(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN) THE BOND VILLAIN REAPPEARS

How did you defeat someone who could, theoretically, loop through the same period of time until they eventually found a way to kill you?

You couldn't, at least not by conventional means. What you could do instead was only delay the inevitable. 

Thomas had already reached that conclusion before he ever stepped into the training room, and there was little point in going over the same ground again. Taylor Hebert's power gave her an advantage that became more formidable the longer a problem remained unsolved, which meant that trying to overpower her directly was almost certainly the wrong approach.

The more important question was what happened when the advantage itself became a burden.

Thomas increased the speed of the treadmill by another fraction and kept his gaze forward, using the mirrored wall to follow the training floor without making his interest obvious. Taylor was sparring with Reynolds, which was precisely why he had chosen the treadmill in the first place. There was nothing unusual about a PRT employee, even a contractor such as him, exercising while recruits trained nearby, and nobody would think twice about his attention drifting toward the sparring area. He had been careful to make his interest look casual.

She was better than he had expected, and the improvement was obvious even from a distance. She still lacked experience, and Reynolds was taking advantage of that, but she was learning quickly. Whenever he caught her with the same maneuver twice, she adjusted the next time he tried it.

Thomas found himself paying less attention to the fight itself and more to the way Taylor responded to it. Reynolds kept changing his approach, and Taylor was beginning to anticipate the changes rather than merely react to them. It was a simple exchange, but the implications were more interesting than the technique itself.

Her ability to learn from him was hardly surprising, since the reports had made that much clear. What interested Thomas was the way she did it. She did not simply repeat the same action and hope for a different result; she watched, remembered, and altered her approach. There was also a patience to it that was unusual for someone her age, although perhaps that was the wrong way to look at it.

Thomas's eyes narrowed slightly as he continued watching.

For all he knew, she had already lived through this particular exchange dozens of times, which meant even her smallest decisions could be built upon experiences he would never see. That was the difficulty with Taylor. He could observe her for an hour and still have no idea how much experience stood behind any particular decision. She could be a talented teenager learning to fight, or she could be someone who had spent years making the same mistakes until she had eliminated every one of them.

There was no way to tell.

Reynolds caught her with a sweep, and Taylor hit the mat before rolling onto her side. She was back on her feet almost immediately, wiping sweat from her forehead before raising her guard again, and Thomas watched her return to the fight without giving herself time to dwell on the mistake.

Then he considered the problem from the other direction.

How would he fight someone like this?

People had limits, even when they did not know where those limits lay. Some could endure physical pain, while others were better at withstanding fear, humiliation, or failure. A rarer sort could bear all three when someone else was paying the price. Taylor's power could erase the consequences of a failed attempt, but it could not erase the experience itself. Whether that distinction would eventually become important was another question, particularly since everything Thomas had seen suggested that Taylor belonged to that last group.

The reports surrounding the ABB had given him enough evidence to make that assessment. Taylor had put herself in danger repeatedly, and the pattern suggested that protecting other people mattered to her more than protecting herself.

That gave him something useful to work with.

He did not need to prevent Taylor from looping; he needed to give her a problem that could not be solved simply by trying again. If one path ended with her death, she could choose another. If another ended with someone else dying, she could keep searching. The real difficulty would come when every available path carried a consequence she was unwilling to accept.

Thomas smiled slightly even as he huffed loudly.

That was where his power became useful. He could explore one course of action while keeping another available, and if the first course proved unprofitable, he could discard it without ever exposing himself to the consequences. Taylor could use her power to search for a solution, but Thomas could change the circumstances surrounding the problem each time she approached it.

More importantly, every attempt would tell him something about how she thought, what she prioritized, and which sacrifices she refused to make. Then, he could force her to choose between outcomes and learn which consequences she considered unacceptable.

The more she tried, the more Thomas would learn, and unlike Taylor, he did not need to remember every possible future. He only needed to remember the ones that mattered.

As a matter of fact, Taylor had no way of knowing which possibility he had abandoned and which one he had kept, so any knowledge she gained would always be incomplete.

Thomas watched Taylor slip another strike and counter with one of her own. Reynolds blocked it, but Taylor had already adjusted her footing before he could retaliate.

She really was persistent, and while that would make things difficult, it would also make her interesting.

Thomas had spent years dealing with people who could be understood after enough observation. Taylor presented a problem that changed every time she failed, but his power gave him the means to change with her.

The question was no longer whether he could defeat someone who could try forever.

It was whether he could make her regret having another chance.

For now, there was no reason to interfere or even approach her yet, since doing so would be foolish. She knew very little about the PRT, even less about the people within it, and he intended to keep it that way.

For now, he was simply another employee using the training room, and that was exactly how he intended to remain. There was no reason to rush while Taylor was still learning what she could do, and every session brought him closer to understanding when she would finally become a problem worth dealing with. Once that happened, he intended to be ready.