The walk home from the hospital stretched before Marcus like a timeline he'd already lived, each cracked sidewalk square a measure in a familiar song. The weight of his mother's maybe – not quite a yes, but far from the resolute no he'd received the first time around – pressed against his chest like a remembered melody.
Rico was waiting on the stoop of their building, a sight that had once filled the teenage Marcus with pure excitement but now stirred a complex chord of emotions in his twice-lived soul. Even in the dying light of day, Rico's leather jacket gleamed with the kind of casual prosperity that had once seemed like the height of success to Marcus's younger self.
"Little man," Rico called out, unfolding his frame from the steps. "Your mama hear the track?"
Marcus adjusted his backpack, feeling the weight of the future pressing against his shoulders. "She's thinking about it," he said, measuring his words like careful notes in a arrangement. "It's different this time."
Rico's eyebrow arched at the 'this time,' but he let it slide, the way he always did when Marcus slipped and said something too knowing, too adult. In his first life, Marcus had never noticed how Rico protected him, smoothing over his rough edges before they could catch on the machinery of the industry.
"Different's good," Rico said, falling into step beside him as they climbed the stairs. The elevator was out again – would be for another three months if this timeline held true. "Different's what we're selling. You got something special brewing in that head of yours, kid. I can feel it."
They paused at the landing, and Marcus studied his mentor in the harsh fluorescent light. Rico was younger than Marcus's mental age now, a fact that struck him with fresh surreality each time they met. The man who would eventually become a giant in the industry still had hungry eyes, still wore his ambition like a shield against the world's doubts.
"I've been working on something new," Marcus said, unlocking his apartment door. The words felt heavy with future knowledge, with melodies that hadn't been written yet, with rhythms that would define a decade he'd already lived through. "Something that could change everything."
Rico followed him inside, his presence filling the modest living room the way it always had. In the kitchen, the clock read 6:47 PM – in Marcus's first life, this had been the exact moment he'd played Rico the beat that would become his first minor hit. A hit that had led him down a path of compromise and commercial concession, away from the true innovation he'd dreamed of.
"Show me," Rico said, settling onto the worn couch like it was a producer's chair in a platinum-selling studio.
Marcus moved to his setup – primitive by his future standards, but he knew now how to make it sing in ways his seventeen-year-old self never could have imagined. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, memory and possibility tangling in his mind like competing melodies.
"This isn't like anything you've heard before," Marcus said, the truth of the statement almost making him smile. How could it be, when it was built on twenty years of music that hadn't happened yet?
He began to play, letting his fingers find the spaces between what was and what could be. The beat started simple – it had to, to bridge the gap between 2004 and everything that would come after. But beneath the surface simplicity lay complexities that whispered of future genres, of movements yet unborn.
Rico's expression shifted as the layers built, his professional mask slipping to reveal genuine surprise. Marcus watched from the corner of his eye, remembering how this man had shaped his career, had protected him from the worst of the industry's sharks, had eventually become the closest thing to a father he'd known.
"Marcus," Rico breathed as the final notes faded, "what the hell was that?"
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with possibility. Marcus turned from his keyboard, faced the man who would become his champion in two different lifetimes, and made a decision that would alter both their futures.
"That's just the beginning," he said, his voice carrying the weight of years unspent. "I've got more. Much more. But we need to do this different than anyone's done it before."
Rico leaned forward, his eyes sharp with recognition of something bigger than a teenage producer's dreams. "Different how?"
Outside, the Bronx continued its eternal rhythm, a backdrop to this moment of change. Marcus could hear the future in its beats, could feel the weight of everything he knew pressing against the present like a tide ready to break.
"I'll show you," he said, turning back to his keyboard. "But first, you need to understand where we're going."
The light through the window painted long shadows across his equipment, across Rico's expectant face, across the future unfolding note by note beneath his fingers.