The Loop

by Ben Oliver

  I nod my head, take a deep breath, and step inside.

  * * *

  The tunnel seems somehow more ominous with the dancing light of the torch illuminating the damp walls and the flat ceiling, where short stalactites grow out from the green moss that covers the concrete.

  Shadows flicker in time with the fire, and I can’t stop my eyes from darting around, sure that I’ll see a horde of giant, ugly rats with glowing yellow eyes, but there’s nothing.

  I walk, slowly at first, as my vision adjusts to the gloom, and then I pick up the pace, moving deeper and deeper into the passageway.

  After a few minutes, I come to a fork in the track. In my fear and desperation to escape the rats I hadn’t noticed it before; the left fork goes slightly uphill, and the right slightly downhill. Logic tells me that the Loop is to the right—I had been walking with my hand against the left wall and would have felt the point where the tunnel splits if I had been coming out the other way, plus I’m sure I remember the gentle uphill slope.

  I step into the tunnel on the right, just as my first torch begins to flicker and sputter. One minute later, and the flame has died.

  As I stand in the darkness, fumbling with the next torch, trying to pour hand sanitizer onto the shirt, I hear the first clicking of claws on concrete. In my panicked state, I drop the open bottle of the sharp-smelling fuel. I curse myself and scramble around for it. Finally, my fingers wrap around the bottle. Another skittering of rat claws and the slap of a thick tail behind me.

  Grabbing the lighter, I douse the cloth in gel and light it as quickly as I can.

  The flame bursts into life, and for a second, all I can see is a boiling carpet of black-and-brown fur, with a thousand milky little eyes staring hungrily at me. I am in the middle of a sea of rats.

  The torch begins to shake in my hand as I think about how far I have to go, how long the torches last, how much hand sanitizer I have left.

  I take a step forward, and the swarm of rats moves with me—although they keep their distance, staying away from the brightest of the light thrown by my makeshift torch. I take another step, and my vermin chaperones come with me.

  “I hate these tunnels,” I whisper as I start walking quickly toward the Loop, the rats moving as one writhing, scratching, crawling mass, never stepping into the light but never looking away from their next meal.

  I run, the flame roaring beside my ear, and my footsteps no longer echo as the rats are joined by more and more, filling up the tunnel with their warm and foul-smelling bodies. They are behind me now, trailing the light, a sea of them, too many to count, too many to imagine.

  The flame only illuminates the next few feet in front of me, and I’m sure that any second I’ll trip and the flame will go out, or I’ll run into a wall and knock myself unconscious, and then all the rats will have to do is wait until the flame dies and I become an easy meal.

  It’s not long before torch number two begins to choke and fade. I stop, this time not waiting until the darkness comes before lighting my third and final torch.

  Too far to go, I think. The torch won’t last.

  I pour most of the remaining fluid onto my final torch, light it, and throw the almost-burned-out one among the mass of bodies behind me. I hear them shriek and cower away from the fire, and I run again, as fast as I can, pushing with every ounce of energy that is left in me as the flame burns away the fuel.

  The rats keep pace with me, never getting any closer nor any farther away than the ring of light around me.

  Where is it? Where is the platform? Where is the Loop?

  I run even faster, sure that any minute now I will see my destination and I’ll be safe from these wiry creatures and their razor-sharp teeth and claws.

  The walls, the rails, the green mold on the ceiling of the tunnel all rush past me as I run and run and strain and push for the platform, for what is now, I realize bitterly, the freedom of the Loop.

  The rank smell of damp coupled with the festering stink of the rats fills my senses, and I can feel myself choking on it. I hear the flame crackle, and the light dims.

  “No,” I hiss, and push myself even harder, forcing my legs to move, move, move.

  The light drops to nothing and then comes back as the flame finds one last reserve of fuel to burn.

  There it is, up ahead, the platform.

  The flame dips once more, so close to going out that the rats have closed in and are at my heels.

  I grab the last of the hand sanitizer from my pocket, use my teeth to pry off the lid, squeeze the gel onto the closest rat, and drop the torch onto the leaders.

  The squeals that come out of the flash of yellow flame are horrifying, almost human, cries of agony and terror as the rats become the light that they fear so much.

  I make it to the platform without so much as a single new scratch to match the old ones. I climb up and lie on my back, listening with a mixture of sickness and triumph to the screaming rats.

  I’ve imagined escaping the Loop time after time after time, but never once did I imagine returning. I shut my eyes and wait for my breath to return to normal before getting to my feet and walking back into the prison.

  Kina is on her feet, her fingers wrapped tightly around the trigger keeping me alive, her eyes narrowed and watching. Having heard my footsteps, she is alert and ready for whoever or whatever might appear. She looks relieved when she sees that it’s me, but her expression quickly turns to one of shock when she sees the bloodstained jumpsuit.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  I try to answer, try to tell her about the rats and the crazy people who tried to kill me, about the crumbling city, but I don’t know where to start. “We need to get to the drones,” I say instead.

  “The drones? Why?”

  “They’re armed with a hallucinogen that puts the body into hibernation,” I say, stumbling over my words as I try to explain as quickly as I can. “We need to use it on Wren; if we can slow her heart rate down, then we can slow the bleeding and maybe keep her alive long enough to get her to a doctor.”

