The Loop

11:56 a.m.

Adam floated himself and the barely conscious Tomas up to the rooftop where Lakshmi was laying down and breathing slowly. It took him a few minutes to rouse the two of them enough to understand what he had to say.

“Who’s coming, my friend?” asked Tomas, whose shirt was covered in blood but whose wounds looked superficial. “I’m afraid you’re not making any sense.”

“Them! They’re coming here. And chances are with all the commotion we’ve been creating, they’ll be here sooner rather than later.”

“Impossible,” said Lakshmi. “There’s no reason for them to come here. There are no reports of them anywhere near here.”

“Actually,” said Tomas, perking up a little, “we didn’t get a chance to tell you before we were attacked, but there was quite a large contingent of them amassing in Page.”

“Your timing couldn’t be worse,” said Lakshmi. She looked around at the dead. “Now there’s only the three of us to fight them …” she trailed off.

“The numbers wouldn’t matter,” said Adam. “You know that.”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” she replied.

“So what do we do?” asked Tomas.

“We do what we came to do. Lakshmi, I’m sorry about your sister—I am—but I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of waiting. The plan has to happen and it has to happen now.”

“Even if we had found her,” she mused, “and rescued her, and then you went ahead with your plan … All of this would be erased. It would be pointless to waste precious time on a mission whose outcome doesn’t matter.” She sighed. “I’ve just never been apart from her so long. I wanted to see you off with her by my side.”

“I understand,” said Adam, “and I promise that if this works, I’ll do things differently. We don’t have to be enemies again.”

“If you go back, and you’re still who you are, and I’m still who I am, then yes, I’m afraid we will be enemies. But at least we’ll have a chance. I’m ready.”

Unfortunately, Tomas wasn’t. While they had been talking, he had slipped back into unconsciousness. Adam peeled off his shirt to examine his wound more closely. As he had thought, it was barely more than a scratch. Long, yes, but not very deep. But then he felt around the back of Tomas’s head and found the large bump where he had hit his head when he fell.

“We may have a problem,” he said.

“Yes, I believe we do,” replied Lakshmi, although she wasn’t referring to Tomas’s head wound. Adam looked up at her and then followed her gaze to the South of town, where he could see the telltale dust cloud of a great migration across the desert. And it was headed their way.

“What do we do?” he asked her.

“We get as far away as we can.”

“We can’t outrun them for long. Not if they’re here for us.”

“Then we hope Tomas wakes up while we’re moving.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we die.”

12:16 p.m.

The worst part for Adam was not being able to sense them. It was a necessity, of course; the range of his power was roughly the same as the range of their power negation field. If Lakshmi wasn’t exhausted from the recent battle she had barely survived, he might have suggested holding their ground, because with her boosting his power he might have been able to fight them from just far enough away that they couldn’t affect him. But even then, he would only have been able to destroy two or three of them before the rest got close enough to shut down both their powers, and then they’d be sitting ducks on a rooftop just waiting for death.

He had used his power to lift the three of them into the air and start heading North, but he didn’t want to stay in the air any longer than necessary. As soon as they were clear of the nearby buildings and on a relatively clear and straight road heading out of town, they descended to ground level. He and Lakshmi were running side by side, with Tomas levitating horizontally at waist level next to them. Adam was careful to hold Tomas’s body straight and stable to avoid any possible damage to his spine, because unconscious people had a tendency to flop around if grabbed at their center of gravity and tugged along, as Adam had found out many years ago the first time he tried something like this.

Because they had stayed low and relatively out of sight, the Abominations were still somewhere back around the center of town, searching. At least that’s what they gleaned from the impossible crashing and visceral, bloodcurdling screeching they could hear behind them. It always struck Adam just how unsubtle the Abominations were. They were all misaligned limbs and external entrails and precariously placed metal rods and pneumatic cylinders and mutant eyes and mismatched skin and they moved in a way that appeared completely uncoordinated, propelled by sheer, mindless, violent energy, not quite running and not quite rolling and utterly repugnant and terrifying to witness in motion.

And yet, when they were closing in on a target, they never missed their mark, giving Adam the distinct impression that the rest of it was a farce. It was a calculated clumsiness on display precisely because of how off-putting and horrific it was. Or maybe their bodies really were just so abnormal and malformed that they could not possibly move in any other way. Regardless, the upside was that the incessant racket caused by their unusual movement usually gave them away well before they were close enough to cut off one’s powers.

Although he couldn’t read Lakshmi’s thoughts, he got glancing bits of emotional information from her, and from that he knew that her strength was fading fast. Or perhaps he was just projecting his own feelings onto her. Tomas had shown no sign of stirring.

“We should stop for a minute.” he said, breath heaving, clutching at a stitch in his side.

