1
There's a difference between learning the rules of a game and trying to win it.
Up to then, I'd been doing the first part.
Kick here, pull there, watch where the invisible hand got annoyed.
Jump off a bridge? No.
Light the place on fire? No.
Drag Angel out of range? No.
Phone adults? Absolutely not.
Sit at home and ignore it? It dragged me to 02:24 anyway.
I had a decent list of "don'ts" and a sick amount of data on four men, one girl, one factory.
What I didn't have yet was a night I could point to and think:
That one belongs to me.
So I built one.
2
Preparation stopped costing anything except conscience.
Loops took care of the time.
Conscience was on a clearance sale.
Over a bunch of runs, I stopped thrashing and started rehearsing.
One evening I followed the men all the way from the auto place to the factory and counted every turn, every light, every pothole that made the van rock. Another, I stayed in the building after they left, feeling my way along the side corridors until I found a narrow maintenance recess just off the main hall, half-hidden behind stacked panels.
Perfect blind spot. You could tuck a man in there and lose him.
Or tools.
I didn't leave anything there yet. That was scouting, not planting.
On a different loop I "borrowed" a wrench from the auto shop workbench, learned its balance, then swapped it back for another of the same size in a later run. I sanded the handle in a stairwell until it fit my grip better than my own toothbrush did.
By the time I stopped counting how many evenings I'd spent doing this, I knew where I wanted to stand, what I wanted in my hands, and where I wanted spare metal within arm's reach.
On the run that mattered, I went to the factory early, alone, and slid a crowbar, a roll of tape, and a short camping knife into that recess.
The day didn't flinch.
Tools were scenery.
3
The men carried their damage into this one.
That part never reset.
Jacket's knee still hated stairs from the time I'd bent it the wrong way with a pipe. Fake payphone's nose sat slightly off-centre thanks to a brick. The driver's shoulder had a hitch from where I'd wrenched his arm too far back. Shaved head favoured one side when he thought no one was watching, rubbing ribs that had introduced themselves to a workbench edge.
They weren't limping wrecks; nothing that dramatic.
Just worn.
Like parts in a machine that should have been replaced three services ago and weren't.
It meant that, on this night, the system would have to work a little harder to keep its pattern smooth.
I wanted to see how much harder.
4
The run that counted began like all the others.
Bank. 19:38. Red numbers over glass doors.
Students. Dog. Wrapper, right on cue.
Angel's shape at the far end of the street, bag pressed against her side, shoulders already tense under weight she couldn't name.
I didn't go to her.
I went straight to the auto place.
The sign out front sagged a little more than the first time I'd seen it. The shutter was half-up. Radio muttering. Smell of old oil and a day that should have been over ten minutes ago.
Out back, the driver was on his phone again.
"…told you, I'll send it this weekend," he was saying. "I know. Yeah. I know."
He hung up, sighed, turned—
—and stopped when he saw me.
Not because he recognised me.
Just because adults are wired to clock teenagers near their jobs as potential trouble.
"We're closed," he said.
"That's fine," I answered.
The tuned wrench came up in one smooth line.
Metal met the side of his skull with a solid, damp sound.
He went down between the wall and the bin like that space had been saved for him.
5
No dust.
No bank.
The air stayed the same thickness.
His chest still moved, shallow and rough.
Leaving him alive wasn't mercy. It was hedging: if the day decided it needed a warm body with his face later, it had one in storage.
I took his keys, his jacket from the nail, his cap from the bench.
By the time I walked around to the front, I was wearing his shape well enough.
Inside, shaved head was sliding a tray under a car, fake payphone was crumpling a noodle cup, Jacket was closing the ledger.
"You're late," Jacket said without looking up.
"Traffic," I said.
He gave a dismissive little huff, pocketed the keys, and jerked his chin toward the door.
We left.
6
Driving felt easier now that I wasn't pretending I didn't know the road.
Streetlights flicked past in the same order. The same cheap bar signs, the same shuttered shops, the same empty patch of sidewalk where the dog would be sniffing later.
This time, when Angel crossed at the light they always used, I watched her the way the men did: a timing problem, not a person.
We slid into position.
Shaved head got out. Fake payphone followed.
I kept the engine idling and my hands loose on the wheel.
They stepped into her path, said whatever they felt like saying in this version, shifted their weight the same way they had every other time.
Her bag dropped. Her shoes scraped. A muffled sound left her throat and got cut short.
The van rocked as they pulled her in.
"Go," Jacket said from behind me.
I went.
7
At the factory, I parked in the same place the driver always used.
Yard. Side door. Same dented drum, same sagging fence, same cold concrete pretending not to be important.
We walked in a loose line toward the building.
Angel stumbled once on the way to the stairs.
I didn't catch her.
My fingers wanted to.
The invisible weight coiled for a shove.
I kept my hands open and empty.
Inside, the ground floor swallowed us.
Up the stairs. Along the corridor. That now-familiar stretch with its faint scuff marks waiting for chair legs.
Jacket walked like he owned the place, favouring his bad knee. Shaved head and fake payphone each had a grip on Angel. I came last, exact number of steps behind, just another shadow.
