The digital clock on the dashboard flipped to 10:47 AM. Fifteen. Loop number fifteen. Or was it sixteen? The edges were blurring, the sheer repetition grinding down the sharp edges of memory, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache of accumulated failure. Ethan risked a glance away from the highway, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Beside him, Clara hummed softly, tapping her fingers against the passenger window in time with some tune only she could hear, the late morning sun catching the fire in her engagement ring. A ring he'd given her what felt like both a lifetime ago and just yesterday morning. Every morning.
"You're gripping that wheel like it personally offended you," she remarked, her voice light, teasing. She turned from the window, her smile radiant enough to momentarily push back the shadows clinging to his mind. "Relax, Ethan. It's a beautiful day for a spontaneous road trip."
He forced a smile back, stretching his lips over teeth clenched tight. "Just focused. Lots of trucks out today." A lie. The highway stretching north, away from the city, away from the myriad potential deaths lurking in its concrete canyons and crowded streets, was relatively clear. His focus wasn't on the traffic. It was on the clock. Always the clock. Six hours and thirty minutes until 5:17 PM.
"Spontaneous? You had maps printed out, a thermos of coffee bigger than my head, and told me to pack an overnight bag before I'd even finished my cereal," Clara countered, though there was no accusation in her tone, only fond amusement. "Your brand of spontaneity involves military precision, apparently."
He managed a short chuckle. "Wanted to be prepared. Getaway drivers always have provisions."
"Getaway drivers? What are we escaping from? Mid-week boredom?"
Everything, he wanted to scream. Fate. Gravity. Bad luck. Malice. The colour red on a Tuesday. Falling anvils and stray dogs and the 13 other ways I've watched you die.
"Just the usual," he said instead, his voice carefully modulated. Calm. He needed to be calm. Panic made mistakes, and he couldn't afford any more. Not today. Today felt… different. He'd ironed out the kinks from Loop Twelve's disastrous attempt at escaping south. Loop Fourteen's westward flight had ended with a bizarre small aircraft emergency landing directly onto the highway they were traveling. North. North seemed safer today. Less populated roads, fewer variables. He'd spent Loop Thirteen meticulously planning this route, memorizing potential hazards, calculating fuel stops, even pre-checking weather patterns specific to this corridor – a skill he'd miserably failed geography in high school but had mastered over fourteen horrifying tutorials.
The plan was simple: drive north for six hours, deep into the state forest lands. Find the secluded cabin rental he'd located, off-grid and miles from any other structure. Bunker down. Keep her inside, away from windows, until 5:18 PM had safely ticked over. It was crude, relying on distance and isolation, but his more complex plans – the ones involving intricate timing, controlled environments, and pre-positioned medical gear – had all failed spectacularly. Maybe simpler was better. Maybe distance could beat the clock.
Hope was a dangerous, addictive substance in his current reality. He tried to starve it, to operate on pure logic and ingrained procedure, but seeing Clara beside him, so vibrantly alive, humming her tuneless song, it flared up despite his best efforts. A treacherous warmth in the icy landscape of his repetitive hell.
"Okay, Mr. Prepared Getaway Driver," she said, reaching over and squeezing his tense arm. "Can we at least listen to some music? Your focused silence is a little… intense."
He nodded, grateful for the distraction. "Sure. Your playlist?"
As she scrolled through her phone, selecting upbeat pop songs that felt jarringly optimistic against the backdrop of his internal dread, Ethan's eyes scanned everything. Mirrors, road ahead, shoulders, sky. Checking for the glint of something falling, the swerve of an oncoming vehicle, the impossible shadow of a rogue aircraft. He catalogued license plates, car models, the logos on trucks – useless data, most likely, but the habit of observation was ingrained now, a desperate attempt to impose order on chaos. In Loop Six, a tire blowout on a seemingly innocent passing van had sent debris flying through their windshield. In Loop Nine, a deer had bolted from the trees at the precise wrong moment. He was ready for vans. He was ready for deer. But what else was lurking in the script for today?
They drove for another hour, the cityscape giving way to sprawling suburbs, then patchy farmland, and finally, the dense green embrace of the forest edging closer to the highway. Clara sang along loudly, drumming on the dashboard. He offered her snacks he'd packed – pre-checked for potential allergens after Loop Five's fatal encounter with unlabelled nuts in a cereal bar. He kept the conversation light, asking about her work, her upcoming bridal shower plans, deflecting her questions about his sudden moodiness or the reason for this trip with vague excuses about needing a break.
