“What the hells, Fin … ?”
His brow is creased in a deep scowl. “We’ve done this before.”
“But that’s … that’s not possible… .”
He raises one pale eyebrow, somehow still managing to find a smile despite everything. “Scar, believe me when I say that I’ve imagined kissing you enough to realize when I’ve done it twice in the same day.”
A voice rings over comms. “Scarlett? Finian?”
“Zila?”
“Are you both … well?”
“I have no idea.” Fin squares his jaw, his voice growing firm. “Look … this might sound insane, but does there happen to be an old, beat-up space station on your viewscreen right now? A dark matter storm? And a Terran fighter threatening to blow us all to sad little pieces?”
“I take it you are also experiencing a sensation that suggests this moment is repeating itself.”
Fin looks at me, his lips pinched thin.
“Maker’s breath … ,” I whisper.
“We’ll be right up,” Fin says.
The adrenaline of almost dying and almost kissing and then definitely not dying but, yes, definitely kissing is now being replaced by the impossibility of all this. My legs feel like jelly, my brain buzzes in my skull. But I hold out my hand to Fin, and together, we’re running up the corridor to the cockpit. Again, we find Zila seated in the pilot’s chair, again looking frazzled. Again, on our viewscreens, I can see that dumpy-looking space station in a sea of starless darkness, and that angry Terran pilot.
Again.
Again.
But instead of just a tiiiiiiny bit uncertain, now the pilot sounds all the way sideways. “What the hell is going on here?” Zila is looking at Finian, chewing one lock of long, curly hair.
“Temporal distortion?” Fin says.
“I can surmise no other adequate explanation,” she replies.
“Shiiiiiit,” he whispers. “Ouroboros effect?”
“It is only theoretical.” Our Brain shakes her head, glancing at the station, a pulse of brief purple light flaring in the dark storm beyond. “And despite our lessons at the academy in temporal mechanics, I would have said unthinkable.”
“Look,” I say, glaring at the pair. “The only temporal mechanics lecture I ever took, I spent flirting with Jeremy and Johnathan McClain—”
（Ex-boyfriends #35 and #36. Pros: Identical twins, thus, each as hot as the next. Cons: Identical twins, thus, easily confused in the dark. Whoops.）
“—and in case you missed it, there’s a very annoyed pilot—”
The commset crackles, cutting me off.
“You are in restricted Terran space,” the aforementioned pilot says. “You have fifteen seconds to transmit ident codes, or I will open fire!”
“We seem to be experiencing a temporal distortion, Scarlett,” Zila explains. “You, me, Finian, our ship … as outlandish as it sounds, we all seem to be repeating the same few minutes, over and over.”
“Ten seconds!”
“It’s a time loop, Scar,” Fin says. “We’re in some kind of time loop.”
“Ending with our deaths,” Zila nods. “And resetting to the moment we arrived. Like Ouroboros. The snake from Egyptian and Greek mythology that eats its own tail.”
I scowl at the pair of them. “That’s impossible.”
“It is extremely unlikely,” Zila agrees. “But once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable—”
“You have been warned!” the pilot spits. “I am opening fire!”
All around us, alarms flare into life, lights flashing and Syldrathi symbols illuminating, and a loudspeaker barks.
“WARNING, WARNING: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.”
A tiny line of light appears on our scanners. I look to the others. We have no engines. No navigation. No defenses.
“Do not be afraid,” Zila says.
“It doesn’t hurt much,” Fin murmurs.
My hand reaches for his, fear turning my belly cold and hard.
“You better be right about this,” I breathe.
“Well, in case I’m not … you wanna make out some more?”
BOOM.
2.3
SCARLETT
Black light burns. I can taste the sound around me as everything rips itself apart and together and together and togeth—
“Scar?”
I open my eyes, see another pair before mine.
Finian.
“What … ,” I ask.