I'm still staring at the photograph when I hear footsteps again.
This time they're not trying to be quiet.
Heavy boots echo through the hallway, getting closer. Whoever sent me this picture isn't done with me yet. Part of me wants to slam the door and pretend none of this is happening. The other part – the part that's been killing vampires for two years – knows that running away won't solve anything.
Besides, where would I go? Back to my bed where Adrian's body is slowly getting cold?
The footsteps stop right outside my door.
"I know you're listening," says a voice that makes my blood turn to ice.
It's my voice. Exactly my voice. But colder. Like someone took all the warmth out of it and left behind pure calculation.
"Open the door, Luna. We need to talk."
I grip the photograph so tight my knuckles go white. This is insane. People don't just run into perfect copies of themselves. Especially not at four in the morning while standing over their dead boyfriend.
But then again, people don't usually get stuck in time loops either, and I've been handling that pretty well.
"Who are you?" I call through the door.
"I think you already know."
And the sick thing is, I do. That voice, that tone – it's me talking to myself like I talk to Adrian right before I kill him. Clinical. Detached. Like emotion is just another weakness to overcome.
I slide the chain lock and twist the deadbolt. The door swings open.
She looks exactly like me. Same height, same dark curly hair, same scar by my left eye from when I tried to shave with Dad's razor when I was seven. But everything else is wrong.
Her hair is pulled back in a tight military braid instead of the messy ponytail I always wear. Her clothes are all black leather – pants, jacket, boots that probably cost more than my rent. And her eyes... God, her eyes are like looking into a mirror that reflects nothing but ice.
"Hello, sister," she says, and steps into my apartment without being invited.
"I'm not your sister." I back away, keeping my hands loose at my sides. "I don't have a sister."
"No. But you have versions." She closes the door behind her and turns the lock. The click sounds like a gunshot in the quiet apartment. "Infinite versions, actually. Most of them are dead now."
She walks past me toward the bedroom, moving with the kind of fluid grace that comes from serious combat training. I follow her because what else am I supposed to do? She's wearing my face and talking about infinite versions like it's no big deal.
When she sees Adrian's body, she doesn't even flinch.
"Messy work," she says, circling the bed. "You used to be more precise."
"Used to be?" I step between her and Adrian's body, even though he's past caring. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you're losing your edge. Eight hundred and forty-seven loops, and you're still playing house with a dead vampire." She reaches into her jacket and pulls out a knife identical to mine. Same silver blade, same engraved handle. "You were supposed to graduate by now."
"Graduate to what?"
She finally looks at me directly, and it's like staring into a funhouse mirror. Everything familiar twisted into something sharp and dangerous.
"To this," she says, and lunges.
I throw myself sideways as her blade whistles past my ear. She moves fast – faster than I remember being able to move – but her fighting style is familiar. It should be. It's exactly the same as mine.
I grab the lamp from my nightstand and swing it at her head. She ducks and kicks out, catching me in the ribs. Pain explodes through my chest, but I manage to stay on my feet.
"Who taught you to fight?" she asks, feinting left before slashing right. I jump back and feel the knife cut through my t-shirt.
"Same person who taught you, apparently." I grab the chair from my desk and hurl it at her. She sidesteps easily and the chair crashes into the wall, leaving a hole in the drywall.
"Clever girl." She's not even breathing hard. "But I've had more practice."
We circle each other in the narrow space between my bed and the wall. Adrian's body lies between us like some kind of gruesome referee. The smell of blood fills the air, mixing with the scent of old coffee and fear-sweat.
"What do you want?" I ask, looking for an opening.
"To clean up your mess." She gestures at Adrian with her knife. "This isn't how it's supposed to go. You kill him at 11:59. Clean, precise, efficient. Not this amateur hour butchery."
"I didn't kill him." The words come out before I can stop them.
She pauses mid-step. For just a second, something flickers across her face. Surprise? Confusion?
"Of course you did. You always kill him."
"Not this time. I woke up and he was already dead."
She's looking at me like I just told her the sky is purple. "That's impossible. The loop doesn't work that way."
"Then maybe the loop is broken."
The words hang in the air between us. I can see her processing this information, running through possibilities in her head the same way I do when I'm trying to solve a problem.
"Show me your hands," she says suddenly.
I hold them up. Blood still cakes my palms and fingernails, dark and sticky.
"Your memories of last night."
"Gone. I remember going to sleep around midnight. Next thing I know, it's 3:47 and he's dead."
