1
By the time the bank clock blinked 19:38 at me again, I'd stopped pretending this was the third or fourth time.
It was just "again."
Same digits.
Same date.
Same wrapper doing the same sad little spin to the pavement.
I let it land unstepped this time.
The last reset still sat in my bones. Cop keys half-lifted. That sense of a giant, bored hand slapping them out of reach and tossing me back under this awning.
So.
Pieces, not miracles.
Fine.
2
The nice thing about being stuck in one evening was that you started collecting alternate versions of it.
In one branch, I'd walked next to Angel and made bad jokes.
In another, I'd sprinted at a van and bounced off something I couldn't see.
In a third, I'd watched four men drag her through a side door and memorised their faces.
In a fourth, I'd gone to the police and discovered some rules weren't written in any human language.
There were other branches too. Quick experiments, burned loops.
One where I tried slashing the van's tyres before it ever reached her. Knife under the chassis, rubber giving under my hand, satisfaction lasting right up until I heard a different engine around the next corner and watched a grey van roll into the same position instead. New plate. Same route. Same result.
One where I dropped a payphone report about a gas leak at the factory, hoping to draw authorities there early. Reset hit before I got to the part about "factory."
One where I called Guardian from a booth near the station and told him I needed him to pick me up there right now. The line died as soon as he said my name.
The leash wasn't just watching what I did. It was watching what might branch.
Every time I tried to introduce new players or remove a key tool, the board rebalanced and put the pieces back.
So I stopped focusing on pieces I couldn't break.
The door at the factory didn't go anywhere.
It would be there whether I babysat Angel's walk or not.
I didn't need to chase the van anymore.
I knew where it was going.
3
This time, I didn't wait for her to pass.
As soon as the bank clock hit 19:38, I turned away from the route she'd take and headed straight for the industrial district.
No escort. No conversation. Just me and streets that were starting to feel too familiar.
The air changed texture as I moved through the city. Neon gave way to sodium lamps. Pavement shifted from relatively smooth to a patchwork of old repairs and new neglect.
The factory rose ahead of schedule.
In my own time, it was a carcass. In this one, it had skin, but the heart was already cold. No lights in the windows. No workers leaving. Just a dead building waiting for someone to use it.
The gate stood open again. Nobody posted outside. The yard held the same arrangement of pallets and empty drums I'd seen before, frozen a little earlier in their quiet decay.
No van yet.
Good.
4
Getting in was insultingly easy.
The side door they'd use later wasn't locked. I tried it, half-expecting some supernatural slap on the wrist for touching their entrance.
Nothing.
The handle turned. The metal swung inward on a creak that sounded too loud in the empty building.
Inside, the air had that settled chill of spaces that used to be busy and had been left alone too long.
I stood just inside the doorway and listened.
No voices. No footsteps. No engines yet.
Just my own pulse echoing in my ears.
"Okay," I told the dark. "I'll wait."
5
The ground floor was a maze of machinery silhouettes and support columns.
I didn't bother exploring. I knew where I needed to be.
Up the stairs with the missing rail. Along the corridor with the safety posters and the flaking paint. Left, then right, then into the long concrete throat that would later hold the chair and the light.
When I'd seen it at 02:24, it had been a stage.
Now it was an empty hallway with a bare socket hanging from the ceiling, no bulb yet.
The marks on the floor from the chair legs were just as faint.
I stepped around them and sat with my back against the wall, halfway down, where the light wouldn't hit me once they turned it on.
Every instinct told me it was a bad idea to put myself in the same room as four criminals and their victim.
Every other instinct wanted data.
The second one had been winning for a while.
6
Waiting in the dark with nothing but your own breathing for company does strange things to your sense of time.
The absence of clocks made the minutes elastic. My body tracked them anyway, using the slow ache in my legs, the stiffness gathering in my shoulders.
Somewhere in there, my mind helpfully replayed the hospital sheet: 19:42 last seen. After midnight, noises. 02:20, arrival. 02:24, stop.
There were a lot of hours between "pulled off the street" and "cut out of her."
I listened for the point where those hours started.
It came in layers.
First, a distant engine rumble, muffled through concrete and glass.
Then a door banging open downstairs. Male voices, overlapping. A laugh, too loud.
Footsteps. Several sets. Heavy boots, moving like they knew exactly where they were going.
I held my breath without thinking.
They came closer.
7
The first glimpse I got was of the tallest one's shadow stretching along the corridor wall before he turned the corner.
Jacket guy.
Behind him, shaved head and fake payphone, talking low.
They carried things.
A folding chair in one hand. A coil of rope in another. A shopping bag that clinked softly as it swung.
Every object looked normal enough that my stomach knotted harder. There's a particular horror to seeing everyday things walk down a hall in the wrong hands.
No Angel yet.
She'd be coming separately, then.
They stopped near the spot with the faint scrape marks.
Jacket dropped the chair there, set it up with casual efficiency. No discussion about where. This was not improvisation.
Fake payphone unspooled the rope with a little flourish, measured lengths with his arms like he'd done it before. Shaved head set the bag down with a clank of glass and metal.
I forced my hands to stay open on my knees.
One of them, the driver maybe, said something about "schedule." Another about "nobody around until morning."
They weren't worried. They'd done their thinking already.
I wanted to leap out and drive my skull into somebody's nose just to wipe the ease off their faces.
