Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"Move." I shoved Vera toward the alley's dead end and heard the door behind us crack open.
She stumbled, caught herself against the brick. "There's no way out."
"There's always a way out." I lied. The scratching stopped. Footsteps now, slow and deliberate, each one landing with a wet sound like boots in blood. I turned. The Observer stood framed in the alley entrance, faceless mesh catching the streetlight, head tilted like it was listening to something we couldn't hear.
"Subject 447," it said. Not from a mouth. From everywhere. "Voluntary termination will preserve Subject 448. Refuse and both archive."
Vera made a sound I'd never heard from her before, small and trapped. The silver lines had crawled up past her elbow now, branching like veins under glass. "Mark, what does it want?"
"Me dead," I said. "Again."
The Observer moved. Not walking. Gliding, feet an inch off the ground, closing the distance faster than anything that size should. I put myself between it and Vera and felt something shift in my right hand. Not pain exactly. Pressure. Like my bones were trying to get out.
"Mark—" Vera's voice went sharp. "Your hand."
I looked down. The skin along my knuckles was splitting, but there was no blood. Just pale ridges pushing through, curved and sharp. Bone spurs, three of them, each one maybe two inches long and still growing.
"What the hell—"
The Observer lunged. I brought my hand up on instinct and the spurs punched through its chest like it was made of wet paper. It made that mechanical scream again, high and grinding, and I felt the vibration travel up my arm into my teeth. I twisted and yanked back. The Observer collapsed into itself, folding down into a pile of black fabric and empty space.
"Did you kill it?" Vera was pressed against the wall, silver lines pulsing with her heartbeat.
"I don't know." The spurs were retracting, sinking back under my skin, leaving the knuckles smooth again. No scars. No proof except the pile of fabric dissolving into ash at my feet. "Are you okay?"
"No." She pushed past me and started walking, fast, deeper into the alley maze. "I'm not okay. I'm marked. I'm changing into something and you just grew weapons out of your hand like it's normal."
I followed. "It's not normal."
"Then what is it?"
"Evolution mod. The protocol keeps one thing from the last loop. This time it's these." I held up my hand. It looked human again. Felt human. But I could feel them under there, waiting.
She stopped under a fire escape, turned. "What was it last time?"
"Night vision."
"And before that?"
"I died before I could use it."
She stared at me. "How many times have you done this?"
"This is loop four."
"Jesus." She leaned against the ladder, breathing hard. "So every time you die, you wake up yesterday, but you keep getting more... more monster?"
"Looks like it."
"And me?" She held up her arm. The silver had stopped spreading, but it hadn't faded. "What am I keeping?"
"I don't know. You weren't marked in the other loops."
She laughed, sharp and bitter. "Lucky me. I get the special edition."
We stood there in the dark between two dumpsters, and I could hear sirens in the distance. Wrong kind of sirens. Not cops. Something else, lower and rhythmic, like a search pattern.
"We need to move," I said.
She didn't. "Where? You said the whole district's locked down. Where do we go that those things won't find us?"
"Anywhere that's not here."
"Great plan."
"You have a better one?"
She opened her mouth, closed it. The silver lines pulsed brighter for a second, then dimmed. She looked down at them, then at me. "You could leave me. Reset. I wouldn't be marked next time."
"No."
"Mark—"
"I said no." I stepped closer. "I tried leaving people behind. First loop I ran. Didn't help anyone. Didn't stop anything. I'm not doing that again."
She held my eyes for a long time. "You're going to get yourself killed trying to save me."
"Probably."
"And then you'll reset and I won't remember any of this."
"Yeah."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." But she pushed off the ladder and started walking again. "Fine. Where to?"
"Dispatch station. There's a guy there who might remember. Sometimes."
"Sometimes?"
"His memory glitches. He's not supposed to retain anything between loops, but he does. Pieces. Names. Faces."
"And you trust him?"
I thought about Lucas, the way he'd looked at me in loop two and said, You again. Like he'd been waiting. "I don't have a choice."
