JOLT.
Ethan shot upright in bed, the phantom sensation of Clara's hand spasming in his, her terrified gasp as the embolism struck, echoing in the sudden silence of the bedroom. Loop 12. He didn't need to see the clock to know the time. Didn't need to smell the coffee to know Clara was alive again, oblivious. The memory of the previous loop wasn't just agonising; it was sickening. He had done that. He had intentionally broken her leg, and in doing so, directly caused her death through a cascade of improbable biological misfortune, precisely at the appointed hour. The self-loathing was a physical taste in his mouth, coppery and vile.
He swung his legs out of bed and moved out of the room towards the kitchen, not with the apathy of Loop 9 or the cold resolve of Loop 10, but with a grim, almost brutal energy. He had tried kindness. He had tried passivity. He had tried direct, controlled harm. All had failed. Worse, his attempt at control had resulted in perhaps the most direct responsibility he felt yet for her demise. The universe didn't just resist his manipulations; it actively weaponized them against him.
Fine. If small, direct interventions backfired so spectacularly, if trying to control her fate was impossible, then the only option left was to stop trying to control her at all. The target needed to shift. He couldn't control the precise moment of her death, couldn't guarantee her safety within the storm. So, maybe… maybe he needed to try to control the storm itself. Not gently nudge events, but disrupt the entire goddamn system. Create chaos on a scale large enough, unpredictable enough, that maybe, just maybe, the delicate clockwork precision required for her 5:17 PM death would be shattered.
It was a scorched-earth approach, born not of strategy but of fury and the elimination of all other options. It felt less like a plan for salvation and more like a declaration of war against the loop itself. If he couldn't save her nicely, maybe he could save her violently – by breaking the playing field.
"Morning, sleepyhead," she called out cheerfully as she heard his footsteps approach, her back still turned as she tended to the coffee maker. "Thought I'd get a head start." She hummed lightly, pouring hot water.
Hearing no response, no familiar banter, Clara finished pouring and turned around, a bright smile starting to form. "Coffee's..." Her smile froze, then melted away entirely as she took in his appearance. He wasn't just pale or tired; there was a harshness in his stance, a chilling stillness in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. "...Ethan?" she finished uncertainly, her voice losing its warmth. "What's wrong? You look…" She seemed to search for the right word, settling on, "...really intense."
He offered no explanation, no reassurance. His gaze was distant, hard. "Going out," he stated, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. He moved abruptly past her, grabbing his keys and wallet from the small dish on the counter where they always kept them.
"Going out?" she echoed, bewildered, turning to watch him as he headed straight for the apartment door. "Now? What about coffee? What about work? Ethan, wait!"
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, glancing back briefly, his expression unreadable, cold. "Need air. Don't wait up."
"Ethan!" Her voice held a note of rising panic now, fueled purely by his unprecedented behavior this morning. "Talk to me! What is going on?"
But he didn't answer. He simply opened the door and stepped out, pulling it closed firmly behind him, leaving Clara alone in the sunlit kitchen, confused, worried, and completely oblivious to the storm of cold fury and desperate calculation raging within him.
He didn't need air. He needed information. He needed weapons. Not guns or knives – the loop seemed adept at turning simple physics against them, suggesting conventional weapons were likely irrelevant or easily countered. He needed weapons against the system itself. Weapons of disruption. Weapons of chaos.
He spent the morning not at his office, but at the main public library, hunched over a public access computer terminal, the stale air smelling of old paper and quiet desperation. His search history, if anyone were tracking it, would have painted a picture of a deeply disturbed individual sliding rapidly towards radicalism.
He started where his morbid research yesterday had ended, but pushed further, harder.
Urban infrastructure vulnerabilities power grid water mains
Cascading failure points transportation networks communication systems
Creating widespread panic false flag event simulation
Psychology of crowds emergency evacuation choke points
Then, steeling himself, he dove into darker territories, the clicks of his keystrokes feeling heavy, illicit.
Improvised explosive devices basic principles
Common household chemicals explosive precursors synthesis
Ammonium nitrate fertilizer accessibility regulations (Blocked by filters – damn it.)
Tannerite binary explosive composition purchase legalities
Pressure cooker bomb design historical examples (Images flashed – Boston Marathon. He flinched, shoving the implication down.)
Structural engineering weak points bridge supports load bearing walls
Thermite reaction ignition temperature applications
He downloaded voraciously – PDF manuals deemed 'for educational purposes only', scanned excerpts from outdated engineering textbooks, grainy chemistry demonstration videos from dubious corners of the internet, forum posts discussing theoretical vulnerabilities. He bypassed library filters using cached pages and obscure search engines learned previously dedicated to mundane IT skills he never thought he'd need for this. He filled a cheap USB drive with gigabytes of data, a digital grimoire of potential destruction.
