I opened my eyes. I was on the balcony, elbow on the table, fingers against my forehead. Carmen – sat on the other chair next to me – yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned to look at me, a frown on her face, as if she’d lost something and was trying to trace back her steps.

  “I swear it was nighttime,” she said.

  I smiled with a silent sigh of relief. I’d been right. I leant over and gently grabbed the back of her head and gave her a kiss like nothing before. She was alive. I was alive.

  After leaving her breathless, I looked past her, and as expected, Darren was coming over to the barrier of his balcony.

  “You alright, Darren?”

  “Yeah, good, mate. You?”

  “Give me a sec,” I said to him.

  I kept my eyes on him as I whispered to Carmen. “I need you to trust me. Go to our bedroom, grab the two gym holdalls and pack clothes for both of us. We need to get out of here. Check the news on your phone. You’ll understand.”

  I kissed her again. She looked at me with curiosity but said nothing and stood and shuffled inside, with Darren leering at her. I grabbed my phone from my pocket. It was 9:22 am. Only eight minutes had passed this time. I slipped the phone back into my pocket, and walked to the edge of the balcony next to Darren’s and was so close to him that I could almost reach over and grab him.

  “Got any plans today?” I asked him. I had no interest really – I just wanted to keep him there as long as possible. Keep him from seeing the notification. Keep him from killing me or Carmen.

  “Nah. Who’s gonna have plans today?” he replied.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You didn’t see the message?”

  “What message?”

  “Are you being serious? Didn’t you get it? A blue screen in your face saying System initialising?”

  “I didn’t see anything like that. What was it?”

  “You’re pulling my leg, ain’t ya, mate?” Darren said.

  “No, seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What the fuck?” He gave me a look like he was unsure whether I was telling him the truth or not. “It happened like, thirty minutes ago. It was crazy man. I was over by the Swiss Cottage roundabout, coming back from a mate’s place and suddenly, the car just cut out. Engine. Lights. Everything. Happened to a couple of other cars. Crashes all over the place. Then this blue screen appeared in front of my face and had a message on it. System initialising.”

  “Sounds crazy,” I said, doing my best to sound interested and surprised. “What happened with the car? You just left it there?”

  “Yeah. I had to. Some weird shit’s happening.” Darren leant on the barrier and looked out across the city. “Like it’s daytime already but it was nighttime when I got home. Doesn’t make sense. You guys seem like you been sitting there for a while. Nothing weird happening on your side?”

  “Nah. We just got up a few minutes ago. Haven’t even had breakfast yet. Just had some things to talk about.”

  He nodded before turning to me. “I’ve been wondering…how’d you nab yourself a sweet thing like that?”

  “You mean Carmen?”

  “Yeah.”

  I gave a little snort. “You’d need to go to uni, Darren. Have you been?”

  “Been where?”

  “Uni?”

  “Course not. Does it sound like it?”

  “I don’t judge,” I replied. “So, what is it that you do?”

  That’s when I really got his attention. I was curious. I’d never seen him or his mum do any sort of work. The rent wasn’t exactly cheap. Three grand, the girlfriend and I paid, and even without the gambling, it was a struggle after bills. And there was the matter of the shotgun. Why did they have it?

  He turned to look at me. “A little bit of this. A little bit of that.” He smiled. It was obvious he didn’t want to say more.

  “Darren,” his mother shouted from inside. “Darren, come here.”

  “We’ll talk again,” Darren said as he turned to leave. I nodded at him and as he ducked inside, I made my way to the bedroom, checking my phone.

  9:26 am.

  Four minutes. I could guess that Michelle had just seen the notification on the news and was going to tell Darren. However the gem worked, it was resetting us all to around 3 in the morning, when Carmen and I had originally been on the balcony.

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  Earlier, it had taken ten minutes for the loop. We all would have seen the notification at the same time and it must’ve been no longer than thirty seconds before Darren was at my door. The next loop had taken eight minutes, but Carmen and I had come in immediately, and then I’d spoken to Delroy. The notification was already on the news unlike earlier, where there’d been a couple of minutes until we all got it.

  When I entered the bedroom, Carmen was shuffling between the wardrobe and the bed, jerking open drawers, grabbing whatever she thought we needed and stuffing them into the holdalls. She looked up as I walked over to the closet to grab the bat.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “I’ll explain later, but we need to go.” I grabbed the bat from the closet and turned to her. “Get the bags packed and get dressed.”

  “What is going on?” she said, looking at the bat. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Babe, I will tell you everything but now’s not the time. We’re in danger. You’ve seen the notification. It’s only a matter of time before people start turning up for me.”

  As I got to the door, I turned to her. “Whatever you hear, stay in the room, okay? Do not come to the lounge.” I headed out having confused her even more and walked towards the lounge. Darren would be at the door at any moment. In both earlier iterations, Darren turned up after getting the notification. If I was right–.

  The doorbell rang as I stepped into the lounge.

  I smiled to myself at my own cleverness. Well, someone had to.

