The moment I saw sixteen different versions of Starkid die in my office, I knew we were all screwed. Timeline Seventeen showed him surviving, but that path required three impossible choices and one miracle. The odds were astronomical, but then again, calculating impossible odds was literally my job description.

  Welcome to my headache. I'm Kira Cole, and I see every possible future simultaneously. It's like watching millions of TV channels at once, except each channel shows a different way the world might end. Or not end. Reality's kind of fluid these days. Most precogs see one potential timeline, maybe two if they're exceptionally gifted. I see all of them—every branching possibility, every quantum decision point, every outcome spiraling into infinity. The human brain isn't designed to process that kind of information. Hence the migraines, the nosebleeds, and the small fortune I spend on painkillers that barely take the edge off.

  My office on the seventieth floor of Meridian Tower offered a panoramic view of Star City's gleaming skyline. In Timeline 36,428, a quantum bomb detonated in three hours, turning those skyscrapers into quantum dust. In Timeline 84,711, shadow entities devoured the entire eastern seaboard by nightfall. In Timeline 17, Starkid somehow survived, and we had a fighting chance.

  "Ms. Cole?" My assistant's voice came through the intercom in five different frequencies. In four of them, she was already dead. In two, she was never born. I focused on the version where she was still alive and actually my assistant. "There's a BACR containment team in the lobby."

  Right on schedule. In thirty-seven futures, they were already breaking down my door. In twelve, they'd caught me at home. This timeline was holding steady – so far. I checked the calendar on my desk, though I already knew the date in every possible reality. Two days since the Herald emerged. Four hours since the Shadow Bearer began collecting powers in Queens. Reality was approaching a convergence point, and everyone with half a quantum brain could feel it.

  I pulled up my precognitive analytics report – the one that had attracted BACR's attention. Stock market predictions were just a cover anyway. The real data was hidden in mathematical models that showed reality's structural integrity degrading across multiple temporal vectors. My company, Probability Partners, made billions by predicting market fluctuations with impossible accuracy. What my clients didn't know was that my real work happened in the secure lab beneath my office, where I'd spent the last three years tracking the collapse of reality itself.

  I tapped a sequence on my keyboard, activating security protocols I'd designed for this exact moment. Quantum-encrypted files began transferring to secure servers worldwide. When BACR seized my systems—and they would—they'd find nothing but ordinary financial models and client data. In Timeline 238,947, I managed to electronically transmit my findings to the Displacement Underground before BACR reached my office. In Timeline 238,948, the transmission failed and I died screaming as the containment team's power suppressors turned my brain to jelly.

  In Timeline One... well, let's not think about Timeline One.

  I focused on the most stable path – the one where I survived long enough to make a difference. It required precise timing and at least three extremely unlikely coincidences.

  Good thing I'd been arranging those coincidences for the past six months.

  "Send them up," I told my assistant through the intercom. In this timeline, she'd live exactly seventeen more minutes. Just long enough.

  I pulled up surveillance feeds on my monitors, watching the BACR team ascend. Four powered agents in quantum-shielded tactical gear. Two sensitives who could detect power usage. One guy who could nullify abilities within a ten-foot radius.

  They looked professional, efficient. Like they were just doing their jobs. I almost felt sorry for them.

  "Activate Protocol Seventeen," I said to my empty office. The AI system I'd designed hummed to life, quantum processors calculating probability vectors faster than even my enhanced brain could track. "And initiate defensive countermeasures."

  Hidden panels in the walls slid open, revealing technology that shouldn't exist for another decade. Not conventional weapons—those would be useless against what was coming. Instead, each device emitted carefully calibrated probability fields designed to nudge reality in specific directions.

  In Timeline 4,482, I took them all out with carefully placed explosives. In Timeline 4,483, the explosives failed and I got mind-wiped. In Timeline 4,484...

  Focus. The stable path. The true timeline. I checked my watch. The quantum patterns aligned exactly as I'd seen. Time to make the first impossible choice. I activated my office's hidden defense systems – not to stop BACR, but to slow them down precisely 4.13 seconds. Long enough for what came next. My nose started bleeding as probability waves collapsed around me. The futures compressed from millions to thousands to hundreds to dozens. Each elimination felt like ice picks in my brain, but I couldn't stop now.

  The pain was excruciating. Imagine the worst migraine you've ever had, then multiply it by a thousand. Now imagine that pain is caused by seeing every possible way your atoms could be arranged across infinite timelines. That's what it feels like when I force probability to collapse into a single path. The elevator dinged. Footsteps approached my office door. In Timeline 17, I survived the next ten minutes. In all others, I died—painfully, creatively, or instantaneously.

