JOLT.
Loop 17. Bedroom. Sunlight. The scent of coffee. He was out of bed before the last echoes of the KRA-THOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!! faded from his memory. The guilt from Loop 15 still lingered, a dull ache, but it was now a subservient emotion, fueling rather than hindering his resolve. He knew the drill for the morning interaction, or rather, non-interaction.
He entered the kitchen, already dressed, keys in hand. Clara turned, coffee mug poised, her morning smile ready to bloom. It wilted as she saw him, his face set in lines of grim preoccupation, his eyes holding a distant, almost metallic sheen.
"Ethan?" she began, the familiar note of confusion tinged with worry entering her voice instantly. "You're… already leaving?"
"Morning," he said, his voice flat, devoid of warmth, already moving towards the door. "Got an early start. Things to do."
"But… coffee? What about…?" Her words trailed off as he reached the door, her expression a mixture of hurt and bewilderment.
"Can't. Busy," he stated, not looking back, pulling the door open.
"Ethan, wait! Please, just tell me what's wrong!"
He paused in the doorway, half-turned, and for a fleeting second, the image of her terrified face from Loop 15 flashed in his mind. He hardened himself against it. "Later, Clara," he said, the words a hollow promise. "I'll call." He stepped out, shutting the door firmly on her distressed, unanswered questions. He couldn't afford emotional entanglement today. Today was about logistics, targeting, and the cold, hard math of destruction.
The acquisition run was smoother than ever, a grimly efficient routine. He knew exactly what he needed, where to get it, how to pay. Stump remover, charcoal, sulfur for the black powder. Acetone, peroxide, muriatic acid for the APEX. Steel pipes of specific dimensions, end caps, heavy-duty wrenches. Wires, batteries, timers, steel wool, electrical tape. He also added a few new items to his list: several cheap, disposable burner phones and SIM cards, a set of detailed city infrastructure maps he'd seen at a specialist bookstore (gas lines, electrical grids, subway tunnels – publicly available if you knew where to look), and a pair of powerful, compact binoculars.
He didn't bother with preliminary tests at the switching yard today. Loop 16 had proven his synthesis methods and the efficacy of the two-stage device. Today was about building the operational charge and selecting the target.
By midday, he was back in his car, parked not in the desolate switching yard, but in a discreet multi-story garage on the city's periphery, one that offered anonymity and a decent view of certain key infrastructure points. He spread his newly acquired city maps across the passenger seat. The schematics of gas mains, electrical substations, and major transportation arteries lay before him like a blueprint for controlled mayhem.
His goal wasn't indiscriminate terror. That felt pointless, messy and quite honestly he wasn't quite mentally prepared to cause neither major fear in people nor kill anyone directly. He needed a disruption significant enough to fundamentally alter the city's rhythm around the 5:17 PM mark, something that would override the loop's subtle machinations or create an environment so chaotic that Clara's specific, pre-ordained demise couldn't occur. But what?
He studied the maps. A major electrical substation supplying a large downtown sector? Taking it offline would cause widespread blackouts, traffic signal failures, and disrupt businesses, including Clara's office building if it fell within that grid. A key fiber optic junction point? Could cripple communications, emergency services, financial transactions. A section of elevated highway or a critical bridge? Structural damage there would cause immediate, massive traffic snarls, rerouting, and a heavy emergency response.
The ethical implications, the potential for widespread harm to innocents, pressed at the edges of his consciousness, but he ruthlessly suppressed them. The loop had already proven its capacity for collateral damage, its indifference to suffering. He was merely co-opting its methods, trying to turn its own destructive tendencies against it. Or so he told himself. The line between fighting the monster and becoming one felt increasingly blurred.
He settled on a target: a major natural gas regulator station located in a relatively industrial, less populated area, but one that supplied a significant portion of the downtown commercial district. A powerful enough explosion there wouldn't just cause a service interruption; it would likely trigger secondary fires, force widespread evacuations, and draw a massive, prolonged emergency response, effectively paralyzing a large section of the city for hours. The ensuing chaos, the sheer scale of the incident, felt like it might be enough.
Target selected. Now, the device.
Working in the cramped confines of his car, he began the synthesis and assembly. The APEX came first, the familiar routine of ice bath, careful mixing, and slow crystallization. While the APEX reacted, he meticulously prepared the steel pipe, packing it densely with the freshly made black powder, ensuring the charge was maximized. He prepared the electric initiator wires, carefully embedding the steel wool filament.
Once the APEX was synthesized, filtered, and quickly air-dried using the car's heater vents on a low, unheated setting (a risky but faster method given his time constraints), he proceeded with the final, delicate arming process. A slightly larger quantity of APEX this time, nestled carefully against the black powder, the initiator wires perfectly positioned. He sealed the heavy steel pipe, triple-checking the tightness of the end caps. The finished device felt cold, dense, and terrifyingly potent in his hands.
Next, the trigger. He took one of the burner phones. His research
had included basic remote detonation methods. He carefully disassembled the phone, exposing its circuit board. He located the motor that controlled the phone's vibration function. With delicate precision learned from hours of soldering practice, he unsoldered the motor's wires and instead soldered his initiator wires to those contacts. Now, calling this burner phone would complete the circuit, sending a current through the steel wool filament, detonating the APEX, and in turn, the main charge. A crude but effective remote trigger. He tested the circuit with his multimeter (bypassing the explosives, of course) – it worked.
He placed the armed device carefully into a padded gym bag, the burner phone trigger nestled beside it, ready to be connected. He checked the time: 3:45 PM. Time to move.
He drove carefully, obeying all traffic laws, the gym bag containing several pounds of high explosives sitting innocuously on the passenger seat. The juxtaposition of his calm demeanor and the lethal cargo was a testament to how far he had descended.
