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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

In the forensic office, the ultraviolet disinfection lamp sliced Arthur's shadow into scattered pixels. He wore the bio-mask stripped from Watson's corpse, and beneath its fingerprint membrane, genuine skin oozed a pale blue tissue fluid—an aftereffect of multiple time jumps.

"Surveillance footage from three days ago proves you were at the scene," Dr. Kate declared as she circled a blurry figure on the monitor with her laser pointer. That figure was the "killer" bearing Arthur's face, seen injecting liquid helium into the preservative tank. "But what's interesting is…"

The coroner suddenly pressed a spectrometer against his carotid artery, and the screen erupted with wildly fluctuating quantum signals. "You know what?" she said, tearing open his shirt buttons. "Real humans do not emit any fermionic afterglow."

Without warning, three chrome-alloy probes pierced between Arthur's ribs—emergency equipment he had installed during his escapades through the rifts of spacetime. When Kate's skull was shattered against the DNA sequencer, Arthur finally saw what lay beneath the skin at the nape of her neck—a miniature quantum entanglement generator, an iteration of the Novous prototype.

He dashed back to the laboratory and activated the time machine, this time inputting the precise coordinates of the explosion at Raymond's lab: October 25, 1985, at 03:15. In the instant when the spacetime vortex devoured his consciousness, Arthur inserted two CR-2049 components into his temporal lobe—this was the flesh inscription method he had discovered in Chapter Three.

In the darkness, the sound of meshing gears resounded. When Arthur opened his eyes, he saw his younger self aiming a gun at Raymond. But as the bullet pierced Raymond's temple, the aged mentor's wound burst not with blood but with a silver tide composed of countless CR-2049 metal fragments.

"You finally arrived," said two voices of Raymond simultaneously—the young version lying in a pool of blood, and the old one rising from behind the time machine's control panel. "Let's talk about how to handle the twelve ways your wife can die."

Arthur suddenly noticed new timelines flickering on the control screen:

03:15:22 – Eileen's throat is slit by metal fragments

03:15:23 – Eileen dies from neurotoxic gas

03:15:24 – Eileen suffers cardiac arrest…

03:15:33 – Eileen is disintegrated by quantum decomposition

Each outcome was accompanied by a detailed chain of forged evidence—all pointing to Arthur's DNA markers. Even more terrifying, the original observer ID for every timeline was his own retinal code.

"Choose your favorite script," Raymond said, handing over a protocol imbued with the scent of jasmine. "Or I'll let Detective Watson's clones begin Protocol 13—the reenactment of the 'accidental' killing of your mother when you were seven."

Arthur's prosthetic eye suddenly began to rotate autonomously, and its iris scan revealed that the protocol was dated April 7, 2035—exactly the day Eileen was murdered. As he tore the paper to shreds, the fragments reassembled mid-air into a holographic image of his wife's final moments: Eileen was plunging a CR-2049 component into her own neck, while the time machine in the background displayed Arthur's biometric features.

Alibi Fracture