Minhyun bent down and tended to Baekho’s wounds. The injured boy was well alive so the same trick that had worked to save Junior would help him here.

Ren had dropped out of the link the moment he died. With nothing left to mend, Minhyun couldn’t fix him. He told all that to Junior – and Aron – while the warm light his hands emitted tied Baekho’s flesh together. He had no idea how he was doing it. It was very similar to creating a mindscape but for the cells in a body. With no will of their own to interfere he was free to tell them to stick together in any way he saw fit.

Junior’s thoughts were a mess. He tried to think through the guilt and confusion.

“Do you see that?” he sent to Minhyun. “That weapon on the ceiling. I had no idea it was going to fire. Not even a second before. How did they do that?”

Minhyun forced a link with the researchers and saw the object through their eyes. If they knew more it was possible they were focusing their attention on a detail he wasn’t aware of.

“Junior!” he sent back, “there is a button camera attached to the gun. And it’s moving. It’s not automatic. Someone’s watching us and directing the thing.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense either,” Junior sent. “If someone actively decided to shoot I should have known way earlier. If there was even a five percent chance I should have known.”

Baekho fired an orb at the contraption that had killed their friend and broke it loose. The gun hung down on cables, swinging back and forth. He spoke up, not bothering to use the link. “What do we do now?”

Junior couldn’t even bring himself to look into the direction of his dead friend. “We were careless. We’re not making that mistake again.”

He shouted at the researchers. “Whatever your orders where, carry them out. Go on! Do what you were supposed to.”

The man stared at him in shock, clearly not sure what to make of it. Minhyun assumed they didn’t know it was going to reset everything the way Junior claimed it would.

It took a bit more yelling but eventually they complied, sitting back down at their computers.

Junior watched over their shoulders making sure they weren’t doing anything unexpected. Meanwhile Minhyun and the healed Baekho stood around aimlessly.

The grim determination on the leaders face kept them from speaking up. And if the time loops were real the reset would fix what had happened. Minhyun had to admit this all seemed horribly wrong and the faint comfort of expecting it to be deleted from time itself was enticing.

He had doubted the whole thing from the beginning but Junior seemed truly sure of himself.

A minute later the last key on the computer was pressed and the eldritch device came to life, glowing and vibrating. Strange charges flowed along the surface. The trepidations traveled into the ground and air.

The lights flickered.

Minhyun wondered if-

***

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.

He was still connected to everyone except Ren.

That was impossible, he had no memory of establishing a connection.

An avalanche of images assaulted his mind through Junior’s consciousness. It had to be the exact moment Junior received the knowledge. One loop, two, three... Over and over they had lived through this day and came so close the last time.

“I saw it, too!” he sent to Junior a few rooms over. “I woke up with the connection intact. We were still linked when the thing went off.”

The leader took a moment to sort out his thoughts before sending “This time we nuke them.”

***

The flight was different that Minhyun remembered through Junior’s second hand memories. Or third hand since they were the memories of a Junior from a timeline that didn’t exist.

With two boys equally convinced and detailed data about the bunker in Japan it was a very different conversation in the helicopter. For one thing, they were accompanied by a small army in more helicopters flying alongside theirs.

“That’s why you can’t see a future? Cause we’re on repeat forever and ever?” Baekho asked.

“Yep.”

Now that Minhyun didn’t doubt the validity of the loop claim anymore it was the tiger who was the slowest to accept the premise.

“And Ren died?”

“That’s what I told you,” Junior said patiently.

“Just checking. It all sounds a bit crazy.”

Ren himself didn’t speak up. Minhyun had to make sure he hadn’t accidentally kicked the boy out of the link network. But no, Ren was just keeping his thoughts to himself.

Minhyun let him think in peace and sent towards Aron instead. They were sitting next to each other which kept them for making eye contact. Stupid, bulky helmets. “How do you feel?”

“My head is spinning but I’m fine," the American sent. "Spent the whole week hoping we’d find a way to prevent the end of the world and it looks like we’re getting there. Even if – as you said – it took us a few tries.”

Aron smiled, Minhyun could tell, even if facial expressions didn't travel through the link.

“Say,” Minhyun sent, “if we hadn’t found anything to do, how would you have spent your last few hours on earth.”

There was a silence that lasted a bit too long.

