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Cole's shoulder was on fire. The round had grazed him, not clean through, but enough that his jacket was soaking warm and Ivy's hands were shaking as she packed the wound.
"Hold still." Her voice was tight. Professional. But her fingers kept slipping.
Nail's voice crackled in Cole's ear. "Don't bring Ivy. I already killed her once."
Cole froze. Ivy felt it. She looked up at him, gauze half-pressed to the torn flesh. "What?"
He couldn't answer. The world had just tilted sideways. Nail's words were still echoing in his skull. I already killed her once. That meant—
"Cole." Nail's voice again, steadier now. Resigned. "I know you're hearing this. I know you think I've lost it. But I remember. One loop. Just one. I woke up at mission start, same as you, and I thought I was losing my mind."
Ivy was staring at him. "Who are you talking to?"
Cole pulled the earpiece out. Put it on speaker. Let her hear.
Nail kept talking. "It was loop seventy-nine. You went down in the tunnel. I got Ivy out. We made it to the evac point. Then she asked me why you kept calling her by name when you'd never met her before. I didn't have a good answer. So I gave her a bad one."
Gunfire popped in the background of Nail's transmission. Close. He was still pinned in the warehouse district, half a klick back.
"I told her you were loop-stuck. That you'd been running this mission over and over. She didn't believe me. Said I was in shock. Then she found something in her med bag. A chip. Black, about the size of a thumbnail. Had numbers on it. She showed it to me."
Ivy's hands had stopped moving. She was listening now, her face pale.
"They were your numbers, Cole. Your contract code. I don't know how it got in her gear. But when she looked at me and asked what the hell a death-loop contract was doing in her supplies, I panicked. I thought she was part of it. Thought she was bait. So I—"
The transmission cut to static. Then Nail's voice came back, quieter. "I put two rounds in her. Center mass. She died in about forty seconds. Then the loop reset and I woke up at mission start. That was four loops ago for you. I've been trying to figure out how to tell you."
Ivy stood up. The gauze fell from her hand. "What the hell is he talking about?"
Cole didn't answer. He was doing the math. Loop seventy-nine. Nail remembered seventy-nine. That meant someone had pulled Nail into the loop, let him run it once, then kicked him back out. A test. Or a warning.
"Cole." Nail again. "They're closing in. I can hold them maybe five minutes. You need to get Ivy out. Don't come back for me. If you do, she dies. I've seen it."
"Bullshit." Cole's voice came out rough. He grabbed the earpiece, shoved it back in. "We're coming. Two minutes."
"No." Nail's voice was flat. Final. "You pick her, or you pick me. You don't get both. Not this time."
Ivy grabbed Cole's arm. Her fingers dug in, right above the wound. He hissed. She didn't let go. "What is he saying? What loop? What contract?"
Cole met her eyes. This close, he could see the gold flecks in the brown. Could smell the antiseptic on her hands and the sweat at her hairline. She'd been running on adrenaline for six hours and she didn't even know this was day four. Didn't know that in about thirty minutes, if he didn't change something, a sniper round would crack her skull open at the evac point.
He'd watched her die eighty-two times. She didn't remember any of it.
"I can't explain it right now," he said. "But Nail's telling the truth. We don't go back."
"He's your squad leader." Her voice was rising. "He's pinned. We have to—"
"If we go back, you die." Cole said it quiet. Let the weight of it sit between them.
Ivy stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"Because I've seen it." He pulled his arm free, started moving. East, toward the evac point. Away from Nail. "We go. Now."
She didn't follow. He turned back. She was standing in the middle of the alley, med bag hanging from one hand, face caught between anger and something else. Confusion. Fear. He didn't know.
"Ivy." He kept his voice level. "I need you to trust me."
"I don't even know you." But her voice cracked on the last word.
