Chapter 1

The fluorescent lights of the emergency room hummed, a sound I knew too well, a sound that always meant Leo was worse.

My little brother, Leo, lay on the narrow bed, his breath a shallow rasp, machines beeping around him like a countdown.

Poverty was a suffocating blanket in our Chicago neighborhood, but Leo' s illness, rare and vicious, was the chain that dragged us under.

His only hope was an experimental treatment, a price tag that mocked my parents' double shifts and my own desperate efforts.

This wasn't just a bad dream, it felt like a memory, a life I'd already lived.

InnovateNext, the national coding championship, was supposed to be our ticket out.

A full ride to Stanford, cash that could save Leo.

But in that other life, that recurring nightmare, I always lost.

Always to Tiffany.

Always by twenty points.

Her code, somehow, always twenty points better on efficiency, on innovation, on whatever metric they used.

Twenty points.

A small margin, consistently, suspiciously small.

Enough to make me second.

Enough for Leo' s gasps to grow weaker, for hope to shrivel and die inside me.

I remembered the despair, a cold, empty room where my code didn' t matter.

Then, a jolt.

My eyes snapped open.

I was in my cramped bedroom, the pre-dawn Chicago chill seeping through the thin window.

The InnovateNext championship started today.

A wave of nausea, deja vu so strong it tasted like metal.

It hadn' t happened yet. Or had it?

The memory of Leo, fading, was too sharp, too real.

I got dressed, my hands shaking.

The first round was remote, submissions online.

At the official online check-in, her icon popped up in the chat. Tiffany.

Her avatar was a diamond-studded tiara.

A private message blinked.

"Hey Sarah. Ready to lose? I'm feeling generous. I'll only beat you by, say, twenty points each round. Just to keep it interesting."

My blood ran cold.

The exact words.

The exact number.

This wasn't just a nightmare replaying, this was a script, and I was trapped in it.

Leo' s life depended on me breaking this loop.