The lobby of the Obsidian Tower was a cavern of marble and gold, designed to make anyone who entered feel small. Maya didn't just feel small; she felt hunted.
She stumbled out of the elevator, her sneakers squeaking shrilly against the polished floor. The doorman, a man named Elias who had smiled at her every morning for two years, looked up from his podium.
"Good morning, Ms. Lin," Elias beamed. "Rain's coming down hard out there. Do you need an umbrella?"
Maya froze. Her breath hitched in her throat, ragged and wet.
He said that yesterday.
The memory hit her with the force of a physical blow. Yesterday morning—the first Tuesday, October 14th—she had stopped to chat. She had taken the umbrella. She had joked about the Seattle grey.
"Ms. Lin?" Elias's smile faltered. He took a half-step forward, his brow furrowing. "Are you alright? You look pale."
"I... I have to go," Maya choked out.
She didn't wait for his reply. She pushed through the heavy revolving glass doors and burst out onto Fourth Avenue.
The sensory overload was instantaneous.
The roar of traffic, the hiss of tires on wet asphalt, the biting cold of the wind—it all assaulted her at once. The rain wasn't just rain; it felt like needles pricking her skin. Maya gasped, clutching her coat tighter around herself, her eyes darting wildly across the street.
She needed proof.
She scrambled toward a newsstand on the corner. The vendor, an older woman bundled in a parka, watched her warily. Maya grabbed a copy of The Seattle Times from the rack, her fingers trembling so violently she nearly tore the paper.
She stared at the header.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025.
The ink seemed to swim before her eyes, vibrating on the page.
"That's three dollars, honey," the vendor said.
Maya dropped the paper as if it were burning. She backed away, bumping into a pedestrian in a wet trench coat. "Watch it," the man snapped, not even looking at her as he hurried past.
She wasn't crazy. The world had reset. Julian had reset it.
Subject retains residual memory from Loop 143.
The words echoed in her mind, overlapping with the sound of the traffic. Loop 143. That meant he had done this one hundred and forty-three times. One hundred and forty-three days lived, erased, and lived again.
How many times had she died?
A sharp, piercing spike of pain drove itself into her left temple. It was blinding, accompanied by a high-pitched ringing sound that drowned out the city noise. Maya stumbled, catching herself against a damp brick wall. She brought a hand to her nose.
When she pulled it away, her fingers were coated in blood.
But it wasn't normal blood. It was too dark. Almost black. And it shimmered slightly, like oil on water.
"Chronos sickness," she whispered, though she didn't know where the term came from. It was a thought that wasn't hers—maybe a fragment of a conversation Julian had with himself while she was dead in another timeline.
She needed help. She needed Chloe.
Maya fumbled for her phone with slick, bloody fingers. She dialed her sister's number, pressing the phone to her ear as she ducked into the awning of a closed coffee shop.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
"Hello?"
The sound of Chloe's voice was so normal, so grounded, that Maya nearly sobbed.
"Chloe," Maya gasped. "Chloe, you have to listen to me. I'm in trouble."
"Maya?" Chloe's voice sounded tinny, distant. "You sound breathless. Are you running? I thought you were studying for finals today."
"No—listen to me. Julian. He's... he's doing something to time. To the day." Maya knew how insane it sounded even as the words left her mouth. "He killed me, Chloe. He killed me yesterday, and then he woke me up today, and it's the same day."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"Maya," Chloe said slowly, her tone shifting from casual to concerned. "Where are you?"
"I'm at the corner of Fourth and Pike. I need you to come get me. Don't come to the apartment. Just pick me up."
"Did you take your migraine medication this morning?"
Maya gripped the phone harder. "This isn't a migraine! He has a machine, Chloe! A watch. He presses it and the day starts over!"
"Okay, okay, calm down," Chloe soothed, but it was the condescending soothe one uses on a terrified child. "You're having an episode. Remember what Dr. Evans said about stress-induced paranoia? Julian loves you. He bought you that car. He pays for your tuition."
"He's a monster!" Maya screamed into the receiver.
People on the street stopped. A woman walking a poodle stared at her. A businessman paused mid-step.
For a second, the world seemed to glitch. The woman with the poodle didn't just stare; she froze completely. The raindrops suspended in mid-air around her. The traffic noise cut out into dead silence.
Then, snap. The noise returned. The woman kept walking.
"Maya?" Chloe asked. "Are you still there? I'm calling Julian. He can come pick you up."
"No!" Maya shrieked. "Do not call him! Chloe, if you call him, he'll—"
Click.
The line went dead. Not disconnected—dead. No dial tone. Just static.
Maya looked at her screen. NO SERVICE.
She stared at the signal bars. They weren't empty; they were flickering. Grey, then white, then gone.
A black Range Rover turned the corner, slowly cruising through the rain-slicked intersection. The windows were tinted impossibly dark, voids that swallowed the light.
Maya didn't need to see the license plate. She knew the car.
Panic, primal and electric, flooded her veins. She shoved the phone into her pocket and ran.
She didn't know where she was going. She just ran away from the Obsidian Tower, away from the car, away from the man who treated time like a toy. She sprinted down Pike Street, dodging tourists and splashing through puddles that soaked her jeans to the knees.
The pain in her head intensified with every step, a rhythmic thumping that matched her heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.
