The roar of Sua’s shotgun was louder than the van crashing through the window.
A massive blast of buckshot tore through the smoky air, slamming into the chest of the closest masked android.
The force lifted the killer right off his feet, throwing him backward into the hood of the wrecked black van.
But instead of a spray of blood, a shower of blue sparks erupted from the massive hole in his suit.
Sua didn’t even blink.
She smoothly cracked the barrel open, ejected the smoking red shells, and slammed two fresh ones in with a sharp flick of her wrist.
”What the hell is that?” she yelled over the ringing in my ears.
“That wasn’t a man!”
”They’re machines!” I shouted back, gripping my police revolver.
“Aim for the joints or the head!
Body shots just slow them down!”
Two more androids stepped through the shattered storefront.
Their featureless black porcelain masks reflected the flickering neon lights from the street.
One of them raised a sleek, futuristic submachine gun.
My pocket suddenly felt like a hot iron against my skin.
Drop!
the voice of the diary screamed in my mind.
I grabbed Sua by the shoulder and pulled her hard to the floor just as a hail of bullets ripped through the air where our heads had been a second ago.
The antique clocks on the wall behind us exploded in a shower of wood splinters, glass, and gears.
I rolled onto my back, aiming my revolver from the floor.
I fired three rapid shots at the legs of the android holding the machine gun.
Two bullets missed, but the third shattered its right kneecap.
The machine let out a glitchy, metallic hiss and buckled to one side, its aim swinging wildly toward the ceiling.
”We can’t hold them off!” Sua shouted, staying low as more bullets chewed up the heavy oak counter above us.
“There are too many coming out of the van!”
”Is there a back way out?” I asked.
”Through the storage room!” She fired blindly over the counter to buy us a second of cover.
“Follow me!
Keep your head down!”
We scrambled on our hands and knees through the debris, pushing through the thick curtain that separated the storefront from the back room.
The storage area was cramped, stacked high with dusty crates and old furniture.
Sua rushed to a heavy steel door at the very back.
She pulled a ring of keys from her apron, her hands shaking slightly, but she managed to jam the right key into the deadbolt.
”Hurry!” I urged, looking over my shoulder.
A heavy boot kicked the curtain aside.
One of the masked killers stepped into the storage room, its head snapping directly toward us like a mechanical predator.
It raised a long, silver dart gun.
My pocket burned again.
I didn’t wait for the book’s specific instruction.
I threw my empty revolver right at the android’s head.
The heavy chunk of metal struck the edge of its black porcelain mask with a loud crack.
The mask split down the middle and shattered, falling away in jagged black pieces.
What I saw underneath made my blood run cold.
It wasn’t a robot face made of metal and wires.
It was a human face.
A perfectly realistic, fleshy human face.
But the eyes were completely dead, unblinking, and the skin was perfectly stitched along the jawline like a twisted Halloween mask.
I recognized that face immediately.
It was the face of the police captain from the precinct I had just escaped from.
The real captain had probably been dead for hours, his skin peeled off and worn by this machine to walk right through the police station’s front doors.
They control the city by wearing the skin of the people we trust, the torn fragment from Page 12 flashed in my mind.
”Jin!
Let’s go!” Sua yelled.
She had the door open.
I snapped out of my shock and sprinted through the doorway just as a green acid dart slammed into the wooden crate next to me.
Sua slammed the heavy steel door shut behind us and threw a heavy metal locking bar across it.
We were standing in a narrow, pitch-black alleyway that smelled of rain and garbage.
”This way,” Sua said, grabbing my wrist.
Her grip was tight and warm.
She didn’t hesitate, leading me through a maze of twisting alleyways, hopping over fences and ducking under low-hanging fire escapes.
She knew these streets like the back of her hand.
We ran for what felt like twenty minutes, putting as much distance as possible between us and the destroyed antique shop.
My chest was burning, and the cuts on my face stung from the cool night air.
Finally, she pulled me down a rusted set of stairs into the basement level of an abandoned apartment building.
She kicked open a rotting wooden door and dragged me inside, locking it behind us.
It was an old, dusty boiler room.
The only light came from the streetlamps outside, filtering thinly through a dirty ground-level window.
Sua let go of my hand and collapsed against the cold brick wall, sliding down to the floor.
She dropped her shotgun beside her and buried her face in her hands, taking deep, shaking breaths.
I leaned against the opposite wall, trying to catch my breath.
The silence between us was heavy.
I felt incredibly guilty.
She had a quiet life running that shop, and I had brought an army of nightmare machines right to her doorstep.
”I’m sorry,” I said softly, breaking the silence.
“I really am.”
Sua slowly lowered her hands and looked at me.
In the dim light, her dark eyes were unreadable.
She wasn’t crying.
She looked furious, but also terrifyingly sharp.