I didn't move.
8
Later, the other steps came.
Lighter. Off-balance.
Angel's shoes scuffed the floor. Her breathing came ahead of her, too fast, little catches on the exhale.
She appeared at the end of the corridor between two silhouettes.
No tape yet. Hands bound behind her back this time. A crumpled strip of cloth at her throat where they'd gagged her and then decided not to.
Her hair was already roughly handled; the clip hung loose, one prong broken.
She stumbled once; the grip on her arms jerked her upright.
I shrank further into my corner, pressing my spine against concrete, forcing myself to be small.
The invisible pressure that had yanked me back on the street hovered, interested. It didn't slam down. Watching wasn't against the rules.
She saw the chair.
Her feet slowed.
It wasn't dramatic. No sudden wail, no collapsing. Just a tiny hesitation, like her brain had slotted the picture together a fraction of a second before her legs could decide what to do about it.
Jacket stepped in front, blocking my view of her face.
"Sit," he said.
His tone was almost bored.
Angel didn't obey.
One of the others kicked the back of her knee.
Her body folded.
They caught her before she hit the floor and dumped her into the chair. The metal legs squealed faintly on concrete.
9
I couldn't see everything from where I sat.
I saw pieces.
Her fingers, white at the knuckles, as they dragged her wrists around the chair back.
The rope tightening. A knot jerked hard.
Her heel scraping the floor as they forced her ankles together and brought them to the metal.
That stupid hanging socket above their heads, still empty, waiting for the bulb.
Their hands moving with the rhythm of familiarity, not frenzy. They weren't improvising this any more than they had the door.
I heard her voice.
Closer now.
"Please," she said, once, raw. "You don't have to—"
Something cut her off. Not a strike this time. Maybe a hand, maybe something shoved into her mouth. The words blurred into choked sound.
I'd heard her pleading in my dreams, from the middle, with no context. Here, on the front edge of it, it landed differently.
It didn't make me rush in to be noble.
It made my focus narrow until there was nothing in my head but the geometry of the scene: angles, positions, distances between bodies, who stood where when which hand moved.
I counted breaths between each movement.
I told myself it was so I'd remember every detail later.
That was not the only reason.
10
At some point, fake payphone screwed a bulb into the ceiling socket and flicked a switch on the wall.
Light dropped down in a sharp circle, flooding Angel and leaving most of the rest of the corridor in shadow.
From my spot, only the edge of it reached my shoes.
Her face hit full illumination.
I'd seen it lit by camera flashes and sickly hospital fluorescents. This was worse.
No filters. No grain. Just every twitch of muscle as she clamped her jaw, every flare of her nostrils as she tried to pull bigger breaths past whatever they'd put between her teeth.
Jacket stepped back to admire his work.
For a second, his gaze tracked beyond the circle of light. Past her. Past the other men.
Down the hall.
My heart climbed into my throat.
His eyes slid right over the corner where I sat and came to rest on the far wall instead.
Not invisibility. Just the fact that people don't see what they're not looking for, especially when they think they're alone.
He turned back to the chair.
One of the others said something that made the group laugh. The sound echoed off the concrete, vulgar and warm in a place that had no business hearing laughter.
Angel's eyes shut for a heartbeat, then opened again.
Her gaze never wandered far from Jacket.
Smart.
You watch the one in charge.
You watch the person who says "stop" or never does.
11
The pressure in the air thickened the longer I stayed.
Not from them.
From whatever had drawn a circle around what was allowed.
Every time my fingers twitched on my knees, the weight nudged closer, as if to remind me what would happen if I tried to stand up and put myself between her and that bulb.
But the leash hadn't yanked me yet.
Apparently watching them tie her down and flip the light on was acceptable behaviour.
Good to know.
I sat there and let every second burn in.
The pattern of rope. The order they moved in. The way their shadows stretched on the floor. The sound of Angel's panicked breathing as it started to fray into something hoarser.
I wanted to feel sick.
Instead, my mind catalogued.
He's on her left. He favours his right leg. That one always keeps his hands near his pockets. The knot on her wrist could be undone with a blade sliding just there—
My nails dug crescents into my palms.
Not yet.
12
Eventually, Jacket said something that made the others shift.
They gathered the bag with the clinking objects and moved further down the corridor, into the darkness beyond the light's reach.
One stayed near Angel. Guard, or just the kind of person who liked to be close to the damage.
Angel tested the ropes as soon as the others' backs were turned, tiny movements, trying to find any slack.
She found none.
Her eyes closed again, slower this time.
I could tell when she realised nobody was coming.
She didn't scream. She didn't waste breath on it.
She just started breathing in a different way. Braced. Tense. Like she was stepping onto a track before the starter pistol.
Something shifted further down the hall. Metal ringing softly. Liquid sloshing.
I didn't need to see.
I could fill in from all the words the hospital report hadn't used.
The weight in the air leaned harder, tasting my intent.
I stayed seated.
I had no idea how many more loops I'd get before something broke, or I did.
But I knew this much: the board would not let me pull her out of that chair.
So I'd have to learn everything about the ones who put her there.
Not for justice.
The word tasted wrong in my mouth.
For later.
For whatever version of "later" this day decided to give me.
I pressed my head back against the wall and watched the first act of the thing that made me, from the only angle it would allow.