Aurora "Rory" Vance
Holden Carr dies in thirteen minutes, and this time I'm going to let him.
I stand at his penthouse window, fingers working the brass lock from my pocket. A vintage Schlage from a pawn shop in Fremont, pins worn smooth from decades of use. Click. Click. The satisfying give of the cylinder rotating. Click.
My therapist in loop twenty-two said I pick locks when I'm anxious. I told her I pick locks when I'm breathing.
Rain streaks the glass. Beyond it, Seattle blurs into grey and neon. Holden's reflection moves behind me, ice clinking in his scotch. He's talking about tomorrow's launch. About legacy. About the children we'll save.
I hum without meaning to. Three notes, descending. Binary search algorithm. My brain sorts the problem into its simplest form: Holden lives, ORACLE launches. ORACLE launches, freedom dies.
Simple math. Terrible answer.
"Aurora." His voice cuts through my humming. "Are you even listening?"
I turn. He's backlit by the bar's amber glow, grey at his temples now, lines around his eyes that weren't there when he funded my scholarships seven years ago. When I was eighteen and aging out of foster care with nothing but MIT acceptance letters and a desperate need to prove I mattered.
He made me feel like I mattered.
Then he turned everything I built into a cage.
"I'm listening." The lie tastes like copper.
5:54 PM. My phone's screen glows in my jacket pocket.
Six minutes left.
I've tried everything across forty-three loops. Warned him in loop seven. He called it psychosis, had building security escort me out in restraints. I woke up Friday at 6:01 PM with the taste of sedatives still thick on my tongue.
Called the FBI in loop twelve. They arrested me. Terroristic threats, they said.
Stayed away in loop nineteen. Spent the weekend in my apartment, doors locked, phone off. He died anyway. I felt the loop reset like a punch to the chest at exactly 6:00 PM Sunday.
Loop thirty-one, I killed him myself. Pushed him off this balcony during an argument about ORACLE's ethics. Watched him fall forty-two stories.
The loop didn't break.
The guilt almost did.
Holden refills his glass. The scotch glugs against crystal, expensive and smooth. "You built something beautiful. The facial recognition software, the behavioral prediction models. Think about it. We can stop terrorists before they act. Find missing kids before they vanish. Isn't that what you wanted? What you coded for?"
My throat tightens. He knows exactly where to press. Exactly which scars still bleed.
"I built software to find children." My voice comes out flat. "You're selling it to regimes that disappear people."
"I'm selling safety." He steps closer. Scotch fumes roll off him, sweet and burning. "The world runs on chaos. ORACLE brings order. You grew up in that chaos. Seven foster homes before you were twelve. Never knowing if the next family would keep you. You understand what it means to need someone watching. Someone keeping you safe."
5:56 PM.
The red dot appears on his white shirt.
I see it in the window's reflection, a pinpoint of laser light tracking across his chest. The sniper's on schedule. Same building across the street. Same angle. Same inevitability.
Holden doesn't notice. He's warming to his speech now, the one about progress and sacrifice and acceptable costs.
I could warn him. Pull him down. Buy him another forty-eight hours.
My feet don't move.
5:58 PM.
The window explodes inward. Glass becomes shrapnel. The sound hits my ears half a second after the bullet hits his chest. Holden staggers backward, scotch glass shattering on marble. His hand goes to the wound, comes away red.
He drops.
I'm kneeling before I decide to. Instinct, maybe. Or the muscle memory of forty-three loops watching him die.
His eyes find mine. Confused. Betrayed. Blood bubbles at his lips when he tries to speak.
"Aurora." It comes out wet. "Why didn't..."
"I'm sorry." I am. For the man he could've been. For believing he cared about more than control.
His hand shoots out, grabs my wrist. His grip is dying-strong, desperate.
"ORACLE is your legacy." Each word costs him. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth. "You built this. You can't run from what you are."
The words land like bullets in my chest.
6:00 PM.
Everything goes white.
The world doesn't fade. It fractures. Reality splits like dropped glass, a thousand sharp edges cutting through my vision. My stomach drops. I'm falling through floors that don't exist, drowning in air, dying even though I'm not the one bleeding out.
Then nothing.
Then everything.
I'm on my bathroom floor.
Cold tile presses against my cheek. The grout smells like bleach and mildew. My hands are cramped around my picking kit, tools scattered across the floor. Seventeen locks surround me in concentric circles, organized by difficulty. I don't remember arranging them. Don't remember coming home.
My phone says 6:01 PM.
Friday.
I push myself up. My palms stick slightly to the tile. The sink's edge is cold under my grip.
The mirror shows someone I'm still learning to recognize. Dark half-moons under brown eyes. Hair escaping its bun in pieces. T-shirt wrinkled. The woman staring back looks like she's been awake for forty-three weekends straight.
Because I have.
Water from the tap runs cold, then colder. I splash my face. It doesn't help. Nothing helps.
My phone buzzes against the tile.
Unknown number.
My chest goes tight. Nobody texts me anymore. Not since the FBI warrant that exists in my future. Not since everyone decided I was either crazy or criminal or both.
The message loads slowly.
You're not the only one counting.
I stop breathing.
Stop trying to save him. Start trying to understand why he has to die.
No. This isn't possible. The loop resets everyone's memories. That's the rule. That's the only rule that makes sense.
Another buzz.
Come to the safehouse alone.
One name.
Graves
Graves Monroe. The hacker Holden spent a decade hunting. The man I ran to in my original timeline, before any of this started. Before the FBI raid. Before I died in his arms and woke up Friday at 6:01 PM for the first time.
He can't remember.
Nobody remembers but me.
My hands start shaking again. The phone nearly slips from my grip.
If Graves remembers, he's been watching me fail for forty-three loops. Watching me try to save Holden. Watching me break myself on an unfixable pattern.
He never said a word.
The phone buzzes a fourth time.
Come to the safehouse alone. Or loop forty-four ends with your name instead of his.
The bathroom walls feel closer. Smaller.
I slide down to sit on the tile, phone clutched in both hands now. My breath comes shallow. The locks around me blur.
This loop is different. Something's changed. And Graves Monroe, who remembers everything I've forgotten, just told me he'll kill me if I don't obey.
Forty-eight hours. That's all I have to figure out why.
One more buzz.
Tick tock, Aurora.
I stare at the words until the screen goes dark.
Then I start picking locks again. Because that's what I do when I can't breathe. When the world stops making sense. When I need to prove something will still open if I just find the right pressure point.
Click. Click. Click.
The pins fall into place.
But nothing unlocks.