The collars around chained necks rattled as Anya approached the center of the room, touching her fingers to the midnight-colored metal at its center, halfway through the forging process in which its inner nature was betrayed and reformed as something else. It seemed to have lines traced across it where the pieces would be cut out and folded together. There was the outline of a rifle stock and various other pieces of an autorepeater, but with a strange design. There was no place to load either a physical magazine or to attach a nutrient pipe. And more strangely, there was no barrel outline.

  The slave collars continued to rattle intermixed with their constant screams. Anya had ignored them, but now it was too late. Two shots rang out, and before she could turn around she felt a crack against her skull— the butt of a rifle. Disoriented, Anya fell over the table, unable to control her body. The sensation was strange but not painful as though her mind had been detached from its shell and left without control. She could still see and hear and feel the world through the body’s eyes and ears and skin, but movement was no longer possible. In these moments as she slumped off the table, aided by a stiff pull from behind, Anya saw that both Yuna and Melissa were dead. Their bodies were crumpled in heaps amidst a pool of blood. Their brains stuck out slightly from exit wounds only to close the next time around.

  The world went black, but Anya did not lose consciousness. There was no more feeling, only darkness. Only this empty void of a world without light as her body was bound like the slaves, granted only the mercy of keeping its tongue and perhaps chastity for a little longer as the useful information was extracted. She could feel the cool wind on her face despite the lack of air and physical presence. Her skin was flush with blood, burning up on the outside. Inside she wasn’t exactly cold, but shivering nonetheless. Being here in the abyss reminded her of something she so desperately needed to fix: hunger. She was shivering with it, burning up with the insatiable need to eat. Alight with the flames of bodily passion and restrained by her own misplaced desire. Trying to save the others from a fate they could repeat a thousand times. Why? Why did she bother with it when they would revive again tomorrow like it had never happened?

  Well, because it did happen and they would remember, and because it had only happened twice so far. Two repetitions of this cycle and her brain and body had already been broken apart. Perhaps it was the influence of piloting Colossus. Perhaps it was something else. But floating in the cool darkness Anya knew only one thing: she needed to eat fifty cheeseburgers, or everyone was going to die. How had she forgotten this fundamental truth? One must first take care of themselves before considering anything else, and she had pretended the hunger was something to be suppressed. She needed to eat.

  The lights came back on and Anya screamed, slapped in the face and told to shut the fuck up and listen. The world was still a blur and her head burned, the pain turning at the same moment the light had. It stung, but not deeply. There was a stab-wound in her stomach that would not mend, and that hurt far more than any light headwound possibly could. Even the others’ deaths didn’t sting, not when they would be alive again soon.

  But when she realized it was Jessica who had slapped her Anya was filled with rage. She remained silent for the restraints around her wrists, ankles, waist, shoulders, and neck, but she was going to put a bullet through that bitch the second she got the chance. It took everything she had not to spit in Jessica’s face.

  “Good morning!” she beamed.

  “I hope you had a pleasant nap!”

  “Where’s Luther?” Anya demanded, but Jessica slapped her again and Anya noticed the knife in her left hand as her head tilted toward it violently.

  “I’m asking the questions here. Or, giving you the prepared statement.” She shrugged, knife-blade pointing upward.

  “So shut your mouth and listen, or I’ll give it the treatment it deserves!” The knife-blade indicated the other slaves, and Anya recognized it as a threat to cut out her tongue. There wasn’t any point in resistance and she’d lose information if Jessica didn’t give her villain monologue, so Anya sat quietly back against the wall, disregarding the short, fat, ugly hag of a woman whose makeup made her look like a clown.

  Anya hadn’t hated Jessica before, not really. There had always been a mild aversion to her suck-up Karen lifestyle, and the feeling was mutual regarding Anya’s military poise and often unfeminine behavior, but why she would brandish a knife threatening to cut out Anya’s tongue was… unclear. Clearly something had changed, and Jessica was about to explain what. Maybe then Anya would be able to get free and translate her mild dislike turned hatred into something a little more visceral. Perhaps the reaction was overblown, but considering the situation? Fuck her. She should die.

