The Twelve Predictions

December 31, 2026

Emma had been promising her friends she would come upstairs for the last twenty minutes, but she was still lying across her bed with her phone in one hand and the lights turned off. The apartment was unusually quiet for the final night of the year. Her parents had gone to stay with relatives for the New Year, leaving her with the occasional sound of traffic drifting up from the street and the distant bursts of fireworks that impatient people had already started setting off.

Her friends were waiting on the rooftop.

She knew because her phone had vibrated several times beside her, and each time she had glanced at the messages without replying. They had been planning the celebration for weeks, but Emma had reached the point where putting on a jacket, climbing several flights of stairs and standing outside in the cold seemed considerably less appealing than staying exactly where she was.

She told herself she would go in five minutes.

Instead, she opened YouTube.

She wasn't searching for anything particular. She had finished the series she had been watching the previous evening and was simply letting the recommendations fill the empty space. A cooking video appeared first, followed by a man restoring an old car that looked as though it had spent years abandoned in a field. Emma watched the restoration for a little while because she liked seeing the difference between the damaged vehicle at the beginning and the polished machine it slowly became.

Another recommendation appeared before she could see the finished result.

A woman was standing on a kitchen chair, shouting at someone behind the camera while a snake disappeared beneath a cabinet. Emma laughed and watched long enough to see the woman point frantically toward the floor before moving on.

The next video showed two strangers arguing in a supermarket. Someone had recorded the encounter from several aisles away, and the comments were already filled with people confidently explaining what had supposedly happened between them. Emma read a few, smiled at one particularly ridiculous theory and continued scrolling.

She wasn't really looking for anything anymore. The videos came and went beneath her thumb, each one holding her attention for a few seconds before being replaced.

Then something made her stop.

The thumbnail was almost completely black. A man stood in the center of the frame, his face partly hidden by shadow. There was no celebrity photograph, no explosion and no oversized red warning text designed to frighten people into clicking.

The title was simple.

2027 — TWELVE EVENTS THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW

Emma stared at it for a moment.

She had seen plenty of videos like this. Every December, someone seemed to appear with a list of disasters supposedly waiting for the world in the coming year. Wars, economic collapses, earthquakes, assassinations, mysterious diseases. Most disappeared from people's attention within days.

She was about to scroll past.

Instead, she tapped the screen.

The video began without an introduction.

For several seconds, the man remained motionless in the darkness. There was no music, no dramatic countdown and no explanation of who he was. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm enough to make the subject sound strangely ordinary.

"January 2027."

A photograph of the White House appeared.

Emma's thumb stopped moving.

The narrator began describing an attempt on the life of the President of the United States. He spoke with such certainty that Emma initially wondered whether she had accidentally opened an old news report rather than a prediction video.

Then the images changed.

A public gathering.

Security personnel.

A crowd pressed against barriers.

The narrator continued, describing circumstances surrounding the supposed event with enough detail to make Emma lean closer to the screen.

She didn't believe it.

There was nothing impossible about an attempt on a president's life. Threats against political leaders were hardly unusual, and anyone could make a prediction about something frightening and wait to see whether it happened.

Still, the confidence in the man's voice bothered her.

He wasn't guessing.

At least, he didn't sound as though he was.

Emma raised the volume.

The narrator moved on.

She heard him mention February and something involving a passenger aircraft, but another notification appeared across the top of her phone. Emma dismissed it without reading the message and looked back at the screen.

She had missed part of the sentence.

The narrator was already discussing another event.

This time she caught only a few details: a ship, oil and something happening at sea. An image of a large tanker appeared on the screen, surrounded by dark water.

Emma frowned.

The predictions were becoming oddly specific.

She lowered the volume and opened the comments.

There were thousands.

Most of them were exactly what she expected. People called the creator a fraud, mocked the title or joked about returning after the year was over. Others argued seriously about whether the events could happen.

Then Emma noticed something stranger.

Several people were talking about an earlier version of the video.

She scrolled slowly.

One comment said the creator had uploaded something similar before.

Another claimed that part of the original recording had been removed.

Someone else had written that the predictions were not what people should be paying attention to.

Emma paused.

She read the comment again.

She looked at the dark figure on the screen, then back at the comments.

For the first time, she wondered who the man actually was.

There was no channel information visible beneath the video. She hadn't noticed a name when she opened it, and now the account seemed almost deliberately difficult to identify.

She scrolled farther.

One comment caught her attention.

"This isn't the first version."

Emma tapped the replies.

Someone had asked what the original contained.

There was no answer.

She returned to the video.

The narrator was still speaking.

Emma considered watching the entire thing. The comments had made her more curious than the predictions themselves, and she wanted to know why so many people seemed convinced there was something unusual about the recording.

Her phone began ringing.

She glanced at the screen.

One of her friends.

Emma answered.

"Where are you?"

"Still upstairs."

"You've been saying that for twenty minutes."

Emma looked at the clock and laughed.

"I know. I'm coming."

"We're starting the countdown without you."

"You wouldn't."

"Try us."

The call ended.

Emma looked at the video again. She had already missed several seconds, and going back would mean starting the whole thing over. She could watch it later.

She swiped.

The dark thumbnail disappeared.

A completely unrelated video replaced it.

Emma barely noticed.

She watched for another few seconds while getting out of bed, then put her phone on the charger and went to find something warmer to wear.

By the time she reached the rooftop, the video was no longer occupying her attention.

Her friends immediately complained about how long she had taken. Someone handed her a drink, another person dragged her into a photograph and within minutes Emma was laughing along with everyone else. Music played from a small speaker near the wall while conversations overlapped around her, and the cold became almost bearable once she stopped standing still.

The city looked alive tonight.

Windows glowed across the surrounding buildings, people gathered on balconies and fireworks occasionally rose from somewhere below before bursting above the rooftops. Cars moved slowly through the streets as families and groups of friends made their way to their own celebrations.

Emma took photographs with her friends, argued about which song should play next and listened to someone describe an embarrassing incident from earlier that week.

The strange video had become just another thing she had seen that night.

As midnight approached, the rooftop grew louder. More people appeared on nearby balconies, music spilled into the streets and fireworks began appearing more frequently across the skyline. Emma stood with her friends near the edge of the building, holding a paper cup between both hands to keep them warm while someone checked the time.

The final minute arrived almost unnoticed.

Everyone began counting together, their voices rising above the music and the distant traffic. Emma joined in, laughing when one of her friends deliberately shouted the numbers out of order. When they reached zero, fireworks erupted across the city, filling the sky with flashes of gold, white and red as people hugged, shouted and wished one another a happy New Year.

Emma smiled as her friends pulled her into the celebration.

"Happy New Year!"

"Happy New Year."

She turned toward the skyline and watched the fireworks for a while, letting the noise and excitement of the moment carry her attention elsewhere.

Later, when she returned to her apartment, she dropped her phone beside the bed, changed into her nightclothes and fell asleep almost immediately.

The city continued celebrating outside.

Her phone remained silent on the table.

For the moment, the video was nothing more than something she had watched and forgotten on the final night of 2026.