I wake up at 7AM feeling nauseous from the feeling of tendrils stabbing at me.
Last night, I found myself restless, so fortunately for me, I spent the night feeling every single tendril, and every single stab.
Raphael's plan began at 8AM as I hear an obnoxiously long car horn from outside my front door.
I finally exit the bed and get dressed in whatever I can find on the floor, which usually consists of jeans, a hoodie being red, black, or blue, and a t-shirt. Any t-shirt I can find.
As I make my way downstairs, I smell the same familiar breakfast I've known for nearly two years now. I choke down as much as I can before the horn gets more obnoxious, lie to my mum and say I'm getting a lift to school, and begin another mission with a high chance of blood and riddles.
The car waiting outside seems to be Milli's personal favourite, since I've seen it a few times now.
Twice in one day last time!
Locke sits in the passenger seat, which means I sit behind him.
I just don't feel comfortable sitting behind Milli yet.
The drive isn't as short as Raphael's excursions. It takes roughly forty-five minutes to get to the clock tower. We cruise through traffic in this town that's way too small, and somehow make it there in less than two pages.
Standing by the entrance is a very familiar face.
Of all people, it's William.
The man, the myth, the legend.
Billson, himself.
We exit the car together, and William does naught to greet us. He simply stands there in his suit and coat, looking fantastic.
Locke approaches the tower and immediately begins placing his ear upon it. Paired with tapping it for hollow points.
A true professional.
Milli and I approach William as normally as one could when accompanied by someone who's killed me once and threatened to again.
"Yo." He greets.
"What's going on?" I ask.
"This guy Raphael told me to be here today." Simple enough. "It's a chore, and I have better things to do, but here I am."
"And we're glad to have you. Right?" I turn to Milli.
He turns his head and pulls out a box of cigarettes.
I never realised he smoked.
Maybe it's when no-one's looking.
Maybe we're lucky today.
"He's glad to have you personally." I tease, as Milli lights a cigarette, glaring at me from the corner of his eye.
Milli takes a long drag before Locke calls out to us. He chokes on his smoke as it catches him off guard, but he adapts quickly.
"Over here! I found the door!" Locke says, raising his voice as he waves his arms frantically as if we didn't hear him the first time.
We proceed around the corner of the tower to find a tattered door carved out of the wall. It seemed someone wanted to hide this as well as they could, so they sealed the whole door behind plaster and paint.
Locke draws a handgun from his holster and takes the lead. William and I follow with Milli watching our backs. Milli closes the door and the room illuminates as if a switch was pressed. William looks around in awe.
This isn't a clock tower at all; this is a laboratory of magic.
The walls were a tree-bark brown, with candles that levitate where the wall mounts should be. Candles that should illuminate only so much, somehow keep the whole tower alight. Portraits of famous works move on their own. Starry Night sways like the seas, The Scream ebbs and flows like the waves, women clad in beautiful gowns brushing their hair or looking in a mirror.
Stairs spiral upwards into the abyss, starting on our left hand side and making its way over the bookcases which were melded to shape themselves perfectly underneath them.
The walls are clad with books upon grimoires upon tomes upon scrolls. All laid in perfect order from alphabetical, categorical and chronological. Alongside towers of books stacked up with moving cloths covering them.
William has remained awestruck for some time now. As am I, of course, this is a sight I never thought I'd see in my wildest fantasies, but for some reason, this place feels both like I've been here before, and like it's very different from when I did.
Locke and Milli have found two cushioned armchairs and sat down, as Milli offers Locke a cigarette that he graciously accepts, lighting it with his own flip lighter. Mark does the same, sharing his flame as his cigarette puffs like a firework for a millisecond.
I check my watch to find it's somehow found itself at 11:15AM. Time moves fast.
I place a hand on William's shoulder.
"So this is why you're here, huh?" I tease.
"Shit, maybe. I'm gonna see what I can find out. I'll be back." As he jogs towards a ladder placed against the shelves.
He takes one step on it, and holds the rail tight. His free foot begins to leave the ground as the ladder extends to an unimaginable reach - all the way up to the top of the tower. Locke and Milli don't even pay attention. Lost in their isolated cloud of smoke.
Wait. No. Isolated? Smoke isn't isolated.
I turn to them, to find they're completely silent. They look like they're talking, their lips are moving, and a conversation can be perceived, but I cannot hear them.
"You still there?" I hear from above.
"Still here, man." I say in an attempt to be comforting.
"I'm gonna need you to catch me. I'm roughly thirty stories up, can you do it?"
