The Loop

I opened my eyes and found that my vision was overlapped with two very different images. In one, I was back in the Dreamworld with my team, while in the other, Angie, Oneiros, Virtuosa, and I were still standing in the shipping yard, surrounded by guards, both human and Hype.

“What the fuck is happening?” I asked. In the Dreamworld, neither Adam nor Lincoln looked at me. In the real world, Shannon glanced my way and took a step back in shock.

“We’re stuck halfway between,” said Oneiros. “Something is interfering with my power. Turning it off at inopportune moments. I think Ganzfield and Cyberspace made it all the way in.”

The guards around us were looking at us, and the Hypes too, but they weren’t doing anything. Still, their images slowly became clearer as the images of Ganzfield and Cyberspace seemed to fade away. We were coming closer to the real world.

“What can we do?”

“I don’t know. Whoever is fucking with my power has to be one of these Hypes. I think they can only turn off one of our powers at once, though. I think they switched to Ganzfield when it looked like he was ready to fight, and then right back to me as I was trying to take us back into the Dreamworld.”

“Why aren’t they doing anything?”

“We’re only halfway in their world,” suggested Virtuosa. “Maybe they can’t interact with us in this state.”

“Is your power still offline?” I asked Oneiros. He just nodded.

“Okay,” I said, and started slapping myself in the face.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, I thought. My logic was that if I was the first one awake, whichever Hype was concentrating on Oneiros would switch their focus to me, allowing him to either pull the others down into the Dreamworld, or pull them all back up to fight. I hoped for their sake that he pulled them down and found a way to continue the mission without me.

I blinked my eyes rapidly and shook my head, wishing with all my willpower to wake up, and then I did. The images of the Dreamworld faded completely, leaving me standing alone in the shipping yard, surrounded by people who weren’t really our enemies, but who I didn’t have time to explain the situation to. I could see Oneiros, Angie, and Virtuosa as ghostly outlines for a moment, then I felt my connection to my power diminish, and they disappeared completely.

“Just you, now,” said the man I took to be the leader. He wore some sort of ancient armor, maybe Greek, and stood staring at me casually, as if he had all the time in the world to interrogate me and wasn’t in any particular rush. And, really, as long as I didn’t have access to my power, he was right. “Where’d the rest of your people go?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” I said.

A woman in a suit and black ski mask actually burst out laughing. I found a curious thing: while I’d still had access to my power, I’d been utterly terrified of her, but as soon as my power was cut, she seemed like any ordinary woman, the type I probably could have beaten in a scrap even without powers.

“She’s got fire,” she said. “I like that.”

“Why did you break into this facility? Who are you working with?” asked a man in the same get up as the woman, standing on the other side of me and forcing me to turn a hundred-and-eighty degrees to see who was speaking. “Are you with the Russians? Chinese?”

It was my turn to laugh.

“I’m red-blooded American,” I said.

“Homegrown terrorists then?” asked a woman in a cool armored bird costume with actual feathered wings protruding from her back. “There’s enough of that these days, but everyone wants to blame the foreigners.”

“Well, no matter,” said the leader. “If you don’t feel like talking, we can always lock you up until you change your— ”

His words were cut short as he was slammed into the shipping container next to him by some unseen force. The other Hypes and guards swung around, searching for a new threat, and I felt the stranglehold on my power loosen. I gasped as if I’d actually been strangled, and took in great gulps of air, looking around to see my team, now spread out around me, encircling the guards just as they’d encircled us minutes ago. Cyberspace and Angie were noticeably absent, but Virtuosa, Oneiros, and Ganzfield were all there.

Ganzfield flew above us, while the other two ducked behind shipping crates and took aim at the guards with guns. I saw on the ground behind Virtuosa two unconscious guards that she’d evidently taken down on her own and surmised that she’d taken the guns from them.

Oneiros was slipping into and out of the Dreamworld, appearing and disappearing in different spots as he advanced on our position. It was a bold move for Adam to be flying, I thought, given that his power could be cut at any time. But …

They don’t actually want to hurt us, I realized. They’re government agents. Glorified federal agents, and until they know exactly what we’re here for, who we’re working for, they don’t want to risk doing any permanent damage.

Virtuosa let two bullets fly, taking two more guards in the legs as they started returning fire, only for their leader to shout, “Stop! What are you idiots doing?” The guards stopped firing, even though two of their own were lying, presumably unconscious on the ground, and another two were rolling around on it, moaning and clutching their legs.

While their attention was elsewhere—I couldn’t be certain which Hype was doing the power limiting thing, or who he was focusing on right now, I knew it wasn’t me—I rushed the Hype nearest me, who happened to be the woman with the wings. She twisted around toward me just as I came within range to kick her, and started to flap her wings and throw herself backward to get away from me, but instead of striking out with fists or feet, I pushed my hand toward her and sent a blast of heat hot enough to catch the air on fire toward her. I expected her to dodge, at least well enough to get away from the brunt of the blast, but was mortified when she remained in place and let it strike her, full force, in the chest.

