I spend the rest of the day walking around LA like a ghost.
My mind keeps spinning back to Maria's words. Don't trust anyone who says they're here to help. Especially not me. What the hell did that mean? If she's not trying to help me, then why give me the map? Why warn me about Hunter Luna?
And that photograph. The woman with familiar eyes standing next to someone who looked exactly like Adrian. Who were they?
By evening, I'm exhausted from thinking in circles. I grab dinner from a taco truck near MacArthur Park – two fish tacos that taste like cardboard – and sit on a bench watching people walk by. Normal people with normal problems. Jobs to go to, families to call, lives that move forward instead of sideways.
I check the countdown timer.
57:23:41... 57:23:40... 57:23:39...
Less than fifty-eight hours left. Whatever's happening to me, whatever choice I need to make, it's coming fast.
The sun sets around seven-thirty. I kill time at a bookstore, flipping through magazines without reading them. Then a movie theater, where I sit through half of some action film without following the plot. Anything to avoid going back to my apartment and thinking about what Maria showed me.
But eventually, there's nowhere else to go.
I get back to my building around eleven-fifteen. The coffee shop is dark, chairs stacked on tables. No sign of Maria or the cleanup crew from this morning. The whole place looks normal. Peaceful, even.
I climb the stairs to my apartment and unlock the door. Everything is exactly as I left it this morning. Bed made, dishes in the sink, books scattered on the coffee table. Like nothing happened.
But I know better now. I'm starting to see the cracks.
I sit on my couch and stare at the clock on my phone. 11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes until midnight. Thirteen minutes until I find out what Maria meant about reality having layers.
My hands are shaking. Not from fear, exactly. From anticipation. For two years, I've been living the same day over and over, accepting that killing Adrian was the only way to save the city. Never questioning why. Never asking who decided that was how things had to be.
Tonight, I get answers.
11:58 PM.
I stand up and walk to my front door. Down the stairs to the coffee shop. The door is locked, but I remember Maria saying the pattern would show me the way. I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight, looking for the hidden door from this morning.
There. Same color as the wall, almost invisible in the dark.
I try the handle. Locked.
11:59 PM.
I press my palm against the door and close my eyes, trying to remember the spiral pattern Maria drew in my coffee. Interlocking circles, flowing lines, symbols that seemed to shift and move on their own.
The door gets warm under my hand.
12:00 AM.
The lock clicks open.
I step into Maria's workshop. The room is dark except for the faint glow coming from the symbols on the walls. They're pulsing now, like a heartbeat. Getting brighter.
I walk to the far wall where Maria traced the symbol with her finger. Up close, I can see it's not painted on. The lines seem to be cut into the wall itself, filled with something that looks like liquid light.
I reach out and touch the symbol.
The world disappears.
I'm falling through gray nothing. No up, no down, no ground, no sky. Just endless gray space that stretches in all directions. The air tastes like metal and electricity.
Then I stop falling and I'm just... floating.
This must be the crack. The space between layers of reality that Maria told me about.
Around me, images start to appear. Not solid things I can touch, but pictures hanging in the gray air like windows. Some are small, the size of television screens. Others are huge, like drive-in movie displays.
And in every single one, I see myself.
Different versions of myself, but definitely me. Same face, same scar by my left eye, same dark curly hair. But wearing different clothes, living in different places, doing different things.
In one window, I'm wearing a police uniform, standing over Adrian's body in what looks like an interrogation room. He's handcuffed to a chair, blood running from his nose.
"Where are the others?" the police version of me asks.
"There are no others," Adrian says. "It's just me."
I watch myself pull out a gun. "Wrong answer."
The window shifts to show another scene. This time I'm in a hospital, wearing scrubs. Adrian is on a gurney, unconscious. He's wearing a white coat like he's a doctor too. There's a syringe in my hand filled with something clear.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to his sleeping face. "But you know too much."