"Obviously not, you ass." I retort. "I'll fucking die."
"You'll come back." He rationalises.
"You wanna do this all again?"
"Yes!!! This place rules, I'll do it a thousand times! Just get me down!!!" He panics.
"Hold on, hold on." I sigh.
Looking around what looks like a library, there isn't a lot of things that could cushion a thirty-story drop, but lucky for him, I've got…
It appears I'm all by myself again.
I analyse my surroundings as if channeling Locke and find at least two things we can use.
I pull the cloth off of a tower of books, forcing at least a dozen books to fall down, and start to pile books.
I make four piles of books, stacking only the heaviest and thickest books I can find. Books on alchemy, sorcery, mysticism, until they're at least fifteen books tall. I place a corner of the cloth on top of a pile and hold it steady with another five books. I do this three more times, and test the stability of the cloth.
"You still doing alright?" I call out.
"Well, I'm not dead." William meekly replies.
"I'm nearly done." I console.
I finish the job with four more books on each corner, weighing down the cloth as much as possible.
We now have the closest thing to a trampoline that one can salvage in the time we have.
"William, fall back!"
"I'm in the air, how the hell do I fall back?!"
"Fall down!" I ensure. "Trust me!"
A minute passes.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
I pace impatiently around the cloth placed at the base of the ladder, when suddenly, without warning, the sound of a boy hitting cloth can be heard.
"I think I have a newfound fear of ladders." William says, struggling to remove himself from the cloth.
"Don't walk under any." I amuse, as William reaches the end of the cloth, finally seeing the ground.
"You don't have to tell me twice." He responds as he ungraciously tumbles from the cloth, bringing both the cloth and three-dozen books with him.
Upon disembarking and William's hand doing its best impression of trying to break his fall, a sigil is formed on the ground beneath our feet.
Just us, not Locke and Milli.
The sigil - which reassembled a Rorschach painting of two men falling into each other - glowed a brilliant bright green and upon ceasing, had transported us to the same room devoid of colour.
Only I and William are conscious here.
The other two are in their own world.
Literally.
William observes our new-old surroundings to find the staircase that previously spiralled upwards, officially spiralling downwards.
Once again, I am filled with a feeling of difference. I continue to recognise everything up until now, aside from the spell book library and reversed layout.
I am severely uneasy.
"Let's check it out." William commands. I comply, following closely behind him. I notice that in William's hand is an identical piece of cloth from the cloth that saved his life, folded in the shape of a sack with what looked like five books inside of it.
"What's in the sack?" I ask, using my favourite socratic irony.
"Breakfast." William lies, completely aware that I know the answer.
We descend deeper, reaching what could only be perceived as a fifth floor, and are greeted with a room completely different from the first floor.
The room itself is two stories tall, the walls decorated as if imitating the idea of Victorian library, except the books are VHS tapes.
If there's anything I've learned about VHS tapes in my lifetime, it's that they make no sense and we're going to be going nowhere very soon.
Aside from the bookcases - whose placement around the room created a misshaped dodecahedron - slowly creating a feeling of claustrophobia, there also stands a moderately-sized 25-inch television on a wheelie stand.
Complete with VHS player. Yay.
William keeps his eyes trained on me, noticing my displeased demeanour and honestly fed up face, and he places his sack on the floor, picking up a single maroon tome, and flicking open to a page that appears to have a sticker-bookmark for easy access. He skims through the pages and begins to mutter to himself.
The book begins to levitate in front of him, and upon William letting go of it, starts to ascend as his body ascends alongside it.
William's outstretched body - which closely resembled the crucifixion of Christ - bore fruit, as tapes fly off the shelves, creating a messy, but still upright pile on the left side of the television.
William descends to my side once more.
I deny myself the privilege of asking what I had just witnessed. Instead;
"It appears I can do magic." William states.
"That makes you a wizard now, right?" I amuse.
"That's Mr Wizard, to you." He taunts as he gathers his books and remakes his sack. "Actually, leave me for a moment. I wanna try something." He insists as he unwraps his sack once more.
I make my way to the television, which somehow felt farther away than it appeared. I select the first tape from a pile of what appears to be twenty, and slide it into the player. The screen lights up on command.
***
Tape one showed security camera footage of what looks like myself, accompanied by eleven people. We enter the building in a single file, into a room that resembles the bottom floor of a lighthouse. William wastes no time and chants, creating a sigil on the floor that appeared very similar to the one that sent us here.
The camera captures every moment.
