Bobby didn’t move for a long time.
He stood in the alley long after the Echo Looper had vanished, after the last of the blue glow had dissolved into the night air, after XX-66 retracted its arm with a smooth click of metal and stepped silently aside.
The words still echoed.
“It’s far from over. Just you wait and see. You will definitely be killed sooner or later.”
They clung to his thoughts like oil in water, impossible to separate, impossible to ignore. The man had been dead the second he stepped into that alley—erased from time—but his words lived on.
Bobby’s fists trembled. Not with fear. Not completely.
With pressure.
With the weight of too many questions and not enough answers.
XX-66 didn’t speak. It simply turned, scanning the area, as if Bobby’s reaction wasn’t even part of
