To Those We Never Meet

Standing outside in the rain, I looked at the building before me. Its walls hollow and solid at the same time. The door closed against the weather and the coming storm. I wanted to turn away. To say this is not mine. I knew better.

Inside, the long hall to the chamber stretched out like miles of empty highway. A highway with no exits. Slowly. Deliberately I entered the hall. He was already waiting for me. Nothing was said between us as he watched me approach the consol in front of the chamber.

How do I do this?

I send him back to die in a war that is not his. Or I leave him here, and the war comes here. I used to think time travel would feel like breaking glass — sharp, violent, immediate.

But the truth is quieter. More like sliding a letter you can never take back through a slot in a locked door.

The chamber hums around us, its walls breathing with slow pulses of blue light. It was once a missile silo; now it’s the last hope of a collapsing century. The air tastes metallic, like the moment before lightning strikes. He stands across from me, helmet tucked under one arm, the other hand balled into a fist. Not out of fear — out of the discipline of a soldier who refuses to shake.

“You don’t have to decide yet,” he says. His voice is steady, but I can hear the fractures beneath it.

“Yes,” I answer. “I do.”

His name is Eamon Hale.

Staff Sergeant.

Born 2127.

Dead — will die — in the year 2043.

A year that, for me, happened more than a lifetime ago.

Time is a spiral, not a line. Eamon is the only one who seems to understand that without going mad.

“You said the breach in 2043 is the nexus point,” he reminds me. “If I go back, maybe I close it. Maybe the invasion never starts.”

“And if you fail, you die in a trench in Belgium. In a timeline your mother wasn’t even born in.”

He gives me a tired smile. “In fairness, Belgium hasn’t been safe in six timelines.”

I want to laugh. I can’t. The truth is simple: Eamon is not supposed to exist.

He’s a temporal fragment — a man born in the wrong century because of one fracture in spacetime three wars ago. He slipped between eras the way a ghost slips between walls. He was raised in the remains of what used to be New Boston, apprenticed into the Chrono Corps before he was old enough to understand why we stitched time like surgeons.

And he’s the only one who survived the last breach.

“We sent eight teams back,” I whisper. “You’re the only one who didn’t vanish.”

His jaw tightens. “Which is exactly why I should go again.”

“No.” I step closer. “Eamon, if you die in that era, I lose the only soldier who understands what we’re fighting.” “And if I stay,” he murmurs, “you lose everyone.” ________________________________________

The first invasion arrived like a winter storm: quiet until it wasn’t. Fractures in the sky, veined with light. Creatures made of bone and shadow pouring through, hunting the living as if memory itself were meat.

We called them Archivists.

Not because of what they looked like — but because of what they took. The Archivists do not kill.

They erase.

Swallowing entire bloodlines, consuming the essence of what a life was supposed to become. They feed on possibility. On futures. On the ones we never meet.

I remember the first time I saw one retrieve a man’s shadow from the pavement. I still hear the pop, like a knuckle cracking.

I still hear the silence after.

Eamon clears his throat, pulling me back. “We have two hours before the breach widens again,” he says.

The room feels colder.

He steps closer. “Tell me what you’re afraid of.”

I shake my head. “Losing you.”

He exhales — a sound that cracks through his armor. “You won’t remember I existed if I fail,” he says quietly. “That’s the point. The timeline will correct. You’ll wake up in a world that never needed me.”

“That’s worse.”

“I know.”

His hand brushes mine. Hesitant. Uncertain. He was never allowed attachments — Chrono Corps trains it out of you. But trauma rewrites rules no academy can enforce. “I’ll come back if I can,” he says.

“You won’t.”

He doesn’t argue.

Because we’ve seen the recordings — corrupted, static-filled reports from dying eras showing the same soldier over and over again, falling in mud, in snow, in fire, each version disappearing into the jaws of something we couldn’t see.

Every version is him. We don’t know whether those are past attempts or future ones. Time doesn’t care.

________________________________________

The breach alarm begins a low tremor.

Eamon looks up. “It’s time.”

I follow him to the platform. He lifts his helmet, hesitates, lowers it again.

“You told me once,” he says, “that every war has two fronts — the one on the battlefield and the one inside the soul.”

“I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

“No.” His voice is steady. “I needed to hear it.” Then he reaches into his vest and pulls out a small metal capsule.

“What is that?”

“A tether spike. If I drive it into the breach core, it’ll collapse. But…” He pauses.

“But?”

“It’ll anchor whatever is closest.”

He meets my eyes.

“It might drag me with it.”

My chest tightens. “Eamon—”

“It’s the only way to stop the Archivists before they nest.”

He waits for me to tell him no. I wait for him to choose to stay. Neither happens.

“You’ll forget me,” he says softly.

“No. I won’t.”

He smiles — small, sad, absolutely infuriating. “You will. But I won’t forget you.”

He steps onto the platform. The chamber lights surge, spinning brighter. The air ripples. And then — a sound:

A voice like cracking ice, slithering through the walls, whispering through the seams of reality.

The Archivists.

They feel the breach opening. Eamon shoves his helmet on. “Power it up!”

I slam my palm onto the console. The temporal engine roars, light twisting inward, coiling like a serpent made of stars.

“Eamon!” He looks back. Just once.

“Thank you,” he says.

And then he’s gone. A blast of light swallows him, bending around him, the chamber shaking until the floor almost splits. For a moment, I swear I see shapes in the breach — towering silhouettes made of bone-lattices and empty eyes, reaching, reaching, furious at losing their prey. Then the world snaps.

The breach collapses.

Silence.

________________________________________

Time resets with the subtlety of a knife sliding between ribs.

The chamber flickers.

Dust settles in patterns I don’t remember.

My badge reads a number I’ve never seen before.

A man I don’t know touches my shoulder. “Commander? You alright? The diagnostics show the breach attempt failed.”

“Failed?” I echo. “Yes, ma’am. Nothing was sent. The tether spike didn’t activate.”

My stomach twists. “What about the soldier?” I ask.

He frowns. “What soldier?”

My mouth goes dry. I check the logs. There is no Eamon Hale in the Chrono Corps roster. No enlisted personnel born in 2127. No records. No footprints. Not even a ghost trail in the probability matrix.

He’s gone.

Not dead — erased. A man swallowed by his own bravery before he was ever born. Except…

On the console, under the flickering blue lights, I find something impossible. A fingerprint. Not mine. Not recorded. Not supposed to exist. It glows faintly, just for a moment, humming like quartz infused with sunlight.

A message ripples through my mind, soft as breath:

I closed it. Keep going. Don’t let them take the ones we never meet.

I inhale sharply. Someone notices.

“Commander?”

“I’m fine,” I whisper. But I’m lying. Something inside me — some thread the universe failed to cut cleanly — remembers the shape of a man who shouldn’t exist. Not his name.

Not his face.

Not his voice.

Just the ache.

The unmistakable ache of love tangled with sacrifice.

________________________________________

The second invasion never comes.

Not in this timeline.

The skies remain whole.

The Archivists never break through the seams.

Billions of lives stay untouched, unwritten tragedies never unfolding. But some nights, I hear humming — faint, resonant, impossibly familiar. Like quartz singing Willie Nelson in a distant canyon.

And I know, without knowing how: Somewhere in the spirals of time, a soldier with no history died saving a future that will never remember him.

I step outside the silo, rain falling gently — soft, quiet, undisturbed.

The world kept.

The cost unknown.

But I lift my face to the sky anyway and whisper to the dark water falling: “To those we never meet… We owe everything.”

And though I cannot hear him, somewhere across the labyrinth of time, I feel the answer: You did meet me. That’s enough.