Tradewinds 14: "No Way Out"

[shadesmaclean]

Justin checked in with the others, then approached the cabin marked Pine, finding the door unlocked, as Shades left it earlier.

While he was no stranger to intrusion, it was only of late that he was starting to get accustomed to intruding on unoccupied places. Sort of took the fun out of it. Though there was also a sense of things being too easy, and he had to remind himself that this place wasn’t that last place.

Lying on the floor partway under the bed was a notebook. He had seen it earlier, but decided to leave it alone since Shades didn’t seem to want to mess with anything, so he now took this opportunity to examine it more closely. Flipping through it, it proved to be a student’s journal, full of notes and boring day-to-day details as far as he could tell, as least until he saw the later entries. Something about the building of two weird sculptures, and strange lights and noises out in the woods at night.

After a moment, he shut the book, deciding to look at the rest of it later, as it was starting to creep him out in this setting.

He knew he had agreed not to take anything without consulting the others, but they were the only ones here. Saw no harm in taking something others left behind. After all, what Shades didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

Yet, as he stuck the notebook in his backpack and turned to leave the cabin, he paused for a moment, wondering why he expected that Sheriff Boggs fellow to just barge in on him, on the heels of that, found himself recalling a conversation with a different lawman…

…Justin sat on a bench with a beach view on Kon Kalona. Normally, this would be a relaxing setting, watching the tide roll in with the Kona kids playing all the while. Now that he knew his friends were going to be alright, he really didn’t care to hang around the infirmary itself while Max and Shades were receiving follow-up examinations of their injuries from the battle with Erix.

It was having Chief Toma of the Island Patrol sitting next to him that left him anything but relaxed.

Grunting as he sat, for the burn on his back was still giving him grief, reminding Justin that this man did put his life on the line for him during the Seeker hijacking, taking a hit for him when he saw the enemy about to open fire on them. That he likely owed Toma his life. Making it all the more awkward to think that the first question to come to mind was to wonder what Toma wanted with him.

“Pleasant evening, isn’t it?” Toma asked, settling in.

“I guess,” Justin replied, struggling against a lifetime of instinct in order to look him in the eye. Found he again wished the bullet graze on his leg would heal enough for him to go swimming without the risk of infection.

“I take it you’re not used to talking to folks in our profession, are you?”

“No, I suppose I’m not.”

“Why is that?”

“Have you ever heard of a place called the Triangle State?”

“Yes,” Toma replied, his tone turning more somber at the mention of that name. “Tell me, do they still mine crystals there?”

“Yeah, and they use people like me to do it.” Justin found he wished he didn’t sound so bitter about it, but he just couldn’t help himself. “I grew up there, so I can tell you just how lucky you are there’s no more gold here.”

“I see.” Toma nodded. “So what do you plan to do now that you’re free, Mr Black?”

“Justin, just Justin.” Figuring it wouldn’t hurt to talk, he told him, “Max and Shades want to stick around for a while after the Festival. It makes sense for Max to heal his wounds some before we set sail again, but I’m worried about what we’re gonna do when the money runs out.”

“I’m guessing your friends don’t approve of stealing, do they?”

“Hey! It’s not like I wanted to steal to live!” Justin snapped. “Do you think I wanted to be a streetrat?”

A long, awkward silence.

“No, I suppose you probably didn’t,” Toma finally said. “I’m sorry, Mr… Justin. Still you do seem like the ‘lone wolf’ sort, so I’m surprised you’d be friends with someone like Max.”

“We first met when we were stranded on an island,” Justin told him. “He’s the only real friend I’ve ever had. He watches my back, and I watch his. And I guess Shades is okay, even if he does piss me off sometimes…”

“Looks like you’ve come a long way.”

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Thinking about the differences between the Triangle State and the Kona Islands brought up an important question.

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you join the Island Patrol?” Now that the question occurred to him, he just couldn’t let it go. “You’re not like the guards back there, the Council’s nothing like the Authority…”

“I’d say it’s because I’m not like them,” Toma answered. “But tell me, why do you carry those guns?”

“To defend myself?… I, uh, never really thought about it…”

“When I draw this gun,” Toma told him, “it’s for one reason. It’s because I want to protect these islands and my people. That’s the whole reason I joined the Island Patrol. Of course, it’s also important that the people can also trust me to protect them, or else there’s no point to it.”

“You really are nothing like the Authority.”

“But the real question is: can your friends trust you when you whip out those guns?”

“Of course they can!” Then Justin paused for a moment as it dawned on him that this is what Toma really wanted to know from the start. “Because… I guess I want to protect them, too.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Toma flashed him a smile never seen on the face of any TSA guard as he told him: “Have fun at the Kona Festival, and enjoy your stay in the Islands, Justin Black.”

With that, Toma stood up, heading back to whatever he was originally doing…

…And Justin turned to close the cabin door behind him to find that conversation lingering in his mind, just like that evening.

Thinking back to the moment of the robbery in St Lucy, and found that all he was thinking about was protecting himself and his friends. Yet now he also found himself thinking about the scene through Chief Toma’s eyes, saw something that wasn’t even on his radar: a store clerk and several innocent bystanders. Found himself even more frustrated at this glimpse of the moment from Sheriff Boggs’ perspective, yet at least now he was sure Shades would agree with him about sticking around to explain would be a bad idea.

Based on what Mr Donaldson told them, he also strongly suspected that this Boggs fellow would probably have a very different conversation in store for him.

As he turned to head back to Max’s position, he found himself facing the steeple of that deserted chapel out in the woods.

“Shades?” Max chimed in, “Did you find anything?”

Silence.

“Shades? Shades?” Max again, sounding quite concerned.

“Yo! Shades!” In spite of the island’s innocent appearance, their encounter with the Twylight was still very fresh in his mind.

“Come in!” Max sounded even more alarmed.

“Are you there?” Justin demanded.

“Shades?” By now, Justin could picture Max immediately heading for the Academy Building. Shades’ last known position.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Shades finally replied, though he sounded rather distant. “Sorry, guys, I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Max told him.

As Shades continued his report, Justin happened to spot something in the woods beyond the chapel, telling them, “There’s something I want to check out. I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” Shades said as they signed off, and Justin could hear the relief in their voices.

As he walked by the chapel, he found it as empty, and eerie, as before. Venturing deeper into the woods on that side of the island, he got a better look at the strange blotch of bright red that stood out against the natural green of the forest. A very large red shape that, he noticed once he was past most of the trees, proved quite familiar.

“THE SLEEPER I”
by G H BARTOK

This sculpture was similar to the first one they found earlier, yet configured differently. A different-looking machine that made no sense, but built on the same formula as the first. While any color probably could have worked out on the playground, that bright fire-engine red here in the middle of the woods made no attempt at all to blend in with its surroundings.

“Potential can only be unlocked with the key of Initiative. Donated to blah, blah, blah…” Justin read from the matching bronze plaque at the base of the sculpture. More meaningless motivational gibberish, as Shades would probably say. This must be what the notebook was talking about, he figured, all that stuff about lights and strange activities out in the woods.

As he stood before the red machine, he, like Shades, noticed the keyhole above the plaque. And he, like Shades, didn’t like it. Could picture someone turning the key…

But he also couldn’t figure out what it would do.

Just like Tranz-D, that was what those sculptures felt like. Those nightmare days he spent there were by far the worst time of his life, and he wondered offhand if the damn things hadn’t given any of these kids here nightmares. Then again, they also reminded him of the rusted-over junk from the Bone Yard on Benton Island, capable of remind him of nothing but memories he could do without.

Justin lingered for a moment more before heading back.

[shadesmaclean]

Max wandered among the empty sports complex buildings, Bandit tagging along.

