Chris wakes up in an unfamiliar bedroom, disoriented and covered in sweat. Years of conditioning have made him a light sleeper, so the grogginess itself feels strange - a sign of danger - and as he opens his eyes he realizes he's in a room he's never seen before, which is never a good sign.

Wait - his brain catches up - stupid. He closes his eyes again and listens: ambient sound from a street, muffled, a quiet hum from either a heater or an air conditioner, a faucet dripping somewhere close by. But no breathing, shifting of clothes, talking. He's alone.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he opens his eyes again: cotton blankets, blue and white, a towel and a crumpled sweater hanging off the foot of the bed. It's an apartment, clearly - there's a small kitchenette and a futon couch a few feet away, and a door that must lead to a bathroom. Chris sits up cautiously, suspicious. He's wearing a black, plain t-shirt and a pair of worn boxers, and nothing else. There are clothes all over the floor, and an open carton of takeout on the small nightstand next to the bed. Chris wrinkles his nose; the entire room smells like dirty laundry.

Chris slides off the bed, looks around. The clothes on the floor look to be about his size. There are protection runes drawn on the cinderblock wall beneath the lone window, and against the wall, there's a cheap bookshelf overflowing with magical reference texts. A small cauldron sits on a hot plate in the kitchenette, and a fishing tackle box is lying open next to it, potion ingredients strewn haphazardly throughout the compartments.

He snorts in disbelief. Somebody's got to be fucking with him.

He finds a pair of jeans that look relatively clean and puts them on, and starts poking through the pile of crap that litter every available surface: most of it is just discarded papers and envelopes, flyers for concerts and restaurants, pens that are cracked or out of ink. Chris finds a few pieces of junk mail with his own name on it, and an address: 729 Hitower Rd #3, Reno, NV. So he's still...on the same side of the continent, at least.

The books are just books: your standard beginner's library of witchcraft, nothing controversial. It looks like whatever was attempted in the cauldron was a simple invisibility spell, nothing weird there either. Chris tears through the small closet and finds only more clothes, and a pile of old magazines beneath a pair of Nikes. There's a cell phone plugged into the wall, but Chris can't get into it - it's locked by a passcode, and after halfheartedly trying to bypass it a couple of times, he gives up.

It's either a trick, or something much more serious: Chris doesn't remember how he got here. He sits down on the futon and tries to remember the last thing that happened to him, but there's nothing - just a dull, groggy blankness. All he can come up with is the vague sense of a fight of some kind - a remembered ache of pain, sense memory of the sizzle of an energy blast too close to his face. The last solid memory he has is of sitting at the dining room table with Paige, talking about spellcraft theory and trying to ignore the distant sounds of Leo and Piper arguing out in the garden. But even that memory feels distant - something that had happened weeks or months ago.

The smartphone alone is proof that Chris is no longer in 2003, but even the style of the clothes would be enough to tip him off. Chris gathers his courage and risks a look at himself in the bathroom mirror, but nothing seems all that different - his face is still...his face, his body is still his body. He looks about the same age as he feels, which is also a relief. He's clean shaven, and there are bags under his eyes, but he's used to that too - the only real difference - the only real surprise - is a tattoo, which he only catches a glimpse of when he's bending down to splash water on his face. It's on his back, but he can't make out what it is - all he can decipher is black linework, but without another mirror to see the whole thing he can't tell what it's supposed to be.

The date and time hadn't shown up automatically on the phone before, but Chris goes back and taps around until they swoop into being: it's eleven-forty a.m. on November 18, 2027. He's twenty-four years old, and he doesn't remember anything.

"Great," he says, out loud to nobody. The words echo a bit, in the high-rafted room, and he winces at the sound of his own voice.

Well, it could be worse, he figures.

There's nothing else of any use in the apartment, so Chris leaves. His first instinct is the manor, but that's even stupider: he's got no idea what the situation is here, where Wyatt is - what Wyatt is. So lacking a better option, he just walks outside instead.

He's never been to Reno before in his life, but the neighborhood he's in seems normal, residential. There's a gas station down the street, with prices that seem ridiculously high, but - gas in 2003 was probably dirt cheap compared to this time period, and in his original timeline, gas stations didn't even exist. So he's probably lacking some vital context on that.

