Chapter 1

The digital clock let out a sharp beep and flipped to midnight. The third loop had begun.

I jolted upright in bed, gasping for air. Cold sweat soaked through my pajamas. There was still a phantom sting at my neck where the blade had sliced it open last time.

That was from my memory of the previous loop. I'd hidden in the ceiling crawlspace and had gotten taken out in one clean strike.

"Calm down. I need to calm down," I muttered, forcing myself to push the fear aside. I started dissecting the reason I'd died the first two times.

The first time, I'd spent a small fortune turning my apartment into something out of a bank vault. I'd had a reinforced alloy front door installed with a 16-digit dynamic passcode. Not even a fly could've gotten in.

The result?

The killer in the clown mask had just stood at the door and let out a sneer. Then, his long fingers had flown across the keypad. With a beep, the light had turned green. He'd walked in like he owned the place, found me, and brought his axe down on my throat.

That passcode was something I'd put together by mixing my first girlfriend's birthday with a string of random characters. No one on earth could've known it but me. Even a top-tier hacker would've needed time to crack it. Yet my killer had done it in three seconds flat.

The second time, I'd learned my lesson and stopped relying on tech. Instead, I'd used my build to my advantage and squeezed into the central AC maintenance hatch in the living room ceiling.

It had been a total visual blind spot. To avoid giving myself away, I'd even taken meds to slow my heart rate, and I'd held my breath.

But when the killer had come in, he hadn't even bothered checking the bedroom or the closet. Heck, he hadn't even so much as looked around. He'd walked straight to the spot under the hatch, lifted his arm, and thrown the axe upward. The blade had ripped through the drywall and hit me dead in the heart.

The whole thing just felt so strange. It was as if my killer were working off a script, like he already knew every move I'd make.

"Something's off… This is seriously messed up," I mumbled.

I paced through the dead-silent apartment, my bare feet pattering across the ice-cold floor. If the first time was just a freak coincidence and he happened to be some master codebreaker, then what about the second time? Did he have X-ray vision? Thermal imaging?

No, that couldn't be it. I'd even wrapped myself in an emergency thermal blanket to block heat signatures.

This was my own apartment; I knew every inch of it. I was positive there were no surveillance cameras anywhere. The only explanation left was that he somehow knew my plan. It was as if he lived in my mind—he knew exactly how I thought and what I'd do.

To test that horrifying theory, I made a crazy decision. This round, I wouldn't hide.

I walked over to the coffee table in the living room and picked up the fruit knife I usually used to peel apples, flipping it into a reverse grip in my palm.

Then, I shut my eyes and deliberately constructed a plan in my head. I would hide in the kitchen freezer. I'd curl up in the freezer compartment. I'd use the thick freezer walls to block the bullets…

I repeated the thought incessantly in my mind. At the same time, I went back to the bedroom and slid under the bed.