Read Chapter 27: The Rowing Race

The bell had stopped tolling, but its echo still lived in Evelyn’s bones as Julian pulled her down the companionway. The ship hummed with that strange, drug-heavy silence—a thousand souls sleeping while the Atlantic crept closer.

“Midnight drill,” Julian said, breath tight. “Ashworth’s doing. He’s called all hands to boat stations. A cover.”

“For what?”

“For us.” He stopped at a cross-corridor, pressing a palm to the wall. “He left a note in the captain’s cabin. Said the port side boats are being lowered early—crew instruction. If we want Margaret on one, we go now.”

Evelyn didn’t ask how Julian had gotten the note. She didn’t want to know what other compromises he’d made while she’d been weeping over her grandmother’s locket. The locket was cold against her chest now, the bell-symbol etched into its face burning like a brand.

They found Margaret in the linen store where they’d hidden her, propped against a stack of folded sheets, her face pale and slick with sweat. The burst appendix had turned her lips grey.

“Can you stand?” Evelyn asked.

Margaret smiled weakly. “I’ve stood through worse.”

Julian lifted her without ceremony, cradling her like a child. She weighed nothing. Evelyn’s stomach turned.

The boat deck was chaos dressed as order. Stewards in white gloves moved passengers in dressing gowns toward the lifeboats, their voices low and soothing. Someone had rigged the ship’s bells to ring a slow, mournful pattern—the drill signal. Women clutched children; men stood in clusters, smoking, pretending this was theater.

Julian angled toward the port side, where Boat 8 hung at the davits, half-lowered. A crowd of women already pressed at the rail. Evelyn spotted her opening: a steward with a clipboard, checking names, turning away anyone who couldn’t prove they belonged.

“Evelyn Ashworth,” she said, stepping forward. “I’m—I’m taking my grandmother. She’s ill.”

The steward’s eyes flicked to Margaret, limp in Julian’s arms. His mouth flattened. “Women and children only, miss. The gentleman can’t board.”

“He isn’t boarding. He’s helping me carry her.”

“Then he can help her to the rail and step back.”

Julian moved to obey, but a second crewman materialized—broad-shouldered, with a quartermaster’s chevrons and a face like a closed door. “Hold. No stretcher cases. The boat’s at capacity.”

“She’s not a case,” Evelyn snapped. “She’s my grandmother. She has a perforated appendix. She needs a surgeon in New York or she dies.”

“She’ll die on the boat if she’s as bad as you say. You’re condemning her to a slow, cramped death in the cold.”

The quartermaster’s logic was vicious and airtight. Evelyn felt the loop press in around her—the same walls closing, the same clock ticking. She’d watched Margaret die in six different timelines. She would not watch her die again.

“I’m pregnant,” Evelyn heard herself say.

The words came out before she knew she was speaking them. The quartermaster blinked. Julian’s head snapped toward her, eyes wide.

“I’m pregnant,” she repeated, louder. “And my grandmother is the only family I have left. If you make me choose between her and my child, you’ll have to explain to God why you forced a woman in my condition to climb a rope ladder in the middle of the night.”

She let her hand drift to her stomach. It was flat beneath her coat, but she made herself believe it. She summoned the phantom weight, the imagined flutter, and for a moment—just a moment—she felt something shift beneath her palm.

The quartermaster stared at her. The steward hovered, uncertain.

“Let her board,” said a woman in a fur collar, stepping from the crowd. “I’ll vouch for her. Edith Rosenbaum. I’ve got my pig. She’s got her grandmother. Let’s stop wasting time.”

The quartermaster’s jaw worked. He flicked his fingers at the steward. “Fine. The girl and the grandmother. But the man stays.”

Julian carried Margaret to the rail and passed her, limp and heavy, into Evelyn’s arms. Her weight nearly dragged Evelyn to the deck. The locket swung against her collarbone.

“I’ll find you,” Julian said, low. “In New York. However this ends.”

“You won’t.” Evelyn’s voice cracked. “The ship is going down. There aren’t enough boats.”

“Then I’ll swim.” He smiled—that sharp, crooked smile she’d memorized across a dozen foredoomed mornings. “I’ve gotten good at not dying.”

The steward urged her forward. Evelyn stumbled onto the boat, Margaret slumped against her shoulder. The lifeboat swayed as the davits took the weight. She could feel the cold radiating off the water below, black and patient.

Then the pain came.

It started as a cramp—low, insistent, like a hand gripping her from inside. Evelyn gasped and doubled over, and Margaret’s head lolled against her neck. Something warm and wet traced the inside of her thigh.

No. No, not now.

The women around her began to murmur. The fur-collared woman—Edith—leaned in. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.” Evelyn pressed her hand to her stomach. “The baby—it’s fine. I’m fine.”

But the pain sharpened, doubled her over the gunwale. Her vision blurred. Through the haze she saw Julian vault the rail, heard the quartermaster shout, saw hands reaching for him—

“Get her out of the boat!” someone yelled. “She’s losing it!”

Losing it. The words landed like blows. Evelyn clutched Margaret, refusing to let go, but strong arms were already lifting her, dragging her back over the rail onto the deck. She kicked, screamed, clawed at the wood—but the pain stole her strength, and she fell to her knees on the planking.

The last thing she saw before the dark closed in was the lifeboat dropping away, Margaret’s grey face tilted up at her, mouth forming a word Evelyn couldn’t hear.

*Run.*

When Evelyn woke, she was in a bunk she didn’t recognize. The ship listed slightly beneath her. A lamp guttered on a shelf, and Julian sat beside her, head bowed, hands clasped loose between his knees.

“Margaret?” she whispered.

He didn’t look up. “She’s gone.”

“Gone onboard? She made it?”

“Gone, Evelyn.” His voice was flat. “Ashworth moved her. While you were being dragged off the boat, he had her carried to a cabin on B-deck. Secret. Locked. He said—” Julian finally raised his head, and his eyes were red-rimmed. “He said she’s safer there. That if she gets on a lifeboat, the loop will kill her faster than the appendix will. He’s done this before. He’s watched her die eleven times.”

Evelyn’s hand drifted to her stomach. It was flat. Empty. The phantom pregnancy had vanished with consciousness—another cruel gift of the loop’s machinery.

“It wasn’t real,” she said. “The baby.”

“I know.” Julian’s jaw tightened. “But Ashworth saw you board with her. And he knows you’re willing to lie your way to the boats now. So he’s sealed the exits. Every boat on the port side is under his control. Every woman who boards will be searched.”

Evelyn sat up slowly, her body aching. The locket was still cold against her chest.

“Then we stop working through the crew,” she said. “We work through the passengers. There’s a woman named Edith Rosenbaum who vouched for me on the boat deck. She has a pig and more influence than the quartermaster. If we can get to her—”

“She’s already in a boat. Ashworth made sure of it.” Julian stood, crossing to a porthole. Outside, the sea was black and endless. No iceberg yet. No collision. They still had time—but time was bleeding through Evelyn’s fingers like water.

“There’s something else,” Julian said. “While you were out, the bell tolled again. Not the ship’s bell. The one from the symbol.” He touched his breast pocket. “I followed it to a storage room. The door was unlocked.”

He pulled out a small, folded card. On it was scripted handwriting Evelyn recognized—Ashworth’s.

*She isn’t the one who dies tonight. You are. You just don’t know it yet.*

Beneath the words, the bell-symbol had been scored into the paper—fresh ink, still wet.