Just the fact that his feline friend was so relaxed on this empty school ground was a great relief after some of their more harrowing experiences in empty, deserted places. Still, he found himself imagining the Layoshan Islands as empty and deserted as Adnan’s. He couldn’t help thinking about Shades’ verbal tour of Lakeside as his mind’s eye wandered the paths of his childhood from one familiar place to another, wondered why this place made it so easy to picture the hillsides of Shipwreck Bay totally vacant.

Found he had gravitated toward the playground, and lost track of time, as he couldn’t remember how long it had been since everyone previously checked in.

After being stranded aboard the Twylight, the last thing he wanted to consider was either of his friends trapped in such a predicament. Deciding to start with Shades, who was closest, he said, “Shades? Did you find anything?”

No response.

“Shades?” Recalling all too well the staticky radio silence of that ghost ship. “Shades?”

“Yo! Shades!” Even Justin jumped in, much to Max’s relief.

Yet still nothing.

“Come in!” Even as he spoke, Max turned to head for the Academy Building, wondering if perhaps they should have checked out the Camcron Building before splitting up…

“Are you there?” Even Justin was starting to sound frantic.

“Shades!” Max was already halfway to the gate.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Shades said, though he sounded rather preoccupied, at least from his tone. “Sorry, guys, I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Max told him. Now that it was all clear the whole thing was a false alarm, he wanted to head back over toward the cliff overlooking the shore. “Justin’s already in position, so at least it looks like our radios still work here.”

“There’s something I want to check out,” Justin piped up. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” Shades said, so Max figured he’d have some time before either of them caught up with him.

As Max crossed the playground, he stopped for a moment in front of the green machine. The Sleeper II, as strange to behold as a lot of things he had seen since he left the Isle of Paradise. Even so, it gave him a creepy feeling just to imagine it sitting anywhere in Layosha, not matter how still and silent it sat.

Not just here, he amended, but anywhere else he had been, either, the thing just did not belong.

Giving it a wide berth, he went over to the log cabin near the edge of the playground. The gaps between the logs were spaced for easy footholds between them, followed by the jutting ends of the corner joints, protruding just far enough to let him to get past the eaves and up onto the roof. Understandably, there was a fence around the perimeter, even taller than the rest, along the edge of the cliff, but from up here, he could see over the edge almost as well as if he was standing right in front of it.

Shades had told him earlier that this area looked a lot like his school’s playground when he was a kid…

…The playground of Max’s childhood would probably not have been most urban parents’ first choice, but was safe enough in spite of its appearance.

Though Max and his friends had free reign of the beach and the patches jungle and forest dot-ting the island of Layosha, there was a place they were particularly fond of playing. Around the way from Shipwreck Bay, on a small stretch of sand backed by steep cliffs, whose only access was the harbor proper, was a more modest shipwreck. Anchored by chains of steel and bonds of sand, inspected and found quite stable, having already been stripped of anything salvageable, it was now the ideal place for the Islander’s children to play at seafaring; when Cleo’s father, Ian, saw how much the kids took a liking to it, he made a point of maintaining it.

Max stood on the canted upper deck, Cleo manning what was once the helm, each of them holding a stick, Cleo’s branch forked with a handgrip that, to a child’s eye, looked a bit like a power pistol, Max’s piece of driftwood he imagined was his father’s laser sword. On the lower deck, Carlton held a telescope he borrowed from home, where he scanned the horizon, spotting the fishing ships as they returned for the day, black silhouettes floating against the shimmering reflection of the setting sun.

“Watch out!” Carlton called out to his friends in frantic warning. “It’s the Cyexian Fleet!”

Lance dashed out from below deck, carrying another long piece of driftwood he held like a power rifle, “Where?”

“Dead ahead!” Cleo called out, pointing at the approaching fishing ships as they headed for the harbor.

Of course, there had been no Cyexian Fleet since their grandparents’ time, not since the last time all dozen or so Cyexian clans joined forces against Layosha. Not since the days when another pirate named Slash menaced the Islands. All the same, it didn’t stop any of the four of them from hearing ominous talk about a woman in this era by the same name, with the same dangerous ambitions, possibly just crazy enough to try it if she got half a chance.

A fitting villain for their imaginary invasion.

“Don’t let them board us!” Max called, brandishing his blade as if being boarded were a foregone conclusion. “We can’t let them set foot on Layosha!”

“Battle stations!” Cleo shouted, remembering lines she had overheard from his father and Max’s uncle Angus conducting training drills aboard the Darkhorse and The Edge.

Carlton collapse the telescope, stuffing it in a pouch in his belt, stepping up to what was likely once fishing gear, pretending the remaining swivel mounting was a quadra-barrel laser cannon, aiming it at the fishing ships.

They all stood watching the ships slowly advance, their child’s game having become unexpectedly intense, and Max wondered for the first time in his life what it would be like to face a real battle—

…Max was jolted back into the here and now as Bandit perked up at Justin and Shades’ return, the memory began to fade as subtly as it descended on him. It always intrigued him how his memory worked at times like this, especially now that he found himself in a new realm every time he turned around. Was beginning to understand how, for people as well-traveled as his parents, everything seemed to remind them of something else.

Now that he thought about it, in the intervening years, he had come to understand what it felt like to stand on the threshold of battle, and he wanted to chastise his younger self for being so eager. Having seen the carnage and mayhem of the battlefield for himself, he was just relieved his new friends were still with him through all of this. Personal experience cast the stories of the last great Cyexian War in a grim new light, made him hope his old friends would never have to see anything as horrible as Slash, or anyone else, uniting any of the Cyexian clans against the Islands in their lifetimes, wishing them peaceful lives.

Of course, now that he was older, he also understood that the real reason the Cyexians were reduced to occasional skirmishes, stunts like raiding cache supplies from Kinsasha— why there had been no real war in decades— was because of the rise of the Triangle State Authority. Once upon a time, he might have considered the Cyexian/TSA standoff to be good for Layoshan peace, but that was before he met Justin Black. Having heard his first-hand account of what the Authority was really like, he couldn’t help but feel guilty for the thought of all that oppression just for the sake of his former home.

Which brought him back to this business with Camcron Industries, which Justin said was some kind of ally of the Triangle State, so he was naturally curious to find out if his friends had learned anything else in the meantime.

[shadesmaclean]

As both of his friends approached his position, Max hopped down from the cabin to join them.

The scene putting Shades in mind of his old friends all hanging out at the Somers South playground, as if this place didn’t already make him homesick as it was. Seeing Bandit hop down only made him wonder what people would have thought to see them walking him down the streets of Lakeside. Justin wondered if he wasn’t getting a glimpse of Shades’ childhood here.

“So,” Max asked Justin, “what did you want to check out?”

“There’s another of these things,” Justin pointed at the Sleeper II sculpture, “over by that abandoned… church… thing.”

“Really?” Shades tried not to sound too ashamed, but for some reason, the idea of Camcron putting more than one of these things on the island bothered him more than he would have expected. Then again, it dawned on him that the number II in its name should have served as a hint. “I’m surprised we didn’t see it.”

They all gravitated toward the green machine as they spoke.

“It was there,” Justin insisted. “It was out in the woods, so you couldn’t really see it well from that side.”

“Sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Shades tried to explain, figuring his last remark must have come across wrong, “it’s just that… Hm… I guess it would blend in, what with that green color and all.”

“Actually, it’s red,” Justin told them. “It’s marked Sleeper I, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same as this one.”

“Mysterious…” Max remarked, wondering if that was where they were heading to next.

“I suppose we’ll check that out next,” Shades said as he walked up to the green machine, having remembered what he originally wanted to check out here. Even as he scanned the ground near it, he tried to figure out why this business of a Red Machine and a Green Machine bothered him. Much like the Camcron Building, and his mind’s association with another out-of-place building in his own world, having something to do with old childhood dreams he wished he could remember more about. “But right now, let’s see if we can’t find out what that weird call yesterday was about. If anything.”

