The coffee mug didn't shatter this time.
Maya stood in the center of the kitchen island, her fingers curled around the warm ceramic handle so tightly her knuckles turned white. The steam rose in a lazy spiral, carrying the scent of roasted beans and hazelnut—a smell that now made bile rise in the back of her throat.
She stared at Julian's back.
He was standing by the stove, flipping an omelet. The domesticity of it was nauseating. He hummed a low, tuneless melody, the picture of a relaxed, loving partner. He was wearing the charcoal suit again. The fabric stretched slightly across his shoulders as he moved.
He pushed me off a walkway, Maya thought. The memory was visceral. She could still feel the phantom sensation of gravity betraying her, the wind roaring, the concrete rushing up to meet her face.
But she was here. Whole. Unbroken.
Don't run, she told herself. The thought was a mantra, a frantic command from the lizard brain that wanted to survive. Running triggers the hunt. Crying triggers the reset. Boredom triggers the knife.
She had to be perfect. She had to be the variable he didn't want to delete.
Julian turned around, sliding the omelet onto a plate. He smiled. It was the smile that had charmed investors, magazine editors, and her.
"Breakfast is served," he said. "You're quiet this morning."
Maya forced the corners of her mouth up. It felt like lifting weights. "Just... tired. Studying."
"You study too hard." Julian walked over, placing the plate in front of her. He leaned in, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her hips, trapping her without touching her.
He sniffed her hair.
"You smell different," he murmured against her ear.
Maya's heart stopped. Had the "hard reset" left a scent? Did she smell like the rain from yesterday? Did she smell like the fear of falling?
"I changed my shampoo," she lied. The lie came out smooth, surprisingly steady.
Julian pulled back, scanning her face. His eyes were scanning for micro-expressions, for the twitch of a terrified muscle. Maya widened her eyes, softening her gaze. She channeled every ounce of her psychology training, mirroring his posture, tilting her head to expose her neck—a primal signal of submission and trust.
"I like it," he decided. "It suits you."
He kissed her.
It took every fiber of Maya's being not to bite his lip until it bled. His mouth was soft, demanding. It was the kiss of a man who owned everything in the room, including the oxygen she breathed. She kissed him back, placing a hand on his chest, right over his heart.
It was beating steadily. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It was a slow, calm rhythm. A killer's rhythm.
"Eat," Julian said, pulling away and checking his wrist. The violet watch hummed silently. "I'm driving you to campus today. I don't want you taking the bus in the rain."
"It's raining?" Maya asked, feigning ignorance. She knew it was raining. She had died in it.
"Pouring," Julian said, grabbing his keys. "Let's go."
The interior of the Range Rover was a sensory deprivation tank of black leather and new-car smell. The rain hammered against the tinted glass, but inside, it was silent.
Maya sat in the passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap. She was acutely aware of the door handle. She could open it. She could tuck and roll.
And then what? the voice in her head whispered. He hits the button. You wake up. He gets angry.
"I've been thinking about the theorem I showed you," Julian said, breaking the silence as he navigated the wet streets of downtown Seattle. He drove aggressively, weaving through traffic with a terrifying precision.
"The... closed timelike curve?" Maya asked. She remembered him talking about it weeks ago—or was it years ago? It felt like a lifetime.
"The Grandfather Paradox is lazy thinking," Julian scoffed, glancing at the side mirror. "Everyone assumes that if you go back and change the past, you break the future. But they don't account for elasticity."
He looked at her, his eyes shining with manic intellect.
"Time is like rubber, Maya. You can stretch it. You can twist it. You can tie it in knots. As long as you don't snap the band, it always wants to return to its original shape. The events want to happen."
Maya felt a chill crawl up her spine. "Is that why..." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Is that why we have déjà vu?"
Julian's grip on the steering wheel tightened. He smiled. "Exactly. The brain is just an electrical receiver. Sometimes, when the rubber band snaps back, the brain catches the vibration. It remembers the stretch."
He reached over and placed his hand on her knee. His fingers dug into her jeans.
"You're very smart, Maya. That's why I chose you. Most people would have shattered by now."
Shattered.
The word hung in the air. He wasn't talking about a theory anymore. He was talking about her. He knew. He knew she remembered the loops. He was waiting for her to break, just to see what the pieces looked like.
"I'm not going to shatter," Maya said quietly.
Julian squeezed her knee. "We'll see."
He pulled up to the curb in front of the Psychology building. The rain was coming down in sheets now.
"I'll pick you up at four," Julian said. "Don't be late. I have a surprise for dinner."
