Ten years ago, the sky above Chicago was a flawless, piercing blue, and Leo Vance's world was measured in the space between his hand and Sarah Calloway's. For most of that sun-drenched Tuesday, the space was zero. He was just Leo, a lanky seventeen-year-old with a worn-out hoodie, and she was the girl who made the chaotic static in his head feel like music.
They were walking the riverwalk, fingers laced together, escaping the artificial dark of a movie theater. The sudden, brilliant sunlight made them blink.
"Admit it," Sarah said, nudging him. A constellation of freckles across her nose danced when she smiled. "For a cheesy sci-fi flick, the zero-g effects were cool."
"They were okay," Leo conceded, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. "But things can't just float for no reason. There has to be a logical consistency…"
"Oh, Leo," she sighed dramatically, but squeezed his hand tighter. "Not everything needs a peer-reviewed explanation. Sometimes it's just magic."
He wished he could believe her. For six months, 'magic' had been a low, persistent hum beneath his skin, a current searching for a ground. It manifested in small, terrifying ways. A pen that would hover for a moment before falling. A book that would fly into his hand from across the room. He'd only told Sarah, expecting fear. Instead, she'd watched him levitate a wrench in his garage with wide, wondrous eyes.
"See?" she had whispered. "Magic."
She wasn't his anchor to the normal world; she was the person who made his impossible reality feel safe.
As they passed a cafe, a tour boat on the river let out a deafening blast from its horn. Leo jumped, startled. The enormous plate-glass window of the cafe beside them shuddered violently in its frame, emitting a high-pitched groan. A hairline crack, thin as a spider's thread, raced from the top corner down six inches before stopping.
Leo froze, his blood running cold. He stared at the crack, his breath caught in his throat. He had done that.
Sarah followed his gaze, then gently traced the line with her finger.
"Whoa," she said softly, more curious than alarmed. "See? Even the city gets jumpy around you."
She squeezed his hand again. "It's okay. It's just a little crack."
But for Leo, it was the tremor before the earthquake.
They bought hot dogs and found a bench overlooking the river, talking about colleges, road trips, and a future they were still naïve enough to believe in. For a while, it worked. The normalcy felt like armor.
Then came the tremor.
A low, resonant shudder rolled beneath their feet. Car alarms screamed. A dull boom followed, echoing through the concrete canyons of downtown. Smoke curled into the perfect blue sky. Panic bloomed.
"Come on," Leo said, pulling her up. But the crowd surged and swept them apart.
"Sarah!"
He saw her a dozen feet away as the second tremor hit. This one wasn't gentle—it was a gut-punch to the Earth. A thirty-story building beside them groaned, steel and glass warping in protest. A chunk of concrete from five stories up broke loose, tumbling directly toward Leo.
Instinct overrode fear. He raised a hand.
The block stopped, suspended six inches from his face, as if reality itself were holding its breath.
It clattered to the ground. He didn't wait to process it.
He saw her—trapped under a massive marble beam near the entrance. The building was dying around her.
He ran.
"I'm stuck," she gasped. "Leo, I can't move!"
He pulled at the beam. Nothing. It might as well have been the world's anchor.
Tears blurred his vision. "I can't do it!"
"Yes, you can," she whispered. "Do that thing. The magic thing. Like the window—it's okay. Please."
He knelt, hands pressed to the marble, and reached inside—to that humming, impossible place. He willed the beam to lift.
For a second, it obeyed.
Then it didn't.
The thread became a flood. The power exploded from him—wild, white, silent.
The beam didn't rise. It vanished.
So did the ground beneath it. The wall. The air.
He looked up, and saw her face. Her eyes wide, her mouth open as if to ask a question.
And then she was gone.
The wave spread in a perfect, impossible sphere. The building? Gone. The street? Gone. People, cars, steel—everything erased.
Then silence.
He stood alone in a shallow crater nearly a block wide.
Dust drifted. The ash of a city block settled on his skin—on his clothes—on his soul.
He looked at his trembling hands.
He didn't fail to save her.
He erased her.
The world would call it The Chicago Anomaly.
But to Leo, it would only ever be one thing.
The Erasure.