Chapter 13 · The Date That Won't Die

"Move." Ada's hand locked around my wrist and yanked me sideways. A memory screamed past where I'd been standing—glass execution chamber, straps, the smell of antiseptic and sweat. It slammed into the wall behind us and dissolved into static.

"What the hell was that?"

"Your death." She pulled me forward, boots scraping concrete. "They're looping. All of them. Every reset you've burned through is bleeding into this space."

The corridor stretched ahead, but it wasn't empty anymore. Fragments hung in the air like broken screens—me strapped to the chair, me opening my eyes in the cell, me with my hands around someone's throat. All of it happening at once, all of it wrong.

"How do we get through?"

"We don't stop." Ada's grip tightened. "You stop, they catch you. They catch you, you're stuck in the loop inside the loop."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

Another memory tore loose from the wall—this one closer, sharper. I watched myself wake on the execution table, the IV still in my arm, the witnesses behind the glass. But the faces were wrong. Blurred. Shifting.

"Kane." Ada's voice cut through. "Don't look at it."

Too late.