JOLT.
Ethan's eyes snapped open. Bedroom ceiling. Morning light. The jarring transition back felt less like waking and more like being forcibly shoved back onto a stage where a horrific play was endlessly performed. Loop Thirteen. The image of Clara lying decapitated beside him on the sofa, a casualty of his own passive death wish, flashed behind his eyelids – not with the gut-wrenching shock of before, but with a searing clarity that ignited something cold and hard in the hollow space where his hope used to reside.
He sat up immediately, the movement sharp, purposeful. The profound apathy of the previous loop was gone, burned away. In its place was a tightly coiled, freezing rage. Not the explosive, directionless anger of pure grief, but something focused, crystalline. Fury directed at the invisible forces that governed this repeating nightmare, fury at the sheer, malicious absurdity of the deaths, fury at his own impotence, and most profoundly, fury for the constant, brutal violation of Clara.
He swung his legs out of bed, the floorboards solid beneath his feet. He heard the faint sounds from the kitchen – coffee brewing, Clara moving about. The familiar sounds didn't soothe or nauseate him today; they simply registered as data points in the repeating equation he was now determined to forcibly rearrange.
He walked into the kitchen, not hesitantly, but with a squared-shouldered resolve that made Clara pause, coffee pot mid-air, as she turned to greet him. Her usual morning smile was tentative, already coloured by the memory of his withdrawal and probable incoherence (from her perspective) yesterday.
"Morning, sleepyhead," she said, her voice warm. "Thought I'd get a head start. How are you?"
"Morning," he replied, his voice clipped, devoid of its usual warmth. He took the offered mug without meeting her eyes directly, instead staring past her at the offending refrigerator – the innocuous appliance that had served as an instrument of death just loops ago. Everything felt tainted now, potentially weaponized by the loop's cruel logic. "I'm fine."
The lie was blatant, paper-thin, but he didn't care about plausibility anymore. He wasn't trying to reassure her or enlist her help. His thoughts were already moving beyond their morning ritual, calculating, assessing. Safety through isolation had failed. Intervention at the moment of crisis had failed. Avoidance had failed. Passive acceptance had led to perhaps the most grotesque outcome yet. The inescapable conclusion hammered itself home with the force of a physical blow: Niceness wouldn't work. Escape wouldn't work. Hiding wouldn't work. The only path left seemed to be asserting some form of control, however perverse, over the inevitable.
If something had to happen to Clara at 5:17 PM, could he dictate what that something was? Could he satisfy the loop's bloodlust with a lesser sacrifice? A controlled injury? A manageable medical emergency? Something that would fulfill the requirement for a catastrophic event targeted at her at that precise time, but fall short of actual death?
It was a horrifying thought, deliberately planning to harm the woman he loved. But the alternative – continuing to watch helplessly as the loop conjured fatal accidents out of thin air, using everything from gravity to kitchenware – felt infinitely worse, like passively enabling her repeated murder. His rage demanded action, and this felt like the only strategy, however morally repugnant, that hadn't yet been proven futile.
"Actually," he said abruptly, turning back to Clara, who was watching him with growing unease, "I need to focus today. Got a major deadline breathing down my neck. I think… I think it would be better if I worked from home, locked myself away. Could you… handle your day without me? Head into the office as usual?" He needed solitude. He needed uninterrupted time to research, to plan. Her presence, her worried questions, her very normalcy, were distractions he couldn't afford if he was going to delve into this dark new territory.
Clara looked taken aback, then hurt flickered in her eyes, quickly masked by concern. "Oh. Okay. I mean, yes, of course I can handle my day. Are you sure you should be working if you were feeling so off yesterday? Maybe you should rest."
"No, work will be good," he insisted coolly. "Distraction. I just need to be completely focused. No interruptions." He softened his tone slightly, mimicking concern. "Besides, you've got enough on your plate with Finch without worrying about me underfoot."
She hesitated, clearly wanting to argue, to push him to talk, to rest, but something in his closed-off demeanor, the cold intensity in his eyes, seemed to warn her off. "Alright, Ethan," she said quietly, sounding subdued. "If that's what you think is best. Just… call me later? Let me know you haven't spontaneously combusted from deadline stress?"
"Will do," he lied, already turning away, dismissing her, his mind churning with grim possibilities.
He endured the charade of her departure, the strained goodbye at the door, the click of the lock engaging. Then, finally alone in the silent apartment, he allowed the cold fury to fully surface, channeling it into focused energy. He bypassed his work laptop entirely and sat down at his personal computer, the screen glowing to life in the quiet room.