Lakshmi said nothing, only veered toward an open doorway to their left. They were on the outer edge of the town now, and before them was open desert. Continuing to run past the outskirts of town was akin to admitting defeat, because in that open land with no cover, they’d be caught before they even started kicking up dust in earnest. But unless Tomas woke up very soon, their worst option would be the only one left.

Adam looked around briefly at the room they found themselves standing in, but it was only by reflex; his power had already told him all he needed to know: it was what remained of the storefront of a small, independent pet store. He was unsurprised to find the shelves mostly empty and the merchandise smashed and scattered across the floor. To the right of the door was the checkout counter, and it was behind this that they laid Tomas and kneeled down, out of view of the front windows. It was a precaution without a logical foundation, because if the Abominations were close enough to see in the windows, it would already be too late.

“Tomas, please wake up,” said Adam, nudging his old adversary in the ribs.

“Tomas! If you can hear me, we need you,” said Lakshmi, usually so reserved and dignified, but now unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice. She slapped Tomas in the face, and still he remained unresponsive.

He was still breathing, though. Adam could feel the rise and fall of his chest. He focused in and felt the intricate movement of the muscles of his heart, felt his blood vessels expanding and contracting with the rush of blood to and from his core.

His focus was interrupted by a crashing and the grating sound of metal on metal. It was an inhuman noise and it cut through him like ice and filled him with a fear that was so immediate and pressing that it was all he could do to resist the urge to flee into the open. The noise was getting closer.

“Oh God,” groaned Lakshmi. She was sweating profusely and her eyes were shining with unshed tears. Adam had never known her to show fear, and he had seen her in situations that would have traumatized anyone else.

“This could be it,” he said, trying to sound resigned but brave. “If we … if we need to fight, can you spare some of your power?”

“I … Yes. If it comes to that.”

Tomas’s eyelids fluttered.

“Did you see that?” asked Lakshmi.

Adam didn’t respond out loud. He brought to bear all the focus and concentration he had trained and built up for years and directed it toward Tomas’s mind. He saw butterflies.

Tomas, he thought, hear my voice. Tomas, wake up!

The man stirred, and Adam redoubled his mental efforts. Finally, Tomas’s eyes sprung open and he looked up at the two of them.

“I think we may need to change the plan, my friends.”

They heard the terrible screeching again, and a sound like an explosion. The noises were now coming from less than two blocks away. Adam could feel a vibration in the ground. The sound grew louder, until they could barely hear each other. Something struck him in the head.

He came to on his back, staring up dazedly at the ceiling.

“Beam fell and hit your head, my friend. Now we both have head injuries. Can you stand?”

“Yes,” he replied, and promptly fell over as he tried to gain his feet.

The sounds came again, and Adam could feel his power starting to drain out of him, the reach of his telekinesis folding in toward him.

“No,” he said. “I can’t stand. Can’t run. You go.”

“That’s absurd, my friend,” said Tomas. “There’s no point in going if you’re not with us.”

Adam said nothing.

“Please, Adam. Get up, we’ll go together,” said Lakshmi, and Adam was shocked but touched to see her eyes shining with tears.

Still he said nothing. He concentrated his rapidly dwindling power, wrapping the two of them in a telekinetic embrace. He reached out shaking arms toward them and touched them both lightly on their shoulders. He nodded at them and closed his eyes

Make this count, he thought at them, and flung them up through a hole in the ceiling, and then guided their bodies North as far as his diminishing power would reach. At the absolute periphery of his awareness, he felt Lakshmi come down hard on the sand and felt her arm snap at the shoulder. Tomas came down on top of her, uninjured.

Close at hand, he sensed the Abominations surrounding the building, and then his power was gone.

He lifted his head enough to see one of the towering monstrosities lean down and poke what might have been a head through the doorway and regard him with what might have been eyes. Whatever they were, there was nothing in them but malice. He noted that this one looked somehow more human than any he had seen before, and the face that was staring at him was almost familiar. It reminded him of Lakshmi.

At the core of the thing, where all its various hideous appendages and cruel mechanical parts came together in unholy union, in the center of what might have been deemed a torso, was a perfect sphere of mirror-polished metal—an orb. Once thought to be the saviors of mankind, they were now simple power sources for the beings that spelled its doom.

He stared into the thing's eyes and it stared back and he wanted desperately to believe there was something there beyond blind hatred, but if there was, he couldn't see it.

He remembered the first time he had seen an orb. He remembered touching it and gaining immense, unimaginable power. He remembered sharing that power with five others—his friends, his team. He remembered sharing that power with Christine. He remembered Alice. He remembered Christine. He re

membered Christine. He remembered Christine. And then he remembered nothing.