The darkness on the Command Deck didn’t just surround them—it pressed against Mari’s skin like a living, suffocating weight, wet with the metallic stench of scorched copper, fresh copper-tasting blood, and the acrid burn of melting insulation. Her lungs screamed, every breath scraping against raw throat.
For three thousand agonizing, violent lifetimes, her heart had stopped in this exact room. Her blood had painted these exact control panels.
Not tonight.
“Fuck.”
The word tore from her cracked lips, a ragged, blood-tasted rasp.
Cassian caught it anyway. His thick arm locked around her waist like a iron vise, yanking her body up against his armor to keep her from falling. His heat radiated through her suit, wild and desperate. “You still with me?”
Mari slammed her palm into his chest plate, shoving him back with everything she had left. Her knees buckled instantly, gravity dragging her down, but before she could hit the blood-slicked steel, Kaelen’s gloved hands clamped onto her shoulders, hauling her flush against his chest.
“Easy,” Kaelen growled near her ear, his breath hot and ragged against her neck.
“Don't tell me to fucking relax!” She spat, twisting out of his grip.
Across the ruined deck, Vesper wiped a smear of black blood from his jaw, a crooked, venomous grin slicing across his features. “There she is.”
Mari glared at the three of them—caked in ash, bleeding through ripped armor, muscles trembling from pure adrenaline. The Command Deck around them was a slaughterhouse. Severed conduits whipped wildly, vomiting cascades of blue arc-sparks into the haze. Emergency strobes bathed the smoke in violent, rhythmic scarlet.
Yet the air remained devoid of the mechanical siren.
No lethal red flash.
No sickening pull of time folding back on itself.
No execution.
Three thousand lives had ended right here, crushed under the weight of the Citadel's ultimate failsafe.
This time, the loop broke.
Cassian stepped over a severed torso, his heavy boots crunching on shattered glass as he locked eyes on the main array. “Grid timer?”
Vesper slammed his fist into the cracked casing of the navigation stalk, wincing as the shock rattled his bruised knuckles. “Ten minutes.”
“Shit.”
“That's what I said.”
Kaelen was already moving, his weapon raised, muscles coiled like a primed spring as he breached the smoke toward the blast doors. “Then stop standing around.”
A low, sickening groan vibrated straight up through the soles of their boots—a sound of groaning, twisting titanium that rattled Mari’s molars.
Her head snapped up, assassin instincts flaring hot and sharp. “That's not the grid.”
The men went dead silent.
Another groan tore through the Citadel's superstructure, deeper this time, followed by a violent upward shudder that bounced them off their feet. Fine concrete dust rained down from above, mixing with the smoke.
Mari dropped into a low crouch, fingers grazing the deck plating. She felt the micro-vibrations pulsing up through the metal, rapid, erratic, and massive. “Movement beneath us.”
Cassian spun, brought his rifle up to his shoulder, thumb flipping the safety to full auto. “Where?”
“Everywhere.”
A sound like a artillery strike echoed below, and a hairline fracture violently violently split the steel deck between her boots, jagged spiderwebs of torn metal fanning out across the room. Beneath the floor, something screeched—a high-pitched, resonant shriek that vibrated through their bone marrow.
It wasn't human. It wasn't machine.
Mari’s blood turned to ice. “Fuck.”
The floor detonated.
A massive, skeletal limb—shrouded in black chitin and dripping with smoking, molten metal—punched straight up through the deck plating. The shockwave blew melted rivets like shrapnel across the room.
Kaelen lunged, throwing his body over Mari's and tearing her backward as the limb swept through the space where her head had been a second prior.
Cassian held the trigger down. The deafening roar of armor-piercing rounds ripped through the air, shell casings raining down onto the steel deck. Vesper joined in, his submachine gun barking in rhythm until his slide locked back empty.
The creature’s bellow shook the Citadel to its foundation, deafeningly loud, blowing hot, foul-smelling air into the chamber.
“Move!” Mari roared, her voice cutting through the gunfire.
Nobody questioned her. Kaelen wrapped a heavy arm around her waist, physically throwing her forward into a sprint toward the shattered exit doorway while Cassian and Vesper walked backward, pouring relentless suppressive fire into the rising mass of blades and shadow.
Behind them, the floor gave way completely, collapsing into a dark, roaring abyss.
“Left!” Mari screamed as they hit the outer ring.
Cassian pivoted violently, his armor scraping against the bulkhead. “How the hell do you know?!”
