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The pistol didn't waver. Ivy's hand was steady. Her eyes weren't.
"How do you know my name?" she said again.
Cole kept his hands visible. Palms out. No sudden moves. The alley behind the convoy wreckage still smelled like diesel and burned rubber. Blood on the dirt. Nail was twenty yards back, crouched behind a half-collapsed crate, watching. He wouldn't shoot her. Not yet. But if Cole signaled—
"I don't have time to explain," Cole said. His voice came out rougher than he meant. Eighty-three loops and he still couldn't nail this part. "You need to get off the street. Sniper's going to reposition in four minutes."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that matters right now."
Her finger stayed on the trigger. She was good. Confident grip. Low ready stance. Field surgeon didn't mean soft. He'd learned that the hard way around loop thirty-something when she'd put a scalpel through a looter's hand without blinking.
"You said my name," Ivy said. "You knew the convoy route. You knew where the IED was." Her jaw tightened. "Who sent you?"
"Nobody sent me."
"Bullshit."
A kid screamed.
Both of them turned. A local boy, maybe twelve, stumbled out from behind the overturned supply truck. His shirt was soaked red from the shoulder down. Shrapnel wound. He was crying in broken English, one hand clamped over the hole, the other reaching for Ivy like she was the only thing in the world that could fix him.
Ivy's gun didn't move. But her eyes did.
Cole saw the shift. The calculation. The same one she made every loop. Surgeon first. Soldier second.
"He's got maybe three minutes before he bleeds out," Cole said quietly. "Your call."
She looked at him. Then at the kid. Then back.
"Don't move," she said.
She holstered the pistol and ran.
Cole let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Nail jogged up, rifle slung low.
"She was gonna shoot you," Nail said.
"Yeah."
"But she didn't."
"Kid saved me."
Nail grunted. "Lucky."
Cole didn't answer. Luck had nothing to do with it. He'd memorized the timing. The boy always stumbled out at eight minutes past detonation. Ivy always ran to him. The only variable was whether Cole lived long enough to see it.
This time he had.
Ivy was already on her knees in the dirt, hands moving fast. She ripped the kid's shirt open, packed the wound with gauze from her kit, her voice low and steady in his ear. The boy was sobbing. She wasn't. She never did.
Cole moved closer. Slow. Hands still visible.
"You need to move him," he said. "Sniper's got line of sight in two minutes."
Ivy didn't look up. "Then help me carry him."
He did.
They hauled the kid between them, Ivy keeping pressure on the wound, Cole taking most of the weight. Nail covered their six. The clinic was three blocks east, a crumbling cement building with red cross paint so faded you could barely see it. Ivy kicked the door open and they dragged the boy inside.
The smell hit first. Antiseptic and rust. Old blood and iodine. The front room was a mess of overturned gurneys and supply crates. No patients. No staff. Just shadows and the buzz of a single flickering light.
Ivy laid the kid on the cleanest table she could find. Her hands were already back in her kit, pulling out suture thread, a clamp, a vial of local anesthetic that was probably expired.
"Hold him," she said.
Cole pressed the kid's good shoulder down. The boy screamed when Ivy irrigated the wound. Kept screaming when she started stitching. Cole didn't let go.
Nail stayed by the door, rifle up, scanning the street through the cracked window.
"We got company?" Cole called.
"Not yet."
Ivy worked fast. Her face was locked in. Focused. She didn't look at Cole. Didn't ask questions. Just stitched and packed and wrapped until the bleeding slowed. The kid passed out halfway through. Shock, probably. Maybe a blessing.
When she finished, her hands were shaking.
Just a little. Just enough for Cole to notice.
She wiped them on her pants and turned to face him. The pistol was back in her hand. She must've pulled it while he was watching the kid.
"Now," she said. "You talk."
Cole looked at the gun. Then at her. Her eyes were dark. Tired. She had a smudge of blood on her cheek and her braid was half undone. She looked exactly like she did every other loop. Except this time she was pointing a weapon at him in a building that wasn't supposed to be empty.
"My name's Cole," he said. "I'm not here to hurt you."
"That's what everyone says."
"I know."
"You knew my name. You knew the route. You knew where the kid would be." Her voice was flat. Clinical. "You're either intel or you're the one who set the bomb."