"I love surprises," Maya lied.
"I know," Julian said. "Now go. Learn something."
Maya opened the door and stepped out into the deluge. She didn't look back until the Range Rover had disappeared into the grey mist.
Only then did she let her legs buckle.
She collapsed onto a bench in the atrium of the Science Center, gasping for air. Students bustled around her, complaining about exams and wet socks, completely unaware that a woman was falling apart in their midst.
Maya looked at her hands. They were shaking so hard she couldn't clasp them together.
She needed a weapon. But not a gun. A gun wouldn't work on a man who could undo the trigger pull before the bullet hit him. She needed to understand the machine.
Time is like rubber. It wants to return to its original shape.
If Julian was right, then fighting the loop directly was useless. She had to find the snapping point.
She stood up, her resolve hardening into something cold and jagged. She walked past her Psychology lecture hall and headed straight for the Physics Department.
The hallways here were quieter, lined with posters of nebulae and equations she didn't understand. She found an empty lecture hall and ducked inside, locking the door behind her.
She paced the room, stripping off her wet coat. She needed to think. She needed to catalog what she knew.
The Trigger: A manual device on his left wrist.
The Range: Five miles.
The Duration: He always reset to 7:00 AM.
The Flaw: She remembered.
Why did she remember? Julian had called it a "cortisol spike." Trauma. Her brain was fighting the overwrite.
Maya threw her coat onto a desk. As she did, something heavy hit the floor with a metallic thud.
She frowned. She hadn't put anything heavy in her pocket.
She knelt down and picked up her coat. The lining was torn near the bottom hem. She felt something hard inside the fabric, between the wool and the silk.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She reached into the tear and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook.
It wasn't hers.
She opened it. The pages were crinkled, as if they had been soaked in water and dried a hundred times. The handwriting was frantic, scrawled in black ink that bled through the paper.
Maya read the first page.
Loop 12: He used the poison. It tasted like almonds. Don't drink the tea.
Maya dropped the book.
It was her handwriting.
She scrambled backward, staring at the notebook as if it were a bomb. She picked it up again, her hands trembling. She flipped the pages.
Loop 45: He broke my arm. He reset it before the cast dried.
Loop 89: I tried to tell the police. He reset the precinct. He killed the officer in front of me.
Loop 112: The device needs to charge. He takes it off when he showers. But the bathroom door is biometric.
Maya covered her mouth to stifle a sob. She had written this. She had been fighting him for over a hundred loops. She had been leaving herself breadcrumbs, hiding them in the one thing that stayed on her body—her coat.
She flipped to the last written entry. The ink was fresh, but shaky.
Loop 143: The Fall. I know he's going to push me. If you're reading this, the 'hard reset' didn't erase the object. The coat remembers. MATTER remembers.
Maya stared at the words. Matter remembers.
Julian thought only organic brains were glitching. But if this notebook survived the reset... if physical objects could be carried over from one timeline to the next...
Then she could bring something back.
She could bring back a weapon. Or she could bring back proof.
Maya looked at the date on her phone. 10:14 AM.
She had six hours until he picked her up. Six hours until the "surprise."
She took a pen from the desk. She turned to a fresh page in the notebook. Her hand hovered over the paper, the weight of a hundred deaths pressing down on her shoulders.
She wrote:
Loop 144: He thinks I'm acting. He thinks I'm submitting. He's wrong.
She shoved the notebook back into the lining of her coat. She stood up, wiping the tears from her face.
The fear was still there, churning in her gut like black water. But something else was there now, too. A cold, calculating rage.
Julian wanted a tragedy? He wanted a perfect ending?
Maya buttoned her coat. She walked to the door, her reflection in the glass looking back at her. The girl in the reflection looked different. Harder.
"Okay, Julian," she whispered to the empty room. "Let's see who breaks first."
4:00 PM.
The Range Rover was waiting at the curb.
Maya walked down the steps of the university, the rain plastering her hair to her skull. She opened the passenger door and slid inside.
"Right on time," Julian said, smiling. "I like that."
"I didn't want to keep you waiting," Maya said. She buckled her seatbelt.
"Ready for your surprise?"
Maya looked at him. She looked at the pulse of the violet light on his wrist. She looked at the charcoal suit.
She smiled back. It was a terrifying smile—sharp, brittle, and totally hollow.
"I can't wait," she said.
Julian put the car in gear. As they pulled away, he didn't notice that Maya's hand was resting on her coat pocket, clutching the hidden shape of the notebook.
He didn't notice that the mouse had just become a trap.