Hana Greaves's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The vine glowed at Hana's back. Vera lay against the beast's flank, breathing shallow, her lips still gray. Frost clung to her white hair. The cryo-poison was winning. Hana knelt and pressed a hand to Vera's cheek. Cold. Too cold. She had reached the vine at last, but the woman who remembered every loop was slipping away in her arms. "Stay with me," Hana said. "You're the only one who knows what's real." Vera's eyes opened a crack. "Told you," she breathed. "Lights too bright." A trucker's dry joke, even now. She'd said it the first loop, blinking up from the ice. Hana almost laughed. Then Vera's head lolled. A sound rose across the plain. Boots. Many boots. Hana turned. Figures marched from the direction of a tall tower, its clock faces staring down like eyes. Chronwell's people. A dozen of them, then more, robed and armed, closing on the vine. They wanted it. They wanted her and Vera too. Hana understood the price now. Chronwell hadn't saved Vera out of mercy. He wanted them alive at the vine, cornered, ready to collect. She had no gun. She had a cracked handheld and a dying friend. But the vine was hers. She'd died on it a hundred times. She knew its burn. "Come get her," Hana shouted. "Come through me." The soldiers spread wide. Hana grabbed a thick vine stem and ripped it loose. Spores flared white in her fist. The nearest soldier lunged. She swung the stem across his face. He screamed and dropped, skin smoking where the spores touched him. The others hesitated. They feared the vine as much as she did. A snarl broke the pause. A gray beast with two heads bounded between Hana and the soldiers, hackles raised, four eyes fixed on the robed men. It had followed Chronwell's pack animal across the ice. Now it stood over Vera, teeth bared, guarding her. "Good dog," Hana breathed. She swung the burning stem again. A soldier fell. The two-headed beast snapped at another and drove him back. For a moment Hana held the line, one woman and one strange animal against an army, the vine roaring light behind them. Then the vine pulsed. The spores flared to blinding white. Hana felt the loop's pull yank hard. Chronwell's stall had run out. The reset came. But this time was different. As the light swallowed her, Hana pressed the burning stem to her own scorched sleeve and held Vera's cold hand tight. If they touched the vine together at the reset, maybe they'd wake together, remembering. The world snapped white. Hana opened her eyes on the ice. Her sleeve smoked, fresh-scorched. Same moment. Same loop. But beside her, Vera sat up, frost in her hair, eyes clear and awake. "Still here," Vera said. "And I felt that one coming." For the first time, Vera had woken strong. The poison hadn't followed her through.