I didn't sleep that night.
Couldn't.
Every time I closed my eyes, the memories crashed over me like waves—seventy-three different versions of the same nightmare, each one ending in death.
Life #12: Burned alive in Trial 8. Duration: 47 days.
Life #37: Crushed during Trial 15 when I tried to save a child. Duration: 4 months, 3 days.
Life #73: Starved to death after my counter hit zero between trials. Duration: 31 days.
The knowledge came in fragments, puzzle pieces clicking into place. I grabbed a notebook—old school, something the system couldn't track—and started writing.
WHAT I KNOW:
73 previous attempts Each death resets me to Day 1, hours before the announcement Starting counter decreases with each reset Memory wipe is standard protocol I'm not supposed to remember
I paused, pen hovering over the page.
WHY DO I REMEMBER THIS TIME?
The mark on my wrist tingled. I pulled up my sleeve again, studying the symbol. It looked like two intersecting glyphs, one I recognized from the system interface, one that was... wrong. Corrupted. Like a pixel error in the matrix of reality.
[OBSERVER ASSIGNED]
The text had disappeared hours ago, but I could still feel it. A presence. Watching. Waiting.
"Who are you?" I whispered to the empty apartment.
No response. Of course not.
I went back to writing.
TRIAL PATTERNS (FROM MEMORY):
Trial 1: Always "The Culling" – survival test, weeds out weak/unprepared Trial 2: Changes based on survivor performance in Trial 1 Trials escalate in difficulty and complexity Physical trials early, mental/moral trials appear around Trial 6-8 After Trial 10, everything changes
My hand cramped. I'd filled six pages already, years of accumulated death compressed into frantic scribbling.
But there were gaps. Huge ones.
I'd never made it past Trial 17.
In seventy-three attempts, Trial 17 was my wall. The furthest I'd ever gotten was Life #44, where I survived sixteen days after Trial 17 before my counter ran out.
[COUNTER: 2,867]
Twenty-three units lost while I'd been writing. The countdown was relentless.
My phone buzzed. I'd been ignoring it for hours, but the notifications kept piling up. I finally checked.
MOM: Please call me. I need to know you're alive.
SARAH: big bro you ok??? everyone at school is freaking out
DAVE (COWORKER): Dude, did you see what happened in Central Park? The news is saying 100k+ dead. This is insane.
I called my mom first. She answered before the first ring finished.
"Connor! Oh thank god, I've been trying to reach you—"
"I'm okay, Mom. I'm alive."
"Your counter, what's your number?"
I hesitated. "Twenty-eight hundred. Almost twenty-nine hundred."
She let out a breath. "That's good, that's good. Mine is... lower. Nineteen hundred."
My chest tightened. Nineteen hundred. She had maybe twenty-six days if the counter stayed constant, less if she struggled in the trials.
"What about Sarah?" My sister was seventeen, a high school senior.
"Forty-two hundred. She's young, adaptable. The system gave her more time."
Thank god. At least Sarah had a buffer.
"Mom, listen to me carefully. The trials—they're going to get worse. You need to start preparing now. Physically, mentally. Whatever the next trial is, you can't go in unprepared."
"Connor, how do you—"
"Just trust me, okay? I need you to promise me you'll take this seriously."
Silence on the other end. Then, quietly: "You sound different. Like you've seen this before."
My blood ran cold. "Mom—"
"I had the strangest dream last night," she continued, her voice distant. "I was in a burning building, and you were there, trying to pull me out. But I was younger. And you were... older. Harder."
Life #12. She'd died in Trial 8, the burning tower trial. I'd tried to save her, failed, and the guilt had made me reckless. I'd died two trials later.
"It was just a dream," I said, my voice rough.
"Was it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't.
"Connor, if you know something—"
"I have to go, Mom. Please, just... stay safe. Train. Prepare. I'll call you tomorrow."
I hung up before she could press further.
The apartment felt too small suddenly, the walls closing in. I needed air, space to think.
I grabbed my jacket and headed out into the post-apocalyptic New York night.
The city had transformed in hours.
Fires burned in trash cans on street corners, surrounded by clusters of people who'd given up on going home. Some were drinking, others just staring into the flames. A few were exercising—push-ups, sprints, anything to raise their physical stats before the next trial.