He parked a few blocks from the targeted gas regulator station, a utilitarian, fenced-off complex of pipes and valves. He transferred the device from the gym bag to a nondescript backpack. Using the binoculars, he surveyed the station, noting security cameras (few, mostly focused on the main gate), fence lines, and potential points of access. He identified a section of the perimeter fence partially obscured by overgrown bushes, adjacent to a large, crucial-looking manifold of pipes. That would be the placement.
A knot tightened in Ethan's stomach, a cold counterpoint to the grim resolve that had driven him this far. He sat in the car for a few more minutes, the backpack containing his improvised weapon a heavy, silent presence on the seat beside him. The binoculars lay on the dashboard. He wasn't just looking at pipes and fences anymore; he was contemplating an act that would irrevocably alter the city, at least for today.
His mind, a relentless engine of calculation and consequence, began to spin out the potential aftermath. If this worked – if the explosion was as significant as he hoped, if the ensuing chaos was widespread enough to truly disrupt the loop's intricate machinery and somehow spare Clara – what then? What if, by some miracle, this was the act that broke the cycle, that jolted them out of this repeating nightmare and back into a linear reality?
The thought, once a desperate prayer, now carried a chilling weight. In that new, singular reality, he would be the man who had just bombed a natural gas regulator station. There would be an investigation. Evidence. He'd been careful – cash purchases, no traceable phone for detonation – but he wasn't a ghost. The sheer scale of such an event would draw immense scrutiny. Could he truly melt away, leaving no trace, no connection? The idea of being hunted, of becoming a fugitive in the very world he was trying to save Clara for, was a stark, unpleasant possibility.
But a far heavier concern pressed down on him, more immediate, more visceral. People. The regulator station, while in an industrial area, wasn't entirely isolated. There were likely workers inside, maintenance crews, security personnel. Even with his attempts to target a less populated zone, a blast of the magnitude he was planning… injuries were likely. Fatalities? He pushed the thought away, but it clung like oily smoke. He tried to rationalize it – the loop itself was a killer, indifferent to collateral damage. He was just fighting fire with fire. But the idea of his actions directly causing the death or maiming of innocent people, individuals not caught in his personal hell, was a bitter pill. It blurred the lines further, inching him closer to becoming the very kind of indiscriminate destructive force he was fighting against. He was trying to save one life by potentially endangering many. The monstrous calculus of it made him feel sick.
And then there was Clara. If she survived this, if the loop broke and they were somehow, impossibly, together in a world where 5:17 PM was just another minute on the clock… what would she think of the man he had become? If she ever found out what he had done, not just today, but in the preceding loops? The man who had contemplated breaking her leg, who had terrified her in her own home, who was now about to commit an act of domestic terrorism, however targeted he believed its purpose to be. Could she ever look at him the same way? Could she love the man capable of such cold, destructive acts, even if they were born of a desperate, twisted love for her? The thought was a shard of ice in his heart. He was potentially saving her life only to destroy any chance of sharing it with her.
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, the weight of it all pressing down. The ethical tightrope he was walking felt impossibly thin, frayed by desperation and rage. But what was the alternative? To stand by and watch Clara die for the seventeenth time? To let the loop continue its relentless, soul-crushing attrition until there was nothing left of him but a hollow, screaming shell?
No. The decision, however monstrous, had been made. He had come too far, learned too much, to turn back now. The potential for saving Clara, however slim, however tainted the method, outweighed the personal cost, the moral corrosion. He had to see this through.
He opened his eyes, the conflict within him settling back into a cold, hard resolve. He had to try. He had to act. The consequences, both for himself and for others, were a price he was now willing to pay, or at least, a risk he was forced to take.
He checked his watch: 4:30 PM. Shadows were beginning to lengthen. Foot traffic in the light industrial area would be minimal now. It was time.
Heart pounding a steady, cold rhythm against his ribs, he slung the backpack over his shoulder. It felt heavier than its physical weight, imbued with the gravity of his decision. He exited the car, locked it, and began the walk towards the targeted gas regulator station, each step a conscious movement towards an act of profound and terrifying consequence. He slipped through the gap he forced in the chain-link fence, moving quickly and silently through the overgrown weeds, his senses hyper-alert. He reached the crucial manifold of pipes, knelt in the dirt and grime, and carefully extracted the pipe bomb from the backpack. He placed it snugly amidst the tangle of pipes, hoping the existing infrastructure would help contain and direct some of the blast force for maximum damage to the regulator.
He connected the initiator wires from the bomb to the modified burner phone. Double-checked the connections, his fingers surprisingly steady. Took out the second burner phone – the one he would use to make the call. He retreated then, slipping back through the fence, walking calmly but quickly away, melting back into the urban landscape. He put several blocks between himself and the station, the sounds of the city beginning to mask the frantic thumping of his own heart. He climbed to the roof of a low, abandoned commercial building he'd scouted earlier, a gritty, wind-swept expanse of tar paper and gravel that offered a distant but clear line of sight towards the target.
He lay prone on the rooftop, the rough surface scraping against his elbows, binoculars trained on the silent, utilitarian complex of the gas regulator station. His hand, holding the second burner phone, was rock steady now, a chilling calmness settling over him. He checked his watch: 5:10 PM. Seven minutes.
He thought of Clara, somewhere in the city, perhaps leaving her office, walking towards a subway, completely oblivious to the cataclysm he was about to unleash, ostensibly in her name. Would this colossal, destructive gamble make any difference? Or would an elevator still fail, a truck still swerve, a piece of scaffolding still fall, precisely on schedule, rendering his desperate act a tragic, violent sideshow? He didn't know. All he knew was that he had to try to disrupt the script on a scale the loop had never seen him attempt.
The seconds ticked by, each one an eternity etched in the grim lines around his mouth.