The Loop

March 3rd, 2031

Adam stood and looked out across the part of the city he could see from his perch by a window on the twelfth floor of Luhrs Tower in Phoenix and wondered, not for the first time, if there was anything left worth saving. Even thinking of the tower as Luhrs Tower or of the city as Phoenix seemed wrong somehow. Both of those designations had become kind of meaningless in the absence of people to use them, and with how complete the devastation to the city was, there wasn’t much left to differentiate it from any of the other ruined cities he’d passed through on his way here. He was looking down what had been South First Street toward what was once Madison, not because he was expecting an attack or anything notable to come from that direction, but because he had to look somewhere, and he liked looking South toward the mountains. The mountains, at least, looked as they always had.

It was here that he had set up camp and spent the last two weeks in solitary contemplation, planning his next move. But all his planning was fruitless, and deep down he knew that. There were no more plans, no more missions, no more victories. Any chance of turning this thing around had passed him by many months ago. Or years ago. Or maybe the whole damn thing was doomed from the start, from the moment he first laid eyes on that stupid metal orb that had changed the course of his life and the world so significantly. Regardless of how far gone things were, and regardless of whether or not he knew it, he couldn’t just do nothing. It wasn’t in him, not anymore. He had once been the type of person who could just give up. In fact, he had once been the type of person who didn’t need to give up because they never started fighting in the first place.

He had heard all his life that people couldn’t change. And because it was repeated so often; by his parents, by friends, by teachers, colleagues, and employers; by half the characters in half the shows he had ever watched and by a good chunk of the self-proclaimed self help gurus—who said people couldn’t change, unless they used this one weird trick!—he had come to believe it. Really, truly believe it. But then something had changed him fundamentally, and he realized that the notion that people couldn’t change was just another one of those not-quite-true ideas that people tell each other constantly to reassure themselves that whatever bad thing has happened isn’t really their fault, because people are what they are, and it is what it is. It was just another way of shifting blame. In other words, it was complete bullshit.

Still, he had to admit that he had had some pretty significant help in changing, and not everyone was blessed with that kind of assistance. In fact, less than zero point zero zero one percent of all humans had gotten the specific type of help he had. And not everyone given that gift had changed for the better. Most hadn’t. But he had. He was a better man now than he had been seven years ago. So much better, and so different, that it hardly seemed fair to even compare himself now to his past self. If not for what had happened all those years ago, he’d likely be now exactly where he had been then, exactly who he had been then; the coward, the underachiever, the lackadaisical slacker. Well actually, assuming that the end of the world would have happened either way, he’d be dead or imprisoned along with nearly everyone else on the planet.

He snapped back to the present with a start. Something was out there. As he often did when lost in thought, he had been subconsciously reaching out with his power, feeling the space and the shape of his surroundings to the outer limits of his mind’s reach. It was a kind of sixth sense, and the only real way that he could describe it to anyone who couldn’t experience it first hand—which incidentally was every other person he met—was that it was like having an infinite multitude of invisible and intangible hands constantly stretching in every direction around him, touching and feeling every object and every surface in a spherical area roughly two hundred feet in radius centered around his head. Walls couldn’t block them, and they could feel objects inside of other objects as if there were no obstruction whatsoever. And moreover, he could manipulate the objects he felt; pick them up, move them, throw them, squeeze them, hold them in place against external forces.

He found himself reaching out in those meditative moments of quiet reverie even now, like stretching a muscle to relax. Of course, there was no real reason to keep his powers sharp, as all powers were completely useless against them. And if they were close enough for him to feel them coming, it was already far too late. But it was a subconscious process that he couldn’t just turn off. It was like breathing, like keeping his heart beating, like making plans even when no plans could be made which would do a damn bit of good.

This time, though, his reaching out paid off, as he felt a man coming up the street about half a block away to the North. The man was walking down the middle of the street, completely exposed, which Adam would normally have advised against, and given his other power he could have passed this advice along to the man, but he chose not to because he recognized the man’s odd gait almost instantly and really wouldn’t have minded if this particular man were ambushed by them and torn to shreds in the middle of the street. But thankfully for both of them, they weren’t around at the moment.

Tomas, he thought, as much to the man as to himself.

Hello, Adam, my friend. Was wondering when you’d say something, he heard the reply inside his own head, but not in his voice.

I know why you’ve come … The answer’s no.

You know why I’ve come, huh? Are you so certain of that? Maybe I’ve just come to talk to an old friend. Maybe I’ve come to say goodbye.

So if you want to talk then talk. You don’t need to come any closer.

Tomas’s thoughts went fuzzy and indistinct for a while. Adam caught stray words and images and ideas, but nothing he could follow easily; a snapshot of a snow covered mountain, a brief glimpse of a grandfather clock, and the repeated phrase ‘out of time.’ Then the man focused his thoughts into coherent words again and Adam heard them as clearly as he could hear the internal monologues of almost everyone he encountered; as clearly as he could hear his own thoughts.

Adam, Tomas thought, I think this would be easier if we could just … actually talk, like, face to face.

What’s the difference?

Don’t be ridiculous. This kind of communication might feel natural to you, but it still feels invasive to me. And anyway, it’s inefficient. I have to really concentrate just to form my thoughts into words clear enough that you’ll understand. It’s …

And as if to illustrate his point, his thoughts became muddy again.

… difficult, he concluded. And I’m afraid what I have to say is too important to risk any miscommunication.

And I’m afraid, thought Adam, that if I see your face in front of me, I won’t be able to refrain from throwing you out the twelfth floor window of this building.

Along with these words, he sent a mental image of a man flying out a window and landing with spectacular, violent force on the ground below.

