Chapter 1: The Midnight Call from Ten Years Ahead
Ten minutes.
I stared at the glowing digital clock on the bottom right corner of my cracked computer monitor: 11:50 PM. Outside my bedroom window, a relentless autumn drizzle streaked against the glass, blurring the distant streetlights of our quiet suburban cul-de-sac into cold smears of amber. The national college admissions portal, a monolithic government system that held the fates of half a million high school seniors across the country, had a strict midnight deadline. Once the digital countdown expired, every application in the country would lock forever. No appeals. No late amendments. No exceptions.
My eyelids burned with the heavy ache of exhaustion. For four brutal years, I had worked myself down to the bone. While my twin brother Julian slept until noon, bought designer sneakers, and threw tantrums over lukewarm soup, I had balanced three Advanced Placement courses, a grueling part-time shift sorting crates at the downtown freight depot, and late-night study sessions illuminated only by the glow of a dollar-store desk lamp.
My application had been finalized and submitted three weeks ago: early decision to Westbridge University, the premier collegiate institution in the continent, boasting a cutthroat acceptance rate under nine percent. My teachers, Mr. Worth and Mr. Mont, had reviewed my portfolio three times over, calling my personal statement the most evocative piece of student writing they had seen in two decades.
I was reaching for the power switch to shut down the monitor when my phone buzzed on the nightstand.
The vibration was violent against the bare wood. I picked it up, expecting an automated SMS from the application portal or a spam notification. The screen showed an incoming voice call from an unknown, untraceable number—no area code, no caller ID, just eleven flickering zeros.
Frowning, I swiped the screen. "Hello?"
A rasping, exhausted breath came through the receiver. It was a man's voice, hoarse and ragged, like someone who had spent years inhaling industrial dust and choking on swallowed tears. But underneath the gravelly tone, there was a strange, haunting cadence that sent a cold shudder down my spine.
"Adrian," the voice said, urgent and trembling. "Listen to me very carefully. Do not hang up."
I froze, my thumb hovering over the red disconnect button. "Who is this? Is this some kind of prank?"
"Your parents changed your college application," the man said. The despair in his voice was so heavy, so suffocating, that it seemed to pull the warmth right out of my bedroom. "They did it forty minutes ago while you were downstairs taking out the trash."
My chest seized. A sharp ringing erupted in my ears. "Who the hell are you?" I demanded, my knuckles whitening against the plastic case. "How do you know my name?"
"I am you, Adrian," the voice whispered. "Ten years from now. I am speaking to you from a damp, windowless basement room in Jersey City. My spine is bent from twelve-hour warehouse shifts, my hands are permanently scarred with chemical burns, and every single dream you currently hold in your chest is dead."
A bitter, incredulous laugh escaped my throat. "Right. A ghost from the future. Look, whatever joke you and Julian are trying to pull—"
"Julian bombed his entrance exams, didn't he?" the man interrupted, his words cutting through my skepticism like a scalpel. "He scored in the bottom fifteenth percentile. For the last forty-eight hours, he has been locked inside the master bedroom on the second floor, screaming until his throat is raw, smashing ceramic lamps against the wall, and refusing to take his asthma medication. Your mother has been weeping outside his door, feeding him sliced honeydew through the crack, while your father paced the hallway blaming you for stressing him out."
The air left my lungs. That had happened. Less than two days ago. No one outside the Lockwood household knew about Julian's disastrous score or the screaming fit that followed. We hadn't told our relatives. We hadn't told our neighbors.
"Why would they change my application?" I whispered, my voice barely audible over the thumping of my heart.
"Because they couldn't bear the thought of Julian going to a community college alone," the future me replied, his voice breaking with ancient, unhealed grief. "They told themselves Julian was too fragile, too sickly, too delicate to survive campus life without a caretaker. And who has always been his caretaker, Adrian? Who was made to give up his clothes, his toys, his bed, and his dignity since we were six years old? They changed your first-choice institution from Westbridge University to Riverdale Community College. The exact same two-year vocational school Julian applied to. They want you to share a dorm room with him, do his laundry, write his essays, carry his backpack, and make sure he never feels inferior."
