“The … ,” Fin says.
“Fuck,” we murmur.
I look around, déjà vu spidering up my spine again. We’re outside the engine room again. And, joy of joys, we are not, in fact, dead.
Again.
I look at Finian, and even though all this is impossible, I’m still aware of how close we’re standing. A tiiiiiiiiiny part of me is conscious that the last time we did this, this pale, beautiful boy kissed me about five seconds from now. But the rest of me, the sensible part of me, is screaming at my lady parts to shut the hells up because who cares what happened when we did this before, Ovaries, the point is, WE DID THIS BEFORE.
“What the hells, Finian?” I whisper.
“Finian?” a voice crackles. “Scarlett?”
Fin taps comms, speaks quick. “We’re here, Zila.”
“Again,” I say.
“I suggest you both get up here. Quickly.”
The impossibility of all this is turning my legs to jelly, and my brain is buzzing in my skull as Fin grabs my hand and we run up the corridor to the cockpit. Again, we find Zila in the pilot’s chair, the roiling darkness, the brief bursts of light, the space station. Everything is the same as when we did this before, and oh Maker’s breath, we did this before, we did this BEFORE.
Except this time …
“Where’s the pilot?” Fin asks. “The Terran who blew us up?”
“Her ship is out there,” Zila nods. “I can see it on our sensors. But she has not initiated radio contact.”
“Wait … ,” I stare at Zila and Fin, my brain running so hard my head aches. “You … I thought you said we were in a time loop.”
“That is the most plausible conclusion, given current data.”
“Well, then shouldn’t she be yelling at us for clearance by now? Shouldn’t she be doing the same thing, over and over?”
Zila chews the end of a curl, staring at the tiny blip on our scopes. She types rapidly on the flickering console, murmuring almost to herself.
“Interesting.”
The alarms flare into life, lights flashing and Syldrathi symbols illuminating and a loudspeaker barking.
“WARNING, WARNING: MISSILE LOCK DETECTED.”
“Oh Maker’s sake, not again … ,” I mutter.
My hand reaches and finds Finian’s.
He looks into my eyes, squeezes tight.
Zila stares at the fighter on the sensors, still chewing that lock of hair.
“Very interesting.”
BOOM.
2.4
SCARLETT
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.