He'd found a wallet - presumably his wallet, although there was no ID in it he could find - before he'd left, and uses the cash inside of it to buy a newspaper. The president is someone named Diego Bonilla, and they're fighting a war in Georgia - useful information, he guesses. Sort of. A Senator from Montana has just stepped down because of the death of her spouse. Four people died last night when a self-driving rideshare van's GPS malfunctioned and drove them straight into a telephone pole. AppleX is releasing a new line of smartglasses. There's a new Avengers movie out.

Chris flips through the local section in frustration, not expecting to find anything that he really wants to know, but disappointed anyway. Clearly, it's a better future than the one he'd come from: magic is obviously still a secret, and there's no mention whatsoever of Wyatt or his family. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he'd fixed it, or that Wyatt still isn't…Wyatt. Chris will have to make contact with one of the sisters - if they're alive - to figure that out, but with no intel whatsoever as to where they are or what their situation might be, it's a risky proposition.

Why is he in Nevada? Clearly, the Chris of this timeline is living here full time - the little frat cave he'd woken up in was fairly telling - but what were the circumstances? Chris can't imagine Piper - the version of her he'd gotten to know, anyway - allowing him to move out of state, if they were living under the threat of a corrupted Wyatt, but - she could be dead, and thus unable to voice her opinion.

The thought sends a chill down Chris' spine, but he pushes through it. You're back in the big leagues now, champ, he thinks. No time for fucking around.

The phone is still his best lead. Chris stops at a corner light and takes it from his pocket, pretending to linger over a text, and tries to break the code again. His birthday doesn't work - of course it doesn't - and neither does Piper's. Rookie guesses, probably. He tries the last four of his Social and gets an error message, telling him he's been locked out, and please try again in five minutes.

He curses under his breath, returning it to his pocket. If at once you don't succeed, Paige used to say, go beg somebody smarter than you for help.

Lisa L., a Front Stage Technical Expert at the AppleX store in the Reno Central Shopping Strip, reminds Chris of Phoebe right after a business meeting: oppressively chipper, smiling so wide she doesn't notice if anyone else is smiling too. She's all too happy to help Chris with his unfortunate passcode issue, of course.

"Generally we'd need two forms of ID, instead of just your Social and your credit card," says Lisa L., "but that lockscreen photo - oh my gosh, so cute! I think I can make an exception. Obviously it's your phone."

Chris bites back a wince. "Yes," he says, nodding, "my lockscreen. There I am, with that adorable baby. Clearly, that is...obviously me."

"Is he yours?" Lisa L. asks, tapping intensely on the phone screen. "Or - wait, is it 'she'? I'm sorry!"

Chris takes a stab in the dark that the incredibly eerie photograph of himself holding a baby in a blue jumper is...probably, most likely, hopefullynot a picture of his own child. "Nephew," Chris says. "Yep, that's little...Peter. The cutest baby in the whole world, if you ask me."

"Aw," Lisa L. says, smiling. She taps a few times more. "Okay. So you know that a hard reset will wipe any data that hasn't been uploaded to your Cloud, correct?"

"But not my contacts, or my texts?" Chris checks.

"Right, no. A few more recent iMessages, maybe, but it's unlikely. Most of those get synced as soon as you reconnect to a data tower. Okay, so! Here," she says, pressing the power button on the side, and then thrusting the phone out. "It's restarting now. You'll need to use your fingerprint to activate the OS, but when it comes back up it'll be like you just bought it again. You'll have to set up your settings again, but - "

"Thanks, thank you," Chris says, nodding.

"And, just a tip." Lisa L. leans in, conspiratorial. "If you set it to unlock with biometrics, your roommate won't be able to break into it and change the password again. Just sayin'." She winks.

"That is excellent advice," Chris says earnestly. What the fuck is 'biometrics,' he wonders.

"You're welcome," she replies, pleased. "Do you want to hang out while you set it up, just in case you have any problems with - "

"No, nope! Not necessary," Chris says. "I have, uh, class?"

"Oh, right," Lisa L. says. "I hope your lecture notes didn't get wiped! You did use the auto-sync option in your Word app, right?"

Chris understands maybe like, three or four of those words. "Yes," he says. "Yes I did."

"Good!" Lisa L. chirps. "Thanks for stopping into AppleX today, Chris. I hope you had a rock star experience!"

"Oh yeah, me too," Chris says.