She lowers her knife slightly. "That shouldn't be possible. The temporal framework is designed to preserve conscious experience during resets."
"Temporal framework? What are you talking about?"
Instead of answering, she walks to my window and peers through the blinds. Her whole body is tense, like she's expecting someone else to show up.
"We need to move," she says. "If the loop is destabilizing, this location isn't safe."
"I'm not going anywhere with you until you tell me who you are."
She turns back to me, and for a moment her expression softens. Just slightly. Like she remembered something she tried to forget.
"I'm you, Luna. The version of you that figured out how to break free." She runs her fingers along the edge of her knife. "I graduated from the program three years ago. Been working for the Time Bureau ever since."
"Time Bureau?"
"Time Oversight and Regulation Department. We monitor temporal anomalies and clean up paradoxes." She slides the knife back into her jacket. "People like you."
"People like me aren't supposed to exist. When someone gets caught in a causal loop this complex, they either break free naturally or collapse into psychosis within the first hundred iterations." She sits down on my desk chair, avoiding Adrian's body. "But you just kept going. And going. And going."
"So what? I'm stubborn. Sue me."
"Stubborn doesn't cover it. You're an anomaly. A glitch in the system that's starting to affect other timelines." She pulls out a tablet from her jacket and swipes through what looks like security footage. "Look at this."
The screen shows dozens of different versions of my apartment. In some, the walls are painted different colors. In others, the furniture is arranged differently. But in all of them, there's a version of me killing a version of Adrian.
"Every time you reset, you create a new branch timeline. Most of them collapse after a few hours. But some of them stabilize." She scrolls through more footage. "Right now, there are approximately two thousand active Luna variants across seventeen different reality clusters."
I sit down heavily on my bed, careful not to look at Adrian. "That's impossible."
"Is it? You've been doing the impossible for two years." She leans forward. "The problem is, all those timeline branches are starting to bleed into each other. Reality can't sustain this kind of paradox indefinitely."
"What happens when it can't sustain it anymore?"
"Universal collapse. Every timeline, every reality, every possible version of existence gets compressed into a single point and then..." She makes a gesture like an explosion. "Nothing."
The room feels like it's spinning. I press my palms against my temples, trying to process what she's telling me.
"So what? You're here to kill me? Stop the anomaly at the source?"
"No." She stands up and walks to my window again. "I'm here to help you find the anchor."
"The what?"
"The temporal anchor. The fixed point that's keeping all these loops stable. Without it, the collapse accelerates exponentially." She checks her watch. "We have approximately seventy-one hours and thirty-two minutes."
"And if we don't find it?"
"Then every version of Adrian dies for real. Every version of you dies for real. And every person in every possible reality dies with them."
I stare at her, trying to figure out if she's lying. But why would she lie about something this insane?
"How do I know you're telling the truth?"
She walks back to the bed and looks down at Adrian's body. For just a second, her cold mask slips, and I see something that looks almost like pain.
"Because I've been where you are. I know what it feels like to love someone you have to kill over and over again." She touches the silver bracelet on her wrist – identical to mine. "I know what it does to your soul."
"Then why did you keep doing it?"
"Because someone convinced me it was the only way to save him." She looks up at me. "They were wrong."
Before I can ask what she means, she's moving again. Back to the window, peering through the blinds with the intensity of someone who's expecting trouble.
"They're coming," she says.
"Who's coming?"
"The cleanup crew. They don't know I'm here, and they can't find out." She turns to me. "Do you trust me?"
"No."
"Smart girl. But you don't have a choice." She pulls out a small device that looks like a TV remote crossed with a phone. "This will take us somewhere safe. Somewhere we can figure out what happened to your timeline."
"What about Adrian?"
She glances at his body one more time. "He's beyond help. For now."
"For now? What does that mean?"
"It means if we find the anchor in time, none of this will have happened. He'll be alive, you'll be free, and reality won't end." She extends her hand to me. "But we have to go. Now."
I can hear sirens in the distance, getting closer. How did they know to come here? Who called them?
"What happens if I say no?"
"Then you get arrested for murder, reality collapses in seventy-one hours, and everyone dies." She presses a button on her device. "Including him."
The sirens are definitely getting closer. Red and blue lights start flashing through my blinds.
"Decide, Luna. Trust me, or trust the system that put you in this loop in the first place."
I look at Adrian one more time. His face is peaceful, like he's just sleeping. But I know he's not coming back this time. Not unless she's telling the truth about the anchor.
I grab her hand.
The world dissolves into white light.
End of Chapter 2