Aurora "Rory" Vance POV
Memory isn't supposed to fracture, but mine is bleeding across forty-four timelines.
It starts while Graves pulls up Axiom Tower blueprints. One second I'm standing beside him, studying floor plans. The next, the world tilts.
I'm still in the safehouse. But it's different. The Rube Goldberg machines are arranged wrong. Or right. Or the way they used to be in a timeline I don't remember. Graves is there, younger somehow, less hollowed out. I'm laughing at something he said, my hand resting on his forearm like it belongs there.
The vision fractures.
Now I'm on a rooftop. Rain-slick concrete under my feet. Seattle spreads below in neon and shadow. Graves stands beside me, close enough I can feel his warmth. I'm saying something about choice mattering more than fate. His hand finds mine. Rough calluses against my palm. I don't pull away.
Another fracture. Sharper. Painful.
Blood. So much blood. My blood. Spreading warm across my shirt. Graves is holding me, his face destroyed by grief I don't understand. I'm trying to tell him something important but my lungs won't work and the words dissolve before they form.
"Aurora."
His voice yanks me back. The safehouse solidifies around me. I'm gripping the desk edge so hard my fingers have gone white. Can't catch my breath. Can't make my lungs remember how to work properly.
"What just happened?" Graves is watching me, concern sharpening every line of his face.
"I don't know." My voice comes out strangled. "I was here. But also not here. I saw other versions. Of this place. Of us."
Something dark crosses his expression. "Echo memories. The loop's degrading faster than I thought. Fragments from other timelines bleeding through into your consciousness."
"Since when?" I force my hands to release the desk. They're shaking.
"Started around loop thirty-eight. Small things at first. Objects in wrong places. Déjà vu. But now it's accelerating. Full sensory experiences from timelines that don't exist anymore." He pulls up a document covered in timestamps and frantic notes. "The loop isn't stable. Reality's fracturing at the seams. We're running out of time."
"How much time?"
"I don't know. Could be this loop. Could be the next. But if we don't break the pattern soon, we'll be trapped in this forty-eight hour cycle forever. And the real world will continue without us, time moving forward while we're stuck in an eternal weekend."
The thought makes my stomach lurch.
Graves turns back to the blueprints, giving me space to recover. He explains the heist in careful detail. Axiom Tower, forty-two stories of glass and corporate steel downtown. We need to reach the mainframe room on the thirty-fourth floor. Extract ORACLE's source code and all documentation. Broadcast it globally before Sunday's launch triggers something irreversible.
"Your employee credentials are still active," he says, pulling up my digital profile on screen. Photo from two years ago, when I still believed I was doing good work. "Holden never revoked your access. He thinks you're having a mental breakdown, not plotting corporate espionage."
"He's not wrong about the breakdown part."
Graves's mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "We'll use your badge to get past lobby security. I've mapped the camera blind spots across fifteen different loops. Memorized guard rotation patterns. But we need inside help for the upper floors. That's where Lennox comes in."
"Lennox?"
"My partner." He checks his watch. "She's been working as Axiom's head of security for two years. Deep cover operation. She should be here any minute."
Before I can ask more questions, another echo slams into me.
This one's different. Stronger. I'm in Graves's arms but I'm not dying. Very much alive. His mouth is on mine and I'm kissing him back like I've been thinking about it for weeks. My hands are in his hair and I'm saying something between kisses. Choosing something. Choosing him.
It tastes real. The coffee on his breath. The leather smell of his jacket. The way his hands cradle my face like I'm something precious he's terrified of breaking.
But I've never kissed Graves Monroe.
Have I?
"Aurora." His voice again, pulling me back from the edge. "Stay with me. Don't let the echoes pull you under."
I blink. The safehouse comes back into focus. Graves is watching me with an expression I can't quite read. Something between concern and pain and a longing he's trying very hard to hide.
"How do you deal with it?" I ask. My voice sounds raw. "Remembering everything while I forget?"
"Badly." He turns away, busying himself with the monitors. "I build Rube Goldberg machines at three in the morning and try very hard not to think about all the versions of you I've watched die."
The honesty in his voice cracks something open in my chest.
Before I can respond, footsteps echo on the stairs. Heavy boots on metal. Graves's hand moves to a gun I didn't realize he was carrying. But his posture relaxes when a woman appears at the bottom of the stairs.
She's around my age. Korean-American, sharp cheekbones, dark eyes that miss nothing. Tactical gear under an expensive designer coat. She moves like someone who learned violence young and got very good at it. Confident in a way I've never managed to be.
Her gaze locks on me immediately. Cold assessment that makes me feel like I'm being catalogued for weaknesses.
