Chapter 2: A First Taste of Retrospection

The night rain in Brussels fell like fine needlework, stitching shut the light at the mouth of the alley. Lucas leaned against a wet cement wall, rainwater dripping from the ends of his hair, carrying the fishy smell of earth. The damp chill seeped through his collar into his skin, making his already taut nerves more fragile still.

On his phone screen the countdown was still ticking, the cold light of the digits wavering in the curtain of rain. The photo of the formalin jar sent by that unknown number stung his eyes like a tumor; the object suspended in the glass jar was blurred and indistinct, yet radiated a nauseating deadness.

He gripped the handlebars tight, his knuckles white with force, the icy temperature of the metal conducting through his gloves into his fingertips, even bringing a hint of numbness. The system's retinal projection flickered in the rain; that glowing blood vessel pointed north, toward some unspeakable danger, yet twisted violently before his eyes, as if reality itself were being pulled and deformed by some force.

"Looking for this?"

The sentence spun in place in his mind, echoing in the gaps of the rain, sharp and piercing. He drew a deep breath; the air was full of rust and ozone. He pushed open the car door, his boots stepping into standing water with a dull sound, splashes rising and instantly swallowed by the night.

At the street corner stood an old café, its warm yellow light shining through heavy velvet curtains, like a haven forgotten by time. In this rain-soaked city, that faint halo seemed out of place, yet inexplicably carried a certain comfort. He pushed the door open; the wind chime gave a grating rasp, like an ancient sigh.

Inside, the air was filled with the mingled smell of roasting coffee beans and old leather, a scent that let him recover a small anchor of humanity. The owner was an old man wearing a monocle who, without even raising his head, pushed a hot drink across from behind the counter. Steam rose in curls, blurring the old man's clouded lenses and veiling his appraising gaze.

Lucas sat down, his fingers touching the wall of the cup unconsciously. The scalding temperature stung his fingertips awake and pulled him briefly out of the illusory system interface. In that very instant, his consciousness sank.

Deep in his field of vision the system interface unfolded, red warning characters pulsing on a gray background, the code crawling like ants and eroding the edges of his sight. He tentatively mobilized the system, trying to rewind thirty seconds and correct the mistake of the coffee he had knocked over in his nervousness a moment ago.

It was a high-risk operation, but he gambled that he could complete the correction before the system locked. The instant his fingertip touched the rim, the cup stood upright again, the surface of the liquid smooth as before, as if never disturbed — even the ripple in the coffee had vanished without a trace.

But immediately after, a system pop-up brutally tore through the retinal projection, its red warning frame occupying most of his vision.

"A time debt has been incurred."

The cold mechanical voice detonated inside his skull like an electric current piercing his nerves. Lucas's pupils contracted sharply. On the screen was displayed an enormous negative number: −72 hours. He realized with a shock that small-scale corrections to causality were not free — they had to be paid for with the lifespan of his future.

Every second of rewind overdrew what remained of his life. This trade was like a loan shark's bargain, its interest a countdown measured in units of life itself. Cold sweat instantly soaked his shirt, plastering it to his back, icy enough to make him shudder. Trembling, he withdrew his hand beneath the table; the coffee's steam twisted in the cold air into eerie shapes, like some struggling spirit.

The air around him seemed to congeal. In those thirty seconds of stillness, Lucas noticed an abnormal shadow beside the table leg. It belonged to no one; it flowed like liquid through the cracks of the floor tiles, devouring the surrounding light. The shadow dispersed, and a woman in a dark blue cashmere coat appeared gracefully beside the table.

Her steps were light, the rhythm of her high heels striking the floor precise and cruel, every step landing on Lucas's taut nerves. Elena von Heidenberg, heir of an old banking family, bore on her face not the slightest trace of disturbance from the ripples of time; her eyes were sharp as knives, as if she could cut open the panic beneath Lucas's disguise.

Elena's fingertip tapped the tabletop lightly, and fine ripples spread across the marble surface, as if her power could affect the underlying structure of matter.

Elena stared at him: "The landing point of your gaze runs zero point three seconds ahead of the position of your body."

Lucas forced himself to stay calm, raised the coffee and took a sip, the scalding liquid sliding down his throat, trying to use the steam to cover his rapid breathing. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, nearly drowning out the jazz playing in the café.

Lucas explained in a low voice: "I am conducting a neuroscience experiment, focused on the visual feedback mechanisms of perceptual delay."

Elena gave a cold laugh and leaned forward, the collar of her coat revealing exquisite lace lining. In that instant, Lucas saw an extremely small mole at the side of her neck — a key feature he remembered about members of the Heidenberg family.

Elena retorted: "Addicted to experiments? Lately you have been going in and out of the historical archives constantly, with nothing to show for it — you even left seventeen abnormal access records in the system logs."

Her fingertip traced an invisible line across the tabletop, and Lucas felt a chill down his spine, as if that line were connected to some invisible judgment.

