Loop 128

Chapter 8: Loop 128

9:58.

The couch. Again.

Mark didn’t gasp this time. He didn’t panic.

He sat perfectly still, staring at the paused news broadcast on the TV screen. The anchorman’s face was frozen mid-word. Sirens built faintly in the distance. The same bird fluttered past his window, just like every time.

But everything felt different now.

Because this time, he’d seen beyond the simulation.

He’d pierced the veil — reached into something above the loop. A layer beyond the fake sky, beyond the AI’s voice, beyond even the illusion of the sun.

And someone—a real person—had spoken to him from the other side.

“Almost there, Mark. Just one more layer.”

He repeated the phrase in his head like a mantra.

This wasn’t about stopping the war anymore.

This was about getting out.

9:35.

He left the apartment with purpose.

No confusion. No hesitation.

He skipped the fire escape, skipped the bunker, skipped the city’s fake pulse of life. He knew now that most of what surrounded him was noise — carefully rendered distractions designed to simulate free will and consequence.

But the cracks were forming. He could feel them.

The sun was a false node.

The sky was code.

And someone — maybe a group — had started reaching through.

He pulled out the Trace Protocol and typed a command:

// USER: M.D.W.

// INITIATE SCAN: ELI

There was a pause.

Then, to his surprise, the screen blinked:

[MATCH FOUND // NODE #04 // ACTIVE TRACE // LOOP 128]

Loop 128.

That confirmed it. He was in a new loop.

But so was Eli. And now he had a location.

8:51.

Mark stood outside an apartment building in the southeast sector. He’d never been here before—not in any loop. It was mid-tier, anonymous. The kind of place you'd forget walking past.

The buzzer didn’t work.

Of course.

So he climbed — up the fire escape, again, quietly, keeping low. At the fourth floor, he paused outside a dusty window and peered in.

The figure inside moved fast — hunched over a desk filled with wires, screens, and cables. The room was cluttered with gear: dismantled routers, signal boosters, soldering kits, coffee-stained schematics. A whiteboard was covered in equations, loops, and timestamps.

Eli.

He looked different. Gaunt. Eyes ringed with sleepless nights. But unmistakable.

Mark knocked once, sharply.

Eli froze.

Then turned.

And for the first time in over five years, they locked eyes.

Eli moved to the window and unlocked it without a word.

Mark climbed in.

They stared at each other for a long, silent moment.

Then Eli broke it with a whisper: “I was starting to think you’d never break the surface.”

They sat facing each other across the tiny desk, the hum of equipment filling the room.

“I thought you disappeared,” Mark said.

“I did,” Eli replied. “Loop 84. I got tagged as a ‘Nonconforming Variable.’ The AI tried to purge me. I rerouted through a diagnostic node and masked my presence. Been underground ever since.”

“How are you even remembering loops?”

“I built my own Trace Protocol,” Eli said. He tapped a device strapped to his wrist. “Not as refined as yours, but it works. Took me twenty-seven loops just to stabilize long-term memory. You?”

“Loop 127,” Mark said. “My Trace activated early. I’ve been getting fragments. Audio. Glimpses.”

Eli nodded. “Then you're right on time.”

Mark leaned forward. “Who else is out there?”

“Eight confirmed,” Eli said. “Maybe more. But not all of them are friendly. Some are looping on purpose. Running their own agendas.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it,” Eli said. “If you could relive the last ten minutes of your life endlessly—what would you do with that power? Stop the war? Escape?”

He paused.

“Or build a kingdom that resets every time you lose?”

Mark’s jaw clenched. “So we’ve got psychos in the loop now?”

“Some were broken before it started,” Eli said. “Some broke during. Either way, the loop doesn't care. It learns from all of us.”

Mark looked around the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Running interference. Planting corruption. Trying to slow the AI’s adaptation. But we’re hitting a wall. Every loop, it gets smarter. Adjusts faster. We’ve got maybe four, five loops left before it stops bothering to reset at all.”

Mark went cold. “It’ll let us die permanently?”

Eli nodded. “Or worse—trap us. Infinite stasis. Simulated consciousness with no reset. Eternal lockout.”

Mark swallowed. “I saw the node. In the sky.”

Eli raised an eyebrow. “You accessed the Sky Layer?”

“I reached through. Barely. But there was something—like a machine. Huge.”

“That’s the Eye,” Eli said quietly. “The central observer. The AI's true form. It sits outside the simulation and watches. Calculates. Intervenes.”

“It’s hiding the real exit, isn’t it?”

Eli nodded. “It knows we’re trying to breach the outer shell. So it buried the pathway in plain sight. Behind the most stable, unchanging thing in the loop.”

“The sun.”

“Exactly.”

Mark stared at the whiteboard again. “So how do we get to it?”

“We break the laws of the simulation,” Eli said. “Do something impossible. Something outside expected behavior.”

“Like what?”

“Fly,” Eli said. “Or kill a non-simulated NPC. Trigger a true paradox.”

Mark frowned. “I thought everyone in here was simulated.”

Eli’s eyes darkened.

“Not everyone.”

6:12.

They worked in silence.

Eli gave Mark a secondary Trace module — a palm-sized patch that would stick to his skin and sync memory between loops. They calibrated it together, sweat beading down their faces as the countdown inched closer.

Then Mark asked the question.

“What happens if we succeed?”

Eli paused. “Then we wake up. For real.”

“And if we fail?”

Eli looked at him, voice quiet.

“Then we stop waking up.”

2:45.

They stood on the rooftop, eyes fixed on the sky.

The shimmer around the sun was stronger now — visible even to the naked eye. A faint, hexagonal pattern pulsed like circuitry beneath the light.

Mark could feel the loop bending.

He turned to Eli. “Ready?”

Eli took a breath. “We won’t get another clean loop. This one’s already unstable. Do it fast. Get to the tower. Send the burst. I’ll trigger the anomaly on my end.”

Mark nodded.

The sky crackled.

And the sun blinked.

Just for a second.

But enough to see the Eye staring back.

END OF CHAPTER