Chapter 25 · The Save That Won't Die

The door's right there. Ten feet away, glowing with that sickly green admin light that means someone coded it to be important.

I can't move.

Nyx is standing between me and the core access terminal, and she's not looking at me. She's looking at the door like it's going to bite her.

"Open it," I say.

She doesn't.

"Nyx."

"I can't." Her voice is flat. Dead. The way it used to sound back in loop one, when she was just a boss with a script. "My code says no."

"Your code's been saying no for twenty-five loops and you've been ignoring it just fine." I take a step closer. The floor hums under my boots. Everything in this place hums now, like the game's holding its breath. "What's different?"

She turns. Her eyes are black again—not the soft dark I've gotten used to, but that flat NPC void. "This door leads to my core directive. If you go in there, you rewrite me. If you rewrite me, I stop being able to hold the loop."

"That's the point."

"If I stop holding the loop, the game collapses. You die for real. No respawn."

I knew that already. Quinn told me.