The Loop

by Ben Oliver

  He wasn’t affected by the chemicals, I think again, picturing the man sweeping the bridge.

  “There,” Tyco says, interrupting my thoughts.

  I look to where he’s pointing: the Old Town Infirmary, an almost pyramid-like building with hundreds of blacked-out windows. From here we can see the rescue-drone bay and emergency entrance.

  Malachai turns so he’s facing Kina, Tyco, and me. “We go in, and we split up. Tyco, you and I will start from the top and work our way down. Kina and—”

  Malachai’s words are cut off by the sound of smashing glass coming from the hospital. We all turn to see a figure leaping out of one of the middle floors of the building and sliding down several closed, sloping windows to a balcony ten feet below.

  “Pander?” Malachai gasps, squinting at the figure who is now hanging from the balcony by her fingertips and dropping to a windowsill below.

  But I’m not looking at the girl anymore—I’m looking at the window she jumped out of. Five Smilers are crawling through after her, ignoring the deep cuts that the shards of glass slice into their flesh as they shamble down the building, stalking their prey.

  As the girl climbs rapidly down the pyramid and lands hard on the roof of an ambulance, I see that it is Pander, but there’s no time to celebrate—as she clambers down to the pavement, three Smilers slam into the roof of the same ambulance while a fourth hits the pavement and lies dead.

  “Pander!” Kina calls, and her frantic eyes find us.

  “Run, idiots!” she screams back. “Go! Run! Move!”

  The chasing Smilers jump down from the ambulance. The fifth crawls down the side of the building and jumps onto the dead body of the one that hit the pavement, and now all four are running at us, Pander leading the way only a few steps ahead of the chasing killers.

  We come to our senses as one and turn, and as we start to run, Pander has already caught up with us, but the sound of the Smilers’ footsteps behind us grows louder every second.

  “I’m starting to regret coming with you,” Malachai yells as he sprints past me.

  We reach a junction: One way leads toward the river, and the other back to the center of town. I don’t get to choose as Tyco shoves me toward the river. I leap down the steps leading to the path that runs alongside the water, and as I run beside the fast-flowing river and underneath the bridge that we crossed minutes earlier, I feel the temperature drop so suddenly that I can’t help but slow down to see what’s happened. Dark clouds have rolled across the sky, and snow falls so quickly and heavily that the path in front of me turns white.

  “What the hell?” I say, slowing down.

  “Run, stupid!” Tyco hisses as he sprints past me.

  And I do. I force my exhausted legs to carry me onward.

  I glance behind me—Kina, Pander, and Malachai have gotten separated from us. Two of the Smilers are still chasing, silent apart from the sounds of their feet crunching on the snow. I turn and run faster, gaining on Tyco now despite his mechanical lungs, and I have just enough time to think, Maybe we haven’t been separated from the other three, maybe the Smilers got them, before my foot slips on the snow.

  I stumble forward, trying to regain my balance, but it’s too late. I fall, arms outstretched. My chin connects with the hard path beneath the cold snow, and I see a white flash in front of my eyes. For a second, the world turns black, and all I can hear is the sound of my heart beating fast and loud in my chest.

  I’m scrambling to my feet in a pulsing world of fog, unsure of where I am. All I know is that I have to move, I have to run, I have to get away.

  The sound of sprinting footsteps closes in.

  Smilers, I think, but I’m too dazed to make my legs work properly. I’m staggering forward like a stunned boxer, watching Tyco disappear into the distance and knowing that any second I’ll feel the warmth of the senseless killers as they swarm me.

  This is it, I think, trying to breathe through frozen lungs. You die here.

  I feel a blow, hard and fast into my rib cage. All the air blasts out of my lungs, and I’m falling again, this time toward the river.

  I hit the water. The freezing temperature clears my head, and I kick my legs hard until I break the surface, just in time to see a tall, skinny Smiler leap into the water and begin moving toward me, his smile unfaltering. Behind him, the second Smiler jumps in, and she moves toward me too, fighting against the power of the current.