  The BACR team breached my office door exactly as Timeline Seventeen predicted. Their power nullifier stepped forward, hand raised. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with the haunted eyes of someone who'd seen too much combat. His quantum signature pulsed with suppression energy.

  "Kira Cole," he began, "by the authority of–"

  The window behind me exploded inward as Starkid arrived right on schedule, reality bending around him like light through a prism. Glass shards froze mid-air, caught in his reality distortion field.

  "You really should have better security," he said, grinning. His golden energy crackled around him, distorting local space-time. I'd always found him irritatingly smug, but right now, his timing was perfect.

  The BACR team reacted instantly, powers flaring – except their nullifier suddenly couldn't nullify, their shields suddenly couldn't shield, and reality suddenly worked differently in my office. The probability fields I'd carefully arranged were altering local physics, creating a bubble where BACR's powers functioned unpredictably.

  The team leader—a telekinetic whose file identified him as Agent Harrow—hurled my desk at Starkid with a thought. The heavy wooden structure shattered against Starkid's reality field, splinters hanging motionless around him.

  "Now that's just rude," Starkid said, flicking his wrist. The splinters reversed direction, accelerating toward the BACR team with impossible speed.

  Agent Choi, their shield generator, threw up an energy barrier that flickered weakly before failing completely. The wooden shrapnel slowed just enough to be non-lethal, embedding in tactical gear rather than flesh.

  I saw the next 7.2 seconds unfold in every possible variation:

  Timeline 34: Starkid dies instantly when Agent Mercer, their energy projector, hits him with a quantum disruption beam.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Timeline 35: I die instantly when Agent Harrow crushes my skull telekinetically.

  Timeline 36: Everyone dies when the probability fields overload, creating a localized reality implosion.

  Timeline 37: The building collapses when Starkid's powers go nova, killing hundreds of civilians.

  Timeline 38: Reality fractures permanently along probability fault lines.

  Timeline 39: The Shadow Bearer arrives early, absorbing everyone's powers and accelerating the collapse.

  Timeline 40...

  I grabbed the stable path and held on with everything I had. Blood poured from my nose as I forced probability to behave.

  "Down!" I shouted as energy blasts tore through spaces where we used to be.

  Starkid moved like he'd rehearsed this fight a thousand times – which, in several timelines, he had. BACR's powered agents found their abilities redirected, their quantum-shielded armor useless against someone who could bend reality itself.

  Agent Mercer fired quantum disruption beams that Starkid caught like softballs, compressing them into tiny points of light before flicking them back. The female agent—Vasquez, their tracker—was trying to lock onto our quantum signatures while the two sensitives attempted to bypass my probability fields.

  Through it all, I remained behind my overturned chair, blood streaming from my nose and ears as I forced this reality to follow the one path where we survived the next few minutes. Each probability nudge felt like someone was driving railroad spikes through my cerebral cortex.

  "Miss!" Starkid called, deflecting another energy blast with a casual gesture. "Whatever you're planning, do it now!"

  But they were just the distraction. The real threat was...

  Timeline One flashed through my consciousness, showing me the truth. The pattern. The real reason everything was converging.

  In Timeline One, the Shadow Bearer didn't just collect powers—it collected minds. Consciousness itself. And my ability to see every possible future simultaneously would make it virtually omniscient. With my power added to its collection, nothing could stop it from unraveling reality completely.

  My death wasn't just likely—it was necessary.

  "Starkid," I gasped as my power suppressant bracelet finally shorted out. "We have to go. Now. The Herald is coming."

  He glanced at me, reality rippling around his fingers. "The what?"

  The building trembled as probability waves collapsed. Through my quantum-attuned senses, I felt reality thinning. Felt the spaces between spaces begin to leak.

  "No time," I said, grabbing equations I'd prepared months ago – back when I first saw this moment coming. "The stable path is collapsing. We have exactly 2.47 minutes before–"

  The air screamed.

  It wasn't a sound you could hear with your ears. It was deeper, more fundamental—reality itself crying out as something tore through its fabric. The BACR agents froze, their faces masks of horror as they felt it too.

  Every timeline suddenly showed the same future – the Herald arriving, reality unraveling, the end of everything we understood about existence.

  But there was one path. One impossible, beautiful path that led through the chaos.

  I shoved the USB drive with equations into Jaron's hands. "Get these to Raylyn Weaver. She'll know what to do."

