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"Show me your hand again."
Erin didn't move. The sealed door was still cooling behind us, the metal ticking like a countdown. Vera pressed herself against the concrete wall, staring at Erin's gloved right hand like it might grow teeth.
"I said show me." I stepped closer. The bone spurs along my knuckles ached, ready to slide out if I flexed wrong.
Erin pulled off the glove. Same white ridges. Same jagged edges. Her index finger had split down the middle, bone growing through the nail bed in a Y-shape.
"You're like me," I said.
"No." Her voice was flat. "You're like me. I was Subject 101. You're 447."
Lucas stayed near the door, one hand pressed to his bleeding jaw where my claws had caught him. He hadn't said a word since Erin dropped the bomb about the resets. Now he was watching her like she might vanish if he blinked.
"You said I died three times." My throat felt tight. "I don't remember dying once."
"You wouldn't." Erin flexed her fingers. The bone spurs scraped together, a sound like knives on ceramic. "Protocol wipes the death itself. You keep the evolution, lose the context. That's the test. How much can a human adapt before the biology overwrites the brain."
Vera made a small noise. When I looked at her, she was staring at her left hand, the webbing between her fingers catching the emergency light. Translucent. Veined. Not human.
"What killed me?" I asked.
Erin met my eyes. "First time? You bled out in an apartment stairwell on Maple. Chest wound. You tried to fight a Phase Two without knowing what you were up against."
"Phase Two?"
"The things that used to be people." She nodded at Vera. "What she'll be in twelve hours if we don't shut this down."
Vera's breath hitched. I wanted to go to her, but I couldn't move. My feet felt welded to the floor.
"Second time," Erin continued, "you made it eighteen hours further. Got killed by a collapsing fire escape on Seventh. You were running from a hunter squad. Your legs gave out. Evolution chose bone density over speed, and you were too slow."
"And the third time?"
Erin's jaw tightened. "Third time you made it to the subway. You found a terminal, tried to hack the protocol. Got electrocuted when the system detected tampering. I watched you seize for forty seconds before your heart stopped."
The air tasted like copper. I realized I'd bitten my tongue.
"You watched," I said.
"I told you. I was admin. I watched all of you."
"How many?"
"Subjects? Four hundred forty-seven. Survivors past the first loop?" She paused. "Twelve. Past the second? Three. You're the only one still breathing after three deaths."
I pulled the knife from my belt. It was a cheap folding blade I'd grabbed from the convenience store, but the edge was clean. I closed the distance between us in two steps and put it to her throat.
Erin didn't flinch.
"Mark." Lucas moved, but Vera grabbed his arm. Her webbed fingers locked tight.
"Don't," Vera said. Her voice shook. "We need her."
"She watched me die," I said. "Three times."
"And I defected," Erin said. The blade pressed into her skin, a thin line of red welling up. "I could've stayed topside. Could've archived this zone and moved to the next city. But I came back."
"Why?"
"Because you reminded me of someone." Her eyes didn't leave mine. "Subject 101. That was my brother. He made it to day four. The protocol turned him into something with six limbs and no face, and I had to watch him try to write my name in the dirt before he forgot how."
My hand was shaking. The knife broke skin, a single drop of blood sliding down her neck.
"I can give you the termination code," Erin said. "But we have to reach the core first. And it's not stationary."
I pulled the knife back. "What does that mean?"
"It means the core moves on a schedule. Subway line. Old freight route, sealed off during construction ten years ago. The train runs every eight hours. If we miss the next window, we lose another day, and you'll be on loop four."
Vera's breathing was too fast. I turned and saw her staring at her hand again, flexing the webbing. It had grown since we entered the room. Now it reached halfway to her wrist.
"Twelve hours," she whispered.
"Less," Erin said. "Evolution accelerates near the core. Proximity triggers faster mutation. If we go down there, she's got maybe six."
Lucas finally spoke. "Then we don't take her."
"She comes," I said.
"Mark—"
"She comes." I looked at Erin. "You said you can stop it. The mutation."
"I said I can shut down the protocol. That stops new triggers. Doesn't reverse what's already started."
Vera's knees buckled. I caught her before she hit the floor, my right hand closing around her arm. Her skin was cold. Too cold.
"There's a medical override," Erin said. She was watching us, her face unreadable. "In the core chamber. Quarantine protocol. It flash-freezes the subject's evolution state. Buys time."
"How much time?"
"Forty-eight hours. Maybe seventy-two. Long enough to find a real reversal method."
Lucas moved to Vera's other side, helping me hold her up. His face was pale under the blood. "You're saying there's a cure."
"I'm saying there's a chance." Erin sheathed her clawed hand back in the glove. "But we have to move. The next train window opens in ninety minutes, and we're still three stations away."
I looked at the sealed door. "What about the hunters?"
"They'll regroup. Protocol sends reinforcements every time a subject gets close to the core. We'll hit resistance at every junction."
"How do you know?"
Erin's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "Because I wrote the reinforcement algorithm. I know exactly where they'll be."
She turned and moved deeper into the maintenance corridor. There was another door at the far end, older, the paint flaking off in sheets. She pulled a keycard from her pocket—black, no markings—and swiped it through a reader I hadn't noticed.
The door clicked open.
Beyond it, a stairwell dropped into darkness. The air smelled like rust and old water. Somewhere far below, something metallic groaned.
"Service tunnel," Erin said. "Connects to the old freight line. Stay close, stay quiet. If you hear a hum, don't touch the walls. The core emits a resonance field. It'll trigger evolution in anything with foreign DNA."
Vera's hand tightened on my arm. I felt the webbing brush my skin, smooth and wrong.
"I don't want to forget you," she whispered.
I looked at her. Her eyes were still brown. Still hers.
"You won't," I said.
Erin was already descending. Lucas followed, his hand on the railing, his steps careful. I helped Vera through the door, and the stairwell swallowed us.
We went down.
The temperature dropped every ten steps. By the time we reached the bottom, I could see my breath. The tunnel stretched ahead, concrete and rebar, lit by a string of emergency lights spaced too far apart. The gaps between them felt like open mouths.
Erin stopped at a junction. She tilted her head, listening.
"What is it?" Lucas asked.
She didn't answer. Then I heard it too. A low hum, rhythmic, coming from somewhere ahead. It vibrated through the floor, up through my boots, into my bones.
"The train?" I said.
Erin's face went rigid. "No. That's not the train."
The hum grew louder. The emergency lights flickered.
And then I saw it. Far down the tunnel, in the deepest shadow between lights: a red glow. Small. Pulsing. Like a signal.
"The core," Vera breathed.
"No." Erin backed up a step. "The core doesn't move like that. It doesn't—"
The red light split. Two lights. Then four. Then a dozen, spreading across the tunnel width like eyes opening.
Lucas grabbed my shoulder. "Run."
But Erin was staring at the lights, her face pale. "It's not supposed to do that. The core is locked to the train. It can't—"
The hum spiked into a shriek.
And Erin's voice cracked.
"They moved it. The core isn't on the train anymore."
The red lights surged forward.