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I woke up in my apartment again.
Same grey light through the blinds. Same cheap coffee smell from the pot I'd left on yesterday. Same fucking phone buzzing on the nightstand with a message I already knew by heart.
I didn't check it. I rolled up my left sleeve.
The number sat there on the inside of my wrist, black as a tattoo but not quite. It looked burned in. Clean edges. No ink spread.
07.
Seven.
I'd started with eight. Now I had seven. That sniper on the rooftop had cost me one more, and I still didn't know how many I'd had to begin with. Could've been ten. Could've been eight. Could've been twenty.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my thumb against the number. It didn't smudge. Didn't hurt. Just sat there, counting down every time I failed to stay alive.
"Alright," I said to the empty room. "Let's try this different."
Last two loops, I'd gone straight for the job. Tried to beat Viktor to the warehouse, tried to set up my own ambush, tried to outthink the leak. Didn't work. Someone always knew I was coming. Someone always had the angle.
That meant the job was compromised from the start. Which meant I needed to go around it. I needed information no one expected me to have, a network I shouldn't be able to access.
I needed Ava Klein.
She was careful. She was expensive. And she didn't take meetings with people she didn't trust. I'd worked with her twice, three years back, before the Prague job went sideways and my entire career turned into this looping nightmare.
She wouldn't remember me well. But I remembered her.
I also remembered that in about six hours, she'd be at a café in the Warehouse District, meeting a client who'd try to stiff her on payment. She'd walk out pissed, cut through the alley behind Margrave Street, and text her partner to pull the client's info off the market.
I knew because I'd tried to meet her there in the second loop. Timed it wrong. She'd brushed me off.
This time, I'd time it right.
---
The café smelled like burnt espresso and old leather. I sat three tables over, back to the wall, watching Ava through the crowd.
She looked the same. Short dark hair, sharp jaw, jacket that cost more than my rent. She had her tablet out, stylus tapping the screen while the guy across from her talked too much with his hands.
I didn't need to hear the conversation. I'd heard it before. He was trying to negotiate her rate down after she'd already pulled the data he wanted. She was about to tell him to go fuck himself in three languages.
I waited.
Two minutes later, Ava stood up, slid the tablet into her bag, and walked out without looking back. The guy sat there, red-faced, staring at his coffee like it had betrayed him.
I followed her.
She moved fast, cutting across the street and into the pedestrian zone. I kept a block back, hands in my pockets, eyes on her shoulders. She didn't check behind her. Didn't need to. In her world, the threats came from data breaches and bad clients, not tails in broad daylight.
She turned into the alley.
I sped up.
"Ava."
She stopped mid-step, hand already moving toward her bag. When she turned, her face was blank, but her eyes were reading me like a dossier.
"Do I know you?"
"Mark Weston. We worked together a few years back. You pulled a personnel file for me in Berlin."
Her expression didn't change. "I pull a lot of files."
"You told me the file was cleaner than it should've been. You said someone scrubbed it, and that meant I should walk away from the job."
Her eyes narrowed. "I say that a lot too."
"You were drinking gin. Hendrick's, no tonic. You said tonic was for tourists."
That got a flicker. Not trust. Just recognition.
"Alright. Mark Weston. What do you want?"
"I need access to your network. I need to know who's running jobs out of the old Directorate contacts, who's buying operational intel, and who's been asking about me in the last seventy-two hours."
She laughed. It wasn't a friendly sound.
"You need a miracle. That's three layers deep, and I don't hand that out to ghosts who remember my drink order."
"I'll pay."
"With what? You're not active anymore. I checked when you walked in behind me."
"You knew I was following you?"
"I always know." She tilted her head. "You've got the look. Burnt-out operative trying to get back in. You think you've got one more play in you, and you need someone else's resources to make it happen. I've seen it before. It ends badly."
"It's already ending badly. I just need to know why."
She studied me. I could see her weighing it. Risk versus payout. Curiosity versus safety.
"No," she said finally. "I don't sell coffins. Find someone else."
She turned to walk away.
I checked my watch. Twenty seconds.
"Ava, get down—"
"What—"
I grabbed her wrist and yanked her toward the dumpster.
The alley exploded.
Not literally. Not fire and shrapnel. But the air punched in, a massive concussive crack that slammed into my eardrums and rattled my teeth. The far end of the alley buckled inward, bricks splintering, dust and smoke pouring through the gap.
Ava hit the ground next to me, shoulder against the dumpster, eyes wide.
"What the fuck—"
"Stay down."
I kept my hand on her arm, pressing her flat against the pavement. My ears were ringing. I could taste copper and concrete dust. Through the smoke, I saw movement. Two figures, dark outlines, walking into the alley from the street side.
They weren't running. They were checking.
"Mark." Ava's voice was low, tight. "Who the hell are you?"
"Later."
"No. Now."
I looked at her. Her face was inches from mine, smudged with dust, eyes locked on me with an intensity that would've been distracting if we weren't about to get shot.
"I used to work for people who don't let you quit. They think I know something. I don't. But they're not asking."
"And you brought them to me?"
"They were already coming. I just knew when."
Her jaw tightened. I could feel the heat of her breath, the tension in her wrist under my hand. She didn't pull away. Didn't push me off. Just stared at me like she was deciding whether to trust me or kill me herself.
"You've got ten seconds to prove that," she said.
I let go of her wrist and pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket.
"Hey—"
"Check the metadata on your last client meeting. The guy at the café. Check when his request came in."
She grabbed the phone back, fingers flying across the screen. Her face went tight.
"That's... four hours before he contacted me. Someone pre-loaded the request."
"Someone wanted you in that café at that time. They wanted you in this alley."
She looked up at me. "Why?"
"Because they knew I'd come looking for you. And they knew you'd walk this route."
The figures in the smoke were closer now. I could hear their boots on the broken pavement.
Ava's hand moved to her bag. She pulled out a small black device, thumb on the trigger.
"Flashbang?"
"EMP. Lower yield, higher spread. You want out of here or not?"
"Yeah."
"Then move."
She threw it.
The pulse was silent, just a faint crackle in the air. The figures stopped. One of them swore, loud and sharp. Their comms were dead.
Ava was already running. I followed her, keeping low, cutting left out of the alley and into the service lane behind the old depot building. She moved like she'd done this before. No hesitation. No panic.
We didn't stop until we were six blocks away, inside a parking garage, tucked between two vans on the third level.
Ava leaned against the van, breathing hard. I checked the stairwell. Clear.
"Alright," she said. "Talk."
"I need your network because someone's hunting me, and I don't know who's giving the orders. Every move I make, they're there first. Every contact I try, they've already burned. You're the only broker I know who keeps her sources off-grid."
"And what makes you think I won't sell you out the second you walk away?"
"Because you just saw what they do to people who get in the way. You were collateral. They didn't care."
Her face was unreadable. Then she pulled something out of her pocket. Small. Metallic. Blinking red.
"I pulled this out of the rubble while you were watching the stairwell," she said.
I stared at it.
It was a tracker. Military-grade. The kind we used to tag assets in hostile territory.
"It was attached to the dumpster," Ava said. "Right where you pulled me down."
My chest went cold.
"They knew exactly where I'd be."
"Yeah." Ava turned the tracker over in her hand. The red light blinked once, twice. "And here's the fun part."
She held it up so I could see the frequency readout on the side.
I knew that signature. I'd used it a hundred times.
It was Directorate issue. Old network. My old employer.
"Someone inside is tracking you," Ava said quietly. "And they knew you'd come to me."
She looked up at me, and for the first time, I saw something other than suspicion in her eyes.
Fear.
"Mark," she said. "What the hell did you do?"