Chapter 7 · The Relay Under the Chapel

The coordinates lead to a collapsed chapel.

Cole can see it half a klick out—stone rubble, a bell tower listing like a drunk, snow piling up where the roof caved in. No lights. No movement. The kind of place that screams ambush so loud he can taste it.

Ivy's breathing hard beside him. They've been running for twenty minutes straight, cutting through back alleys and frozen fields, and her surgical scrubs are soaked through with sweat under her coat. She keeps checking her phone. The message is still there. *I remember.* And the blinking dot that says they're almost on top of it.

"This is it," she says.

Cole grabs her wrist. "Wait."

She pulls free, not rough, just determined. "You said I die in ninety minutes. We've got seventy-eight left. I'm not spending them hiding."

"You're spending them walking into a trap."

"Maybe." She meets his eyes. "Or maybe whoever sent this actually knows what's happening to you. To us."

Cole wants to argue. Wants to drag her back to the extraction point Nail set up, get her on a truck, get her *out*. But he's done that. Loop sixty-one.