Borrowed Time

The abandoned gas station squats in the desolate desert like a dead thing refusing to lie down. Paint peeled decades ago. Rust crawls across metal like cancer. Windows, what's left of them, grin like broken teeth.

Inside, dust covers everything in sheets of gray memory. The shelves still hold ghosts of what they used to stock - ancient cigarette packs, sun-bleached candy wrappers, bottles of nothing.

Behind the counter, I find an old clock. Dead, like everything else here. Hands frozen at 4:13, time giving up sometime in the last century.

Fitting. Time's been on my mind lately.

My strings dance in the stale air, cutting shadows just because they can. Been thinking about Germany. About Dieter. About lessons taught in blood and broken moments.

Three hundred and eighty years is a long time to remember anything. But some memories stick like knives.

***

Berlin in winter. A city of ghosts and old wounds. Perfect place to find a man who can stop time.

Dieter Kraus. Former physicist. Current problem. He'd carved out his territory in the abandoned industrial district, where frozen birds hung suspended in mid-flight and leaves stopped mid-fall. Nature's statue garden.

"Remember," I told Nyx as we approached the warehouse. "No hesitation."

The kid nodded, adjusting his perfect tie. Still trying to look like daddy.

We found Dieter in his workshop. Frozen moments surrounded him like photography exhibits. A water droplet hanging in space. A bullet stopped inches from a steel plate. A moth caught between wingbeats.

He studied us through safety goggles, hands steady on his workbench. "Ah. He said you'd come." A pause. "Said you'd try to recruit me."

I let my strings dance. Black lightning crackled between them. "Smart boy, that Lark."

"He also said what you did to the Fellowship." Dieter turned back to his work. Something mechanical. Something dangerous. "Said you'd offer power. Purpose. A place in your new order."

Nyx tensed beside me. "And?"

"And..." Dieter's hand brushed a frozen wrench. "I don't like puppet shows."

The air... stopped. Everything froze. Dust motes. The sound of our breathing. Reality itself held its breath. But my strings? They cut through stopped time like it was tissue paper.

Dieter's eyes widened. Just a fraction. He hadn't expected that. The fight started like they always do - with reality having a seizure. Dieter touched the frozen wrench. Kinetic energy stored inside it exploded outward. The blast caught Nyx in the chest, sent him flying through drywall and memories.

I launched a barrage of strings, each one crackling with stolen lightning. Dieter froze them mid-flight, turning my attack into a deadly art installation. He moved through his frozen kingdom like a shark through still water. Each frozen object he passed became a weapon. A nail. A splinter. A drop of sweat. All loaded with potential energy, waiting to explode.

The first blast took out a support beam. The second nearly took off my head. The third...

The third caught me in the chest. Like being hit by every punch I'd ever thrown, all at once. Blood filled my mouth. Internal organs rearranged themselves in ways anatomy textbooks would reject.

Nyx attacked from the side, trying to create his own bubble of slowed time. Amateur hour compared to Dieter's mastery, but the kid had guts.

Dieter just smiled. Touched a frozen dust mote.

The explosion turned concrete into confetti. Razor-sharp, bone-splitting confetti. Nyx's temporal shield flickered and died under the assault. Blood sprayed as stone fragments found flesh. I unleashed Maelstrom's power. Lightning turned the air to plasma. Dieter caught the bolts in frozen time, touched them one by one, sent their power back at me multiplied by stored force.

Pain became my entire world. Every nerve ending screaming in harmony.

But pain? Pain is just weakness leaving the body. And I've got plenty of weakness to spare.

The warehouse became our arena. Every frozen moment a potential bomb. Every paused instant a weapon waiting to be triggered. Reality groaned under the weight of so much stopped time.

Nyx recovered. Tried again. Got closer this time. His temporal manipulation fighting against Dieter's mastery. For a moment, time itself seemed confused about which way it should flow.

Almost landed a hit before Dieter caught his fist in stopped time.

Something in Nyx's arm made a sound bones should never make. Kid screamed. Or tried to. The sound froze in his throat.

