Zero

I met Sera on a Tuesday in the Temporal Quarter. Early. Around 7:30 AM.

Nothing magical about it. I was delivering a clock to one of the guild workshops. She was standing outside the Memory Archive, hands shaking, staring at her clock like it had just told her she was dying.

Maybe it had. You never really know.

"You okay?" Stupid question. Obviously she wasn't okay.

She looked up. Dark eyes. Tired. "My countdown just changed."

I should have kept walking. You don't ask strangers about their countdowns. It's worse than asking how much money they make or whether they're sleeping with someone. But something about the way she said it stopped me.

"Changed how?"

"It was at thirty-seven days this morning." She held out her clock. The blood numerals glowed faintly in the morning light. "Now it's at eleven hours."

Shit.

Countdowns don't jump like that. Not unless something massive just shifted in the timeline. Accident. Death. Life-altering choice made without realizing it. The kind of change that reorganizes everything that was supposed to come after.

"Want some coffee?" I said. "There's a place around the corner."

She laughed. Not a happy sound. "You're offering coffee to someone who might be dying in eleven hours?"

"Could be something good."

"Could be."

She came anyway.

The café was half-empty. We sat by the window. She ordered black coffee and didn't touch it. I got something with too much cream and probably too much sugar. Kept my own clock in my pocket. Didn't want to check it. Didn't want to know.

"I'm Matthias," I said.

"Sera."

"What do you think it is? The countdown."

She wrapped both hands around her cup. "I've been trying to figure that out for six months. Ever since it first appeared. Thirty-seven days felt far enough away to ignore. Eleven hours feels like a gun to my head."

"You tried asking a Reader?"

"Three of them. All gave me different answers. One said family. One said career. One said death." She finally took a sip. Made a face. "The death guy was probably just trying to upsell me on his premium counseling package."

I laughed despite myself. "They're mostly scammers."

"You don't trust Readers?"

"I don't trust anyone who claims they know things they can't possibly know."

She looked at me properly for the first time. Really looked. "You have a clock?"

I pulled it out. Standard guild-made piece. Nothing fancy. My countdown showed 47 days until something. Another at 203 days. And one that had appeared this morning that I'd been trying not to think about.

Eleven hours.

Her breath caught. "When did that show up?"

"This morning. Around five. Started at thirteen and a half hours."

"Mine changed at six."

We sat there. Two strangers in a coffee shop. Our clocks synchronized to the same moment. The same event. Whatever it was.

"Maybe we're both dying," she said. Dark humor. I appreciated it.

"In the same place at the same time? That's either a hell of a coincidence or we're about to be in some kind of accident together."

"Or."

"Or what?"

She set her cup down carefully. "Or this is it. The countdown was to meeting each other."

Look. I know how that sounds. Romantic bullshit. Fate bringing two people together. The universe conspiring. All that garbage.

Except Blood Clocks don't measure romantic meeting cute moments. They measure significant life changes. Events that alter your entire trajectory. Meeting someone who'll matter to you for five minutes doesn't register. Meeting someone who'll reshape your whole damn life does.

"That's ridiculous," I said.

"Is it?"

"We just met."

"Exactly." She leaned forward. "How many times do you walk past someone who could change your life and never know it? How many times does it not happen because you don't stop? The clock shows significant events. Maybe this is significant because we're actually here. Talking."

"So what. We just decide we're going to be important to each other because our clocks say so?"

"No." She smiled. Sad. Genuine. "We decide whether to try. The clocks just told us it matters."

I checked my countdown again. Ten hours, twenty-three minutes.

"I have to work until six," I said.

"I have a shift at the hospital at seven."

"That gives us what, an hour between?"

"If we're lucky."

Neither of us mentioned that maybe we had less. Maybe the countdown was to one of us walking away. Maybe it was to the moment we decided this was too weird, too much, too fast. Significant doesn't mean positive.

"Meet me at the fountain in Memorial Square," she said. "Six thirty."

"I'll be there."

She stood to leave. Paused. "Matthias? What if this is it? What if we get to six thirty and nothing happens and the countdowns keep ticking and we realize we were wrong?"

"Then we wasted a coffee date. I've done worse."

That got a real smile. She left. I sat there with my cooling cup and my clock and the growing suspicion that I'd just met the person who was going to wreck my life in the best possible way.

I couldn't focus on work. Delivered three clocks to the wrong workshops. Mixed up two customer orders. My supervisor threatened to send me home. I should have let him.

Instead I kept checking my clock. Watching the countdown tick down. Eight hours. Six hours. Fours hours. Each passing minute felt like it was pulling me toward something enormous.

By six I was a wreck. Changed my shirt twice. Tried to fix my hair. Gave up. Grabbed my clock and headed to Memorial Square.

She was already there. Different clothes. Her hair down. Clock in her hand.

"Four minutes," she said when I got close.

"Three now."

We stood there. Two idiots watching our Blood Clocks count down to the same moment. Around us, people passed. Couples holding hands. Families heading to dinner. Nobody else experiencing whatever the hell this was.

"What happens if we're wrong?" she asked.

"What happens if we're right?"

Two minutes.

She took my hand. Her fingers were cold. Or mine were. Hard to tell.

One minute.

"Sera."

"Yeah?"

"I don't know you. Not really. But I want to."

"That's the most terrifying thing anyone's ever said to me."

Thirty seconds.

The countdowns glowed brighter. Blood-red numerals pulsing in rhythm with our heartbeats. I could feel her pulse through her palm. Fast. Scared. Alive.

Ten seconds.

"If this is it," she said. "If this is the moment. I'm glad it's you."

Five seconds.

I kissed her. Right there in Memorial Square with tourists and street vendors and temple-goers walking past. Kissed her like the world was ending. Like maybe it was beginning.

Zero.

The countdowns vanished. Both clocks went dark. For one horrible second I thought we'd broken them. Temporal shock. Bonding failure. All the nightmares.

Then they rebooted. New countdowns appeared.

Except they weren't countdowns.

The numbers were the same. But they were moving the wrong direction. Up instead of down. Measuring forward instead of back.

"Oh," Sera said quietly.

I watched the seconds tick upward. 00:00:01. 00:00:02. 00:00:03.

"Is this normal?" My voice came out strange.

"No." She held her clock closer. Then mine. Perfect synchronization. Both counting up from the same zero point. "This isn't... I've never heard of clocks doing this."

"Should we tell someone? A guild master? A Reader?"

"And say what?" She laughed. Sharp. Almost panicked. "Our clocks are measuring something that already happened? That we're somehow still in the middle of?"

00:00:47.

We stood there watching the numbers climb. Neither of us moved. Neither of us looked away.

"Matthias?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared."

"Me too."

00:01:23.

"I have to go." She was still staring at her clock. "My shift. Seven o'clock."

"Sera, our clocks just—"

"I know." She looked up. Eyes wide. Scared. "I know. But if I don't show up, I lose my job, and I need my job, and I can't think about this right now because if I think about it I'm going to—"

She stopped. Breathed.

00:01:58.

"When does your shift end?"

"Three. Maybe three-thirty if it's busy."

"AM?"

"Yeah."

"There's an all-night place. Gregor's. Two blocks from the hospital."

She nodded. "I know it."

"Meet me there. Soon as you're done."

"That's insane. You have work in the morning."

"I don't care."

00:02:41.

She kissed me. Quick. Desperate. Like she was trying to prove something to herself.

"Gregor's," she said. "Three-thirty."

Then she left. Actually left. Walking fast. Not looking back.

I stood in the square holding my clock. Watching her disappear into the crowd. Watching the numbers climb.

The clock had been right about significant life events.

I was completely screwed.