For one terrified moment, I thought I’d just killed a person, when the flames cleared from my vision and I saw that not only was she still standing, she was now reaching her hand toward me.

“Thanks for the power,” she said, shooting a blast of kinetic energy back at me. I absorbed it without issue, and got ready to blast back at her with something, when I realized how pointless that would be. Somehow she’d stolen my power, and we could stand there all day trading blows back and forth without either one of us ever actually getting hurt.

Fuck that, I thought, and turned my hand toward the woman in the suit at the last minute. I got off a blast of heat and light about a third as powerful as I’d been aiming for before I felt my power disappear again. I stood, impotent and dumbstruck, like someone waking to find themselves missing a limb or two, or half their senses.

The winged woman approached me and I turned and started running, realizing that if I didn’t have my power and she did, then it was no contest which one of us was going to win that fight. Ganzfield swooped low over my head and grabbed me with his telekinesis.

I’m trying to work out which one of them is fucking with our powers, I heard his voice say in my mind. But my telepathy doesn’t work that well on any of them.

“The guy in the suit,” I shouted, but he didn’t hear me over the rush of air. The guy in the suit! I thought. My power got cut as soon as I went to attack the woman in the matching outfit.

Right, he thought, depositing me on the top of a storage locker as he twisted around and went after the man. He didn’t get more than six yards before another spear came flying his way, forcing him off course. He should have been able to just use his telekinesis to knock the spear aside.

The man who’d thrown the spear was now running at Oneiros and Virtuosa, and I watched as his armor seemed to dissolve, or turn liquid, or something, and reform in front of him as a giant bronze wall, moving at the same pace as he did and blocking every bullet they sent his way.

Suddenly, many of the guards started jumping around in a sort of panicked dance, and a few of them dug furiously inside pant or vest pockets as I saw first smoke and then flames erupt in different spots on their clothing. One of them finally found what he was digging for, and managed to fling his phone away from his body before it exploded outright, leaving a black char mark a couple feet across on the pavement. A few others weren’t so lucky, and went to the ground, writhing around as their clothing caught fire or parts of their bodies were badly burned by miniature explosions.

What the fuck? I thought.

Lincoln, thought Adam. He found a way to contribute. Oneiros got him and Angie underground and then woke them up deeper in the facility before he came back up here to flank the guards.

“Clever,” I muttered aloud, as my power came back online and I saw Virtuosa stop firing, her rifle still raised, only now she held it awkwardly, stiffly, like someone who’d never touched a firearm before in her life. The guy in the suit must have switched his focus to her.

I didn’t waste any time using my power to launch myself into the air, leaping clear over the flying woman and attempting to knock her down with a blast of kinetic energy from above, which served to launch me even higher up. It seemed she still possessed my power, though, because the blast hadn’t affected her at all. Except, presumably, to charge up her internal battery.

I searched for the two Hypes in business suits as I continued hurtling through the air, found the man, and was about to hit him with a blast of heat when he spotted me in the air and turned his attention back to me.

“Shit,” I said, as my power abandoned me yet again. I plummeted toward the ground, knowing I didn’t have the safety net of my power to ensure the energy of the landing would be absorbed back into my body. I was mere feet from striking pavement at terminal velocity when I felt my power return. I struck the ground as my power was still coming back online, feeling a bit of the pain and shock as I rolled to a stop. I glanced up from my awkward position on the ground and saw that the male Hype in the suit had been taken out of commission by a bullet to the shoulder and another to the kneecap. I was sure he could still use his power, but the pain was sufficiently distracting to keep him from doing so.

The woman in the matching costume was at his side now, her body rigid except for her hands, which were shaking. She turned her attention on me. If I’d been terrified of her before, I was absolutely paralyzed with fear now. Even knowing she (probably) couldn’t hurt me, I was scared, too scared to even look at her. I turned and started to flee, unmindful of the fact that I was running straight toward the armored Hype, who was now barreling—his wall of bronze still preceding him—past the spot where Oneiros and Virtuosa had been before. He wheeled around, converting his wall back into a shield—smaller than before—and armor that covered more of his body. He drew a sword from the mass of shifting bronze material as it formed and then stood, waiting and watching my approach.

Oneiros and Virtuosa reappeared on either side of him, beginning to fire immediately. Despite well placed shots by Oneiros and expertly placed ones by Virtuosa, they weren’t managing to cause him any visible harm. His armor and shield seemed completely impervious to the bullets.