That was the worst part. She was right. She didn't know him. Didn't know that he'd carried her out of a burning building in loop fortyone. Didn't know that in loop sixty-seven she'd stitched him up in a ditch while mortar fire walked across the ridge. Didn't know that in loop seventy-four she'd laughed at one of his bad jokes and he'd realized, with a sick drop in his gut, that he was in love with a woman who would never love him back because she'd never remember him long enough.
Nail's voice crackled in his ear. "Cole. I can hear you breathing. Stop thinking. Get her out."
"I'm not leaving you." Cole said it to the earpiece. Meant it.
"Yeah, you are." Nail's voice was calm. Almost warm. "Because you're not stupid. You know what matters. I'll hold them as long as I can. Maybe I buy you ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. You use it. Get to the evac point early. Change her position. That sniper round comes in at eighteen-forty-three. You know that. So you move her."
Cole's throat was tight. "Nail—"
"I'm good, brother." Nail's voice was fading under the sound of gunfire. "This one's on me. I killed her once. I'm not doing it again. Now move."
The transmission cut.
Cole stood there for three seconds. That was all he allowed himself. Then he turned to Ivy. "We go. Now. I'll explain on the way."
This time she followed.
They moved fast, keeping to the alleys. Cole's shoulder was screaming but he pushed through it. Ivy kept pace. She was fit, trained for field work, and she didn't waste breath on questions. Not yet.
Behind them, the gunfire intensified. Then stopped.
Cole didn't let himself think about what that meant.
They reached the evac point nineteen minutes early. It was a rooftop, four stories up, with a clear sightline south. The sniper would set up on the water tower, three hundred meters out. Cole had traced the angle in loop fifty-six. Knew exactly where the round would come from.
He pulled Ivy to the north side of the roof. Put a ventilation unit between her and the tower. "Stay here. Don't move until the helo comes."
She dropped her med bag. Turned on him. "Start talking."
So he did. He told her about the contract. About the loops. About waking up at mission start eighty-three times. About watching her die at eighteen-forty-three, day four, every single time. He didn't tell her about loop seventy-four. Didn't tell her that he knew how she took her coffee or that she hummed when she was stitching or that she had a scar on her left wrist from a climbing accident when she was sixteen. Those were things he'd learned by watching her die. She didn't need to carry that.
When he finished, she was quiet. The sun was dropping. Eighteen-forty would hit in four minutes.
"Prove it," she said finally.
"How?"
"Tell me something you shouldn't know."
Cole thought about it. "You have a black chip in your med bag. About the size of a thumbnail. You've never seen it before. It has numbers on it."
Ivy went still. Then she crouched, unzipped the bag. Started pulling things out. Gauze. Suture kits. Antiseptic. Her hands were shaking again.
At the bottom, wedged into the corner seam, she found it.
A black chip. Small. Cold. With a string of numbers etched into the surface.
She held it up to the fading light. Read them aloud. "Seven-seven-two-three-nine-B."
Cole's contract number.
Ivy looked at him. Her face had gone pale. "How did this get in my bag?"
"I don't know," Cole said. And that was the truth. "But someone put it there. Someone wants you to find it."
The helo appeared on the horizon. Eighteen-forty-two. One minute early. Cole kept Ivy behind the vent until it landed. No sniper round. No crack of gunfire. Just the rotor wash and the co-pilot waving them in.
They climbed aboard. The helo lifted. Cole watched the city fall away below them. Somewhere down there, Nail was gone. Maybe dead. Maybe extracted by another team. Cole didn't know. The loop had never gone this way before.
Ivy sat across from him. She was still holding the chip. Turning it over in her fingers. Her face was unreadable.
Finally she looked up. Met his eyes. "If this is real," she said, "if you've been dying over and over to keep me alive, then who's running this? Who put that chip in my gear? And why do they want me to know about you?"
Cole didn't have an answer. But the chip did. Because when Ivy turned it over one more time, he saw it. Etched on the back, smaller than the contract number, almost invisible.
A single word.
WATCHER.