Chapter 24 · Cut Out the Anchor

Cole's voice came through the comms. His own voice. Telling him to put Ivy down.

He ripped the earpiece out and crushed it under his boot. Ivy was staring at him, her hand still on the med kit she'd just used to patch the graze on his neck. Her fingers had stopped moving.

"That wasn't Nail," Cole said.

"I know." She didn't ask how someone else had his voice. She was learning. Fast. "How many people know what you sound like when you're about to kill someone?"

"Eighty-two loops' worth." He checked the stairwell behind them. Empty. For now. "Whoever's running this has been recording every word I've said since loop one."

Ivy's hand dropped from his neck. The blood on her fingers was still warm. She looked at it, then at him. "So they know everything."

"Everything I've done. Everything I've tried." Cole reloaded his rifle, movements automatic. Muscle memory from eighty-three identical firefights. "They don't know what I'm thinking. Not yet."

"And what are you thinking?"

He met her eyes. "That you're the only variable they can't predict."

She didn't flinch. That was new. Loop seventy-nine she'd flinched when he looked at her like this.