He barely makes it around the corner before he orbs away, itchy by the the crush of people and the unfamiliar surroundings - he's not used to a world like this, all chrome and plastic and bright fluorescent colors. 2003 had been bad enough, with the unfamiliar presence of television, cars, TV dinners - pop music - but so far, this version of 2027 is so much worse.

Chris grew up without any of those things - most of American infrastructure was in shambles by the time he was six. He vaguely remembers watching movies with Aunt Phoebe a few times, when he was really young, but even that had been a privilege. The mortal government was all but gone by the time he turned eighteen. Cars were still in use, but they were powered by magic, used only by Wyatt's followers, and phones? Forget about it. Some people had them - rich people, specifically - but it was more of a status thing. Who the hell actually needed a phone, when you could buy a scrying ball from the corner practitioner's shop for the price of a single good memory, or a piece of your virgin hair?

Chris had traded away all of his good memories by the time he was twenty, on supplies and food and - finally, Bianca's ring, which he'd bought with the last memory of his mother, the clearest, strongest one he'd had left. He'd never told Bianca what he'd traded, of course, but - he hadn't ever regretted it - not until he'd gone back to the past, anyway. It was a terrible and genius idea to rest an economic system on, really, because you didn't forget the memory, you just...stopped feeling it. It became distant in your own head, a dry fact instead of a full, living event that had guided your life. It was the emotion that the witch doctors wanted - that's what was valuable. Plus, you could always make more good memories, right? A never ending source of income that you could generate all on your own.

Yeah fucking right. No wonder the world just rolled right over, the second Wyatt asked: nobody had enough passion left to care.

Chris thinks about that memory now, ducking through the unfamiliar crowds on a strange, alien sidewalk: Mom, standing at the kitchen counter, cutting up strawberries. Every few minutes reaching down and giving him one to eat. Smiling, humming. Her hands are wet from the juice, and there's a breeze coming through the window. Chris can smell the rosemary plant in the planter on the sill.

It could be a scene from a novel he's describing, for all that it moves him. Chris knew that it'd be his greatest obstacle against his goals in 2003, knew that it would unnerve and put off his mother and her sisters: that coldness that was native to every being in his time, the removal from your own self. He'd thought that maybe, possibly, he was getting it back bit by bit, but who even knows? Had they warmed up to him because he was warming up, becoming more human again in their presence? Or had they simply done it once they knew who he was, knew their obligation and responsibility to him?

Doesn't matter anymore, Chris reminds himself, and ducks into a coffee shop to sit down. The game is different, now. (Different, again.)

The very first thing Chris discovers from the phone is that he has a fiance, and it's not Bianca. Unwelcome news, to say the least.

The longest text log is with a contact labelled "Mimi," but in the messages themselves, Chris - the other Chris, that is - addresses her as "Miranda." Nickname? Alias?

Who cares. The texts themselves are boring - nothing. Teenage bullshit. Chris scrolls quickly, annoyed about all of it. What kind of person is he, in this time? The type of person who calls his future wife "bb," apparently.

The calendar app is littered with wedding-related appointments - he is, at this very moment, he discovers, skipping a meeting with a florist. The most recent text from Mimi/Miranda is a long line of question marks, followed by the message, where are u, are u okay? There are three missed calls, as well. Chris ignores them.

Other contacts include an "Aunt P1" and "Aunt P2" (which one is the superior P, Chris wonders? Paige or Phoebe?) and contacts for "Mom" and "Dad," which give Chris a deep, aching bolt of relief. Lots of other names he doesn't recognize, and finally, down at the bottom of the list, one he was both hoping for and dreading: Wyatt.

There's a text log for him, but it's far, far down the list. Chris refuses to fuck around and just opens it, not giving himself time to second guess, but - it's nothing. The same normal back and forth that you'd expect from a pair of normal, boring brothers. Chris frowns, reading the messages intently, searching for the catch, but -

lol did you watch the new ep of Harry Potter last night? is followed by hahahaha don't tell Paige but yeah, followed by an incomprehensible argument about some character who killed another character, what the fuck ever. Further back, Wyatt asks: u coming out bro? and the other Chris has replied with three smiley faces. Even further than that: happy birthday! Check ur trunk nerd and don't tell me I never bought you anything. Love you, man. Happy twenty-fourth.

Chris sets the phone down on the table, and just breathes for a second, watching as the screen dims, and then finally goes dark. The world around him seems to be in slow motion, and Chris feels the magnitude of what's happened, for the first time since he woke up.