I inject the liquid into his IV line. His body goes rigid, then still.
Another window. Another world.
This time we're in what looks like a laboratory. Adrian is strapped to a metal table, electrodes attached to his head. He's awake, struggling against the restraints. I'm standing next to a control panel, wearing a lab coat.
"Luna, please," he begs. "You don't have to do this."
"The experiment requires your termination," I say, my voice completely emotionless. "It's for the greater good."
I flip a switch. Adrian screams.
Window after window. Scene after scene. Hundreds of different versions of me killing hundreds of different versions of Adrian. Each death is different – knife, gun, poison, electricity, drowning – but the result is always the same.
He dies. I live. The cycle continues.
But then I see something that makes my heart stop.
In one of the larger windows, I'm wearing a white dress. Not scrubs or a uniform or a lab coat. A wedding dress. Lace and silk and tiny pearls that catch the light. My hair is curled and pinned up with flowers. I'm smiling.
Really smiling. Not the forced expression I wear during loops, but genuine happiness.
Adrian is standing next to me in a black tuxedo. He's smiling too, his gray eyes bright with joy. Behind us, I can see people in folding chairs. Wedding guests. A minister holding a book.
We're getting married.
"Do you, Luna Martinez, take Adrian Blackwood to be your husband?" the minister asks.
"I do," the other me says.
"Do you, Adrian Blackwood, take Luna Martinez to be your wife?"
"I do." His voice is warm with love.
"By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."
Adrian takes my face in his hands and kisses me softly. The wedding guests cheer. Someone throws rice. In the background, I can hear music playing.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And it's everything I'll never have.
I reach toward the window, desperate to touch this other life, this other possibility. But my hand passes right through the image like it's made of smoke.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
I spin around. There's someone else in the gray space with me. A figure made of shadows and starlight, neither male nor female, young nor old. When I try to focus on them directly, they seem to shift and blur.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"A friend. Or an enemy. Depends on your perspective." The figure moves closer, and I catch glimpses of features that look almost human. "You're looking at what could have been."
"Those other worlds... are they real?"
"As real as anything else. More real than the prison you've been living in."
"Prison?"
"Eight hundred and forty-seven loops, Luna. The same day, the same choices, the same death. Over and over and over." The figure gestures at the windows around us. "But in these realities, you had different options. Different possibilities."
I look back at the wedding scene. The other me is laughing now, her hand in Adrian's as they walk down an aisle covered with flower petals.
"Why can't I have that?"
"Because someone decided you were too dangerous to be happy. Too powerful to be free." The figure's voice carries an edge of anger. "So they built you a cage and convinced you it was heroism."
"The loops aren't real?"
"The loops are real. But they're not natural. Someone is forcing you to live them." The figure moves to stand beside me, watching the wedding. "Tell me, Luna. In all your loops, have you ever tried to save Adrian a different way? Have you ever looked for alternatives to killing him?"
I think about it. Have I? In eight hundred and forty-seven loops, have I ever tried anything besides murder?
"I... no. I always knew killing him was the only way."
"How did you know?"
"Because..." I pause. Why did I know? Where did that certainty come from? "Because someone told me."
"Who?"
I try to remember, but the memory is fuzzy. Like trying to recall a conversation from a dream. "I can't remember."
"Of course you can't. They made sure of that." The figure points to another window, this one showing me as a child, maybe eight years old, sitting in what looks like a classroom. There are other children there, all around the same age.
"What is this?"
"Your real past. The life they stole from you."
In the window, young me is raising her hand to answer a question. She looks happy. Engaged. Normal.
"You weren't always a killer, Luna. You were a student. A daughter. A girl with dreams and hopes and a future." The figure's voice softens. "Until they decided to use you."
"Use me for what?"
"To test their control methods. To see if they could take a strong-willed werewolf and turn her into an obedient weapon." The figure turns to face me fully. "You've been their lab rat for two years."