"No," I choked out, shaking my head violently. "They wouldn't. Mom and Dad know how hard I worked. Dad promised me—"
"Log in," the voice commanded, cold and relentless. "Stop defending people who treat you like a spare kidney. Log in right now and look at your screen."
My fingers were trembling so severely that I mistyped my portal credentials twice. On the third attempt, the government portal flashed green and redirected to the applicant dashboard.
I clicked on *Active Submissions*.
My breath caught in my throat as if an iron vise had clamped around my windpipe.
There it was.
*Institution: Riverdale Community College* *Major: General Associate of Arts* *Submission Status: Pending Final Lock (11:52 PM)*
Westbridge University was gone. The honors scholarship application I had spent four months polishing had been revoked. In its place was an open-enrollment trade program three miles from our house, where the only requirement for entry was a high school diploma and a registration fee.
Hot, bitter tears sprang to my eyes, stinging like acid. All the late nights. All the skipped lunches so I could buy second-hand AP textbooks. All the freezing winter mornings walking two miles to the public library because Julian had commandeered the family sedan to drive to a video arcade.
They had thrown it all in the incinerator. Not because they hated me, but because to Caspian and Karen Lockwood, my entire existence was merely a support strut designed to keep Julian from stumbling.
"You see it now, don't you?" the voice on the phone asked quietly.
"What happened to you?" I asked, a sob catching in my chest. "If I don't change it... what happens?"
"You go to Riverdale with him," the man said, each word sounding like a heavy stone dropped into a deep well. "You spend two years doing his homework while he parties and skips lectures. When he fails out anyway, Mom and Dad blame you for not tutoring him hard enough. Then Dad's small consulting business begins to fail. They decide Julian needs a safety net, so they forge your signature to waive your inheritance rights to the house. When you're twenty-four, they arrange a marriage for you with an abusive, narcissistic heiress twice your age because her family promised Dad a fifty-thousand-dollar business loan. They took that money, bought Julian a four-bedroom townhouse in the suburbs, and left you to be beaten and degraded by a woman who treated you like a stray dog."
The man began to weep softly into the phone. "I thought if I just kept sacrificing, if I just kept enduring their abuse with a smile, one day Dad would look at me and say he was proud of me. One day Mom would hug me the way she hugs Julian. They never did, Adrian. A parasite does not thank the host. It only eats until the host is hollow. You have to change it. Don't let them turn you into me. Please... save our life."
A sharp click echoed through the line. The call disconnected.
I looked at the corner of the screen.
*11:55 PM.*
Five minutes.
Adrenaline surged through my blood with the force of an electric shock. I grabbed the mouse, clicked *Edit Application Preferences*, and aggressively cleared the Riverdale selection. My hands flew across the keyboard, re-entering the institution code for Westbridge University: *WBU-0842*. I reattached my personal essay file from the desktop, checked the box for early binding decision, and clicked *Save and Finalize*.
*System Notice: Please confirm your selection. This action will submit your application to Westbridge University.*
I clicked *Confirm*.
Then, remembering the future voice's warning, I immediately navigated to *Account Security*. I changed my recovery email, revoked all active browser sessions across other devices, and updated the password to a twenty-character cryptographic sequence that neither Caspian nor Karen could ever guess.
A digital countdown banner appeared across the top of the portal:
*00:03:12 until deadline lock.*
I sat frozen in my desk chair, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs that I could hear it in the silence of the room. Downstairs, I heard the faint creak of floorboards. My father's heavy footsteps paced toward the kitchen, followed by the clink of a refrigerator door. Were they trying to log back in from the living room tablet? Were they checking to ensure their betrayal had gone unnoticed?
*00:01:45.* *00:00:30.* *00:00:10.* *00:00:00.*
The screen refreshed automatically. A bold, immutable banner replaced the countdown:
*The 2026 Admissions Portal is now officially closed. All application submissions are locked for institutional review. No further modifications may be made.*
Below it, clearly stamped in bold black text, was the final submission receipt:
*Applicant: Adrian Lockwood* *First Choice: Westbridge University — College of Arts & Sciences* *Submission Timestamp: 11:57:14 PM*
I slumped back against the wooden chair, my whole body trembling as a tidal wave of relief washed over me. For the first time in eighteen years, I had defied the architects of my misery. I had taken the steering wheel of my own destiny, and I would never let them touch it again.