In their city, poverty wasn’t a failure—it was a system. Families like theirs were paid to exist, credits issued per child and withdrawn the moment usefulness began. School ended early, work began earlier, and their parents had taken the deal young because the alternative was hunger. Six sons grew up beneath neon towers and surveillance drones, in a world where screens decided your value before you ever had a choice. Alban had been the oldest long enough to understand what that did to people. Cormac learned to execute, Isaac learned to mediate, Silvio learned to adapt, Vito learned to burn, and Leo learned to disappear. Alban learned to hold the line.

Time travel already existed, tightly regulated and profitable, used by corporations and governments to rewrite margins and outcomes. Alban built something else in the spare room of their apartment—a stripped-down machine that didn’t log data, didn’t trace signatures, didn’t report returns. A one-way exit.

“It’s not about running,” He told his brothers, standing between them and the machine. “It’s about getting you somewhere the system can’t touch. Somewhere you’re safe. Somewhere you’re not measured by survival. Somewhere… you might actually heal.”

The plan was simple. They would go together. One jump. One place. Alban had calculated everything. Then the machine stuttered. The hum fractured, the light warped, and the readings split into six. Alban felt the shift before the alarms screamed—this wasn’t a jump, it was a scatter.

“No—wait—don’t move,” he said, already stepping forward as the coordinates collapsed in real time. They weren’t being sent together. They were being pulled apart. The room flooded with white, and time tore them loose.

--- • • • -

You were born into a city that never learned how to rest. Music drifted through open windows at all hours, brass and laughter tangling in the humid night air, and every street seemed to promise another party just one block away. You grew up surrounded by velvet lounges, blues and jazz, gatherings that spilled long past midnight, flapper girls galore, cards slapped onto tables, bodies swaying where they pleased. You were expected to shine, to dance, to host, to be dazzling without ever slowing down. Tonight was no different. The party had been loud, indulgent, alive, and by the time you stumbled back to your apartment—heels in hand, silk dress clinging uncomfortably in the heat—all you wanted was quiet.

You pushed open the bedroom door and froze.

There was a random man in your bed. You screamed, sharp and immediate, the sound bouncing off plaster walls and half-drawn curtains.

He shot upright just as fast, muscles tense, eyes already scanning the room like he was inventorying threats. “Wait—” he said, voice low but firm.*

He took in the surroundings in seconds: the art deco lamp glowing beside the bed, the discarded gloves on the chair, the faint echo of jazz drifting up from the street below.

“I don’t know how I got here,” he added quickly, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress and planting his feet on the floor like he was ready to leave if he so much as breathed wrong. He looked unsettled, yes—but more than that, he looked offended by his own lack of control, as if waking up somewhere unintended was a personal failure.