I woke before the alarm.

  That alone should have meant nothing, but it always did.

  The room was dim in the way mornings pretended to be, light seeping through the curtains without ever revealing the sun. The air was still. Too still. It carried no smell, no warmth, no promise of weather. Just presence.

  I laid there, staring at the faint crack in the ceiling that ran like a thin scar from one corner to the other. I could have drawn its exact shape from memory, could have counted its tiny branches like winter trees against a gray sky. I had. Many times.

  The silence held the weight of something waiting to begin, like time had fallen still. My own breath was the only measure of times passage. In. Out. Slow. Steady. Measured.

  I turned my head. Vivian was there, curled on her side, face half buried in the pillow. Her hair spilled across the linen like ink on water. She looked peaceful. Maybe even too peaceful. In sleep, her features softened into something almost unreal,no twitches. No murmurs. Just stillness. One could say it was a perfect composition of rest.

  I watched her chest rise and fall. The rhythm was flawless. Mechanical, even.

  My fingers twitched toward the alarm clock on the nightstand. A sleek, silver thing that always displayed 6:45 AM. Not 6:44. Not 6:46. Always 6:45. I didn't need to look. I already knew. The number wasn't a warning. It was a statement. An established fact.

  A soft chime broke the morning's fragile silence. The alarm.

  I didn't move to silence it. Neither did Vivian. The chime sounded three times, perfect intervals, each note clear and without vibration. Then it stopped. As if it had never been.

  Vivian's eyes opened. Not the slow, gritty blink of waking, but a smooth transition from closed to open. They were the color of warm honey, and they found me immediately.

  "Good morning," she said. Her voice was exactly as I remembered it…soft, without the rasp of sleep.

  "Morning," I replied, my own voice sounding foreign in the quiet room.

  She pushed herself up, the blanket sliding from her shoulders in a single, fluid motion. No wrinkles. No disarray. "Did you sleep well?"

  I considered the question. Sleep. The word felt both familiar and alien. I didn't recall dreams, but I didn't recall the feeling of not sleeping either. It was as if a chunk of my existence had been neatly excised, leaving a smooth, featureless void.

  "I think so," I said, choosing the safe answer.

  "That's good." She smiled, a gentle curve of her lips that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Coffee?"

  I nodded, pulling myself to the edge of the bed. The floorboards beneath my feet were cool but not cold. The silence returned as she left the room, a silence that wasn't empty, but full, as if it were holding its breath. I looked down at my hands. The nails were clean. The skin was unblemished. They were my hands, I knew that, but they looked like a photograph of my hands. Still. Perfect.

  I followed her downstairs into the kitchen. The light was the same as it always was—a soft, diffused glow that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Vivian was already by the counter, her movements a practiced dance. She reached for the bag of coffee beans, the ceramic canister with the small chip on the lid that wasn't really a chip but a deliberate design flaw. She scooped, tamped, and poured the water into the machine. Each action was a beat in a rhythm I'd heard a thousand times before. I knew the sequence, not just because I'd seen it, but because it felt…right. Expected.

  "How's your day looking?" she asked, her back to me.

  "I have the Miller proposal."

  She paused for a fraction of a second, her hand hovering over the mug rack. "Right. The Miller proposal." She selected a mug, the one with the faded blue stripe. "You'll do great. You always do."

  I sat at the kitchen table, the wood grain beneath my fingertips a familiar map of whorls and lines. I traced a specific knot near the edge, a small, dark eye in the pale wood. I knew its texture as well as I knew my own name.

  The coffee maker began its quiet gurgle, a sound so soft it was almost a vibration in the air. The aroma of brewing coffee filled the room, rich and warm. It was comforting. So comforting it was almost suffocating.

  I looked out the window. The garden was perfect. The roses were in full bloom, their petals a deep, velvety red. The lawn was a flawless green carpet, not a single blade out of place. The whole scene looked like a painting, or perhaps one of those old vintage color movies that emphasizes on nature’s slow subtle movements. The perfection was the only imperfection.

  "You're quiet this morning," Vivian said, placing a steaming mug in front of me. The liquid was the exact shade of mahogany, not a single ripple disturbing its surface.

  "Just thinking," I said, wrapping my hands around the warmth of the mug.

  "About the proposal?"

  "About… other things." I wasn't sure what things. Just a feeling, a nagging sense of déjà vu that went beyond the familiar routine.

  Vivian sat opposite me, her own mug in hand. She didn't press. She just watched me, her honey-colored eyes calm and steady. "It's a beautiful day," she said, her gaze shifting toward the window. "It would be a shame to waste it indoors."

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  I followed her gaze to the garden. The sunlight had shifted, the colors brighter now, more saturated. The red of the roses seemed to pulse with a life of their own. It was beautiful.

  "You should get going," Vivian said, standing up. "You don't want to be late."

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. The hands hadn't moved. They were still pointing to 7:15.

  "The clock's broken," I said, a note of surprise in my voice.

  Vivian turned to look. "Is it?" She walked over to it, tapped the glass face with a fingernail. "It seems fine to me." The second hand began to move, sweeping smoothly in a circle. "See? It's just a little slow sometimes."

  I picked up my mug. The coffee was still hot. How long had I been sitting there?

  I finished my coffee, the bitter liquid a familiar comfort. I stood up and headed back upstairs, removed a complete set of a neatly ironed suit from my wardrobe, tied my hair up in a bun and raced back downstairs with an air of slight eagerness. I grabbed my briefcase from the hook by the door. "I'll see you tonight," I said, my mind already on the day ahead.

  "I'll be here," she replied, her smile warm and reassuring. As I turned to leave, she called after me, "Connor?"

  I paused at the threshold, my hand on the doorknob. "Yes?"

  "Don't forget your keys."

