete shaft, drowning out his ragged breathing.
Downstairs, in the humid twilight of the alley, Jed’s beat-up sedan looked incongruous next to the older man’s grim intensity. Older Jed wrenched the driver’s door open.