---=Chapter 13: Wait, How Did You Know That?---=

Nia exited behind me, and I glanced over as she stepped in to push Maebe; her attention was on a note card she was reading. The card had a green aura, like the monsters and first-loop Nia.

I bent in to get a closer look, and she politely held it out so I could see. It was remarkable how quickly she was adapting. She'd been super skittish at first, but it was as though she'd decided I must be ok since I didn't immediately bite her face off or something.

As she turned it so I could see, I found the source of the aura. The card had a shard of memory crystal taped to it. The card had writing on it that said, "Today repeats. Count the loops. Number of time loops I've counted:" There were several crossed-out numbers, but the last number, 73, wasn't.

The crystal was in the center of the card. The words were written around the periphery of the crystal.

"It was on the fridge. What does it mean?" Nia asked. By now, she had to know I didn't communicate well, so I just pointed to what it said.

Day 73, though. That was a lot higher than my count. Where were the missing days? I didn't understand what was going on with memories. Even considering we were in a time loop, our memories were too inconsistent.

The hallway led to a door that continued straight, while another hallway continued to the right. Even before we reached the door, I could see there wasn't much on the other side. The glow of the barrier shone from under the cracks around the door. I put my hand out to keep Nia back as I went closer. I turned the handle and carefully pushed it so the door swung into the Vortex.

I immediately regretted it. Now there was just this doorway into oblivion, completely unblocked. I made a note to myself to leave the door closed next time.

"Be careful!" Nia burst out, running up to me and grabbing my arm to pull me away from the Vortex. I looked over at her; tears were streaming down her face.

The fear wasn't surprising. If anything, it was more surprising she'd been keeping it together as well as she was. I didn't know what Nia remembered or had figured out. At the start of the loops, her dad's seat was fully in the Vortex. I was sure she knew or at least suspected that he was gone.

Nia dropped down into a crouch and took deep shuddering breaths, her hands still reaching up to cling to my arm. I didn't try to pull away. There was nothing I could do except let her have the time she needed.

After a while, Nia stood back up, wiping her eyes, and cleared her throat. Her voice only shook a little as she looked around. "Well, I guess nobody's in there, huh? Come on, the elevators are this way," she said, moving behind Maebe to push her chair.

In avoiding her emotions, she wasn't being as cautious as I could wish, trying to take the lead herself. Too bad for her, I was seven feet tall and quickly passed them as Nia pushed Maebe around the corner.

No more doors lined this hall, but we were approaching another intersection. To the left, the deadly haze of the Vortex blocked our path; there wasn't a door straight ahead either, so we hugged the right wall to keep away from the exposed barrier and took another right turn. There were some doors along the left wall, but Nia stopped me when I moved to open one.

"That's where they do surgery. If Alice is in there, we should wait till she's done; otherwise, we should keep looking. She's probably either busy or with my mom in the Chapel. That's where we should go next."

It wasn't until this moment that I twigged to a memory from the first loop—well, one of the first loops I could remember anyway. Nia had asked me to save her sister. I thought She'd meant the corpse that ended up being Maebe. Maebe, who wasn't Alice at all. That Nia believed her sister was probably in danger somewhere in the hospital. It reminded me that Hands had suggested a problem with Nia's mom too. He'd said something about not being able to help the "pastor lady," I was pretty sure.

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I was looking for a safe spot for Nia and Maebe. Ultimately that would require other people in at least somewhat secure positions. Previously, I'd doubted whether either would stay in Forest Lake when they could have escaped the Vortex. Now I wondered why they'd stayed and worried they wouldn't be in any better position than Nia and Maebe.

We passed several doors I wanted to check out to look for Jon, but Nia appeared to have given up on this floor; she walked straight up to some elevators and hit the button for the first floor. The elevator immediately dinged and began to open.

"Nia?" a feminine voice said, peeking out from a doorway. "Holy sh-rap, what is that?" she asked the very next moment.

"ALICE!!!" Nia screamed, letting go of Maebe's chair to sprint down the short hall and run into Alice's arms. Alice, for her part, stepped out of the room and caught her.

Nia began to sob into her sister's shoulder. Alice had a messy Afro made with loose curls and was wearing green scrubs. She held Nia to her, and the sisters cried together.

Shit, Nia is going to be stuck telling Alice that their dad died.