That’s a grim image, Adam, but I’ll take my chances.

Adam could feel a hint of amusement in the man, and despite himself he chuckled quietly. Normally he was better at not letting other peoples’ emotions influence his own, but he hadn’t seen or spoken to another person in over a month and he was a little out of practice. The major drawback to this secondary power of his was that although it allowed him to communicate silently at a distance and glean information from peoples’ minds, there was always a risk of what he called ‘backsplash,’ or the tendency of some of the other person’s thoughts or feelings to have a noticeable effect on his own.

Fine, he thought. Come on up. You were going to anyway.

Tomas did his best to close off his mind from Adam’s intrusive power as he entered the lobby at the bottom of the building, and to his credit he did so to much greater effect than most people would have been able to manage. But then, it wasn’t the first time that Tomas and Adam had had one of these battles of wills. It took a great deal of practice for someone to successfully conceal their thoughts from a telepath, and since telepathy had been such an incredibly rare power even before most Hypes had been hunted and killed or captured, most people had never bothered to even try to learn. In truth, it wasn’t really about making the thoughts themselves invisible—that wasn’t possible—but rather about pushing them back to a lower level of consciousness and placing at the forefront of one’s mind images and words that were completely unrelated to one’s true inner thoughts and intentions.

Those who could pull it off all went about it in different ways; some imagined with all their will a fixed image of something impenetrable, like a solid brick wall, others imagined random patterns and movements of light that resembled a static signal on an old TV set. Tomas went about it in a rather more novel way; he always imagined several dozen butterflies flapping around, rendered in excruciating detail. Every motion of each wing was accounted for, each of their paths carefully mapped, each of their colors and patterns carefully chosen.

Adam could see the butterflies clearly in his head, and beneath them he could see that there was a great deal else going on in Tomas’s mind, but he couldn’t make out exactly what it was, and that was the point. It was about obfuscation. Those who were best at it could actually convincingly present completely false information as if it were their genuine belief at their highest levels of consciousness while keeping their true thoughts suppressed so deeply that even a telepath as gifted as Adam had no sense that they were there at all. But he had to admit, the butterflies worked almost as well.

“Tomas,” he said without turning around as the man entered the room behind him, limping and out of breath. He could feel the man’s labored breathing, the heaving of his chest, and he could feel the throbbing in the man’s left ankle as if it were his own. He made a point of lifting up the sword in the corner of the room closest to the door through which Tomas entered and pointing it in the man’s direction.

Tomas spotted the sword hovering ten feet to his right and laughed.

“Really?” he asked. “Still with the sword? So theatrical. What’s the point?”

He limped along the length of the room toward Adam and the sword kept pace with him, staying between the two men.

“Seriously, Adam, put that thing down. You’re making me nervous.”

“You should be nervous, Tomas, and not just because of me … You know what else is out there.”

At these words Tomas shuddered, and Adam felt the jump in Tomas’s anxiety so acutely that he had to struggle to suppress a shudder of his own.

Tomas was now less than six feet behind him, and he still hadn’t turned around because he really was scared of what he would do when he looked the man in the eyes.

“Yes, you’re right of course. I haven’t been at ease, I mean like truly calm in at least … Well, let’s see, how long have they been around?”

“Eighteen long months.”

“Eighteen months. That’s right, my friend. My God, has it been that long? But listen, Adam, they’re not here now. I’ve been tracking them, and the closest contingent is about fifty miles east of Tucson. I’ve seen zero evidence that they’re heading this way or that they even know you’re here.”

“You’ve been tracking them?” Adam asked in disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“Well, you’ve long thought so,” Tomas said, laughing grimly.

Finally Adam turned around to look at the man now standing close enough to touch. He let the sword hover back to his side and propped it up against the wall by the window, and studied the face before him. Tomas looked old, older by far than the last time they had met. But a few months in a post-apocalyptic wasteland will age you. He supposed he probably wasn’t looking that hot either. Still, the man had maintained a reserved and understated dignity, and the sort of classical good looks common of Hollywood’s leading men in the thirties and forties. Just a little scruffier now, with bags under the eyes and gray stubble on the chin.

“You need to shave,” he said.

“And you badly need a shower, my friend.”

“Can you stop with that ‘my friend’ bullshit? We weren’t friends before the world ended and I wouldn’t say I’ve warmed up to you any since.”

He was trying to keep his mind off of the last time they had met and the events that had taken place that he still blamed Tomas for; the events that, if he was being honest with himself, they were both at least partially responsible for. But Tomas was the villain, and he was the hero—at least that’s how the world had seen them before all this—so if someone had to take the blame, it sure as shit wasn’t going to be him.

“Listen, Adam, you never gave me a chance before—”

“Don’t you fucking dare …”

“You never gave me a chance to say that I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” Adam snarled.

“—sorry for what happened to Christine.”

The sword flew with incredible speed toward Tomas, stopping itself against his throat, less than half an inch from ending his life and sparing Adam from ever having to listen to or consider what this man, this villain, had come to say.

“Adam, if you really want to kill me, you could just squeeze my aorta with your power and be done with it. I’ve seen you do it before. So, since you’re making a big show of holding a sword to my throat, I know you’re not serious.”

Adam pushed the sword a little harder into Tomas’s throat, and the man gulped, his eyes bulging slightly with a fear he was obviously trying hard not to show. But Adam relented and again allowed the sword to float gracefully back toward the spot where it had been resting against the wall.

“Don’t bring her up,” he said, “You can say whatever you came here to say, but don’t say her name in my presence again.”

“Duly noted,” Tomas said, “In that case, we should get down to business.”