Chapter 2: 4:00 AM
Cranston Estates slept well.
the wealthy often slept without a care in the world
That was one of the perks of being rich. Thick walls. Private security. Gates that made sure danger had to schedule an appointment before it showed up. The houses were quiet, the lawns trimmed, the streets empty except for the occasional patrol vehicle that rolled by without urgency.
Nothing unusual ever happened at four in the morning.
Except tonight. and this night was supposed to be no different, why would it not be, but sadly one little baby boy wasn't having the best Time at the moment . . .
Kairo Victor Fugate Wakati woke up sweating.
The nightmare was the same as always. the same as always, again, and again, the same as always.
He was frozen.
Not cold. Not like ice. Not like stone either. Worse than that. He had no arms, no legs, just a torso and a head suspended in space; his mind was so awake and aware, he was unsure if his eyes were closed or staring into total darkness. He could feel his body wanting to move, muscles screaming, nerves itching to twitch, but there was nothing to move with. No leverage. No control. Just awareness trapped inside stillness.
It wasn't pain. Nothing hurt, it was the desire to move, even move just a little bit, less than an inch would do, anything at all . . . . but he was stuck in the motionless void . . .
It was wrongness.
He tore himself out of it through sheer will.
His eyes snapped open. He was back in his crib. The sheets were soft, damp from sweat. The air in the nursery felt heavy, too warm against his skin. If he had the mind of a normal baby, he might have cried. Might have wailed until someone came running.
Instead, he lay there, breathing hard.
Then he heard it.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Every clock in the room.
The nursery had too many. Decorative wall clocks. A pendulum piece by the door. A small antique on the dresser. A digital display embedded in the baby monitor. Even the hidden monitoring equipment behind the walls made faint rhythmic sounds if you knew how to listen.
Normally, they blended into the background.
Tonight they were unbearable.
Each tick felt like a hammer strike against his skull. Not loud in volume, but loud in meaning. Every second announcing itself. Every moment forcing him forward.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
His ears rang. His heart sped up. His little hands curled into fists. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't think. The sound filled everything.
Stop, he thought.
Please stop.
It was too much.
he couldn't think, he needed to Thick . . . every single second, again and again, tick, Tick. TICK . . TICK!, TICK!!!!!!, he wanted it to stop, stop, stop, he needed it to stop
And so it stopped.
Not just the clocks.
Everything.
At four in the morning, Time itself paused.
Across Cranston Estates, air froze in place. Curtains hung motionless. Security cameras locked mid-rotation. Outside, a moth that had been fluttering near a porch light stopped in the air as if pinned there. Somewhere miles away, waves rolling in from the ocean flattened into glass. Far above, satellites drifted without drifting. The stars did not move.
Inside the nursery, Kairo floated.
Only a few feet above his crib. Small. Sweaty. Breathing unevenly. Completely unaware that the universe was waiting on him.
The ticking was gone.
Silence.
Real silence.
His body cooled slowly. His breathing steadied. The panic faded. His tiny frame lowered gently back into the crib like someone had tucked him in by hand.
As soon as his mind slipped back into sleep, peaceful and soft, Time resumed.
The clocks began again.
The moth finished its wingbeat.
The ocean moved.
The stars continued.
And in the lower levels of the Wakati mansion, every alarm related to temporal fluctuation detonated at once.
Dr. Elias Wakati shot upright in bed before he was fully awake.
His lab sensors were screaming.
The atomic clock calibration system had desynced and then re-synced in a way that was mathematically impossible. The isotope decay monitors showed a flatline and then a jump. The pendulum regulators in three separate chambers had stalled mid-swing. His chronometric resonance scanners had recorded a universal zero-point drop that lasted precisely one second and no measurable duration at the same time.
That was not possible.
Even when he had successfully halted localized time in controlled environments, nothing had reacted like this. His systems were built to withstand paradox. They were designed to endure disruption.
They were not built to experience absence.
Several antique hourglasses in his private study had shattered under internal pressure, sand spraying across polished wood like something had squeezed them from the inside.
Elias was on his feet before his mind caught up with his body. He threw on his lab coat as he moved, not bothering to button it properly. His old knees protested as he descended the stairs faster than they appreciated, one hand gripping the rail, the other already tapping commands into his wrist console.
He shut down the larger machines first. Cut power to the oscillation chambers. Locked the displacement core into dormant mode. Reset the resonance readers. His hands moved with the calm of decades of practice even while his thoughts raced.
