Out Of Time

Chapter Three: The Father Who Never Lived

"Neither of you was supposed to survive the first experiment.”

My father's words echoed through the chamber, and for several seconds, nobody moved. The man standing in the doorway looked exactly like the father I remembered from childhood, with the same sharp jaw, the same deep-set eyes, and the same small scar above his right eyebrow. Yet the man beside me, the older version who had spent eleven years trying to repair the Continuum, looked just as real. Two men who shared the same face stood in front of me, each claiming a place in my life, while my mother knelt on the floor as though the sight of them had finally destroyed the last of her strength. I wanted to believe that one of them was an illusion, a trick produced by the machine, but the terror in their expressions was too genuine. The younger man glanced at the silver key lying near his feet, then looked directly at me. “Abigail, if you want to know why you keep dying, you must stop asking who changed the past and start asking who created the first version of it.” Before I could respond, the older man grabbed my arm. “Don't listen to him. He isn't your father.” The younger man smiled sadly. “That is exactly what he told me the first time we met.”

I pulled away from the older man's grip and stepped between them. “Enough. I want the truth, and I want it now.” The younger man looked at my mother, whose face had become almost colourless. “You should tell her,” he said. “You have hidden it long enough.” My mother shook her head violently. “You promised you would never come back.” He glanced at the machine behind him. “I never promised that. You simply believed I would remain dead.” The older man moved toward the control panel, but the younger version raised his hand, and the machine responded with a sudden burst of light. Every switch went dark. My father stopped immediately, his expression changing from anger to disbelief. “You have no control over this version of the Continuum,” he said. “Not anymore.” The younger man turned toward me. “Eleven years ago, your father did not die in an accident. The man who raised you was already dead before you were born, and the person standing beside you is an imitation created by the machine.” I stared at him, feeling something inside me begin to fracture. “Then who are you?” I whispered. His answer came without hesitation. “I'm the original Daniel Hayes, and I was the first person your father killed to create the future you remember.”

The name meant nothing at first, but then I remembered the photograph in my apartment, the billionaire whose death had been announced on television. Daniel Hayes was supposed to be thirty-four years old. The man before me looked younger, perhaps twenty-five, and wore the same broken wristwatch I had seen in the newspaper clipping. I turned toward the older man, searching for an explanation, but he refused to meet my eyes. “He's manipulating you,” he said. “The machine can create convincing copies of people, including their memories. Whatever he tells you, don't believe him.” Daniel laughed quietly. “You have been using that excuse for eleven years. Every time she remembers something you don't want her to know, you tell her the memory is false.” He approached the machine, placing one hand against its metal frame. “Your father built the Continuum to change a single event. He wanted to prevent a disaster that would destroy thousands of lives. But the first experiment required a living mind capable of remembering both the original timeline and the altered one. He chose Abigail because she was his daughter. He believed her memories would survive the transition.” My stomach tightened. “What happened?” Daniel looked at me with an expression of unbearable sadness. “The experiment worked. You remembered both timelines. But when your father realised what you had seen, he tried to erase your memory. That was the night you died.”

I could hear my own heartbeat, but everything else seemed distant. “Why would my father kill me?” I asked. The older man finally faced me. “Because the experiment was destroying you.” His voice trembled, and for the first time, I wondered whether he believed his own explanation. “Your mind was holding memories from two different histories. You were becoming unstable, and every attempt to separate those memories caused the timelines to collapse. I had to stop the experiment before it destroyed everyone connected to it.” Daniel shook his head. “You could have shut the machine down. Instead, you sent her back to the railway station and allowed the accident to happen.” My mother began sobbing. “I thought I could save her,” she whispered. “I thought if I changed the moment of her death, she would be able to live without remembering anything.” I turned toward her. “You knew what he was doing?” She covered her face with both hands. “I knew your father was trying to erase your memories. I didn't know he would send you onto the tracks. By the time I understood what was happening, it was too late.” The words hurt more than I expected, not because they explained everything, but because they revealed how many people had watched my life unravel while convincing themselves they were protecting me.

