The Gravity of Tomorrow
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 12: The First Life Lost
The second time the system gave Ty and Ann a choice, it did not feel like opportunity.
It felt like consequence.
It started with a phone call.
Ann was still at the shelter when it came in—late afternoon, the kind of gray hour when the day felt tired before it was over. The front desk volunteer handed her the phone with a look that said this one mattered.
“Ann, it’s the hospital,” he said quietly.
Her stomach tightened before she even lifted the receiver.
“Yes,” she said. “This is Ann Mitchell.”
There was a pause. Then a voice on the other end—measured, professional, carrying the careful weight of bad news.
“I’m calling about DeShawn.”
Ann closed her eyes.
He was the young man she’d helped weeks ago. The one who hated doors. The one who had trusted her enough to walk through one.
“He was brought in last night,” the doctor continued. “Overdose. We stabilized him, but ... he coded early this morning. I’m sorry.”
The words didn’t land all at once.
They came like stones dropped into still water.
One. Then another. Then the ripples.
Ann thanked the doctor without remembering what she said, then set the phone down carefully—as if it might break if she moved too fast.
DeShawn was gone.
Ty felt it before she told him.
Not as a voice.
Not as a signal.
As absence.
He was fixing a faulty transmitter on a rooftop when the awareness brushed past him—quiet, hollow.
Loss.
That night, Ann came to his apartment without calling ahead.
He opened the door and saw it in her eyes immediately.
“Come in,” he said softly.
She stepped inside, set her bag down, and leaned against the wall like her legs had suddenly forgotten how to hold her.
“He’s dead,” she said.
Ty didn’t ask who.
He crossed the room in two steps and pulled her into a hug.
She didn’t cry right away.
She just stood there, shaking, her face buried in his shoulder.
“I was supposed to help him,” she whispered. “I told him he mattered.”
Ty closed his eyes. “You did help him.”
“It wasn’t enough,” she said.
Silence filled the room—not empty silence. Heavy silence.
The kind that came when the world refused to bend no matter how much you wanted it to.
Later, they sat across from each other at the small table, the same place where they had first spoken to the system together.
Ann stared at her hands. “You saved a man on the street. You changed probability. You bent things just enough.”
Ty swallowed. “I didn’t save him. I helped him not die that day.”
“You could have helped DeShawn,” Ann said. Not accusing. Just aching.
Ty felt the mark on his wrist stir—not in warmth, not in power.
In restraint.
“You don’t know that,” he said gently.
Ann looked up at him. “I do know that. I felt it. When he was struggling ... I felt the system open. Just a crack. And I didn’t act.”
Ty’s breath caught. “Why not?”
“Because I was afraid,” she said. “Afraid that if we start saving everyone we care about, we stop being stewards and start being gods.”
The room seemed to hold its breath.
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