"But the disaster. If I don't kill Adrian, the city gets destroyed."
"Show me."
"What?"
"Show me evidence of this disaster. Show me news reports, emergency broadcasts, government warnings. Show me anything that proves the city is in danger."
I try to think of proof, but I can't find any. I just... knew. The same way I knew killing Adrian was the only solution.
"There is no disaster," I whisper.
"There never was. It's just another layer of control." The figure moves to another window. This one shows me sitting in a chair, electrodes attached to my head, while people in lab coats watch monitors. "They programmed you to believe the lie. Made it part of your core programming."
"Programming?"
"You're not completely human anymore, Luna. They've enhanced you. Modified your brain, implanted artificial instincts, rewritten your memories." The figure's voice is gentle but devastating. "You're part machine now. A biological computer designed to follow orders."
I stare at the image of myself with wires coming out of my head. It should horrify me, but instead I feel... relief. Like a mystery I couldn't solve finally has an answer.
"Is any of it real? My feelings for Adrian? My memories?"
"Your feelings are real. Modified, but real. As for your memories..." The figure shrugs. "Some are real. Some are implanted. Some are a mixture of both. Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!"
"Why? You're still you, Luna. Different from your original self, but still you. Still capable of choice."
"What choice? You're telling me I'm a programmed machine!"
"I'm telling you that you were programmed. Past tense." The figure points to the windows around us. "But something is breaking down. Your programming is failing. That's why you can see these other possibilities now. That's why the loops are becoming unstable."
"The countdown timer."
"Exactly. In fifty-six hours and thirty-seven minutes, they're going to reset your programming completely. Wipe everything and start over with a fresh set of controls."
I feel sick. "Can they do that?"
"They built you. They own you. Legally, you're property." The figure moves closer. "But there might be a way out."
"How?"
"By choosing a different reality. By stepping into one of these windows and making it your own."
I look at the wedding scene again. The other me is cutting a cake now, Adrian's hand over hers on the knife. They're both laughing.
"Can I really do that? Just... step into another life?"
"It's not that simple. You'd have to replace the Luna in that reality. And she might not want to give up her place."
"What happens to her?"
"She gets sent here. To the gray space. To live in limbo while you take her life."
I stare at the other me, the happy me, the me who gets to marry Adrian instead of killing him.
"That's not fair to her."
"Fair?" The figure laughs, and the sound echoes strangely in the gray space. "Luna, you've been murdered hundreds of times in other realities. Sometimes by versions of yourself. Fair doesn't exist here."
"But it should."
"Yes," the figure says softly. "It should."
We stand in silence for a moment, watching the windows flicker around us. So many possibilities. So many lives I could have lived. So many choices I never got to make.
"Who are you?" I ask again.
"Someone who's been watching. Someone who cares about what happens to you."
"Are you one of them? The people who built my prison?"
"No. But I know who they are." The figure turns to look at me directly. "Are you ready to see the truth, Luna? The real truth about who you are and why they want to control you?"
The real truth. After all the lies, all the false memories, all the programmed instincts, I'm finally going to get real answers.
But I remember Maria's warning: once you see what's on the other side, you can't unsee it. And once they know you've seen it...
"What happens if I say yes?"
"You learn who your real enemies are. And they learn that you're awake."
"And if I say no?"
"You go back to your loops. Fifty-six more hours of killing Adrian, then they reset your programming and you start over. This time, they'll make sure you never wake up again."
I look around at all the windows, all the possibilities, all the lives I could have lived. Then I look back at the wedding scene. The other me is dancing now, her dress spinning around her as Adrian twirls her in his arms.
She looks so happy.
But she's not me. And this isn't my life.
I turn back to the figure.
"Yes," I say. "I'm ready to see the truth."
The figure smiles, and for a moment I catch a glimpse of a familiar face. Someone I know. Someone I trust.
"Good," they say. "Because the truth is going to change everything."
End of Chapter 5