The Hour Between

Chapter One: The Wrong Minute

Maya Sen believed that most mysteries were badly labelled facts.

A loose wire. A faulty lock. A person lying. A person remembering badly.

The world, in her experience, was rarely supernatural. It was usually careless, and carelessness left paperwork.

The municipal archive was full of it.

The building had once been a courthouse, and its corridors still carried the solemn smell of old wood, damp stone and documents that had outlived the people who signed them.

Maya worked there three afternoons a week, scanning photographs and cataloguing records for a digitisation project. She liked the work because the dead were generally more organised than the living. A date was a date. A name was a name. If two records disagreed, one of them was wrong.

At 3:16 on a Tuesday, the scanner stopped.

Maya checked the cable, the power strip and the connection to her computer. Nothing. She tapped the side of the machine.

“Please don't make me explain technology to you,” she muttered.

The wall clock read 3:17.

Her computer said 3:16.

Her phone said 3:17.

She glanced at the clock again. Its second hand trembled at the top of the dial, then moved.

The scanner started by itself.

A photograph appeared on the screen. Maya had not selected it. The image showed the front entrance of Bellweather House, a residential block scheduled for demolition. She recognised the building from the previous day's records: four floors, thirteen apartments per floor, an enclosed lift, and a service corridor that had been sealed after a fire.

A woman stood outside the entrance.

Dark hair. Black coat. One hand resting on the iron railing.

Maya leaned closer.

The woman had her face.

Not a resemblance. Not a relative's familiar eyes or the same shape of jaw. It was her: the slight asymmetry of her smile, the tiny scar across her left palm, the small crease between her eyebrows that appeared whenever she concentrated.

The photograph was dated 1987.

Maya was born in 2004.

She checked the original file.

1987.

She checked the archive box.

1987.

She opened the image metadata and found no indication of recent editing.

Then she noticed the scar.

Three weeks earlier, Maya had cut her palm on a broken glass while washing a mug. The scar was still pink at the edges. In the photograph, the woman had the same mark.

Maya looked down at her hand.

The scanner made a soft clicking noise.

The woman's eyes had shifted. She was now looking directly at the camera.

A line of text appeared beneath the photograph.

DO NOT SHOW ADRIAN VALE.

Maya read it twice.

She had never heard the name Adrian Vale.

At least, she thought she hadn't.

A shadow moved behind her. She turned, expecting the security guard, but the aisle between the shelves was empty.

On the screen, a second line appeared.

YOU ALREADY DID.

Maya closed the file.

For a few seconds she sat perfectly still, listening to the archive's old pipes knock inside the walls. Then she reopened it.

The photograph was gone.

In its place was the demolition plan for Bellweather House.

At the bottom of the plan, where the architect's signature should have been, someone had typed a single sentence.

THE FIRST VERSION OF YOU WAS KINDER.