The Time Loop

by Anita Oh

  When we got back to land, they herded me into the back of a van, and my fear started to overtake everything else. It wasn’t only fear of the unknown, of what lay ahead, though I doubted anyone was ever taken anywhere good in the back of an unmarked van. It was fear of the thing inside me, of that ever-changing power. I could feel it stirring, and the greater the distance I was taken away from my pack, the stronger the stirring became. The last time it had exploded, I’d been able to channel it into something productive, something beautiful, and I’d made the golden tree. I doubted anything could grow in the place I was going.

  It seemed like we spent hours in that van. I’d barely eaten since lunch, just a few nibblies at the dance, nothing substantial. It seemed too much to hope that my father would have a welcome feast ready for me.

  Finally, the van stopped, and the minions dragged me out.

  We were inside some sort of nondescript warehouse, a big room with concrete walls. I could’ve been anywhere in the world. As far as evil lairs went, it was disappointing. They led me through a door and then down a series of hallways, all equally indistinguishable. Finally, we went through another door and into an office, where my father was sitting behind a large but mostly bare desk. He said something to the lackeys in a language I couldn’t even identify, and they backed out through the door, leaving the two of us alone.

  My father wasn’t looking so good. There were big puffy bags under his eyes, and he had broken capillaries all over his face. Maybe his work was getting to him. Or the strain of the time loop had been too much. It served him right.

  “I’m glad you could make it, Lulu. You look very pretty.”

  I sat down in the chair opposite him, folding my arms over my chest. “So, what’s the plan, here? Are you going to keep me in a cell like last time, too drugged up to move?”

  He shook his head. “No. You’re here of your own free will, and I’m sure you’ve been given enough incentive to follow procedure.” He picked up a glossy pamphlet and held it out to me. “This is the company handbook. The ceremony will take place in a few days, on the Spring Equinox. Try to have it memorized by then. It’s going to be a big event. All the leaders will be there, a lot of very important people. It would be nice if we could impress them.”

  I didn’t take the stupid handbook from him, so he placed it on the edge of his desk. “A lot rides on you doing your part here, Lulu. Please understand.”

  “If you hurt my brothers, I’ll kill you,” I told him, using the full measure of my powers to impress him with how serious I was. “If you hurt my pack, I’ll torture you and then kill you. Please understand.”

  His eyes widened a little, so I knew he knew I wasn’t kidding.

  I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair. “Got any food?” I asked. “Your lackeys weren’t exactly hospitable.”

  He nodded and pressed a button on his phone. “I’ll have someone show you to your room, and they can bring you something. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  But in the morning, he was nowhere to be found.

  My room wasn’t a cell. It was more like a cheap hotel room with a small bathroom. The door wasn’t even locked. I figured there must be silver or something in the walls, because I couldn’t feel the pack bond or communicate with Tennyson. The lackeys had searched my bag and confiscated my phone, but everything else was in there, so I showered and changed and then decided to go exploring.

  Exploring, I soon realized, was not as easy as it sounded. All the hallways looked identical. I’d tried to memorize the way from my father’s office to my room, but when I tried to get back there, I was in a hallway with no doors. I decided to keep wandering at random, and at some point I’d find something interesting. The place was cold, almost refrigerated, but at least Tennyson’s hoodie was so oversized on me that the sleeves fully covered my hands. I let the familiar smell comfort me, determined to keep on in the inhospitable environment. Most of the doors were locked, and the ones that weren’t led to storage closets or empty rooms, but I kept going. The place wasn’t infinite; at some point, I’d have to either come back to my room or find something interesting.

  I found an elevator that had buttons down to seven stories’ worth of basements, but I needed a swipe pass to go to another floor. Maybe all the interesting stuff was somewhere else, and that’s why I was allowed to walk around freely, but there had to be emergency stairs somewhere, surely.

  The whole time I wandered, I felt that power swirling inside me. It was as if it was held inside an egg, almost ready to be born and giving the first few tentative taps as it woke up. Even if the power was ready, I sure wasn’t. I didn’t want an egg full of power, though I sure would like an omelet.

  Or anything.

  Maybe not mini quiches.

  Most of the doors looked the same, all painted an ugly bottle green, so when I came to one that had a symbol on it, a triangle with a small circle above the top point, it really stood out. Even with my powers being repressed, I could sense that whatever was behind that door was important. It was powerful.

  The door was locked, of course, but I had super strength. Maybe if I forced it, I could get it open. I jiggled the handle, trying to work out which was best, to push or pull, when a lackey appeared beside me and started ushering me away.

  “So, there’s something really good in there, hey?” I said.

  The lackey didn’t respond. I wondered if my father had cut their tongues out or something. I pressed myself close to the wall as we walked, popping a claw out from my oversized sleeves to mark the wall with a cut each time we turned a corner. I needed to see inside that room. I’d just need to be more sneaky about it.

  We ended up back at my father’s office. Like the night before, the lackey left, and I sat in the chair.

  “I was looking for the breakfast buffet,” I told him. “The service here is not good. I give it one star.”

  “There’s a bell in your room. If you need anything, you can ring. If you’d read the handbook, you’d know that.”

  I sighed and picked up the handbook, which was still on the edge of the desk. I might as well read it, I figured. It was days until the ceremony, and it wasn’t as if they had Netflix.

  “Your evil lair is super boring,” I told him. “You should look into some interior design ideas. You know, you can restyle your home without breaking the bank. Katie used to love those home makeover shows. Maybe if you hadn’t killed her, she could’ve given you some tips.”

  “I quite like the spartan look,” he said, ignoring the point I’d been trying to make. “I find it encourages productivity. If there’s nothing to stimulate the mind, the mind stimulates itself. It’s an ex-military facility, you know, so it’s perfect for our needs. After the last time you visited, I figured we couldn’t be too careful. The walls have been reinforced with silver, in case you changed your mind, but that’s obviously not for decoration.”

  I shrugged but didn’t say anything, hoping that if I stayed silent, he’d keep talking. He was the kind of guy who loved the sound of his own voice.

  “Your mother and I used to argue about that all the time. She loved to pick up little knick-knacks and things, but they were just clutter. How is she?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been at school all year, but apparently you’ve been keeping in touch with the family, so you tell me.”

  “I haven’t been to the house,” he said. “And your brothers are very obstinate boys.”

  I smiled, proud of my stubborn little buttheads.

  “They wouldn’t give me any information about her, but surely they’d tell you if her condition had changed.”

  I narrowed my eyes. He seemed way too invested in this. “What did you do?” I asked him. “What did you do to my mother?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Not for a long time, anyway. I’m merely observing.”

  Suddenly, I was sick of his BS. I had to be there. I had to go along with his ceremony. I didn’t have to be civil about it.

  “Where�
�s Katie?” I asked him. “And where’s Hannah Morgan? I know you’ve got her. You didn’t fool anyone with that faking her death stunt. You know, there’s a word for old men who kidnap young girls and use them for their own amusement.”

  I expected some sort of flippant comment, but his gaze slid off to the left for a moment before he collected himself. It was no surprise that he was hiding something, but he was worried, and that meant I was close. I wondered how close, exactly.

  “What did Katie’s parents say when they discovered what you’d done to her?” I asked, hoping that the more I pushed, the more he’d give away, but I’d gone too far.

  “It was their idea,” he said, smiling coldly. “Everyone who works for the corporation is equally committed. We know when we sign up that there may be sacrifices. I knew. Ruby Spencer also knew.”

  My blood ran cold at the mention of Sam’s mother, but I needed to push as much as I could.

  “She’s not dead, either, is she?”

  I held my breath, waiting for his answer.

  “You know the answer to that, don’t you?” he said. “You know that she’s like you, that you’ll become what she became.”

  He couldn’t conceal the nasty edge beneath his words. It was refreshing to have him be honest with me for a change.

  “The Others,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “What are they?” I asked him. “What are we?”

  For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. His face was like thunder. But then he relaxed, and his smile was sharp enough to cut.

  “You’re experiments gone wrong. You have that strange gene, yes; that was why you were selected to take part in the program, but you didn’t react as we’d hoped. You, Ruby Spencer, others like you. All the Others.”

  “You created them,” I said. “You made them into monsters.”

  He nodded. “They evolved and gained more and more power until we couldn’t control them. We had no way of holding them, and when they broke free, we had no way to get them back. Most of our resources are now taken up with trying to hunt them, rather than applying them to our original objective, but I’m hopeful that we’ll soon be back on track. Once they’re back under our control, we will be unstoppable.”

  His words made the power inside me rise up as if it was ready to strike out at its creator. I wanted to let it. I wanted to tear him down, along with his whole evil organization.

  “What gives you the right?” I asked him through gritted teeth.

  He shrugged. “Nobody ever actually gives you rights. You have to take them.”

  I was thinking seriously about taking away his right to breathe.

  “What are you trying to do here?” I asked him. “What is the point to any of this?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? We need to create the perfect being. Something pure and flawless that we can use to eradicate all the dirty creatures that parade around wearing human faces.”

  His eyes shone with cold hatred.

  My father was basically Hitler. Well, that was just great.

  Chapter 16

  I spent the next few days alternately reading the handbook and plotting how to get into the room with the symbol on the door. The handbook was terrifying. I hadn’t been far off mark with the Hitler thing. There was a lot of stuff in there about purity and cleansing, and it was disgusting. I didn’t need to memorize that kind of garbage. I’d hoped there would be something useful in there, something that would help me get out of this whole mess, but it was all racist propaganda against non-humans. There was even a list of “preferred terminology” so people could perfect their racist slurs. If Tennyson was offended by the word werewolf, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do if someone called him a mangy mutt, and that was one of the tamer ones. Still, I learned the whole thing by heart, even though it made me sick. It was always better to know your enemy.

  Getting into the room would be easy enough, I decided; I just needed the right timing. The hallways were obviously being watched. Nobody had appeared while I was wandering around. I’d seen a few of them here and there, going about their business, but they’d all left me alone until the moment I tried to enter the room. The corridor had been empty moments before, so it made sense that there were cameras. I took a few short walks, several times a day, following the scratch marks I’d put on the walls. The cameras were small and subtle, but once I knew what to look for, I noticed that they were at the points where the hallways intersected, facing in each direction. There was also one in my room. It gave me the willies to think of those creepy old men watching me. I decided to only get changed in the bathroom, after I’d done a thorough search for cameras in there.

  So, I needed to avoid the cameras and then get into the room. My plan was to knock out one of the lackeys and steal their clothes. That way, I could walk the hallways without anyone caring where I went. The problem with that plan was that I’d need to do it without it being caught on the camera in my room. I had no internet to hack into it, and it would seem obvious that I was up to something if the camera in my room suddenly stopped working.

  Once I was at the door, I was sure I could force it open, providing it wasn’t booby-trapped with silver. I just needed to iron out those few minor details. I figured I still had a day or so before the ceremony to figure it out. Right before the ceremony would be the best time to do it, when everyone was distracted.

  One of the lackeys entered my room without even knocking. I thought they were bringing me my lunch, but this one actually spoke.

  “It is time,” it said in a voice that sounded neither female nor male, neither young nor old. “Leave everything and come with me.”

  I started to panic. The power inside me spiraled out of control, as if it was reaching out for something safe to latch on to. As if it was searching for Tennyson. The power seemed to cry for him in a way that I couldn’t. But he wasn’t there. He could never be. Even his scent had faded from his hoody.

  “But it’s not until tomorrow,” I said, standing in the middle of the room and staring at the lackey stupidly. “It’s too early.”

  The lackey said nothing more, just turned and walked out of the room as if they trusted that I’d follow. Which I did. I didn’t exactly have many alternatives.

  “Where are we going?” I asked the lackey, hoping that since this one actually had a tongue, they’d answer me. “Do you know what the ceremony actually involves?”

  My hopes were in vain. The lackey kept walking as if I wasn’t even there. It led me into the elevator and down to the bottom floor. That seemed like a bad sign.

  The doors opened, and we stepped out onto what could only be described as a large viewing platform. It was dimly lit, with men in suits gathered near the back, interspersed with a few scientists wearing white coats and holding clipboards. There was a glass wall at the front of the room, with rows of chairs lined up facing it. The lackey walked toward the glass wall, where my father was standing alone, looking down at something below. I’d thought that, if anything, he’d been schmoozing with the bigwigs, but he seemed lost in thought.

  As I approached him, I could see what he was looking at: a large, white-tiled room with a series of symbols painted on the tiles. Creepy symbols, like they wanted to summon Satan. Only, that kind of evil was probably too low-level for them.

  “Oh, Lucy, you’re here. Good.” My father nodded distractedly. He hardly seemed to notice where he was. “All the preparations are in order,” he said to the lackey. “Take her to be cleansed.”

  “I don’t want to be cleansed,” I told him. Cleansing sounded painful and not fun. “I’m plenty clean enough as it is.”

  He nodded again, turning back to the window. “Good, good.”

  The lackey led me out a door and down some stairs into a dimly lit room that must have been off to the side of the tiled room.

  “Enter,” it said. “Bathe. When light returns, dry by the air and dress in the sacred robe, then enter the white altar.”

  For a moment, I didn�
��t take in what it had said. Its speech pattern was a little strange, and I wondered why. It had no identifiable gender, no distinct way of walking, nothing defining about it at all. I wondered if it even had a face under that hood. The thought struck me that maybe this was another failed experiment. My father clearly required obedience from his creations, and this one did exactly as it was told.

  The lackey gestured for me to enter the room, and I did, but I really didn’t want to. Terrible things were about to happen, and if I could delay the start of them for long enough, I’d never have to go through them. The lackey turned and left the room, closed the door firmly and left me there alone.

  It was a small room with a round pool in the middle. There were dome-shaped lamps set into the walls, giving off a warm glow. A strange humming noise came from them. To the left of the stairs was a door that obviously led out to the tiled room. On the opposite wall was a hook with a robe hanging from it, and beneath it a bin for my old clothes. There were mounds of salt scattered in the corners of the rooms, with more symbols drawn into them.

  The humming got louder, and two long pipes lowered down and began to expel clouds of smoke. I was fairly sure they hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to gas me first thing, and if that’s what they were doing, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. The smoke smelled citrusy and not terribly lethal, so I figured it was just another part of their dumb cleansing ritual.

  After a brief but thorough look for cameras, I undressed and stepped into the pool. The water was warm but not hot, and I could smell the salt vapors coming off it. The pool was big enough for me to starfish out and not even touch the sides. In other circumstances, it might have even been nice.

  The water was deep, about waist height, and because of all the salt, I was quite buoyant in it. It was impossible not to float; it actually took quite a bit of effort to keep my limbs under water. I just went with it, letting the water take my weight. Occasionally, I’d bump into the sides, but then float off again into the center. I tried to forget everything outside of the pool for a moment and drift.