Lucas covered: "Those were only routine data retrievals. I am organizing data on medieval trade routes."

Elena did not expose him. Instead, she slid a cufflink from her sleeve and set it gently on the table. It was a silver badge engraved with the Heidenberg family crest — but in the light, the edge of the crest bore fine cracks, as if eroded by some force. Under Lucas's enhanced vision, those cracks stood out with particular clarity, like withered blood vessels.

Elena probed: "This badge — you have seen its prototype. It was in that set of black accounts in Milan's financial district, wasn't it?"

Lucas stared at the cufflink, his heart pounding violently. He retrieved from the system's memory that this black badge was exactly the item he had seen on the dark web last week; at the time he had taken it for a counterfeit, but the real object now in his hand gave off an old, bloody smell.

Lucas countered: "Who authorized me to investigate the Heidenberg family's transactions of a hundred years ago?"

Elena's gaze grew profound, as if she were appraising a piece about to be auctioned, weighing its value and its risk.

Elena said frankly: "I am cleaning out the borers inside the family. They are trying to use the forged evidence in your hands to overturn the Heidenbergs' position in the EU Banking Alliance."

Lucas realized he had long been standing at the center of the conspiracy. Looking at the cufflink, he rapidly built a game model in his mind, nodes flashing across his retina at high speed. Every choice led to a different future, and the time debt was steadily compressing the space he had to decide.

Lucas proposed the trade: "If I can obtain the highest clearance for the archives, I am willing to help you eliminate the traitors inside."

Elena examined the red glow of system points flickering in his eyes — the red light leaking through the slits of his eyelids, betraying the madness and resolve within him. For her, this was not only an exchange of interests, but the confirmation of an uncontrolled variable.

Elena finally agreed: "Deal. But I require you to find, within seventy-two hours, the intelligence agent who leaked the family's secrets."

At that moment, the system suddenly shook violently, an alarm blaring inside his skull like a screaming whistle. The prompt showed that the "time debt" had eroded Lucas's heart valves. He felt a violent wrenching pain in his chest, and his vision instantly turned red.

He clenched his teeth, cold sweat sliding down his cheeks and dripping onto the tabletop with a faint sound that seemed unnaturally clear in the silent café. He had to finish this conversation before paying the price, or even the strength to stand would be gone.

Elena rose, smoothed the folds of her coat, and put the cufflink back on. Her gestures were composed and elegant, as if the crisis just now had been a trifle to her.

Elena warned: "If you cannot control your own past, history will never let go of the present."

She turned and left, the sound of her high heels echoing through the empty café, gradually fading away. Lucas watched her back; the debt figures on his retina still ticked, like a funeral bell counting down, and every tick came with a stab of discomfort in his heart.

Outside the window, the rain was easing. The city lights shattered and recombined in the standing water, neon reflected on the wet streets, and undercurrents surged in corners no one knew of, waiting for him to fill the void torn open by time.

Lucas forced down the tearing sensation in his chest and, trembling, pushed the last few coins across the table. The instant his fingertip touched a coin, the blood-red warning pop-up floated up on the system interface again, more glaring than before. He did not dare linger. Staggering, he rushed out of the café; cold wind wrapped in post-rain dampness struck his face and cleared his head a little.

Elena had not gone far. She stood in the shadow of the street corner, the brim of her black umbrella tilted slightly, rainwater dripping along its ribs and knocking a monotonous rhythm on the ground. Hearing his footsteps, she did not turn her head; only her voice came through the curtain of rain, cool and distant: "You are three seconds late. In those thirty seconds you rewound, I too once tried to correct certain mistakes."

Lucas stopped rigidly where he stood, the wrenching pain in his heart darting like electric current through all his limbs. Gasping, he asked: "Correct?"

"A family is like a precision clock, its gears meshing flawlessly." Elena turned around, those sharp eyes especially profound in the rain mist. "But lately, a few springs have rusted, even begun to break. Parts that should have stayed silent are emitting piercing noise. Someone inside is loosening the axle, trying to paralyze the whole machine."

She stepped forward, her heel splashing tiny sprays in the standing water, like shattered crystal. "You think the secrets you leaked were an accident? No — that was bait fed to the borers. The 'calm' you saw in the rewind was only ripples disguised on the surface of a trap. The real storm is brewing underground."

Lucas felt a bone-deep chill rise from the soles of his feet, colder than the burning of the time debt. He realized he was not an isolated variable, but a pawn carefully placed.

"Seventy-two hours." Elena's voice closed in by his ear, carrying unquestionable pressure. "Find the one who is hollowing out the foundation of this family. Otherwise, the next to fall will be you. Remember: rust never disappears. It only spreads."

Before her words had faded, her figure had melted into the rainy night, as if she had never existed. Lucas looked down at the back of his hand. Beneath the skin, dark veins were faintly spreading — the sign of the time debt eroding his flesh. Before that happened, he had to infiltrate that nest full of venomous snakes.