Aurora's End (The Aurora Cycle #3)(5)

“Weird,” we murmur.

I look around, a strange black-cat creepy-crawly feeling of déjà vu spidering its way up my spine. We’re in the corridor outside the engine room. And, joy of joys, we are not, in fact, dead.

But …

Wait …

Didn’t we just … ?

I look at Finian, conscious of how close we’re standing. He looks into my eyes but I have no idea what to say, and I’m saved from the embarrassment of being speechless by Zila.

“Finian, Scarlett, are you still … ?”

“Breathing?” Finian says, his voice a little uneven.

“Apparently so.”

And there it is again. That creepy black-cat-walking-on-your-grave feeling. The feeling that—

“I am one confused boy right now,” Finian says.

“Didn’t we just … explode a moment ago?” I ask.

He meets my eyes again. I see him steel himself, take a deep breath.

“… Lemme check.”

I feel electricity crackle as his fingertips brush across mine and then, oh Maker, he’s kissing me, the sensation sizzling like live current though my lips and—

“Stop,” I say, breaking away. “No, stop, Fin … wait …”

I’m looking at him, and he’s staring back with the same confused expression I’m probably wearing, and somehow, somehow, before he speaks I know exactly what he’s going to say.

“Scar, I’m having the strongest feeling of—”

“Déjà vu.”

He blinks once. “… That’s French.”

“You don’t know any French,” I say, my belly turning somersaults.

He eases away from me, the deck seeming to shift underneath my feet, and there’s a cold lump of ice where my stomach used to be as he stares around us. We’re still in the corridor outside the shuttle’s engine room, the air is still sharp with the smell of burned plasteel, fused wiring, smoke. Looking through the plexiglass, I can still see what’s left of the engines, and I know I’m no expert, but this place, this conversation, somehow …

“What the hells, Fin … ?”

His brow is creased in a deep scowl. “We’ve done this before.”

“But that’s … that’s not possible… .”

He raises one pale eyebrow, somehow still managing to find a smile despite everything. “Scar, believe me when I say that I’ve imagined kissing you enough to realize when I’ve done it twice in the same day.”

A voice rings over comms. “Scarlett? Finian?”

“Zila?”

“Are you both … well?”

“I have no idea.” Fin squares his jaw, his voice growing firm. “Look … this might sound insane, but does there happen to be an old, beat-up space station on your viewscreen right now? A dark matter storm? And a Terran fighter threatening to blow us all to sad little pieces?”

“I take it you are also experiencing a sensation that suggests this moment is repeating itself.”

Fin looks at me, his lips pinched thin.

“Maker’s breath … ,” I whisper.

“We’ll be right up,” Fin says.

The adrenaline of almost dying and almost kissing and then definitely not dying but, yes, definitely kissing is now being replaced by the impossibility of all this. My legs feel like jelly, my brain buzzes in my skull. But I hold out my hand to Fin, and together, we’re running up the corridor to the cockpit. Again, we find Zila seated in the pilot’s chair, again looking frazzled. Again, on our viewscreens, I can see that dumpy-looking space station in a sea of starless darkness, and that angry Terran pilot.

Again.

Again.

But instead of just a tiiiiiiny bit uncertain, now the pilot sounds all the way sideways. “What the hell is going on here?” Zila is looking at Finian, chewing one lock of long, curly hair.

“Temporal distortion?” Fin says.

“I can surmise no other adequate explanation,” she replies.

“Shiiiiiit,” he whispers. “Ouroboros effect?”

“It is only theoretical.” Our Brain shakes her head, glancing at the station, a pulse of brief purple light flaring in the dark storm beyond. “And despite our lessons at the academy in temporal mechanics, I would have said unthinkable.”

“Look,” I say, glaring at the pair. “The only temporal mechanics lecture I ever took, I spent flirting with Jeremy and Johnathan McClain—”

(Ex-boyfriends #35 and #36. Pros: Identical twins, thus, each as hot as the next. Cons: Identical twins, thus, easily confused in the dark. Whoops.)

“—and in case you missed it, there’s a very annoyed pilot—”

The commset crackles, cutting me off.

“You are in restricted Terran space,” the aforementioned pilot says. “You have fifteen seconds to transmit ident codes, or I will open fire!”

“We seem to be experiencing a temporal distortion, Scarlett,” Zila explains. “You, me, Finian, our ship … as outlandish as it sounds, we all seem to be repeating the same few minutes, over and over.”

“Ten seconds!”

“It’s a time loop, Scar,” Fin says. “We’re in some kind of time loop.”