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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 sky over the San Francisco Bay Area was obscured by metal locusts made of CR-2049 components, each insect's abdomen flickering with the face of Erin. Arthur hid in the steel cable mesh of the Golden Gate Bridge, holding a modified quantum disruptor — a weapon crafted from the hypothalamus of the Gravekeeper's brain, releasing cognitive pulses with the scent of jasmine with each shot.

"Arthur Claude." Four hundred voices of Erin came from the swarm, landing on the suspension cables, "You taught us how to transcend time; now it's our turn to show you what eternal suffering is."

The foremost Erin clone tore open her chest, revealing a heart made of tin soldier toys. As Arthur pulled the trigger, the disruptor wave was converted by the heart into the Wedding March, and the bridge surface suddenly quantumized into Raymond's laboratory in 1985. Twelve Erin clones, dressed in wedding gowns, crawled out from incubation pods, and metallic locusts flew from the wounds in their necks, assembling the scene of Arthur's mother's death in the air.

Arthur's quantum heart resonated with the swarm, and his retina projected a terrifying data stream: every citizen had a CR-2049 chip embedded in the back of their neck, and they were collectively walking toward the bay, falling into the deep water like magnetized iron filings. In the foam rising from the sea, Raymond's holographic smiling face appeared — the ultimate form of mass hypnosis.

"The third layer of the cognitive filter has been removed." Erin's voices vibrated in unison, and the steel cables of the Golden Gate Bridge began playing the "Requiem." Arthur noticed that his skin was turning to paper, and the news report of his mother's car accident appeared on his palm prints. When he cut open his arm with a knife, instead of blood, tiny tin soldiers poured out, each shouting "Dad, no!"

At this moment, the quantum computer's alarm pierced through spacetime: [Memory plague index has exceeded the critical threshold]. Arthur looked up and saw the moon splitting into twelve fragments, each one reflecting a different murder scene across alternate timelines. In the brightest moon phase, the real Erin was in Raymond's laboratory, adjusting equipment with CR-2049 infusion tubes attached to her pregnant belly.

The swarm suddenly dove down, pinning Arthur to the rusted bridge surface. The Erins, using mechanical prosthetics, dissected his quantum heart, and a video tape from his seventh birthday fell out. When played, the footage showed Raymond placing infant Erin into an incubation pod, with the pod label reading "AC-0001 — Maternal Prototype."

As the green mist of the memory plague engulfed the bridge, Arthur activated the disruptor one last time. The jasmine pulse wave melted the Erins into bronze statues, and their remains formed an escape map of Raymond's laboratory. Beneath the sea, a giant CR-2049 structure emerged, and inside the cryogenic chamber at its top, the sleeping Erin's body silently lip-synched to the surveillance camera: "Kill all of me, and you will kill the true demon."

At this moment, Arthur's retina burned with the ultimate truth: all the clones' memories came from AC-0001's deathly fear during childbirth, and that recurring moment of death — the precise instant each murder across timelines took place.

Hive Requiem