Chapter 28: Missing Time

Chapter 28: Chapter 28: Missing Time

Ren noticed it three days later, and once he noticed it, he couldn’t stop noticing it.

He’d woken that particular morning with every intention of using the day properly, actually productive for once instead of simply reacting to whatever crisis found him first. He’d meant to visit the observation deck again, meant to finally track down more information about the monster border settlements the AI had mentioned so casually over dinner, meant to corner Alouis for an actual conversation instead of another rushed, worried check-in. He’d gotten out of bed, dressed, eaten a proper breakfast at the dining hall without any glowing surprises this time, and started down the corridor toward the observation deck with something like genuine purpose for the first time in what felt like ages.

And then, somehow, impossibly, it was evening. He stood in the middle of the corridor, blinking hard at the shift in the overhead lighting, the warm, dimmer evening tone that only ever kicked in once the outpost’s simulated day cycle wound down, and felt a fresh wave of disorientation crash over him hard enough that he had to brace one hand against the wall to steady himself.

’That’s not right,’ he thought, turning slowly to look back the way he’d come, trying to piece together what had actually happened between breakfast and now. ’That’s not right at all. I remember eating. I remember walking. I don’t remember getting to the observation deck, I don’t remember turning around, I don’t remember any of the hours that apparently happened in between.’ He checked his watch, the purple display confirming what the lighting had already told him, hours and hours simply gone, swallowed whole without leaving behind a single memory of how they’d passed.

’This isn’t the first time,’ he realized, the thought landing with a fresh, cold weight settling into his stomach. He thought back over the last several days, trying to trace the pattern now that he was actually paying attention to it instead of simply attributing each instance to ordinary exhaustion. The two full days he’d lost entirely, dreaming about his old life. A shorter gap two days after that, an afternoon he’d assumed he simply hadn’t paid attention to closely enough. Another yesterday, brief, barely noticeable at the time, an hour here, an hour there, easily explained away as distraction or fatigue.

’It’s getting worse,’ he thought, pulse picking up as the pattern fully assembled itself in his mind. ’It’s not just poor sleep. It’s not just recovery from the rank test or the berserk episode. Time is genuinely disappearing on me, and it’s happening more often, and I have absolutely no idea why, and worse, I don’t actually remember any of what happens during the gaps. I just blink, and suddenly hours have passed, and I have no memory of living through a single second of them.’

He made his way back toward his quarters, mind racing, and forced himself to sit down and actually think it through properly instead of simply panicking his way past it the way he had every other time this had happened. ’Okay,’ he thought, pressing his palms against his eyes. ’Okay, think. What’s actually different. What’s changed since this started happening.’ He ran through everything methodically, the rank test, the training sessions with Reven, the berserk episode, the dual classification results, the two lost days of dreaming, searching for some common thread that might explain the pattern.

The dreams, he realized slowly, had continued even in the shorter gaps. Fragmentary at first, barely noticeable, but present, always the same quiet, comfortable pull toward his old life, the couch, the noodle shop, the warm, unremarkable ordinariness of a world he no longer had access to. He hadn’t thought much of it before, assuming it was simply grief working itself out through his unconscious mind, but now, turning it over with fresh, deliberate attention, it felt considerably less incidental than he’d first assumed.

’What if it’s not just grief,’ he thought, a new, unsettling possibility surfacing. ’What if something’s actually pulling me there, or pulling something from there into here, every time I sleep. What if that’s what these gaps actually are, not exhaustion, not recovery, but something reaching for a version of me that technically shouldn’t exist anymore at all.’ He sat with that thought for a long moment, uncomfortable and unresolved, before shaking his head firmly, forcing himself back toward something more grounded. ’That’s a theory with absolutely nothing behind it except panic and too little sleep. I need actual information, not spiraling speculation.’

He considered, briefly, telling someone. Reven, who’d clearly already noticed something was wrong given his reaction to the two lost days, might have some classified insight into exactly this kind of phenomenon given whatever mysterious authority apparently backed his presence at this outpost. Yegard, who had access to medical records and Command resources Ren himself couldn’t touch, might be able to push for a more thorough investigation than the inconclusive scans that had already come back empty. Alouis, who’d known Rafayal his entire life, might recognize something familiar in the pattern that Ren, still fundamentally a stranger to this body and its history, simply couldn’t see on his own.

’But what would I actually tell them,’ he thought, chewing over the problem with growing frustration. ’Time keeps disappearing and I don’t remember where it goes? I keep dreaming about a life that doesn’t exist anymore and I think it might be connected? That sounds insane. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing that gets a person locked in a medical observation room indefinitely, especially given everything else already stacked against me, the broken diagnostic array, the berserk episode, the dual classification nobody fully understands yet. Add "possibly losing time to some kind of dimensional pull toward my past life" to that list and I don’t think anyone’s going to hear "concerning phenomenon requiring investigation" instead of "this Sentinel is becoming increasingly unstable and needs to be contained."’

