Nathaniel stood still, staring at his phone screen. The words stared back at him, pulse throbbing in his temples. How many? The message felt like a challenge, a riddle that was meant to push him further. But what did it mean?

His mind raced, spinning through the possibilities. What did "how many" refer to? Versions of himself? People watching him? Or was it something more abstract—something tied to the patterns he had been tracing with his prime numbers?

The lights flickered again, and this time, he felt it. Something shifting, a wave that ran through the room like a crack in reality, barely perceptible, yet undeniable. The air around him seemed to hum with static, a slight distortion in the sound of the world—like the frequency was off.

He needed answers. And there was only one place left to go.

The lab.

Nathaniel had worked at the university’s research facility for the past year. He was a nobody, just another graduate student working on theoretical models of quantum mechanics and complex systems. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing special—except for the occasional brilliant idea that made professors raise their eyebrows. But he knew the lab’s server room held things—data. Patterns. Complex models that could help him understand what was happening to him. If he could just access the deeper files, the ones hidden away from public view, maybe he’d find something that could explain the chaos inside his mind.

Nathaniel grabbed his jacket and walked out of his apartment, his footsteps quickening as he felt the world slip further out of focus. He needed to see the server logs. Needed to dive deeper into the data, where the lines between theory and reality had blurred.

The cold air hit him as he stepped outside, but it did nothing to clear his mind. He walked faster, ignoring the nagging feeling in his gut. It wasn’t just the fear of what he might discover—it was the feeling that he was being watched. That something was always just behind him, watching him as he moved through the world.

The server room at the lab was restricted. Only a few people had clearance to access it. Nathaniel wasn’t one of them. But he knew how to sneak in.

The door creaked open, and the quiet hum of the lab’s machinery surrounded him. He moved quickly, bypassing the basic security measures with ease—he had been inside the system too many times not to know how to slip past the defenses.

His fingers danced over the keyboard as he accessed the server, pulling up encrypted files, deep system logs, and research documents. It was there, buried beneath layers of corporate data and academic junk—the hidden models, the ones his mentor had hinted at but never fully explained.

Nathaniel's heart raced as he uncovered files labeled "Quantum Event Log – Alpha Project." He clicked it open.

The files revealed data that didn’t make sense at first. Lines of numbers, cryptic annotations, and fragmented equations filled the screen. But something about the structure—the patterns of the data—spoke to him. He could feel his mind pulling the strands together, as if it were already familiar with this information, already processing it. It was the same sense he had felt when he saw the equations in his earlier calculations, the same fractal logic that guided his thoughts. He had been here before. He had always been here.

He scrolled down, and his eyes locked onto a particular line:

"Entity #1: Nathaniel (Original). Quantum split identified at 17 years. Time divergence pattern detected."

The words hit him like a punch to the gut.

The data was talking about him—about his split. About the fact that he wasn’t a single entity, but rather a fractured version of someone who had been divided by time itself.

A chilling realization crept over him. This wasn’t just happening to him. It was planned.

He quickly scanned more lines:

"Entity #2: Nathaniel (Secondary). Data access authorized for analysis. Temporal displacement detected."

The same name. His name.

The other Nathaniel. The version that had met him at the café.

His heart thudded in his chest as he pulled up more files, each one revealing more about the quantum model that described the split. Time wasn’t a straight line—it was fractured, chaotic. But it wasn’t random. It had been engineered.

Suddenly, the room felt cold. The hum of the machines grew louder, almost oppressive. His vision blurred for a second, and when it cleared, a shadow moved across the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around, but the room was empty. No one was there.

Still, a growing sense of dread gnawed at him. He wasn’t alone.

He stared at the screen. His name, his image, his identity, written out as if it were part of a larger system. A system he had no control over.

Before he could process what was happening, the screen flickered. A message popped up on his monitor:

"You’re asking the wrong questions, Nathaniel."

He froze, feeling his skin go cold. The message disappeared, replaced by a blinking cursor. And then another message appeared:

"It’s not just you that’s fractured. Time itself is unraveling. You have to decide which timeline to follow."

The lights flickered again, and the room seemed to breathe. The hum of the machines grew louder, and Nathaniel felt something snap in his mind. The fractured reality around him twisted.

Time was breaking.

End of Chapter 3.