Feeling odd about it even as he spotted the phone and picked it up again, Max and Justin watching with quiet intensity.

For his part, Shades was just glad that the buttons bore at least a passing resemblance to phones back on Earth. Perhaps form does follow function… he speculated as he hunted among the controls. Finding a button that appeared to dial the number of the last caller, at least if he understood correctly, listening to at least a twenty-odd-digit dialing sequence.

Extreme long distance…

They stood in tense silence for nearly a minute or so as it rang multiple times, waiting.

After letting it go long enough for his dead grandmother to pick up, Shades clicked if off in disgust. For all the suspense they had built up, it was just so anti-climactic. As far as he was concerned, if whatever that woman called about was so damn important, there should presumably be someone on the other end of the line waiting to hear from whoever it was they were trying to warn in the first place.

Then again, if she was cut off…

All four of them, even Bandit, jumped when the phone started beeping.

“Umm…” Shades answered, “Hello?”

“Director Grady,” a bold, gruff voice demanded.

“Uh, no, I’m afraid I don’t know anyone named Grady. You see, this phone—”

“Shut up!” that voice roared at him. “Don’t give me that crap about how he’s not in! You think you can run your own little agenda out there, do you? Well, pack your bags, Grady! You’re fired!”

Then his disembodied antagonist hung up with a loud slam somewhere on the other side of the ether.

Seeing Shades’ sheepish expression, Max and Justin asked, almost simultaneously, “What did they say?”

“Apparently, I’m fired.” Shades shrugged, wishing he knew more of what that was about. “No big loss. I wouldn’t wanna work for him anyway. He sounds like an asshole.”

As they stood there, it started raining again, as the sky had been threatening to do all day.

“Shit. Let’s go back to the ship.” Justin, for one, saw no more point in hanging around.

“Yeah,” Max agreed. This place started out somewhat intriguing, but without any further information, this was starting to get old. Even Bandit seemed to be getting bored.

“I suppose.” Shades tossed the phone aside and turned to join them as they headed back to the ship.

They were about to begin preparing lunch, when Justin, perhaps on some lingering outlaw instinct of his, happened to look off in the general direction of St Lucy, spotting a dot bobbing on the horizon.

“Guys!” Justin snapped, grabbing his binoculars for a closer look. “Don’t look now, but I think we’ve got company.”

Sure enough, it was a small boat, and headed in Adnan’s general direction. Even in this murky weather, it wouldn’t have to get too much closer for the Maximum to potentially be within their visual range, too, assuming it wasn’t already. Even as they tried to figure out what anyone could possibly be up to out here, Shades’ closest guess being perhaps some kind of routine check on the school campus, a more ominous thought occurred to them, recalling the first phone call they received.

They sent him! He may already be in St Lucy!…

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Shades remarked, recalling the fear in that mystery woman’s voice, combined with the fact that the guy who just fired him sounded pretty confident of some kind of consequences if this Dr Grady didn’t leave the Institute quietly. If this was the him that woman was talking about, “I don’t think we should stick around to find out who it is.”

“I’m with you,” Max agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Damn straight,” Justin said, stepping out to unmoor the ship while Shades took the helm.

Once they were set, Shades fired up the engines, and they made a hasty retreat from Adnan’s Island, abandoning all pretense of stealth in order to gain a solid lead on them. All three of them couldn’t help thinking that the rain, tiresome as it had become to them, may have just saved them a lot of trouble with its timing. After all, if they hadn’t gone back to the ship when they had, there was no telling how close that unknown vessel may have gotten— perhaps even landed— before any of them were even aware of it while they were off exploring the rest of the island.

With such a large head start, it didn’t take them long to start widening the gap between themselves and the unknown vessel, but none of them lowered their guard for a good long while, even after both the ship, and Adnan’s Island, faded out of sight.

It was only once they were well away from the realm of St Lucy and well on their way to parts unknown that they remembered the red machine. Shades, especially, wishing he had at least had the chance to go and examine before they left Adnan’s. So many unanswered questions, and now they would never know.

[shadesmaclean]

The following morning turned out just as cloudy and brooding as the last.

They again had breakfast and settled in for what usually turned out to be a week or two between realms. Over breakfast, the conversation centered around the Camcron Building and those two Sleeper sculptures. That building, especially, proved a tantalizing question mark that each of them had a slightly different take on.

“I still think we should have gone in,” Max insisted, figuring Justin, at least, would agree with him.

“Are you nuts?” Justin still couldn’t pin down exactly why he was so hesitant about it. Odd, given that he would ordinarily be gung-ho for casing the joint. All he could come up with was how much trouble he went through the last few times he simply barged into places without knowing what he was getting into. Tranz-D. The Harken Building. That haunted island estate. “I think we should have tried to find out what those bastards were doing in there before going in.”

“I think we were probably smart to stay out, no telling what they were ‘researching’ in there, though you can’t help but wonder…” Shades knew it was easy to be brave now, but whenever he walked past that place, he couldn’t help feeling as if he had experienced it before, in a dream or something, and the foreboding impression that taking that building lightly would be a dangerous mistake. “It felt really weird standing near it… like there was some kind of energy source in there… But I’m not sure. Maybe we were just spooking ourselves.”

“Well, I suppose now we’ll never know,” Justin remarked. Last night, in his cabin, he had flipped through that diary he picked up before he finally crashed, but there were only a handful of entries that had anything to do with the building, or those two machines, and none of them shed any light on what it was that was actually going on. Which only added to his frustration, since even bringing it up would amount to admitting he had broken their agreement, so he kept his mouth shut about it.

“I guess.” Max resumed his turn at the helm now that he was finished eating. As Justin and Shades continued to discuss the building and Camcron’s possible motives for setting up a research facility in a backwater realm like this, he spotted something on the horizon. He rejoined the conversation with: “Hey guys, I can see something up ahead.”

Both of them turned and looked forward, for none of them were expecting such a short trip.

Each of them had their own bad feeling about this, recalling yesterday morning.

“No… No way…” Justin stammered, noticing it just before his friends did.

No way out… Shades’ thoughts finished for Justin, though he didn’t like where his intuition was going with this. By different paths, they were working their way toward the same conclusion. “I’ve seen this shit before…”

Max looked back and forth between his two friends for a moment, the last to recognize, expanding before them in the front window, the Isle of St Lucy.

Again.

“Something’s not right here…” he muttered.

“You’re tellin’ me,” Shades commented.

“I am,” Max insisted.

“But how…” Justin tried to wrap his head around how they could have gotten turned around not once, but twice in a row, shaking his head as if in negation of reality.

“I think I have an idea.” To Shades, this scene looked exactly as it had, down to the angle of their approach, the day before. And the day before that. And he was starting to harbor suspicions about the day before that, as well.

“Don’t tell me…” If Justin could read his thought, he would probably concur in spite of himself.

“We’re going in,” Shades said, having come up with a perfectly plausible plan to test his theory. As he ironed out the details in his mind, he tried to fight back the panic lurking in the back of his thoughts, trying to creep back in at the thought of it being true.

“But what about Sheriff Boggs?” Though Justin knew he was asking mostly on reflex. “I’m not setting foot off this ship unarmed, man.”

“I don’t think Sheriff Boggs will be a problem,” Shades told him, a grim smile crossing his face. “And quite to the contrary, not only do I not expect us to go in unarmed, I think we should come prepared for battle.”

“Why?” Of the three of them, Max was the only one who didn’t quite get it. Even Bandit seemed to look at him with that knowing expression of his. Still, he found he was starting to get an idea. Whatever we do, we keep ending up back in St Lucy…

“If I’m right,” Shades said as they approached the port, silently hoping with all his heart that he wasn’t, “we’re gonna have to be if we’re going to stop a robbery.”