Each mile gained felt like a small victory against the unseen enemy. Each minute passed was another grain of sand slipping through the bottleneck of the afternoon. The sun climbed higher, the air filled with the scent of pine from the open windows. For moments, sometimes entire minutes, Ethan could almost forget. Almost believe this was just a normal day, a happy drive with the woman he loved. Then the clock would catch his eye – 2:13 PM… 3:45 PM… – and the cold dread would return, gripping his insides.
He was watching a hawk circle high above the trees lining the road when Clara asked, "Seriously, Ethan, what's got you so spooked? You've been checking the sky like you're expecting an alien invasion."
He forced his gaze back to the road. "Just… thinking."
"About?"
He hesitated. Tell her? Try again? See the familiar confusion morph into fear or pity in her eyes? Hear her suggest he needed sleep, or maybe a doctor? Relive that specific brand of failure? No. Not now. Not when they were so close.
"About how lucky I am," he said, reaching over and briefly touching her hand. Her skin was warm, real. "About getting away with you like this."
She smiled, the suspicion in her eyes softening. "Me too. Even if you are acting like a fugitive."
4:58 PM. Less than twenty minutes. They were on the smaller state route now, deep within the forested hills. According to his calculations, the turn-off for the cabin road was only ten miles ahead. No other cars in sight. The trees stood tall and silent, ancient witnesses. He allowed himself a breath, a tiny fraction of relief. Maybe this was it. Maybe the sheer distance, the lack of human interaction, the absence of complex urban variables…
Clara, he thought, a silent plea directed at whatever cruel force governed his repeating nightmare, Just let me have this. Let her have this.
5:10 PM. He saw the turn-off sign ahead. A simple wooden marker, almost hidden by overgrown ferns. Excitement warred with terror. This was the final hurdle. Just get onto that isolated dirt road, get inside the cabin, lock the door…
5:12 PM. The ground beneath the car didn't shake. It rippled. A low, grinding groan vibrated through the chassis, through the steering wheel, up Ethan's arms. Not an earthquake – he'd researched seismic activity for the region back on Loop Thirteen, it was negligible. This felt different. Localized. Wrong.
Clara gasped, grabbing the dashboard. "What was that?"
Before Ethan could answer, before he could even fully process the unnatural vibration, the world tilted. The section of highway directly in front of them, maybe fifty yards ahead, simply… buckled. Not a crack, but a sudden, violent subsidence. The asphalt fractured like shattered glass, and the ground beneath it vanished downwards, swallowed into a newly opened maw of raw earth and stone. A sinkhole. Not a small one, but a gaping chasm that stretched the width of the road and beyond, consuming ancient trees on either side with horrifying speed.
Ethan slammed on the brakes, the anti-lock system stuttering violently. The tires screamed, desperately seeking purchase on the asphalt that was suddenly far too close to the abyss. He yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, aiming for the narrow shoulder, hoping to skid into the relative safety of the dense treeline instead of plunging into the earth.
Time slowed, warped by adrenaline. He saw Clara's terrified face, mouth open in a silent scream. He saw the edge of the sinkhole rushing towards them, the broken earth churning like brown water. He saw the huge pine tree he was steering towards, hoping its bulk would stop them.
They hit the shoulder, the car slewing sideways, dirt and gravel spraying. For a fraction of a second, he thought they might make it, that the trees would catch them.
Then the shoulder itself gave way. The ground beneath their right wheels dissolved, pulled into the gravitational pull of the expanding void. The car tipped violently, impossibly. Steel shrieked against tearing earth. Ethan was slammed against his door, the world becoming a chaotic mess of green foliage, brown dirt, and terrifying glimpses of the dark hole opening below.
Clara screamed his name.
Then came the sickening, final lurch as the car tumbled over the edge, into the abyss. Darkness. Falling. The horrific sound of metal twisting and collapsing. An explosive impact that stole his breath.
Silence.
…
Ethan coughed, the taste of dust and copper filling his mouth. Pain flared, sharp and jagged, across his ribs, his head. He was hanging upside down, held by the seatbelt, the car's interior a wreckage around him. Darkness pressed in, broken only by the faint, dust-choked light filtering from somewhere above. He blinked, trying to clear his vision.
"Clara?" he choked out, twisting painfully against the restraint. "Clara!"