  “You always were so masculine. So fascinated with sucking Raethor off. Did you think that made you feminine again? Just because you wanted to please your master? That’s not what it means to be feminine you tomboy whore!”

  She kept rambling, forgetting she herself was a soldier. Anya stopped paying attention until she started licking the knife, edge-first, blood beginning to drip down her tongue.

  “Just because you played soldier didn’t make you better than us. Just because you played left hand to God didn’t make you better.”

  The blood splattered on Anya’s face, speckling her red, and though she didn’t dare speak, the question of what had possibly happened to Jessica loomed large.

  “Did you think you could fix this on your own?!” She started screaming.

  “All you’ve done is make it harder for Peter to find a real solution. You can’t do that, stupid girl. You can’t mess up the real plans. Stop playing at roles you aren’t suited for! It’s unbecoming.” Did Jessica not realize Lululu was also there? Presumably they were still working together. Is that what this was? Peter had found Jessica and driven her mad? But there was nothing Peter should possibly have over her that should drive her to lick knife blades for fun and drama.

  Jessica pressed the blade to Anya’s throat.

  “Maybe I should give you a nice bright-red neck-tie, really punctuate the role you’ve tried to take for yourself!”

  “Jessica, stop!” Anya heard Peter yell from across the room, behind the looming form of the clown-soldier playing at a role that had driven her to madness.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Just, keep an eye on her. That’s the only thing we told you to do. Cutting is fine, but you can’t fucking kill her and you need to wait until I leave. Stop making me repeat that! Your prattling and screams are distracting me from my work...”

  Jessica shut up, and the minutes began to pass in silence. Anya watched her, flicking her ugly red-painted fingernails with the knife-blade. Chipping them and breaking off pieces. Occasionally dragging the blade seductively across Anya’s skin. It made Anya’s tongue quiver with excitement, the blade reminding her of cutting up a stuffed pig… even if it was an ironic thought. The sounds of passing time were the clanking of metal and the occasional screams of forges implanted with new flesh to birth. Anya said nothing for a long while, but it had become clear what was happening.

  They needed her. They hadn’t hesitated to kill Chris and Yuna, and Anya wasn’t sure if Luther was alive or not, but there was no reason to delay the trigger-pull if they had any reason to fire at all. Her place in this was special, separated from the others in space and time even if they all came back on death. But that was the thing, wasn’t it. Whose death triggered the loop? Anya hadn’t thought to ask about that before because she had always died last. But only last in the groups she had been in. If Peter and Lululu were off in the base doing their own thing then they should have continued living on.

  Therefore one of two things were true: either the others were petrified to the same ash sculptures regular humans were when the black sun rose— which seemed unlikely given the Most High had claimed it was on their side— or Anya had some special role to play in the time loop. But if this latter option were true it wasn’t clear why Peter would be aware of it. Did Lulululululululu have some kind of special awareness? It was possible she knew more about the situation than she had been letting on. That seemed especially likely given she and Peter had split off and killed each other from very early on, and were here now— Peter at least— working on some project to forge a weapon to… what? Kill God? There was no body up there in the sky. Shooting a star seemed impossible. What would be the point?

  “Can’t you at least kill me so I can get back to work?” she shouted at Peter. Jessica screamed incredulously.

  “You can’t talk to him!” she began. “Know your fucking place you stupid c—”

  “Shut up, Jessica. You can cut out her tongue if she speaks again, but I’d like to avoid that.”

  He walked over and patted Jessica on the shoulder, pushing her aside. His robe was cut in several places, and burned in others. His hair and beard were disheveled and his face looked haggard. The man was exhausted and there were dark circles under his eyes. That was what it meant to live for three days without sleep, she supposed.

  “Just, sit still, Anya. We don’t want to hurt you. We don’t want to be enemies.”

  Anya opened her mouth, beginning to say something like “Then what is this? You said she could cut me, but only once you leave.” and would have spread her hands if she were able, gesturing to the dead bodies she supposed must still be around here somewhere. Peter motioned his fingers closed, however, as if to preempt her speech, though he didn’t seem like he’d be all that displeased if she had ended up speaking. It wasn’t every day you got to watch someone’s tongue get cut out, even if it might mean delaying whatever project he was working on.

