The Loop

August 2nd

They call New York ‘The City that never sleeps’, and they’ve never been more right.

It’s been a busy, bustling city pretty much from its inception, but since the arrival of the orbs, since powers? Man, there’s a thrum, a hum, a glow. There’s a nervous energy that permeates everything. It permeates me.

And I can’t get enough.

As I walk down the street, I feel it. I look across the road to the police station where a man I know only too well is even now on track to find an orb and get himself some powers. Those powers will both create and calm chaos, if given the chance. In a past life, I called that man a friend. An ally. Not now, though.

I’ve been through it all before, of course. How many times now? I’ve lost count. Dozens? Hundreds, maybe. So I know that the anxiety only ramps up. As the orbs get found, as their power gets used up, transferred, transmitted, and reconfigured, as their subliminal calming effect dissipates, the city’s fury ignites, explodes.

I move on and, attuned to the telepathic grooming of the orbs, I hone in on where I’m going. My destination sits clear in my mind; a warehouse three blocks away. Despite the hustle and bustle and constant movement of people throughout the city, there’s at least one orb I know of in Manhattan that hasn’t yet been found. It’s not really for me, at least not yet. The detective is supposed to touch it first, and every other time I’ve been down this road, I’ve let him, too afraid of how badly I might change things if I got there first. But now? Well I’ve already tried everything safe, everything non-chaotic.

As I recall, the metaphor of the city ready to explode will become literal in fifteen days when that madman, Zilzal—or whatever the hell he calls himself—blows up Grand Central. But he’s small potatoes, just the spark that lights the fuse that sets off the powder keg. If it isn’t him, it’ll be someone else. I know that, too. I’ve seen the alternatives, tried stopping him—and his alternatives—myself a bunch of times and seen how things played out. Never any better.

I tried the hero thing. I tried the saving the world thing. I’ve been sent back so many times that memories of individual timelines bleed into one another. Can’t quite be sure which me is the real me, which city is the real New York, which version of events really happened, is happening, will happen.

Only one thing is certain: They always win.

I know there have been entire iterations that I lived through that I’ve forgotten. I know I wasn’t the first to be sent back; that honor goes to the Machine—Overseer, as he calls himself, or called himself, or will call himself. I interrogated him once, in a loop at least ten generations back, and found that out. Then there was me, who knows how many times, with each timeline terminating around the same point, with Tomas shocked when I tell him we’ve been here before, with him naively suggesting I try something different this go around, as if there’s anything I haven’t tried.

I’ve tried everything.

Everything except, well … embracing the chaos.

But now I’m locked out. Someone else has been sent back, which means whatever I did in the last timeline—which I don’t remember because I wasn’t the one sent back—ended up leading to the time jumper, the looper, being someone other than me. I know this because my mind has become so used to traveling back that I can feel the shockwaves when something moves through time.

And since they’ve been sent back to a point after my arrival, I’m locked in to only the knowledge I already had. I exist now only because of time-fuckery that goes a little beyond my understanding. The Machine tried to explain it to me, once. It’s the same thing that happened to him when I arrived for the first time; he was cut off, aware only of the timeline he’d come from and the timeline he was currently in. No matter how many times I came back between him and this newcomer, the machine man never knew what had transpired in any other loop than the one that birthed him.

He’s a stranded descendant of a long-dead loop, and now I am, too.

Of course, I could kill the newcomer—I probably will anyway, if for nothing but the sheer joy of destruction—and make sure it’s me who gets sent back again at the end of this iteration, but I think I’m done with all that bullshit. I’m ready to escape the cycle.

Why wasn't it me though? I wonder.

The question holds a certain sort of intellectual interest for me. But I don’t dwell on it too long.

Maybe I was struck by a car before I even got powers? Maybe I got sick of it all and offed myself. I had been considering exactly that before I felt the time shift that signaled to me that someone else had come back. Maybe I went rogue and died fighting my old team. Who knows?

It doesn’t matter.

