Chapter 8 · Loop Eight Starts Wrong

"Victor."

I opened my eyes and someone was standing over me. Not Ada. Not Lane. A woman in a gray suit, clipboard in hand, like she'd just stepped out of a corporate psych eval.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Sit up, please." She didn't move. Didn't blink. The room around us was white. Not concrete. Not the cell I'd woken up in seven times before. White tile, white walls, a single metal table bolted to the floor.

I sat up. My hands were free. No cuffs. No blood. I checked my palms—no scars from the last loop where I'd climbed out of the vent shaft and shredded my skin on the grate.

"This is loop eight," the woman said. "You've been selected for accelerated processing."

"Processing."

"Correct." She tapped her pen against the clipboard. "You have forty-three minutes to reach sublevel three. Your partner has thirty-one."

"My partner."

"Ada Frost." She turned the clipboard toward me. A timer was counting down in red digits. 00:30:47. "If her clock reaches zero, she will be terminated. Permanently."

I stood. The chair scraped back. "Where is she?"

"Sublevel two. You are on sublevel five.