What could cause a full-field temporal stall?
Nothing he had built.
Nothing on Earth.
Nothing natural.
And yet he knew.
He knew before he let himself admit it.
Staff began appearing at the edges of the lab, confused and worried. Mrs. Patel in a robe. Anika's father half-awake and blinking. A security officer asking if there had been a break-in.
Elias straightened, forced his voice steady.
"It is fine," he said gently. "A calibration cascade. Nothing dangerous. Please return to your rooms."
He gave them soft and gentle answers, telling them everything was fine, it was ok to go back to bed, there was nothing to worry about, because nothing was exploding anymore. They made their way back to bed, or duties,
They trusted him. That was the problem with being the smartest man in the building. People believed you when you said things were under control.
When the last of them drifted away, Elias turned toward the nursery.
He walked more slowly now.
He did not rush.
He did not need confirmation.
He only needed to see.
The nursery door was already open.
Anika was inside.
She had beaten him there.
Still in her pajamas, hair slightly messy from sleep, she stood by the crib holding Kairo close to her chest. She had gotten there fast. Faster than a seventeen-year-old with no lab alarms to guide her should have.
She didn't look up at first.
She just swayed slightly, cradling him.
"Kairo is very special, Doctor," she said quietly. "But I think you already knew that."
Elias nodded once.
"Yes," he replied. "I did."
Anika finally looked up. Her smile was soft but there was something thoughtful behind it.
"This little tyrant is a handful already," she said. "But the more time I spend around him, the more I notice things, the more I see and feel his magic."
Elias pulled a chair over and sat. His bones appreciated it.
"So," he said carefully, "you think it is magic? I haven't thought about that, my old brain is so far stuck in the fields of science that I forget other factors, Kairo is far too young for any real tests, but I currently have no idea, . . it could be magic, maybe he has some type of superpower, even if superpowers sound stranger than magic, maybe it's a mixture of magic, genetics and science, but what I do know, my grandson has a power over Time. But I'm unsure if he knows that he has such a power."
Anika wiped the drool from Kairo's mouth, her movements practiced and gentle, then looked up at Dr. Wakati, a little smirk tugging at her mouth. Anika raised a brow. "Doctor, I don't know what you think you're working with here, but this baby… he's not just special, he's a walking, crawling little time storm. You know how I said he was a handful? I meant it. We're all just trying to keep up."
She adjusted Kairo's blanket and continued, her tone calm but animated.
She tucked Kairo close to her chest, swaying a little as she spoke, her voice low but still holding warmth. "You ever notice how the nursery just goes quiet when he's napping? I mean, really quiet? Sometimes I'll blink, and it's like two hours have passed, or maybe no time at all, and I'm left wondering if I fell asleep on my feet. Or when he gets mad—oh, you haven't lived until you've seen this kid throw a tantrum. The cry starts, and suddenly it's like the world moves through honey. Thirty seconds of wailing feels like an hour. I swear, I once saw one of his favourite toys Mrs. Goat age ten years during one of his fits."
Elias did not interrupt.
She gave Kairo an affectionate nudge with her nose. "And don't get me started on the burps. He spits up, and poof—mess is gone, bottle's full again, bib is clean, and I'm left holding a baby who looks way too pleased with himself. You think you're going nuts, but then you see him do it again, and you just have to accept that the rules don't work the way you thought. Crawling? He's got a trick for that, too. One minute he's here, I blink, and he's halfway across the room, giggling at me like I'm the one who's slow."
She looked down at Kairo, who snored softly.
Anika's tone softened, almost conspiratorial now. "Toys don't last. He picks up a plushie, and by the end of the day, it's worn out—threadbare and faded, like it's been loved for years. Or sometimes, it goes the other way. I'll see him with a pacifier that looks brand new, not a tooth mark on it, and I know it's not the same one from this morning. Everything around him is… out of step. And it's all tied to how he's feeling. Happy? Time zips forward. Scared? The world rewinds, just enough for him to miss whatever scared him. Curious? He'll stare at something, and the whole room gets stuck on repeat until he looks away. It's like living inside a skipping record."
