Time blurs to a stop around you as history uncoils itself, collecting in your palm in the form of a silver key. Bitterness lingers in your throat.

In deep space there's no dirt, no pollen allergies, no lonely sunsets, no atmosphere; in cold sleep you dream the touch of your family and the anchor of the ground and dream screaming until you wake up with your heart clenched into a fist.

(You are a guardian angel, and you can't save anyone.)

You laugh at your own expense and begin.

Loop 135

Day 1

The downside of being trapped in time is that no change you make to your body is permanent. You've started about fifty loops giving yourself the same side-shave, improving unpredictably and looping again if you really fuck it up.

If you were a normal girl in a normal world where the laws of physics weren't suspended for your own personal torture—you'd probably be put on suicide watch, in all honesty, but you'd at least trust your haircuts to last longer than a few days.

(Setsu has repeatedly told you to stop throwing yourself out of the airlock whenever things don't go your way, but admittedly, dying is kind of fun if you survive.)

"I guess I'm the engineer this time," Setsu says, catching up with you in the hallway. "Are you my guardian angel again?"

The pang in your gut slows when you see their smile. "Maybe."

There are two Gnosia and a bug out of twelve crew. Jonas has procured a tray of donuts and a pot of coffee for the discussion—apparently an old Earth custom used in formal meetings. Powdered sugar falls onto your chest, staining your black sweater as Shigemichi also claims to be the engineer and gets himself frozen.

"Poor guy," Setsu says afterward. "I'd like to watch another movie with him. I—I mean... you know..."

(To be honest, you'd prefer if Shigemichi wasn't there. Setsu is adorably awkward and you'd probably kill if anyone made them too uncomfortable to show it.)

(That, and you'd prefer to hold their hand when you're alone.)

"Do you want to run away again?" you ask.

Setsu looks at the floor. "I don't know if we should. We're getting close. I can feel it. We just need a little more information, and then..."

That's what they've been saying for the last twenty loops. Three months of time. It's not like you disagree—the volume of your crew data speaks for itself—but running away is going to be a lot harder once time and its consequences are real again.

Setsu bumps their forehead against your shoulder. "Of course I want to."

Day 2

Jonas is dead.

"And Evelyn isn't Gnosia," Setsu adds. "Does the doctor have anything to say?"

"Yes, you're Gnosia," Raqio says. "You eliminated Shigemichi because he was the true engineer. A safe enough first move, although I'm not sure what your reasoning was in killing Jonas. Is Evelyn Gnosia too?"

You balk, looking up from your coffee. "Do Gnosia even eat food?"

"To lie that they're human? Yes," Raqio says, gesturing to your breakfast. "I've never even seen a human being eat a scone. Is it teatime in colonial Britain?"

You roll your eyes. This situation isn't extremely concerning yet, not with Yuriko and Kukrushka both going after other people, and you let yourself fade into the background as the crew slowly loses itself to emotion.

Complicating things further, you watch Remnan's skin crawl as he stutters: "Raqio is lying. I'm the real doctor, and Shigemichi was Gnosia."

"So you and Setsu are both lying," Raqio snaps. "I'm not mistaken that you're working together, yes? You must both be aching to learn who the bug is. I'd even go as far as to say you're desperate."

"It's Yuriko," Comet says, with no elaboration. "Yuriko is the bug."

Once Comet is frozen, Setsu meets you in the cafeteria.

"Day two's are always the worst," Setsu says, exhausted. "Only one person is dead. There's so much fresh grief and confusion."

(You could have protected Jonas last night, if you had guessed right. Instead, you chose Setsu.)

"Hey," you start. "Do you ever stay up thinking about what kinds of mental illnesses we're going to develop once we break this loop?"

Setsu sips orange juice from a juicebox, furrowing their brow. "No?"

"Time dissociation? Post-traumatic stress disorder? Complex post-traumatic stress disorder?"

The juicebox makes an unpleasant bubbling noise as Setsu finishes it off, sucking until the carton implodes. "Ev, you're such a pessimist."

