He couldn't remember ever giving out that number. The landline had been nothing more than a decorative object on his nightstand for years, dust settling in the grooves of its rotary dial, its red light dead since he'd moved into the apartment. It was a remnant of the previous tenant’s life—like the picture-frame marks on the walls, or the cigarette smell that never quite disappeared from the bathroom.However, tonight the light was blinking with the insistence of a fresh wound.James sat up slowly; the metallic taste of insomnia clung to his tongue. The nightmares had been getting worse: syringes, lab rats with tumors the size of ping-pong balls, the sense that someone watched him from the shadows of his office. The Helix Pharma case had been consuming him more than he wanted to admit.The clock read 3:17 a.m. (not 3:33 as he would remember later).He pressed play, expecting a phone company error. The first message was just interference—a sharp screech, like nails on glass. The second was the same. In the third, between the static, something seeped through that wasn't noise. A whisper. A held breath.“Do you remember when you were eight and got lost at the mall?”James froze. The voice was distant, distorted—but unmistakable. It was like hearing himself through a wall of water.“Mom took two hours to find you. You were hiding behind the McDonald's counter, crying because you thought they didn't love you anymore.”Nobody knew that story. Not even Sara. Not since before she left—before he discovered she was entangled in the machinery he now wanted to expose.The fourth message came clearer.“James, listen to me carefully. In two days you'll receive a proposal. They'll offer you double your salary to drop the Helix case. They'll call it a promotion. It's a lie.”He bolted upright, heart hammering. Outside the window, the street lay empty—same cars, same flickering streetlight—but a black van idled where he’d never seen one before.In the fifth message his own voice sounded resigned.“I know what you're thinking: someone's messing with you. I wish that were it. Listen: tomorrow Nancy will be late—flat tire. At 11:30 you'll get a call from Matt cancelling the meeting with the Helix witnesses. At 2:15 a man in a gray suit will arrive at your office claiming to be an external consultant. His name is David Kronos. He's not a consultant. He's a cleaner.”James felt his legs go slack. He sat on the bed and kept listening.“The sixth testimony, Dr. Chen’s, won't make it to trial. Officially, she dies in a traffic accident Friday morning. It won't be an accident.”The voice came from very far away, as if speaking from the bottom of a well.“In your desk—left drawer, behind the paper clips—there's a USB drive you don't remember putting there. You put it there. A you from three days in the future. It contains real evidence about Helix's Genesis program. Not just defective meds. Something else.”He ran to the living room desk, fingers fumbling. Behind the clips, sure enough, a black USB he didn’t recognize. His hands shook; it took three throws to plug it into his laptop.The files were worse than he feared: clandestine labs, humans in glass tanks, injections into subjects who screamed with no sound, screens showing DNA sequences that made his stomach drop. In one clip dated two years earlier Sara stood in a white coat, taking notes as they injected a man in a tank.He stumbled back to the phone. The seventh message hissed:“Sara didn’t leave because she loved someone else. She left because you discovered too much and had to get away before they killed you. She still loves you. She’s helping you from the inside.”The eighth message was barely a rasp.“Time isn't a straight line. It's a spiral. When you tamper with genetics—when you alter DNA in certain ways—you create... fissures. I am you, but from a previous loop. I've lived this week seventeen times. In every loop they found a way to kill you.”James collapsed to the floor. The following messages were a ledger of attempts: the car bomb that failed to detonate; the sniper who missed; the poisoned coffee he’d spilled at the last second. Each loop ended with his death. Each loop, he found a way to send these messages before the reset.The sixteenth message found a tone that was almost hopeful.“This time can be different. I've learned their patterns. I know how to dodge them. But you must do exactly as I say, without deviating a millimeter.”The seventeenth—barely audible—closed like a prayer.“James... if you're hearing this it means the loop is closing. In a few minutes everything will reset. But something has changed. This time you'll remember. This time, when you wake tomorrow— or in a moment— you won't be alone.”The answering machine went silent. James glanced at the clock: 3:33 a.m. exactly. As if time had snapped forward.He sat very still, waiting. The room’s edges began to blur as if a photograph were fading. The last thing he saw before everything went black was the answering machine's red light blinking again.Seventeen new messages.When he woke this time, he remembered everything.And this time, in the right drawer of his desk—where nothing had been before—he found a gun and a scrap of paper in his own handwriting: For David Kronos. He'll arrive at 2:15.Time was a spiral. He had just learned to use its twist.

When he woke up, there were seventeen voicemails from a stranger.

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When he woke up, there were seventeen voicemails from a stranger.

IsidoraLuna

Isidora Luna

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When he woke up, there were seventeen voicemails from a stranger.

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