The implications of his words left a lingering moment of silence as they began planning in earnest.

[shadesmaclean]

Justin yawned with extreme boredom.

Like Shades, he had been digging around the general store for nearly two hours, and the clerk was starting to watch them with growing suspicion. Yet not enough to convince him this guy had been held at gunpoint just the other day. A fact he liked less than he thought he would, especially as it dawned on him that this guy might ruin their little party before it could even begin.

For his part, Shades wished he knew what time they came in on their previous visit. Of course, they sent Max in first to purchase supplies, while Justin watched from the alley across the street, and he refueled the ship. Now Max and Bandit guarded the Maximum, as he was becoming increasingly certain they would need to make a hasty departure when they finally left.

Turned out Sheriff Boggs stopped by again while he was refueling the ship. Asking the same questions he asked Max last time. And now, here as well, the store clerk showed no sign of having seen any of them before, nor of having been through anything so traumatic as an armed robbery any time lately. It was hard to imagine either a cop or a businessman being that forgetful with faces.

Thus both of them shifted back and forth between bored and anxious as the scenario only half played into their theory.

“Shades,” this was driving Justin nuts, trying to keep his guard up against something his rational mind told him shouldn’t even be able to happen, “maybe you were wrong a—”

“Don’t let your guard down,” Shades admonished, a tense look of concentration written all over his face. “I’m getting that weird feeling, just like be—”

—fore… he finished in his head as three very familiar-looking masked, gun-toting figures barged in through the door.

“Hit the deck!” the robber taking point shouted as the other two moved toward the front counter. “This is—”

Was all the farther he got before Justin and Shades fired several rounds of stun shots into their midst, cutting down all three of them before they even knew what hit them.

“Damn…” Justin felt an icy chill as he beheld the scene before him. This is exactly what happened the last time we came here…

Little realizing his thoughts and Shades’ matched perfectly.

“Looks like I was right…” Shades muttered, struggling against that sense of reality trying to recede from him, for he was now certain what would come next.

“What now?”

Before Shades could remind his friend to stay focused, Sheriff Boggs burst into the store, shotgun aimed right at them.

“Freeze! Police!”

Justin’s little nightmare began again.

“Don’t worry, officer, they’re only stunned.” Shades somehow managed to sound reassuring despite the fact that he was reliving events from two days ago.

“They tried to rob the place,” Justin added, trying to focus.

Shades knew this point was critical, that he couldn’t let the shock of their discovery throw him off for this next part.

“Drop your weapons!” Boggs ordered, gesturing with his shotgun, concluding that the would need backup to deal with this mess.

They dropped their weapons, both nodding to each other.

“Looks like it’s a good thing I was in the neighborhood,” Boggs remarked as Justin put his hands up, and Shades put his out. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll sort it out at the—”

As Boggs whipped out his handcuffs, wanting to bind this shifty-looking fellow first, Shades quickly flicked his hand over, snatching the cuffs and jerking the sheriff around. With a quick motion, he twisted Boggs’ arm, wrenching the shotgun out of his hand, shoving the startled lawman against the door he just came in. Shades stepped away a moment later, leaving Boggs handcuffed to the door handle.

“How’d you…” Boggs trailed off, simply staring back and forth between his cuffed hand and the door in total confusion.

“Sorry about that,” Shades told him, grinning with a newfound appreciation for the disarming techniques Master Al taught him. Kicking the shotgun out of reach, he finished, “but I’m afraid we can’t stick around this time, either.”

“Hope we didn’t scare the shit outta you,” Justin said to the petrified clerk as he retrieved his guns.

“Too late,” he replied, stumping away woodenly.

Shades couldn’t help laughing in spite of himself as he picked up his power pistol. As they breezed past a flabbergasted Sheriff Boggs, hoping to leave his awkward sense of unreality behind him in this general store, he remarked, “Well, you know what they say…”

“Shit happens,” Justin finished as they left.

Leaving the sheriff and the clerk staring after them, then back at each other in confounded silence.

[shadesmaclean]

“That was fucked up!” Justin remarked as the Isle of St Lucy receded behind them.

“What happened?” Max demanded from the helm. Judging from the rush they were in when they boarded, he was almost afraid to ask. For it seemed they were indeed wise to be prepared for a fast escape.

“It happened again. The robbery… from the other day…” Shades wondered how it could be so difficult to say the ridiculously obvious. The same day had just repeated itself for them three times in a row.

This situation, in the last few hours, had become much more serious than any of them wanted to believe.

“That… How is that even possible…” Max was still trying to wrap his head around the idea, to find that he was coming up rather short. Found he was wracking his brain, but even among the most bizarre of his parents’ stories, he couldn’t think of anything even remotely like this.

“We keep going the same way, ending up here…” Shades thought aloud. Recalling, while he was at it, an old joke his friend Vince, John’s eccentric bandmate, was rather fond of. Einstein’s Definition of Insanity. The most concise, scientific definition of insanity ever devised, Vince would tell him with that Cheshire Cat grin of his: Insanity is when people keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different outcome. “It’s kind of a long shot, but let’s loop around the other side of St Lucy and leave this realm by a different way. It’s getting kinda late, and we already know it’s just gonna rain for most of the rest of the day, so we’ll try to leave one last time. If this attempt fails, we’ll go straight to Adnan’s tomorrow and take the place apart ’til we get to the bottom of this. How does that sound?”

“I guess.” Though Justin already had his doubts.

“Okay,” Max agreed. “At times like this, I really wish we got to talk to Abu-Sharrah more about some things.”

“Too late now,” Justin muttered. Ordinarily, he would prefer not to have anything further to do with that peculiar old man, but right now, some of his sage advice would be welcome. Still, “The old fart ain’t here to help us. This time, we have to get out of this mess all by ourselves.”

“Let’s try it,” Max said as he took them around the far side of St Lucy, hoping that a different approach would do the trick.

All the while, keeping an eye out for any signs of pursuit by the local authorities. Though just like last time, they would have their hands full with those robbers, this time they had humiliated Sheriff Boggs while they were at it, and if there was one thing Justin Black had learned about authority figures anywhere, it was that making fools of them was the fastest way to piss them off. And Shades suspected that once Boggs recovered enough to remember he still had the keys to his own cuffs, he was increasingly certain it would be a bad idea to linger in the islands this time around.

They sat in silence as Max took them around. Once they were safely on their way from the Isle of St Lucy on their new heading, without a hint of interference, everyone started to relax. Shades lounged on the couch, and Justin went below to his quarters to do some reading.

He wasn’t quite sure how to break it to his friends, but he seriously doubted just going a different route would solve all of their problems. If there was any truth to that student’s diary he was reading last night, they would be in big trouble. Had no idea how all this was related, or what that research institute could possibly have done to make days repeat themselves like this, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that their troubles were just getting started.

This he thought as he dug among the covers where he hid it before he went to his night shift at the helm. Yet no matter which way he shifted the blankets and clothes strewn across the small bed, his efforts revealed no sign of the journal. At first, he found himself suspecting Shades, in spite of the fact that he had never once caught him in here, nor seen any signs of anyone sneaking in when he wasn’t around, but even as he dug around, a disconcerting thought occurred to him.

The notebook had vanished as if it had never been there to begin with…

“Yo, Justin!”

Shades knocking on his cabin door, jarring him out of his thoughts as he turned to this dresser, wondering why he hadn’t thought to hide it in there in the first place—

“Mind if I come in?”

And then he did.

“Hey!” Justin wheeled on him, wondering why he felt so sheepish when he seemed to be missing what he would have been trying to hide anyway. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

“I did,” Shades reminded him. “Is there anything I can help you with, man?”

“No, nothing.”

