Black light burns as everything rips itself apart and together and togeth—
“Scar?”
Finian.
I look into his eyes as the lights dim around us. The alarms flare into life, a now-familiar barking spilling from the loudspeaker as my stomach sinks all the way down to my shoes.
“WARNING, WARNING: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.”
“Okay,” I sigh. “I am officially over this day.”
“Scarlett? Finian?”
“We’re here, Zila,” Fin reports.
“The pilot is preparing to fire on us again. Even faster this time.”
“Look,” I hiss into comms, trying to keep from just screaming until my voice breaks into a million pieces along with the rest of me, “maybe I didn’t study temporal physics, maybe I’m just stupid, but if we’re stuck in a loop, shouldn’t everything around us be acting exactly the same?”
“My readings on the station are congruous,” Zila says. “Gravitonic bursts in the tempest, energy signatures, quantum flux—everything about this scenario is identical every time.”
Electricity crackles as Fin’s fingertips brush mine. “You know, you’re not stupid,” he tells me. “I dunno why you talk about yourself like that.”
I look at the gray metal around us. The flashing globes reflected in the big, pretty eyes of the boy holding my hand. And then I see it.
Because, yeah, maybe I’m not the Brain of this squad. But if we’re stuck in this loop and acting different every time, and that trigger-happy pilot out there is also acting different every time, there’s only one explanation.
Eliminate the impossible.
Whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.
“That pilot is stuck in the loop with us,” I say.
“Not just a pretty Face,” Fin smiles.
“I see what you did there.”
His smile fades a little as I look down to his lips. And as I press my mouth to his, as he kisses me back, I realize there are worse ways to die, over and over and over again.
BOOM.