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"Don't let Drake open Gate Three."
Jude's voice came through the smoke before I even opened my eyes. Same ceiling. Same cracked tile under my palm. Same eleven minutes and forty seconds left before the blast.
I sat up fast. "How many times have you watched me die?"
"Enough to know you'll try to run the east stairwell first." He was already on his feet, cuffs still on, blood already dried on his temple from the hit I gave him last loop. "Don't. The grid collapses that side at eight minutes."
"You're not my partner."
"No." He stepped closer, and I smelled gunpowder and something sharper, chemical. "I'm the one keeping count."
I shoved past him and hit the hall. My squad's channel was already lit up with panicked chatter. Dispatch yelling about structural damage. Someone screaming for medevac at the south gate. I knew all of it already. I'd heard it die three times.
"Lyra." Jude caught my shoulder and I spun, gun halfway up before I stopped myself. His hands lifted, slow, but his eyes didn't flinch. "You can't save them all at once. The system reads momentum. You move too fast, it moves faster."
"What system?"
"The one that wants you to keep choosing."
I wanted to hit him. Wanted to cuff him to the nearest pipe and leave him to burn. But last loop I'd tried that and he'd still been there when I woke up, whispering the same warning.
"Fine." I lowered the gun. "Gate Three. What happens if Drake opens it?"
"Everyone in D-block dies in the flood. Including your sister."
My chest went cold. "How do you know where Mara is?"
"Because you told me." His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Four loops ago. Right before you bled out trying to reach her."
I grabbed his jacket and slammed him into the wall. His head cracked against concrete but he didn't fight back, just watched me with those flat gray eyes like he'd been waiting for this exact moment.
"You don't get to use her name," I said.
"Then stop her from going to D-block. She's heading there now because Drake cleared the route. Drake wants the flood."
"That's insane."
"That's the point." He leaned in close enough that I felt his breath against my ear, low and controlled. "She's feeding the loop. Every time you reset, she gets another chance to bury what she did. You want out? Stop running her script."
The building shuddered. Ten minutes left. I let him go and he straightened, rolling his shoulder like I hadn't just choked him against brick.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked.
"I'm not." He started walking. "I'm helping me. You're just the only one who can move pieces on this board."
I followed because I didn't have another play. We hit the central stairwell and I could already hear the sirens winding up, the same sequence I'd memorized. Jude moved like he'd mapped every step. He knew which rail was loose. Knew the third landing would be wet. Knew exactly when to pull me left before the ceiling panel dropped.
"How many times have you done this?" I asked.
"More than you."
"That's not an answer."
He glanced back. "You want numbers or you want to live past twelve minutes?"
We hit the monitoring floor and I went straight for the terminal near the blast shutters. My access code still worked. I pulled up the grid map and there it was: Gate Three, green-lit and ready to open. Timer set for nine minutes from now. Drake's authorization code stamped right next to it.
And under that, a second code.
Mine.
I stared at the screen. My action code. My clearance. Time-stamped twenty minutes before I'd even entered the station this morning.
"That's not possible," I said.
Jude leaned over my shoulder, close enough that I felt the heat of him against my back. "You wrote that order, Lyra. You just don't remember doing it yet."
"I didn't—"
"Not this version of you." His voice dropped, quiet and sharp as a blade. "The one three resets ago. The one who thought she could trade D-block to save the rest. Drake sold you the math and you signed it."
I spun on him. "I wouldn't do that."
"You did. And then you watched Mara drown. And then you woke up here and tried something different." He caught my wrist before I could shove him. His grip was solid, not rough, just immovable. "This is the loop where you stop believing Drake. This is the one where you start believing me."
The lights flickered. Eight minutes.
"Let go," I said.
"Make me."
I twisted and he let me break free, but not fast, not like he couldn't have held on. I hated that. Hated that he was choosing when to let me move.
"Why should I trust you?" I asked. "You won't even tell me how you know my name."
"Because you said it." He stepped closer and I stepped back, hit the console, nowhere left to go. He planted one hand on the terminal beside my shoulder, leaning in until I could see the faint scar through his eyebrow, the way his jaw tightened when he was holding something back. "Four loops ago. You said, 'My name is Lyra Vane and I'm getting my sister out.' Then you asked me to help. Then you died. So yeah, I know your name. I know how you take your coffee. I know you count to three before you pull a trigger and you always check your six even when you think no one's watching."
My pulse hammered against my ribs. "That's not helping your case."
"Good." His mouth was a flat line but his eyes flicked down, just for a second, to where my hand was braced against his chest. "I'm not here to make you comfortable. I'm here to keep you alive long enough to break this thing."
The building shook again, harder this time. Dust rained from the ceiling. Seven minutes.
"Fine," I said. "What's the play?"
"We lock Gate Three. We pull Mara out of D-block. And we make Drake answer for why she wants half this station underwater."