“You sure?” He had noticed Justin seemed to be spending an awful lot of time in his quarters lately, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was up. “You seem to be missing something.”

“Did you take it?” Justin demanded, though, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what would bother him more, the idea of Shades sneaking into his room, or the other, less reassuring, possibility creeping into his mind.

“Take what?”

“The notebook—”

“What notebook?”

“Alright, fine, I took a notebook when we were on that island yesterday,” Justin told him, deciding that coming clean was the fastest way to get to what he had to say. “It was something somebody left behind. In one of the cabins on Adnan’s. I didn’t think it would hurt anything.” Seeing the exasperated expression on Shades’ face, he added, “Come on, you don’t think this trapped us here?”

“No, I don’t,” Shades replied, wondering, strangely enough, if Justin’s sticky fingers hadn’t just done something right for a change. “It’s not that. I just wish you’d told us sooner, that’s all. Anyhoo, I didn’t know you were the bookworm type. Just what is it about this notebook that you found so fascinating?”

“Well, there was some stuff in it about Camcron, and about those statues,” Justin told him. “That’s how I found out about that red one out in the woods. I don’t know what the hell they were doing there, but they were really secretive about it.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Shades was increasingly certain his friend was sitting on some important clues whether he realized it or not.

“That’s the problem,” Justin explained, “I can’t find it.”

“For real?” Shades really didn’t like where this was going.

“It was here when I was reading it last night…”

“But not today?”

“No, now that I think about it…” He was in such a hurry to breakfast before they found themselves back in St Lucy, he couldn’t remember if it was still there. “But that’s not all. Though those bastards tried to keep it a secret, someone found out something about it anyway. They were working on something called Project Pythagoras.”

“Pythagoras?…” Shades realized he had been so preoccupied with those Sleeper sculptures and the Camcron Building itself, he had forgotten all about the name he had read, scribbled in that bathroom stall. At the time, he wasn’t completely sure it was Pythagoras— simply a misspelling or a misunderstanding between dimensions— but now that name was filling his mind with ominous new implications. “What did they find out?”

“I don’t think they found out anything else,” Justin said. “At least not from what I read.”

“I see,” Shades replied. “This doesn’t bode well for our plans. In fact, I imagine we should probably expect to end up in St Lucy yet again.”

“And I’ll bet whatever Camcron was up to on that island has something to do with it.”

“I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things,” Shades informed him. “Project Pythagoras… At least now it has a name.”

“So you think so, too?”

“I was kind of afraid of this for a while now, but this pretty much proves it,” Shades replied. “Tomorrow, we should probably just go straight to Adnan’s Island and investigate this ourselves. In the meantime, we should probably go up and tell Max.”

He was pretty sure Max wouldn’t be happy about the situation, but he might at least be curious to finally find out what was up with that Camcron Building.

[shadesmaclean]

When the next day dawned as grey and drab as those before it, none of them were terribly surprised anymore.

After all, based on both the events of the first three “days” combined with Justin’s intel about Project Pythagoras, it was exactly what they were expecting. Exactly what they were afraid of. And when they again spotted the Isle of St Lucy looming into view after breakfast yet again, it was all the confirmation they need. It was now plain to see that there would be no simple solution to this.

This realm’s problem had become theirs, as well.

Having already seen this episode before, they immediately veered away from St Lucy and made for Adnan’s, where they now suspected the only way out of this whole mess would be found. They wasted no time docking in front of the defunct school. Once they assembled their gear, they made for the green machine, Sleeper II.

Sure enough, that mobile phone was lying on the ground. Exactly where Shades found it the last couple times, now that he thought about it. In spite of tossing it in a different random direction each time before.

“As I thought…” Shades mused, then turned and told Justin, “That probably means your notebook is right back in that cabin where you first found it. I suppose you should bring it back here for investigation.”

“Why here?” Justin asked.

“Because I’m gonna be opening a little answering service here,” Shades replied, picking up the phone, “and hopefully I’ll be getting some answers, too, while I’m at it.”

That settled, Max went with Justin, wanting to see the red machine while they were out that way. Remembering how much it would rain here, Shades set up shop inside that playground cabin, not wanting to stray too far from the phone’s original position, for fear of interfering with the reception and missing his call. Sure enough, it started raining almost as soon as his friends were away from the sports complex, so he was glad the roof was tight enough to keep the rain off him.

Since last night, he had done a great deal of thinking about Camcron Industries. From what he could gather, it seemed to be a powerhouse manufacturer from New Cali, whose products seemed to find their way into far-flung realms. And New Cali, said by many to the biggest city in the world. Given how big this world was turning out to be, he figured their headquarters must be pretty impressive. Their financial backing considerable, to place something as expensive as the Camcron Building and commission sculptures way out in a backwater realm like St Lucy.

As the minutes ticked on, he found himself wishing he had a more reliable means of telling time in this realm; the fact that the events were repeating themselves meant that each of these things would always happen at the same time, which just left the question of what time that actually was. The weather was no help in that regard, either.

A short while later, Justin got on the horn, reporting, in a voice that still registered a strong incredulity in spite of all they had seen, that the notebook was exactly where he found it the first time. Since it was raining, Justin decided to stay in the cabin for now. Mean while, Max and Bandit headed back to the ship to begin preparing lunch.

As well as keep an eye out for approaching ships. Though it seemed unlikely, given the lack of any response the times before, they had actually talked with Mr Donaldson the first time around. And, as Justin very astutely pointed out, had the tactical sense to skirt around behind his back on their last visit, whereas this time, in their haste to investigate Camcron, they had sailed right by in plain sight. And then there was that strange business from their last visit before, with that mysterious ship that spooked them, whose crew, situation, and disposition, where unknown to them.

The way they figured it, if no one came out in the next couple hours to question them, it seemed likely they would be good for the day; after all, the authorities would soon have their hands full with a robbery back there.

Though it kinda worried him a bit, he just reminded himself that Sheriff Boggs was in the neighborhood, and he did have a shotgun, so it wasn’t like—

Shades’ thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of the mobile phone, nearly making him fumble it in spite of the fact that it was the exact turn of events he was waiting for.

“Hello?” Shades answered as he pushed the button.

“Director Grady,” a gruff voice he remembered all too well from the other day barked at him.

“You again,” Shades remarked. “Good. I’ve got a lot of questions for you.”

“I’m the one asking the questions around here,” that voice shot back. “Now where is Grady? Answer me.”

“Dr Grady has left the building,” Shades informed him, “so you’ll be dealing with me now. Now, you tell me, what is Project Pythagoras? What were you trying to accomplish?”

“Pythagoras…” the voice hissed. “Who are you?”

“None of your damn business,” Shades told him. “Now what the hell did you do to these islands?”

There was a long moment of silence, during which Shades was afraid the guy was going to hang up before he finally spoke again.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” the voice warned him, “but you won’t feel so smart when Mr Geist arrives.”

“Who?”

“Pythagoras is our research, and we won’t let Grady or whoever you work for steal it!”

Then he slammed the phone, just like before.

“I don’t ‘work for’ anybody,” Shades muttered, frustrated that his attempt to shake the other guy up, and hopefully shake a little info loose, had failed to yield any useful intelligence, “and you can’t fire somebody who never worked for you in the first place.” It left him with a maddening impression that this guy knew a lot more about the whole affair than he was letting on. “Fine then, we’ll just see about that…”

With that, Shades jabbed the RECALL button.

Though after ringing several times, the line cut off, leaving Shades’ questions, and a piece of his mind, stranded on the tip of his tongue.

Disgusted, he leaned against the wall and waiting for the next call. He already knew there would be at least two; based on their different arrival times, he knew the other one wouldn’t be for at least another three or four hours. While he was at it, he planned to stick around and find out if this Grady fellow had any other incoming calls of any significance today.

