Chapter 17 · They Call Her Lisa

The air tasted like rust and old cement. Charlotte's birthplace wasn't a house. It was a decommissioned maintenance tunnel under the rail yard where her mother used to work night shift, back when the docks still ran freight to the mainland. She'd played here as a kid. Knew every junction.

Now she couldn't remember which turn led to the old breakroom.

She braced one hand against the wall, flashlight beam cutting through the dark. Her ribs ached from the last reset—she'd taken a knife to the side fourteen loops ago and the phantom pain still hadn't faded. The coordinates had dumped her topside at 4 a.m. She'd been down here for two hours. The air was getting thin.

"Lisa Grey," she said aloud. Tested the name. It didn't fit right in her mouth anymore.

She pressed forward. The tunnel sloped down. Somewhere ahead she heard the hum of a generator, the kind of white noise that meant someone was running lights or a ventilation rig. Someone was keeping a place livable.

Her daughter would be eighteen now. Or maybe seventeen. Charlotte couldn't pin the math. Every reset ate the edges. She still remembered the day Lisa was taken—