Dec. 14, 2025

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights (Episode 3 of 4) - "Midnight Variations"

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights (Episode 3 of 4) - "Midnight Variations"

Eighty-nine loops in, Sloane's powers have evolved into something unprecedented: threshold sight, the ability to see between moments. She's remembering almost everything now—including the fact that she's falling in love with Elias.But the Collector has noticed her transformation. It appears with an offer: serve it forever and live, or die her final death. There is, it admits, a third option—but it requires Sloane to choose death willingly.When Elias admits he's known this all along, Sloane refuses to accept any of the Collector's terms. In the moment before her next death, she glimpses something new: a thread connecting her to Elias. And with it, the beginning of a plan.



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WEBVTT

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Caloroga Shark Media.

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Hello and welcome to Twelve Nights, a Christmas paranormal romance thriller.

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This is episode three, Midnight Variations.

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Loop eighty nine, and I can see things I shouldn't

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be able to see. It started small flickers at the

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edge of my vision, like catching movement in a mirror

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that wasn't there when I turned around. By loop seventy,

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the flickers had shapes. By loop eighty the shapes had meaning.

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I'm seeing between moments now, the pause between one second

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and the next, stretched out like taffy full of things

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that don't belong in normal time. Right now, standing in

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the bathroom with marsy sharpie in my hand, I can

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see three versions of myself layered on top of each other.

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One is writing on her arm, One is already at

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the gas station talking to Elias. One is dying pinned

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against a guardrail, watching blood spread across her blouse like

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a blooming flower. All of them are me. All of

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them are happening right now in the spaces I'm learning

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to see. I blink and they're gone, just me in

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the mirror, dark circles under my eyes that shouldn't be there,

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because my body resets every loop, but something about me

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isn't resetting anymore. Something is carrying forward that goes deeper

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than skin Loup eighty nine. I write on my forearm

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threshold sight getting stronger, saw the Collector in Loop forty

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seven sixty three eighty one. It's watching. It knows you're

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changing Elias eighteen forty seven, Cholera debt Walker. He saved you,

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he loves you. I pause, mark a hovering over my skin.

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That last part is new, not something I've written before,

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or maybe something I've written dozens of times and kept forgetting.

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But it feels true, truer than anything else I know

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about this impossible situation. He loves me. He's loved me

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for hundreds of loops, watching me die, watching me forget,

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showing up at the same gas station at the same

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time every night to have conversations I won't remember. And

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I'm starting to love him back. That's the cruelest part

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of all of this, not the dying, not the cold

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or the fear or the endless repetition. It's falling for

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some one across fractured time, building something real out of

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moments that keep getting erased. I capped the marker and

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head for the parking garage. Elias knew something was different

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the moment I stepped out of my car. I could

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tell by the way his posture shifted, hopeful, cautious, like

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a man who'd been disappointed too many times to trust

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good news. You're early again, he said, I'm always early now.

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I crossed the frozen pavement to stand beside him, closer

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than I usually did, close enough to see the fine

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lines at the corners of his eyes, the slight silver

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threading through his dark hair, signs of age that shouldn't

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exist on someone who'd been twenty nine for almost two centuries.

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I'm remembering more almost everything, I think, at least from

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the last twenty loops or so. That's not possible. And

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yet I held up my arm showed him the writing.

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I've been keeping notes, but lately I barely need them.

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It's like like the resets aren't reaching as deep as

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they used to. Elijah stared at my arm, then at

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my face. Your eyes, he said, softly, what about them?

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They're different. There's something. He reached up almost touched my cheek,

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then caught himself the almost touch that was becoming our

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signature in the old language. We'd call it threshold sight,

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the ability to see between moments, to perceive time the

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way the collector does. That's what's happening to me. I'm

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becoming like it. No, you're becoming something else, something I've

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never seen before. He shook his head. In all my

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years of walking debts, I've never met a human who

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developed threshold sight. It shouldn't be poss Maybe dying eighty

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nine times changes a person. He didn't laugh. Maybe it does.