"I'm a realist."

"Now you're starting to sound like Raqio."

You scoff. "God. Promise you'll kill me if I start talking like an elitist sapiosexual."

Setsu covers your mouth with a finger. "Hey," they say. "Stop saying things like that."

You try to say something sassy but Setsu keeps clamping your jaw shut. They're surprisingly strong. You shouldn't be surprised—they're a career soldier, after all; you've seen them in just their binder whenever they get frozen, and like, you would never trace your hand over your best friend's arm muscles without consent, but—

Ultimately, they're asexual and you're not, and this isn't a problem. It's so much of a non-problem that you aren't even sure why you think about it all the time.

"You can't die anymore," Setsu says, breaking eye contact to stab their straw into a second juice box. They still aren't letting you speak. "Stop licking my hand. Do you even remember what you did?"

"Oh shit, did I kill you again?"

"No. You killed yourself. SQ misgendered you, so you went and cut off your—you know, your... You bled out in the shower."

There's nothing for you to say for yourself.

"And I found you like that," Setsu says.

"Oh my God, you were alive?"

Their eyes widen. "Do you normally wait until I'm not?"

"Um..."

"Evelyn!" Setsu says, grabbing your hands. "Evelyn Tyler Selby!"

"I'm sorry, I just..." Anxiety strikes at your core. "Oh God, did you, like—did you see, you know—it?"

Both of you stare at each other in dawning horror. Setsu is a deer in the headlights.

"Oh no," you say.

Slowly, without releasing your hands and without breaking eye contact, Setsu leans down to their straw and drinks the rest of their juice.

Neither of you speaks for a while.

"Why is it called orange juice," you say.

"Ev, I think it's because it's orange."

"No, like, what is orange?"

"It's... it's a color?"

"It just says the ingredient is 100% orange. What is orange? Why does color have a taste?"

"Evelyn," Setsu says, still holding your hands. "Is it possible that you have synesthesia?"

You have no idea what's going on.

"Here," Setsu sighs, briefly releasing your hand. "Try it."

Painfully conscious that the straw you're about to use was just in Setsu's mouth, you sip.

Day 3

Kukrushka is dead.

The Gnosia are playing smart. Without knowing if the guardian angel is alive or not, they've chosen to attack everyone but the true engineer, Setsu, leaving your hands tied as people fall around you.

"For what it's worth, SQ is human," Setsu says.

SQ winks in the general direction of your table. You can't help but remember that one loop where you figured out that you are not asexual, which SQ must have forgotten because it's a time loop. (To be honest, you're grateful that nothing more happened, now that you've observed SQ's streak of accidental transphobia.)

(Showers kind of freak you out now.)

"I can help with that," Setsu replies. They're putting Chipie in cold sleep and seem unsure what to do with the cat attached to his neck.

Your heart lurches dangerously in your chest. "What?"

"Showering. I'll just stand in front of your stall and tell everyone else to leave."

"Um... Isn't the glass, like, transparent?"

Setsu absently strokes Chipie's cat, causing Chipie's actual leg to start kicking. This horrifies them enough that they hurl the rest of his cat into the pod and slam it shut. "It's semi-transparent, yeah," Setsu says, changing the subject. "You can see if someone's in there but not what they're doing."

You think about it. It occurs to you that this might be Setsu's way of tactfully informing you that you need to bathe.

In the bathroom, you take off your outer clothes and leave them in a heap on the floor. This is the same outfit you were wearing when you fled Liu-An. Your father's leather jacket smells like your last cigarette mixed with the burning of worlds; underneath you have a button-up with no bra, a chest with no breasts, and a tattoo of a phoenix caged between your ribs.

Setsu's back presses dutifully against the other side of the shower door. The glass is, in fact, semi-transparent, and something about seeing the worst parts of yourself next to the only real friend you have left is deeply, deeply sickening.

This is vulnerability, you realize.

This is real fear.

Somehow, in a hell of endless boredom and fearless pain, you've found something you're afraid to lose.

