Timefall: A Thousand Years to Find You

What Followed Him

The silence lasted three seconds. Maybe four. It felt like an hour.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, it was gone, footsteps outside, fast, moving away down the street, and after that, nothing. No banging. No shadow under the door. Just the ordinary sound of the city again, horns and voices and somewhere far off, a dog barking.

Chenxi let out a breath he didnt know hed been holding. Okay. That was probably just some kid. Or a cat. It was probably a cat.

That was not a cat, Jinyan said.

You dont know that.

I know what a cat sounds like. Jinyan hadnt lowered the sword. His eyes were still on the door, sharp and steady in a way that made Chenxis skin prickle. That was something looking for me.

Chenxi wanted, badly, to argue with that. Hed had a long night, a longer week, and the very last thing he needed was a man with a real sword and a glowing hand telling him something was hunting him down in his own kitchen. But the truth was, hed felt it too, that wrongness in the silence, like the air itself had been holding its breath along with them.

Okay, Chenxi said slowly. Lets say I believe you. Lets say you really are from, wherever, whenever, a thousand years ago, whatever. Why is something after you? What did you do?

I do not know. Jinyan finally lowered the blade, but he didnt sheath it. I was dying. Then I was here. I do not know what happened between those two things, or why.

Something in the way he said it, quiet, honest, a little lost, made Chenxis anger fade into something closer to pity. Whatever this man was, prankster or lunatic or actual time traveler, he looked exhausted in a way that wasnt easy to fake.

Chenxi rubbed a hand over his face. He thought about his shift starting in less than an hour, about rent due Friday, about the exam he still hadnt studied for. He did not have room in his life for any of this.

Heres the deal, he said anyway, because apparently he also didnt have the heart to throw a bleeding stranger back out onto a street where something might be waiting. You can stay here tonight. One night. Tomorrow we figure out what you actually are and where you actually go. Deal?

Jinyan looked at him for a long moment, like the offer surprised him more than the glowing hand had. Why would you help someone you do not know?

Chenxi shrugged, already turning back to the stove like this was a completely normal Tuesday. Because you looked like you were about to fall over, and because my mom would kill me if she found out I let a guy bleed to death on my kitchen floor. Sit down. You look terrible.

Jinyan sat. It felt strange, obeying a stranger in a strange land, but his body was tired in a way that went past muscle and into something deeper, and the chair was, at least, solid and real under him.

Chenxi set a bowl in front of him a few minutes later, rice, some vegetables, the same thing hed been cooking for himself. Jinyan stared at it like he wasnt sure what to do with a bowl that didnt have a servant standing behind it waiting to fill it again.

Its just food, Chenxi said, amused despite himself. Eat.

Jinyan ate. It didnt taste like anything from his own time, and somehow that made it easier to swallow, like eating something that belonged to no world at all, just to this strange in between hour.

You said you dont know what I am, Jinyan said eventually. You do not believe me.

I dont know what I believe. Chenxi sat down across from him, exhaustion written plain across his face. I believe I saw your hand glow blue like something out of a bad drama. I believe you know words for things that stopped existing a thousand years ago. I dont believe in time travel, though. Not really. Not yet.

Then what will convince you?

Chenxi thought about it. I dont know. Maybe nothing will. Or maybe, he stopped himself, shook his head. It doesnt matter. Eat your food.

But it did matter, and some part of Chenxi knew it even as he said otherwise, because as he watched Jinyan eat in careful, deliberate bites, like a man relearning something he used to know by instinct, a small, uninvited thought crossed his mind, what if hes telling the truth?

He pushed the thought away. He had a shift to get to.

He didnt get the chance to leave.

The lights went out, all of them, all at once, the whole street outside going dark like someone had reached out and pinched the sun. And in the sudden black, low and close, a voice spoke that belonged to neither of them.

There you are, it said. Prince.

Jinyan was on his feet before Chenxi could even find his voice to scream.