New York, 1903.
Rain clawed at the windows like it wanted in.
The apartment was a narrow third-floor walk-up. The air was heavy with solder smoke and damp wool. A single gas lamp flickered on the ceiling, casting long, slow-moving shadows across a cluttered room no larger than a dining hall.
Lucien sat cross-legged on the floor, back straight, hands motionless in his lap. He was sixteen.
Around him, an organized storm. Dozens of notebooks, stacked and unstacked. Ink sketches. Component parts scavenged from junk markets and pawnshop tech—vacuum tubes, copper wire, a split-open metronome, the cracked core of a phonograph coil. It all spread in a spiral from where he sat. The floor beneath him was marked in chalk lines—concentric circles, alignment symbols, equations.
The only sound was the steady tick of a broken wall clock.
He reached for a coil—thread-thin copper braided around a filament of carved quartz. He soldered the wire to a narrowed arc junction, its shape imperfect, trembling under heat. His hands moved with absolute precision. There was no hesitation, no adjustment.
A thin hum sparked through the circuit. The core—a disk no larger than a silver dollar—began to vibrate faintly. Lights in the room flickered. The chalk on the floor shifted slightly inward, dragged by the device's first breath.
Lucien exhaled.
No relief. No pride. Just acknowledgement.
He turned the dial one notch clockwise.
The hum leveled.
He reached to the side and opened a steel box he had built from machine scrap—a thick-lidded case, velvet-lined, its lock engraved with a symbol that looked like an eye split in two.
He placed the stabilizer inside.
Closed the lid. Latched it.
Then, he picked up a fountain pen and wrote on the inside of the lid.
"For them"
He sat in silence for several more minutes.
Letting the device hum inside the box.
Rain streaked down the window. A car rumbled below.
Lucien didn't look away.
He was not building for this world.
He was building for the ones he lost.
***
New York, 1905.
The patent office smelled like wet paper and stale cigarette smoke.
Sepia light poured through tall, dirt-streaked windows, casting slanted shadows across rows of wooden desks and dented filing cabinets. The walls were yellowed with age.
Typewriters clacked in the background—out of rhythm, too fast, too loud.
Lucien stood at the front counter.
His clothes were simple, a dark button-up shirt tucked into charcoal slacks, sleeves rolled past the wrist. His boots were clean but worn, scuffed at the edge. He looked out of place in the room—not due to wealth, but because of how still he was. Everything about him was sharpened. Composed.
In his hands, he held a folio. Thin. Carefully sealed with a brass clasp.
The clerk who received it—mid-50s, spectacles fogged, fingers ink-stained—fumbled with the pages for a few minutes before squinting at the top sheet.
"Temporal… alignment?"
Lucian nodded once.
"Algorithm embedded in an analog logic circuit," he said.
"Predictive harmonics. Self-correcting drift."
The clerk blinked. "What does it do?"
"Stabilizes small pockets of localized time." Lucian answered.
The clerk chuckled. "Sounds like a dream."
"It's not."
The man flipped through more pages, visibly trying to find a reason to reject him.
Behind them, a man in a three-piece pinstripe suit leaned in slightly. His shoes were too clean for this building. His posture didn't belong there.
"I'd like a word with the applicant," he said.
Lucien turned slightly.
The man offered his hand. "Edric Crowe. Private capital. I fund outliers."
Lucien looked at the hand. Didn't shake it.
Edric smiled, not offended. "I read the abstract. The math's impossible. But you wrote it like it was obvious."
Lucien said nothing.
"Let's talk," Edric said. "Somewhere else."
***
The office above was private. Oak walls. Whiskey on the table. Rain against the glass.
Lucien didn't sit. He stood at the far wall.
Edric poured two glasses. Offered one to Lucien. He refused.
"I don't fund dreams," he said. "But I do fund inevitabilities.", he took a sip, "What you've built. If it does half of what you claim—it'll redefine how we structure… everything."
Lucien still hadn't spoken.
Edric continued. "Here's what I'll offer." He took another sip. "Seed capital. Total discretion. One condition—this doesn't go public. Not yet."
Lucien met his eyes.
"Agreed."
Edric opened a drawer from his desk, pulled out a checkbook. Wrote one, and handed it to him.
Lucien took it. Folded it. Tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket.
No smile. No gratitude.
He walked out into the rain alone. The wind pressed against his shirt. A car passed, the bells distant.