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We stood there in the cold, breath fogging between us

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inside the gas station. The clerk was reading a magazine,

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utterly oblivious to the impossible things happening in her parking lot.

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Christmas music drifted through the windows, silent night, tinny and distant.

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Tell me about the woman, I said, He went very still.

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What woman, the one who tried to save you a

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century ago. I didn't know where the knowledge came from,

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a fragment, from a loop. I couldn't fully remember a

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whisper in the space between moments. You mentioned her once

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loop thirty something. You said, she tried to free you

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and ended up bound herself. For a long moment, he

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didn't answer, Then quietly, her name was Clara. She was

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a spiritualist in Boston nineteen twelve. She could see things

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most people couldn't, not threshold sight, but something adjacent, close

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enough to perceive me. When I came to collect a debt,

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you fell in love with her. No, he said it firmly,

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but there was pain underneath. I cared for her, admired her.

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She was brilliant and fierce, and she saw the Collector

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for what it was, not just an entity, but a system,

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a machine that fed on human suffering. She wanted to

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dismantle it. What happened. She found a way to sever

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my bond, a ritual, old magic, something she'd pieced together

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from fragments and folklore. It should have worked. His jaw tightened,

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but the Collector doesn't let go easily. When she tried

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to cut my chains, it took her instead, made her

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a debt walker in my life place, she's still out there,

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still bound. No, she broke herself free eventually. It took

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us sixty years, and it cost her everything, her sanity,

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her humanity, most of her memories. Last I saw her,

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she was just a shell, a ghost of the woman

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she'd been. He looked at me, and his eyes were haunted.

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That's why I haven't tried to break your loops loan.

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Every attempt to fight the Collector directly ends in destruction.

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It's not malicious, it's just vast incomprehensible, like fighting gravity.

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So we just accept it. Die forever, reset forever, never

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get out. I didn't say that, then, what are you saying?

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Before he could answer, the temperature dropped, not gradually the

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way cold usually arrives. This was instant, absolute, the kind

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of cold that stops your heart, that makes your bones ache,

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that feels less like weather and more like presence. The

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Christmas music from the gas station turned to static. The

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lights flickered, buzzed, went dark, and in the darkness something spoke,

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Sloane Marchetti. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from

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inside my skull and outside the universe, from the space

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between one second and the next, where things like the

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Collector lived. You are changing, evolving, becoming something new. I

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couldn't move, couldn't Breathe beside me. Elias had gone rigid,

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his face pale in the dim light. Don't engage, he whispered,

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whatever it offers, don't your debt, Walker gives poor counsel.

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He has always been sentimental inefficient. The darkness shifted and

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I saw it the collector, not the glimpse I'd caught

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in Loop forty seven, a flash before impact avoid where

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a face should be. This was the full thing, and

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my threshold sight showed it to me in terrible clarity.

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It was made of moments, thousands of them, millions maybe

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fragments of time that should have ended but didn't. Human

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lives stretched and folded and compressed into something that was

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almost a shape. I could see faces in it, hear whispers,

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feel the weight of all those stolen seconds pressing against

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reality like a hand against a window. You perceive me good,

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That will make this easier. What do you want? My

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voice came out steadier than I expected, the same thing

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I always want, balance, debt, the natural order maintained. It shifted,

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and for a moment, those compressed faces seemed to turn

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towards me, a chorus of the dead and the dying

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and the never quite finished. Your loop generates significant energy,

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more than any single soul has produced in centuries. I

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am reluctant to release it, but you are evolving beyond

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the loop's capacity to contain you. Soon you will remember everything.

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Soon you will see as I see, And a soul

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with threshold sight cannot be harvested, cannot be contained. A

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pause heavy as centuries, you will break free eventually. It

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is only a matter of time. Hope surged in my chest,

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sharp and painful. Then let us go. If I'm going

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to break free anyway, I did not say I would

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allow it. The cold deepened beside me. A Lias made

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a sound pain, maybe or fear. I could see frost

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forming on his eyelashes. I am offering you a choice,

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Sloane Marchetti. Work for me as your debt walker does,

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use your threshold sight in my service. In exchange, I

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will end your loop and allow you to live, truly

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live in linear time once more. And Elias, he remains bound.

