Mia's POV
"Mom?"
The word falls from my lips like broken glass. I'm staring at a ghost. At an impossible thing.
My mother died five years ago. I went to her funeral. I buried her. I grieved for months until the pain became a dull ache I learned to live with.
But she's standing right there in Adrian's office doorway, looking exactly like she did the last time I saw her alive. Same gentle smile. Same warm brown eyes. Same way of tilting her head when she's worried.
"Mia, sweetheart." Her voice is the same too. "I know this is a shock—"
"A shock?" I stumble backward, hitting Adrian's desk. "You're DEAD! I watched them lower your casket into the ground!"
Adrian moves toward me, hands raised like I'm a wild animal he needs to calm. "Mia, let me explain—"
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" I'm screaming now, not caring who hears. "You lied about the timeline! You lied about everything! And now my dead mother is standing in your office like this is NORMAL?"
Marcus steps forward, and his warm expression is completely gone. Now he looks cold. Calculating. "Sit down, Mia. We need to talk."
"I'm not sitting down! I'm leaving!" I try to push past him, but Marcus blocks the door. He's not hurting me, but he's not letting me pass either.
"You can't leave yet," Marcus says quietly. "Not until you understand what's really happening. Not until you know the truth about why you came back."
"I came back because—" I stop. Because why? I never questioned it. I just woke up ten years in the past and accepted it like a gift from the universe.
But gifts from the universe don't exist.
Someone sent me back. Someone with power I can't even imagine.
"Who are you?" I ask, looking between Marcus, my mother, and Adrian. "What are you?"
My mother takes a step closer. "We're like you, honey. We came back too. But we've been back much longer. Long enough to understand the rules of this... gift."
"Gift?" I laugh, and it sounds hysterical even to my own ears. "You call this a gift? I watched myself die! I lived ten years of hell before getting a second chance, and now I find out it was all some kind of SETUP?"
"It wasn't a setup," Adrian says, and his voice is rough with emotion. "Everything I told you was true. I did see visions of you dying. I did fail to save you. I did—" He stops, jaw clenched tight.
"He did kill himself," my mother finishes softly. "That part was real, Mia. Adrian's suffering was real."
I look at Adrian, and for a moment, I see past the lies to the pain underneath. Real pain. The kind you can't fake.
"But the timeline—" I start.
"We can't explain the timeline in a way that will make sense to you yet," Marcus interrupts. "Not until you understand what you really are. What we all are."
"Then TELL ME!" I'm shaking now, from fear or rage or exhaustion. Maybe all three.
Marcus and my mother exchange a look. Some kind of silent conversation.
Finally, Marcus speaks: "We're not the first people to come back from death, Mia. There have been others throughout history. People who died before their time, who had unfinished business, who were... chosen."
"Chosen by who?"
"We don't know." My mother's voice is gentle, like she's explaining something to a child. "But we do know the rules. When you come back, you get a chance to fix your biggest regret. To save yourself or save someone else. But there's a catch."
Of course there's a catch. There's always a catch.
"What catch?" I ask, even though I don't want to know.
"You have ninety days," Adrian says, his gray eyes locked on mine. "Ninety days from the moment you wake up in the past. If you don't fix your regret by then—if you don't accomplish what you were sent back to do—you die again. Permanently."
My blood turns to ice. "Ninety days?"
"You came back yesterday morning," Marcus says, checking his watch. "So you have eighty-nine days left."
Eighty-nine days. Less than three months to fix ten years of mistakes.
"What happens if I fail?" I whisper.
"You die on day ninety-one," my mother says, and tears fill her eyes. "At the exact same moment you died in your first life. The stage will collapse again, or you'll have a heart attack, or a car will hit you. The universe doesn't care how. It just takes you back."
I sink into the chair, legs giving out. "And you? All of you came back too?"
"I died in a car accident seven years ago," my mother says. "I came back to save you from making a terrible mistake—dating Ethan Park. But I was too late. I watched you suffer for three years before I..." She trails off.
"Before you died again?" I finish. "But you're here now—"
"Because I succeeded my second time," she says. "I fixed my regret. I saved someone I was supposed to save. And when you succeed, you get to stay. You get to live in the new timeline you created."
My head is spinning. "So you died, came back, failed, died again, and came back AGAIN?"
"Third time's the charm." She smiles sadly. "But most people only get one chance, Mia. I was lucky. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it."
I turn to Adrian. "And you? How many times have you come back?"
His jaw tightens. "Twice. The first time, I failed to save you. I died. The second time—this time—I made sure to prepare better. I went back further than you did. Six months earlier. I used that time to build resources, to learn everything about your life, to set up protections for you."
"Because I'm your regret," I say slowly. "I'm what you were sent back to save."
"Yes." The word is barely a whisper.
"And the contract? The fake relationship? Making me a star?" My voice hardens. "All of that was just to keep me close so you could save me and complete your mission?"
"No—" Adrian starts.
"Don't lie to me again!" I stand up, anger giving me strength. "I'm not a person to you. I'm a quest objective. Something you need to complete so you can move on with your life!"
"That's not true—"
"Then what IS true?" I'm yelling now, and I don't care. "Tell me one thing—just ONE THING—that's actually real!"
"My feelings for you are real!" Adrian shouts back, and the raw emotion in his voice stops me cold. "Everything else might be complicated and messy and tied up in this supernatural nightmare, but what I feel when I look at you—that's REAL. I didn't come back just to save your life. I came back because losing you broke something in me that death couldn't fix!"
Silence falls like a hammer.
We stare at each other, both breathing hard, the air between us crackling with tension.
Marcus clears his throat. "Okay, so now that we've established everyone's feelings—"
"What's MY regret?" I interrupt, looking at my mother. "You said we come back to fix our biggest regret. Adrian's regret is saving me. What's mine? Is it stopping Sophia and Ethan? Becoming famous? What?"
My mother's expression shifts to something that looks like pity. "We don't know, sweetheart. Everyone has to figure out their own regret. It's different for each person."
"How am I supposed to fix it if I don't even know what it is?"
"You'll know when you fix it," Marcus says. "You'll feel it. Like something clicking into place. And then you'll have a choice—stay in this new timeline, or go back to being dead."
"That's insane—"
A loud CRACK makes everyone jump.
The massive window behind Adrian's desk splinters like a spider web. A small hole appears in the center.
Someone shot at us.
Adrian tackles me to the ground as the window shatters completely, glass raining down like deadly snow. Marcus pulls my mother behind the desk.
"Stay down!" Adrian's body covers mine, heavy and protective.
Another shot. This one hits Adrian's desk, sending splinters flying.
"Who's shooting at us?" I gasp.
"Someone who knows you're here," Marcus shouts. "Someone who doesn't want you to succeed!"
A third shot—but this one doesn't come through the window.
It comes from the doorway.
I crane my neck to see who's there.
It's Sophia. And she's holding a gun.
But her eyes aren't right. They're empty. Glazed. Like she's not really there.
"Sophia?" I whisper.
She raises the gun, pointing it directly at my head, and speaks in a voice that's not quite her own—deeper, stranger, wrong:
"You weren't supposed to remember, Mia Chen. You weren't supposed to fight back. Now you have to die. Again."
Her finger tightens on the trigger.