Day 4

Nobody dies overnight, and you're grateful.

You are a guardian angel, and you can't save anyone, you think. You keep thinking it until Setsu's eyes tell you they trust you with their whole heart.

Something about that haunts you.

(In your mother's religion, there is a word for angels in hell. There is a description of eternal burning, of immortal suffering—but, you wonder, could the Devil really create a hell in which you couldn't choose hope without reason? Against all impossibility, eternity is forever, so all things become certain.)

(Phoenixes are also immortal. They also burn eternally, flying uncertain, until—

"Remnan is the true doctor," Setsu argues. "He is the only one to corroborate that Shigemichi was Gnosia—have I lied to any of you? All of you who are human—you each know what the truth is. Sha-Ming: you're human. Evelyn, SQ: you're human. You may not trust each other, but you each know your own truth. All I ask is that you vote from the heart."

"How dense can you be!" Raqio spits. "Setsu and Remnan are both Gnosia—their results corroborate each other exactly—"

"Because we're telling the truth!"

"And," Raqio continues. "Setsu has explicitly chosen not to investigate either person coming forward as doctor. What interest are you serving, exactly, in building up trust among the crew instead of using your unique ability to resolve this conflict once and for all? Are you avoidant, perhaps, of telling the wrong lie?"

"Setsu isn't stupid," you say. "If they aren't investigating a doctor it's because they've already noticed which of you is lying."

From across the room, Yuriko abruptly makes eye contact with you.

A chill runs down your spine.

"Evelyn," Yuriko states. "Have you considered that even eternity won't save you from sin?"

"What the fuck are you talking about," you say, less confidently than you hoped. Emptiness settles into your stomach. Something is wrong.

Setsu is detaching from the scene, leaning against the wall behind SQ's bench; you meet their eyes with mutual concern until Yuriko obscures your line of sight.

"The question you've asked," Yuriko says. Her smile births two new galaxies behind her eyes and she speaks them into lifeless mist. "There is a point where consciousness is broken beyond repair. Impossibility is real, and there is no burning that can absolve you of your guilt."

Yuriko is upon you now. Her breath is negative space, each exhale annihilating the air before you until you can barely breathe; her finger taps the center of your chest, the opposite of closeness until your heart beats backwards and your tattoo escapes your skin to die in her hand— "A phoenix," Yuriko says without speaking, "Is only destined for insanity."

You choke. You want to say something like Bro, what the fuck, but you no longer have a mouth.

"Raqio," Setsu says tentatively. They are saving you. There is no way to keep you unfrozen except by directing suspicion to someone else. "I have reason to believe Shigemichi was the bug. All we know is at least one doctor is lying. I spoke too soon, and now I'm choosing to trust you. My apologies."

Raqio sneers. They don't trust Setsu enough to believe this is isn't gamesmanship.

Tension stretches as thin as the atmosphere.

Impossibly, you open your mouth. "Yuriko," you address, as Setsu's eyes widen in fear, "Please believe them. This could all end tonight."

Nobody speaks until the votes are counted.

You exhale in heavy, dead relief.

When it's over, Setsu catches you in the hallway.

"What the fuck was that," you hiss, still unable to shake the lingering sense of dread. "What the fuck just happened?

"We just found out who the other Gnosia is," Setsu breathes. "This is bad. I haven't seen you shaken up like that since your loops were in the thirties. Are you okay?"

"How did she know about the tattoo? How was she reading my fucking mind?"

"She just guessed right. It was probably a last-chance scare tactic. If you voted for her out of fear instead of Remnan, they'd have two tiebreaker rounds to sway Raqio back and freeze you. After killing me, they'd win in debate tomorrow."

"Setsu, what if the one who dies tonight is me?"

"It's a gamble. You're an easy target in tomorrow's debate, so they might try to kill someone who's been going unnoticed instead."

"No, like, what happens to you?"

