Lester grabbed Franklin before the mission. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  Franklin hesitated. His fingers twitched at his side, his breath unsteady. “…I think so.”

  The weight of it sat between them, heavier than their weapons, heavier than the war itself.

  They tried to tell General Jones. They spoke of the repeating battles, of memories that shouldn’t exist, of deaths that didn’t stay permanent.

  Jones dismissed them without a second thought. The cycle had already erased his memories. To him, this was just another fight. Another day. Another hopeless stand.

  Lester clenched his jaw. *We’re alone in this.*

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  So he tried something drastic.

  When the battle began, he didn’t fight. He let himself fall.

  A clean strike from an enemy’s blade. A bullet through the chest. The sensation of his body giving in, of blood seeping into the dirt.

  Darkness.

  But the loop didn’t end.

  Lester’s eyes snapped open. He was back in the briefing room. *Too soon.*

  His breath came in ragged gasps as he looked across the table. Franklin was missing.

  Panic gripped him. He wasn’t supposed to be alone.

  Then it hit him—Franklin was still in the fight.

  The war had continued without him.

  Lester clenched his fists as realization sank in. He wasn’t resetting with Franklin. He had left Franklin behind.

  Different versions of reality.

  He was moving between them, but they weren’t dying together. They weren’t bound to a single repeating moment.

  They were scattered across endless fractures of time.

  Lester shot to his feet. This changed everything. If they weren’t locked in the same loop—if they were being thrown into different versions of the war—then there had to be a way out.

  Somewhere, in some timeline, the cycle had to break.

  He just had to find it.