She shifted her hold on Kairo, glancing at the doctor with a little shrug. "Sometimes, if I hold him just right, time stretches. I'll get whole hours with him in my arms, peaceful, like the world outside just slows down to let us rest. But if he gets really upset—like, can't-catch-his-breath upset—he'll tug you right out of the present. I've ended up in the kitchen five minutes before I left the nursery, and once I swear we landed in the garden in the middle of last week. And don't even ask about hide and seek. You'll turn around and he's just… gone, like he slipped out of the moment. It's never for long, but it's enough to make you question your sanity."
She laughed, shaking her head. "Milk stays warm, toys float, sound echoes funny—sometimes it's like the whole world is wrapped in a bubble with him, and nothing outside can touch us. It's wild, Doctor. I've worked with kids my whole life, and I've never seen anything like it. He's not just bending time—he's making it his own. And I think, maybe, he's just getting started."
Elias stared for a long moment as he consumed the information . . .
Then Dr. Wakati's mouth slowly dropped as he listened to the young woman speak, "I didn't know . . . about Any of that," The doctor's mind wandered to the thought of his daughter and how often he didn't pay her any mind
or if he went even further back in time . . . . older memories
to his X-Wife, how she complained about how he sometimes wouldn't even look at her for days, how she was so lonely, its one thing to forget about her birthday or anniversary but he would forget she even lived here or existed in the first place, and for someone so concerned with time, its strange how he would lose total track of it. Dr. Wakati's mind drifted further and deeper back into more and more memories of him truly not being present, until, Anika's voice brought him back from his deep thoughts, asking if he was ok and if he was listening.
"I was not aware of that," he said honestly.
Anika gave him a look that was affectionate and slightly pointed.
"You're not aware of a lot of things, Doctor."
That one landed.
He removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead.
"I have not been good at… noticing," he admitted. "Even when the people are close to me. Especially when they are close."
His mind drifted backward. His daughter. His wife. All the moments he had meant to show up for and didn't. A man obsessed with time who never had enough of it for the people in his own house.
Anika softened immediately.
"I'm not saying you're a bad grandfather, I know your work keeps you very busy and . . ." she said. "You love him. That's obvious. But he's not just bending time, Doctor. It bends around him. And we can't pretend that's normal."
He apologized to her, Setting his glasses down on a nearby table to further rub his head, "I've never been good at . . . well I'm not good at many things but I have a true talent for ignoring others especially when it comes to paying attention to people, even when they are so close to me, in fact, the closer they are to me the more I seem to drift from them, and in my old age, things are only getting worse, Anika, I'm sorry for my rambling but I can't thank you enough for all you do, and I'll be relying on you to take care of my Grandson more and more . . ."
Anika stopped him, "Don't get me wrong, I love Kairo and don't plan on abandoning him but I'm really only good at looking after kids and babies,"
She said readjusting Kairo before speaking again, "and my duties are to this mansion and staff, so for example when he gets older, sure, I'll still be here and an amazing big sis to him but, I don't know anything about raising someone with super powers, and I'm not a bodyguard either, because I figure Kairo is going to draw unwanted attention toward himself, and i'm not much help in a fight, But me and my family along with the current people and staff working here can only do so much . . . not from a lack of trying but the fact of the matter is that we wouldn't know what to do or even know how to start."
Elias nodded slowly.
"You are correct," he said. "Which means we need help."
Anika shifted Kairo on her shoulder.
"Again, I love this kid," she said. "I'll always be here for him. But I don't know how to raise someone who can accidentally stop the universe. And again, I'm definitely not a bodyguard."
Elias almost smiled.
"Yes," he said. "Stopping the universe accidentally is… a complication."
He pushed himself up from the chair with a few quiet old-man sounds and looked down at his sleeping grandson.
"I have resources," he said. "I have contacts. I have wealth. If I have failed at many things, I have not failed at accumulating those."
He looked at Anika.
"In the morning, I begin looking for help."
Anika nodded.
"Good," she said. "Because if he's already doing this in his sleep, I'd like to know what happens when he's awake and mad."
Elias did not answer that.
He simply watched Kairo breathe.
And for the first time, he wondered not if his grandson had power.
But whether Time had chosen him for something neither of them were ready for.
The Good Doctor nodded, making up his mind, "Thank you again, for all you have done and will do, I hear you, I promise to be better but I fear that isn't enough, perhaps its time to expand our family with people who might have a better idea of where to "Start."
Dr. Wakati made a few more old man sounds as he made his way to the door, "I'll leave you with Kairo, but make sure to get some sleep too, In the morning, I start my search for some, 'help'."