25min Timer Novels & Stories

"I ordered your favorite soft pink wedding dress. After surgery, the designer will take your measurements. At our wedding, you'll be the most beautiful bride." I smiled and touched his face. This was my farewell. Tears streamed down my face, and a silent thought echoed. "Ethan, there won't be a wedding for us." As the doors to the operating theater closed, I kept my gaze fixed on the three people I loved most; I wanted to commit their faces to memory. Once these doors closed, I knew I would never see them again. As anesthesia dulled my senses, the world around me faded away. My death was declared at precisely 10:00 pm, as indicated by the wall clock.

She hands it to me and leaves the room. After peeing on the stick, I set the timer for 5 minutes, despite the box saying 3 minutes. I sit and wait, and wait, and wait. Finally, the timer goes off, and Tammy comes in. "Well?" She asks prancing around and all excited.

I then readjusted the guns on the wall to my liking, putting all the different brass knuckles in one box afterwards. I closed the door behind me as I jumped on my bed, finally done with all of it. "Two more minutes and I'll head down," I thought to myself. It was 4:30 p.m, so I still had time. Or at least, that's what I thought until my father's voice boomed throughout the house. "Athena Hendrix! Down here now!" I flinched, quickly getting up and tilting my head in confusion. "I thought he said til five," I spat.

Micah's panicked voice echoed through the speaker. Dante swiftly typed on the computer, and a shared screen appeared. A gasp escaped my lips as I stumbled backwards, my eyes fixed on the screen. There it was—a timer, its numbers ticking away ominously. My heart pounded in my chest as I realized the gravity of the situation. The timer displayed one hour and forty-seven minutes. Were the bombs already placed? The thought sent a chill down my spine, and I felt a sense of urgency gripping me like a vice. “I can’t leave Silvio here.” I shook my head as Dante looked pleadingly at him.

And he had somewhere under forty-six hours now, on a timer set by a man who had not asked nicely. "I'm listening," he said.

Then the timer dropped below one minute. And the race for our lives truly began.

A red timer appeared in the corner of Jack's vision, projected by his contact lens display. TIME TO DETONATION: 3:00... 2:59... 2:58... He was standing on a bomb, and the fuse was lit.

The recording timer stretched across the screen. 14 HOURS 07 MINUTES. A storage warning flashed repeatedly at the top. My breathing slowed. And suddenly, I remembered. I set it up before the knock. My thumb hovered over the screen slowly. If it had been recording this entire time, then it recorded last night.

His shoulder was already past the sensor before I looked up and by then the doors were closing and there was nothing to do but stand at my end of the small space and look at the numbers above the door. "Evening," Tate said. "Evening," I said. The numbers moved. One. Two then it stopped between floors, as the display flickered and settled on a small orange symbol I recognized as a maintenance fault. "Twenty minutes minimum." Right there on the panel in small orange letters, like that wasn't a problem at all. I kept my eyes on the door and my file against my chest and said nothing. Tate looked at the panel, then looked at me. "Twenty minutes."

Her voice trembled slightly. "You need to get out of there." Alexander replied calmly, "I’m working on it." Sophia listened to the conversation with mild amusement. "You really think you have time?" Alexander looked at her. "How long?" Sophia smiled. "I thought you’d ask." She pressed another button on the remote. A timer suddenly appeared on the small screen near the wall. 10:00 Ryan stared at it. "Ten minutes?" Sophia nodded. "Exactly." Alexander didn’t react. Instead he looked at Ryan.