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His debt is not your concern. That's not Alternatively, the

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collector shifted again, and I felt its attention focus on

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me like a spotlight made of ice. I can collapse

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the loop now permanently. You will die your final death

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at mile marker forty seven, as you are always meant to,

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and your soul will move on to whatever waits beyond.

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Clean simple the natural order restored those are my only options?

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Serve you or die. There is a third option, but

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you will not like it. I waited you could break

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the loop yourself. Your threshold sight grows stronger with each iteration.

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Eventually you will be able to see the mechanism that

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binds you, the debt your lover paid to trap you here.

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If you can find that debt and sever it, the

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loop will end and you will both go free. My

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heart was pounding. How do I sever it? The debt

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was paid in blood and desperation. A man watched a

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woman die and could not bear it. The only way

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to break such a bond is to reverse it. The

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collector's voice dropped, almost gentle. You must choose to die, Sloane,

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not by accident, not by fate, by choice. You must

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stand at the threshold between life and death and willingly

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step through. That's insane. I've died eighty nine times. You

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have been killed eighty nine times. There is a difference.

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A death you choose carries different weight than a d

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death that happens to you. Another pause. Your debt walker

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knows this, he has always known. Ask him why he

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never told you. The cold receded, The lights flickered, back on.

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The Christmas music resumed, picking up right where it had

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left off, as if nothing had happened. I turned to Elias.

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He wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the ground,

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shoulders hunched, and in the yellow glow of the gas

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station lights, he looked older than his centuries, tired in

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a way that went deeper than bones. You knew, I said, yes,

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all this time, you knew there was a way out,

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and you never because the way out is you dying.

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His voice cracked, you choosing to die, and I couldn't.

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He finally looked at me, and there were tears in

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his eyes. I've watched you die three hundred and eighty

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nine times, Sloane. I've memorized every version of your last breath.

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And you want me to ask you to do it

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on purpose, to stand in front of that guard rail

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and choose to let it kill you. It might not work.

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It might not work, he agreed. The collector could be lying.

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It probably is. It doesn't want us free. It wants

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to break us, twist us into something it can use.

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The clock on my phone read eleven fifty one. The

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pull of the loop was stronger than ever, dragging me

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toward the car, toward the highway, toward the crash. I

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couldn't escape, but for the first time I fought it.

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Dug my heels in stayed. There's something the collector didn't say,

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I told Elias. It said the debt was paid in

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blood and desperation, Your blood, your desperation. But it also

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said the bond goes both ways. Sloane, what if I'm

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not the only one who has to choose? He stared

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at me. The pull was getting stronger, and I could

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feel time itself starting to bend, the loop, demanding its

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dew figure it out. I said, find another way, because

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I'm not choosing to die, and I'm not choosing to

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serve that thing. There has to be a third option.

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There isn't always a third option. There is if we

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make one. I got in the car, drove to the highway,

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hit the ice at mile mark of forty seven, and

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felt the world spin out from under me. But just

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before impact, I saw something new, A thread, thin as

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spider silk, glowing faintly in my threshold sight, stretching from

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my chest to somewhere beyond the crash, beyond the loop,

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beyond everything, A thread connecting me to Elias, and in

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the instant before everything went dark, I understood the debt

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wasn't just his, it was ours, and the only way

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to break it was to share it. The office Christmas

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party ended at eleven. I opened my eyes at my desk, gasping,

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and I remembered everything, not fragments, not shadows, everything ninety

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loops of dying and living and falling in love with

222
00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:31.000
a man trapped in time, the collector's offer, the choice

223
00:16:31.039 --> 00:16:35.559
I refused to make, and the thread, the impossible, beautiful

224
00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:39.759
thread that connected us across every reset. I grabbed my

225
00:16:39.799 --> 00:16:43.039
coat and ran for the door. This time I wasn't

226
00:16:43.039 --> 00:16:46.720
going to the gas station. This time I was going

227
00:16:46.759 --> 00:16:48.720
to find another way.

228
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Yeah,