"So this is the variable you've been dying for." Her voice is smooth. Controlled. With an edge underneath. "She doesn't look like much."
"Lennox." Warning colors Graves's tone.
"What? I'm just making an observation. Six times, Graves. You've died for her six times across these loops. I'm naturally curious about what makes her so gods damned special."
The words land like a physical blow.
"I didn't ask him to die for me," I say. My hands curl into fists at my sides.
"No. You just let him." Lennox moves past me to the monitors, deliberately invading my space as she goes. "Every loop where you two get close, you end up dead and he ends up resetting everything. Starting from scratch. Maybe the problem isn't the loop. Maybe the problem is you."
"Lennox, that's enough."
But she's not finished. She turns to face me fully, and I see it clearly now in her eyes. Not just suspicion or professional skepticism. Something deeper. More personal.
Jealousy.
She's in love with him. Has been for a long time. And I'm the variable that keeps taking him away.
"Does she know?" Lennox asks Graves, still holding my gaze. "Does she know about loop nine? About the time we actually succeeded?"
My stomach drops. "What?"
Graves's jaw goes tight. "Lennox, don't do this."
"She deserves the truth. Loop nine, we got out. All three of us. We stopped ORACLE, exposed Holden's authoritarian deals, survived the FBI raid. We were free, Graves. Actually free. The loop broke. We won." She pauses, letting it sink in. "But in that timeline, I died. Caught a bullet during the extraction. Bled out in the back of our escape van. So Graves reset everything. He deliberately trapped himself in thirty-five more loops. Just to save me."
The confession hangs in the air like smoke from a gun already fired.
I look at Graves. He won't meet my eyes.
"You reset the loop on purpose?" My voice comes out hollow. "You had a way out and you chose to stay trapped?"
"I couldn't let her die." His words are flat. Final. "Lennox has been my partner for six years. My friend. The only family I have left. I couldn't just walk away and let her stay dead."
Lennox's expression softens when she looks at him. Just for a second. Then it hardens again when she looks back at me. "So yeah. You're not the only person he's trying to save here. You're just the one he hasn't figured out how to keep alive while also breaking the loop. Lucky you."
The tension between us crackles like static electricity before a storm.
"We don't have time for this," Graves says. He pulls up the heist timeline, forcing us both to focus. "Lennox, what's the status on internal security?"
She switches modes instantly. All business. "Systems are running normal. I've scheduled routine maintenance on the thirty-fourth floor for Saturday night, 11 PM to 1 AM. Gives us a two-hour window when guard presence will be minimal."
"What about camera access?"
"I can loop the feeds for thirty minutes before someone in the monitoring station notices the repeat pattern and flags it."
"Thirty minutes isn't enough," I say, forcing myself to focus on the blueprints instead of the sick feeling in my stomach. "Even if everything goes perfectly, extracting ORACLE's data will take at least forty-five minutes. The encryption alone..."
"Then we'll have to be imperfect and very, very fast." Graves zooms in on the mainframe room layout. "You're the fastest coder I've ever seen, Aurora. How long to bypass ORACLE's security protocols if you're working at full speed?"
I study the encryption layers he's showing me. Military-grade protection wrapped around my own code, weaponized beyond recognition. "Twenty minutes if I'm lucky and nothing goes wrong. Thirty to thirty-five if there are complications."
Another echo hits without warning. Graves saying these exact same words in a different loop. A different version of this conversation. Me responding with something sarcastic about luck and probability. Both of us almost smiling despite the circumstances because we're in this together and that makes the impossible feel possible.
We didn't have enough time in that loop either. I died before we could finish the extraction.
"You okay?" Lennox asks. Her tone isn't kind exactly, but it's not cruel either. Just clinical observation.
"Echo memories," Graves explains before I can answer. "They're getting stronger. More frequent."
"How much stronger?"
"She's experiencing full sensory loops from other timelines. Complete scenes playing out in real-time."
Lennox swears quietly in Korean. "The degradation's worse than you said."
"I know."
They exchange a look that speaks volumes. Years of partnership. Trust built through shared danger. A history I'm not part of and never will be, no matter how many loops Graves remembers of me.
I turn back to the monitors, trying to ignore the jealousy burning hot and uncomfortable in my chest. I have no right to be jealous. I don't even know this man. Can't remember the loops where we were apparently close enough to kiss.
But my body remembers something. Muscle memory my conscious mind can't access. The way my breath catches when he's nearby. The way my hands stop shaking when he touches me. The way part of me wants to trust him despite every logical reason not to.
The planning session stretches on. Lennox walks us through security protocols with military precision. Guard rotation schedules. Camera placement maps. Biometric scanner vulnerabilities. Emergency exit routes. She's thorough. Professional. And she keeps glancing at Graves like he's the only person in the room who truly matters.