He didn't look up.
It wasn't a beginning.
Just one step closer.
***
1913.
The original Chronos workshop sat in a gutted warehouse. The windows were sealed with blackout cloth, the walls patched with scrap wood and insulation. Piles of discarded tech lined the edges—old generators, early radios. It smelled of metal, oil, and chalk.
There were five of them in total.
Three engineers—young, hungry, brilliant—and then the founders: Max and Lucien.
Max Crowe moved like a man who had already won. His suits were always clean, pressed, understated in cut but powerful in tone. He spoke with practiced confidence, precise but personable. He knew how to fill a room without crowding it.
Lucien barely noticed the room.
He sat at the drafting table, surrounded by diagrams that extended beyond the edge of the desk—pages layered on pages, notations sketched in black ink and faint graphite. His sleeves were rolled back, shirt clean but faded. He hadn't moved in an hour except to change pens.
"Gentlemen," Max said, addressing the reporters and city councilmen now crowding the far end of the workshop. "Chronos is more than a company. It's foundation. A system."
Light applause.
Max continued, "We don't innovate for novelty. We do it to correct time's own rhythm—to reshape the world. One second at a time. Chronos doesn't follow the future. It writes it"
Lucien remained at his desk—silent.
Max caught a glance of him mid-sentence and smiled faintly. It wasn't patronizing. It was partnership.
Lucien didn't return the look. He sketched a new design.
He says we, Lucien thought, but this was always mine.
***
Time passed quickly once the first investor checks cleared.
Chronos expanded faster than projections. Public projects. Contracts. Whispered visits from military officials. The original engineers each got their own teams. Max became the face, the voice, the fire. Lucian remained the silence behind it all.
In 1917, ground was broken for Chronos Headquarters.
The lot spanned six city blocks. The scaffolding rose with eerie speed, steel curved like the frame of a tuning fork. Reporters called it "The Machine Tower." Others called it "The Heart of Time."
Lucien watched its rise from the street near it, hands in his pockets, shirt sleeves rustling in the river wind.
Closer, he thought, one step closer.
***
1923.
The rooftop terrace of the newly completed Chronos tower glowed with electric brilliance. Lamps lined the perimeter, but it was the glass floor that truly drew the eye—lit from beneath, pulsing in soft harmonics that mirrored the Chronos sync field. Above, green thread-light veins climbed steel spires like artificial constellations.
The city looked like a reflection of the tower now. All movement below was timed by Lucien's machines.
The air was sharp with champagne and cold iron. Crystal glasses chimed. Music played from a live quartet–restrained, dignified. Every major paper in the country had sent a correspondent. Governors, foreign dignitaries, military generals—gathered like gravity had shifted to this single place.
Lucien stood near the edge.
His three-piece suit was dark, minimal, and embellished. His presence cut through the noise with sheer stillness. His hands were folded at his back. He hadn't spoken since his arrival.
Max had, of course, already spoken–flawlessly.
Isabelle stood near the crowd's edge. Her dress shimmered pale lavender in the terrace lights. She smiled when she looked at him—uncertain, hopeful, proud. She held a glass, but hadn't drunk from it. Every so often, she looked toward Lucien, waiting for the moment he might speak to her.
He hadn't.
Someone cleared their throat behind a microphone. The hum of conversation dipped.
Max nodded toward Lucien.
Lucien stepped forward. The crowd turned.
He didn't adjust the mix. He didn't thank anyone. He simply looked out at the skyline, then spoke.
"Time moves forward," he started "But it's fragile. It fractures. It forgets. And if no one holds it still, it disappears."
He looked past the crowd, past the city, past the moment.
"My machines weren't built to save lives. They were built to close fractures. To cage chaos. To hold what matters in place."
A pause.
"History forgets because it wants to. But I remember. And I will not let them stay lost."
He didn't elaborate.
He stepped back.
There was a pause. Then polite applause. A few furrowed brows. Most clapped anyway.
Isabelle watched him with unreadable eyes.
The orchestra swelled. The first fireworks rose into the sky—a high arc of gold that cracked into five symmetrical bursts. Then another, silver. Then another, violet.
Lucien didn't look up.
He turned slightly toward the reflective surface of the glass wall, watching the fireworks in the pane. Watching them not as light—but as noise.
His reflection did not blink.
And neither did he.