Artemis didn't move for a long moment, his hands locked around the steering wheel as the engine idled beneath him, the steady vibration travelling up through his arms in a way that felt far too real for something his mind was still trying to reject.
The road stretched ahead exactly as it had before, the same bend, the same pale wash of afternoon light across the scrub, the same dog standing in the verge like a fixed point in a world that had quietly reset itself without asking.
He blinked slowly, once, then again, waiting for the edges of the scene to distort the way they would in a dream when you stared too hard at them.
Nothing shifted. The dog didn't move. The air didn't flicker. Even the faint ticking of the engine sounded identical to what it had been moments before, steady and grounded and completely at odds with what he knew had just happened.
Dreams blurred.
This didn't.
Every second sat in his head intact, sharp and unyielding. The sound of the fence snapping. The front door splintering inward.
The weight of bodies forcing through the hallway. The moment it stopped being a fight and became something else entirely.
His grip tightened.
"No," he said quietly. "That's not how that works."
The dog shifted slightly, its attention still fixed somewhere beyond the road, as though whatever had drawn it there hadn't changed at all.
That was enough to push him forward.
Arty reached over and killed the engine, the sudden silence stripping everything back to the bare essentials.
He stepped out of the ute and shut the door with controlled force, his boots settling into the dirt as he stood there for a moment, letting the world sit around him without interference.
The air felt the same.
That made it worse.
He scanned the road, the verge, the tree line beyond, searching for something that would confirm this was explainable, something that followed rules he could work with.
Nothing offered itself. The quiet stretched out in every direction, not empty, just… waiting.
Arty exhaled slowly and reached back into the ute, his hand closing around the wrench on the passenger side floor.
The weight grounded him immediately, familiar and dependable in a way nothing else currently was.
"If this is real," he muttered, stepping away from the vehicle, "then it's already happened."
The words settled into place as a working truth.
Not confusion.
Not panic.
A problem.
He understood problems.
His eyes shifted toward the direction the dog had been watching, then beyond it to the shallow dip in the land where the scrub thickened just enough to hide movement until it was already too close.
The first time, he hadn't looked.
That mistake wasn't happening again.
Arty crossed the road at a steady pace, his steps measured and deliberate, his focus locked on the tree line as he moved closer.
The ground sloped slightly underfoot, dry dirt and scattered stones shifting just enough to remind him to stay balanced, but his attention never left the space ahead.
It didn't take long.
A shape moved between the trees.
Subtle at first, easy to miss unless you were expecting it, but once seen it couldn't be unseen.
The figure staggered forward, correcting itself without rhythm, its posture wrong in a way that immediately aligned with the memory still sitting fresh in his mind.
It was earlier.
Much earlier.
"Right, I've got you now," he said quietly. "So this is where you started from."
He grabbed a wrench from the back of his ute, adjusting his grip as he walked forward, closing the distance while he still controlled the timing.
Waiting would only let it reach the road, then the yard, then the house, and everything after that would fall back into the same pattern.
He wasn't letting that happen.
The figure emerged from the scrub, its head low, one arm dragging slightly while the other hung loose, its movement driven by something that didn't require coordination or awareness in the way a normal body would.
Up close, it would be worse.
He already knew that.
The thing didn't react immediately, its path carrying it forward without deviation, giving him just enough time to position himself properly before it registered him.
When it did, the shift was instant.
The head snapped up.
The body tightened.
It lunged.
Arty stepped into it.
The wrench came across in a controlled arc, connecting with the side of its head with a clean, solid crack that dropped it immediately.
The body hit the ground hard, dust rising briefly before settling again, he stepped back, watching, waiting.
Nothing.
"Nope no way, not this time, Arty had no hesitation," he said under his breath.
He gave it a few more seconds anyway, his eyes fixed on it as the memory pushed forward again.
There had been something.
A glint.
He crouched slowly, keeping his weight balanced as he used his boot to shift the body slightly, turning the head to expose the damaged side.
There it was, faint, subtle, easy to miss.
He leaned in, narrowing his eyes as he focused on the point where the light caught something inside the skull differently than it should have.
It wasn't obvious. It wasn't clean. It was buried within the damage, something that looked almost like a reflection until you realised it wasn't behaving like one.
He reached down, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then followed through.
