Leo knew the experiment was dangerous.
This wasn’t an opinion—it was an objective fact based on three months of calculations, twenty-seven pages filled with equations, and two nights where he barely slept.
Dangerous, complicated, and requiring a level of concentration that couldn’t tolerate even a single mistake.
That was exactly why he was doing it at four in the morning.
When everyone was asleep.
When no one would knock on his door or disturb him.
When the world was quiet enough for his crazy ideas.
The secret laboratory was a bit of a grand name.
The truth?
It was his bedroom after a very carefully planned rearrangement—the bed pushed into a corner, the desk covered with devices he had built himself from parts he had bought over the years with his allowance, and the walls covered with thin screens displaying data that no one but him could understand.
If someone saw his room, they would probably think he was a crazy idiot.
Leo considered that a kind of compliment.
He sat in front of the main screen and opened the experiment file.
“Spatial Jump Protocol — Attempt One.”
The idea was simple in theory: create a temporary breach in the fabric of space to move a small object from one point to another.
No time travel, no parallel dimensions, just a shortcut through distance.
The theory was sound.
The calculations were correct.
The only problem Leo knew about—the problem every scientist knew about before any major experiment—was that there was always something the calculations didn’t account for.
But he decided to conduct the experiment anyway.
Because he was Leo, the legendary inventor.
He placed the apple on the small platform in the center of the room.
The goal was to move it only one meter—from the platform to the table opposite it.
One meter.
Thirty-six inches.
A distance any person could cross in a single second with an ordinary step.
But in the way Leo wanted to prove it—the apple would cross that distance without actually moving.
It would disappear from here and appear there.
He sat behind the control panel and began entering the commands with steady fingers.
“Alright,” he said to himself in a completely neutral, scientific tone.
“If this experiment succeeds, I’ll be the first person in history to prove that spatial jumping is possible on the scale of large particles.”
He paused.
“And if it fails…
I might blow up the room.”
He thought for a moment.
“Or maybe more than the room.”
He looked at the apple on the platform.
“No.
The calculations are correct.
It’ll work.”
“Alright…
just to be safe, I’ll put on my watch.”
He put it on confidently.
“I’m not nervous.
This is just…
a professional precaution.”
The countdown began.
Ten.
The screens began displaying a continuous stream of data.
Nine.
The platform lit up with thin blue lines.
Eight.
The watch’s rings began moving faster than usual, as if it could sense what was happening.
Seven.
Leo held the control panel with one hand and a pen with the other—a habit from years ago.
He wrote down his notes even in the final seconds.
Six.
The room began to shake very slightly.
So slightly that anyone else wouldn’t have noticed.
Leo noticed.
Five.
“This…” he hesitated.
“This wasn’t in the calculations.”
Four.
He quickly looked over the data.
The numbers were correct.
The equations were sound.
But the shaking—
Three.
The shaking intensified.
Two.
“Alright, maybe—”
One.
“Maybe I should’ve started with a smaller test.”
Zero.
The room disappeared.
Not dramatically—there were no explosions, no loud noises, and no bright white light like in the movies.
It simply— disappeared.
And in its place appeared something Leo hadn’t been prepared for with any calculation, any equation, or any sleepless night in his entire life.
Void.
An absolute void containing nothing but light moving like storms, colors he had no names for, and the feeling that every atom in his body was moving in a different direction at the same time.
And in the middle of it all— the watch.
The watch began glowing with an intense golden light he had never seen before.
Its rings spun at a terrifying speed.
And before Leo could understand what was happening— the watch transformed on its own.
And completely enveloped him.
The last thing Leo thought before losing consciousness was:
“I should’ve started with a smaller test.”
End of Chapter Three