“This isn’t your fault.” I pulled her away from the console and she didn’t resist as I tugged her into my arms.

Quanta pressed her face into my chest and her shoulders shook—

And a wave of ice rolled down my body. My vision twinned at the sensation.

Two rooms full of shocked researchers. Two Quantas. Two echoing bangs as the Black Helixes arrived and started pounded on the door.

A literal déjà vu. I’d only felt the sensation once before, but it wasn’t something I could forget. Our reset point. Did that just write over…?

“No.” Quanta’s hands snaked under my lab coat and she gripped the fabric of my shirt as she shook her head. “No, no, no.”

The door slid open and all I could do was turn to shield her from what was coming next.

I didn’t need her visions of the future to see our deaths on the horizon.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

QUANTA

We were so screwed.

So beyond screwed.

Using every mental muscle, every synapse, every atom that I had, I stretched to find our bookmarked breakfast, but it was gone, lost in the million layers of sketchy pasts.

Written over.

Now a new moment was traced in dark lines.

This moment.

I’d fallen into Tair’s arms and let myself be comforted. I’d let myself wish that we really could stay together, because I liked him, and I still didn’t love him yet, but I was realizing that I might soon and I wanted to and maybe I could give him what he needed the same way he gave it to me…

Because seeing those tanks made me realize I couldn’t do this alone anymore. I didn’t want to do it alone.

Clones.

I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe.

They looked like me, but not. All wrinkly and red and twisty and wrong.

And now we were stuck here with them.

Whether it was exhaustion or I’d just hit my limit, I’d lost the reset point and the sickening sensation rising in my throat told me we weren’t going anywhere. I gripped Tair tight, straining my brain until I staggered with the pain of it, but nothing. Breakfast was just a normal memory now. I couldn’t find it in the layers of time, let alone flip back to it.

We could still timewind, but only to a few seconds ago.

Only to guards knocking and us trapped in Darren’s sick world.

I scrunched my eyes closed and leaned into Tair, anchoring to him as I tried to find a future that didn’t end dark.