Chapter 25 · Zero Hour Battlefield

"Choose now," Noah says, "or she forgets you existed."

I'm already moving.

The floor under my boots shifts from concrete to sand. The air hits different—dry, scorching, tasting like cordite and three-year-old blood. I don't look back at the white room. I don't look at the countdown climbing on my wrist. I step through the doorway and the desert swallows me whole.

The heat slams into my chest. Real heat. Not simulated. Not loop memory. The kind that bakes your lungs from the inside and turns your spit to paste.

Ahead of me, bodies.

Not arranged. Not staged. Sprawled exactly how they fell three years ago when the convoy detonated and the ambush came from every direction at once. I know these men. Knew them. Sullivan with half his face gone. Ortiz face-down in the sand, arm bent wrong. Chen slumped against the burnt-out Humvee, rifle still across his lap.

I stop breathing.

"Keep walking," Noah says behind me. His voice carries across the sand like he's right at my shoulder, but when I glance back he's still in the doorway. Framed by white walls. One hand holding the remote. The other loose at his side. "You left us here.