Chapter 31: To Keep Law And Order

I'd been here before.

I lay on the floor of the closet, light shining in my eyes from underneath the door. My chest was tightening, and my jaw clenching.

I wanted to cry.

Jon was on the other side of that door. Despite the weeks I'd spent in this form, there was still an unfamiliarity to the things I felt.

I was used to the tightening of my chest—the ache in my stomach; less familiar was the drooping of my ears and the sagging of my tail. It was like giving up, emotional defeat.

Was this my fate? A never-ending kill-or-be-killed scenario with my friend, who looked at me as not just a stranger but as a monster. The friend who got me through school with my sanity intact? The brother of my childhood as the enemy of my life?

Impossible.

I'd been here before, waking up on the floor of the hospital bathroom, knowing there was no path forward that didn't include going through Jon. No path that didn't cast me as a monster in his eyes, an unnatural evil that needed to be rejected and denied at every turn.

For the sake of Nia and my allies, I'd pulled myself together long enough to get through Jon before.

I killed him with my own hands.

Even knowing the day would loop and his death would be temporary— even knowing he wouldn't remember much—if anything—it was hard.

My body, heavy with an unwillingness to accept I was once again in this situation, refused to move, even as the sound of voices reached my ears.

"I'm going to ask one more time, do either of you have any idea how we got here?" A voice asked, presumably one of the other deputies.

Jon snorted, and at the familiar sound, my lips instinctively twitched, ready to be in on the joke. "You need to learn to roll with the punches," He said. "Clearly, whatever's happening is related to those weird vortexes dropping all over the place. It's the end of the world, man. Are you really worried about a little lost time? We're literally wearing vests with the words 'Guard the Hostile Alien' taped to our chests. It'd be weirder if we weren't confused."

A few weeks cut off from the world, and I'd largely stopped considering what it might be going through. I'd known even before getting trapped in Forest Lake that the world likely wouldn't recover in my lifetime. When we left through my escape hatch, we'd be returning to a breaking world, presumably on the same day we got trapped. For me, that all seemed so long ago; for Jon, it had just happened.

"Let me get this straight, you wake up in a strange place-"

"Strange place? It's a Stop'n'Slurp." Jon interrupted.

"Without any real idea how you got there, and your response is to just go on with your day?"

"Obviously not. I'm guarding that door, and so are you." Jon replied, the sound of metal sliding on metal telling me he had just cocked his gun.

"Is that a threat?" the other man growled.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"If it was a threat, the gun would be pointed at you, not the closet. It's an observation. Somehow, I doubt whoever put us here picked us at random. We're supposed to guard that door; we were equipped to guard that door. Besides, I want to know what these aliens that attacked our planet look like. Aren't you curious?" Jon replied, unconcerned with the man's threatening tone.

"You really think there's an alien in there?" The doubter asked.

"It's in there." A third voice said, his tone grim.

I closed one eye to try to focus my other eye under the crack, but I couldn't make out much beyond a shelf lying on its side. There were a few loose bags of chips on the floor, but nothing scattered around like you'd expect from tipping over a shelf.

"Not that I disagree," Jon said, "But what makes you say so."

"I just know. I can feel it. There's something terrible in there. Evil."

"Something evil? Yeah, it could be. Something hostile for sure." Jon replied."

"You two are really just going to 'roll with the punches' with something this weird? You wake up sitting on a shelf wearing a badge and a bullet-proof vest with surreal orders on them, and you just nod and go along with it."

"Hey, what's your name?" Jon asked.

"Henry."

"Well, Hank, if you want to go take a peak inside, I won't stop you; I'm as curious as anything else, but I've seen enough movies to know that if you can't adapt, you'll end up dead."

"Which is exactly what will happen if you open the door." The grim-sounding man said.

"Are you threatening me:" Henry asked.

"Henry, he's warning your dumb-ass. Hey, Mr. Serious, you have a name?"

"Phillip. Yours?"

"The name's Jon, Phillip. Thanks for asking; our friend Henry here was too panicked to be polite."

"I think the polite thing is giving your name first," Phillip replied stoically.

"Fuck that. If someone wants to know about me, they should ask."

"I wasn't going to open the door." Henry offered up defensively, "But I don't understand why you two are willing to crouch behind that shelf and stare at a door."

"Let me ask you this, Henry. What's the last thing you remember?"

"I'd just sat down to eat a late lunch-"

"Oh, nice, anything good?" Jon interrupted.

"Just a frozen dinner, nothing special. I'd only just started eating it, too."

"That reminds me, I skipped lunch. Either of you spot me for a bag of chips? I don't carry cash, and there's no one manning the register." Jon said.

"It's a bag of chips," Henry answered, bemused, "Just take it, who's going to care?"

Jon sighed. "Henry, we don't just live in a society with rules; we have a society because of rules. Not sure you noticed, but we're all wearing deputy badges. You've heard of being deputized, right? That means it's up to us to keep the peace, to keep law and order, to fight the aliens and enforce the rules."

Henry Scoffed, "I was never deputized, at least not by choice."

"You were." The Sheriff's voice said, accompanied by the sound of his footsteps entering the store. "Like all of you, I have only spotty memories of how we got here, but I always give my deputies a choice, Henry. I can show you the videotape if you need proof."

Video Tape? Has he found a way to 50-First-Dates the time loops—to leave himself video messages that could survive the resets? How?

Putting messages on clothing with electrical tape was clever and I could see how that would work. I knew from my own experimentation that setting a spawn point affected more than just the body of the person whose spawn was set; anything on their person, clothing, bags, hats, items being held, etc, would all have their spawn points changed.

It almost worked on Jenga rules. The loop wouldn't remove a piece that other pieces depended on or that were dependent on other pieces.

So, the deputies' clothing, badges, and electrical-tape-messages were all dependent on the deputies when they set their spawns. At a guess, one of the deputies spawned, sitting on the over-turned shelf to hold it in place. I'd done something similar once by bringing a chair into a bathroom. I was half-surprised I didn't end up sprawled on the floor when time looped, but the chair remained.

Taking some deep breaths, I sat up and looked around. In a moment, I expected the Sheriff or one of the deputies to shove the endoscope under the door. No doubt, after killing me last time, they'd tried to claim my memory crystal and Shadow. As Alice had discovered while doing brain surgery, and Pastor Kay had discovered when making drones, humans only had crystals in their heads when they were alive. Whatever I was, that still seemed to apply to me, or no doubt I'd have woken up without any memories since the Vortex touched down, like Nia's Mom.

I missed some of the conversation as I repositioned and looked around, but soon enough, I heard someone approach and begin sliding something under the door. I grabbed some fresh towels off a shelf and lined the bottom of the door, blocking the camera as well as most of the light. Since I'd taken the Shadow from Kay, my Aura had been significantly dimmed. While I had a lantern and flashlights in my Shadow Alcove, groping along the wall revealed a light switch and proved my past preparation unnecessary.

"Hey Now," the Sheriff said as I blocked the camera, "Let's cooperate here. We both know that portal can't take you out of there, so why not cooperate and see if we can both walk away satisfied."

I opened up my Shadow Alcove, positioning the entrance against one of the side walls, so it would be harder—maybe impossible—to hit me by shooting through the door.

"Sure, let's just gloss over the fact that you just killed me, a sapient person, on the off chance that my death would benefit you."

"All is fair in love and war, and you, whatever you are, person or not, are certainly part of this war. Besides, I think we both know it wasn't your first death. At the very least, it's unlikely to be your last."