”Who are you really?” she asked, her voice dangerously calm.
“And don’t give me that ‘friend of a friend’ garbage again.
Those things in my shop…
the one’s mask broke.
I saw its face, Jin.
It looked like Captain Choi from the local precinct.
But it didn’t move like a human.”
I sighed, running a hand through my messy hair.
The rule was clear: Trust no one.
But how could I survive this without her?
She was the only person in this city who didn’t want to kill me yet, and she had just risked her life to save mine.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the charred leather diary.
”My name is Ji-hoo,” I said quietly.
Sua watched me carefully but didn’t say anything.
”I didn’t bring this trouble to you on purpose, but I had to find what you were keeping in that watch,” I continued, holding the book in my hands.
“Those things hunting me…
they belong to something called the Apex Foundation.
They are killing people, stealing their faces, and replacing them to take over the city.”
”And you know this how?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Are you a cop?
A spy?”
”No,” I said, looking down at the diary.
“I’m just a guy who has died forty-six times trying to stop them.”
Sua stared at me like I was completely insane.
“What did you just say?”
”I know it sounds crazy,” I said, walking over and sitting on the floor a few feet away from her.
I tapped the cover of the book.
“This diary was written by me.
Forty-six different versions of me.
Every time I get killed by the Apex Foundation, I wake up three days in the past, right inside the police interrogation room.
This book is the only thing that travels back with me.”
She looked at the charred book, then back up at my face.
She let out a dry, humorless laugh.
“Time travel.
You expect me to believe you’re a time traveler.”
”I expect you to believe your own eyes,” I replied, my voice firm.
“You saw the machines.
You saw the fake face.
When I touched the silver watch in your shop, you saw me flinch in pain.
This book literally burns me when it updates with new information to keep me alive.”
Sua went quiet.
She looked at my raw, red wrists where the handcuffs used to be.
Then she looked at the shotgun resting by her side.
”Okay,” she breathed out slowly.
“Let’s say, just for a second, that I believe your insane story.
Why did you need the paper inside my broken clock?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded scrap of Page 12, handing it to her.
She took it cautiously and read the words by the dim light of the window.
”The assemblyman,” she whispered, looking up at me.
“Assemblyman Kang Min-seok.
He’s doing a live broadcast right now at City Hall.”
”The police think I killed him in an alley tonight,” I explained.
“They found a knife with his blood on it, and camera footage of me running away.
But Kang isn’t dead yet.
The fragment says Apex hasn’t killed him because they need to prepare his fake face first.
They set me up to take the fall for a murder they are going to commit in three days.”
”If they replace an assemblyman,” Sua said, her voice turning cold, “they’ll have access to the city’s entire defense grid.
The military contracts.
The police databases.”
”Exactly.
And whoever is leading the Apex Foundation is doing this from the shadows,” I said, pointing to the torn edge of the paper she was holding.
“My last past-life found out who the leader was.
He wrote the name down on Page 12.
But before he died, he ripped the page into pieces and hid them, so the shock wouldn’t give me away.
Your watch held the first piece.”
Sua handed the paper back to me.
She leaned her head against the brick wall, staring at the ceiling.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
I half expected her to grab her shotgun, tell me I was a lunatic, and walk out.
Instead, she slowly pushed herself up from the floor.
She dusted off her leather apron and picked up her weapon.
”Assemblyman Kang’s political rally ends in two hours,” she said, checking the action on the shotgun.
“If they haven’t replaced him yet, they’ll probably make their move when his convoy leaves City Hall.”
I looked up at her in shock.
“Wait.
You want to go after them?”
Sua looked down at me, that fearless, sharp smirk returning to her lips.
“Those freaks destroyed my shop, Ji-hoo.
That building belonged to my grandfather.
I don’t care if they are robots, aliens, or politicians in skin-suits.
They owe me a new front door.”
She held out her free hand toward me.
I stared at her hand for a second, feeling that familiar, heavy skip in my chest again.
I grabbed it, and she pulled me up to my feet.
As soon as I stood up, the diary in my pocket suddenly flared with a gentle, pulsing warmth.
It wasn’t the painful burning of a warning.
It was different.
I opened the book.
On the very last blank page, a single line of fresh black ink slowly wrote itself onto the paper.
Run 47.
An anomaly detected.
Sua did not survive the shop attack in the previous 46 timelines.
The timeline has fractured.
You are now in uncharted territory.
I stared at the words, a chill running down my spine.
I had saved her.
I had actually changed the past.
I closed the book, slipping it back into my coat.
We were flying blind now, but as I looked at the girl standing beside me, loading shells into a massive gun, I realized I wouldn’t have it any other way.
”Alright,” I said, grabbing my empty revolver.
“Let’s go save an assemblyman.”