His fingers brushed against something solid embedded within the fractured structure. It wasn't bone. It wasn't soft tissue. It was something else entirely.
He adjusted his grip and pulled.
A small, jagged piece came free into his hand.
Dark at first glance, then shifting as the light hit it properly, revealing a faint internal shimmer that didn't match anything natural he could place.
It had weight, more than it should, and the surface felt structured in a way that suggested it hadn't formed randomly.
"What are you?" he murmured.
The object offered no answer.
He turned it once more between his fingers, noting the way the light seemed to move within it rather than across it, then slipped it into his pocket without overthinking it.
"Later," he said quietly.
He stood again, scanning the area, still quiet, that simply wouldn't last long.
His gaze shifted back toward the road, then toward his property beyond it, the house sitting there exactly as it had before, unchanged and completely inadequate for what he now knew was coming.
The fence had failed, the door had failed, the house had failed, that wasn't happening again.
He turned and headed back toward the ute, his pace quicker now, his thoughts aligning into something more structured as he replayed the sequence of events, not as a victim this time, but as someone looking for points of control.
Time.
Position.
Preparation.
Those were variables.
Variables could be changed.
He reached the ute and paused, one hand on the door, his eyes drifting back toward the scrub.
Movement.
Another one.
Further back this time, partially obscured, but unmistakable once he focused on it.
That changed things.
"They're not staggered," he said quietly. "They're layered."
That meant the first one wasn't the only problem.
It had never been the only problem.
He opened the door and climbed in, starting the engine again as his mind adjusted, recalculating based on new information.
The first run had been survival.
This one was data.
Data changed outcomes.
He pulled forward, this time not driving straight past the house, instead slowing slightly as he approached it, his eyes scanning the structure with a more critical eye.
Front door.
Weak.
Frame.
Worse.
Windows.
Breakable.
Every entry point was a liability.
Every second spent inside would be borrowed time.
He continued past it, heading toward the shed instead, his thoughts already shifting toward materials, tools, anything that could buy him time before things escalated beyond control again.
A new thought pushed forward.
Not just survival.
Not just defence.
Control the approach.
Meet them early.
Reduce numbers before they reached the house.
His grip tightened slightly on the wheel as the idea settled into something more concrete.
"If I can get ahead of it," he said quietly, "then I don't have to fight them all at once."
The logic held.
For now.
He slowed the ute near the shed and cut the engine again, stepping out with the wrench still in hand as he looked over the area, seeing it differently now, not as a place to live, but as a space to shape.
Something could be done here.
Not enough.
Not yet.
Time was still the problem.
He glanced back toward the road.
Movement again.
Closer.
Faster than before.
"Right," he said under his breath, the pressure building again, familiar now but no less dangerous. "So it's not just repeating."
That changed everything.
He turned back toward the shed, moving quickly now, knowing that whatever advantage he thought he had was already thinner than he wanted it to be.
The timeline wasn't waiting, it was catching up, this time, he intended to meet it standing.
Artemis stood beside the shed with the wrench still in his hand and watched the movement near the road sharpen into certainty.
One shape became two, two became enough to stop pretending he could patch over the same mistake with slightly better timing and a heavier swing.
The house was done.
That conclusion settled into him with a clarity he didn't bother arguing with, because he had already seen how it ended.
He knew how fast the fence failed, how little the front door mattered once enough weight hit it, how quickly a hallway turned into a trap when panic and bad angles took over.
The only reason he had even looked at the place a second time was habit, the stubborn little instinct that told him home was where you made your stand when everything else went wrong.
Home had already lost.
His eyes moved from the house to the ute, then back toward the road where another figure appeared beyond the verge, cutting across the scrub at the same broken, relentless pace as the others.
"Right," he said quietly. "So we stop thinking small."
He stepped into the shed long enough to grab what mattered most. A half-full water bottle from the workbench. A small torch from a shelf near the door.
A faded rag that he shoved into the passenger footwell without quite knowing why, only that it might become useful later. His gaze passed over nails, timber, wire, mesh, all the things he had been mentally turning into a defence line for the last few minutes.
For the first time he saw them not as resources he could use but as anchors that would keep him tied to a place already proven weak.
Static defence only worked if the ground deserved defending.
This ground didn't.