The sigil in the footage, however, does not transport them the same way we were. Instead, the floor itself begins to descend as if an elevator. The footage switches erratically as if being controlled by someone. It follows us endlessly as the newfound elevator proceeds further down at a breakneck speed, yet the team flinch naught. They seem trained, like experts whose lives until now had been for this moment.
They arrive at the fiftieth floor.
A man who resembles Zidane is seen pushing forward as he steals the lead, approaching a woman and a girl, who appears to be in a stasis chamber.
'Zidane' rants and rambles, arguing with the woman ahead of him, and after a few sentences, he brings out a handgun and shoots the woman in the head.
She falls limp onto the floor, twitching, leaking bodily fluids onto the floor beneath him.
From her body, an aura - what could only be assumed to be her life essence - becomes visible, drifting towards the girl in the stasis chamber behind her. The man resembling Zidane steps over her slowly dying body, holds his gun tight as he aims it at the girl held in stasis.
He shoots her five times.
Once in the head, and four more in the chest.
Her aura now becomes visible, as it transmutes from a fluorescent aqua to a murky black, and disappears.
The footage glitches for a second, and they appear outside of the building.
No-one questions anything, some simply lean against the building, some sit down on the floor. Two of them stay standing.
The footage ends.
***
"Anything good?" William inquires behind me.
"I couldn't explain it even if I tried." He says, regardless of my monique description above, as I turn back rejoin him and bear witness to his newest discoveries.
William no longer had a sack. The cloth had transformed into a messenger bag, retaining its material, yet sporting a brand new strap to hold it comfortably.
He waves his hand slightly in the direction of the remaining tapes, and they all beckon his call, throwing themselves to his side as he catches only one in his waving hand.
"Alright. Understood." He confirms. "Most of these tapes are useless, but they all tell us one thing: we have been here before many times. Once before the loop, and eleven times during."
My face reverts to dumbstruck as I attempt to come to terms with what I just witnessed.
"I found a spell that lets me see media without playing it, instead the data just goes straight to my mind, I guess."
"You guess?"
"I've only done it once. Just now, and it worked." He states with great pride.
"Okay, but how did you find such a specific spell?" I interrogate.
"This book here is literally titled 'Spells you won't need more than once'. I took it because I unironically want to use them all more than once at least." He gloats. "Here's another one titled 'Strange incantations you have to learn today', which intrigues me."
"Why are these titles so long?"
"You're missing the point, dude. They're specific, which makes them perfect." He rationalises. "Wanna keep going?" He asks as he begins his way to the staircase. I nod and join him again.
We proceed accordingly, descending down a long, assumedly endless flight of stairs, that felt like it was going on forever due to the lack of scenery and light that accompanied us the further we went.
William clicks his fingers on his right hand, summoning a glowing wisp that joined us as our third party member, illuminating the way for us.
This didn't make the descent feel shorter. It still felt like it was going to last forever.
After roughly an hour, I check my watch to find the great revelation that it doesn't work. It has been stuck on 11:15AM since we got here, and we really did not get here at that time. Which means: A, my watch diverted to this time upon entry, or B, a wizard did it.
My blame shifts to William, and immediately dissipates as I realise the blame could be on anyone.
Another hour goes by, and William finally stops in his tracks. He stretches his arms into the sky.
"How long does this go?!" His screams echo upwards of twenty floors at least. I place my hand on his shoulder.
"The stairs end here." I say confidently as my foot touches where the stairs end.
William looks puzzled, yet also somewhat fooled also. We both enter the twenty-fifth floor and the room lights up with candles that trail all the way up the walls through the stories we've walked so far. We can only assume the lights don't go down, which means we keep our wisp.
The further we press on into the room, the more we notice that portraits fill the walls alongside the candles. Portraits of people we know, and people who live inside the loop. People from this town. Family members.
"Look, it's me." William says, nudging me as he points at his portrait. A scowl covered his painting's face, a horrid and disappointed stare as he looks down on himself.
"It's your whole family tree if you look hard enough." I respond, pointing around his portrait.
Next to his painting on each side, are three siblings each. His younger brothers - who appear as normal as can be - and his older brothers. The band leader, the mafia boss, the scientist. His dad's portrait sits above William's, alongside what could only be assumed to be his mother, which was scratched out so horribly that the frame itself leaked red liquid from its tears and rips.
Dotted around the room stood portraits of tens of people. Myself and Maryanne, including our parents above us, alongside all of the teammates we've accumulated until this point. Dotted around with their eyes fixed upon us in pure disdain.
