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"Move!" I shoved Iris back as the stairwell door slammed open.
Two mercs poured through. Body armor. Suppressed rifles. One wore a camera rig strapped to his chest.
"Down," I said, yanking her behind a concrete pillar. Rounds chipped the corner where her head had been half a second ago.
"They're recording," Iris hissed. "Blake's watching this in real time."
"Good. Let him watch me kill his toys."
I counted muzzle flashes. Three-round bursts. Disciplined. They weren't spraying and praying anymore. Blake had run this loop enough times to coach them into professionals.
The camera merc advanced down the left corridor. His partner swung right, cutting the angle.
"Stay here," I told Iris.
"Like hell."
She grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall mount, hefted it like she'd done this before. Maybe she had. Three years was a long time to learn how to crack skulls.
I broke cover, closed the gap before Camera Guy could adjust his sight picture. Grabbed the rifle barrel, shoved it high. He squeezed the trigger anyway. Rounds punched the ceiling, rained drywall dust on both of us.
I drove my elbow into his jaw. Felt teeth break. He went down hard, camera rig scraping concrete.
His partner pivoted, brought his rifle around.
Iris swung the extinguisher into his knee. The joint folded sideways with a wet crunch. He screamed, dropped.
"Jesus," I said.
"I told you I remember the loops." She kicked his rifle away, breathing hard. "You think I just watched?"
The PA crackled overhead. Blake's voice, smooth as ever. "Cade, you're down to twenty-six. That knee shot bought you maybe forty seconds before the next wave. You want to keep playing hero, or do you want to hear why Iris is really here?"
I looked at her. She was staring at the camera rig on the floor, face gone pale.
"Don't listen to him," she said.
"He's been right about everything so far."
"Cade—"
"Floor twelve," Blake continued. "That's where the server vault is. Iris knows the access codes. The tech she stole from me three years ago? She's been reverse-engineering it. Trying to crack the same temporal compression algorithm I used to build this loop. She wants to weaponize it."
Iris didn't deny it. That was the thing that made my stomach drop. She just stood there, jaw tight, hands still gripping the extinguisher.
"You knew," I said. "You knew what this tech could do, and you bought his company just to bury him."
"I bought it to stop him."
"By stealing his work?"
"By making sure no one else could use it the way he did." She dropped the extinguisher. It hit the floor with a clang that echoed down the corridor. "You don't understand what he built, Cade. This isn't just a time loop. It's a weapon. You can trap entire cities in recursive causality. Erase events. Rewrite outcomes. He sold prototypes to three different governments before I shut him down."
"And now he's using it on us."
"Now he's using it on you." She met my eyes. "This whole thing is calibrated to your biometrics. Your death is the reset anchor. I'm just collateral."
The PA hissed. "She's half right. But here's the part she's not telling you, Cade. Gdansk wasn't an accident. The fire that killed sixteen people in that tech expo? That was her. She torched my presentation hall to destroy the prototype I was demoing. You were there doing close protection for a buyer. She set the fire knowing you'd prioritize the target and leave everyone else behind."
I felt my hands go cold.
"That's not—" Iris started.
"Your sister was in that building."
Everything stopped. The air. My lungs. The blood in my veins.
"Emma Mercer," Blake said. "Freelance journalist. She was covering the expo. Front row. You didn't know because she used her married name on the press pass. But Iris knew. She had the guest list. She knew exactly who'd burn."
Iris's face crumpled. "Cade, I didn't—"
"You knew Emma was there."
"I didn't know she was your sister. Not until after. I swear to God, I didn't—"
I took a step toward her. She backed up, hit the wall.
"Say it," I said. "Say you set the fire."
Her throat worked. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. "I set the fire."
I should've moved. Should've grabbed her, shoved her against the concrete, made her feel a fraction of what Emma felt when the smoke filled her lungs. But I just stood there, frozen, while Blake kept talking.