  I was resetting us but everyone who was reset was still making the same decisions or actions. That’s why Carmen was packing even though she knew it was strange that I knew. She’d seen the notification. She still thought the same. That we had to get out of here before others showed up. She’d made the same decision presented with the same information. In the previous iteration, she hadn’t been able to. I’d opened the door to Darren before she’d got the chance.

  Same with Darren. Once he found out, his first thought was to get me. Same with Michelle. Delroy wasn’t being reset so I wasn’t sure what he would do. He hadn’t come to the door this time, even though he must have heard the shotgun again.

  I was the only one who was able to change the course of how things would happen. Change the course of the decisions the others made.

  I opened the door and stepped back into the lounge, bat in hand, sofa behind me. Darren walked through tentatively, scanning left first, then right and seeing me there. He had the machete in his hand as before.

  “So you did get the message?” Darren said.

  I shrugged. “What’s with the knife?”

  “What’s with the bat?” he countered.

  “Well, you struck me to be the sort who might come for me once you found out.”

  “You can make it easy for yourself,” Darren said. “I don’t want to kill you. The message said to take you alive.”

  “Then why the knife?”

  “You might need persuading. Where’s that pretty little thing of yours?”

  My eyes widened. “Stay the fuck away from her.”

  He smiled that gap-toothed smile. “I won’t do anything to her. Not if you work with me.”

  I remained silent, watching him. Eventually I put the bat down and my hands up. “Leave her out of it.” I walked backwards, by the side of the sofa, towards the dining table.

  Darren followed me in slowly, keeping an eye on my movements. I needed to draw him in. Wouldn’t be long before Michelle got here. I had a few moments to overpower him and then take the fat one down.

  “Get on your knees,” Darren said.

  I did as I was told. He walked closer to me. Good. He was within range.

  “System,” he said, then after a pause seemed to be reading something in front of him. With him distracted, I took my chance, leaping up and striking the underside of his jaw with the top of my head. As painful for him as it was for me. He dropped the machete. I grabbed it.

  “You piece of shit,” I screamed at him as I hacked at his head. He put his hands up to defend himself but flesh was flesh and I drew blood all the same. I hacked and I hacked as many times as he had stabbed me earlier and when I was done, he lay on the ground in a pool of brown blood. At some point, he’d shit himself.

  Then came that thunderous boom again. I looked up. Michelle was at the lounge door, but she was facing towards the hallway. I quickly ran over and embedded the machete into the top of her head with a thwack. Look, I was no killer. I didn’t take joy in it. But I’d long known that I had the capability if it was required. Now, it was required.

  I pulled the blade away, as Michelle tried to turn, loosening her grip on the gun as I smacked her with the blade again, this time in her arm. She dropped the gun. I hacked a final time, right into her neck and she clattered against the lounge doorframe, and slid down to the floor.

  Then I wondered what she had shot at and saw what I didn’t want to see. Carmen. On the floor again, looking at me. She wasn’t gone yet. She was trying to say something but all she managed was to cough up blood on the wooden floor, before letting her head rest.

  I went over to her. Turned her over. Cradled her head in my hands. I stroked her face, brushed away the tears she had been crying as she took her last breaths. Wiped away the blood around her mouth. She looked so peaceful. So serene.

  But I wasn’t.

  She didn’t deserve this. The fat bitch and the gap-toothed bastard, I couldn’t care less about, but Carmen? For four years she’d been by my side. She’d given me something I’d missed. Support. Love. My mum had died when I was younger. Carmen was the first person I’d felt love from since then. Seeing her die for a second time, I knew for all our problems, I needed her.

  I stood up, walked back to where Michelle had dropped the gun and picked it up.

  Decisions. Life always came down to decisions.

  I could have given in. Let Darren give me up to the Pantheon. Let them do what they wanted with me. Darren would get his reward. Carmen would be safe. The world would be spared. It made sense, right?

  But how could I know if any of that’s true? How could I know that the Pantheon would reward Darren for it? How could I know what would happen to me? How could I know Carmen would be safe? How could I know if the world would be spared?

  I’m not reckless. I just weigh up the options and make quick decisions. I can’t even articulate my reasoning half the time. I just know what I feel is the right thing to do at the time with the information to hand.

  And right now, I knew the Pantheon couldn’t take the gem from me. For some reason, an entity that could bring the world to a standstill couldn’t come and get the gem themselves. Or wouldn’t.

  And now I knew I couldn’t die. That’s why they needed me alive.

  And as long as that was the case, I was the one in charge. I had fourteen days to find out what the Pantheon was. I had fourteen days to find out what the Universal Survival Protocol was. Oh, and I had fourteen days to find out who the damn girl was that caused this mess in the first place.

  And until I had those answers, there was only one thing for me to do. Keep myself safe, and protect the ones I love.

  I turned to look at Carmen’s lifeless body. I knew what I had to do if I wanted to get the both of us out of here alive.

  I put the shotgun to my head and pressed the trigger.