  I take a deep breath and dive back below the flowing stream, kicking my legs and dragging my arms through the murky, cold water. I swim as fast as I can. I have no idea if my pursuers are close, if they’re gaining on me, if I’m getting away from them. All I do is swim and swim and swim. I stay below the surface, using the experience of the energy harvest to remain calm as my lungs feel like they are stretching to the ripping point in my chest.

  After what feels like forever, I climb to the surface and suck the cold air into my body.

  I turn back to where the Smilers were and see only the fast-flowing water through the rapidly falling snow.

  “Hey,” a shout comes from the bank, and I turn to see that Tyco has stopped running. He’s pointing a finger into the stream in front of me.

  I follow the direction of Tyco’s outstretched finger. At first I see nothing, then, through the snow, I see the shape of a human body, floating facedown ahead of me. It’s the tall Smiler. I stand there, frozen in shock as the corpse floats by me, and, a few seconds later, the second Smiler floats by, her orange blouse almost glowing in the dirty water and white snow.

  “Get out of there,” Tyco calls. “You’ll catch hypothermia.”

  I can’t think of anything apart from the unmoving bodies floating downriver as I fight against the current and the rapidly forming ice. I make it to the muddy banks. Tyco pulls me onto the path. All of this seems to happen in snapshots—I feel as though I float away for a second and then come back. As I lie in the snow, staring up at the blizzard, I laugh. I don’t know why. Maybe Tyco’s right and this is the first symptom of hypothermia—certainly I can’t feel my fingers or toes, and my breath is coming out in clouds of thick white.

  “We have to go,” Tyco says, leaning down into my field of vision.

  I can’t make sense of his words. The whiteness of the snow seems to fill my whole world until there’s nothing else.

  And then I’m indoors. Collapsed onto a couch in a vast, clean living room in a home I don’t recognize or remember getting to.

  “Where are we?” I say, my teeth rattling together as my body temperature hits a new low.

  “My house,” Tyco mutters as he moves around the place, opening doors, looking for signs of life.

  “Pander and Malachai?” I ask, almost unable to get the words out, I’m shaking so violently. The words are slurred as well, as though I’m drunk. “Kina?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies. “I didn’t see what happened.”

  I nod, but I can’t really comprehend the meaning of the words. I no longer feel fear, or hope, or anything. I want to sleep, so I lie down and close my eyes.

  “No!” Tyco yells, and then he’s slapping my cheek over and over.

  “What?” I ask, annoyed by the disturbance. “What?”

  “Wait here, and don’t fall asleep. If you fall asleep, you won’t wake up, do you understand?”

  I nod again, even though his words make no sense to me at all.

  Kina can’t be dead, I think, my mind finding a moment of clarity. If she was dead, I’d be dead too. She has the trigger.

  I smile and look around the room. I want to tell Tyco the good news, but he’s gone, and I’m alone. I look around at the white walls, the tiled floor, the 360-degree projector built into the floor, and the SoCom unit on the glass table.

  “What a nice home,” I mutter to myself. And I fall asleep.

  I’m on top of the Black Road Vertical.

  The boy with the blond hair is falling down and down through the clear summer air. The boy is Tyco
Roth’s brother, and pretty soon he will be dead.

  My sister turns to me and pulls the rubber witch mask off. There are tears in her eyes, and her lower lip is trembling, the knife in her hand falling to the ground.

  “I didn’t mean to …”

  The wind whistles through the water pipes as we stare at each other.

  “Molly, you didn’t do it,” I tell her. “I did.”

  I open my eyes.

  I’m in a bathtub. Warm water up to my chin. Steam rising all around me. I’m still fully clothed.

  Where am I?

  There is immense pain in the tips of my fingers and toes. I remember the river, the cold, and the pain. It’s only now that I realize I was on the verge of death.

  And Tyco saved me, I think.

  As I lie here, I can hear his voice, day after day, year after year, screaming across the exercise yard that he was going to kill me.

