Aurora "Rory" Vance
The safehouse smells like burnt coffee and forty-three weekends of failure.
I find it in Georgetown, beneath a boarded-up bookstore. Twenty minutes in my car before I work up the nerve. Rain hammers the windshield. The street is empty. Just me and worse decisions.
The alley beside the building reeks of piss and wet cardboard. A metal door at the back, no sign. I pull out my lock pick kit. My hands shake.
The lock's old. Simple. I hum without meaning to while I work. Three ascending notes. Quicksort. My brain sorting this into something manageable.
Click.
Inside, stairs drop into darkness. The railing is cold and slick. Each step echoes. The air warms as I descend, thick with electronics humming.
The basement is impossible. Twice the size of the building above. Servers line the walls, lights blinking. Monitors everywhere showing code, security feeds, network maps. And scattered between the technology, Rube Goldberg machines. Dozens of them. Some elaborate, some simple. Some look weeks old, others fresh.
I touch one before I can stop myself.
It activates. Click, clack, thunk. A marble drops into a cup.
There's a note inside.
You always touch things when you're nervous. 44 loops. Still haven't learned.
My stomach drops.
"You came."
I spin, hand going to the knife in my pocket. Graves Monroe steps from the shadows.
He's taller than expected. Lean, like he forgets to eat. Dark hair, amber eyes. Leather jacket worn soft. But it's his left hand that catches my attention. Scars across the knuckles, deliberate damage. Old pain.
He doesn't smile. "Forty-four."
The number punches air from my lungs.
"You've been watching me." My voice comes out harsh.
"Yes."
"Knew I was looping. Knew I was failing."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He moves to a wall covered in papers and photos. "Because I needed to see who you'd become. Every loop, you tried to save him. Holden framed you, destroyed your career, got the FBI hunting you. And you still tried. I needed to know if you could do what's necessary."
"Which is?"
"Letting him die."
The words sit between us like something I could touch if I wanted.
I don't want to.
"The loop resets everyone's memories," I say. "I'm the only one who remembers. How are you..."
"I don't know." He cuts me off. "I woke up in loop one remembering the original timeline. Where you died. FBI raid, bullet meant for me. You bled out at 6:00 PM Sunday. Then the loop started. I've been trying to keep you alive since."
My chest tightens. "So I'm your project? Your variable?"
"You're the person I couldn't save." Something raw crosses his face. "Yes, I've manipulated you. Lied. Used you. Because the alternative was accepting you're dead."
Too intimate. Too honest.
I step back. "Why does Holden have to die?"
"Because stopping ORACLE isn't enough." He pulls up code on the monitor. "Loop six, we stole the source code. Loop nine, corrupted the servers. Loop fifteen, exposed his partnerships. Loop twenty-eight, destroyed the mainframe. Every time, ORACLE still launched. He has backups we can't find. The only constant is his death."
I move closer. The code looks familiar.
Too familiar.
"That's my code," I whisper.
"Yes."
"But I wrote facial recognition. For missing kids. This is..." I scroll through files, stomach sinking. "Behavioral prediction. AI consciousness."
"ORACLE." His voice flattens. "An AI that predicts human behavior with ninety-seven percent accuracy. Holden built it using your research. The facial recognition software you designed to save children became the architecture for global surveillance."
My legs give. I grab the desk.
All those nights at MIT. All those algorithms coded with shaking hands and determination to do good. To matter. To prove a foster kid from Portland could change the world.
I changed it. Just not how I meant.
"I didn't know." Ash in my mouth.
"I know. That's what makes it worse. You built this with good intentions. Holden weaponized them."
The air is too thick. Smells like burnt coffee and failure and the death of every good thing I thought I was.
"ORACLE launches Sunday night," Graves continues. "Holden's partnering with authoritarian regimes. Anyone willing to pay. If it goes live, privacy ends. Free will ends. Your code becomes the cage holding humanity."
I'm going to be sick.
"I can't stop it alone," he says. "Forty-three loops I've tried. I need your help. You know ORACLE's architecture. You understand Holden. Forty-eight hours. We stop ORACLE, break the loop, or we both burn."
"If I say no?"
"Loop forty-four plays out like the others. Holden dies. ORACLE launches anyway. Loop resets. You forget. I watch you fail for the forty-fifth time."
The exhaustion in his voice makes me really look at him. Bone-deep tired from carrying something too heavy too long.
"You could've told me earlier," I say. "Loop one. Why wait?"
"Telling you changed things. Loop eight, you didn't believe me. Loop fourteen, you had a breakdown. Loop nineteen, we almost succeeded until you saw Holden die. The guilt broke you. You walked into traffic at 5:30 PM." He pauses. "I had to find the right version of you who could handle the truth."
"What makes me different this time?"
He watches me with uncomfortable intensity. "This time you let him die. You stood in that penthouse and chose not to save him. That's the version I've been waiting for."
Should feel like condemnation. Feels like permission instead.
"Forty-eight hours," I hear myself say. "We stop ORACLE. Then I never want to see you again."
His mouth quirks. "You say that every tenth loop."
"Why will I hate you?"
"Because I'll ask you to break laws. Commit crimes. Become someone your foster families wouldn't recognize. You'll blame me for showing you who you are under all that performed goodness."
"I'm not performing."
"Yes you are. You've been performing goodness your whole life because foster care taught you being good might make someone keep you. But you're capable of more than good, Aurora. You're capable of necessary."
Before I can respond, he turns to the evidence wall. "Come here."
I shouldn't follow.
I do anyway.
The wall overwhelms. Photos, maps, documentation. Red strings connecting events.
Then I see them. Photos of me with Graves.
Laughing, my hand on his arm. Working on code, shoulders touching. Asleep on a couch with a blanket over me.
We look comfortable. Close.
"What are these?"
"Proof you've trusted me before. In some loops we barely spoke. In others we got close."
My hand lifts to one photo. Me and Graves on a rooftop, smiling like I don't have a care.
"I don't remember this."
"You never do. For you, every loop is the first time. For me, it's the forty-fourth version."
I pull another photo. This one different. Intimate.
Me and Graves tangled together. His face in my hair. My arms around him.
"What loop was this?"
Silence.
"Graves. What loop?"
"Twenty-two. Six hours before you died. You said you didn't believe in fate but you believed in choice. Then you chose me."
The air gets heavier.
"And then I died."
"Yes. Trying to save me."
I stare at the photo. At a version of myself unburdened. Who made a choice and didn't regret it.
"I don't know you."
"You do." He finally looks at me. "You just don't remember."
Forty-three loops. Forty-three versions. Forty-three lifetimes I can't access.
The most dangerous thing here isn't the technology or FBI or ticking clock.
It's how Graves Monroe looks at me.
Like I'm worth remembering.
Like I'm worth saving.
Even if it destroys us both.