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In 2035, in San Francisco, quantum physicist Arthur Crowder's wife was killed in a "perfect murder." There were no fingerprints, no witnesses—only half of a high-tech alloy button, clearly belonging to future technology. To uncover the truth, Arthur infiltrated his own creation, the "Novous Timefold Experiment," but a malfunction in the equipment threw him into parallel timelines. He gradually discovered that in each timeline, a different version of himself was enacting vengeance in various ways. All clues pointed to a more terrifying truth—the murderer was Raymond Stone, his mentor, who had "died" twenty years ago due to an experimental failure caused by Arthur himself. After crossing twelve timelines, Arthur was forced to choose between saving his wife and maintaining the stability of time itself. Ultimately, he uncovered an even darker conspiracy—the collective manipulation of human memories.

The Chrono's Redemption

The smell of gunpowder still lingered at the muzzle of Detective Watson's gun, as Arthur's back slammed against the biometric lock on the time machine's hatch. Seven red laser scan lines suddenly shifted to an eerie indigo hue—this was a color that should never appear in any security protocol.

"Activate it," Watson ripped open his suit sleeve, revealing silver nanobots crawling beneath the skin of his forearm. "Or I'll let these little ones crawl into your wife's pituitary gland and see what secrets she's been hiding."

Arthur's thumb pressed against the retinal scanner, and in the fleeting reflection of the metal, he saw his own image shaking its head. As the hatch opened, he heard Raymond's voice echoing in his ears from forty years ago: "Remember, time is not a river, but a shattered field of mirrors."

The tearing sensation of quantum entanglement was far more violent than he had anticipated. Arthur felt as if he were an ant stuffed into a Klein bottle, each cell of his body experiencing a topological inversion. When he finally regained his sense of gravity, his nostrils were filled with the sharp scent of jasmine essence mixed with liquid nitrogen—the same smell from the laboratory the night before the incident.

Outside the bulletproof glass, Eileen was having a heated argument with the man with the mechanical prosthetic. Arthur's temples throbbed; the man's left ring finger bore Raymond's titanium wedding band, and his sleeve exposed the same old burn scar as Arthur's.

"Data must be destroyed!" Eileen's voice cracked with tears. "You know perfectly well that if there are more than seven spatial anchor points, it will..."

The man suddenly drove his mechanical finger into his left eye, digging out a CR-2049 component pulsating with red light. Arthur felt a searing pain in his retina in sync with the action.

At that moment, the spacetime turbulence hit. As Arthur was pulled back into the capsule, he caught a glimpse of a memory on the operation screen from when he was seven: Raymond holding him while they watched a solar eclipse, the reflected sunlight from the lens leaving a permanent black spot on his retina—curiously, the shape of the black spot perfectly matched the wound on his wife's neck.

The moment he returned to reality, Arthur smashed through the observation window of the cryogenic chamber. Watson was nowhere to be seen, and the floor was covered in three days' worth of dust. What choked him was the body in the B-07 slot—the coroner's tag indicated Eileen had died 72 hours ago, exactly during his time travel.

A warm liquid suddenly poured from his nostrils. As the blood droplets fell in slow motion, Arthur saw two truths:

1. The blood followed a non-Euclidean path, resembling a Penrose triangle, in the air.

2. CR-2049 components, covered in frost, were forming his childhood tin soldier toy that Raymond had repaired.

When the ventilation system released another burst of jasmine-scented mist, Arthur noticed the palm print on his left hand had transformed into Raymond's military code. The holographic projector automatically began playing footage from the 1985 experiment, showing a younger version of himself aiming a gun at Raymond's temple.

Prisoner of Mirrors