He lay back on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling, and let himself feel the full weight of the isolation that particular realization brought with it. This wasn’t a problem he could actually share, not honestly, not completely, not without revealing details about his situation that would sound so far beyond credible that even the people who’d shown him genuine kindness over the last week would likely start questioning whether he’d lost his mind entirely. ’I’m the only one who knows what this actually is,’ he thought, the loneliness of it settling in sharp and sudden. ’I’m the only one who has any context for why this might be happening, and even I don’t fully understand it, and I can’t exactly explain the context to anyone else without giving away the one thing I promised myself I’d never say out loud.’

He thought, unwillingly, about the book again, about how little detail it had ever offered regarding Rafayal’s internal experience, how thoroughly it had focused instead on Yegard’s rise and the broader political machinations orbiting around their relationship. ’Maybe this happened to him too,’ Ren thought, turning the possibility over carefully. ’Maybe this is part of what actually broke him, in the end, some slow, creeping instability that the book never bothered explaining because it wasn’t interested in his perspective at all, only in what he eventually became from the outside looking in.’ The thought unsettled him more than he wanted to admit, the uncomfortable possibility that whatever fate had originally awaited Rafayal might not have been purely a matter of jealousy and obsession after all, that something deeper, something the story had simply never bothered to explore, might have been quietly unraveling him from the inside the entire time.

’I need to figure this out on my own,’ he decided finally, the resolve settling in heavier than he wanted it to. ’Whatever this is, whatever’s causing it, I can’t rely on anyone else to solve it for me, not without revealing things I’m not willing to reveal, not without risking a level of scrutiny I genuinely cannot afford right now with my father still stationed on this outpost watching for any excuse to declare me unstable.’ He closed his eyes, exhaustion tugging at him again despite his best efforts to resist it, the familiar, dangerous pull of sleep threatening to claim another unaccounted stretch of hours if he let it.

He forced himself back up, refusing to give in to it so easily this time, and crossed to the small terminal built into his quarters’ wall, pulling up whatever general information the outpost’s public database might offer on Sentinel-related sleep phenomena, dual classifications, or anything even tangentially related to the pattern currently unsettling him. Most of what came back was dense, technical, and largely unhelpful, standard medical literature on Sentinel burnout and Guide exhaustion syndromes that bore only surface similarity to what he was actually experiencing, nothing that addressed the specific, bizarre combination of dreamlike time loss and vivid recollection of a life that, as far as this world was concerned, had never existed at all.

He was still scrolling through increasingly unhelpful search results when his watch buzzed against his wrist, the purple glow pulsing to announce an incoming transmission, and Ren glanced at the display with a fresh spike of wariness, half expecting another crisis given how the last several days had gone.

It was Alouis, her expression more curious than alarmed this time, a small mercy given everything else currently weighing on him. "You disappeared on us again," she said without preamble, though her tone carried more genuine concern than accusation. "I stopped by earlier to check on you and you weren’t in your quarters. Where did you go?"

Ren hesitated, the question landing with fresh unease given his own inability to answer it honestly. "I went for a walk," he said finally, choosing the safest, vaguest version of the truth available to him. "Lost track of time, I think. I’ve been more tired than usual lately."

Alouis studied him through the display for a long moment, something considering in her expression that made Ren distinctly uncomfortable, like she could sense there was more to the answer than he was offering. "You should have that looked at properly," she said finally, though something in her tone suggested she suspected he already knew that and had chosen not to act on it. "Whatever’s causing all this exhaustion, it’s not normal, even accounting for everything you’ve been through recently."

"I know," Ren said, and meant it, the admission costing him more than he wanted her to see. "I’ll figure it out."

"See that you do," Alouis said, softening slightly. "I’d rather not spend another two days panicking over whether you’re going to wake up again." The transmission cut a moment later, leaving Ren alone again with his half-finished research and the growing, uncomfortable certainty that whatever was happening to him wasn’t going to resolve itself simply by ignoring it and hoping for the best.

He closed the terminal display finally, the unhelpful search results offering him nothing useful, and sat in the quiet of his own quarters turning the entire problem over one more time before exhaustion, inevitable and unwelcome, began pulling at him again regardless of how hard he tried to resist it.

’One more day,’ he thought, already dreading the possibility of losing another stretch of hours he wouldn’t remember living through. ’One more day, and if this keeps happening, if I keep losing time and dreaming about a life I’ll never get back, I’m going to have to figure out a way to actually investigate this properly, whatever the risk, whatever it costs me to admit something’s genuinely wrong.’ He lay back against his pillow, fighting the pull of sleep for as long as he could manage, and lost that particular battle far sooner than he wanted to, the world going soft and distant around him one more time, the familiar, dangerous pull of home rising up to claim him yet again before he even realized he’d stopped resisting it.