"Twenty-six loops, Cade. You've got twenty-six chances to decide who deserves to walk out of here. The woman who killed your sister, or the forty-two other people in this building who don't even know they're dying on repeat. Choose wrong, and the counter hits zero. Everyone stays dead. Including you."
The stairwell door burst open again. Four mercs this time. Fresh loadout. Flashbangs clipped to their vests.
Iris grabbed my arm. "Cade, we have to move."
I shook her off. "Don't touch me."
"Cade—"
"I said don't."
The mercs fanned out. One of them raised a launcher. I saw the grenade spin through the air, trailing smoke.
Iris ran. I didn't.
The flashbang detonated three feet from my face. White light, pressure wave, the world tilting sideways. I hit the floor, ears ringing, tasted blood.
Someone hauled me up by my collar. Dragged me down the corridor. My vision strobed. Concrete. Boots. Iris's face, pale and desperate, shouting something I couldn't hear.
We crashed through a door. She slammed it shut, threw the bolt. Leaned against it, chest heaving.
I blinked until the world stopped spinning. We were in a server room. Racks of blinking hardware, cold air pumping through vents. A single terminal glowed in the corner.
"This is it," Iris said. "Floor twelve. The vault."
"I don't care."
"You should. This is the only place in the building Blake can't monitor directly. The Faraday shielding blocks his cameras. We've got maybe two minutes before he overrides the door."
She moved to the terminal, fingers flying over the keys. Code scrolled across the screen too fast to read.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Pulling the master log. Every loop iteration, every reset timestamp, every death trigger. If we can isolate the algorithm's core function, we can force a manual override. Break the loop from inside."
"Or you're wiping evidence."
She stopped typing. Turned to face me. "You think I want to be here? You think I wanted any of this?"
"You killed sixteen people."
"I killed sixteen people to stop Blake from selling tech that could kill millions." Her voice cracked. "I made a call. A bad one. Your sister died because of me, and I've lived with that every single day since Gdansk. But if you think I'm the villain here, you're not paying attention."
The terminal beeped. She turned back to the screen, pulled up a video file.
"Watch," she said.
The footage was grainy, time-stamped three weeks ago. A boardroom. Blake sitting across from two men in suits. One of them slid a briefcase across the table. Blake opened it, pulled out a tablet, tapped the screen.
The suits watched something I couldn't see. Their faces went pale. One of them vomited into a trash can.
Blake smiled. "Gentlemen, you've just watched your city die and resurrect forty times in the last ninety seconds. Imagine if I didn't hit the stop button."
The video cut out.
Iris looked at me. "He's not testing you, Cade. He's auditioning you. He wants to know if you're ruthless enough to be his partner. If you'll sacrifice me to save everyone else, you prove you're still the operator who left him in Yemen. If you save me, you prove you're compromised. Either way, he wins."
The door shuddered. Something heavy slammed into it from the other side.
"We're out of time," she said. "I can trigger the override, but it'll fry every system in the building. Including life support. Everyone on floors one through eleven will have about four minutes of air before the ventilation dies. Blake included."
"And us?"
"This floor has an independent oxygen supply. We'd survive. But you'd be choosing us over them."
The door shuddered again. A crack split the wood down the middle.
"Or," Iris said, "we go out there and fight our way to Blake. Hope we reach him before the loop resets. Hope he's even in the building and not watching from halfway across the world."
I looked at the terminal. At the override command blinking on the screen. One keystroke. That's all it would take.
"There's a third option," I said.
"What?"
"You stay here and run the override. I go stop Blake."
"Cade, you'll die. You always die on floor twelve."
"Then I'll die on thirteen."
The door exploded inward. Mercs poured through, rifles up. I counted six. No. Seven. The last one wore no armor. No helmet.
He stepped into the light, and my blood turned to ice.
Noah Blake. Alive. Older. Scars running down the left side of his face like someone had taken a blowtorch to him. He smiled, and it was the same smile from the video. The one that said he'd already won.
"Hello, Cade," he said. "Let's talk about Yemen."
The mercs leveled their rifles at my chest. Blake raised one hand, and they froze.
