Ethan forced himself to stay calm, but the weight of what he was reading pressed against his chest. Project Requiem wasn't just about anomalies—it was about eliminating them. Every name in the file had been flagged as a time discrepancy, something that shouldn't exist. And one by one, they had been erased. Except him.
Lyra's fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling deeper into the archive. "There are execution orders here. Dozens of them. They weren't just monitoring anomalies, Ethan. They were wiping them out."
Ethan's gaze remained locked on the screen. The names meant nothing to him, but their pattern did. These weren't criminals. They weren't rebels. Some were normal people, scientists, politicians, even civilians. The only thing they had in common was that, somewhere in their timeline, something had changed.
Lyra scrolled further, then stopped abruptly. Her voice was tight. "Ethan… your name isn't just in the list. You're the only anomaly with multiple orders."
His pulse slowed. "Multiple?"
Lyra swallowed. "They've tried to erase you six times. Each attempt failed."
Ethan exhaled through his nose, forcing himself to process the words. The gunshot. The betrayal. The near-deaths that never quite finished him. All of it, part of something bigger.
Lyra leaned back, rubbing her temple. "Whatever this project was, you were their biggest problem. And if they failed six times…" She glanced at him. "They're going to try again."
Ethan closed his eyes briefly, then straightened. "Who's running this now?"
Lyra typed fast, tracing the latest logs. "Project Requiem was officially shut down years ago, but someone reopened it. The new authorizations were signed under a classified encryption. No name, no designation."
Ethan clenched his jaw. "Someone high up."
Lyra nodded. "Very high up. Someone with direct access to the core of the Time Loop Bank." She hesitated. "And if they know you're alive…"
Ethan pushed away from the desk, his mind already racing through possibilities. The syndicate, Malik, Dante—none of them mattered anymore. This was bigger. The game he thought he was playing had just changed.
He turned to Lyra. "We need to find out who reopened that project. And then we need to stop them before they erase me for good."