  "I'm not leaving you–"

  "Yes, you are. Because in every timeline where you stay, we both die. And then reality dies." I pushed him toward the window as shadows began seeping through my office walls. "The numbers don't lie, Jaron. The only way forward is the path I've calculated. Find Raylyn. Show her what's coming."

  The shadows weren't just darkness—they were absence itself. Places where reality had been erased, leaving nothing behind. They flowed like liquid night, swallowing everything they touched. One of the BACR agents screamed as a tendril touched his foot, watching in horror as his existence began to unravel from the bottom up.

  The Herald's presence warped reality around us, turning simple geometry into impossible angles. The BACR team screamed as their quantum frameworks began to unravel.

  Jaron hesitated one last moment. "What happens to you?"

  I smiled through the blood dripping from my nose. "I hold the line. Create a probability bubble stable enough for you to escape. Buy you exactly 7.39 seconds."

  "And after that?"

  I saw Timeline One flash again – the truth about what we were really fighting, what reality was trying to become. The Herald couldn't be allowed to absorb my consciousness, my ability to see all futures. With that power, it would become unstoppable, able to navigate the quantum collapse with perfect precision.

  "After that... I see what comes after."

  "But wait? How do I find Raylyn?" Jaron realizes.

  "You'll find help on the USB. Now Go!" I was growing impatient now. Every second he delayed closed another possible path to survival.

  Jaron nodded, reality bending around him as he prepared to jump. "Thank you."

  "Don't thank me yet." I turned to face the encroaching shadows, probability waves collapsing around me like dying stars. "Just make it count."

  As Jaron vanished into fractured space, I saw every possible future converge into a single point. The room temperature plummeted as the shadows coalesced, forming a shape that hurt to look at—angles that shouldn't connect, geometries that rejected Euclidean mathematics.

  The Herald emerged from spaces that shouldn't exist, wearing what used to be Mikey like a quantum crown. Its form shifted between states of matter, trailing void and stolen powers like a cosmic shroud.

  "Hello, Kira Cole," it said in a voice that tasted like static and smelled like void. "We've been looking forward to this conversation."

  I straightened my back, ignoring the blood now pouring from my eyes. "I know. I've seen it in every timeline."

  "Then you know what happens next."

  I nodded as reality began to forget how to be solid. "I do. And I know something else too." I smiled through quantum-tinted tears. "I know what you really are. What you've always been. What reality is trying to become."

  The Herald's form shifted between states of being. "And will you tell them?"

  "No need." I felt my consciousness expanding as probability itself embraced me. "They're about to find out anyway."

  The remaining BACR agents were gone now—not dead, but erased. As if they had never existed. The Herald moved closer, void-tendrils reaching for me, for my mind, for the power that would make it unstoppable.

  But I had seen this moment in Timeline One. I knew what would happen if the Herald absorbed my consciousness. And I knew what I had to do.

  In Timeline 17—the only one where humanity survived—I didn't live past the next thirty seconds.

  My hands moved to the quantum detonator I'd concealed beneath my blouse. Not a conventional bomb—those were useless against entities like the Herald. This was designed to create a localized probability implosion, collapsing all possible futures into a single point before they could be observed.

  "You would destroy yourself?" the Herald asked, void-form rippling with something almost like amusement. "Such a human response."

  "Not destruction," I corrected, fingers tightening on the detonator. "Transformation. There's a difference."

  The Herald realized my intention a moment too late. Its void-tendrils accelerated, reaching for me with desperate speed. "Your ability—we need it to navigate the Unweaving properly. To ensure the correct pattern emerges."

  "That's exactly why you can't have it." My thumb pressed down on the detonator. "Some futures should never be seen."

  The probability implosion began at the quantum level. My consciousness shattered into infinite fragments, each piece containing a single possible future instead of all of them simultaneously. The Herald's void-tendrils touched these fragments, trying to absorb them, but there were too many, moving too quickly.

  My body remained, but my mind—my consciousness—exploded outward across probability space, beyond the Herald's reach. My ability didn't die; it dispersed, becoming unusable to any single entity.

  The last thing I saw before reality claimed me was Timeline One—the truth about everything. About what came before. About what comes after.

  About what we're all becoming.

  As my consciousness fragmented across quantum space, I caught one final glimpse of Jaron—safely away, clutching the USB drive containing the equations that would lead him to Raylyn. To the only chance reality had left.

  I smiled as darkness took me. Not the darkness of the Herald, but the gentle darkness of possibility itself.

  Some sacrifices are worth making. Especially when you've seen every possible outcome.

  Especially when you've seen Timeline One.