"I'm neither."
"Then what are you?"
He almost said it. Almost told her. But the words caught in his throat because he'd tried that before. Loop forty-seven. She'd called him insane. Loop sixty-one. She'd run. Loop seventy-nine. She'd shot him in the leg and left him for the militia.
So instead he said, "Someone who's trying to keep you alive."
Her eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"Because you die in two days if I don't."
Silence.
Nail swore softly from the door.
Ivy's finger tightened on the trigger. "You're threatening me."
"I'm warning you."
"Sounds the same from where I'm standing."
Cole took a step forward. Slow. The barrel was six inches from his chest now. He could feel the weight of it. The heat of her hand. She smelled like antiseptic and sweat and something floral he could never place. Shampoo, maybe. Something from before the war.
"I know you don't believe me," he said quietly. "I know how it sounds. But in forty-eight hours, you're going to be standing on the east ridge evacuating wounded. A sniper's going to put a round through your chest at dusk. You'll be dead before you hit the ground."
Her face didn't change. "How do you know that?"
"Because I've watched it happen."
"Bullshit."
"Eighty-two times," Cole said. "You die eighty-two times and I wake up back at mission start. Every loop. Every time. I don't know how to stop it yet. But I'm trying."
She stared at him.
Then she laughed.
It wasn't a kind sound. It was sharp and bitter and exhausted. The laugh of someone who'd heard every lie the world had to offer and wasn't impressed anymore.
"You're insane," she said.
"Yeah," Cole said. "Probably."
She lowered the gun. Just a fraction. Not holstered. Not safe. But not aimed at his heart anymore.
"Get out," she said.
Cole didn't move. "There's something else."
"I said get out."
"This clinic," he said. "It's supposed to be full. Staff. Patients. At least a dozen people. Where are they?"
Ivy's jaw tightened. She didn't answer.
Nail turned from the window. "He's right. This place is gutted. Looks like they cleared out fast."
Cole's instincts itched. Wrong. This was wrong. The clinic was always full. Every loop. Ivy came here on day two to resupply. She traded morphine for intel. She saved a kid with a broken leg. She—
A sound.
Below them.
Metal scraping stone.
All three of them froze.
"Basement?" Nail whispered.
Ivy's face went pale. "There's no basement."
"Then what's under us?"
Another scrape. Closer.
Cole moved first. He found the door behind a toppled supply shelf. Old wood. Rusted hinges. A chain lock that had been cut clean through. Recently.
He looked at Ivy. She shook her head.
"I've been here a dozen times," she said. "That door was always locked."
"Not anymore."
Nail slung his rifle forward. "Could be looters."
"Could be," Cole said.
But his gut said otherwise.
He pulled the door open. Stairs led down into darkness. The air smelled like wet stone and something else. Something chemical. Formaldehyde, maybe. Or preservative.
Nail clicked on his tac light. The beam cut through the black.
They went down.
The basement wasn't a basement. It was a morgue.
Rows of metal tables. Plastic sheeting. Drains in the floor. The kind of setup you didn't build unless you planned to process a lot of bodies fast. The walls were lined with cold storage lockers. Most of them were closed. A few hung open. Empty.
Cole's skin crawled.
"What the hell is this?" Nail muttered.
Ivy didn't answer. She was staring at the tables. Her hand had drifted back to her pistol.
Cole moved deeper. His boots echoed on the concrete. The tac light swept left. Right. Rows of tables. Rows of—
He stopped.
One of the lockers was open. The drawer pulled out. A body inside. Covered in a sheet.
Cole's heart slammed in his chest.
No.
He stepped closer. His hand shook as he reached for the sheet.
"Cole," Nail said. "Don't."
He pulled it back.
The face staring up at him was his own.
Same scar over the left eyebrow. Same crooked nose from a bar fight in Berlin. Same dog tags around the neck. But the skin was gray. The eyes were clouded. The chest had a bullet hole punched clean through the sternum.
Cole staggered back.
Ivy's voice came from behind him. Barely a whisper.
"What the hell is going on?"
Cole couldn't answer.
Because pinned to the dead man's chest was a piece of paper. Handwritten. One line.
*Welcome to Loop Eighty-Four.*