In the very centre of the room rises a wooden gate, which transforms the whole room into a courtroom. Chairs rise from one side as a podium rises on the other. Right behind the podium hangs a portrait of a judge who looks vaguely familiar to Locke.
I suppose who better to deal justice than a member of the police force, right?
A voice calls out to us that reverberates through the room.
"We call to the stand; William Theddy. Fourth of his father."
William does not question it. He shrugs his shoulders and makes his way to the podium. He opens the wooden gate at the centre of it, and approaches the stand.
"William Theddy. Your crime is conspiracy to murder, accessory to murder, theft and incapacity to stop the end of the world." Bellows the voice.
But something is gravely wrong.
I approach the gate.
"I wish to defend the accused, Your Honour." I demand.
"You wish to defend an accessory to murder of a mass extinction level?" It queries.
"I wish to defend my friend." I reiterate.
"Hmm. Very well. You may approach the defendants table." It amuses.
As I approach the stand, a folder, standing at a comical seven billion pages tall, appears as if it was just out of my sight beforehand.
I stay standing. I do not read the folder.
How could I even open a folder seven billion pages tall?
Where do you buy such a thing?
"Your Honour," I begin, "how could my client be responsible for the end of the world? What could he have done to stop it?" I ask, hoping there's no reasonable answer.
The voice hesitates for a moment.
"You already know the answer, as you are just as accused." It states, moving me to the stand also. "Seven billion deaths came at the hand of your team, when you sealed the fate of the world."
"That's an oxymoron, Your honour." I continue to defend. "I don't know the answer. If the accused has no recollection of the event, can he be held accountable entirely?"
"That is a complicated response, I agree. However, that does not make you exempt of the crime." It rationalises.
"I would like to see evidence of the crime." William asks, hand raised as if asking for permission to ask the question.
"Hmm. I cannot grant you this." It says in an almost disappointed tone. "Your crime has yet to be played out entirely."
"Because we're stuck in June 7th?"
"Yes. That is the reason." The voice pauses for a moment. "There should have been more with you who are accused also." The voice trails off.
"We don't have a team yet, but I feel like you're referring to the eleven of us that raided this place two days ago." I say, referencing the tape I watched as William learned literal magic.
"Indeed. Eleven of you are just as guilty for the events in the very near future." It says as if recalling an event that happened already.
"Your Honour," I start, "I have a proposition."
"Proceed."
"Me and a few people are trying to get us out of this loop. How about when we get out, we come back and properly be tried for our crimes?"
"You truly think I will believe you?"
"I truly do. In my eyes, we cannot be tried as two of us. If you allow us some time to gather everyone, we can have a fair trial. In fact, me and Will… ahem. William and I can get them to come here personally. And since we know how to get here, we're the only people who can do it." I barter.
The voice says nothing for thirty seconds.
It hears me.
It ponders.
"Very well. You have convinced me, he who remembers nothing." It bellows. "I will grant you the day. Return to me when you gather the accused." As the courthouse setting descends quickly into the ground, and a single light, brighter than a candle, illuminates the stairway further downstairs.
William races there, assumedly to escape any resemblance of this room. I follow suit.
As we get to the start of the stairway, William waves his right hand in the air to conjure another light wisp. Upon its full summoning, William takes the first step.
I sense a cold chill down my spine upon my own first step. I notice the stairs are entirely metallic. Iron reverberations can be heard with every continuous step. William notices too. He allows me and the wisp to take the lead, while he conjures another one for himself.
We proceed, remaining cautious. Well, I remain cautious. William's reading more books and tomes. The sound of whooshing and chimes can be heard from each successful understanding.
The further we proceed downwards, the less the iron reverberations… well… reverberate. Echoes of pages turning can be heard louder than them. Steam can be heard erupting from pipes, additional clanking separate from our own feet, and the smell of blood lingers in the air.
After what feels to be hours - a culmination of the time spent here combined into one time frame - we touch down on solid ground.
Solid steel.
I remember this place.
"This is the room from the tape." William states.
"You saw it?" I query in socratic irony.
"I used that… Shut up." He argues as he realises he lost the game.
Verbatim, the game William and I play quite often has no name. We challenge each other to see who will fall for socratic irony first. Asking a question in which you already know the answer. A wonderful game.
William smacks my right arm and a strangely familiar pain flows through it. As if I'm experiencing something all over again.
We proceed to the near-middle of the room. Upon arriving, thirteen spectres flow through us. Two additional spectres appear in front of us.
This must be a recollection of the events that played out here before the loop.
