The GSCA building was filled with people, each floor packed with different crisis units and those units even more packed with specialists from various fields. It was almost like the world was prepared to deal with anything that was thrown at it.

  Naia got to work an hour early, with coffee in one hand and papers in the other. She wasn't really a morning person, but with a coffee this strong, she could probably move mountains if she ever needed to.

  Senior analyst Phrid, who got there even earlier, waved at her when she walked into the office.

  "Morning," Naia said.

  Before going to her desk, Naia checked every screen in the office to see how the world was behaving that today. So far, so good, everything still read STABLE.

  "You're early today," said Phrid, who was already buried in papers.

  Naia sat at her desk, right next to Phrid. They were quiet for a few minutes.

  "You looked at that line for a long time yesterday," said Phrid.

  "Yeah, it looked strange, so it bothered me."

  "Good observation," said senior analyst Kimara, who had just walked in and heard their conversation.

  Both Naia and Phrid looked at her and asked at the same time. "Why?"

  "We found something strange in the response logs," said Kimara while giving paper copies to each.

  "How strange?" asked Naia before even looking at the papers.

  "Southern grid sector surge alarm," she said. "Yesterday night."

  "That was the heat spike," Phrid said.

  "Exactly." Kimara pointed at the timestamps. "Alarm triggered at 21:18:04..."

  "But the response log arrival states 21:18:01," Naia finished Kimara's sentence for her.

  "So... the system somehow responded seconds before the alarm was even triggered," added Phrid.

  "We should check the response system clock," Naia said.

  "I already did, they match," said Kimara.

  "We need to brief the team." Naia paused for a second, then continued, "I am sure it's just a system glitch, but we need to find the cause and fix it."

  None of them said anything after that. They were waiting for the rest of the team to arrive. Phrid was completing his morning paperwork while Kimara was working on the report. Naia kept looking at the graph on her tablet. Somehow it seemed even stranger now.

  Their full team arrived in forty minutes and the three of them quickly briefed the rest. Someone even made a joke about them having to solve time travel.

  The team checked various incident report logs, some of them showed the same pattern, small discrepancies. Seconds, sometimes two, sometimes four, nothing dramatic or dangerous, but still something wrong.

  "Could be a synchronization issue between servers," one of the analysts suggested.

  "We need to pull timing comparisons from the last ten years for every log."

  A few people turned toward her. "Ten years?" someone repeated.

  "Yes," replied Naia.

  "That's... a lot of data. We will need access to the main archive, but if we submit the request soon, we should have the logs tomorrow."

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I'll request archive access," said one of the junior analysts.

  Another analyst raised an eyebrow. "Do you really think it's been happening for years?"

  "I don't know," Naia said. "But we'll find out soon."

  The whole team slowly returned to their work. Requests were submitted. Someone complained about how slow old servers were.

  Soon after, normal office sounds returned, but Naia's attention drifted back to the screen she had been staring at all night: the graph, the tiny jump. She replayed the recording again, the stabilization line rose normally, then it jumped forward. Less than a second, barely visible.

  "Probably nothing," she thought to herself. "Glitches happen all the time."

  ***

  The cold hadn’t gotten better since Sunday, if anything, it felt even worse on Monday morning.

  The generators were still running, barely, but running. They were loud as always, but the sound they made carried strangely through the tunnels that morning, it almost felt like their echoes were arriving a bit too late.

  Naia noticed it while she was walking through the corridor, she stopped mid-way and turned her head toward the engine room. The hum was steady, but something about it felt slightly off.

  Behind her, a young man was struggling to push a cart full of tools while breathing heavily. Seconds later, he tripped, and the metal rattled inside the cart.

  The sound reached Naia a moment after the cart passed. She noticed but kept walking, thought it was probably nothing, everything sounded strange down here.

  Naia followed the tunnel into the main chamber, where people were already working. Some were checking on crops, others were moving supplies from the outer storage.

  Naia spotted Kat, who was sitting near the wall, sharpening a knife. She looked up when Naia approached.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep much,” Kat said.

  “I slept enough,” Naia replied.

  Naia and she shared a room in the settlement, so Kat knew it wasn't true,

  “You were out there half the night fixing generators. You know I can hear when you leave at night, right?!”

  “Someone had to keep an eye on them.”

  Kat rolled her eyes but didn’t argue, not because she didn't want to, but because she knew there was no point.

  Naia leaned against the wall, watching people move through the room, some enjoying hot tea between their breaks, some preparing to hunt later.

  The place felt almost normal again.

  One of the older guards, Grigor, walked past carrying a rifle. As soon as Naia noticed him, she ran toward him.

  “Give me that,” she said.

  Grigor stopped. “Give you what?”

  Naia pointed at his rifle. “I will give it back in five minutes."

  "Don't you have your own?" Grigor asked.

  "I left mine in my room. Hand it over," Naia said.

  Grigor hesitated at first, but handed it over.

  Kat looked at her surprised. “What are you doing?”

  Naia didn’t answer, instead, she walked toward the tunnel entrance where the forest opened behind the wooden barricade. Cold air quickly rushed in from outside.

  Naia raised the rifle and aimed toward a dead tree standing about fifty meters away. She pulled the trigger and the shot cracked through the forest. Its sound echoed across the trees.

  “One…” She muttered quietly.

  “Two…”

  The echo returned.

  “Three.”

  Naia lowered the rifle slowly.

  Kat and Grigor walked up beside her. “What are you doing?” Kat asked.

  Naia was looking at the tree she had just shot and then without saying a word, she handed the rifle back to Grigor.

  “Sound came back late,” Naia finally replied.

  Kat and Grigor looked at each other, then looked back at Naia.

  “It sounded normal to me,” said Grigor and started heading back to the settlement.

  Naia shrugged. “Maybe I counted wrong.”

  Kat folded her arms. “You never count wrong.”

  Naia stepped outside the tunnel and looked at the forest that still felt too quiet and somehow wrong.

  Kat followed her out. “You’re still thinking about the wolves, aren’t you?”

  Naia nodded. “They should have been howling last night.”

  “Maybe they moved north.”

  “Maybe.”

  Kat got closer to Naia and leaned against her. “I think you’re just chasing ghosts again.”

  Instead of arguing, Naia bent down and picked up a small stone from the frozen ground. She tossed it into the air, caught it, then tossed it again.

  “Kat,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Count with me.”

  Kat was visibly confused but agreed. Naia threw the stone again.

  “One,” both said at the same time.

  Naia caught it.

  “Two.”

  Again.

  “Three.”

  They repeated it a few more times before Naia finally stopped.

  Kat looked at her. “So, what exactly are we doing here?”

  Naia was looking at the stone in her hand. “I don’t know yet.”

  Kat sighed. "You dragged me outside to freeze to death because you don’t know?”

  Naia slipped the stone into her pocket and looked at the forest again. “Something feels wrong.”

  Kat's eyes followed Naia's gaze. “You already said that yesterday.”

  Naia nodded. “I know.”

  They stood there for a moment, both looking at the forest and listening to the wind.

  Still no wolves.

  Still no birds.

  Just the sound of branches moving endlessly with the wind.

  “Well, if the world ends today,” Kat said, “at least we will face it together.”

  Naia smiled. “Yeah.”

  Kat started walking back toward the tunnel. Naia followed, but before stepping inside, she glanced toward the forest one more time.

  The wind shifted through the trees, and for a moment, it felt like the whole forest paused, then everything moved again. Naia stood there another second. Something about the rhythm of the world felt out of order.

  Just a little.

  Not enough to prove anything.

  But enough to bother her.