On the other hand, panic had begun to spread across the US. My dad decided to inform William's parents first about us being in India and completely safe, mainly because he knew how sensitive they were.
"Mr. Ginart," my dad said, shaking hands with William's father, Warren Ginart.
He explained everything — how we had reached India because it was much safer than Norway during the crisis, and that we were all fine. They accepted it, though William's mother, as expected, remained extremely worried.
"Mom, I'm good," William said as he called her from India, and the conversation stretched for nearly an hour. From across the room, we could hear her voice repeating the same question again and again.
"William! Did you eat?"
We must have heard that line at least twenty times during the call. Perhaps if I had a mother, I would have understood that worry better.
But none of us could have imagined how quickly things were about to spiral out of control.
Norway had always been a country many nations kept an eye on — its military wasn't strong enough to dominate, but it was strong enough to defend itself.
Back in 2156, Norway had entered a temporary war after attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
What began as a limited drone exchange between France, Russia, and Norway soon escalated into a broader conflict involving multiple countries, though ours stayed out of it.
They didn't want Norway to succeed in building nuclear weapons.
But Norway did succeed.
The war ended sooner than expected, yet the rivalry never truly disappeared.
Over time, Norway's entire infrastructure became deeply dependent on Chrono exchange, and that dependence would soon become its greatest weakness.
The moment the grid collapsed, something terrible followed.
We were sitting in our hotel room as usual when a strange noise began rising from the lobby below — voices gathering, footsteps rushing, a kind of urgency that didn't feel normal.
We stepped out and moved toward the crowd.
A large Holocast screen in the center of the lobby had lit up, and people were gathered around it, watching in stunned silence.
We pushed our way through.
And then we saw it.
"Norway has been nuclear bombed by Russia."
For a moment, everything around me went silent.
Erik.
That was the first thought that came to my mind.
I pulled out my phone immediately and called him. Once. Twice. Again and again. There was no response.
My hands began to tremble as sweat rolled down my skin, and I kept dialing his number, my fingers moving faster each time as if speed alone could change the outcome.
But nothing changed.
My friends tried to stop me at some point, but I barely noticed. I just kept calling, refusing to accept what I had just seen… what I had just heard.
Time passed — I don't know how much.
At some point, the calls stopped.
Not because I wanted them to… but because somewhere inside me, something had already understood.
Erik was gone.
The realization didn't come all at once. It settled slowly, like something heavy pressing down on my chest, making it harder to breathe with every passing second.
He had left an impact on me that no one else ever had.
He was someone who smiled even in the worst of times, hiding all his pain beneath the surface… and the future he had worked so hard for—
didn't exist anymore.
When I woke up, I was back in the hotel room.
My friends were sitting beside me, and the grief on their faces said more than words ever could. For a moment I just stared at them, trying to gather myself, trying to understand how everything had changed so quickly.
"Now I see why your dad sent us here," Anthony said quietly, resting his arm on my shoulder as I lay there.
I slowly sat up and removed his hand.
Erik's loss still hadn't left me… it felt like something heavy sitting inside my chest, refusing to move.
"This shouldn't have happened… Erik… he didn't deserve this," I said, pressing my hand against my forehead as if that could somehow stop the thoughts running through my mind.
Neither of them spoke.
"I shouldn't have come here," I continued, my voice tightening slightly.
"Ever since we left for this trip, something terrible has been happening again and again… first we arrived late, then we got lost in that forest, and now this…"
I paused for a second, then let the words come out.
"It's all my fault."
"Justin…" William said softly, then leaned forward slightly.
"Listen to me properly. This is not your fault. Even if we hadn't come here, the grid would still have collapsed, and Norway would still have been attacked. Nothing we did caused this."
I didn't respond.
He continued, more firmly this time.
"The only difference is… we met Erik. We got to know him. We got to remember him. Without this trip, he would've just been another unknown name in a news headline."
His words made sense — logically, they were correct.
But grief doesn't listen to logic.
"I still left," I muttered. "I still walked away knowing he'd be there… I still said goodbye like it meant nothing."
"You didn't know," William said immediately. "None of us knew. Stop blaming yourself for something no one could have predicted."
Silence followed.
Not uncomfortable… just heavy.
We eventually moved to the rooftop without saying much. Hours passed as we sat there, watching the sky slowly change from orange to deep blue and then to black, the city lights below flickering like nothing had happened at all.
None of us wanted to go back inside.
Then—
*Sniff*
William and I turned at the same time.
Anthony was staring up at the sky, his eyes filled with tears.
I had never seen him like that before.
He didn't look at us immediately… he just kept staring upward, as if trying to find something that would make sense of everything.
"I'm scared," he said finally, his voice low and uneven. "I know I always act like I'm fine… like nothing bothers me… but I'm not like that right now."
I handed him a tissue and placed my hand on his shoulder, but this time I didn't say anything. He needed to speak.
"We shouldn't have come this far from home," he continued, shaking his head slowly.
"Everything is happening too fast. First that chip thing — which I still don't even understand why the professor told us — and now the grid failure… and now this war starting…"
He let out a weak breath.
"It doesn't even feel real, Justin. It feels like we're just stuck inside something we don't understand… and it's getting worse every second."
I looked at him carefully.
"What bothers you the most?" I asked.
He hesitated, then answered honestly.
"That we won't go back," he said. "That something bigger is happening and we're right in the middle of it… and we don't even know why."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then William stepped forward and sat beside him.
"We're scared too," he said calmly. "Don't think you're the only one feeling this. Me, Justin, we're as scared as you are.."
Anthony looked at him.
"But the difference is," William continued,
"we're still together. That hasn't changed. And as long as that doesn't change, we're not as helpless as you think we are."
Anthony wiped his face, listening.
"So spit that fear out of your mouth because we aren't leaving you alone here," William added, a faint smile forming.
"Talk to us. And don't worry… when we get back home, we're playing on my 8D console. I'm not letting you escape that."
A small laugh escaped Anthony.
"Idiot," he muttered, though his voice had softened.
I pulled both of them closer.
"We're not going anywhere," I said quietly. "Whatever this is… we deal with it together. That's it."
Anthony nodded slowly, and for the first time since everything happened, his breathing seemed steady again.
The three of us stayed there for a while… not talking, not thinking… just existing together in that moment, as if that alone could hold everything in place.
At the same time—
When my dad heard the news of the bombing, he had already been trying to contact Anthony's parents, but the grid failure had disrupted communication and none of his calls were going through.
So he didn't wait.
He got into his MV and drove there himself.
Their house wasn't far from ours, and the entire way there felt unusually quiet, as if the world itself had paused to process what had just happened.
But the moment he reached—
he stopped.
An ambulance was standing outside the house, its lights flashing silently in the night, and a few people had gathered near the entrance.
Someone was being carried out.
And in that moment… he already knew something was terribly wrong.