“I would have…spent it with you. You guys, I mean.”

“Right.”

They fell into silence again, trying to sit comfortably in the crowded aerial vehicle.

After they were past the halfway point of their flight route, Aron poked Minhyun’s mind through the link anew. “Hey um, you know… After this is over… There’s this small bakery right around the corner from our headquarters, but I’ve never been there.”

Minhyun lifted his hand and put it down on Aron’s thigh. The other boy jumped a little but grabbed the offered hand, squeezing it once before letting both their hands rest between them.

“Sure, Aron. I’ll check it out with you.”

If only he could have turned his head far enough to see past the clunky headwear. Minhyun bet his companion was blushing like never before.

***

Junior was acting like a general commanding troop movements. Which was exactly what he was doing.

Teams of heavily armed operatives swarmed the evacuated suburb and stormed the houses Junior knew to be hiding places of agents of the void in waiting.

As Aron formed a huge titanium cylinder from dirt, Minhyun got an unshakable sense of déjà-vu. Of course he knew he had seen this before in a different life, but the feeling of repetition was uncanny to the extreme.

This time they wouldn’t tolerate going in underpowered. The target was the generator Junior knew to be hidden in great depth at a spot he could pinpoint precisely.

Aron caused a minor earthquake in the region as he slammed the superheated metal block into the ground with hypersonic speed, giving it constant momentum all the way until it reached the Anti-Aron shield.

Everyone who was inside the bunker had their ear drums torn by the entry. The generator was turned paper thin and dragged farther into the earth. Every light in the underground facility went out just as the explosion made everybody go deaf.

Baekho shifted and went down through the hole, flying elegantly in Twi. He carried a few smoke grenades. At the bottom he didn’t bother to pop back since the door to the corridor had burst open from the pressure anyway. There was no point in seeing whether or not the staff members were leaving their quarters.

He threw the grenades into the corridor – which made them pop into reality – and floated back up. Popping out on the surface himself made everyone except Junior jump in surprise.

“Mission accomplished.”

Junior didn’t look at him. “You mean ‘mission accomplished, Sir’.”

“Nope.”

“I’ll teach you, one of these days.”

The leader furrowed his brows, but Minhyun could guess it wasn’t because of the white tiger as Junior’s eyes widened in shock a moment later. “Wait. No!”

“What is it?” Minhyun asked, seeing the panic rise in Junior’s face.

“They advanced the schedule. The end of the loop is minutes away. We were supposed to have two hours left. Is there another device somewhere else? Oh please, no.”

Minhyun remembered the last time and suggested “We could ask the researchers. Maybe they are in contact with the other station wherever it is.”

“Good idea, we- Wait. Aron?”

“Yeah?”

“Is the power out down there?”

The American used his ability to tell charged particles how to move to see if there were any. “…Actually there is still current flowing.”

“Ha!” Junior raised his hands in triumph. “A backup generator. Naturally.  Aron destroy it.”

“Don’t treat me like a weapon you can fire.”

“Aron destroy it, please?”

The powerful boy claimed through the link that he was overloading the electric lines in the bunker. Would this be the end of the ‘end of the world’?

Junior yelled incoherently through the link. There was an impending catastrophe. Without wasting a second Minhyun mentally yelled at Aron, vaguely seeing what disturbed Junior.

“Future! We all die! Protect us!”

The explosion lifted the ground as if hell was opening. The first flame shot from the hole Aron’s cylinder had punched into the bunker. Then various rifts in the streets and gardens around formed, letting hot smoke escape, like a volcano opening up underneath the town.

The world went ablaze.

The spot of ground on which the five boys stood was left unscorched, kept cool and quiet by Aron’s power. Around them, the explosion raged as walls of tempestuous fire.

As the heat outside their protective bubble died down, revealing a blackened and scarred landscape, the ground sank underneath them. It was again Aron’s doing that kept them save as he traned the loose earth into steel. They landed hard but only after falling a mere arm’s length.

Houses burned, holes were still opening and the smoke darkened the sky. Nuest and their operatives were of course the only survivors. Fortunately the area had been void of civilians.

Ash descended like snowflakes.

Junior dropped to his knees, sobbing.

“We have a future,” he mumbled. “We have our future back. I can see the stars again.”