Safety plans were useless. Avoidance was impossible. Intervention at the point of crisis was too late, the loop too adept at substitutions. He needed to act before 5:17 PM. He needed to introduce a controlled variable.
He started typing, his fingers flying across the keyboard, the search queries stark and disturbing:
Non-fatal falls injury types
Inducing temporary unconsciousness medically safe
Common household accidents broken bones severity
Emergency room response times urban center rush hour
Symptoms mimicking heart attack treatable conditions
Controlled allergic reaction induction epinephrine timing (He paused, the memory of Loop Two's fatal reaction flashing – too unpredictable, discard.)
Mild concussion diagnosis treatment protocol
He devoured information with grim intensity. Downloaded medical abstracts, scanned ER procedural guides, watched grainy first-aid demonstration videos. He learned about the different types of fractures, the likely recovery times. He read about the Glasgow Coma Scale, about the dangers of subdural hematomas from seemingly minor head injuries. He explored conditions that could cause sudden, dramatic collapse but were ultimately manageable with swift medical care – vasovagal syncope, certain types of seizures (if controllable).
The sheer volume of ways the human body could be harmed was staggering. Controlling the outcome, ensuring an injury remained minor and treatable, seemed terrifyingly difficult. A fall designed to break an arm could easily result in a fatal head injury. An attempt to induce fainting could trigger cardiac arrest. His initial confidence in the 'controlled harm' strategy began to fray at the edges, revealing the terrifying lack of precision inherent in causing deliberate injury.
But the anger pushed him onward. He had to try something different. What about creating an external emergency that would necessitate her being under medical care before the deadline?
Localized gas leak simulation controlled release
Short circuit non-lethal electrical fire small scale
Chemical irritant exposure symptoms temporary incapacitation
This felt marginally less monstrous than directly causing her physical injury, but still deeply unsettling. Sabotaging their own apartment? Creating a localized hazard? The risks of unintended escalation, of the hazard itself becoming the fatal event, were immense.
He spent hours immersed in this morbid research, the apartment silent around him except for the clicking of keys and the hum of the computer. The sun tracked across the sky outside the window, marking the relentless passage of time towards the deadline he was desperately trying to preempt.
Around 3:00 PM, Clara called, as promised. He answered curtly, assuring her he was fine, just deeply engrossed in work. He asked a question that had occurred to him during his research: "Hey, random question – remember when your cousin Sarah broke her ankle falling off that curb? How long was she actually laid up?"
"Uh…" Clara sounded surprised by the query. "Gosh, I don't know, six weeks in a cast, I think? Why?"
"No reason," Ethan deflected quickly. "Just popped into my head. Gotta go, deadline calls." He hung up before she could ask more, his heart pounding slightly. Even researching this felt like wading through moral sludge.
By late afternoon, a crude plan began to form, coalescing from the grim fragments of his research. Directly injuring her felt too unpredictable, the risk of accidentally causing a fatal blow far too high given the loop's apparent skill at maximizing harm. Sabotaging the apartment felt equally fraught. But maybe… maybe a staged accident outside? To get her to the hospital and have her there before 5:17? Something seemingly random, severe enough to absolutely require immediate ambulance transport and hospital admission, placing her within the relatively controlled chaos of an ER during the critical minute?
A fall, perhaps? Not down stairs – that could be instantly fatal. But maybe a fall on level ground, designed to cause a clear, incapacitating but survivable injury like a badly broken leg or hip? He could stage it somewhere with witnesses, ensuring help was called immediately. He could even 'accidentally' trip her, making it seem like a clumsy accident.
The thought was repellent. Intentionally tripping Clara, causing her significant pain and injury… But wasn't a broken leg infinitely preferable to decapitation by ceiling fan? Or burning alive? Or being hit by a car? It felt like choosing between different circles of hell, desperately hoping one was slightly less torturous than the others.
He closed the dozens of browser tabs filled with accident statistics and medical procedures. He stood up, stretching his cramped muscles. The cold resolve remained. He would try it. Stage a fall. A bad one. Get her to the hospital before 5:17 PM. It was a terrible plan, fraught with risk and moral compromise, born of rage and desperation. But it was a plan. And in the face of utter powerlessness, the illusion of having a plan, however flawed, was the only thing keeping the darkness entirely at bay. For now.