  “Luka,” she says, putting a hand on my shoulder as I try to walk past her, “what did you see? Why haven’t you brought help?”

  Again, I hesitate. How do I explain to her that there’s a war going on? That we’re in grave danger? “There’s no one to help … The war is real, Kina. The city is burning. Wren is sick, she lost her mind and started killing people, and there are others like her—I saw them in the village, they attacked me … It’s bad, Kina, it’s bad. I think whoever started the war has poisoned people, turned them into killing machines.”

  She nods. Her eyes scan side to side, focusing on nothing as she tries to process the information that I have given her. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, all right. So how do we get to those drones?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, “but I think I know someone who might.”

  I walk past two of the open cells, and from the corner of my eye, I see figures draped over their beds, skin gray, unmoving. I make my way to Fulton’s old cell, where I saw Woods run to hours before.

  I slide open the hatch. Woods’s bloodshot eyes stare at me.

  “Woods?” I say, trying to get a reaction from the unmoving boy.

  Slowly, his head drops, and he speaks in a low, gravelly voice. “Luka, what was that? What happened out there? Is she dead? Did she kill anyone else?”

  “Woods, I need your help,” I say, unlocking and opening his cell door.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” he yells, leaping to his feet and pulling the door back toward the frame. “Is she still out there?”

  “No, she’s locked in a cell,” I tell him, and open the door again. “Like I said, I need your help.”

  Woods steps tentatively out into the corridor, his wide, strong frame a contrast to his obvious fear. “My help? You need my help? Help with what?”

  “Wren’s going to die if we can’t get to the drones.”

  Woods holds a hand up, silencing me, his
eyes growing wider still as he stares at the corpse of Alistair. “A-Alistair?” he stammers. “She killed Alistair too?”

  “Woods, listen to me,” I say, trying to remain calm. “We’re running out of time, Wren is dying … Something has happened to her; there’s a virus or something,” I tell him. “It changes people, makes them killers.”

  “She executed them, man. She ended their lives without a second thought.”

  “She didn’t know what she was doing,” I tell him. “Just like everyone in Group A.”

  “I ain’t helping her!” he screams, tears spilling from his eyes. “If I ever see her again, I’m going to kill her. I’m getting Adam, and we’re getting out of here!

  “Woods, please …” I start.

  “This is not a debate, Luka.”

  I watch him amble, hunched and hitching shoulders, to Adam’s cell. He stops at the open door, and even though I can only see his side profile, he seems to age ten years in front of my eyes.

  I walk over to him and place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Woods.”

  “How can they all be gone?” he asks.

  “If you want to get back at the people who did this, you have to realize that it wasn’t Wren. There’s a war going on outside the Loop—they’ve poisoned innocent people with something that turns them into murderers. Wren is a victim in this; she’s not your enemy.”

  “You’ve been outside the Loop?” he asks, looking at my bloodstained jumpsuit.

  “Yes, and whoever attacked the Region is winning.”

  “So who was it, Luka? Who is responsible for killing my friends?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  He stares at me, unblinking in his anger and grief. Finally, he nods his head. “Tell me what you saw out there.”

  I explain everything from escaping my cell and locking Wren inside, to the rat tunnel and the other crazies in the village. Kina and Woods listen intently as I come to the end and explain my theory that the drones’ poisonous darts have the same effect as the hibernation medication that was given to slow down my mom’s death.

  Woods is clearly still unhappy about trying to save the life of the woman who took his friends’, but he accepts that Wren was not herself when she did what she did.

  “I’ll help you get the drone, but then I’m out of here, understood?”

  “The more of us there are, the more chance we have of—”

  “Luka, I got nothing left; Winchester is gone, Alistair and Adam are dead. They were everything to me in this place, and they’re gone. I’m leaving, I’m going alone, is that clear?”

  I sigh. “Fine.”

  “Good,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “There is a way to get to the drones.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “I don’t know exactly, but Winchester spent months staying up all night to watch them and see if he could gather any information.”

  “And?” Kina urges.

  “Who’s this?” Woods asks, looking from Kina to me.

  “Answer the question,” I implore him.

  “And a drone broke down, an engine fault or something, meaning they couldn’t fly it out of here to be repaired. So at about four in the morning, they sent two mechanics up through the pillar. Winchester saw them open a trapdoor, grab the drone, and disappear back down the pillar with it. They returned about an hour or so later with the repaired drone, attached it to the charge point, and left.”

  “So there’s a way up the middle of the pillar?” Kina asks.

  I remember the door marked ENGINEER on the other side of the platform. “I think I know how to get there,” I tell them.

  Kina and Woods follow me to the entrance, where the warning about exploding implants is written.

  “Wait!” Kina calls, and points to the yellow words.

  “It’s okay,” I say, pointing in turn to Wren’s severed arm on the floor, “I deactivated it.”

  “Pretty resourceful,” Woods muses. “Fulton once came up with a similar plan.”

  We cross the tracks, enter the staff room, and open the ENGINEER door, where we are faced with two more doors: REPAIRS and DELIVERIES.

