Chapter 7: A World Without Tim

Chapter 7: A World Without Tim

The world slammed back into place with the force of a physical impact. Leo was on the floor, the rough fibers of his bedroom carpet scraping against his cheek. The coppery tang of blood was thick in his mouth, a remnant of a nosebleed he vaguely remembered. Above him, the familiar popcorn texture of his ceiling spun slowly. The warm, golden bars of afternoon sunlight slanting through his window blinds were the most beautiful, most real thing he had ever seen.

It was over. It was a dream. A terrifyingly vivid, hyper-realistic nightmare brought on by stress and sleep deprivation. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, a giddy, hysterical wave of relief washing over him, so potent it left him dizzy. His body was trembling, slick with a cold sweat, but he was home. He was safe.

The bedroom door creaked open. His mom stood there, a laundry basket propped on her hip, her face a mask of concern. "Leo? Are you okay? I heard a crash."

“I’m fine, Mom,” he gasped, the words catching in his throat. His voice was a raw, shredded thing. “Just… just a bad dream.”

Her features softened into a familiar, loving smile, a sight so grounding it almost brought tears to his eyes. "Okay, sweetie. Well, when you're done having nightmares on the floor, could you give a call to your friend? His mom just phoned, wondering why he didn't come home last night."

The relief that had filled his veins turned to slushy, gray ice. His heart, which had just begun to slow, kicked back into a frantic, hammering rhythm. His mom just phoned. It was real. The game, the train, the silence—it was all real. Tim wasn't home.

"She seemed pretty worried," his mom continued, oblivious to the world collapsing behind her son's eyes. "So, could you please call Tim?"

And then, with the casual, world-breaking innocence only a mother could possess, she tilted her head, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion.

"Who's Tim?"

The two words hung in the sunlit air, a dissonant chord in the symphony of reality. They didn't make sense. It was like she had asked "Who is the sun?" or "What is gravity?"

Leo stared at her, a weak, confused laugh escaping his lips. "What? Mom, what are you talking about? Tim. Tim Carter. My best friend." He said the name as if it were an anchor, a fundamental truth he could use to steady the spinning room.

But his mother’s face only grew more concerned. She put the laundry basket down and knelt in front of him, her cool hand pressing against his forehead. "Honey, you don't have a fever. Are you feeling alright? You've never had a friend named Tim. Your best friend is Mark, from down the street."

"No!" The word tore from his throat, sharp and panicked. "No, Mark moved away two years ago! Tim! We've been best friends since second grade!"

This was a prank. A cruel, elaborate prank. His mom was in on it. Tim's mom was in on it. They were trying to teach him a lesson for sneaking out. That had to be it.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring his mother's worried protests, and snatched his phone from his bedside table. His thumb, slick with sweat, fumbled to unlock the screen. He pulled up his contacts, his finger flying down to the 'T' section. Taylor, Thompson, Tio... and that was it. No Tim. No Carter.

"No, no, no," he muttered, his breath coming in short, sharp huffs. He pulled up his recent calls. The last one was from his dad, yesterday afternoon. The call he’d made to Tim four nights ago, the one that had sealed their fate, was gone. He frantically opened his text messages, scrolling back through days, then weeks. Conversations with other friends, messages from his parents, junk mail alerts. There was not a single message from or to Tim Carter. It was a digital hole where a life used to be.

He threw the phone onto his bed and lunged for his desk, jamming the power button on his computer tower. The machine whirred to life with agonizing slowness. While it booted, he ripped open his desk drawer, pulling out his last school yearbook. His hands trembled as he flipped through the glossy pages, the smell of paper and ink filling his nostrils. C... Caldwell, Carlson, Carr... He held his breath, turning the page. The next name was Casey.

There was no Tim Carter.

He slammed the book shut, a strangled sob catching in his throat. It wasn't possible. This was a mass hallucination. He was still in that broken place, and this was just another, more cruel level of the game.

The computer monitor flickered to life. He opened his browser, his fingers flying across the keyboard, typing the URL for the Net-Nihil forum from memory. The page loaded. It was there, just as he remembered. But the original post about The Subway Game was gone. A search for "A_Watcher" returned zero results. He checked his browser history. The record of his late-night obsession, the hours he’d spent researching the game, had been wiped clean.

He was being gaslit by reality itself.

"Leo, you're scaring me," his mother's voice was soft, laced with a fear that was all too real.

He ignored her, his mind latching onto one last, desperate hope. Physical evidence. Something the Architect, whatever it was, couldn't have reached. A photograph.

He spun around and went to his bookshelf, pulling down a heavy, leather-bound photo album. The cover was embossed with the words Summer Vacation 2011. He flipped it open on his bed, his mother watching with wide, worried eyes. He turned the plastic-covered pages, past photos of the Grand Canyon, of cheesy roadside motels, until he found it. The trip to Lake Mead.

He remembered the day with perfect, painful clarity. The sun beating down, the smell of sunscreen, the ridiculously oversized inflatable raft they had saved up for all spring. He remembered Tim daring him to jump from the small rock cliff, and the triumphant, waterlogged photo his dad had taken of them right after. They were standing side-by-side, shivering, with goofy, triumphant grins, Tim's arm slung tight around his shoulder.

He stared at the photograph.

He was there. Shivering, grinning, his hair plastered to his forehead. But he was alone. His arm was held out awkwardly, bent around a space of empty air. The weight of a phantom limb seemed to press on his shoulder. Tim was gone. He hadn't just been cut out of the picture; the picture had been retaken by a universe where Tim had never been there to begin with. The space he occupied was filled in with the blue-gray water of the lake and the distant brown hills. He was a seamless, perfect deletion.

A low, animal sound of pure despair escaped Leo's lips. He sank to his knees, the open album on the bed before him. This was not a dream. This was not a prank. This was a rewrite. The Architect, the cosmic being with its brush of light, hadn't just killed his best friend. It had performed a far more profound and terrifying act of violence. It had un-written him from the source code of the world, and the edit was so clean, so perfect, that only one person—one glitch who had seen the developer’s tools—was left with the memory of the original version.

He looked around his room—at his posters, his video games, his rumpled bed. It was his sanctuary, his home, the safest place he had ever known. But it was all a lie now. It was a cell in a new reality, a prison where every familiar object was a testament to a history that had been stolen.

He was alone. Utterly, completely, and cosmically alone, the sole keeper of the ghost named Tim Carter. And in the oppressive silence of his rewritten life, he understood the true nature of the game. It wasn't about winning or losing. It was about seeing the truth, and the price of that truth was everything you had ever known.