Chapter 5 CHASE'S POV

Chase POV

The air is electric.

The data from Avery's necklace is more than I expected maps, prototypes, notes in a strange blend of physics and poetry. Her mother encoded not just technical warnings about the loop, but emotional cues. Anchors. Words like memory resonance and empathic signature scatter across pages of predictions and pain.

She didn't just design a fix.

She designed it for Avery.

And I can't help but feel like a stranger in the middle of someone else's prophecy.

"She saw me," Avery whispers behind me, fingers tracing her necklace like it's a lifeline. "Before I ever painted the mural. Before I met you. She knew."

"Yeah," I say, voice low. "She knew exactly what you'd become."

A threat to the loop.

A light in the dark.

My salvation and maybe my ruin.

The Resonator hums quietly from the lab below, still dormant, waiting for us to decide what comes next. But I know now: restarting it the way I used to won't fix anything.

Not without her.

Not without feeling.

We've moved the prototype into the gallery space. My team wouldn't approve of this blending science and chaos like this but I don't care. They don't remember. They don't feel the pull of this version of the truth like we do.

Avery stands in front of the mural again, but she's not painting.

She's listening.

"To what?" I ask, stepping beside her.

She tilts her head. "To what the world is trying to say."

My chest tightens.

She turns to me slowly. "You always think in answers, Chase. But this loop? It's not a problem to solve. It's a wound. It needs healing."

I swallow the lump in my throat. "Then how do we heal it?"

She places her hand over the mural's heart the part that mirrors her necklace.

"We go back to where it broke."

Avery POV

The lab feels colder than before. Maybe it's the truth seeping in now. Maybe it's fear.

Or maybe I'm just aware of how little time we have left.

I stare at the Resonator sleek, mechanical, lifeless.

This machine killed time.

And I'm supposed to be the key to resurrecting it.

"You don't have to do this," Chase says, but he doesn't sound convinced. He knows I do.

"I think I always did."

I slide the pendant into the core slot.

The Resonator whirs.

The mural above us pulses.

And something inside me unlocks.

I see her.

My mother.

Young, beautiful, terrified but determined.

In the memory embedded in the necklace, she's standing in this very lab, holding the prototype, speaking into a recorder.

"This machine is more than quantum. It's emotional. It connects to the strongest signature in the room. That's the anchor. That's the heart. And if it chooses someone, the loop begins."

She pauses.

"I hope she forgives me for what I've done."

The memory ends.

I blink hard.

And I understand.

"She tested it on herself," I say. "But it didn't anchor to her. It anchored to me. I was in the room. I was a child. I was the strongest emotional signature."

Chase's eyes widen. "You've always been the center of the loop."

My voice shakes. "And I never knew."

The Resonator pulses harder now brighter.

It recognizes me.

And it's waking up.

Chase reaches for my hand.

"I'm with you," he says, steady.

I nod.

The loop begins to close. Not reset. Not break.

Heal.

But just before the Resonator fully activates, a deep, strange pull yanks at my chest.

Like something someone doesn't want it to end.

Chase feels it too.

His eyes narrow.

"There's another variable," he mutters. "Something still inside the loop, resisting the collapse."

The air thickens.

And then I hear a voice that doesn't belong.

From nowhere.

Everywhere.

"My, my. You figured it out."

We both spin toward the sound.

And I freeze.

Standing in the shadows of the gallery...

...is my mother.

Alive.

Or some version of her.

She steps forward, eyes glowing faintly, almost artificial.

"I've waited a long time for this moment, Avery," she says softly. "But I'm not here to stop you. I'm here to finish what I started."