The night had its actors in position.
8
The setup ran on muscle memory.
Chair down in the usual spot. Bag beside it. Rope drawn out in loops.
Jacket did the talking and the first passes of rope like always. Shaved head took her ankles. Fake payphone fetched the bulb from the bag and climbed on the chair to screw it in.
"Hold that," Jacket told me, nodding at the chair as Angel struggled.
My hands met metal.
Her shoulder brushed my wrist.
The pressure slammed into my chest like a brick.
I didn't try to pull her away. I didn't tug on the knots. I just took the weight so the chair didn't skid.
The force eased back to a threatening murmur.
Allowed.
It cared what happened to her, not whether the furniture needed a spotter.
We forced her down. We tied her in. We did exactly what the night wanted on that count.
9
Light fell.
Angel's face flinched under it, eyes narrowing against the glare, then widening again as the circle shrank her world.
I'd seen this view from the dark dozens of times.
Seeing it from inside the ring didn't make it more tragic.
Just more detailed.
Jacket laid out his usual mix of lies and crooked assurances. Shaved head hovered too close. Fake payphone laughed at the wrong beats.
I half-listened.
Mostly, I watched the pattern.
I knew the script's rhythm now:
After the tying and the test tugs, they'd take the bag further down the corridor to do whatever the report authors had nicely summarised as "escalation." One man would stay with her as a guard.
Every time before, that was when I'd been just a shape on the wall.
This time, I was another piece on their side of the board.
I waited until Angel was exactly the way she always was at the point the monitor later recorded as 02:24 minus a sliver: tied at wrists and ankles, tape in place, light above, breath high and clipped.
The state the day wanted.
They had delivered their part.
Now it was my turn.
10
They moved according to habit.
"We'll be right there," Jacket said, nodding down the hall with that false, steady tone. "Behave and this ends quick."
He always over-promised.
Shaved head cursed about how long this would take. Fake payphone muttered something about needing a smoke when they were done.
Between them, they picked up the bag and started down the corridor, away from the circle of light.
This time, the guard left behind was fake payphone.
Of the three, he shook the easiest.
He stood near the chair, arms folded, trying to look like he belonged in charge of anything.
Angel tested the ropes once, small, careful movements.
He snapped at her.
"Stop that."
His voice didn't match his posture.
I stood in my usual shadow, just outside the light, the same place I'd haunted in a dozen loops.
To him, I was just the driver promoted to extra body.
He turned his back.
That was the last unobserved movement he got.
11
I counted breaths.
Not just mine.
His.
Hers.
Air went in and out of their bodies at different speeds, each little rise and fall exactly where it had been in other loops, until I added a new factor.
At thirty-five of his breaths, he yawned.
At thirty-six, he glanced down the corridor, bored.
At thirty-seven, I moved.
The wrench had been loose in my hand the whole time. It came up silent.
He started to turn, annoyance on his face.
"You new guys are so—"
The rest of that sentence never had a chance to exist.
Metal hit the side of his skull with a thick, wet impact.
His knees lost the argument with gravity.
I caught his jacket before his body could knock into Angel or tip the chair, hauling him sideways out of the cone of light.
The pressure in the corridor hit me like a train.
My teeth ached. My vision shrank to a tunnel.
I braced for dust, for the bank, for red numbers.
They didn't come.
The weight shook me, hard, then held.
On probation.
Waiting.
"You brought me here," I told it, under my breath, dragging him toward the maintenance recess. "You taught me how this goes. Don't get shy now."
His breathing was rough but present when I left him propped against the wall, out of sight of the main line.
If the system wanted to recycle him later, it knew where I'd put him.
I stepped back into my shadow.
Angel's eyes rested on me full for the first time.
Nothing noble rose to meet them.
Just the next part of the plan.
12
Down the corridor, metal shifted.
Their voices carried in fragments.
Jacket talking about money. Shaved head making some ugly joke. A bag zip. A tool being lifted.
I walked toward the sound.
My fingers slid along the wall until they met the rough edge of the panel that hid my stash.
Crowbar handle. Knife grip. Tape.
My hand closed on the crowbar.
Wrench in my other hand.
It was a ridiculous amount of metal for one teenager in a narrow hall.
The calm that came with it fit.
I stepped into their light.
13
Shaved head saw me first.
He was half bent over the bag, rooting for something, when his gaze cut sideways.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, irritation more than suspicion. "I told you to stay with—"
His eyes caught the tools.
His mouth changed shape.
"Hey, what the—"
He didn't get to finish.
The crowbar drove into his gut, all my weight behind it.
Air left him in a sound that barely qualified as human.
He folded around the metal.
Jacket jerked upright, hand going for his belt.
He was fast.
The damage in his leg and the numbness in his arm from previous loops made him just not fast enough.
I brought the wrench down on his forearm.
Bone shifted under the blow.
This time I didn't think of the sound as anything.
It was a change in state, nothing more.
The pressure in the corridor surged.
My chest clenched.
My ears filled with static.