She ducked into the Pike Place Market. It was crowded, a labyrinth of stalls, fish throwers, and tourists. Safety in numbers. He couldn't kill her here. Not with hundreds of witnesses.
She weaved through the crowd, her vision tunneling. The smell of fish and fresh flowers was overwhelming, nauseating.
She reached the railing overlooking the Puget Sound and stopped, gripping the cold metal, gasping for air. She wiped the blood from her nose onto her sleeve.
"Enjoying the view?"
The voice was right beside her ear.
Maya spun around, her back hitting the railing.
Julian stood there. He wasn't out of breath. He wasn't wet from the rain. He held a large black umbrella over his head, shielding himself perfectly from the elements. He looked impeccable, a statue of modern elegance amidst the chaotic crowd.
"Get away from me!" Maya yelled.
A few tourists glanced over, but they quickly looked away. In a city like this, a domestic dispute was just background noise.
"You're making a scene, Maya," Julian said calmly. He stepped closer, the umbrella casting a shadow over her face. "And you're bleeding. You're pushing the physiology too hard. Your brain isn't built for the paradox."
"You killed me," she hissed, her eyes wide with terror. "I remember. The kitchen. The knife."
Julian's expression softened. He looked almost... proud?
"You remember," he repeated softly. "That's fascinating. Usually, the subject's memory wipes clean after a localized reset. But you... you're adapting. You're evolving."
He reached into his pocket. Maya flinched, expecting a weapon.
He pulled out a handkerchief. Pristine, white silk. He reached out to dab the blood on her upper lip.
Maya slapped his hand away. "I called Chloe. She knows."
Julian sighed. "Chloe thinks you're having a psychotic break. I already texted her. I told her I found you and I'm taking you to Dr. Evans."
"She won't believe you."
"She already does. I'm very persuasive. And I have money. People tend to believe the rich, Maya. It's a sad fact of our reality."
He took a step closer, crowding her against the railing. Below them, the highway buzzed with traffic. Beyond that, the cold, dark water of the bay.
"Why are you doing this?" Maya pleaded, tears mixing with the rain on her face. "Why can't you just let me go?"
Julian looked at her, his eyes dark and empty of empathy. "Because I haven't got it right yet. There's a moment, Maya. A specific micro-expression of tragedy I'm trying to capture. Last time, you were too fearful. The time before that, too angry. I need... acceptance. I need the perfect ending."
He glanced at his watch. The violet light pulsed.
"And besides," he added, his voice dropping to a whisper. "You can't leave."
"Watch me," Maya spat.
She turned and vaulted over the railing.
It wasn't a suicide attempt. There was a service walkway about ten feet down—she had seen the maintenance workers use it before. She just needed to get away, to find a police officer, to find anyone.
She landed hard on the metal grating below. The impact jarred her ankles, shooting pain up her legs. She stumbled but kept her balance.
She looked up. Julian was leaning over the railing, looking down at her. He wasn't chasing her. He was just watching.
"Maya," he called down, his voice carrying effortlessly over the wind. "Check the perimeter."
"Go to hell!" she screamed.
She turned to run along the catwalk toward the stairs that led to the lower level of the market. She took three steps.
WHAM.
It was like running into a glass wall.
There was nothing there—just open air—but Maya's body slammed into an invisible, solid barrier. The force threw her backward. She hit the metal grating, the wind knocked out of her.
She gasped, scrambling up. She reached out a hand.
The air in front of her rippled. It looked like heat haze on a summer road. When she pressed her hand against it, the air felt static-charged and solid. It hummed against her palm.
"The device has a range of five miles from the anchor point," Julian explained from above. He sounded like a professor giving a lecture. "Or, in this case, from me. You can't leave the loop, Maya. You're just... bumping against the glass of the fishbowl."
Maya pounded her fists against the invisible wall. She screamed in frustration, a raw, animalistic sound.
She was trapped. Not just in the apartment. Not just in the city. She was trapped in time with him.
Julian checked his watch again. "Heart rate is one-eighty. Adrenaline is peaking. This isn't a good data set. Too much chaos."
He looked down at her with that pitying, terrifying smile.
"I think we need a hard reset. Soft resets leave too much residue. That's why you're bleeding."
"No," Maya whimpered. She backed away from the barrier, looking for another way out.
"Don't worry," Julian said. He reached for the bezel of his watch. "I'll make sure you sleep well this time. No dreams."
"Julian, please!"
"See you yesterday, my love."
He pressed the button.
The world didn't fade to white this time.
Instead, the metal walkway beneath Maya's feet simply ceased to exist.
Gravity took over instantly. Maya fell into the void, the grey sky and the market spinning above her. The rush of wind roared in her ears. She saw Julian's face shrinking away, calm and collected, watching her fall toward the concrete below.
She didn't scream. She didn't have time.
The ground rushed up to meet her.
7:00 AM.
Maya gasped, inhaling a lungful of air that smelled like expensive fabric softener.
She sat up. The room was silent. The sunlight was warm.
She was in bed. Her skin was smooth. Her head was clear. There was no pain. No blood.
From the kitchen, she heard the clink of ceramic on granite.
"Coffee's ready," Julian called out. His voice was cheerful. Loving.
Maya stared at her hands. They were shaking, but they were clean.
She pulled the sheets up to her chin, her eyes wide, staring at the doorway. She didn't move. She didn't speak. She just waited for the monster in the charcoal suit to walk in and smile.