  “This one,” Kina says, and leads the way through the REPAIRS door to a set of stairs going down into the darkness.

  We descend, and at the end of the staircase is a corridor. We walk along in darkness, following the wall as it circles around until I’m sure we’re under the exercise yard. A few more steps, and I walk face-first into a door. It’s unlocked. Inside is another set of steps, this one a spiral staircase leading up.

  “I think this is it,” I say, and climb up and around until I come to a thick metal hatch above my head. I push it open and tip it over until it crashes down with a loud boom that reverberates around the yard.

  I climb up and onto the pillar. I’m in the center of the yard, the wind blowing hard, whistling over the dividing walls. I stand for a while and just look at the Loop from this vantage point. It’s so strange to see the yard from here, to look down at the strip of concrete where I’ve spent hundreds of hours sprinting back and forth, sure that I would never leave until it was time to be transported to the Block. I look out over the cells to the almost desertlike land around the Loop, and if the walls that separated the yards weren’t only two centimeters thick, we could walk over to the roof of the Loop and climb down to freedom without having to go through the rat tunnels.

  Woods and Kina stare out at the landscape, awed by the expanse. None of us talk for a full minute.

  “Come on,” I say finally.

  I move toward the nearest drone, fighting against the vertigo brought on by the fifty-foot drop on all sides of me. The drones are bigger than I thought they were, and I take the chance to inspect one close-up. A black carbon-fiber shell covers the machinery inside, and there are two propeller blades on either side, the large one in the middle, and three barrels of weaponry hanging below.

  “Wait,” Woods says. “Won’t it attack? The light is still on.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “The charging point still works because the machinery for it is in the nuke-proof bunker underground, but whatever took out the rain and the screens will have wiped these things out too.”

  “How do you know that?” Woods asks.

  “Wren told me,” I reply, grabbing the enormous security drone and lifting it off the charging point. “Help me with this.”

  Woods and Kina help me carry the drone down the stairs, along the corridor, and back up into the staff room, where the dim backup lights offer little help when it comes to figuring out how to get the darts out. Luckily, we have Woods, who seems to know his way around electrical equipment. He unscrews bolts and removes panels until he holds a magazine full of hallucinogenic ammunition in his hand.

  “Here,” he says, handing it to me.

  I push three rounds out of the magazine and examine them. The tips are hollow, meaning the fluid enters the bloodstream from the attached vial, so all I have to do is get one of these into a vein, and Wren will enter a world of mental torture—but it might also be enough to save her life.

  We move quickly back to the corridor, and still I’ve avoided looking directly into the open cells. We get to my cell, and I open the hatch. I don’t like what I see: Wren is still lying on my bed, but she’s a horrible shade of off-white. Her hair is matted with sweat, and her skin seems somehow too tight, her cheekbones protruding too much, her cheeks hollow like she’s emaciated, and the sheets below her amputated arm are soaking up the still-escaping blood.

  I open the door, kneel beside her, whisper that I’m sorry, and push the small dart into a raised vein in her neck.

  I see her body relax, and for a second, I wonder if the solution inside the dart will work on people with mechanical hearts and lungs. But there must be nanotech infused with the chemicals; as I listen to the hum in her chest, I hear the tone change as the mechanics slow down in response to the poison.

  “I’ll come bac
k,” I tell her unconscious body. “I promise.”

  I step back out into the corridor and look from Woods to Kina.

  “I’ll take that back now,” I say to Kina, pointing to the trigger in her shaking hand. “Thank you.”

  Kina nods and hands it, carefully, back to me.

  “That what I think it is?” Woods asks.

  “We have to let the others out,” I say, ignoring Woods’s question.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Woods says, folding his arms across his chest again. “There’s some pretty bad people in here, and I already told you I ain’t sticking around.”

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay?” I ask.

  “No,” he replies without hesitation. “There’s somewhere I got to be. If there really is a war, I know what side I’m on.”

  “What do you mean?” Kina asks.

  He looks at her for a long time, as though he’s considering telling her something, but in the end he just says, “It don’t concern you.”

  I consider trying one more time to persuade him to stay with us, but he’s already done me two favors in not killing Wren and helping me with the drone. “Listen, remember what I told you about the tunnels,” I say.

  “Right. Rats.”

  “There’s a USW in the staff room,” I tell him. “In the emergency equipment room, some riot gear too—it might be enough to get you out. And they’re afraid of light, so if you can figure something out …”

  He nods, and for a moment, he looks again as though he’s going to say something. Instead, he turns and walks away.

  Kina and I stand in the silent corridor and listen to his footsteps fade.

  “Well,” she says. “And then there were two.”

  I nod in agreement. “Better get the rest of the team,” I say.

  “Team?” Kina asks, following me as I move to a closed cell.

  “Just some friends of mine,” I say as I try switching on the screen beside the cell. I’m surprised to see that the power is still running to the cameras. Inside, I see Akimi pacing back and forth. I unlock her door.

  Her initial reaction is to shrink back against the far wall of her cell in terror, but when she recognizes me, she runs forward, throwing both arms around my neck and crying in relief.