A sharp alarm interrupted us. The screen above the machine flickered back to life, displaying a countdown of seven minutes. Daniel looked toward the doorway, and his expression became urgent. “We don't have time for the rest of this conversation. The boundary is collapsing, and once it closes, the abandoned timelines will begin merging with ours.” My father rushed to the controls, but Daniel raised the silver key from the floor before he could reach them. “The only way to stop the collapse is to return the Continuum to its original state.” I frowned. “You mean reverse the experiment?” Daniel nodded. “Not exactly. We must restore the moment before the first experiment ever happened. If we do that, none of the altered timelines will exist.” I stared at him. “What happens to us?” He hesitated, and the answer was written across his face. “We may never have existed.” My mother rose unsteadily to her feet. “No. We are not doing that. I will not lose my daughter again.” Daniel looked at her. “You have already lost her countless times. You have simply been allowed to forget.” She slapped him across the face, and the sound cracked through the chamber. “You don't know what it means to lose a child.” He did not defend himself. Instead, he turned toward me and said, “I know exactly what it means, Abigail. Because in the original timeline, you were the person who killed me.”

I stepped backward, shaking my head. The accusation was so unexpected that I could not even form a response. Daniel reached into his pocket and removed a small photograph, its edges blackened as though it had survived a fire. It showed me standing beside him at the railway station, holding a metal device in both hands. Behind us, the machine glowed with the same pale blue light I had seen in my apartment. On the back of the photograph was a handwritten message: WHEN THE CLOCK STOPS, KILL THE WITNESS. I recognised the handwriting immediately. It was mine. “That isn't possible,” I whispered. Daniel held the photograph toward me. “You were the first person to discover what the Continuum could really do. Your father believed he had invented a way to change the past, but you discovered that the machine could also move consciousness between different versions of reality. You realised that someone could use it to escape the consequences of any action, including murder. You tried to destroy the machine before your father could use it again.” I looked at the photograph, then at my hands. A memory surfaced: my fingers tightening around a metal handle, Daniel shouting my name, and a flash of white light swallowing the railway platform. Then came the sound of a gunshot. I gasped and dropped the photograph. I remembered pulling the trigger.

My mother caught me before I fell. “Abigail, look at me. You were seventeen. You didn't understand what you were doing.” I pushed her away, horrified by the tenderness in her voice. “Did I kill him?” She could not answer. Daniel answered for her. “Yes, but not in the way you think. You shot the original version of me during the first experiment. The man who died in the locked room yesterday was another version, one created by the Continuum after your father tried to restore the timeline.” He looked toward the younger man standing in the doorway, who had remained silent throughout the explanation. “And he is the version of your father who died before the machine was ever activated.” The younger man nodded. “The machine brought me here because Abigail's memories have finally become strong enough to reconstruct the original event.” I turned toward him, trying to understand how someone who had never lived could stand before me. “If you're dead, why are you here?” He glanced at the black doorway. “Because the machine has begun searching for the person who started everything. It doesn't care whether that person is alive or dead. It only wants the original event restored.”

The countdown reached three minutes. The chamber began to shake, and the glass panels cracked one after another. Through the broken surfaces, I saw the abandoned timelines collapsing into darkness. I watched versions of myself disappear, their faces frozen in terror, while the machine released a sound like a thousand people screaming at once. Daniel placed the silver key in my palm. “You have to choose,” he said. “Shut down the Continuum and allow the original timeline to return, or let the machine complete the reset and risk losing every version of yourself.” My father grabbed my shoulder. “Don't do it. If you restore the original timeline, you will remember everything, including what you did to Daniel. You will have to live with those memories.” I looked at him, then at my mother. Both wanted me to choose the option that would preserve the world they understood, even if that meant repeating the same mistakes. I realised that neither of them was asking what I wanted. They were still trying to decide which version of me deserved to survive. For the first time, I understood that the only way to escape their control was to make a choice they could not predict.

I inserted the silver key into the hidden slot beneath the control panel and turned it.

The machine stopped instantly. Every clock in the chamber went silent, and the lights faded until only the metal doorway remained illuminated. A message appeared on the screen: ORIGINAL TIMELINE RESTORATION READY. CONFIRM SUBJECT IDENTITY. Beneath the message were two names: ABIGAIL HAYES and DANIEL HAYES. I reached toward the screen, but Daniel seized my wrist. “Don't select either name,” he warned. “The machine is asking which person should carry the original memory.” I stared at the choices, realising that the decision was not about who would live. It was about who would remember the truth. Before I could respond, the younger man stepped toward us and placed his hand on the screen. Both names disappeared. A third name appeared in their place.

My mother screamed.

The name was hers.

Then the machine spoke in a voice that sounded exactly like mine: “Original subject identified. Begin restoration.”

And somewhere beyond the doorway, a train began to approach.