That was a heavy weight to hand a kid. I wished I could take that burden from her, but voiceless was voiceless.

I hung back, watching. Other people came out into the hallway, other medical staff of some kind. I was starting to feel pretty conspicuous as, one-by-one, they saw me and retreated back into the room before peeking out again.

I sat down, legs crossed, and let my tongue loll out in a grin. Let them make of me what they would. Little by little, they took a cue from Nia and Alice and pretended to ignore me, which seemed a little rude, if preferable to torches and pitchforks.

One of the braver ones came over to check on Maebe, who was about halfway between us. She had strawberry blond hair and kept an eye on me while looking Maebe over and even taking her pulse.

"I don't know," she said when Maebe didn't give any reaction. "Her reflexes and pulse seem normal. Nia, do you know how she got like this?"

In Alice's arms, Nia shook her head.

The golf bag was already resting on the floor, so I took the strap off my shoulder.

"Do we need to be worried about that?" a pointy-chinned man asked.

I tipped my hat to the healthcare workers studying me from down the hall; all four wore green scrubs. I wondered if they had a spare set of extra large ones I could borrow. Apart from Alice, pointy-chin guy and blond lady, there was also a fit man with graying temples.

"He saved me," Nia said, pulling back a little from Alice but still leaning into her shoulder.

"His name is Oberon," Alice said right on top of Nia, surprising everyone and prompting a flurry of exclamations that amounted to "You know what that thing is?"

"Wait, how did you know that?" Nia asked.

"I… don't know. His name really is Oberon, though, like your dog?"

"Wait. That was a dog that got changed like that spider?" The blond said as she pulled Maebe's chair backward toward the rest of the group.

"That spider was creepy as shit, though," Pointy Chin said.

"Of course it was. It started with eight eyes and legs even without being monstrous, but what if this is what 'monstrous' looks like in a dog?" The same woman said.

"Umm, no, Oberon died last year," Alice said.

"So this big guy is what? The ghost of your sister's puppy, back from the dead and seven feet tall. Alice, your sister's pet is a thief, by the way. Those are the clubs I left in the breakroom." The man with graying temples said.

I was pretty sure he was joking, but I had just spotted a fireman's ax in a case across the hall from the elevator. I wasn't sure it was an upgrade to the clubs, but I was willing to make the trade. Besides, I wasn't the only one who might need to defend himself.

"No, wait, he needs them, there are monsters running around, and he kills them."

"Wait, you saw other monsters too. Were they spiders or like him?" Alice asked.

"He's killing those things with my clubs?"

Nia's eyes began to water, and she wiped away the fresh tears trying to form. "He saved me from one. It jumped on me, and he grabbed it and stomped on it a bunch. It didn't look like a spider. And there was another one I think he beat up with a chair. I don't think that was a spider either, but it was smooshed, and there was a chair with guts on it. Then when we came to find you, he was carrying that chair around until he found the golf bag."

"It's that smart?"

"He brought Maebe out to me too. And he covered her with the blanket."

"I've seen dogs do that," Pointy Chin said dismissively.

I sighed and leaned back against the wall. I was honestly more amused than annoyed, but I wished the blonde hadn't wheeled away the chair with my backpack on it. I wondered if they'd let me sneak in and grab my notebook and the memory crystals.

"Look at him. He does understand you," Alice asked.

Nia nodded. "He can't talk, but he understands me. And he drew pictures, and I think he was able to read this," she said, turning back to the group and pulling the glowing notecard from her pocket.

Alice gulped a few times as though trying to work up to something. "So, he really is named Oberon? Then, dad—I mean, he'd—is he?"

And then Nia was sobbing into Alice's shoulder again, the sisters crying together. Nia told Alice how she and Titus had seen the Vortex lowering and tried to run and hitch, and then saw a police car and two people getting in it with bags. She told her they crashed in the parking lot trying to escape and that their dad went into the haze.

Somehow Alice already seemed to know what happened to their dad. If she hadn't known the name 'Oberon,' I'd think she just guessed. She had at least some memories.

Seeing the sisters lean on each other, most of two decades separating them, this was precisely the spawn point I'd hoped to find for Maebe and Nia. There had been something about a spider monster, but nobody was bleeding. I'd need to find where they killed it and see if it had a memory crystal too. There were plenty of rooms here. One of them should be a safe spawn if I could just narrow it down.

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