The day wanted to throw me away from this spot so badly it felt personal.
"Too late," I thought at it, dizzy with the push. "You got what you wanted from them. They brought her here, like good boys. They tied the knots. The bulb is on. You have your picture."
Everything after that was me rearranging your leftovers.
14
Shaved head was on his knees, trying to pull some air back into his body.
I pulled the crowbar free and brought it across his back.
He went sideways and stayed there, breathing small and shallow.
Jacket fumbled the knife halfway out of its sheath.
His fingers wouldn't close around the handle.
His eyes met mine.
They were just eyes.
No cosmic evil. No supernatural glow.
Just a man who had done something terrible so many times it felt like work.
"Who are you?" he demanded, voice ragged.
"Someone you left in the audience too long," I said.
It wasn't a brave line.
It was just the closest I could get to the truth.
The wrench rose again.
His head hit the floor at the end of the motion and didn't try to get back up.
15
After that, the corridor was crowded but quiet.
Two men on the ground, one stuffed behind a panel, one still downstairs bleeding behind a bin.
Angel in the chair.
Bag abandoned.
Light buzzing over it all.
The pattern that had held this space tight through dozens of runs had torn along its main seam.
The weight in the room didn't vanish.
If anything, it doubled.
Every step back toward the circle felt like moving through water so dense it might as well have been gel.
My head pounded.
My vision pulsed at the edges.
I kept walking.
If the loop wanted to throw me out, it was going to have to try harder.
16
Angel watched me come.
Her breathing was sharp and uneven, fogging the tape.
The rope had already eaten deep into her skin.
I set the wrench down on the floor where she could see I wasn't holding it anymore.
That didn't make her any calmer.
Her eyes tracked my hands.
I ignored what they wanted.
I went to the knot at her left wrist.
When my fingers touched the rope, the pressure in the air balled up like a fist.
My nose ran warm.
Red hit my upper lip.
I wiped it with my sleeve and kept working.
The knot was badly tied, layers from loops and anger.
It took longer than it should have.
My hands weren't shaking because I was scared.
They were just tired of fighting everything in the room at once.
The rope slipped.
Her arm jerked.
She yanked it away from the chair as if expecting it to snap back by itself.
Nothing did.
17
I stepped around her and took the knot on the other wrist.
The weight in the room ratcheted up again.
My vision blurred.
My heartbeat felt like it belonged to somebody else.
I thought of jumping, of fuel blooming into flame, of the station line, of the phone pressed to Guardian's ear.
Every time I'd tried to leave or to call help, the day had torn itself away from me early.
Here, I was staying inside its shape.
Same night. Same girl. Same room. Same chair.
Just a different hand on the rope.
It hated it.
It didn't know how to handle it.
The knot came loose.
Her hands dropped into her lap.
Her fingers clenched once, twice.
Still no dust.
Still no bank.
18
I dropped to one knee to get at her ankles.
The rope there was a mess of anger and habit, layers over layers, enough for three hostages.
Halfway through prying it apart, my body started to give up on me.
My arms felt floaty and heavy at the same time.
The corridor tilted sideways for a moment.
My free hand slapped against the floor.
Concrete under my palm, not nothing.
Angel made a sound behind the tape, urgent and thin.
"Almost," I said.
It came out warped.
The last knot surrendered under my fingers.
Her feet slid free of the bindings.
Silence pressed in from all sides.
If the loop had a throat, this was where it held it.
19
She didn't bolt.
For a second, Angel just sat there, like she was waiting for gravity to notice she was untied and fix it.
Then her hands rose.
Her fingers went to the tape and peeled it away in one long, slow tear.
The noise it made was small and ugly enough to feel private.
She dragged in a full breath.
"Who…" she started, voice wrecked, then stopped halfway through the word.
We stared at each other.
This was the moment the story I'd told myself said should feel holy.
I waited for whatever other people meant when they talked about love or relief or being whole.
Nothing came.
What landed instead was a clear, steel-edged assessment:
Positions.
Bodies.
Paths out.
I'd done it.
Not I saved her.
Just I broke it and it stayed broken.
Her hand shot out and closed around my wrist.
Her nails dug in hard enough to sting.
"You came," she whispered.
This was new.
Not from a police report.
Not from a TV segment.
Something the loop hadn't shown me before.
For the first time, we were beyond its diagram.
20
Somewhere deep in the building, a siren's whine seeped in from the outside world, thin and directionless.
We were past the time the sheet had called "pronounced."
Past 02:24.
Past the line where the world had ended for her in every previous version.
The room stayed.
My knees gave out.
I dropped in front of the chair like my strings had been cut.
I didn't pass out.
I was there for every moment my body shook and tried to fold.
The invisible hand that had owned this night pressed down hard, then eased, like it was letting go of something it had been clenching for too long.
It didn't fling me back to 19:38.
It didn't repaint the street and reload the van and set Angel walking.
It just… let time keep going.
Angel's fingers were still on my skin.
The day didn't repeat.
For the first time since this started, it had to find out what came next the same way I did:
second by second.