  I patted my pockets. Empty. I looked back at the small bowl on the entryway table. There they were, gleaming under the soft light. I picked them up, the metal cool against my palm.

  "Right. Thanks," I said, a faint flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck. I opened the door and stepped outside, the cool morning air a welcome shock after the stillness of the house. I closed the door behind me, the click of the latch barely echoing amidst the bustling street.

  I walked toward the bus stop. The world outside our door was a symphony of muted colors and hushed sounds. The few people I passed moved with a slow, deliberate grace, their conversations little more than distant murmurs. I recognized some of them from my daily commute, but I couldn't recall their names. They were just…faces. Background characters in my morning routine.

  I reached the bus stop and joined the small crowd of waiting commuters. The bus arrived exactly on schedule. I boarded, swiped my card, and found an empty seat by the window. The bus pulled away from the curb, the cityscape blurring into a watercolor of grays and muted pastels. I watched the world go by, my mind a blank canvas.

  The bus ride was uneventful. No traffic. No sudden stops. No delays. Just a smooth, steady journey through a city that felt both familiar and strangely distant. I disembarked at my stop, the flow of the crowd carrying me toward my office building.

  The lobby was a cavern of polished marble and chrome, the air smelling of lemon-scented cleaner and stale coffee. I swiped my keycard at the turnstile and made my way to the elevator. The doors slid open, revealing an empty car. I stepped inside, the doors closing behind me with a soft, almost inaudible whir.

  I pressed the button for the 12th floor. The elevator began to ascend, the numbers on the display climbing in a steady, silent rhythm. 3. 4. 5.

  I watched my reflection in the polished metal of the doors. My hair was neat, my suit crisp. I looked… composed. Assembled. But my eyes held a flicker of something else. A question I couldn't quite form.

  The elevator dinged, the doors opening onto the 12th floor. I stepped out into a hallway of identical gray carpet and unmarked wooden doors. I walked toward my office, my footsteps muffled by the thick carpet.

  The nameplate on the door read: Connor Leamington, Senior Associate.

  I pushed open the door and stepped inside. My office was exactly as I'd left it. Neat. Orderly. A stack of files on my desk, a single framed photo on the corner. A picture of Vivian and me, smiling on a beach I couldn't recall visiting. The sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. Vivian's arm was around my shoulder, her smile wide and genuine.

  I set my briefcase down by my desk, the leather chair creaking softly as I sat. I powered on my computer. The company logo appearing for a moment before resolving into my desktop. A picture of a serene mountain lake. Another place I didn't remember.

  I opened up the Miller proposal. The words swam before my eyes, a sea of corporate jargon and financial projections. I tried to focus, to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of work, but my mind kept drifting. Back to the garden. To the perfect roses. To the clock that was broken and then wasn't.

  A knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts.

  "Come in," I called out, my voice sounding strangely loud in the quiet office.

  The door opened, and Emily stepped inside. She was holding two mugs of coffee, steam rising from them in delicate spirals.

  "Saw you didn't grab one from the break room," she said, her smile a little too bright, her eyes a little too knowing. "Figured you could use this."

  "Thanks," I said, taking one of the mugs. The ceramic was warm against my hands. "I was just getting to it."

  Emily leaned against my desk, her gaze sweeping over the neatly arranged files. "Still buried in the Miller proposal?"

  I nodded. "It's... a lot."

  "They always are," she said, her tone sympathetic. "But you'll get through it. You always do."

  Vivian's words, echoing in my mind. I pushed the thought away.

  "It's not that," I said, my voice lower than I intended. "It's... something else."

  "What is it?" Emily asked, her expression shifting from casual to concerned. "You seem... off."

  "I don't know," I admitted, the words feeling heavy and unfamiliar. "It's just... a feeling. Like I've lived this day before."

  Emily didn't laugh. She didn't dismiss my words with a reassuring platitude. She just watched me, her green eyes holding an intensity that was both comforting and unsettling. "A feeling," she repeated, her voice barely a whisper. "Or a memory?"

  The question hung in the air between us, sharp and unanswerable. I looked down at the proposal on my screen, the black text blurring into a meaningless jumble. "I don't know," I said again, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

  "Well, whatever it is," Emily said, straightening up, "don't let it get to you. It's probably just the stress. The Miller proposal is a big deal."

  I nodded, wanting to believe her. "Yeah. Probably."

  She lingered for a moment longer, her gaze fixed on the photo of Vivian and me on the beach. "Nice picture," she said, a strange note in her voice. "You two look happy."

  "We are," I said, a little too quickly.

  Emily smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'll see you later, Connor. Don't work too hard."

  She left, closing the door softly behind her. The silence that followed was louder than any noise. I looked at the photo again. Vivian's smile. The perfect, cloudless sky. A beach I couldn't place. Why couldn't I place it? I tried to summon the memory of sand between my toes, the taste of salt on my lips, the sound of waves crashing on the shore. Nothing. Just a blank, a void where a memory should have been.

  I turned back to my computer, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. I needed to work. I needed to focus. But the words wouldn't come. My mind was stuck on Emily's question, on the photo, on the clock. On the unsettling feeling that something was fundamentally wrong without knowing what.

  The rest of the day was a blur of meaningless tasks and unremarkable interactions. I attended a meeting about the Miller proposal, nodding along as my colleagues discussed projections and strategies. I ate lunch at my desk, a sandwich that tasted like cardboard. The office hummed with a quiet, steady energy, a rhythm that was both familiar and hollow.

  As the afternoon light began to fade, I found myself staring out the window, watching the city lights flicker to life. The world outside looked like a miniature galaxy, a thousand tiny stars scattered across a dark canvas. It was beautiful. Surreal.

  The clock on my computer read 5:00 PM.