Setsu's eyes soften, and they elbow you in the hip. Elbowing you in the shoulder isn't an option because you're almost a half-meter taller. "I'm trusting you for that," they say, and smile. "See ya."

Day 5

"Sha-Ming is dead," Setsu announces, with no hint of remorse.

"Well, he was definitely human," Raqio says. "And I confirmed Remnan wasn't. And since we're all here again, that can only mean one thing. Evelyn, would you prove yourself useful in taking a guess? It's so simple even you can figure it out."

Setsu swallows. "Last night, I investigated Yuriko. She's the final Gnosia."

This is it. You and Setsu are on the same page; you just need one more vote against Yuriko to guarantee the win. If you can't get Raqio or SQ to vote for Yuriko, you'll at least have to focus on splitting their votes to force a tiebreaker.

"So we found all of them. There's no need for a debate at this point," you say. "Yuriko should freeze."

Yuriko turns to look at you, unblinking. "So you desire the destruction of the Universe."

"The bug," Raqio says.

"Evelyn," Yuriko says.

You shiver.

"Even if Setsu is Gnosia—" Raqio starts.

"Evelyn could like, destroy the whole universe tonight?" SQ concludes.

"Is this a game for you?" Yuriko accuses you. She is walking towards you, a presence with no presence, ground rising up to meet unmoving feet. "Would you toy with the burden of infinite sin, all for the sake of amusement?"

"I would never," you say.

"So speaks the woman who would carve an enclave out of time just for herself and her lover," Yuriko says. "Playing God to the souls of twelve others."

Your heart drops into your stomach. You cannot look at Setsu.

"Did you honestly think you could hide from me?" Yuriko says. "I know everything about you."

(That's a lie, you realize.)

"You know," Setsu says. "If I were Gnosia, I would have killed you last night. So why is it that you're not dead?"

Yuriko smirks without moving her lips. "Who can say?"

"Raqio," Setsu says. "I know you're the true doctor, but place yourself in the Gnosia's position. You've spent five days arguing with us, and you've seen how influential Yuriko is. If she were human, why would the Gnosia choose to kill Sha-Ming? And what, to you, does that beget?"

They think about it.

Eventually, they burst out laughing.

For the second day in a row, you breathe heavy relief.

By the time Yuriko is in cold sleep, you are running through the halls. It's not genuine joy, yet. There are only four of you left, and this isn't over until fifteen people step off the D.Q.O. onto dry land.

That being said, you haven't tasted victory this sweet in a while.

(Liu-An has been gone long enough that, when you finally touch dirt and water again, you'll kiss it. You'll kiss so many times, each one honest and open—you'll give forever in defiance.)

(In your culture, an orphan becomes a child of the village; and, you suppose that makes you a child of the Universe. You are ready to be embraced by every filthy corner, to be found crying in every field, to eat in every house and leave full—)

For now, all you can do is outrun the end of your loop.

(To be honest, Yuriko has really been giving you a hard time lately. Why is she so scary? She's literally a teenager.)

Setsu charges you with their arms spread and you chest-bump in the middle of the cafeteria.

"Hey," Setsu says, hugging you.

"Oh, hi," you say. You are still thinking about kisses too much, catching your breath as they press their forehead into your chest and wow, your heart really is beating that fast, and—

"Ready to warp?" Setsu says.

"Yeah," you say. They have really beautiful eyes. "I'll, um..."

(Like every loop, this one is ending too soon.)

"I'll see you next time," you say.

They smile. You can tell it's genuine.

Day 6

SQ is dead.

You understand exactly what's going on.

Raqio is cackling. In scientific terms, they are losing their shit. "Evelyn, you fucking idiot! I told you this would happen. Do I need to explain to you how—"

"There we go," Setsu says, dusting their hands on their pants.

You are exhausted. It's the same exhaustion you carry into the start of every loop. With the ship to yourself, you collapse into the shower.

A phoenix is only destined for insanity, Yuriko had said. You're starting to believe it. In fact, the only part you disagree with is the implication that it's somehow your fault for playing God when you've been forced into it.

