The white light fades, and I'm standing in what looks like an abandoned warehouse.
My legs feel like jelly. Whatever that teleportation thing was, it definitely wasn't designed with passenger comfort in mind. I lean against a concrete pillar and try not to throw up.
"Where are we?" I ask, but when I look around, Hunter Luna is gone.
Great. Fantastic. She drags me away from my apartment, tells me reality is about to collapse, and then disappears like some kind of temporal Uber driver.
The warehouse is massive and empty except for a few broken shipping containers scattered around. Dust particles float in shafts of early morning sunlight streaming through grimy windows near the ceiling. The place smells like rust and old motor oil.
On the ground where Hunter Luna was standing, there's a small black device about the size of a smartphone. It's beeping softly, and numbers are counting down on the screen.
71:47:23... 71:47:22... 71:47:21...
A countdown. Less than seventy-two hours until... what? Universal collapse? The end of everything?
No pressure or anything.
I pick up the device. It's heavier than it looks, and warm to the touch. The screen shows more than just the countdown – there's a map with several red dots scattered across Los Angeles, and what looks like some kind of energy readout fluctuating between different colored zones.
One of the red dots is pulsing brighter than the others. It's located about six blocks from here, in what I recognize as the parking garage under the Meridian Building downtown. Adrian's favorite spot.
He goes there sometimes when he needs to think. Says the underground concrete helps block out the noise of the city. I never asked what kind of noise he was talking about. Just another mystery about my vampire boyfriend that I never bothered to solve.
Maybe it's time to start paying attention to the details.
I slip the device into my pocket and head for the exit. The warehouse door is heavy and rusted, but it opens with a loud screech that echoes through the empty space. Outside, the streets are starting to fill with early morning commuters. Regular people heading to regular jobs, completely unaware that their reality might have less than three days left.
The Meridian Building is a fifteen-minute walk through downtown LA. I pass coffee shops full of people checking their phones, office workers hurrying to catch buses, homeless camps tucked into doorways and alleys. Everything looks normal. Everything looks real.
But I can feel something underneath it all. Like the whole city is sitting on a foundation made of glass, and somebody just started tapping it with a hammer.
The parking garage entrance is on the east side of the building. I've been here dozens of times over the past two years, usually following Adrian when I was feeling paranoid about what he did during our time apart. The security guard recognizes me and waves me through without checking ID.
"He's already down there," the guard says, not looking up from his newspaper. "Level B3, same as always."
I stop walking. "He's here? Now?"
"Yeah, showed up about an hour ago. Looked pretty rough, if you ask me."
My heart starts pounding. Adrian is here. Alive. But that's impossible. I saw his body. I saw the knife in his chest. Hunter Luna confirmed he was dead.
Unless...
I take the elevator down to B3. The parking garage is dimly lit and mostly empty at this hour. My footsteps echo off the concrete walls as I walk toward the spot where Adrian usually parks his motorcycle.
The bike is there. A black Ducati that he babies like it's made of gold instead of metal. But no Adrian.
That's when I see it.
On the wall behind the parking space, someone has written a message in what looks like fresh blood. The letters are shaky and uneven, like whoever wrote it was in a hurry. Or dying.
"The one you killed isn't me, and I'm not me either."
I stare at the words until they start to blur together. What the hell does that mean? The one I killed isn't him? But I've killed Adrian hundreds of times. Eight hundred and forty-seven times, to be exact.
Or have I?
I reach out to touch the blood, and the world explodes.
Suddenly I'm not in the parking garage anymore. I'm standing in my apartment, but it's different. The walls are blue instead of white. The furniture is arranged differently. And there's Adrian on my bed, but he's wearing a white coat like a doctor.
I watch myself – another version of myself – drive a knife into his chest. His eyes go wide with shock and betrayal.
"Luna, why?" he whispers. "I was trying to help you."
Then the scene shifts.
Now I'm in what looks like a laboratory. Adrian is strapped to a metal table, unconscious. He's wearing different clothes – a black suit this time. Another version of me is standing over him with a syringe filled with something silver.
"I'm sorry," she whispers as she injects the liquid into his neck. "But you're not real. None of this is real."
Adrian's body convulses once, then goes still.
Another shift.
This time I'm on a rooftop. The city spreads out below us, lights twinkling like stars. Adrian is wearing jeans and a t-shirt, looking more human than I've ever seen him. We're talking, laughing, holding hands.
Then another version of me appears behind him with a gun.
"I love you," she says, and pulls the trigger.
Adrian falls forward, blood spreading across his shirt. But before he hits the ground, he looks at me with these sad, knowing eyes.
"I love all of you too," he says. "Every version. Every choice. Every death."
The visions keep coming. Faster now. Adrian dying in a hospital bed while Luna-the-nurse injects poison into his IV. Adrian burning alive while Luna-the-firefighter watches from across the street. Adrian drowning in a swimming pool while Luna-the-lifeguard holds him underwater.
Hundreds of deaths. Hundreds of different Adrians. Hundreds of different mes.
But in every single vision, right before he dies, Adrian says the same thing:
"Find the real one."
