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“Alright, let’s get started. We’ve got to find our enemy.”
How many times have you said those words?
At this point, it all just sounds like noise to you. You don’t even know the last time your Silver Key learned new information. It doesn’t matter who you talk to, who you get close to, who you hate, who you love, who you eliminate. Each time you loop, you check it again. Nothing. It’s so close to being full, yet freedom still seems so far away. It almost feels like it’s making fun of you. If it still had a corporeal form, you’d have smashed the damn thing into a million little pieces already.
Someone suspects you, and you deflect it effortlessly back onto them. You can’t find it in yourself to feel bad anymore. You hate yourself for it. This is their one and only world line, you tell yourself over and over again, so you have to make it count.
How many times have you met Remnan? How many times have you put Otome into cold sleep? How many times have you tried, and failed, to get SQ to open up? How many times has Jina told you how scared she is of disappearing, only for you to heartlessly kill her during the warp? How many times have you been touched by Gnos, having to eliminate those you want so desperately to survive this? How many times have you felt your soul be ripped from your body, then forcibly returned? How many times have you watched the universe crumble before your very eyes?
You aren’t really paying attention to the meeting anymore. You don’t bother looking at the screen when you cast your vote. Your vote is what sends Chipie to cold sleep. You accompany him to the cold sleep room and tell him goodbye before closing the pod. It’s become somewhat of a routine for you. You still feel obligated to send them off with dignity, at least.
You used to keep count of the loops you’ve been through. At first, it was somewhat comforting. Seeing your Key fill up as you continued looping gave you hope—maybe you really would be able to escape. But as you learned more about the crew, about their dreams, their desires, their fears, it became increasingly difficult to keep your thoughts in order. It’s never been easy for you to be vulnerable with others—you’re a Lieutenant, after all, and people are relying on you. You never had time for that. Now all you have is time. Feelings you didn’t know you were allowed to have snaked their way out of your chest and into their hands. Feelings that they won’t remember. Because they will never remember the you of that universe.
You stopped counting after 500.
You walk around the ship aimlessly, the click-clacking of your heels echoing throughout the halls. On your third lap around the ship, you stop in front of the EVA room, remembering something you wished you could forget. On your fifth, exhaustion starts to set in. You ignore it. You’ve tuned out the hum of the fluorescent lights that line the walls by now, but it begins to drill into your skull. On your ninth, you realize this is pointless. You’ve just been going around in circles, and nothing has changed.
You don’t notice LeVi’s warp announcement, and you don’t care. You can no longer tell what’s “morning” and what’s “evening”, since your days have become “before the meeting” and “after the meeting”, but your body seems to know when it’s time to warp. You sigh and walk slowly to your sleeping quarters.
Your mind wanders to your partner. You wish you could kick yourself for becoming so complacent while they’re still trying so hard. Each time you see them, their Key has become fuller, and you have to wonder if they’ve noticed that your Key hasn’t changed at all in the last 300 loops. You’re not really sure what loop they’re on, or if they’ve even been counting—last time you told them, they were from a much earlier loop, so you refrained from giving the real answer. You can’t burden them with that. They’re relying on you—you’re a Lieutenant, after all, and…
You unbutton your coat and toss it haphazardly onto the floor. You wonder how many years it’s been since you’ve become stuck here. You untie your boots and set them next to your coat. You wonder how many times you’ve had that thought. You shudder when your feet touch the cold, metal floor of the ship. Comet and SQ are talking about something, but you can’t understand what they’re saying. A familiar green hue lights up the room, and LeVi’s voice warns that warp will begin in 5 minutes.
You slide yourself into your sleeping pod and shut the door behind you. You’re used to unfavorable sleeping conditions from your time in the military, but you still can’t put yourself enough at ease to fall asleep in here. You stare at the stickers covering the back wall of the pod. You’re not certain why they’re there—sometimes there’s way more of them, and sometimes there’s none at all. They provide little comfort to you, but they are cute.
LeVi begins counting down. The straps come from below you and wrap around your body tightly. No matter how many times this happens to you, you’ll never get used to it. Exhaustion weighs heavy on you, but you know you won’t get a wink of sleep. You don’t remember the last time you did. When the countdown reaches 1, your eyes are forced shut.
You open your eyes. A vast, green expanse, sparse with trees, stretches out in front of you. This dream again. You look up at the great blue sky, and you feel bitter. You miss the sky. You miss the wind, and the rain, and your cohort. You never thought you would have to miss the sky.
Suddenly, your body begins to burn. It’s a feeling you’re all too familiar with. You try to scream, but no sound comes out. It starts from your arm, and it begins to radiate throughout your body, the pressure increasing until it becomes too much, and then you burst, leaving nothing behind. As if you were never there in the first place.
You wake up with a start. Searing pain jolts through your body, but slowly dies down, replaced by something nostalgic, something longing. An uncomfortable primal urge pulses through you, your mind becoming hazy with the weight of many. In the meeting room, Kukrushka looks at you and smiles.
“Alright,” you say, “let’s get started. We’ve got to find our enemy.”