(Lovers, she had called you.)

When this ends, Setsu is going back to the Galactic Military. They'll be reabsorbed, rank and file, into the same beast that stole their childhood—how many years will it be before you can see them again? How many nights can you last before you fill the hole in your heart with someone else?

Being trapped in this loop might be the only time you've ever been free.

That's what Yuriko was reading on your face.

"Do you think we're fucked up?" you say over the water.

Setsu leans back against the door, thinking. "A situation like this isn't supposed to exist, so no. It's like war. We didn't start it, and we aren't even following orders. We're just here."

You wash your face, palms scraping over permanent stubble. "I don't know. I can't get the idea of sin out of my head."

"You mentioned you used to be religious," Setsu says. It's a safe answer.

"I mean, religion is a tool that helps people understand the universe. I've never been one for dogma or organization—and I don't know, maybe I still count as religious? It's just... do you ever just feel guilty?"

"Yeah. All the time."

"I think for me, that's what sin feels like."

Setsu is quiet. "For me, I just hope it means I'm still somehow a good person."

There's no easy way to reassure them. All you can do is crack the door open and fish around until Setsu takes your hand. Spend a moment on nothing and call it peaceful.

"This is a terrible angle," Setsu says.

"Yeah, I agree," you say. At this point, you're too exhausted for anxiety. "We can just open it. It's not like anyone else is here."

"Are you trusting me to keep my eyes shut?"

"I... don't care at this point," you say. They've seen worse in the shower. You're definitely both trying not to think about it.

"Ev, can I just get in with you?" Setsu says. "I—I mean, we do it all the time in the military. Not in showers like this—there's a huge room that everybody... you know."

"Yeah," you say. "I'd like that."

Their uniform rustles in an indecipherable combination of zippers and snaps. You're thinking about asexuality again—not so much as a problem, but more as they key to deciphering their intent. Reading people has always been incredibly difficult, and a hundred or so loops haven't done much to remedy that.

It's a bit comforting in a way, to know that you're still the same awkward trans girl who boarded the ship at Liu-An.

(You don't think about this part much, but you ran across an active battlefield for this. You left everything, didn't look back, looked back, traveled through time and still—)

The door opens, and you feel Setsu's arms around you. The bare skin of your back tells you that they're still wearing clothes, but it's as human a touch as you've ever shared.

In contrast to the social austerity on the mainland, the families on your moon loved openly. It isn't just newborns who need touch; it's elders, parents, friends, shaking hands at the gas station, hugging your best friend until you squeeze out the tears they're holding back—

"No matter what," Setsu says. "Don't give up."

"I promise."

"Even if you're suffering. Keep suffering, because you love yourself too much to die. Even if it's without me."

You can't promise that. It's impossible to keep, not because you can't control your emotions, because you can (kind of), but because—

"I promise," you say. "No matter what."

Water streams down your face.

"Were you really my guardian angel?" Setsu asks.

You nod. The loop is beginning again. You can feel particles of unreality creeping towards your core, eating away like acid and teeth; a flood—

"I'm sorry," Setsu chokes. "I'm so sorry, Ev—"

You turn your head to face theirs, skin against skin (you have never been more honest—

"I've got you, okay?" you say. "I've got you."

They are desperate, eyes wide with fear and pain and—you know how this feels. You've felt how this feels. They are fighting harder than you have ever seen them fight—you have both only ever been tender—

"You never have to forgive me for anything," Setsu whispers.

As time holds its breath around you, your hands find theirs. Arms tighten around your head, cradling you—you realize you are watching them give in, and your heart—

"I can't," Setsu cries.

This is what you chose.

"Ev, I can't fucking do it."

Water falls over you, so much like a rainstorm that you'd swear you're almost home.

Slowly, their hand moves to cup your chin, and you close your eyes. Lean back into the touch of your life in their hands, of water and closeness and something neither of you are brave enough to call by its name.

(In your eternity, all hope becomes certain.)

They kiss you on the cheek, and snap your neck.