Chapter 22 · Same Death Line

Charlotte's palms were still burning from the door frame. Lisa's face—white, eyes wide, asking if she'd let go again—was seared into her retinas like she'd stared too long at a welding torch. She couldn't blink it away.

Marcus was three steps behind her on the fire escape, not even breathing hard. "You pull her through that door, the loop fractures. She dies in every timeline at once."

"Shut up."

"I'm not the one making the rules, Grey."

She rounded on him so fast the rusted metal groaned under her boots. "Then who is?"

He didn't flinch. Just looked at her with that same flat expression he'd been wearing since the third loop, the one that said he'd already run this conversation six ways and knew how it ended. "The same thing that's been eating your memory since day one. You want answers, you need to go deeper than a dock ambush and a missing kid."

Charlotte's jaw tightened. The gun at her hip felt heavier than it should. She'd pulled it off a dead cop two loops ago—no, three. The count was starting to slip. "Deeper how."

"There's a core site. North end of the city, under the old railyard.