  I lie still, letting the warmth of the water surround me. I look down at the wounds covering my body, the rat bites and the scrapes from the tunnel and the village and the river, and I’m surprised to see that they are already healing.

  I let the water heat the core of my frozen bones. I suck the hot, steamy air through my nose and feel it in my throat. My body is still shaking and convulsing, but my mind is clear once more.

  I look around at the lavish bathroom. It’s about the same size as the entire apartment that I grew up in. The curved wall in front of me is a screen that—when the power was on—would have shown interactive movies, social media, and games. There are four sinks along one wall with retractable shelves full of self-replenishing products. An autowash shower the size of a small barn sits in the corner.

  I think about my dad; I think about my sister, about Kina, Wren, Pander, Malachai, Akimi, Pod, Igby, Blue. I hope they’re alive; I hope they’re okay. I think about how much time has passed already and about how every second my sister and my father are left alone out there in the city is another second closer to their deaths. I think about the Facility, the massive structure where our Delays took place and where there just might be a cure for the Smilers.

  I push myself to standing, and the water pours out of my clothes. My knees feel stiff and weak. I pull apart the Velcro of my prison suit and let it fall off me before stepping out of the bath.

  There are six towels hanging on a rack beside the door. I take one and wrap it around my waist before opening the bathroom door and stepping out.

  I’m in a long corridor that forms a mezzanine level. Below me I can see the living room where I sat dying on the couch. I see a large gas canister hooked up to a camping stove with water boiling in a large pot.

  That’s how he heated the water, I think, and walk toward the ornate wooden staircase.

  “You’re alive,” Tyco says, coming out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishcloth.

  I nod as I walk down the staircase toward him. “Thanks to you.”

  “Well, I’m only alive because of you. You let me out of the Loop.”

  I laugh at the drastic change in our relationship. “I never thought that you and I would be looking out for each other.”

  “Things change, I guess,” he says as he lets the dishcloth hang over one hand.

  “This is a nice place,” I say, looking around at the expansive home once again.

  “Thank you.”

  “Tyco, when I said I was sorry about your brother, I meant it. I—”

  “Luka, please. I’ll never be okay with what happened, but we’re in the middle of an apocalypse, so I have to put it behind me.”

  “I understand; I just want you to know—”

  “I know,” he says, and holds a hand out for me to shake. “It’s behind us, okay?”

  I look at his outstretched hand and can’t quite believe it. I had resigned myself to the fact that Tyco Roth had lost his mind the day his brother died, that something had broken inside him and he would go to his death believing that I was the devil, and here he is offering a truce.

  “Okay,” I say, and take his hand in mine.

  Tyco smiles and lets the dishcloth fall from his other hand as he slaps me on the back. “We won’t survive this unless we work together,” he says.

  “You’re right. I agree.”

  Tyco steps back and looks at me intently, the smile growing on his face.

  “The thing is,” he says, great humor in his voice now, “I don’t actually care if I survive, just as long as you don’t.”

  Tyco walks toward me, his form leaving an afterimage, a trailing stream of color as he moves.

  Something is wrong.

  I feel a jolt of panic as I register the feeling of something on my back where Tyco slapped me, something that feels like a small plastic strip.

  I reach for it, throwing my arms across my shoulder, but the Ebb patch is just out of reach.

  “I couldn’t let the cold kill you, Luka. It had to be me,” Tyco says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from everywhere at once.

  “Tyco, what have you done?”

  I try to concentrate on the danger, the threat of Tyco, but my eyes focus on a small scratch on the arm of the red leather couch, and it seems funny to me. I imagine Tyco as a toddler with a plastic sword running around the house slaying imaginary dragons; I see it so vividly that for a second I forget that the grown-up Tyco is standing in front of me, intent on ending my life. I laugh at how absurd that is.

  “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment?” Tyco asks, and as he talks, I see his words coming out of his mouth in big purple balloons twisted into the shape of letters. I watch them float up into the air and then pop over his head.