Now that he thought about it, the repeat-loop at least explained a couple mysteries about the phone itself. Though he figured it was at least moderately water-resistant— had to be in order to still be functional after sitting out in the rain like that— he was still surprised it could survive for days at a time. Now he knew it had only been out here for one, most likely. And while he could perhaps be mistaken, given the differences in technology in this dimension, it was his experience that battery life in portable electronics was a little too sketchy to hold a decent charge for days on-end.

As he looked out the window and contemplated how lonely this playground looked under this gloomy sky in its present deserted state, Max and Bandit returned from the ship, bearing thermos canisters of steaming hot stew and one of cocoa. Max was about to go take one over to the student cabins but the rain had let up in the meantime, and Justin made his way over even as they gave him a buzz to tell him soup’s on. As he ducked into the tiny cabin, he took out the journal, which he had been digging through while he waited out the rain.

“I take it everything’s okay back at the ship?” Shades intoned.

“Yeah,” Max told him, “looks like no one’s coming out here today.”

“So, any luck?” Justin asked.

“No, not really,” Shades replied, “but at least this time I didn’t get fired.”

“Okay,” Max suggested, “then let’s eat.”

While they ate, they flipped through the notebook, searching for any more clues about Project Pythagoras. Yet the lion’s share of it was just a student’s diary, concerning itself primarily with day-to-day life at Adnan’s, what few parts there were about Camcron shed no new light on anything they already knew. More questions than answers, and mostly focused on those two Sleeper sculptures than anything else.

After lunch, Max and Justin hung around for a short while, but just as they were about to head out and take another look around the red machine, the phone started beeping again.

“Hello?” Shades answered again.

“You have to get out of there!” the panicky voice of the mystery woman gave her desperate warning yet again. “They sent him!”

“Who?” Shades demanded, though he was already half afraid he knew what she was going to say next.

“Mr Geist!” the mystery woman told him emphatically. “Who else?”

“Who is Geist?” Shades asked, going for the direct approach.

“No time!” she pleaded. “He may already be in St—”

And then the line went dead, just like before.

Though already fairly sure of the outcome, he tried the RECALL button once more, just in case; it came as no great surprise when that line sounded to him like it was out of service.

“Who was it?” Justin asked.

“She didn’t say,” Shades told him. “Just like before. The same grim warning, then she got cut off. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I’m pretty sure whatever she was trying to warn us about has already happened…”

“And who the hell is Geist?” Justin added. In the absence of any other info, that was what he really wanted to know.

“Sorry, I got so wrapped up in the notebook, I forgot all about that part,” Shades apologized. “That guy from before— the one who fired me— said that someone called Mr Geist had been sent here, and he seemed to think we were gonna get it when he arrived.”

“But didn’t that woman also say he was coming?” Max pressed, based on Shades’ end of that phone conversation.

“Yeah,” Justin seconded. “What was he sent to do?”

“No clue,” Shades admitted, “but whoever he is, he sounds like bad news. Even so, we know he doesn’t arrive anytime today, so I think we’re alright.”

“We should still keep our guard up,” Justin remarked, recalling that mysterious ship they fled from last time they were here, which he couldn’t recalling seeing on any other repeat.

“So, what now?” Max asked.

“Well, I think we’ve learned everything we’re going to out here,” Shades told them, stuffing the phone in his jacket pocket. “What say we actually see for ourselves what they were doing in that building?”

“Let’s,” was Justin’s grim reply.

“I guess we have no choice,” Max agreed, he and Bandit exchanging a nervous glance.

That settled, they headed for the Camcron Building. Though Shades harbored his own misgivings about abandoning his stakeout before it was complete, he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was getting bored with it. That, and they were running out of daylight, plus he was increasingly certain they had already gleaned as much information from outside sources as they were going to. If nothing else, he was pretty sure at least some of that communications gear on the roof of the building was somehow tied to that phone’s long-range reception anyway, so as long as he kept it on him, he doubted he would miss any important calls.

Max and Justin flanked the entrance, power pistols drawn, while Shades stepped up to the door, stun-stick readied. On their previous visit, he had ransacked the Academy’s administrative offices, but never did find the magnetically coded key the door to this building seemed to require. Instead, recalling as he did that whatever those doors were made of, they were clear as crystal and solid as steel, he fired up both cutting blades, opting for brute force.

Four crisscrossing slashes later, the lock between them fell to the floor with a dull clank.

The very second Shades kicked the door in, alarms started blaring from all corners of the building. Shades hit the deck, and just in time, as Justin opened fire with both guns. A couple shots actually made it inside, while the rest were cut off by heavy armor plates that sprang up from a slot between the segments of concrete in front of the door, the remainder of Justin’s energy blasts splashing harmlessly against it.

Max took a dive as well, careful not to land on his injured arm. As such, he was the first to notice that the Camcron Building had thrown up blast plates over all of the window slits, as well. The alarms muffled, yet still going off, they heard, as Justin stilled his trigger finger.

They sat there for a long moment in understandable indecision before Max stepped up to the metal barrier with his laser sword. Justin, unpleasant memories of Tranz-D’s automated hell ringing in his ears with that alarm, ducked around the corner. Shades did so, as well, stun-sticks as primed as Justin’s guns to back Max up.

With several swift strokes, Max carved out a new entrance, the reinforced plate hitting the floor with a massive, reverberating slam, announcing their presence even more loudly than all the alarms.

After another long pause, to confirm that there were no auto-guns or robo-guards or anything waiting to ambush them, they hesitantly entered the main hall.

What got them moving again was hearing a pre-recorded voice over the intercom, announcing: “ACTIVE SECURITY MEASURES BREACHED!… EMERGENCY DATA PURGE SEQUENCE NOW ENGAGED…”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Justin demanded as they ran up to the nearest door.

“It means we’re running out of time,” Shades informed him, pondering the irony that what he said might not even be technically possible in St Lucy on this particular day.

The room itself was occupied only by several large tables, a dozen or so chairs, and a few empty boxes, having clearly been gutted from its original use.

“Where to now?” Max asked.

“Downstairs!” Shades concluded, remembering the basement level, and they bolted down the nearest of two stairways in the main open area.

At the bottom, they found a door marked Research Control, and Max again chopped down the door. The darkened room was currently lit by nothing but the dim glow of mostly blank computer monitors. The equipment itself looking, to Shades, decades ahead of anything he had ever seen.

Yet before any of them could even begin to figure out where to start, they were greeted by another dispiriting message from the intercom, even as the alarms faded out: “EMERGENCY DATA PURGE COMPLETE… ALL SECURED DATA IS NOW DELETED…”

As the room fell into silence, all they could do at this point was stare at blank screen prompts, and one central monitor that read: Data deletion: 100% complete.

“What the hell do we do now?” Justin moaned.

“I guess we really do need the proper key…” Shades muttered, for he really hated being right about things like these.

[shadesmaclean]

Seeing nothing of any further interest, for the Institute didn’t seem to keep any physical records on the premises, they filed back out of the Camcron Building to find Bandit waiting anxiously outside.

Having exhausted all of their current leads on Adnan’s Island, they trudged back to the ship through the pouring rain. Shades chucking the mobile phone aside with the maddening foreknowledge that when next he returned to this island, it would be right back where he originally found it. Justin, on the other hand, hanging on to the journal; though he knew they had a time limit before it, too, magically returned to that student’s cabin, and he had his doubts about whether even Shades would be able to wring any more insight out of its vague pages, he still felt those two damnable machines were as much a part of the puzzle as the building itself.

“By the way,” Max told him, for, seeing the remaining dishes from lunch reminded him of something that had completely slipped his mind while they were investigating the phone and the building, “I forgot to mention it earlier, but while I was making lunch, I noticed something really weird.”

