Brave Citizen -

He looked at the gauntlet. Its screen displayed a single line of text:

The enforcers froze. The temporal signal vanished. Without the gauntlet, he was no longer an anomaly. He was just Leo Vance, a citizen who had never been summoned to Brave Service because, in this timeline, he had never existed in Atherton. Brave Citizen

He could redo the last five seconds, dodge the enforcers, run. But that was survival. That was the Oculus's game. He looked at the gauntlet

In the sprawling, smog-choked metropolis of Atherton, being a "Brave Citizen" wasn't a compliment. It was a punishment. Without the gauntlet, he was no longer an anomaly

On the fourth day, the city's enforcers arrived. They were sleek, black shapes that moved like oil, scanning for the temporal anomaly. They would find him. They would drag him back to the vat.

He landed hard on a familiar, grimy carpet. The smell of stale pizza and his mother's lavender candles filled his nose. He was seventeen again, in his childhood bedroom. The same room where, a week from now, he would make the choice that led him to Atherton—the choice to take the safe, beige job as a data-scrubber instead of running away with his band, instead of kissing Mira Liu, instead of living.

Leo stood in the town square, the gauntlet on his wrist. The enforcers closed in. He looked at the screen: