The Time Loop

by Anita Oh

  Then the lights went out.

  I reacted instinctively, thrashing around and getting salty water in my eyes and up my nose as I tried to crouch in a defensive position. My eyes stung, which made them water, which made them sting even more. I wanted to wipe my face, but there was no towel, only my clothes, and I wasn’t sure I could find them in the absolute dark.

  I went completely still. They couldn’t shut off my hearing, so if someone was in there with me, if they were to somehow enter, I’d at least hear it. And even with the citrusy smoke, I’d be able to scent them.

  With that thought, I began to relax a little. If someone were to enter, they’d let in some light. It would be impossible for me not to know. There had been nobody there when I’d entered, and there was nowhere for them to be concealed. Even all the silver embedded into this place couldn’t dull my innate senses. Nobody was about to attack me. I wasn’t under threat. At least, not any threat that I was unaware of.

  I lay back again and floated on the water. In the complete darkness, it felt as if I was in space, weightless and staring into infinity. My mind began to empty, but at the same time, in that moment I was aware of everything. Everything made sense. I had complete clarity. I somehow knew that everything that had happened and everything that would happen was part of a larger plan. Everything was as it should be. Things had happened exactly as they were supposed to. I could see it all laid out before me, in the vastness of space. I could see my part in it, and everyone else’s part. And everything was beautiful.

  I had no idea what that smoke was that they were pumping in there, but it sure had relaxed me.

  In the darkness, I saw the five of us, our little pack within a pack. We shone like tiny lights, like multi-colored fireflies, red and blue and green and purple and yellow. We flickered around each other, pulsating. I wanted to reach out and touch those lights, but I felt too relaxed to move.

  The power inside of me spoke, and I knew it wasn’t my enemy. It was just another part of me. I had to accept it, to grow with it, so I could become who I was meant to be. That wasn’t scary or evil; it just was.

  We have a job to do, it told me. Let me help you do it.

  I wanted to know more about the job. I wanted to know everything the power could tell me. I had access to all the secrets of the universe, right there in front of me, and I wanted all of them. But before I could immerse myself further, the lights came back on.

  I blinked in confusion. I’d completely forgotten where I was. It felt as if I’d been gone for a lifetime but also only for a few seconds. As I came back to myself, I noticed that humming sound again. It had been there the whole time, but I’d tuned it out. Everything was as it had been, but I felt different.

  Slowly, I climbed out of the pool. I felt light-headed, so I leaned against the wall. The lackey had told me to air dry, I remembered. That felt like it had happened long ago. Already, the details of what I’d seen, the things I’d known, were slipping away. All I remembered were the fireflies and the feeling of total wellbeing. The power inside me seemed stronger than ever, and I wondered if that had been my father’s intention, or if that quiet part of me that had woken up in there was just trying to protect me.

  The salt dried on my skin and I brushed it away, then pulled on the robe. I couldn’t put this off any longer.

  This was it. The ceremony was about to begin.

  As I opened the door out of the room, I could feel all the eyes in the viewing room looking down at me. I pulled the damp robe tighter around myself. The starkness of the room terrified me. I didn’t want to enter it. It seemed too white, as if anything that touched it would fade into the whiteness. It was the same feeling I’d felt in the darkness of the tower with Tennyson, only at the same time, completely the opposite. The symbols stood out starkly against it, the bright red of fresh blood.

  I glanced up at the viewing room and saw my father staring down at me. A few of the scientists and men in suits had taken their seats, but he was still standing. It looked as if he was waiting for something, probably for me to try to escape. But that time had passed. There was no way out of this now. I wondered if that had been why the ceremony was earlier than I’d expected, so that I’d run out of time for any escape I might’ve planned.

  There was no point thinking about it now. The only way left for me to save my family and my pack was to go through with this, like I’d promised.

  One of the lackeys pointed me toward the blood symbols, and another positioned me in the right place. This was it. It was really about to happen, but it didn’t feel real. The power inside me thrashed around, trying to break out, trying to end this, but I couldn’t let it. Not yet. I had to go through with the ceremony, or this all would be for nothing.

  There were a lot of lackeys now, and they formed a circle around me, beyond the edge of the symbols. Except for one, who stood in front of me.

  I don’t know what possessed me to do it. Maybe it was some small form of rebellion. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe I thought that after the ceremony, I’d never get the chance to do it again, but I reached forward and pushed back that lackey’s hood.

  “Katie?” I said, my voice breaking a little.

  Only it wasn’t Katie, not really. Her eyes were completely white, like Tennyson’s had been when he was channeling her energy. There was no recognition on her face, nothing that showed she was even aware that I’d pulled off her hood, or where she was or what was happening. She wasn’t Katie anymore. I didn’t even know if she was alive. My father had burned up everything that made her Katie when he used her life to maintain the spell. Every one of my enhanced senses said that Katie was gone and now she was just a shell. I understood now what my father had meant when I’d asked if Katie was alive and he’d given me that cryptic response.

  I bit down on a sob. I wouldn’t let them see me react to this, not all those awful men up there who had done this to her, who were doing this to me. But I’d get them back for it. I’d make them pay.

  She grabbed my arm and pulled back the sleeve of my robe, then, before I could do anything, she slashed a knife across my skin. I cried out and grabbed my arm, trying to stop the bleeding, but there was too much. The blood streamed out, dripping down onto the older blood of the symbols, bright, wet red against the darker dried. And as my blood flowed down, the symbols began to glow.

  Katie stepped back, moving to join the circle, and the lackeys started to chant. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. It didn’t sound like any language of this world. The louder they chanted, the brighter the symbols glowed.

  And then the pain hit me. I thought I’d felt pain before, but that was nothing compared to this. It felt like tendrils of fire had wormed their way into every atom of my body. They wrapped around me, through me, until they had me in their grasp, and then they pulled.

  I dropped to the floor, writhing in pain, screaming, but the pain didn’t stop. On and on it went, until it became the only thing that existed, the only thing that had ever existed. Up and up it built, but it never reached a crescendo; it just built higher. There was no end to it. I thought that at some point, I’d black out, but that point never came, only more pain. The tendrils became knives, stabbing at me, shredding my flesh, gouging out my innermost parts. They took and they took until I had nothing left to give. When I was finally empty, the pain stopped.

  It was a different kind of waking up than coming out of the pool. That had been coming into light; this was looking out from the darkness. I’d thought that the silver in the building had stopped me from feeling the pack bond, but now that the bond was truly gone, I realized that it had only been muted before. Now that it was gone, I was hollow. The pack bond had been connected to every part of me, so when it was ripped out, every part of me had gone with it. There was nothing left.

  I lay there on the tile floor, on the smeared symbols, in my damp robe that was covered in blood, and I didn’t care. Nothing mattered. The men in their white coats looked down on me and made notes on th
eir clipboards, and I didn’t care. Everything I cared about was gone. I was alone. A tear dripped down my face and onto the floor, mingling with the blood.

  In the viewing room, the men began to applaud.

  Chapter 17

  I don’t know how long I lay there. I didn’t care. None of the lackeys came to move me. I didn’t even know if they were still there. I couldn’t be bothered raising my head to check. The cut on my arm throbbed, but I let it bleed. What did it matter? Nothing mattered.

  All that time, I’d taken the pack bond for granted, thinking of it as secondary to my bond with Tennyson. I hadn’t realized how deeply embedded in every part of me it had become. I’d been so stupid. But still, I couldn’t regret my decision. In spite of all the pain I was in, as much as it felt as if I’d been cut open and all my insides scooped out, it had still been the right thing to do. By losing the pack, I’d saved them. Everyone would be safe now. My dad would leave them alone. They’d be off his radar. It was all worth it.

  The thought gave me the strength to sit up. I was alone in the room; all of the lackeys were gone. The symbols had completely vanished. Except for the pool of watery blood around me, the tiles had returned to white. There were still some people up in the viewing room, but they weren’t looking at me anymore, now that the entertaining part was over.

  The power inside me rose up, and I remembered those words inside my head. We have a job to do. Let me help you do it.

  I was ready to accept that help.

  I closed my eyes and let the power take over. It filled me and flowed out of me until it surrounded me completely. I knew the power would change me, but that didn’t matter now. There was no appeal in being a werewolf without a pack.

  As I rose to my feet, one of the lackeys came through the doorway to the cleansing room and approached me, but I raised my hand and it stopped. I had no way of telling if it was Katie or not. I wasn’t even sure if it mattered when it was something that didn’t have an identity. It backed up until it hit the wall, and then it stayed there, and I could feel why. Because it was only the shell of a person, my power filled it with my will and could control it. That was how my father had been controlling them, but his power was nothing compared to mine, just something weak and stolen. I could control armies if I needed to.

  “Find Hannah Morgan and bring her to me,” I told it. She was somewhere in the building, I could feel it, somewhere close. Through my power, I showed the lackey everything that Hannah was so it could identify her. If she was one of them, she wouldn’t be Hannah, she’d be gone. They wouldn’t recognize her. If she was one of them, it was better not to know.

  The men in the viewing room had begun to stir, crowding back around the window. Apparently, I was interesting again, but their presence was unimportant. I could crush them all, but that wouldn’t stop the evil work they were doing. They gasped and backed away as I rose up from the floor, the blue glow of magic carrying me through the air toward them. When I reached the glass wall, I passed right through it.

  The suits stumbled out of my way. One of the scientists was filming me on her phone. My father wasn’t in the room, but even he didn’t matter right now. I had one goal: whatever was behind the door with the symbol on it. Anything else was just an obstacle.

  The magic carried me toward that door, my feet a few inches from the floor. I felt it filling me up, taking up all the spaces where the pack bond had been. It couldn’t replace the bond but it healed me, made me whole again. Down hallways, back up to the main floor, the magic guided me. Concrete objects meant nothing to me; matter was nothing more than a concept that could be broken down and rearranged as I pleased. Nothing was impossible for me.

  I was invulnerable.