His mind raced, trying to absorb, connect, synthesize. Power grids relied on specific substations. Traffic flow depended on key bridges and tunnels. Communications could be disrupted. Explosions created not just physical damage, but widespread panic, overloading emergency services, completely rewriting the city's operational script for hours. Could he create an event loud enough, chaotic enough, to simply drown out the quiet, specific chime of Clara's 5:17 PM appointment with death?
He didn't know. But the sheer scale felt more appropriate to the fight he was in than trying to subtly trip someone or guess which falling object to dodge. This felt like meeting the loop's overwhelming force with potentially overwhelming force of his own.
He barely registered the passage of time, skipping lunch, ignoring the buzz of his phone (Clara, no doubt, alternating between worry and anger). He was immersed, consumed by the grim acquisition of knowledge. For a horrifying second, while staring at a complex diagram illustrating the molecular structure of an oxidizing agent, Clara's terrified face from Loop 7 – tear-streaked, pleading with him – seemed superimposed over the chemical bonds. He shook his head sharply, rubbing his eyes, shoving the emotional pang down with brutal efficiency. Sentiment had no place here. Empathy was a liability. All that mattered was finding a lever big enough to break the machine.
By late afternoon, his eyes burned from staring at the screen, his head throbbed with information overload, but a grim sense of purpose had solidified. He knew, theoretically, how certain things could be done. He knew what materials were needed, how they interacted, the potential yields, the potential dangers. He had schematics of basic timers, rudimentary understandings of structural weak points. It was all dangerous, half-baked knowledge, gleaned in frantic hours – knowledge that in the real world would take experts years to master safely. But he wasn't in the real world. He was in a loop where consequences reset, where practice loops were possible, where the only limiting factor was his own resolve and the ticking clock.
He gathered his things, pocketing the USB drive, acutely aware of the toxic knowledge it contained. He left the library, stepping out into the late afternoon sun. He checked his phone – multiple missed calls from Clara, a few worried texts. He ignored them.
He walked towards a busy downtown avenue, not towards Clara's station, not towards home, just… walking, observing. He looked at the buildings, not as architecture, but as potential targets, potential sources of chaotic failure. He saw crowds not as people, but as flow patterns to be disrupted. He heard sirens in the distance and categorized them, assessed response times. His mind, honed by loops of observation but now fueled by cold rage, was already working, analyzing, planning the logistics of chaos.
He was standing on a street corner, watching the traffic light cycle, contemplating the structural integrity of a nearby overpass, when his phone vibrated again. He glanced down. Not Clara. A news alert. He tapped it open absently.
BREAKING: Major Gas Leak Reported Downtown - Evacuations Underway Near Grand & Mercer.
Grand and Mercer. Several blocks from Clara's office building. A major leak. Evacuations. Chaos. Exactly the kind of systemic disruption he had just spent the day researching. His breath caught. Was this… it? Did the loop somehow anticipate his thoughts? Or was this just another random, fatal coincidence lining up?
Then his phone rang immediately. Clara's number. He answered, a cold dread settling over him despite his newfound hardness.
"Ethan! Oh my god! Are you okay? Where are you?" Her voice was high-pitched, breathless with panic. "There was some kind of… explosion! Down the street! They're evacuating our building – fire alarms, smoke, people screaming! I'm trying to get out, everyone's pushing… Ethan, I'm scared!"
Smoke? Explosion? The news alert said gas leak. He felt a sickening lurch. This wasn't the loop anticipating him. This was the loop doing what it always did – finding a way. Perhaps the gas leak itself was the trigger, causing secondary events, panic, chaos near her location.
"Clara, stay calm," he said, his voice tight, useless. "Just get out. Follow the crowd. Head west, away from Grand."
"I'm trying! It's chaos! People are-" Her voice cut off abruptly, replaced by a deafening roar of background noise, then a sharp crackle, then silence. The line went dead.
Ethan stood frozen on the street corner, phone pressed hard against his ear, listening to the dead air. He knew. He didn't need details. The chaos he had been contemplating, the disruption he had been researching, had materialized – spontaneously, lethally – right on schedule. Near her. Targeting her. He hadn't needed to lift a finger; the loop had provided its own catastrophe.
He slowly lowered the phone, his knuckles white. The cold rage solidified into something harder, heavier. Learning about chaos wasn't enough. Planning disruption wasn't enough. He needed to be the one pulling the trigger. He needed to control the chaos himself, dictate its terms, its location, its timing, force it to serve his purpose instead of the loop's.
His research wasn't just theory anymore. It was the foundation for his next attempt. Loop Fifteen. The gloves were off. He would build. He would deploy. He would become the catastrophe. He stared into the middle distance, the sounds of the city fading, the faces of passersby blurring. He felt nothing but the cold, clean burn of destructive intent. It wouldn't bring Clara back. It might not even save her. But it felt like the only response left that wasn't surrender. He turned and started walking towards the subway, already planning the grim "shopping list" for the next iteration.