I walked toward Central Park, drawn by morbid curiosity.
Police had cordoned off the entire area, but people lined the barriers, staring at the meadow where thousands had died. News crews were everywhere, interviewing survivors, getting reactions.
I kept my hood up and walked the perimeter.
That's when I felt it.
A presence. Not the Observer—something else. Something human.
I turned slowly.
A woman stood thirty feet away, leaning against a streetlight, watching me. She was maybe mid-thirties, athletic build, with a scar running from her left eyebrow to her jawline. But what caught my attention was her eyes.
They held the same weight mine did.
The weight of knowledge that shouldn't exist.
She pushed off the streetlight and walked toward me, casual, confident. When she was close enough that others wouldn't overhear, she spoke.
"You remember too, don't you?"
My heart hammered. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Liar. I can see it in the way you move. Too careful. Too aware. You've done this before."
I said nothing.
"My name is Elena," she continued. "This is my forty-first loop. And judging by the look on your face, you've got me beat."
Forty-one. She'd died and reset forty-one times.
"How many?" she asked.
I could walk away. Should walk away. But the hunger in her eyes—the desperate need to know she wasn't alone—mirrored something in me.
"Seventy-three," I whispered.
Her eyes widened. "Jesus Christ. How are you still sane?"
"Who says I am?"
She laughed, sharp and bitter. "Fair point. Your counter?"
"Twenty-eight hundred."
She whistled low. "Brutal. Mine's thirty-five hundred. Started at five thousand this loop."
Math clicked in my head. She was dropping slower than me. Either she'd started higher initially, or the system was calculating our "penalty" differently.
"Why do we remember this time?" I asked.
"No idea. I woke up the morning of the announcement with all forty loops crashing into my brain at once. Thought I was having a stroke." She touched her temple. "Then I saw this."
She pulled back her hair, revealing a mark behind her ear. Similar to mine, but different configuration. Same glitch-like quality.
"You too?" she asked.
I showed her my wrist.
"Observer assigned," she said, nodding. "I got the same message. Any idea what it means?"
"Something's watching us. Something that isn't part of the standard system."
"Great. So we're lab rats in a lab run by lab rats." She lit a cigarette with shaking hands. "You ever make it past Trial 17?"
"No. That's my wall. You?"
"Trial 19. Made it there twice. Never survived it." She took a long drag. "But here's what I've figured out: we're not the only ones."
"Other loopers?"
"At least a dozen that I've identified across my attempts. Most don't remember. But there's a pattern—certain people keep appearing, keep surviving longer than probability suggests. I think they're like us, but their memory wipe is still working."
This was huge. If there were others, if we could find them, maybe we could pool knowledge, identify patterns the system didn't want us to see.
"Where are they?"
"No idea. They scatter after Trial 1, and I've never made it far enough to track them all down. But I've got names, faces. We could—"
She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes locked on something over my shoulder.
I turned.
Standing across the street was a man in an immaculate black suit, completely out of place in the chaos. He wasn't looking at us. Wasn't looking at anything. Just standing there, perfectly still.
"Shit," Elena whispered. "We need to move. Now."
"What? Who is—"
"That's a Guardian. They enforce system rules. If they've marked us—"
The man's head turned. Slowly. Mechanically.
His eyes locked onto mine.
[ANOMALY DETECTED]
[PROTOCOL BREACH IN PROGRESS]
[GUARDIAN DEPLOYED]
The text appeared in my vision, and I felt something shift in the air—like reality itself was paying attention.
Elena grabbed my arm. "Run!"
We ran.
The Guardian didn't sprint after us. Didn't need to. I glanced back and saw him walking, each step covering an impossible distance, space folding around him.
"What the hell is that thing?!" I shouted.
"Enforcement! They appear when loopers break protocol!" Elena yanked me down an alley. "We're not supposed to meet, not supposed to share information—it compromises the trials!"
We burst out onto Broadway. Elena pulled me into a subway entrance, vaulting the turnstile. The station was packed with people camping out, treating it like a bunker.
We ran down the platform, jumping onto the tracks, into the dark tunnel.
Behind us, the Guardian descended the stairs with that same methodical walk.
[COUNTER: 2,864]
Three units lost during the chase. Or was it a penalty for breaking protocol?
