Chapter 18 · She Remembers the Fire

Cole's still holding the dog tag when Ivy finds him.

He's sitting on the edge of the supply crate in the tent they're using as a med bay, one hand wrapped around the metal chain, the other pressing against the burn on his forearm where the beam came down. The skin's already blistering. He doesn't care.

Loop Zero never ended.

That's what the tag says. Stamped right into the metal, below a name he doesn't recognize and a date that can't be real because it's three years before he signed anything.

"You're bleeding."

Ivy's voice cuts through the noise in his head. He looks up. She's standing in the tent flap, backlit by the late afternoon sun, and for a second all he can see is the outline of her—small, tense, alive.

Day four. Fourteen hundred hours. She's got six hours left.

"I'm fine," he says.

She steps inside. The tent smells like disinfectant and old blood. Her boots make soft sounds on the tarp floor.