“Like what?” Justin asked as they prepared to depart. Almost afraid of what Max might say next, in light of all they had seen lately.

“Well, you know how that book you found disappeared?”

“Don’t tell me…” Shades suspected that he had already figured out what his friend was about to say.

“You see, I think I made the very same stew that Justin made the other day…”

“What do you mean, the very same stew?” Though Justin already didn’t like where Max was going with this.

“Guys, I can’t find any of the stuff we bought yesterday. I went looking while the stew was cooking…”

“You mean we wasted all that money—” Justin began, already seeing it all sitting back on that pansy-ass store clerk’s inventory shelves…

“I doubt that,” Shades assured him grimly. “I’ll bet if we count it, we’ll find we’ve got the same amount of money we started this whole mess with.”

“I guess that makes sense…” But, like most things about this whole affair, it made Max’s head hurt just thinking about it.

“Donaldson…” The more Justin thought about their conversation with the old man, the more certain he was that he wanted them to go there. “That son-of-a-bitch! I’m gonna kill him!”

“I really don’t think he knows,” Shades said, trying to calm him. “It’s not his fault— in fact, I’m pretty sure we got stuck the moment we entered these waters. Everyone else seems to be trapped in some kind of repeat-loop, and I’d bet Mr Donaldson wouldn’t remember us, either.”

“Why don’t we go talk to him?” Max suggested.

“Yeah,” Justin agreed darkly, “I think we should have another chat with the old man.”

“I agree,” Shades concurred. “But you’re not killing him.”

“Then let’s go,” Max said, changing course toward Donaldson’s small island.

“When you stop and think about it, he is our only remaining lead,” Shades remarked. “After all, he was the principal there, so he must know some things we don’t. The only other thing I can think of is the kid who wrote that diary, but even if I thought he actually knew anything else, there are other issues.”

“Like what?” Justin asked.

“Like even finding him, for starters,” Shades pointed out. “We’re outsiders, so we can’t exactly go around asking such suspicious-sounding questions. And even if we came with the pretense of ‘returning’ his diary, it would still raise issues of what we were doing out here. No parents worth their salt would buy our…”

He trailed off as they came in sight of Donaldson’s island, spotting a second, even a third, vessel docked there. Along with Donaldson’s small craft, there was another small vessel, looking like any of at least a dozen or so they had seen around the harbor back in St Lucy. The other, bore white-and-red markings, they all noticed, matching that of the Harbor Patrol boats they had seen back there, as well. Max reflexively slowed down at this unexpected sight.

“Justin,” Shades said, thinking fast, “I hate to make you sit out in the rain like this, but would you go up top and hide below the railing? You’ve got one of your EMP grenades handy, don’t you?”

Justin nodded, relieved to have a backup plan.

And so they approached the docks at a more modest speed, coasting in close at a broadside angle. Max cracked the window next to the helm in spite of the weather, the better to hear what was going on. Shades put on a plain grey ball cap he had picked up in the Konas and stepped out on deck to do the talking while Justin secretly covered him.

They all had a sinking feeling when the only person to emerge from Donaldson’s cabin was Sheriff Boggs.

“Who goes there?” Boggs demanded, shotgun at the ready.

“Just a couple passing travelers,” Shades replied, remembering to keep Justin’s presence hidden.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” the sheriff countered.

“And just what business do you have with Mr Donaldson at this hour?” Though given what the old man had said about him being on Camcron’s payroll, he already had a bad feeling about his chances of angling for info.

“How do you know Donaldson?” Boggs’ eyes narrowed in an open display of suspicion. “You hardly strike me as former students.”

“He’s a recent acquaintance,” Shades answered. “We just want to talk to him, Boggs.”

“That’s Sheriff Boggs to you, boy. And just where did you get my name? I’ve never seen you before…” At that point, he seemed to notice the Maximum’s trajectory, demanding, “You just came from Adnan’s, didn’t you? What were you doing out there?”

“None of your business.” And Shades reminded himself that Justin’s EMP could prevent any pursuit. “Did Camcron send you out here? What have you done with Donaldson?”

“Camcron…” Boggs raised his shotgun. “Who do you work for? What the hell are you talking about?”

“We just want to see Mr Donaldson.”

“Well, you can’t.”

“Says who? You?”

“Says the Reaper,” Boggs shot back. “Of course, you wouldn’t know, but there was a robbery in St Lucy today. I lost one of my best deputies, and the store clerk was wounded. We got two of ’em, but one stole a ship.

“He came all the way out here— whether to hide out or take that old fool hostage, I’ll never know— but by the time we caught up with him, he had already killed Donaldson. I was just about to issue a report back to headquarters when you showed up. Now tell me, what are you doing here?”

“So that’s how it ends…” Shades realized they had forgotten about the robbery, that they had no clue how the original sequence of events played out on that front. “Looks like we missed him this time…”

“What’s going on? Who are you?”

“I guess you really don’t remember us, either.” Shades now knew there was nothing further to be gained from this verbal fencing match, so now all they needed was an opening to escape. “Looks like Camcron screwed you over even more than you know.”

“Don’t take an attitude with me, boy…”

“And don’t you ‘boy’ me, lapdog,” Shades shot back, deciding to pose one more question as a parting shot, though he doubted he would get an answer, “and one more thing: what do you know about a Mr Geist?”

“Just that if you don’t know about him, you ain’t supposed to. Now get off that ship. You’re under arrest.”

“I see. So that’s how you’re going to play it this time.” Shades was just thankful Justin would have the element of surprise when he made his move… “Well, I’m afraid we have to be going now…”

“And just what makes you think you’re going anywhere?”

Re-aiming his shotgun for emphasis.

“Looks like we’ll just have to talk to Donaldson next time.” Trying not to shift his head toward Justin’s position.

“Next time… Have you lost your mind?”

“No, just—”

Right then, Shades’ rebuttal was interrupted by another deputy stepping out of the cabin, calling, “Sheriff! We’re ready to… Who are those—”

Was as far as Justin let them get before popping up and stunning Sheriff Boggs. Shades hit the deck, and Max took that as his cue to fire up the engines. As they pulled out, Justin chucked the EMP grenade into the Harbor Patrol ship as Max poured on more speed.

Once they were out of range, Justin came back down, and Shades told him, “Sorry I made you use one of those, but if it’s any consolation, I imagine you’ll have it back in the morning.”

Didn’t care to find out how being thrown in a jail cell would affect the loop, and suspected Justin felt the same, but kept that part to himself.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” he said as he shook the rainwater out of his hair. He sneezed loudly, adding, “I just hope I don’t catch a damn cold from that.”

“I doubt that will matter in the morning, either,” Shades pointed out. “What matters now is getting our act together, and planning for the next round.”

“Donaldson…” Max said quietly.

“Not just Donaldson,” Shades intoned. “The people of St Lucy may have originally let Camcron in, but they didn’t deserve this ending. While we’re busy trying to escape, we should try to give St Lucy a better day.”

[shadesmaclean]

The next morning started out just as ominous and overcast as the repetitions that preceded it, dark and cloudy, threatening rain.

Again they ate in silence, waiting for the inevitable next step. Until they reached St Lucy, there just wasn’t much to talk about. Last night was all about strategy, today would be all about seeing how far they could carry it out.

As they ate, Shades recalled a haunting dream he had last night. In it, he saw the children of St Lucy being moved out of Adnan’s. Teachers, staff, as well as several men in business suits, whom he suspected were with the research institute, leading the students down to several ships. The kids them-selves looking both confused and excited, as if they themselves just found out they were moving. One even tried to go back for something, but the suits wouldn’t let him.

Though he doubted he would ever know if that was really how it all went down, upon waking all it made him think of was just how sinister the name Camcron sounded.