I saw my chance. Strings shot out while Dieter was focused on Nyx. One caught his shoulder. Drew a line of red through expensive wool. First blood. Dieter's response? He touched the blood dripping from his wound. Froze it. Weaponized it.

Red mist exploded outward like a shotgun blast. Nyx screamed as frozen droplets tore through flesh. I felt the impact through my strings - like being stabbed by a thousand ice needles.

"Fascinating," Dieter muttered, studying the blood on his fingers. "The potential energy in even a single drop..."

He pressed his hand against a support beam. The whole building shuddered. Metal groaned as stored energy built up like a pressure cooker about to blow. Everything stopped. Not like before. Deeper. Absolute. I felt my strings strain against the temporal pressure. Even they struggled to move in this dead zone of frozen time.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Dieter walked through his frozen kingdom. Each step precise. Each touch loading more energy into random objects. The air itself felt heavy with potential violence.

He reached Nyx. Studied him like a bug under glass. "Your brother warned me about both of you. But he didn't mention..." He gestured at the frozen blood droplets. "The possibilities."

To demonstrate, he tapped a frozen dust mote.

The explosion took off part of Nyx's shoulder. Blood and bone sprayed in an arc that froze mid-splatter. The kid screamed. The sound stuck in his throat, trapped in stopped time. I tried moving my strings. Like pushing through tar mixed with broken glass.

Dieter noticed. A scientist's curiosity in those cold eyes. "Even your strings struggle here. In absolute zero time."

He reached for Nyx. Grabbed him by the throat. "Perhaps I should study this further. The interaction between temporal manipulation and..."

That's when he made his mistake. See, strings aren't just weapons. They're connections. And connections...They work both ways.

I pulled. Not with my strings. With Torque's stolen power. Reality groaned. Dieter's control over time slipped. Just for a heartbeat.

But a heartbeat was all I needed. My strings burst free. Wrapped around him like a lover's embrace. Each one humming with stolen power. The look in his eyes wasn't fear. Wasn't anger. Just... fascination.

"The energy transfer must be remarkable-"

I pulled.

Blood sprayed. Time snapped back to normal speed.

Then every stored moment released at once.

It started small. A single drop of frozen blood exploding. Then another. Then thousands. Each one a miniature bomb of kinetic force. The chain reaction spread. Every dust mote he'd touched. Every frozen spark of electricity. Every stopped instant of time. All that stored energy desperate to move again.

The floor buckled first, concrete turning to shrapnel under the assault of a thousand frozen footsteps suddenly remembering they had force. The walls followed, metal screaming as weeks of stored impacts hit at once. Support beams twisted like pretzels, each frozen touch Dieter had left behind now a point of devastating force.

The air itself seemed to tear. Sound caught up with reality - every frozen scream, every stopped explosion, every paused moment of destruction hitting at the same instant. A symphony of chaos compressed into a single second.

I grabbed Nyx, wrapped him in strings reinforced with Torque's power. A cocoon of protection against the apocalypse of unbound time.

The warehouse didn't just collapse. It erased itself from existence.

Concrete became dust became atoms. Metal liquefied, vaporized, vanished. Every molecule that Dieter had ever stopped in time now expressed its rage at being constrained. The blast rippled outward like a temporal nuclear bomb. Windows shattered for blocks. Car alarms screamed in the distance. A small earthquake of unleashed potential.

When reality remembered how to exist again, nothing remained within a fifty-foot radius. Just a perfect crater of smooth, glassed earth where stored time had erased everything it touched. When the dust settled, Dieter lay in pieces. His power over time hadn't saved him from having his time cut short.

Nyx pulled himself from the wreckage. Half his suit was blood. The other half was worse. Shrapnel had turned his left side into modern art - ribs visible through shredded flesh, arm hanging wrong in three different places. His perfect hair matted with blood and fragments of what used to be warehouse floor. The right side of his face looked like it had tried to divorce the left, held together only by his growing temporal manipulation.