  Focus, Luka, I tell myself. This guy is going to kill you.

  But I can’t focus. My body feels as if it is being filled with pure, concentrated joy from the tips of my toes up to the top of my head. I laugh again and watch Tyco pull the knife from his pocket. I know it’s a knife, I know what he intends to do with it, but to me it looks like a cucumber.

  “Do you know why I was sentenced to death?” Tyco asks, his face changing from purple to green to yellow. “I tried to burn down the Marshal station because they let my brother die. My family paid thirty thousand Coin a year for personal protection, and they let him die. I think a part of me wanted to end up in the Loop with you, Luka, because I knew, somehow, that I would get a chance to make you pay for what you did.”

  I have a moment of clarity, and I see the look of triumph on Tyco’s face, and the long, sharp blade moving slowly toward me until the tip is against my neck.

  “Tyco, please,” I manage, and then I’m gone again.

  I hear music, a great orchestra playing some jubilant concerto, and the sound is coming from Tyco. Every time he opens his mouth, the orchestra starts again.

  He’s going to plunge that knife into you, any second now. He might have already done it, and you can’t even feel it.

  I grab on to that thought. I have to escape; I have to run.

  I shove Tyco as hard as I can and watch him tumble over the couch, the cucumber—no, knife—clanging to the floor. I run into the kitchen, leaping onto the island unit and sprinting across to the front door, which I kick open before running out into the sunlight.

  I did it, I think. I escaped.

  I’m in a field of tall grass, running without effort. I feel so alive and so free, and the sunlight is so warm on my skin.

  Sunlight? I think. Wasn’t it snowing?

  And then I’m back in the living room. Tyco is still standing in front of me with the cucumber pressed against my throat.

  I imagined the whole thing; I didn’t escape at all, haven’t even moved.

  “Shit,” I say, and my voice comes out as a low, long, slow-motion sound.

  “Why don’t you beg?” Tyco asks, that sneer on his face making him look like a Smiler.

  The rat tunnel, the homeless village, the river, I think. You survived all that just to die at the hands of Tyco Roth. You should have
just left him in his cell.

  I’m not going to beg, no matter how high I am, no matter how suggestible I am. Instead I close my eyes. If I’m going to die, I might as well enjoy the fantasy that kept me sane for so many long days and nights in the Loop.

  I’m walking along the riverside on a beautiful summer’s day. The sound of the water is so vivid and clear that when I turn my head, I’m not surprised to see the crystal-clear river flowing lazily by. I can feel the fine, soft grass between my toes and the perfect heat of the sun on my shoulders. There are people here, dozens of people: families playing games, couples rubbing sunscreen on each other, girls and boys swimming in the quietest parts of the river, and vendors selling ice cream. I feel fingers interlace with mine; I look down at the hand that has grasped mine and smile.

  I want to stay here. I’m going to stay here, with Wren.

  I look into her beautiful face, and it’s not Wren; it’s Kina.

  Of course it’s Kina. Of course that’s the way it should be. My love for Wren wasn’t love at all, I see that now; it was a combination of impossible loneliness coupled with her wonderful kindness. I knew nothing about her other than that she’s pretty and nice; that was never an equation that had any right to add up to love.

  Love is made of more complex things: invisible strings, unwritten words, magnets, and glue and atoms.

  Am I in love with Kina?

  Not yet.

  But I would have fallen in love with her, given time, given a little bit more life. I took the first steps on a route mapped out by fate. But now that same fate has led me down a different path, to my death.

  There is some sense of loss, far, far in the background, but what I really want to do is see Kina again, for real, not just in this made-up world where everything is perfect and I’m not about to die at the hands of a man who lost his mind a long time ago.

  As I think about Tyco, I can hear his voice far above me. I look up toward the source of the sound and see his face in the sun, smiling triumphantly.

  “Oh, shut up, will you?” I say. “Just let me enjoy this place.”