  I touched the door, and it dissolved into the air. I entered the room. The walls were lined with screens. The screens showed everything. These people were watching everything, everywhere. I could see my house. The dining hall at school and the lighthouse. Both the Red House and the Golden. And that was only a few of them, one small corner in the vast room. So many places I didn’t know, buildings and people that were being watched. This had to stop.

  I raised my hand toward the screens, and they blinked out. Not just the picture, but the cameras on the other end. The knowledge of the cameras. But that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t crush the intent behind this whole thing; there was no magic that could cure bigotry or hatred or fear. The most I could do was to set them back so far that they’d be discouraged, to destroy enough of this corporation that it would seem like a defeat.

  There was a vibration behind one of the walls, the hum of their main server. So much information was stored there, dangerous information. I closed my eyes, envisioning that server, all that encrypted information. Inside the server, there may have been nothing but a series of ones and zeros, but magic wasn’t binary, and information was power. Everything was energy, and I could control it. I could take whatever I needed and leave them nothing.

  But that wasn’t the power that had called to me. It wasn’t what they were so carefully guarding. There was something more important.

  In the middle of the room was a large glass dome with flashes of light and color swirling around inside it. That dome was the core of my father’s power, the source of his corporation’s power. Energy radiated from it in waves, drawing me to it. This was the trunk of the tree that all the branches stemmed from. Maybe I’d never be able to kill the roots, but I could cut the tree down to the ground.

  I placed my hands on the dome, the blue glow of my power surging as it came into contact with the glass. The flashes within the dome rose to the surface, and I cried out in horror as I realized what was inside.

  It was Katie. It was an old homeless man and a runaway boy. It was workers who had disobeyed, anyone who had opposed my father and what he stood for. It was all of the lackeys whose empty bodies were walking around the facility, doing his bidding. It was lives, lives of people and animals, lives that my father had stolen so he could use their energy for his evil work.

  My power rushed forth, battering against the glass until it shattered. I stood back in awe as those flashing lights broke free. They swirled around me for a moment, hundreds of them, maybe more. I could feel them, feel their life force, their energy. I could feel Katie. I hoped she could forgive me. I knew that she couldn’t go back to her body but I hoped she could at least be free.

  The lights flared brilliantly bright for a moment, and then they were gone.

  “What have you done?”

  I turned to see my father standing in the doorway, a gun in one hand and an orb of magic in the other. The last magic he possessed.

  I didn’t answer him. I didn’t need to. There was nothing he could do to me anymore, and there was nothing I needed from him. He obviously suspected as much, because he pointed his gun at me and fired.

  When the bullet hit the edge of the glowing blue light around me, it turned to dust.

  Anyone else would’ve run away, but my father was so filled with hatred that he couldn’t see logic anymore. He launched the magical orb at me. It flared brightly when it reached me, and then I absorbed its power into my own.

  “You cannot hurt me,” I said, my voice sounding distorted through the wall of power surrounding me. “I’ve already defeated you.”

  He shook his head. “No, you can’t. Your brothers…”

  “Are safe.” I knew it somehow, could feel it.

  “We have your blood,” he tried. “We can use it, perform rituals with it.”

  But all his threats meant nothing to me anymore. He’d already taken the most precious thing from me. He’d stolen my home, the one place I’d ever really belonged. He’d taken my pack.

  “Enough,” I said. “You have lost. Submit.”

  “And if I don’t?” he said. “Are you going to kill me, Lucy?”

  I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t kill any of them. It might have been easier; they would be out of the way for good, not able to infect anyone else with
the poison of their beliefs. But my father setting me on a dark path didn’t mean I needed to walk it. I might have been pre-programmed to become one of the Others, and maybe it was inevitable that I would go to the dark side at some point, but I’d put that moment off as long as I could. As long as I had self-control, as long as I could make my own decisions, I wanted to do the right thing.

  But before I could answer him, he crumpled to the floor. And standing behind him was the Wilde Alpha.

  “Well, come along, then, you troublesome girl.”

  Alpha Wilde looked as flawless as the last time I’d seen her, a year ago: her dark hair pulled back into a tight bun, not a speck of dirt on her Chanel suit, and her face pursed like she’d been sucking lemons. How she’d gotten into a secure ex-military facility without a hair out of place was as much of a mystery to me as her being there at all. She made a small tsk-ing noise and then turned away, as if my very existence was an irritation to her, like the buzzing of a fly.

  I followed her, my feet a little closer to the ground than before.

  “Since you elected to leave my pack, I am not actually obligated to clean up your messes,” she said, already halfway down the corridor. “However, we have restrained all of the organization’s leaders and are in the process of freeing the captives. The proper authorities have been notified and are on their way. They will deal with the aftermath. I have arranged your transportation back to school before they arrive, so they will remain unaware of you. Until you learn to restrain these powers of yours, you don’t want to call attention to yourself. You can wait downstairs until you leave.”

  I followed her into the elevator, and we rode it down to the bottom floor. When the doors opened, I didn’t get out. I didn’t want to see that room again.