The cafe clock reads 2:14. Vesna has lived this same hour four times. Across the room, a man stirs cold coffee and smiles at her. His name is Calder, and he comes from a future that erases hers. He was sent back to cut one second out of history. She was sent to do the same to him. They both know it. Neither one moves. Whoever acts first, in the right second, wins. The loser's whole world just stops.

Vesna stops waiting. Under the table she thumbs the small device in her coat, the one that crushes a single second flat. She locks onto Calder's timeline and the air around him starts to ripple. But Calder was watching her eyes. Half a breath later, he triggers his own device.

Calder's device misfires. Vesna's lands clean. His timeline folds shut and he flickers like a bad signal. But just before he vanishes, he leans in and whispers a string of numbers into her ear. Coordinates. A gift or a trap, and she can't yet tell which.

Vesna repeats the numbers and the cafe dissolves around her. She arrives in a quiet office where the tired woman from the counter sits across a desk. "You're the second everyone keeps fighting over," Vesna says. The woman nods sadly. "Sit down. Let me tell you why both of your futures need me dead."

The woman explains that Vesna's treaty later becomes a weapon that burns Calder's whole century to ash. "Two futures, and only one survives, but only if I die at 2:15." Vesna refuses. She takes the woman's hand and pulls her out of time completely, hiding her in the gray space between worlds where neither future can reach her.