A soft moan answered him from the passenger side. She was alive. Relief hit him with the force of a physical blow, immediately followed by the icy certainty that it wouldn't last. He checked the dashboard clock. It was smashed, frozen at 5:16 PM. Close enough.
"Ethan…?" Her voice was weak, trembling. "What… where…?"
"Hold on, Clara. Just hold on." He fumbled for the seatbelt release, his fingers clumsy with pain and rising panic. It clicked open, dropping him heavily onto the car's crushed roof, which was now the floor. Agony shot through his shoulder as he landed, but he ignored it. He crawled through the shattered space where the windshield used to be, peering towards her side.
The passenger side had taken the brunt of the final impact against the unseen bottom of the sinkhole. Metal was crushed inwards, trapping her. He could see her face, pale and marked with blood in the dim light, her eyes wide with fear and pain.
"It hurts, Ethan," she whispered, tears tracking through the grime on her cheeks. "My legs…"
He reached for her hand, his own shaking uncontrollably. Her fingers were terrifyingly cold. "I know, I know. Help is coming." Another lie. They were miles from anywhere, at the bottom of a newly formed geological nightmare. No one would find them for hours, maybe days. And they didn't have hours. They had, at most, seconds.
He knew, with the absolute certainty born of fifteen failures, what was coming. He could almost feel the countdown in his bones. He watched her face, trying to memorize the slope of her cheekbone, the curve of her lips, the precise shade of terror in her eyes.
Her breath hitched. A sudden stillness came over her. Her eyes lost focus, staring past him into the darkness. A faint, shuddering sigh escaped her lips.
And then… nothing.
The silence in the crushed metal coffin was absolute, broken only by the drip of some unknown fluid and the frantic pounding of Ethan's own heart against his shattered ribs. He didn't need to check for a pulse. He knew. 5:17 PM. Right on schedule. Death by internal injuries sustained in sinkhole collapse. Methodical. Punctual. Inescapable.
A guttural sound, half-sob, half-scream, tore itself from his throat. He slammed a fist against the buckled doorframe, the flare of pain a welcome distraction from the void opening inside him. Fifteen times. Fifteen different ends, all arriving at the same immutable moment. He'd flown. He'd driven. He'd hidden. He'd fought. He'd prepared. And the universe, or whatever malevolent entity was playing this cruel game, had simply opened the goddamn earth beneath them.
How do you fight that? How do you plan for the ground vanishing?
He stayed there, crumpled in the wreckage beside her cooling body, long after the last echo of his cry faded. The darkness deepened as the light from the opening above slowly died. Time ticked onwards in the world above, the world he was no longer truly part of. 6:00 PM. 8:00 PM. 10:00 PM. Each passing hour was marked only by the slow stiffening of his limbs and the deeper settling of despair in his soul.
What was the point? Why keep trying? Every attempt just led to a new, elaborate way for the inevitable to occur. Maybe… maybe he should just stop. Let Loop Sixteen play out exactly like Loop One. Accept the original script. Let her die in the city, quick and familiar, instead of inventing new horrors in remote locations.
But even as the thought formed, the ingrained defiance sparked. He couldn't. Not while there was breath in his body, not while the loop offered another chance, however futile. He thought of her humming, her smile, the warmth of her hand. That was the anchor. That was the reason he endured the resets, the deaths, the grinding erosion of his own sanity.
He carefully, painfully, maneuvered himself until he could rest his forehead against her unmoving shoulder. He closed his eyes, waiting while hugging her lifeless body. The silence stretched, thick and heavy with grief.
11:59 PM. The familiar nauseating lurch in his stomach, the sensation of being pulled backwards through molasses.
Midnight.
The world dissolved into a silent, rushing darkness.
JOLT.
Ethan gasped awake, heart hammering against his ribs. Sunlight streamed through the familiar bedroom window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. The scent of brewing coffee drifted from the kitchen. He was lying in their bed. His bed. Clean sheets. No pain. No wreckage.
He blinked, the transition always jarring, the instantaneous leap from profound darkness and despair back to the bright, ordinary start. He knew, without looking, what the clock on the bedside table would say.
But he looked anyway. The red digits glowed innocently: 9:00 AM.
The day of Clara's death had begun again. Loop Sixteen. He pushed the covers back, the weary weight of forever settling onto his shoulders. Time to get up. Time to try again.