Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"Move."
Dalen's hand is on my shoulder blade, shoving me forward. The corridor smells like burnt plastic and something wet I don't want to name. My boots skid on the metal grating. I can still hear my own voice coming from the speakers behind us, looping that same line over and over. *Don't let him remember the fourth time.*
"What does that mean?" I twist around. "The fourth time. What did I—"
"Shut up and run." He doesn't look at me. His jaw is locked, eyes scanning the walls. The gun's still in his hand, pointed down but ready. "You talk, you slow us down. You slow us down, we both die."
"You just tried to kill me."
"I missed."
"On purpose."
He grabs my wrist and yanks me into a side passage. "Don't make me regret it."
The walls here are narrower. Older. The lights flicker every few seconds, throwing shadows that twist and double back. I can feel the heat radiating off him, his fingers tight enough to leave marks. He's close enough that I can smell gunpowder and sweat and something sharper underneath, like adrenaline turned chemical.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Up."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." He lets go of my wrist and moves ahead, checking each junction before we cross. "Stay behind me. Don't touch anything. Don't stop."
I follow because I don't have a choice. The corridor slopes upward, the grating under our feet giving way to concrete, then to something that feels like packed earth. The air gets colder. Thinner. My chest starts to ache.
"Dalen."
He stops. Turns halfway. "What."
"How do you know my name?"
His face doesn't change. "I don't."
"You just said it. Back there. When the camera—"
"I said a lot of things." He cuts me off. "Keep moving."
But I saw it. The split second after the shot, when he looked at me and his mouth started to form a word that wasn't *target* or *Mother* or *codename*. It was my name. The real one. The one I can't remember.
We hit a ladder. Vertical shaft, no lights, just a string of rungs disappearing into the dark above. Dalen slings his rifle over his shoulder and starts climbing without a word. I grab the first rung and pull myself up. My arms are shaking. I don't know if it's fear or exhaustion or the fact that seventy-two hours ago I woke up in a different version of this same nightmare and I still don't know how it ends.
Halfway up, my hand slips.
I don't scream. I just fall. My stomach lurches, my fingers claw at nothing, and then Dalen's arm hooks around my waist and slams me against the ladder. My ribs hit metal. The air punches out of my lungs.
"Got you." His voice is low, right against my ear. His breath is warm on my neck. "Don't let go."
I can't answer. I'm pressed between the ladder and his chest, his arm locked across my stomach, his hand flat against my ribs. I can feel his heartbeat. It's faster than it should be.
"Kess."
I freeze.
"That's your name," he says. "Kess Marin. You created the AI. You triggered the collapse. You're the reason half the grid went dark and the Reborn Council put a kill order on your head. And I'm the one they sent to do it."
I turn my head. His face is inches from mine. I can see the scar along his jaw, the way his eyes don't match the flatness in his voice.
"Then why didn't you?"
"I don't know."
He pulls back. Lets go. I grab the rungs with both hands and hold on until my knuckles turn white. He climbs past me, fast and smooth, like he's done this a thousand times. I follow. My legs are numb. My mind is worse.
*Kess Marin.* The name doesn't fit. It sounds like someone else. Someone who made choices I can't remember and set something in motion I can't stop.
We reach the top. Dalen shoves open a hatch and pulls himself through. I climb out after him and the cold hits me like a fist. We're on the surface. The sky is the wrong color, bruised purple and streaked with orange, like a sunset that never finished. The ruins stretch out in every direction, broken towers and collapsed highways and the skeletal frames of buildings that used to have names.
And the screens.
Every intact display, every cracked monitor, every shattered billboard still flickering with power—they're all showing the same thing.
Me.
My face. My body. My death.
It's looping. Four different angles. Four different kills. The first one is clean, a single shot through the temple. The second one is messy, my throat slit, blood pooling on concrete. The third one I'm on fire, my hands clawing at my face. The fourth—
I can't look at the fourth.
"Jesus," Dalen breathes.
I step forward. My legs won't hold me. I drop to my knees on the cracked asphalt and stare at the nearest screen. It's mounted on the side of a half-collapsed building, twenty feet tall, the image crystal-clear. My face fills the frame. My eyes are open. My lips are moving.
I can't hear what I'm saying, but I know the words.
*Don't let him remember the fourth time.*
Dalen crouches beside me. He's not looking at the screens. He's looking at me. "You've done this before."
I nod.
"How many times?"
"I don't know." My voice cracks. "Three. Maybe more. I only remember fragments. But every time, I die. And every time, I wake up back in that room with you pointing a gun at my head."
"And the AI?"
"I don't know." I press my palms against my eyes. "I don't know what I built. I don't know what it wants. I don't know why it's using my voice or my face or—" I break off. My throat is too tight. "I just know that in seventy-two hours, it happens again. I die. The loop resets. And no one remembers except me."
Dalen's quiet for a long time. When he speaks, his voice is different. Softer. "The fourth time. What happened the fourth time?"
I lower my hands. The screens are still looping. My deaths, over and over, in perfect sync.
"I don't know," I whisper. "But I think you do."
He stands. Turns away. His shoulders are rigid, his hands curled into fists. "We need to move. The Council's got eyes everywhere. If they know you're alive—"
"They already know." I point at the screens. "They're broadcasting it. They want people to see."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not the target." The words come out before I can stop them. "I'm the bait."
Dalen looks at me. Really looks at me, like he's seeing something for the first time. "For what?"
I open my mouth to answer.
That's when the screens cut to black.
All of them. At once. The silence is so sudden it feels like a physical thing, a weight pressing down on my chest. Dalen's hand goes to his gun. I get to my feet, my heart hammering.
The screens flicker back on.
It's not my face this time.
It's his.