I summoned as much of my stored energy as I thought I safely could and fired it toward him as a bolt of blue lightning, allowing the LEDs on my costume to glow yellow just before I fired for added dramatic effect. The lightning struck him straight in the chest, and once more I had the sinking feeling that I might have just killed someone. My vision was obscured by sparks and smoke, but when they cleared, the man stood exactly where he had been, no worse for wear.

Was he copying my power too? I wondered. But no, I thought, it was just his armor. Somehow the material that he could shift and reshape was impervious to any kind of damage, from conventional weaponry or Hype powers.

I was vaguely aware of something hitting my back, like the persistent tapping of someone trying to get my attention, and I turned to see the woman in the suit firing a pistol at me. Even though it was accomplishing nothing, the sight filled me with such a sudden and powerful dread that I turned and started running again. Once more, the armored man was in my path.

“Oneiros!” shouted Ganzfield. “We got her, let’s get out of here!”

He was flying overhead, the winged woman in hot pursuit. The armored man had drawn another sword from his bank of material and was now holding his arms up, pointing a sword in either direction, one at Oneiros, one at Virtuosa.

I was about to collide with the armored man’s back in my mad, blind dash away from the suited woman when I felt Oneiros’s power wash over me and found myself pitching face first toward the ground, closing my eyes, and fading out.

——————

The four of us awoke back in the Dreamworld, our relative positions still the same, with Adam in a sleeping position in the air, and the rest of us on the ground.

The area around us looked as it had before, like a strange city full of impossible architecture and run through a million filters, only now I saw that there was a giant robot with drills for arms sitting next to a massive hole in the ground.

“Your work?” I asked Oneiros.

“Actually, your friend Lincoln came up with that idea. I quite like it, though.”

“We’d better get moving,” said Adam. “Ange and Linc will be way ahead of us.”

——————

We made our way down a crude spiral staircase of earth and stone with a massive drop down the center. After four or five minutes of walking, we found that the stairs stopped and the hole leveled out abruptly.

“Wasn’t sure exactly how deep we’d need to go, and neither was Cyberspace,” said Oneiros. “This seemed like a good bet. Hopefully they haven’t gone too much farther without us.”

By now, the guards and Hypes on the surface would surely have realized that two of our number had made it deeper into the facility. For all we knew, they’d still be surrounding us when we awoke back into the real world, but Adam didn’t think so.

“I think they’ll assume this is some sort of prison break or something, if they think it’s nefarious at all, which isn’t a given. So they’ll be sending guards to all the wrong places. What they can’t guess is that we’re just here to see one prisoner, and we’re certainly not planning on getting him out.”

“Besides,” said Shannon, “they have no way of tracking us in the Dreamworld. They might post sentries at different points, but even we don’t know exactly where in the facility we’re about to emerge.”

“Fair point,” I conceded. “Oneiros, do your thing I guess.”

He did.

——————

We emerged into chaos. We were in what looked like a small office with windows on all sides and several computer consoles spread around. I looked out one of the windows and saw that we were in a sort of raised tower, overlooking what looked like prison cells without ceilings stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. I looked way over to my left and saw a similar looking tower a few hundred yards away. Many, maybe most, of the prison cubicles—I couldn’t think of a better term for them—were empty, but not all. And the prisoners in the ones that weren’t empty were causing such noise with their shouting and throwing things around their cells that I thought at first we’d emerged into some sort of party, or else straight into the heart of hell.

At my feet was a guard lying face down. I checked his pulse and found that he was still breathing.

“Dunno how Cyberspace managed that,” said Ganzfield, indicating the guard.

“Could have been Angie,” I suggested. He laughed at the idea. “Actually,” he said, “it wouldn’t surprise me to find she has it in her.”

“Speaking of,” said Virtuosa, “where have the two of them gotten to?”

I pointed at a screen in the corner by the door that must have led to stairs and ultimately ground level. This particular screen was flashing green with one word: “Hurry.”

We ran over to it and the screen refreshed, showing a new message: “Took you guys long enough. We’ve located Pitch, but guards are making their way down. I’m blocking them as well as I can, but they have several key systems isolated from the rest so I can’t get to them all at once.”

“Where do we go?” Oneiros asked aloud.

The screen went blank, then: “I’ll show you the way.”

We went out the door and looked around for a sign. “There!” shouted Ganzfield, pointing at a strip of LED lights embedded in the floor, presumably to guide guards or others to specific parts of the facility. There were seven strips running in parallel, each a different color, and I supposed that new hires here would learn in some orientation what part of the facility each color would lead them to.

Lincoln was pulsing them all on and off creating a sort of wave effect leading down the corridor immediately in front of us. About fifteen yards up, I saw that the wave of lights turned right at an intersection.

“Let’s go,” said Ganzfield, leading the way.

In the distance, I heard the grinding and squeaking of a mechanical door being forced open, and the shouts of many angry voices beyond.

“Hurry,” I said to no one in particular as we raced along, chasing Cyberspace’s lights.