“Because I've died here enough times to know what's coming!”
That killed any further questions.
They hit the central access corridor just as a heavy security fireteam breached the smoke ahead. Cassian didn't even slow down; he fired twice off the hip. The head of the lead guard disintegrated against the wall. Before the second guard could bring his rifle to bear, Vesper closed the distance, his sidearm blade flashing in a arc of silver.
“Wrong fucking hallway,” Vesper snarled, stepping over the fresh corpse before it even hit the floor.
Mari surged past him, her lungs burning like fire. “Transport bay! Now!”
Kaelen stayed glued to her flank, his heavy hand catching her shoulder to steady her every time the corridor violently bucked. The Citadel was eating itself alive. Automated sirens screeched in deafening patterns, fire suppression foam poured from ruptured ceiling vents, and heavy blast doors slammed down in chain reactions, sealing off collapsing sectors behind them.
From the dark depths behind them came a second, cataclysmic roar—closer this time.
Cassian shot a glance over his shoulder. The black nightmare was bursting through the corridor walls, tearing through concrete like wet paper as it pursued them. “Faster!”
“We're fucking trying!” Vesper yelled back, firing a quick burst into a wall control panel, blowing the tracking grid out in a brilliant shower of white-hot sparks.
They burst out of the access tube onto the high balcony overlooking the transport bay.
Positioned on the glowing launchpad below sat the heavy assault shuttle, its dual sub-light engines already whining as they gathered power, glowing a bright, lethal violet.
Mari froze at the railing, her heart slamming against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Three thousand lives. Three thousand brutal resets. She had never made it to this room. Not once.
Her chest tightened, a strange, overwhelming panic seizing her muscles. The terror of the unknown hit her harder than any executioner's blade ever had.
Kaelen felt her stall. He stepped into her space, his hands grabbing both sides of her tactical vest, forcing her to look up into his blood-splattered face.
“Don't,” he growled, his dark eyes locked onto hers.
“Don't what?”
“Look backward.”
Behind them, the emergency blast doors began their slow, hydraulic descent to quarantine the bay.
Cassian grabbed Mari's hand, his grip tight enough to bruise, dragging her down the gantry stairs. “Come on!”
They broke into a flat-out sprint across the tarmac. The giant iron teeth of the blast doors groaned as they neared the floor. Vesper threw himself flat, sliding on his chest through the narrowing gap just before it closed. Kaelen seized Mari by her harness, throwing her under the descending barrier ahead of him and diving through a split-second later.
The blast doors slammed into the deck with a deafening BOOM that rattled their teeth, sealing the nightmare inside.
The old world vanished behind thousands of tons of reinforced steel.
Cassian slammed his palm into the shuttle’s ramp controls. The rear hatch hissed open, and they scrambled inside, sliding across the metal floor as Cassian punched the pilot sequence.
The engines screamed.
The shuttle surged forward, tearing off the launchpad and bursting out of the Citadel's exit bay into the cold void of open sky. Below them, the massive, sky-scraping fortress groaned, internal explosions tearing orange wounds across its massive dark hull before it began its slow, agonizing collapse inward.
Mari stood at the rear viewport, her hands pressed flat against the thick glass, staring down at the inferno.
Three thousand deaths. Three thousand endings.
All burnt to ash.
Vesper slid down into the jump seat beside her, tossing his empty magazine onto the floor with a clatter. He let out a long, ragged breath, looking up at her with bloodshot eyes.
“So.”
Mari turned her head slightly to look at him.
A genuine, dark smile slowly cracked across his bruised face. “What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”
For the first time in three thousand lifetimes, Mari’s lips twitched upward into a cold, lethal smirk.
“We survive.”
Cassian glanced back from the primary console, his hands locked onto the flight sticks, his expression carved from stone.
“No.” His voice was ice. “We don't just survive.”
Kaelen dropped into the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes locked on the burning ruins shrinking in the display as the Citadel collapsed into its own foundation. “We find out who built the loop.”
Vesper’s smile faded into something sharp and dangerous. “And then?”
Mari stared out into the vast, unforgiving expanse of the cosmos stretch out before them. Her fingers slowly curled into tight, trembling fists.
“Then we burn their fucking universe down.”
The assault shuttle fired its thrusters, disappearing into the dark expanse of space. Behind them, the Citadel finally shattered, reduced to a blossom of fire and debris.
Ahead lay an uncharted, terrifying apocalypse.
And for the first time in three thousand lifetimes—
Mari was free.