Chapter 1: Seventeen Crosswalks

The woman at the corner of Lexington and 34th was deciding whether to cross on yellow.

I saw her do both.

The solid version waited, one hand on her bag strap, weight shifted to her right hip. The other version, translucent, a half-second ahead, stepped off the curb and walked. Same coat, same scarf, same tired set to her mouth. But one chose patience and the other chose risk, and now they existed simultaneously, layered over each other like a photograph developed twice.

The light turned green. The solid version crossed. The translucent one was already at the opposite corner, checking her phone, living her parallel Tuesday morning in a timeline where she'd arrived twelve seconds earlier.

I looked away.

Crosswalk one.

The walk to work took thirty-two minutes if I kept my pace. I'd mapped the route for density: side streets where foot traffic was thin before nine, avenues I crossed only at signals where fewer people made decisions. Even so, the city was full of splits. A man choosing between two coffee carts. A student deciding whether to skip the subway stop or ride another station. Small fractures. Brief flickers. Most of them closed within minutes, the two versions snapping back together like magnets.

Crosswalk four. Crosswalk seven. A woman arguing on her phone, and the version of her that hung up walking beside the version that kept talking.

I counted because counting was the alternative to screaming.

By the time I reached the lobby of 1440 Broadway, I'd logged seventeen crosswalks and nine visible branches. Average for a Monday. I updated the tally in the notebook I kept in my coat pocket, then put it away before the elevator arrived.

The office was quieter. Fewer people meant fewer decisions, fewer fractures in the air. The seventh floor held accounting and project management, two departments filled with people who had already made most of their significant choices. Marriages happened. Mortgages signed. Children born. Their branches were old and distant, barely visible, like the afterimage of a bright light.

I liked it up here. The hum of keyboards. The recycled air. The predictability.

My desk was by the window, which I kept meaning to request changed. Windows meant seeing the street below, and the street meant branches. But the request would require explanation, and explanations were something I'd learned to avoid.

I set my bag down. Turned on my monitor. The coffee from the break room tasted like it had been sitting since Friday, but I drank it because the bitterness was grounding, a sensation that belonged only to this timeline, this moment, this version of me.

At 9:47, I saw him.

He was new. IT transfer, probably, given the badge color. He was setting up at a desk six meters from mine, plugging in cables, adjusting a monitor angle with the concentration of someone who cared about the placement of things.

Sandy brown hair. Broad shoulders. Leather boots that looked worn enough to be real.

And no alternate.

I stared. I couldn't help it. My focus shifted left, the involuntary pull I'd learned to hide, checking for the translucent overlay that every person carried. The second version. The branch shadow.

Nothing.

He was singular. One version. Solid all the way through, like looking at a wall instead of a window. I'd spent nine years watching people split and flicker and duplicate, and I had never, not once, seen someone who existed as only themselves.

My coffee went cold in my hand.

He looked up.

Hazel eyes, more green than brown. Steady. He looked at me like I was a puzzle he'd noticed but hadn't decided to solve yet.

"You look like you're trying to figure something out," he said.

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Picked up my coffee and drank the cold remains because I needed my hands to be doing something.

"Just wondering who you are," I said. Flat. Professional. The tone I used with everyone.

"Callum Voss. IT systems." He smiled. Easy, unhurried. "I'm supposed to be on three, but they're doing renovations. Displaced until March."

March. Three months of him, six meters away, with no explanation for why the air around him didn't fracture.

"Sable Orin," I said. "Project management."

"Nice to meet you, Sable."

He went back to his cables. I went back to my screen. The spreadsheet in front of me swam. Numbers that meant nothing. I typed my password wrong twice.

I didn't look at him again that morning.

I looked at the space where his alternate should have been, and found nothing, and counted my breaths until the panic thinned to something I could swallow.