Chapter 2
1113 Words
Aria’s POV
After a lot of pacing, a lot of late-night overthinking, and way too much ice cream, I came to a decision: I had to meet Xander.
Simple, right?
Wrong. Because there’s one glaring, time-splitting problem—I’m not allowed to time travel. At least, not officially. I’m on time probation. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds… actually, scratch that. It’s exactly as dramatic as it sounds.
Let me explain.
It all started during senior year of high school. We were covering World War II in history class—specifically the brutal conflict between Japan and Korea. Now, I’m a hands-on learner. Reading about events from a textbook just doesn’t cut it for me. So I did what any curious, totally unsupervised teenager with access to temporal displacement tech would do—I traveled back in time to witness it firsthand.
In my defense, everything was going fine... until it wasn’t.
I somehow, totally by accident, ended up sneaking into Queen Min’s royal chambers. It was breathtaking—ornate silk drapes, polished gold furniture, the faint scent of peony incense in the air. My curiosity got the better of me. I tried on her ceremonial headpiece, posed in front of her mirror, and—yeah—took a few selfies.
Bad move.
One of the maids caught me. She screamed bloody murder when she saw herself on the screen of my phone. Thought I was some sort of ghost or demon. Next thing I knew, guards were bursting in, and I barely escaped with my hair still blue. Now, there’s a legend in that timeline about a “blue-haired demon girl who traps souls in glowing ice boxes.”
Oops?
Naturally, the Time Council wasn’t amused. Especially not my dad—the Head Time Council Master himself. So I was grounded. Temporally grounded. Meaning I’ve been banned from time traveling for the past six months.
I only have one week left. One. Week.
And that’s just enough time to pull off the biggest, boldest move of my life: meeting Xander before the war ends, before he dies, and before the future he changes ever has a chance to happen.
Why Xander? Why risk it?
Because he’s the one person I can’t stop thinking about. I discovered him while doing a temporal scan for potential anomalies in the mid-2000s, and something about his energy was… electric. He's a weapons engineer with a genius mind and a strange softness beneath all the gruff sarcasm. He's the type of guy who names his machines after Greek gods but still stops to feed stray cats. Yeah—that kind of rare.
For the past week, I haven’t shut up about him. I’ve been venting nonstop to my best friend and neighbor, Zoe. She’s usually away at university, juggling biology and explosive engineering (I know, cool and terrifying). But her semester just ended, and she came home for summer—just in time to get wrapped up in my chaos.
We were sitting on the old, rusted swing set in her backyard, the chains creaking under us. I was mid-rant about how Xander’s smirk could end wars and melt glaciers.
“So, you’re really going back in time to meet him?” she asked, sipping from a cup with three different straws sticking out of it. Classic Zoe.
“Yep,” I said, nodding with wild determination.
“And you need me to make a clone of you so no one notices you're gone?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re completely insane.”
“I know. But come on, Z, I need this.”
She narrowed her eyes. “The Queen Min incident didn’t exactly change the future. But going back to date someone? That could completely unravel the timeline, Aria.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. I’m being careful this time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You say that like you're not the same person who triggered an earthquake because you wanted to take a nap in Pompeii.”
“That was once, and I was really tired.”
Zoe exhaled sharply, letting her head fall back to stare at the clouds. “Xander’s death led to Russia never getting the blueprint to a certain super high-tech bomb, Aria. You do realize that if you mess with this, it could cause global consequences?”
“I’m not stopping his death,” I said quickly. “I’m going back three years before it happens. Just enough time to... influence things a little. Change how it plays out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll climb that mountain when I get to it.”
Zoe shot me a glare. “That’s not reassuring.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
She groaned. “You’re hopeless.”
“I prefer ‘romantically daring.’”
“You mean reckless.”
“Semantics.”
She stared at me in silence for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then, she sighed and stood up. “Fine. Come over tomorrow so we can start working on your clone. Bring snacks this time. And soda. The good kind.”
“Thanks, bestie!” I jumped up and hugged her tightly.
As I was about to leave, she grabbed my arm. “Aria, listen to me for real. You can’t let Russia get their hands on the Sodom and Gomorrah blueprints. If they do, we’re looking at a future with zero survivors on Earth. That weapon’s power is beyond comprehension.”
I nodded, serious now. “I know. I won’t let that happen.”
Her eyes searched mine for a moment before she finally let go.
I walked—okay, skipped—home under the sunset, excitement buzzing in every step. Tomorrow was the beginning of everything.
That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. My thoughts drifted to Xander. What would he be like in person? Would he still be as magnetic, as sharp-witted, as kind in secret ways? My heart raced at the idea of standing in the same room with him, of hearing his voice not through time echoes but right in front of me.
Was it dangerous? Absolutely.
Was it worth it?
Every. Single. Risk.
Tomorrow I’d begin crafting my fake identity, prepping the clone, and slipping through a loophole in the time probation rules. My father would not be pleased, but this wasn’t about him. It was about protecting the future—and maybe, just maybe, giving myself the chance to experience something extraordinary.
Something like love.
With one final thought—Xander’s crooked smile etched in my mind—I let sleep take me.
Because tomorrow, the countdown begins.
- Writer
