Chapter 9 · Don't Lose Her Face

Charlotte's phone screen goes soft at the edges.

Not the glass. The photo. Lisa's face in the last picture Charlotte has—the one she pulled from the clinic server six loops back—starts bleeding pixels. The smile's still there. The dark hair. But the left side, where the dimple should be, that's just noise now. Static eating inward.

She's in the stairwell between the third and fourth floors of the archive building. Marcus is two floors down, maybe three. She heard his boots on concrete ninety seconds ago. The audio file's supposed to be in a grey cabinet on the fifth floor, northeast corner, behind a false panel Ivy marked in the last loop. If Ivy wasn't lying. If this loop's layout matches the last.

Charlotte zooms the photo. Her hands don't shake. They never do when she's holding a gun or a phone. She stares at Lisa's cheek.

There should be a dimple.

She knows there should be a dimple.

She can't see it anymore.

"Shit," Charlotte whispers. Her voice bounces off the cement. She shoves the phone in her jacket and takes the stairs three at a time. Her ribs still hurt from the dock.