I break into the warehouse through the back. It will be later tonight that the detective will come here, checking out a lead and chancing upon the orb. And it wouldn’t be long after that he’d offer it to me to take its final charge. I didn't even know him, we weren't even friends. In the first loop I can recall, the one I consider home, he just happened upon me in a time of need when his orb had one charge left and he needed someone to back him up. Ally they called me. I was simultaneously a sidekick and an integral member of the team. Enhancing the others’ powers, borrowing them one at a time, swapping them between teammates, creating synergies between powers that wouldn’t exist otherwise. But none of the powers ever really belonged to me.

I always hated that; that without the others, I was nothing.

Outside, dusk is fast approaching, but enough red-tinged sunlight remains in the sky to make the summer city unproblematic to navigate. And, well, it’s New York City. Even in the middle of the night, there’d be enough light from streetlights and passing cars to make my way down the street. Inside the warehouse, though, night has come early, and I stumble from room to room, for a moment feeling the start of a creeping doubt. Was this really the right warehouse? Did Ricky ever actually tell me the address of the place he found the orb?

I crack my knee against the edge of a stack of pallets that floats out of the gloom directly in front of me.

“Fuck!” I shout.

But my frustration is short-lived, because there it is: the voice of the orb.

Hello, László, it says. I’ve been waiting for you.

“What do you know about me, really? Nothing you didn’t dig out of my brain just now, right?”

Isn’t that enough? Don’t I know you? László Kovács, isn’t it? Or would you prefer if I called you Ally?

“I wouldn’t prefer that actually. I’m no one’s ally. Not this time.”

Well touch me and pick a name, then. Whatever you want. And I’ll give you the power to do what you need to do.

What am I waiting for?

Nothing.

I touch it, and I know as soon as I do that this time will be different.

“Yes. Yes!” I shout. Despite the power of the orb surging through me, I manage to keep my feet, and my consciousness. This isn’t my first rodeo.

My many repetitions have had some negative effects: dissociation, hallucinations, confusion. But there are advantages, too. My first time going back, it took me over a year to recover all my memories. The second time, a few months. The most recent time, I had all my memories of all the loops I've lived through back within seconds. A bit jumbled, maybe. A few out of place or missing altogether, maybe. But I have more than enough to know who and what I am.

The other advantage is this: the moment the orb gives me power no longer knocks me on my ass.

And it is power. Power unlike anything I’ve felt, in any iteration I’ve lived through.

Well what do you want to be called then, ally-of-no-one?

“Call me … Adversary.”

And what will you do with me? It’s finders keepers, you know? You could give my charges out to whomever you wanted. Or you could throw me in the ocean and keep anyone else from getting a single, solitary piece of what I offer.

I consider it.

“No. You stay where you are. The detective, ‘El Cerebro’, can find you, and you’ll pretend he’s the first. You’ll let him pick the rest of his team.” I say his nickname with such derision that I’m surprised I don’t spit.

The old team still needs to get their powers. There’d be no joy in crushing a bunch of unpowered nobodies. And if I can’t have some fun on my way to the apocalypse, then what’s the point?

As you wish, Adversary.

I open a portal and step through, across the city and into the night. Kayla always made such a big deal about how hard it was to make doors when you couldn’t see the destination. She was a fool. I make the night even darker around me; Felipe’s thing. Simple enough. I look out at the people passing by me, unable to see me where I stand in a shadow of my own making, and I read their expressions, their gaits, their involuntary twitches. And I understand what they are: dumb, anxious, violent animals who would as soon tear each other apart as try to do anything to prevent their doom. Even without Ricky’s enhanced observational skills, I’d pick up on this much.

Yes, I think. I’m finally doing the right thing. And yes, this will be fun.

I’ll kill whoever this new time traveler is, after I kill my old team. The priest? Yeah, I’ll kill him, too. Why not? And I’ll kill Zilzal while I’m at it. If I can hunt down the Machine, who has a way of slipping the noose from what I can recall, I’ll put an end to him as well.

Then I’ll find Tomas and I’ll kill him, so no one else can come back, so the Abominations can destroy us all and we’ll finally be done with the whole stupid mess and there’ll be no risk of me ever being forced back into this nightmare again.