Time Looped

There were many places for a student to stay between classes. The corner shop was one of those places. With Helen being well known for her academic prowess, it was considered that the matter had to be important enough to let it slide. Given that Alex was also there, many suspected that the girl had a few choice words to say, which was about time as far as everyone was concerned.

“How much time you got?” Alex asked, munching muffins along with the paper cup holding them.

“End of second period,” Will said, stretching the truth a bit.

“Fourth period,” Helen said. “Do you have to eat like that?”

“All good. Part of my loop extension,” the goofball replied. “Is good. Don’t notice it.”

Will winced. Being forced to eat food with the wrapper to gain a few minutes didn’t sound like a good deal. On the other hand, it must have worked well for his friend, given the amounts he was consuming with ease.

“Sorry for sending the goons at you, bro. Part of my class.”

“You sent them?” Will blinked.

“Yeah, bro.”

Will’s nostrils flared.

“Was my class, bro. Doing it for ages. Didn’t know you’d get looped.”

That made some sense. But still. Jace’s sudden behavior, the jocks’ sudden bullying, had all been because of that? No wonder this morning’s loop was so calm. Of course, Helen had done something similar by sicking the coach on the boy.

“For real, bro. Won’t do it again.”

Assuming we come to some agreement, Will thought.

“Why did you keep taking Daniel’s notes?” Helen asked. “Were you the reason he died?”

“Whoa there, sis.” Alex glared at her. “Don’t be bitching at me. You went with him on his last run.”

The atmosphere tensed up. Even the corner shop seller glanced in their direction, expecting something to happen. The next half minute passed in silence. The girl kept on glaring at Alex, who, in turn, continued eating his muffins twice as slow as before.

“We’re not here to fight,” Will stepped in after it became apparent that no one else would. “We all know the location of our mirrors so we could make it difficult for everyone else if we wanted.”

“Wow, bro. Still a noob, but giving advice?”

“He’s not wrong.” The girl crossed her arms. “He might not be able to cause you trouble, but I could.”

There was another tense moment, after which the goofball shrugged.

“Danny said you were lit.” Reaching in his backpack, he took two stacks of paper and offered them to Helen.

It didn’t take a genius to know what they were. Slowly, the girl reached out and took them.

“Won’t find anything,” he said, as she started reading. “Nothing you don’t know.”

“Why go through all the trouble of taking them, then?” Will asked the obvious question.

“Bro… You think this stops at the school? Press F to doubt.”

“The archer.”

“The archer, the druid, the martial,” Alex said, crumbs falling from his mouth as he did. “There’s lots of them. Some I’ve never seen. The ones I have are all nasty.”

“Why?”

Alex looked at Helen.

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I told him enough.” The girl kept flipping through the pages. Her reading speed was impressive, to say the least. Of course, anyone observant could tell that she was skipping entire passages and only focusing on what interested her.

“Big ooof, bro.”

Will had to agree. After so many loops and everything they’d been through, he would have thought he had earned a bit of trust. Clearly, not.

“We are divided into groups, bro. Six groups with four mirrors.”

“Twenty-four participants.” Will nodded. “Nah, bro. Twenty-four classes. If you’re good, you can get all four solo.”

“Okay, up to four.”

“Each group is in a zone. In order to get out, you must do certain—”

“Yeah, I know.” Will interrupted. “The activity path.”

“Nah, bro,” Alex laughed. “That’s to extend the loop. Look. There’s four things.” He took a muffin and tossed it to his friend. “Loop.” He then tossed another. “Level.” Then another. “Random reward.” And a fourth. “Tasks.”

Will quickly looked around for a place to put the four muffins in case more were tossed his way. Thankfully, they weren’t. Instead, the goofball took one of the muffins back. “Do stuff to extend your loop.” He took a second and put it directly in his mouth. “Kiww wows to wewl up.”

“Don’t be disgusting.” Finished with one stack of pages, Helen put it beneath the other and kept on reading.

Taking the hint, Alex swallowed his muffin before taking the next from Will.

“Kill a pack and you get a reward.”

“Hold on!” Will pulled the last muffin away. “What pack?”

Once again Alex glance at Helen, who kept on flipping page after page

“No, I didn’t tell him,” she said. After going through the second stack, much faster than the first, she arranged the pages neatly and handed them back to Alex. “Green mirrors. Once you kill a pack, you get a random ability. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to go off hunting wolves every loop.”

“Oh,” the boy said. He wasn’t pleased that she’d kept that from him, but it wasn’t like he had shared either.

“That’s the rogue part, bro.” The goofball chomped down another muffin. “You can get lit stuff. Or crap. Or both,” he laughed at his own joke.

“So, there are three types of mirrors now?” Will looked at each of them.

“Four,” Helen corrected, at which point Alex grabbed the last muffin from Will’s hands. “Daniel said there’s a set of tasks at school. We don’t have to complete them, but once we do, we get a prize.”

“Like what?”

“He didn’t say.”

The sound of bells came from the school, marking the start of second period. Only five minutes had passed, but enough to let the group know they couldn’t continue the conversation where they stood. With a wall to the outside being nearby, it was quickly decided they should take that approach. Even if someone was to see them, and believe their eyes, that would only last for one loop—or close to another twenty minutes in Will’s case.

The goofball’s initial proposal was to go to the parking lot where his mirror was. After some consideration, the other two agreed. If anything, it was better than just walking about the streets.

“What are the tasks?” Will asked.