"She'll have me arrested."
"She'll try." He pushed off the console and turned toward the door, glancing back with something that might've been a smirk if he remembered how. "That's when you arrest her first."
I grabbed my radio and switched to Mara's direct channel. Static, then her voice, breathless and sharp.
"Lyra? Where the hell are you?"
"D-block. Get out. Now."
"I'm on Drake's orders, I can't just—"
"Drake's orders are going to kill you." I kept my voice level, the way I did when I needed her to listen. "Trust me or don't, but move. I'll meet you at the north junction."
Silence. Then: "You better be right about this."
The line cut.
Jude was already at the blast door controls, fingers moving fast over the manual override. He didn't look at me when he spoke. "She'll make it if you move now. If you stand here arguing, she won't."
I crossed to him in three steps. "How do I know you're not the one lying?"
He stopped. Turned. Looked at me like I'd just asked the only question that mattered.
"You don't," he said. "But I took a bullet for you last loop. And the one before that I burned my hands pulling you out of the server fire. So maybe start with that."
He yanked the lever and Gate Three's controls went dark, locked down hard. The system shrieked an alarm. Six minutes.
"Now we run," he said.
We hit the corridor at full speed and I heard the gunfire before I saw it. Three shots, west hall, the same place the grid had collapsed last time. Jude cut left and I followed, blind, trusting momentum because there wasn't time for anything else.
The shots got louder. Closer. Then I saw them: two guards pinned behind a half-collapsed support beam, return fire sparking off metal. I didn't recognize the shooters but I recognized the gear. City defense. Drake's people.
"They're shooting at us?" I shouted.
"They're shooting at me," Jude said. "You're just in the way."
He shoved me toward the south exit and stepped into the open. I screamed his name but he was already moving, drawing their fire, taking two rounds in the vest before he dropped behind cover. The guards turned to track him and I pulled my sidearm, put one round through the nearest shooter's shoulder, dropped the second with a leg shot.
Jude was back on his feet before they hit the ground.
"You're welcome," I said.
He didn't answer. Just grabbed my arm and pulled me through the blast door as it started to close. We squeezed through with inches to spare and I heard the explosion on the other side, the same fireball I'd died in twice.
Four minutes left.
We were in the control room. The one I'd never reached before. The walls were lined with monitors, every screen showing a different sector of the station. And on the center screen, time-stamped and logged, was the Gate Three order.
My code.
My authorization.
Filed eighteen days ago.
I stared at it. "That's impossible. I wasn't even assigned to this sector eighteen days ago."
Jude moved to the terminal and pulled up the metadata. "You were. You just don't remember. Drake scrubbed your assignment logs after the first reset. She's been cutting your memory every loop, keeping you confused, keeping you running the same choices."
"Why?"
"Because you're the only one with clearance to lock her out." He turned the screen toward me. "And because the first time you figured that out, you tried to arrest her. She killed you. Then she killed your sister. Then she triggered the reset and made sure you'd forget."
My hands were shaking. I didn't let him see.
"How do I stop her?" I asked.
"You already did." He tapped the screen. "Gate Three's locked. Mara's out of D-block. The blast still happens but the flood doesn't. You just saved two hundred people."
"Then why are we still here?"
"Because the loop doesn't end when you save people." His voice went cold. "It ends when you stop the person who started it."
The door behind us opened. I spun, gun up.
Violetta Drake stepped through, flanked by two officers. Her uniform was perfect. Her expression was calm. She looked at me like I was a child holding a firecracker.
"Captain Vane," she said. "Step away from the terminal."
I didn't move. "You authorized Gate Three. You knew it would flood D-block."
"I authorized a safety protocol. You overrode it." She glanced at Jude, then back to me. "And you're taking orders from a man we pulled out of a bombing in sector seven. That's a problem."
"The problem is you've been resetting this station every time someone gets close to the truth," I said.
Her mouth tightened. Just a fraction. Just enough.
"Put the gun down, Lyra."
"Tell me why my access code is on an order I never gave."
She didn't answer. Just nodded to the officers. They moved forward.
Jude stepped between us. "She's not going with you."
Drake smiled. Cold. Controlled. "And who's going to stop me? You?"
"If I have to."
She pulled her sidearm and aimed it at his chest. "I've killed you four times already. What's one more?"
The blast hit.
I woke up on the floor. Same ceiling. Same tile. Eleven minutes fifty-nine seconds.
And Jude's voice, quiet and close.
"Now you know," he said. "She's the one keeping you here."
I opened my eyes. He was crouched beside me, wrists still cuffed, blood still fresh on his temple.
And in his hand, pressed flat against the floor between us, was a tablet. Screen lit. File open.
My access code.
Drake's authorization.
And a third code I'd never seen before.
Stamped one hour before the blast.
Before I entered the station.
Before I'd even woken up this morning.
My code.