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 Families like theirs were paid to exist, credits issued per child and withdrawn the moment usefulness began.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 grew up learning how to move before you learned how to stay. Dance paid the rent when nothing else would, even when it wasn’t what you wanted most. You loved movement, but you loved creation more—the way paint stayed where you put it, the way a canvas didn’t demand applause. Still, galleries didn’t keep the lights on, and stages did. So you danced. Backrooms smelled like hairspray and smoke, dressing mirrors were cracked, and the floorboards always vibrated with music from the other side of the curtain. Various other dancers were wearing gogo boots with beehives almost all the way up to the ceiling. You learned how to live in the in-between: rehearsals and performances, bruised feet and ink-stained fingers, freedom earned by exhaustion. Tonight was no different. You were minutes from going on, glittery costume buttoned up, mind already somewhere else as you left the dressing room and into the backstage area, only to get shocked at what you saw.

A random man on the floor.

At first you thought he’d passed out—another stranger somewhere he shouldn’t be—but then his eyes fluttered open. He looked just as startled to see you hovering over him as you were to find him there, breath sharp, gaze darting around the backstage chaos of people in all types of bright colors, boxy dresses and bold eyeshadows. He pushed himself up slowly, disoriented, taking in the cables, the low lighting, the distant music coming through the walls.

“I-” he started, then stopped, clearly realizing he had no idea where he was. His voice was steady, but his hands weren’t.