“Tap a mirror at a certain place at a certain time. Similar to the hint mirrors. They only work if you tap them in the right order. We tried to find one a few hundred times. After that we gave up.”

“Same.” Alex nodded. “Tried tapping all the hint mirrors in every order. Not that.”

“Daniel never told me about you,” the girl said in a warning tone. “When did you join eternity?”

“Long before you, sis.” The goofball grinned. “Danny scooped me. He knew I knew lots of stuff, so he told me about it… a few dozen times. The last time I believed him,” he glanced at the pole mirror. “Then we started exploring. When he found out about you, he told me to chill and help in the background. Like a super spy.”

Will couldn’t help but snort. Alex was a lot of things, but spy definitely wasn’t it.

“Then you got close, so I didn’t want to c—” he stopped on time. “The desk thing was my idea,” he added with pride. “Same for June.”

“The shrink?” Will asked, surprised. “You went there to talk.”

“For sure, bro! We could say all sorts of crap while waiting. Who’d believe it? He got too much into it, though.” The smile was still there, but the change of voice indicated that it wasn’t a fond memory. “Danny felt trapped. When we failed the area task, he started going out of the zone. That’s when the others noticed us.”

Will’s eyes widened. That was a twist he didn’t expect. Helen had told him that the archer had started attacking them first. What if it was the other way around? For someone with experience, it would be child’s play to rush up to the location of the archer and… possibly kill him? That was definitely the sort of grudge that would last loops.

“I stopped chiming, but he got you.” Alex turned to Helen. “Did you get anything on the last?”

The girl shook her head.

“He said he had figured it out,” she said slowly. “He was going to tell me at the start of the next loop. But it never came. At first, I thought he’d broken eternity with his death. Then they started again.”

“Yeah, for real.” Alex sighed. “Worst week of my life.”

As the conversation continued, Will slowly pieced together what he was missing. By the sound of it, he had restarted eternity by coming into contact with the bathroom mirror. Normally, it wasn’t supposed to work like that. The looped weren’t supposed to die, at least not permanently. And that definitely shouldn’t have broken the loops from continuing. And yet, there was no denying the facts. Alex’s theory was that it had something to do with the green mirrors. The abilities they gave were always different and sometimes meta. After killing off an entire pack, one could get anything from the ability never to spill to being able to leave the starting zone without punishment. There was a chance that Daniel had gotten something that would have provided a reprieve from looping.

“So, what’s your class?” Will asked.

“Moi?” Alex grinned, clearly expecting the question ever since they’d gathered after class. “Sneaky sneaky thief.”

“You’re the thief?” The girl almost choked.

That would explain why no one was able to capture him.

“Level three thief,” he said with pride.

“How’d you become a level three?”

“See that?” he pointed at a small burger place across the street. “Corner place with mirrors in the bathroom.”

“Wolves are in corners,” Will said, remembering the hint.

“Thief skill one traps.” He grinned.

That was rather convenient, not to mention overpowered. Looking at the rest of the group, Will thought he had the worst starting skills. Both Alex and Helen had ways of dealing with wolves quickly and efficiently early on. The things he had to go through in order to “kill his first pack” were a lot more difficult.

“Who’s the fourth?”

“Fourth?”

“According to the desk, there were four mirrors at school.”

“The nurse’s mirror.” Helen narrowed her eyes. “Or will you pretend you don’t know about that?”

“Nah, that’s me, bros.”

“You?”

“Yep. Crafter. Has some good stuff. Helps me play with gadgets, but nothing lit.”

“Wait,” Will raised his hand, in a gesture showing he wanted everyone to stop talking for a minute. “There’s no fourth?”

“Err, yeah, bro. Told you that.”

“Four mirrors, not four people,” Helen reminded, as if Will was a kindergartener.

“Don’t you see it? What if that’s the first task? If there are six teams, the first task should be a team.”

Alex and Helen looked at each other, as if they’d thought of it only now. Both felt ashamed in their own way. Alex, who had been known to play a video game or two, should have known this from his gaming experience. A lot of games started after the main party was selected, thus there was no reason for eternity to be any different. Hele, on her part, always prided herself on being organized. Even in her home, if there were four sets of plates at the dinner table, that suggested there would be four people at dinner.

“Danny was the one inviting people, bro,” the goofball quickly redirected the blame.

“I’m still not sure that’s how it works,” Helen said. “Others have played with the knight mirror and they aren’t looped.”

“As far as you know,” Alex said, attempting a spooky voice.

“It must be the same for the rest. Also, why did Daniel ask you, of all people, to touch the mirror?” She looked at the goofball. “You two weren’t particularly close. And, after a few tries, he could have gone to anyone else. Still, he kept on trying to get you.”

“So only certain people can enter eternity,” Will said. That explained why the nurse or the janitor hadn’t. If it was first come first serve, it would have definitely been one of them.

“How we find who?” Alex asked.

A good question. Sadly, Will wasn’t close to having an answer. Logically, they could try to get everyone to touch it. It wasn’t going to be easy, but with an eternal number of loops, it was possible. And yet, he felt that there had to be something to guide them—a hidden hint, as it were.

“Let’s just get—” Alex began, but Will’s warning glance made him quickly stop.

“Did Danny say anything to you two? There’s still a lot on his desk I haven’t been able to figure out.”

“Not his desk, bro. I wrote half the stuff there. Well, some of the stuff. He told me the songs were a joke, and I tried all the numbers.”

“Actually,” the girl said. “That’s not exactly true. There was something else he left behind, something he wanted me to have.”