I pull my hand away from the bloody wall and stumble backward. My head is spinning, and I can taste copper in my mouth. The visions were so real I could smell the blood, feel the weight of the weapons, hear Adrian's voice saying my name.
But that's not possible. I've only lived through one timeline. My timeline. The same Tuesday, October thirteenth, eight hundred and forty-seven times.
Haven't I?
"You're starting to remember."
I spin around. Adrian is standing by his motorcycle, but he looks different. Older somehow. Tired. His clothes are the same ones he was wearing in my apartment – black t-shirt, dark jeans – but they're clean. No blood.
"Adrian?" My voice comes out as a croak. "How are you alive?"
"That's a complicated question." He walks toward me slowly, hands visible at his sides like he's approaching a wild animal. "Which version of alive are you asking about?"
"The version where you're not dead in my bed with a knife through your heart."
"Ah. That version." He stops about ten feet away. Close enough to talk, far enough to run if I decide to kill him again. "I'm alive because the Adrian in your apartment wasn't me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what the message says. The one you killed isn't me. And I'm not me either." He gestures to himself. "This body, this face, this personality – it's all just a projection. A role I've been playing."
"A role? For who?"
"For you. For the Luna who needed a vampire boyfriend to kill every night." He sits down on the hood of a nearby car, suddenly looking exhausted. "But there are other Lunas who need different things. Different versions of me to kill."
I feel like I'm drowning in cold water. "How many versions?"
"Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands by now." He runs his fingers through his hair – that familiar nervous gesture that I always found endearing. "Every time you reset, the system creates a new Adrian specifically designed for your timeline's needs. Doctor Adrian for Luna-the-nurse. Lawyer Adrian for Luna-the-prosecutor. Innocent Adrian for Luna-the-serial-killer."
"The system?" I lean against the wall, trying to process what he's telling me. "What system?"
"The same one that's been keeping you trapped for two years. The one that's designed to make you think you're saving the world by killing me over and over again." He looks up at me with those gray eyes that I've stared into while committing murder nearly a thousand times. "Luna, you're not saving anyone. You never were."
"That's not true. Every time I don't kill you, something terrible happens at midnight. The whole city—"
"Gets destroyed in your timeline while thousands of other cities in other timelines survive just fine." He stands up and walks closer. "The disaster isn't real. It's just another projection. Another way to make sure you keep playing your part."
"What part?"
"The part of the perfect killer. The werewolf who's so dedicated to protecting others that she'll sacrifice her own happiness over and over again." His voice is getting angry now. "Do you know what they call you in the reports? Subject 847. The Martyr Complex."
Subject 847. Like I'm some kind of lab rat.
"Who are 'they'?"
"The people who built this prison. The ones who decided that a werewolf with temporal abilities was too dangerous to exist in the real world." He's close enough now that I can smell his cologne – that woody scent that always made me feel safe. "The ones who convinced you that love requires sacrifice."
"But you're real. I can touch you. I can—"
"You can interact with me because that's how the system works. But I'm not the Adrian you fell in love with." His face is so sad it makes my chest hurt. "That Adrian has been dead for two years. Died the first time you killed him."
"No." I shake my head. "That's not possible. I remember falling in love with you. I remember our first date, our first kiss—"
"You remember the story they programmed you to remember. False memories implanted to make the scenario more believable." He reaches out like he wants to touch my face, then stops himself. "Luna, think. Have you ever been outside LA during a loop? Have you ever called your friends or family? Have you ever tried to leave?"
I open my mouth to say yes, of course I have, but the words won't come.
Because I haven't. In eight hundred and forty-seven loops, I've never once tried to call my parents. Never tried to visit my sister in Portland. Never even wondered why my life consists of nothing but this apartment, this neighborhood, this endless cycle of murder and reset.
"The real Luna would have tried to escape by now," Adrian says gently. "The real Luna would have asked more questions. Would have demanded answers instead of just accepting that this is how things have to be."
"Then who am I?"
"You're a copy. A very good copy, with most of her memories and all of her personality. But you're still just a simulation designed to play out this scenario until..." He trails off.
"Until what?"
"Until they get what they want."
"Which is?"
"Proof that even the strongest werewolf can be broken. Turned into a weapon that kills on command without questioning orders." He pulls out a device similar to the countdown timer in my pocket. "The time anchor isn't some mystical object that holds reality together. It's the control mechanism for your simulation. And they've decided it's time to shut you down."
The countdown in my pocket beeps. I pull it out and see the numbers: 71:23:17... 71:23:16...
"Seventy-one hours until my deletion?"
"Unless you find the anchor first and break free. But Luna..." He steps closer, and this time he does touch my face. His skin is cold but familiar. "Even if you escape, you'll still be a copy. You'll never be the real Luna Martinez."
I stare into his eyes – these gray eyes that I've looked into while killing him so many times – and see something I've never noticed before.
Recognition. Like he's looking at someone he used to know.
"Adrian," I whisper. "How long have you known?"
"Known what?"
"That I'm not real."
He's quiet for a long moment. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely audible.
"Since the first time you killed me."
End of Chapter 3