"Not yet," he said. "I want him to understand first." He looked at Iris. "Hit the override."
She didn't move.
"Hit it," Blake said, "or I execute everyone on floor six. Starting with the intern who brings you coffee every morning. What's her name? Sophie?"
Iris's hand hovered over the keyboard.
"Don't," I said.
Blake tilted his head. "Interesting. You'd rather let forty-two people suffocate than give me what I want. Maybe you haven't changed after all."
He nodded to one of the mercs. The man raised his rifle, aimed at Iris.
"Last chance," Blake said.
Iris looked at me. I saw the question in her eyes. The same one I'd been asking myself since the elevator doors opened. Who decides who lives?
She pressed the key.
Alarms screamed. The lights cut out, replaced by emergency reds. The ventilation system gasped once and died.
Blake laughed. Actually laughed. "Thank you, Iris. You just proved my point."
He pulled a tablet from his coat, tapped the screen. The countdown on my wrist flared bright. 26 became 25.
"Wait," I said. "No one died. The loop shouldn't—"
"The loop resets when I say it does." Blake pocketed the tablet. "I've been remote piloting this whole scenario from the beginning. The building, the mercs, the timer—all theater. But this?" He gestured to Iris, to the dead terminal, to the dying air. "This is real. You've got four minutes before everyone on this floor suffocates. Including her. Including you."
He turned to leave. The mercs followed.
"See you in loop twenty-five, Cade," Blake called over his shoulder. "Let's see if you make better choices next time."
The door sealed behind them. Magnetic lock. I slammed into it with my shoulder, but it didn't budge.
Iris was staring at the dead screen. "I killed them," she whispered. "I killed all of them."
"Not yet." I scanned the room. Server racks. Cable conduits. A ventilation grate in the ceiling.
"Cade, it's over. We're locked in. The air's gone. We've got maybe three minutes."
"Then we've got three minutes to find another way out."
I grabbed a rack rail, yanked it free, started prying at the vent cover. The screws held. I hit it harder. One screw popped loose. Then another.
Iris grabbed my arm. "Stop. Just stop."
"I'm not dying here."
"You've died twenty-six times already. What's one more?"
I rounded on her. "You want to know the difference? Every other time, I didn't know your name. I didn't know you set the fire. I didn't know you killed my sister. Now I do. And I'm not giving you the easy way out."
Her eyes filled. She opened her mouth to answer.
The terminal flickered back to life. A single line of text scrolled across the screen.
> OVERRIDE CANCELLED. VENTILATION RESTORED. LOOP 25 INITIATION DEFERRED. —N.B.
The air vents hissed. Cool air flooded the room.
Iris stared at the screen. "He let us live."
"No," I said. "He wants us to keep playing."
The PA crackled. Blake's voice, soft and almost gentle. "You asked for a third option, Cade. Here it is. Floor thirteen. My office. Come alone. Bring Iris, and I'll reset the loop with everyone still inside. You'll wake up in the elevator, but they won't. Permanent death for forty-two people. Your call."
The screen went dark.
Iris looked at me. Her face was streaked with tears, her hands shaking. "You're not actually going."
I pulled the rail free, bent it into a pry bar. "Stay here. Lock the door when I leave."
"Cade—"
"You wanted to know if I'd changed since Yemen?" I met her eyes. "I haven't. I'm still the guy who leaves people behind. Blake was right about that."
I opened the door. The corridor was empty. No mercs. No cameras. Just the red emergency lights and the sound of my boots on concrete.
Behind me, Iris called my name one more time.
I didn't look back.
The stairwell door was open. Thirteen flights up. I started climbing.
The PA crackled one last time. Blake's voice, barely a whisper. "She's lying about Gdansk, Cade. The fire started in the server room, not the presentation hall. And there was only one person with access to that room the night before the expo."
I stopped climbing.
"Check the access logs," Blake said. "Iris wasn't even in the building. But you were."
The PA went silent.
I stood there in the stairwell, hand on the rail, heart slamming against my ribs.
Then I turned around and started running back down.