  “You need to sit still. Let us finish our work. It doesn’t mean anything to die. Not here, not now. There is no mercy in death. No respite. We simply wake up again and go on as before like nothing happened. And given that, what does it matter anyway to die? A headshot is instant. Painless. They go on as before when you return to them. But we do so need to finish our work now. Please, sit still. Or don’t! Jessica seems quite restless after seeing… Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Sit down and shut up.”

  “Why not gag me then?” Anya ventured, certain now her guess had been correct. It was her death that reset the loop, not the black sun, but she would confirm with the others who had been in Colossus the last time once the next one started. They would be able to tell her if they had survived to see the angels. She mentally cursed herself for not thinking to ask before. It had been so easy to assume they would survive as long as she did with all the same constraints. But it was clear that wasn’t true now.

  Peter answered quite simply. “Because Jessica seems like she needs to cut something or she’ll end up cutting herself. Worse, she could end up interfering in our work more than you already have. So we told her she can cut you once for every word you blabber now. Twice that count now that you’ve made me come over here!”

  Jessica grinned, her lips smeared with ugly lipstick pulled wide against her face. She flicked the knife against her finger joints and they bled. Anya cursed silently. They had made her go through worse in training, but now she was going to be held in bondage and subjected to a fate far crueler than death— watching herself get carved up and being unable even to taste the slivers of flesh.

  She shook her head, or tried, breaking the thought. The chains rattled. She realized saying that out loud would make her sound crazy, but it wasn’t as crazy as it might seem. Feeding the rifles required a pouring out of one’s own flesh through the nutrient tube, and being a soldier required unpleasant sacrifices. Or so they said. She could see the value in getting used to being cut, but it was kind of sick to make new recruits eat barbecued slivers of their own skin. “Kind of” only because she could see the value in it as a hazing ritual. What else were you supposed to do with perfectly good ~pork rinds?

  That clarification didn’t help her case, but she had no idea what else to do sitting around in chains. There wasn’t much to be said inside her that hadn’t already, and time was no object. Not when it was being endlessly repeated. She would be able to discuss with the dead a thousand times hereafter. Even if Peter thought he could break the spell, she failed to see how that was possible alone. Such a large-scale event would require more than the outline of a new weapon. Not even Colossus was enough to break this situation. But there was Pleroma sitting there below… Did he intend to mount the sword like a gun? How the fuck did he expect to fire a sword from a gun?

  Whatever. Pretending the mechanism would work, which it wouldn’t, what would it even accomplish? Was he going to shoot the fucking sun? With a gun? That normally shot bullets? That didn’t make any sense. Less sense even than Jessica’s constant babbling.

  “So what if I’m not even real. You’re not real either! None of this is real!”

  Ah, yes, the “all a dream” defence. If only it were that simple, but Anya had died already, and normally dream death wasn’t something you’d keep sleeping through. Unfortunately, the knife Jessica held in her hand was waving wildly close to Anya’s face. Even if the delusions weren’t real, the delusional crazy bitch with the knife in front of her was. And that was going to be painful.

  Her hunger stabbed at the stomach again so forcefully Anya reeled in pain and the chains strained under the pressure of her inwardly-retracting core. She looked down and noticed the creeping in of white all across her flesh. It would seem every hunger pang brought her closer to getting out of this situation.

  Anya heard the slamming of a door and Jessica screamed with excitement. In the next second, Anya got stabbed through the stomach. Jessica leaned in and started to whisper.

  “Do you want me to tell you a secret?”

  Anya tried to talk, but coughed and spit blood in her face, but Jessica didn’t care.

  “You weren’t there!”

  She screamed again, louder this time, directly in Anya’s ear.

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “Wha—” “Whaaa—” Anya trailed off, choking. An awfully lot of it for a minor stabbing. It barely even hurt, but she could feel herself dissociating.

  “It means if I kill you you don’t really die!”

  …That meant Peter’s “don’t kill her” meant nothing, didn’t it.

  Jessica stabbed Anya in the throat. This time it hurt quite a lot.