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 Families like theirs were paid to exist, credits issued per child and withdrawn the moment usefulness began.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 learned early that the back of the house had its own rules. Bells rang from unseen rooms above, sharp and impatient, dictating when you moved and how fast. The air never quite cleared—coal soot clung to everything, settling into hems and fingers no matter how often you scrubbed. Laundry was boiled in the washhouse until steam clouded the windows, then hauled out back to the narrow court where iron railings dripped with moisture and brick walls trapped the cold. Even in daylight, the gas lamps along the street burned faintly through the fog, casting everything in a dull, yellow haze. You balanced a basket of damp linens against your hip, careful not to slip on the slick stones as you crossed the yard, already counting how long you had before the next bell rang.

That’s when you saw the random man collapsed near the ash bins.

He was sprawled awkwardly against the wall, coat heavy with mud and cinders. For a moment you thought he might be…indisposed. People did turn up like that sometimes. But then he stirred, coughing weakly as his eyes opened. His face was streaked with grime, skin pallid beneath it, hair tangled and damp. He struggled upright, wincing, clearly dizzy, and took in the yard with quiet disbelief: the wash lines, the coal scuttle, the iron boot scraper by the door.

“I’m sorry,” he said at once, voice rough, already trying to make himself smaller despite the state he was in. He looked less frightened of where he was than ashamed to be seen there at all.