It was the 27^th of March and they had made no progress. The end was 5 hours away. Every further lead had turned out a dead end.

Minhyun hadn’t slept all night. There had to be something they could do.

Junior and Aron were missing at breakfast. Minhyun didn’t see them the rest of the day. He hung around Ren and Baekho but the two didn’t have much in common and the conversations were stilted.

There wasn’t much to do, so he meditated a bit until construction noises disturbed him. Expanding his thoughts a little he could tell that several operatives were stationed on the roof and working on something big. Junior and Aron were both there. The boy with the tranation ability created many identical satellite dish arrays from a templet.

Was there something they could do last minute?

He stayed in his room. If they needed him they knew where to find him. But he couldn’t keep his curiosity down.

Careful not to disrupt an important ongoing process he knocked on the door of Junior’s consciousness.

The waking mindscape was different from the dreamscape in that it was much more coherent but a lot less telling. Peoples’ surface thoughts didn’t give away all the juicy bits their subconscious processed during the night. It was almost like looking through Junior’s eyes, but filtered strongly by what the boy considered important or relevant in the moment, giving Minhyun strong tunnel vision.

“Hey,” Junior said mentally. “What’s up?”

“You sound chipper. Do you have good news?” Minhyun sent up.

“Maybe it’s nothing. If it works I’ll tell you next time.”

“Next time?”

“Sorry, I have to coordinate a lot of these arrays across the globe. I’d love to chat but today of all days we’re short on staff. Sent home all the unimportant ones. If I had knowns we’d need the programmers then- Sorry, I really have to go.”

“Alright.” Minhyun severed the link. What was that about? Well if it prevented the end of the world, he’d know soon.

***

It was the 27^th of March and they had made no progress. The end was 5 hours away. Every further lead had turned out a dead end.

Minhyun hadn’t slept all night. There had to be something they could do.

Junior stormed into the dining room during breakfast, startling everyone except Ren who must have felt his emotions before he entered.

“Listen up,” he said, grinning. “This is going to sound mad, but trust me.”

When he was sure he had everybody’s attention he continued. “Were stuck in a time loop. I remember this day from last time. We’re living today for at least the fourth time now. And the best part, I’m probably the only person on earth who knows this is happening. It’s my ability.”

“Which means,” said Ren, immediately accepting the outrageous idea, “the agents of the void keep making the same mistakes every time. If we can find out where they are-“

“Japan.” Junior waved them to follow him. “Last loop, which was the third one, we tried to find out if there was anything odd going on in the seconds before the reset. Since I can now bring information into the next loop that’s a viable tactic. Turns out there is a massive radio wave surge somewhere near Tokyo seconds before it all ends.”

The four boys were trudging behind their leader who dashed through the corridors.

“It’ll take us one hour to Japan. There we’ll try to pinpoint the source of the signal. But that’s the worst case. Now that we have a specific city we should make a lot more progress. Let’s see if we can stop this looping business.”

***

It was the 27^th of March and they had made no progress. The end was 5 hours away. Every further lead had turned out a dead end.

Minhyun hadn’t slept all night. There had to be something they could do.

Junior stormed into the room with several man trailing behind him. They distributed gear. Helmets? Weren’t those for helicopter pilots? Minhyun realized that they were going to be flying.

“Alright boys, fifth try.”

***

A few minutes later they were in the air, still digesting the news. A coastal area on the far side of Japan was the source of all those time loops. If those loops were really happening. It all seemed a bit strange to Minhyun.

He was in the loud, tight, wobbly helicopter, sitting close to Aron. He established a link and they did their best to calm each other down during the uncomfortable flight.

***

“We have less than one minute left.” Junior was tearing at his hair, turning back and forth. They had wandered through the neighborhood but found no sign of activity that hinted at the agents of the void.

“Aron?”

“Yes, leader?”

“Level the area.”

Several of the accompanying operatives protested and Minhyun was tempted to join them. The whole suburban town had been evacuated under the pretense of a chemical spill but total destruction was still a bit excessive.

“Are… are you sure?” Aron hesitated to comply but had instinctively taken on the stance Minhyun new as his ‘about to use amazing powers’ posture.

“Yes, we’re about to reset in a few seconds. If we stop looping and the damage becomes permanent it would still be worth it. If not we can take the information for next time. Do it. Now!”

Aron caused an upheaval of hellish proportions. Minhyun pressed his hands on his ears to escape the overwhelming sound. No earthquake could have caused that much devastation. It was as if the ground exploded as far as the eye could see, leaving only the small piece of street unaffected on which they all stood, reverse avalanches shooting up around them and coming back down like a meteor shower.

Three seconds to the end of the world.

A force field was uncovered. There had been a deeply hidden substructure, immune to Aron’s shenanigans.

Junior squinted through the settling dust. “Sons of bi-“