Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
Cole woke to the smell of diesel and gun oil. Again.
He didn't open his eyes right away. He counted his heartbeats instead. Twelve. That's how long it took Nail to kick the bench across from him. Thirteen if the captain had a hangover, but Nail never drank before a drop anymore. Not since loop forty-something. Cole had stopped tracking which loop taught which lesson.
The boot hit metal. Twelve beats exactly.
"Ash, you awake or you gonna sleep through another brief?"
Cole opened his eyes. The cargo hold of the transport looked the same as it always did. Rust patches on the ceiling where someone had peeled off the ID numbers. Six mercs on each side, mag-locked to the benches. Nail standing in the center aisle, one hand gripping the overhead rail, the other holding a tactical slate that showed a map Cole had memorized three dozen loops ago.
"I'm awake."
"Good. Because this one's a milk run and I don't need you zoning out when we hit dirt."
Milk run. Cole almost laughed. Eighty-two times said otherwise. He sat up and checked his gear out of habit. Plate carrier, mags, sidearm, the knife he'd lose on day two if he didn't tape the sheath. Everything exactly where it always was. The tape was already there. He'd stopped forgetting around loop sixty.
Nail tapped the slate. The map projection floated in the dim red light of the hold.
"Sector seven. Industrial zone. Target building is here." Nail's finger jabbed at a three-story block on the east side. "Intel says it's a weapons cache. We go in, catalog the goods, grab samples, get out. Four days max. Local warlord's busy up north so the place should be cold."
Cole stared at the map. Sector seven. Industrial zone. Three-story block. He knew every room in that building. He knew the guards rotated every eight hours. He knew the warlord's second-in-command would show up on day three with a convoy, which meant the place was never cold, and Intel was either lying or useless. He knew Ivy would be on the second floor setting up a triage station by hour six because Nail always put the medic somewhere central. He knew she'd die on day four at dusk when a sniper round came through the west window while she was stitching up a rookie who'd caught shrapnel from an IED that wasn't on anybody's map.
He knew all of it. He'd lived all of it.
Eighty-two times.
"Questions?"
Cole looked at the rookie sitting two seats down. Davis. Nineteen. Fresh out of some corp training program. He'd die on day two in the stairwell if Cole didn't pull him back before he stepped on the pressure plate. Loop seventeen was the first time Cole had saved him. Loop sixty-eight was the last time Cole had let him die just to see if it mattered. It didn't. The loop reset anyway. But Cole hadn't stopped pulling him back since.
He didn't know why. Maybe he was just tired of watching kids get blown up.
"No questions," Cole said.
Nail grunted. "Good. We drop in twenty. Check your buddy's gear."
The hold filled with the sound of buckles and velcro. Cole turned to the merc on his left. A woman named Torres. Calm. Competent. Died on day three every single time when a ceiling collapsed during the convoy ambush. Cole had tried fifteen different ways to keep her out of that room. She always ended up there. He'd stopped trying after loop seventy-nine.
She glanced at him. "You good?"
"Yeah."
"You look like you've done this before."
Cole met her eyes. Brown. Steady. She'd said the same thing in loop sixty-two. He'd told her the truth that time. She'd laughed and called him crazy. Then she died in the ceiling collapse and he woke up back in the hold and she didn't remember.
None of them ever remembered.
"First time," he said.
She snorted. "Sure."
The transport shuddered. Nail grabbed the rail.
"Thirty seconds. Lock it down."
Cole pulled his helmet on and mag-locked his boots. The countdown started. He watched the red numbers tick down on the bulkhead display. He'd watched it eighty-two times. It never changed. The number hit zero. The ramp dropped. Cold air and dust rolled in.
Nail went first. The squad followed.
Cole went last. Always last. It gave him three extra seconds to scan the LZ before his boots hit dirt. Three seconds to check for changes.
There was a change.
The building on the east side. The three-story block. It had smoke coming from the roof. Fresh smoke. Black. Chemical. That had never happened before. Not in eighty-two loops. The building was always cold on day one. The fire didn't start until day two when the warlord's people showed up and someone got careless with a fuel drum.
Day two. Not day one.
Cole's heart rate spiked. He forced it down and moved to his position in the stack. Nail was already halfway across the lot, heading for the building's south entrance. The squad moved in formation. Cole kept his eyes on the smoke.
"Nail," he said over the squad channel. "We got smoke."
"I see it. Could be locals. Stay sharp."
Locals. Maybe. Or maybe the map was lying now. Cole had known the map. He'd trusted the pattern. The pattern was breaking.
They hit the door. Nail's breacher planted the charge. The blast was flat and loud in the thin air. The door folded in. Nail went through. Cole was fourth in the stack. The hallway was dark and narrow and smelled like burnt plastic and something older. Blood maybe. Hard to tell.
They cleared the first floor room by room. Empty. No guards. No cache. Just empty metal shelves and a few tarps that looked like they'd been there for years. Cole's skin itched. This was wrong. The cache was supposed to be here. Intel had been wrong about the guards but never about the cache itself.