I watched as he focused, drawn by the way time rippled around his wounds. Slowly, too slowly, flesh began knitting itself back together. Bones found their proper places. Blood crept backward into veins. Not perfect - he wasn't his father, not yet - but enough to keep him alive. Enough to keep him useful.

"Getting better at that," I noted, watching a particularly nasty gash on his cheek reverse itself to fresh scar tissue.

He spat blood, only half of it fresh. "Necessity's one hell of a teacher."

Then the backlash hit. His nose started bleeding - normal red at first, then darker, almost black. His eyes rolled back, showing whites threaded with burst vessels that spread like spider webs. Each second of reversed time was paid for in cellular damage, his body aging at accelerated rates to compensate for the wounds being undone.

The healing took more out of him than the fight. By the time he managed to stand, his skin was fish-belly pale, hands shaking from the effort of forcing time to obey his will. Fresh wrinkles around his eyes smoothed away almost as quickly as they formed - his power unconsciously fighting against the accelerated aging. But each reset left him looking a little older, a little more worn. Like watching years of hard living flash across his face in seconds.

He was alive. Stronger, maybe, for having been broken. But each time he forced time backwards, it took its pound of flesh in return. Nature's own loan shark, collecting its due with interest.

"You killed him," he said. Not accusation. Observation. Dark blood still trickled from his nose, time's payment for his healing.

"He chose his side." I watched my strings dance in the chaos. Each one humming with stolen power, with possibilities. "In this game, there are no second chances."

"Like the Fellowship?" His voice was steady despite the tremors wracking his body. "Like my father?"

I smiled. Kid was learning to ask the right questions. "The Fellowship thought they were gods. Your father thought he was eternal. Both made the same mistake."

"Which was?"

"They played at power." My strings cut patterns in the settling dust. "They had all that ability, all that potential, and what did they do? Maintained balance. Kept order." The disgust in my voice could have melted steel. "They were lions playing at being zookeepers."

Among Dieter's remains, we found a letter. Coordinates. A message from Lark to his new recruit.

"The Light Weaver," Nyx read, cradling his mangled arm. His eyes narrowed at the next line. "The Unweaving?"

"Your brother thinks small. Gathering powered individuals, building his little army of heroes." I ran a string through Dieter's frozen blood, watching it scatter like crimson diamonds. "He wants to restore the Fellowship's vision. Order. Control. Balance."

"And you don't?"

"I want to remind the world what real power looks like." The strings danced faster, hungry for more. "The Fellowship, your brother's new crusade - they're all just practiced at wearing masks. Being what the world wants them to be."

"And what do you want to be?"

The question hung in the air like smoke after a fire.

"Honest." I smiled, all teeth, no warmth. "The world needs to see itself without the masks. Without the pretense of order and control. Only then can real power take its rightful place."

"Starting in Singapore?"

"The Light Weaver is just another piece. Like Dieter was. Like you are." I turned east, feeling the pull of more power, more possibilities. "Your brother's gathering his chess pieces. White knights and noble pawns. But he forgets..."

"Forgets what?"

"Sometimes the board itself needs to be broken."

He stood straighter, fighting against time's toll on his body. "When were you planning to tell me about The Unweaving?"

"When you were ready to understand that some strings need to be cut." I gestured at the devastation around us. "The old order, the Fellowship, your brother's new crusade - they're all built on lies. On compromise."

"And you're built on truth?"

"I'm built on necessity. On the understanding that power isn't meant to be contained." My strings writhed with stolen lightning. "It's meant to be unleashed."

Nyx looked at the coordinates again, fresh blood painting his upper lip black. "Singapore then."

"Let Lark play his games. Let him gather his heroes and make his plans." The strings hummed with anticipation. "Every puppet has its strings."

I watched the temporal damage flicker across Nyx's features, aging him years in seconds before his power fought back. Another piece in my game, another string to pull.

"And I? I'm very good at making them dance."

After all, the best puppet shows always end with a surprise.

After all, every string is part of a greater tapestry.

And I? I'm going to unravel it all.