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."

Vesna sees it too late. The woman is lying to make her drop her guard. The numbers were a trap all along, looping her right into Calder's last revenge. The office door locks itself. The clock on the wall ticks back to 2:14, and the woman looks up at her wearing Calder's exact smile.