Nail pulled them into a side room.
"Ash, Davis, you're on point for the stairs. Torres, you're rear. Move."
Cole and Davis stacked on the stairwell door. Davis looked nervous. His hand kept flexing on his rifle grip. Cole remembered what that felt like. Being new. Not knowing how bad it could get.
"Hey," Cole said quietly.
Davis looked at him.
"Stay behind me. Don't step anywhere I don't step."
"What?"
"Just do it."
Cole opened the door. The stairwell was concrete and steel. Narrow. One way up. The pressure plate was on the third step. He'd memorized the position after loop seventeen. He stepped over it. Davis followed. Cole heard the rookie's boot scuff the edge of the step but not the plate itself.
Good.
They made it to the second floor landing. Cole pushed the door open. The hallway beyond was wider. Windows on the left side. Doors on the right. He moved in and checked the first room.
Empty.
Second room. Also empty.
Third room. Ivy.
She was kneeling next to a body. Local. Male. Gunshot wounds to the chest. She had her kit open and she was working fast but the guy was already gone. Cole could see it in the way his chest wasn't moving. Ivy didn't stop. She kept working. Her hands were covered in blood.
Cole had seen her like this eighty-two times. Every loop she looked the same. Dark hair pulled back. Thin scar on her left temple from something that had happened before Cole ever met her. She never talked about it. He'd asked once in loop fifty-four when he'd had enough beer in him to think it was a good idea. She'd told him to mind his business.
"Ma'am," Cole said.
Ivy didn't look up. "Not now."
"We need to clear the floor."
"Then clear it. I'm busy."
Davis moved past Cole toward the windows. Cole's instincts screamed.
"Davis, stop."
The rookie froze. "What?"
"Get away from the window."
"There's nothing—"
The shot came through the window exactly where Davis had been about to stand. The glass exploded inward. The round hit the wall behind them and punched a hole the size of a fist in the concrete. Davis dropped flat. Ivy threw herself over the body she'd been working on. Cole was already moving. He grabbed Davis by the plate carrier and dragged him toward the door.
"Sniper! West side!"
Nail's voice crackled over the channel. "All units, we got contact. Ash, get that medic out of there."
Cole hauled Davis into the hallway. The rookie was shaking but alive. Alive. That was new. Cole had saved him. That should've been good.
But the sniper was early.
The sniper was supposed to show up on day four. At dusk. Through the west window on the second floor. Ivy was supposed to die. Davis wasn't even supposed to be in that room.
The map was lying. The pattern was breaking.
Cole heard boots behind him. He turned. Ivy was in the hallway, her kit slung over one shoulder, blood still on her gloves. She looked at Davis, then at Cole.
"He okay?"
"Yeah."
"Good." She moved past him toward the stairs.
Cole followed. His mind was racing. If the sniper was early, what else had changed? He ran through the next seventy-two hours in his head. Convoy on day three. Ceiling collapse. Ivy in the west room on day four. Except now the sniper was already active. Which meant—
The shot came from behind him.
Not through a window. From inside the building.
Cole spun. Torres was on the ground. Blood spreading from her chest. She'd been right behind him. Right where she always was. But the shooter wasn't supposed to be here. Not on day one. Not inside.
Ivy was already running back. She dropped next to Torres and ripped open her kit. Cole scanned the hallway. Empty. No shooter. Just shadows and doorways and too many angles.
Nail's voice. "Ash, report."
"Torres is hit. Shooter's inside the building."
"Find him."
Cole moved down the hallway. He checked every room. Every corner. Nothing. Whoever had taken the shot was gone. Or never there. His brain was spinning. He'd saved Davis. Torres died instead. Different day. Different cause. Same result.
The loop was changing.
He made it back to Ivy. She had Torres stabilized. Barely. The merc's face was gray.
"She needs a hospital," Ivy said.
"We're four klicks from extract."
"Then we move now."
Nail pulled the squad back. They carried Torres down the stairs. Cole took point again. He stepped over the pressure plate. He kept his eyes on every shadow. They made it to the first floor. Out the door. Across the lot. The transport was still there. They loaded Torres and Nail called for immediate evac.
Cole stood in the dust and stared at the building. Smoke still rising. Pattern still broken. Eighty-three loops and the map had finally started lying.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
Ivy.
She wasn't smiling. She was looking at him the way she always did. Professional. Distant. She didn't know him. She never knew him.
Except this time she said, "We need to talk."
"About what?"
She pulled him away from the squad. Around the side of the transport where the noise from the engines covered their voices. She stopped. She looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out a pistol.
She aimed it at his chest.
"About why you knew my name before anyone introduced us," she said. "And about why you just saved Davis from a sniper round that didn't exist yet."
Cole's mouth went dry.
Ivy's eyes didn't blink.
"Start talking, Cole Ash. And don't lie. I've been counting too."