Chapter 2

Ethan stared at her, annoyed. "Just leave, Ava. I'll forget the last three. Consider it a bonus for a job well done."

He wanted her gone. Her presence was a strange, irritating buzz in the presence of Scarlett's perfect radiance. She was a reminder of the six months of struggle, of faking it. He wanted a clean slate.

"No," Ava said. Her voice was firm, unyielding. "A hundred favors. That was the deal. I need to finish it."

"Why are you so obsessed with this stupid deal?" he snapped, his patience gone. "It was a joke!"

He turned to leave, to find Scarlett, but Ava's voice stopped him.

"It was never a joke to me."

He left her standing there, a small, stubborn figure in his vast, empty office. He didn't understand her, and he didn't care to.

Ava watched him go, the door closing with a soft, final click. She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.

Her hand went to her chest, where a dull ache was spreading. It wasn't heartbreak. It was something else, something older and colder.

She wasn't just Ava Clark, a socially awkward data scientist. That was a costume, a role she had played for a long time. The "karma debt" wasn't about spilled coffee on a laptop. That was just the clumsy, human event that had forged the final link.

The truth was far stranger.

She was not from this world. She was a traveler, a member of a clan that lived outside the normal flow of time. And she was bound by a Causal Agreement. Years ago, in a moment of weakness and pity, she had interfered. She had saved a young man's life-a young, reckless Ethan Stone who was dying in an alley after a deal gone wrong.

By saving him, she had created a debt not to him, but to the universe itself. To balance the scales, she had to bind herself to him, to grant one hundred of his spoken wishes, his deepest desires. Only then could the paradox of her interference be resolved. Only then could she sever the tie and finally, finally go home.

Her AI research wasn't just a passion; it was a way to pass the time, to keep her mind sharp while she waited. But her only real goal, the only thing that drove her every single day, was completing the agreement.

She remembered some of his wishes, spoken in moments of vulnerability. "I wish I wasn't so alone," he'd said one night after a brutal board meeting. "I wish I could trust someone," he'd whispered another time, half-asleep on the couch.

"I wish you would stay with me forever," he'd said once, looking at her with an expression she had mistaken for love.

Each wish fulfilled was a link in the chain that bound her, and a step closer to her freedom.

Now, only three remained.

She pulled out her phone and sent him a text. "Tell me the last three wishes. I will do whatever you ask. After that, you will never see me again."

His reply was almost instant. "Fine. Whatever. I'm busy. I'll let you know."

As she read the words, a sharp, searing pain shot through her chest. She gasped, leaning against the desk for support. The backlash.

His new, all-consuming wish for Scarlett was a direct contradiction to his old wish for her to stay with him forever. The conflicting desires created a tear in the causal fabric, and the pain was the universe's way of punishing her for the instability.

It was a brutal reminder. The agreement didn't care about feelings. It only cared about balance. And she would endure any pain to finally achieve it.