We ran deeper into the tunnel, Elena leading like she'd done this before. Maybe she had.
Finally, we reached a maintenance alcove. She pulled me inside, pressed a finger to her lips.
We waited.
The Guardian walked past, its footsteps echoing in the darkness. It didn't slow, didn't search. Just continued down the tunnel and disappeared.
We waited five more minutes before either of us spoke.
"Protocol," Elena gasped, catching her breath. "Loopers are supposed to struggle alone. Meeting, sharing information—it's a violation."
"How do you know this?"
"Trial 13, Life #29. I met another looper, we teamed up. Guardian appeared within hours. Killed us both. Counter hit zero instantly."
Christ.
"So we can't work together," I said.
"Not openly. Not where they can see." She looked at me. "But there are ways. Codes. Dead drops. We've done this before in past loops, those of us who remember."
"And it works?"
"Sometimes. Until it doesn't."
Encouraging.
We climbed back to the surface through a different exit, emerging in the financial district. The streets here were quieter, emptier.
"Here." Elena pulled out a burner phone, the old flip kind. "Untraceable. I've got six of these. The system tracks smartphones, but these analog pieces of shit fly under the radar."
She programmed a number into it and handed it to me.
"Don't call unless it's an emergency. Don't text names or specific information. Use the code." She rattled off a cipher system she'd developed over multiple loops.
I memorized it.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked.
She met my eyes. "Because seventy-three attempts means you've seen things I haven't. Learned things I need. And forty-one attempts means I know things you don't."
"So it's transactional."
"Everything is, in the end." She started walking away, then paused. "But also... it's nice to know I'm not alone. Even if we can't admit it out loud."
She disappeared into the dark.
I stood there, holding the cheap phone, processing everything.
Loopers. Guardians. Protocols.
The system was more complex than I'd realized. And I was apparently violating rules just by remembering.
My wrist tingled.
[OBSERVER NOTATION: DEVIATION ACCEPTABLE]
[CONTINUE]
The Observer. It was giving me permission. Or maybe... it wanted me to break protocol.
But why?
I walked home slowly, taking different routes, checking for Guardians.
Back in my apartment, I added to my notes:
NEW INFORMATION:
Other loopers exist Meeting them draws Guardians Someone/something is watching us specifically (Observer) The Observer seems to approve of protocol breaches Guardian can be evaded but not fought
I checked my counter.
[COUNTER: 2,859]
Twenty-nine days until Trial 2.
Twenty-nine days to prepare, to gather resources, to find other loopers without getting killed by Guardians.
Twenty-nine days to figure out what the Observer wanted from me.
I pulled up the list of names Elena had mentioned—people who kept appearing across loops. Cross-referenced them with social media, news reports from Trial 1.
Three of them had survived the culling.
One was a doctor in Brooklyn.
One was a former Marine in Queens.
One was a sixteen-year-old chess prodigy in Manhattan.
If I could find them, warn them, maybe...
My phone—the real one—buzzed.
A news alert: GLOBAL SURVIVOR COUNT: 4.2 BILLION / 7.8 BILLION
Over three billion dead.
One trial.
Three billion people.
I felt sick.
The second notification was worse:
EMERGENCY BROADCAST: Trial 2 structure leaked. Military attempting to prepare civilian population. Details at 11.
I laughed, hollow and bitter.
They thought they could prepare.
They had no idea.
Trial 2 wasn't about survival.
It was about choice.
And from what I remembered, most people made the wrong one.
I opened my notebook to a fresh page and wrote:
TRIAL 2: THE DIVIDE
Objective: Choose
Failure Rate: 68%
My deaths in this trial: 17
I underlined that last number three times.
Seventeen deaths in one trial.
Whatever happened in Trial 2, it had killed me more than any other.
And in twenty-nine days, I'd have to face it again.
But this time, I had something I'd never had before.
Knowledge. Memory. And apparently, permission from something beyond the system to break the rules.
I looked at the glitch-mark on my wrist.
"Alright, Observer," I whispered. "Let's see where this goes."
The mark pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
And for the first time since the sky froze, I felt something other than fear.
I felt purpose.
[END CHAPTER 2]
[NEXT TRIAL IN 29 DAYS, 18 HOURS, 33 MINUTES]
[COUNTER: 2,857]