He's in a new world, with a new Wyatt. A world where they grew up as brothers - real brothers, who cared about each other - and Chris doesn't remember any of it. Chris is sitting here in a body that doesn't actually belong to him, in a life that he doesn't even want, and he has no idea why or how it happened.

"Fuck," Chris says, in sudden realization, and immediately turns the phone off. Then, moving it into his lap below the table, he mutters a quick spell and fries it from the inside out.

All thoughts of making contact with the sisters disappear, and Chris quickly gets up and leaves the coffee shop, dropping the now-useless phone in a trash can by the door. He needs to leave, and he needs to do it now, before they get worried and start to track him. He needs money, and potion ingredients, and some food, probably - eventually, anyway, but if getting into the phone was difficult, he can only imagine getting cash out of the other Chris' bank account will be impossible. Do banks even exist, in this 2027? Or do people just have...chips in their arms or some other weird shit like that? He's got no idea.

He stops at a corner, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up, trying to stay calm. He's at a huge disadvantage here, and the only way to make up the difference is to wing it until he figures it out. He needs...a plan. He needs somewhere he can sit down, and think, and write a cloaking spell. He needs to...eat something, and drink some water, and calm down. He needs Bianca. God, he misses Bianca.

What would she do, if she were here? Chris closes his eyes and thinks. Calm down, hotshot, she'd say, probably, first thing. Then she'd kiss the side of his head and tell him what to do.

Money first. You're one of the most powerful magic users on the planet, use your head! Be quick, be discreet, and get that cloaking spell done, babe. One problem at a time.

Chris takes a deep breath, and a step forward. Just one at a time is all he's ever been able to do.

Chris orbs to Chicago, mostly because he saw a picture of Millennium Park in the newspaper, so he's relatively sure he's not going to split his atoms in two trying to go somewhere that doesn't exist anymore. He pickpockets a teacher leading a group of teenagers down the sidewalk, and uses the wad of cash - some poor kid's vacation money, probably - to buy a new set of clothes, and a few cheap, refrigerated sandwiches from a Target. Then he finds another coffee shop, buys a bottle of water and asks to borrow a pen and some paper, and writes a quick-and-dirty cloaking spell which he casts in the bathroom, muttering as softly as he can and avoiding his own eye in the mirror.

All he has in his wallet are the other Chris' credit cards, which he rips apart and throws away, and the normal detritus that can be found in a young idiot's wallet: old receipts, scraps of paper, a single condom, and a bunch of dirt. Chris spreads it across the table and studies it with depressed resignation: this is all he owns in the world now. He's certainly been in worse situations, sure. But still - it's depressing.

He's not going to take anything from the Halliwells here, and he's certainly not going to take anything else that belongs to the other Chris, other than what he's already got. Whether this is a temporary situation or a permanent one, he's the interloper here, the intruder that's taken over a life that isn't his: he won't make it worse.

It could be an illusion - but all the more reason to stay away, if that's the case. Whatever demon or being that has the power to do something this elaborate, this cruel - it's likely after the sisters, and the obvious play is to get Chris to lead it to them. No - the smarter option is to stay unpredictable, keep out of sight as much as possible. If he was brought here deliberately, by someone evil or otherwise, Chris certainly isn't going to make it easy on them.

And if it's an accident? Chris considers: he could have died in the past, and ended up here. Most of the theory on time travel postulates that if you die outside your natural time, you cease to exist altogether - but...the theory could be wrong. Or maybe the Chris of this timeline died - had a stroke in his sleep, poisoned by carbon monoxide or something, and in trying to survive, his magic...reached out somehow, and found another version of itself.

It's not any more ludicrous than any of the other possibilities, he guesses. Either way - Chris thinks of the text messages again, the faceless Mimi who is probably just now knocking on the door of that ratty loft in Reno, wondering where her fiance is, and winces. He couldn't fake it. There's no way on hell he could pull it off, and it would be...crueler. Even more so than what's been done to him.

Disappearing without a trace isn't much nicer, but Chris doesn't see a better option. Still - he uses a bit more of his cash on a small notebook - he's lucky he found one of the good pocket ones, they're handy for on-the-fly spellcrafting - and writes a note: I'm safe. Please don't look for me. I'm very sorry. If my parents ask, tell them I'm in Valhalla.

He mails it to his own address, in Reno, and tells himself it's enough. Or - the best he can do, anyway. It only halfway feels like a lie.