I understand the feeling more than I want to.
By the time we finalize the infiltration details, my head is pounding and my vision keeps splitting at the edges. More echoes trying to break through. More fragments of lives I don't remember living but my body insists are real.
"Aurora." Graves's hand on my shoulder grounds me. "You need to rest. The echoes are getting worse and you need to be sharp tomorrow."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." He guides me toward a worn leather couch in the corner. "Two hours. Sleep. When you wake up, we'll review the plan again."
I want to argue. Want to prove I can handle this without falling apart.
But exhaustion crashes over me like a wave I don't have the strength to fight. I sink into the couch. The leather is soft from years of use, and it smells like coffee and old books and something else I can't quite place.
Graves drapes a blanket over me. The gesture is gentle. Familiar in a way that makes my chest ache.
"You've done this before," I murmur, already half asleep.
"Seventeen times across various loops." His voice is quiet. Careful. "You always fight sleep when you're anxious. You always lose."
"Do I ever wake up?"
Long silence.
Then, so soft I almost miss it: "Not always."
I want to ask what he means. But sleep drags me under before I can make my mouth form the question.
I dream in fragments. Forty-four timelines bleeding together like watercolors in rain. Forty-four versions of myself making forty-four different choices. In some I trust Graves immediately. In others I never trust him at all. In a few, scattered and precious, I love him.
In all of them, eventually, I die.
When I surface back to consciousness, the safehouse is darker. Quieter. My body says two or three hours passed. I sit up slowly, the blanket sliding off my shoulders.
Graves and Lennox stand at the monitors, talking in low voices that carry in the concrete space.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself," Lennox is saying. "Every loop, you get more attached. More desperate. It's breaking you, Graves. I can see it."
"I can save her this time."
"Maybe you're not supposed to. Maybe that's the point. Maybe the loop won't break until you let her go."
Graves's response is too quiet for me to hear.
I stand, stretching muscles stiff from the couch. They notice me immediately.
"How are you feeling?" Graves asks.
"Like I've lived forty-four lifetimes and can't remember forty-three of them." I move to join them at the monitors. "What did I miss?"
Graves doesn't answer. He's staring at one of the screens, all the color draining from his face.
"Graves?"
Lennox sees it too. She swears, sharp and vicious.
I follow their gaze to the monitor displaying live security footage from Axiom Tower. Multiple camera feeds showing different floors and hallways.
The timestamp in the corner reads Friday, 11:47 PM. Current time.
One feed shows Holden's private office on the thirty-ninth floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Minimalist furniture. Empty except for one person.
Me.
Standing in the middle of Holden's office, clear as anything, is me.
Same dark hair. Same build. Same clothes I'm wearing right now.
But I'm in the safehouse. I've been here for hours.
"That's not possible," I whisper.
The other Rory on screen moves with purpose. She goes straight to Holden's desk, opens a locked drawer like she knows the combination. Pulls out what looks like a data chip. Examines it. Pockets it.
She moves like she's done this before. Like she knows exactly what she's looking for and where to find it.
"Someone's impersonating you," Graves says. His voice has gone deadly calm. The kind of calm that comes right before violence. "Someone got past biometric scanners using your face."
"Or it's another version of me," I say, but I don't believe it even as the words leave my mouth. "From another timeline. Bleeding through like the echo memories."
"No." Graves is already pulling up additional camera feeds, tracking the impostor's movements backward through the building. "Echo memories are psychological. Internal. This is physical. External. Someone is inside Axiom Tower right now, wearing your face well enough to fool retinal scanners and fingerprint readers."
On screen, the other Rory tucks the data chip into her jacket. Moves toward the office door with confident strides.
"We have to stop her," Lennox says.
"We can't." Graves is still tracking the impostor's path through the building's security network. "By the time we get there, she'll be gone. And if we show up now, trip any alarms, we'll trigger lockdown protocols that'll make tomorrow night's heist impossible."
"So we just let her steal whatever she's stealing?"
"We watch." His jaw clenches hard enough I can see the muscle jump. "And we figure out who the hell has been in this loop with us all along. Who's been adapting to our strategies. Who's been one step ahead for forty-four iterations."
On the monitor, the other Rory exits Holden's office. She walks down the empty hallway, completely at ease. Like she owns the place.
Then she stops.
Turns around.
Looks directly up at the security camera.
And smiles.
Not my smile. Something else. Something knowing and cold and almost predatory.
Like she knows we're watching.
Like she's been waiting for us to finally notice her.
Like this is all going exactly according to her plan.
The camera feed cuts to static.