The station was ten blocks north, and we took the back way, cutting through yards and parking garages. The sirens kept circling, never close enough to see but never far enough to forget. Twice we saw other people, normal people, walking home from night shifts or walking dogs, and they looked wrong. Too calm. Like they couldn't hear what we heard.
"They don't know," Vera said, watching a woman unlock her car. "Do they?"
"Not yet."
"When?"
"Forty-six hours from now, the protocol goes live for everyone. Right now it's just us."
"Us and how many others?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know. The protocol said 40,000 specimens, but I'd only seen a handful marked. Maybe it was rolling out in phases. Maybe we were the beta test.
The dispatch station squatted under a highway overpass, all cinder block and steel shutters. I knocked twice, paused, knocked three times. Old code. Lucas had made me memorize it in loop two.
The shutter rolled up halfway. Lucas Pham looked out, eyes going from me to Vera to the street behind us. "You're early."
"Early for what?" Vera asked.
He ignored her, focused on me. "Loop four, right?"
"Yeah."
"You die in the truck again?"
"Every time."
He grunted and stepped back. "Get in. Both of you."
We ducked under the shutter. Inside, the station looked like it always did: dispatch boards dark, coffee pot empty, Lucas's jacket thrown over a chair. But there was a new map on the wall, red pins clustered in the east district, black thread connecting them.
"What's that?" I asked.
Lucas pulled the shutter down and locked it. "Marked subjects. Nineteen so far. You're both on it." He pointed to two red pins near the center. "You keep showing up in the same spot. Her, this is the first time."
Vera crossed her arms. "Who are you?"
"Lucas Pham. Delivery partner. Memory glitch survivor. Unofficial tracker of this nightmare." He turned to me. "Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Whatever you kept this time."
I hesitated, then held up my right hand. For a second nothing happened. Then the pressure built again and the spurs pushed through, slower this time, like they were learning. Three pale bone ridges, curved and sharp, each one locked into place with a sound like knuckles cracking.
Lucas didn't flinch. He leaned in close, studying them. "That's not evolution."
"What?"
He looked up at me. "Someone is choosing your upgrades."
Vera stepped forward. "What do you mean choosing?"
"Evolution mods are random. Protocol's supposed to adapt you to survive the next loop. Night vision, fine. Bone density, reflex boost, sure. But this?" He tapped one of the spurs with his knuckle. It rang like glass. "This is a weapon. Custom built. Someone in the protocol is picking what you keep."
I stared at him. "Who?"
"I don't know. But they're watching you. Every loop, every death, they're deciding what you need next." He stepped back, looked at the map. "And if they're doing it to you, they're doing it to others. Which means—"
The lights cut out.
All of them. Street, station, every glow in every window. The city went black in half a second, and in the silence that followed I heard it: that wet footstep sound, dozens of them, moving in sync.
Vera grabbed my arm. "Mark."
"I know."
Lucas was already at the shutter, looking through the crack. "They're here. Ten, maybe twelve. Observers, all of them, coming straight for us."
"How did they find us?" Vera whispered.
I looked down at the silver lines on her arm. They were glowing now, bright enough to read by. "They didn't. They're tracking you."
She pulled her sleeve down, but the glow bled through the fabric. "Can we run?"
Lucas shook his head. "Back exit's welded shut. Front's the only way out."
"Then we go through them," I said.
Vera looked at me. "You're insane."
"You have a better plan?"
She didn't. Neither did Lucas. We stood there in the dark, listening to the footsteps get closer, and I felt the spurs slide out again, ready.
"Stay behind me," I said.
Vera's hand tightened on my arm. "What happens if you die again?"
"I reset. Twenty-four hours back."
"And me?"
I didn't answer. I didn't know if her mark would carry over. I didn't know if she'd remember. I didn't know anything except the footsteps were right outside now, and Lucas was unlocking the shutter, and Vera was asking the one question I couldn't answer.
"What will the next death change?"