One spectre phases through us as they draw a gun on the two helpless spectres ahead of us, and shoots them both cold dead.
The spectres start to dissipate into dust that soars through the air collectively, swirling up the stairs. In their place are two women. One is lying dead on the ground as per recreated by the spectres. The other lays in a stasis chamber filled with a brilliant fluorescent orange liquid, with an apparatus around her mouth to - what I assume - help her breathe.
But why is she there? She's clearly dead. One gunshot is in her head, and five more lay in her torso.
William doesn't say anything. He just looks down, kicking miscellaneous debris.
I make the first move my advancing towards the corpse on the floor.
I don't know if you're familiar with my experience around corpses, but it's a surprise that I don't have a phobia regarding what happened on the train.
The corpse is… somehow not cold. In fact, from what I can see in the bullet scarring, this corpse has only been here for around two days.
Two days.
Hmm.
"William?" I call.
"I've already solved the murder." He deduces.
I continue to inspect the body, regardless of his deduction.
The body's fluids are a dark green. The constitution is human, but there are stark differences.
For one, her eyes - though devoid of life - glisten like the clear night sky. Her pupils resemble a neutron star. The inside of her mouth resembles a humans also, with hints of adjustments. Her tongue is pink with light red markings and a light blue stone in what could be believed to be the centre of it.
Her hair is a pastel blue which compliments her peach skin. The webbing in between her fingers is slightly more so than a normal humans.
"Wow. A real alien." William says from behind as he lays a hand on my shoulder.
Yep, a real alien.
We stay there for a moment, examining the murder scene, until William speaks up again.
"I think I have something for this."
"You're kidding."
"No no, let me check." He insists as he flicks through a forest green tome. "Hmm… No. Nope. Nuh-uh. Nope. No again. Actually… maybe."
He lays the tome in between himself and her, kneeling down. His palms outstretched towards her as a glowing green sigil manifests beneath them. Green wisps begin to emerge from William and flow into her. He continues for a single minute until the spell ceases.
"That's all I can do, apparently."
"What was that exactly?"
"It was a spell that grants someone another few minutes as long as their body is warm." He says, squinting as he reads from the book
"Very convenient."
"Probably the only time I'll ever use it." He insists with a disappointed tone in his voice.
"Magic is so stupid." I tease.
I proceed back to the alien and attempt to speak to her.
"Hello?" I introduce in primitive earth tongue. Her eyes shine open as if replicating the morning sun as her irises move like the constellations.
"Hello." She replies in kind. "I know you."
"From where? Isn't this the first time we've met?" I insist.
"No. You were here with the great betrayer as they gunned me down with my daughter." She argues. "Tell me, is humanity still strong enough to live on its own?"
"Humanity's kinda doomed." I retort.
"Heh." She chuckles, slowly beginning to cough. "Just as I expected."
"Can we stop it?" I plead. "Like, can we bring humanity back?"
"Of course." She affirms. "But hilariously, you would need us, and we are currently dead."
"So we're doomed regardless?"
"Hypothetically." She says, coughing again. This time bringing up green blood. "But you have to believe me."
"I'll believe anything." I insist.
"You'll have to go back." She iterates.
"I don't believe that."
"You have to cease your massacre. Death begets death." She begins. "You were placed on this earth to save us. You should have never allowed yourself down the path of blood." As the words escape her lips, the life does so in tow.
As the life leaves her, the room begins to shake. Metal pipes and panels falls from the ceiling, as William quickly flicks a books pages faster than the eyes could perceive, and clicks three of his fingers at once on his left hand.
A magnificent feat, but it grinds at your teeth somehow.
Upon this, we are somehow transported the outside of the clock tower.
"What about Marc and Locke?!" I demand upon realisation.
"What about us?" Locke responds from in front of the car we drove here in. "And how the hell did you do that?"
"Magic. I'm a wizard now." William gloats.
"Listen, I don't know what happened, but at one point, you were with us. The next thing we know, we turn around and you two vanish like you had somewhere to be." Locke explains. "So I'll ask again. How the hell did you do that? What do you remember?"
Suddenly my mind goes blank. Time stops. My palms get sweaty. My mouth goes dry.
I don't.
I don't remember.
"What do you remember?"
Still nothing.
"Do you remember?"
I try to scream the words but my mouth releases no noise.
"Do you remember…?" He pauses for a moment as if he was trapped in a trance.
"Well alright. I guess that means we're not needed anymore." He announces as if he wasn't just possessed. "Since it's still kinda early, Raphael said he has something else for you to do."