Chapter 18 - The Loop That Never Closed

Just when I thought we had reached a fragile peace, the fractures returned. Selene and I had been chasing the Memory Thieves across fractured cities, stabilizing Echoes, and locking down illegal loops. The Rebirth Accord was supposed to stop this, but some factions never truly surrendered. On a rainy evening in Prague, we received a coded message from an old contact. "Gabriel, there's a loop that never closed. It's pulling timelines into itself. It's growing. If it collapses, it could destroy the entire memory web." Selene's eyes hardened. "We can't let that happen." We tracked the loop's epicenter to the ruins of an abandoned research facility buried beneath the city. It was one of the original sites where the timeline experiments began. The loop was alive—pulsing, shimmering, dragging debris and flickers of alternate realities into itself. And inside the loop… was Leonard. But that was impossible. Leonard had died. Yet there he was, untouched by time, his body suspended in the heart of the fracture. I stepped forward, but Selene gripped my arm. "Gabriel, this isn't him. It's a construct. An echo designed to pull you in." "I need to know," I whispered, breaking free. As I stepped into the loop, memories slammed into me—flashes of Leonard's laugh, his stubbornness, our final battle. But the Leonard inside the loop wasn't real. He was a fragment, a collection of my own grief and guilt. "You abandoned me," the fragment said, his voice cruelly accurate. "You promised we'd finish this together." "I didn't abandon you. You saved me," I whispered, my chest tightening. "Then why do you keep coming back here, Gabriel? Why can't you let me go?" I clutched the stabilizer, shaking. "Because I'm afraid if I let you go, I'll forget what you meant to me." The fragment of Leonard smirked sadly. "Then you've already lost." The loop pulsed violently, trying to consume me. Selene's voice crackled through the comm. "Gabriel, you need to close the loop from inside. But you won't make it out in time if you do." I stared at the stabilizer, at Leonard's image, at the collapsing memories swirling around me. "Do it," I said. "It's the only way to protect the Accord." Selene was silent for a long moment. Then, her voice softened. "I'll find you. Even if it takes a thousand timelines. I'll find you." I activated the stabilizer, and the loop began to implode. Leonard's fragment smiled faintly. "Thank you… for remembering me." The light swallowed everything. When I awoke, I was in a small apartment in Lisbon. The notebook was gone. The stabilizer was gone. I had no memory of how I arrived. But a woman knocked on my door, her face familiar in a way that made my heart ache. "Hi," she said softly. "I've been looking for you." I frowned. "Do I know you?" "Not yet. But I know you. And I know you never stop fighting for the people you love." She handed me a sealed envelope. Inside was a photograph—me, Selene, and Leonard. Written on the back: Some stories never truly end. They just wait for someone to remember them again. Find me. The signature was hers—Selene. I clutched the photo tightly, my heart racing with an unfamiliar mix of fear and hope. Somewhere, in some timeline, she was waiting. And I would find her.