This whole repeat-loop scenario was starting to remind Shades of how people used to always greet him repeatedly at work. As if they hadn’t just met five minutes ago. Stuff like that got on his nerves very quickly.

What John would have called a monotonous phenomenon. Just like these islands now.

He shook his head, concluding that nostalgia would be no help here. Thinking about the past and his old friends may have been okay before, when they were still blissfully unaware of their true predicament, but now he needed to focus. After all, he really wasn’t so sure his old friends would necessarily be any more help than his current companions, so it was imperative that he got it together so as not to be a burden.

Predictably enough, shortly after breakfast, the Isle of St Lucy loomed in sight. In addition to preparations, they would need to stop over here first. After all, since the same day kept repeating itself, there was one problem in St Lucy that needed to be taken care of.

First, they stopped to refuel, confident that no one would recognize them. Sure enough, Max ran into Sheriff Boggs, who once again failed to remember him. Meanwhile, Justin and Shades took care of the supplies, finishing with Shades making an anonymous call to the police. If they were going to have time to investigate Adnan’s, they wouldn’t be able to stick around to intervene against the robbery— let alone risk getting killed or arrested themselves— but they figured if the local constabulary had a heads-up on it, they would hopefully be able to stop the robbery without anyone getting killed. Plus, it would have the bonus effect of keeping Boggs’ watchful eye turned away from Adnan’s.

All three of them wondering what the looks on those poor bastards’ faces were going to be this time when they tried to rob that store.

That settled, the made for Donaldson’s place next.

Even if they knew how to operate the computers, knew exactly where to look, the data purge itself still wouldn’t leave them enough time to take advantage of it. The next step was to learn as much about the island as possible. If they could find a proper key to that door somewhere, they could surely bypass the Camcron Building’s security measures altogether. Hopefully.

Sure enough, taking stock before and after shopping, they were indeed starting the day each time with the same money and supplies as before, just as Max suspected. Just as predicted, the journal disappeared again, at some point while Justin was sleeping. And Justin’s budding cold evaporated, as well.

And, as always, just as any time before, any attempt to stay awake simply ended in them nodding off at some point lost to memory, and waking up to the same dismal morning.

Wasting no time, they approached quickly, then slowed down to a more casual pace once they were in sight. Max taking the upper helm so they would all be above board. Mr Donaldson was standing off to the left of his home, chopping firewood next to a shed half hidden behind the cabin itself. When he noticed the ship approaching, he stuck the axe in the chopping block and started toward the dock.

Again, they pulled up to the tip of the dock, and Donaldson again stopped short of the dock, until he spotted Bandit, whose presence among them seemed to reassure him.

“Ho there!” he called out, sounding much as he had before, “I don’t get too many visitors out here. What brings you out this way? Ship troubles?”

“No, actually,” said Max.

“Mr Donaldson,” Shades told him, “we need to talk to you.”

“Do I know you?” Donaldson wondered for a moment if they were perhaps former students or something, but no matter how hard he looked at them, they failed to bear any resemblance to anyone he had ever seen before.

“No, I suppose you probably don’t,” Shades remarked cryptically.

“But we know you.” Justin’s words only added more confusion to the old man’s face.

“At least not yet,” Max put in.

“It’s a long story,” said Shades, “but the important part is that we’ve got an idea what Camcron did to St Lucy.”

“Camcron…” Donaldson paused in mid step at that name. “Did Boggs send you?”

“No,” Max assured him, “we’re not with them.”

“You could say we have a common enemy and a common problem.” Shades was hoping more to pique the man’s curiosity than to frighten him, but he was having trouble hiding his amusement at this strange conversation. “We’d love to stick around for some of your delightful tea, but I’m afraid we’re in something of a hurry.”

“But how…”

“Why don’t you come with us?” Max invited.

“We’ll explain everything we know on the way,” Shades promised him straight-up.

“The way to where?” Donaldson clearly starting to become suspicious of them again.

“To Adnan’s.”

“Adnan’s?” Donaldson put his foot down. “What’s this all about?”

“We need your help,” Shades told him flatly. “Besides, I believe you want to know the truth about Camcron and Project Pythagoras, don’t you?”

“Pythagoras, huh?” Donaldson thought about it another moment, figuring that these young men weren’t Sheriff Boggs’ type. And if they were with Camcron, they wouldn’t reveal so much so easily. That this might well be his only chance to find out the truth. “Just a moment. Let me go get my coat.”

[shadesmaclean]

“So basically, you’re telling me that this day has been repeating itself over and over?” There was no mistaking the skepticism in Donaldson’s voice, written all over his face. “But wouldn’t I remember?”

“No one else seems to, either,” Max told him as they continued explaining the events of their last four visits. “Not even Sheriff Boggs, and we’ve met him more times than anybody else here.”

As the Maximum sailed toward Adnan’s, they explained the situation to Donaldson in greater detail.

“You don’t remember getting killed last time, either, do you?” Justin pointed out.

“What?”

“You see, there’s always this robbery at a store in St Lucy,” Shades filled in the blanks, “and if we don’t interfere, it ends with people getting killed. One of them always comes out here to hide out or something, and ends up killing you.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Donaldson looked as if someone just stepped on his grave.

“This time, we made an anonymous call to the police before we left St Lucy,” Max assured him, “so they should be able to stop it this time around.”

“This time…” Donaldson was still trying to wrap his head around this whole scenario. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

“To you, it was just today,” Shades explained, relieved that Donaldson was buying enough of their account to hopefully make it far enough to find more tangible evidence, “just as it is for everyone else around here.”

“But you came from outside…” Donaldson thought about that for a moment. “If that’s really the case, then that would explain why they were in such a hurry to leave at the end…” Though he still didn’t completely buy this, he would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was at least intrigued by it. “But how is it even possible for them to do this?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Max told him with grim determination.

In addition to a coat better suited to the weather in a couple other odds and ends, they also rigged up and towed Donaldson’s boat along with them. They had every intention of leaving the realm of St Lucy the moment they managed to stop Project Pythagoras, so if they succeeded, Donaldson would need his own way to depart Adnan’s Island.

“Shouldn’t we tell the people back in St Lucy?” Donaldson suggested, wondering what they would think about it.

“No, I’m pretty sure it would be a waste of time,” Shades replied. “We don’t have any proof they would accept, so I doubt they’d believe us anyway.”

“And don’t forget about Sheriff Boggs,” Justin reminded them darkly.

“Yes, Boggs would definitely try to stop us,” Donaldson agreed. “I’m pretty sure he’s on Camcron’s hush-money, so he’s got too much to lose if this gets out.”

“The biggest irony,” Shades remarked, remembering their confrontation with from him the previous time, “is that he doesn’t even realize that he’s a victim, too.”

“You really didn’t know about all this, did you?” This whole conversation was starting to make Justin feel bad about what he had said before. But still, “Then why did you try to talk us into going out there anyway?”

“I’ll admit that I must have tempted you,” Donaldson admitted, finding it strange to hear about his potential intentions being played out without even having to do it, “but I was only curious. I would never have imagined anything like this was going on… To be honest, I was afraid they might be doing something dangerous, like weapons or toxic chemicals or something, but then they left. I figured if they were building anything dangerous in there, they probably took it with them. But from what you say, it sounds like the experiment’s still going, isn’t it?”

“Sure looks like it,” Max agreed.

“I see.” Justin nodded.

“And now I know I was right about one thing.” Donaldson stared fiercely at Adnan’s looming in the distance. And on it, a particular building. Found that, the closer they got to the island, the more plausible all of this started to sound as he remembered the way the Institute research staff and their bribed puppets were behaving toward the end… “That lousy Director Grady was up to something, and now that I’m here, I’m going to find out what. I’m going to help you stop this thing.”

“Whatever it is,” Shades mused darkly.

The island itself seemed to pose some grim challenge to them as they arrived.