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Frank straps on his gear with the efficiency of a lifer in the military. Which he is.
He’s been in and out of service since he was 17 and they let him in. It’s a good job. Steady meals. He’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
But this latest promotion – he’s not actually sure what he thinks of it.
‘Time Loops’ they’d told him like that was meant to mean something. Give him a gun, point him at a thing and he’d kill it dead. Aliens? He could deal with that, though they didn’t have any that he knew of. No instead it was ‘Time Loops’. What a joke.
The first time they send him in he doesn’t even know what’s happening, tethered to the base station with a titanium lead and he watched the kid get up go downstairs, then the world sort of reset and the kid gets up and goes downstairs again. He watches it five times before he grabs the kid and drags him out of the loop.
The mission is a success and they throw big science words at him that he doesn’t understand. He saved a kid though, so that’s pretty good.
By the time he hits Alister’s Time Loop he’s been doing it for a year and he has seen some weird stuff. People who were aware of the loop and despairing, people who had to live nightmares over and over again, people who’d been shot in the head and were reliving the last moments of their life on repeat and when he dragged them through they usually died, but he likes to think they’d be okay with that rather than torture forever.
Alister though is bundled up in his Time Loop sitting pretty and living an amazing life. His words resets like all the others, but every day he goes out an lives. He’s been places Frank’s never even heard of. Done things that Frank didn’t know you could, and when Frank says as much he laughs and admits he died doing them a few times but it was worth it.
It’s a strange thing, dragging Alister out of his Time Loop, but orders are orders. And even though Alister gets a haunted look on his face when the clock keeps going Frank doesn’t apologise, just sets him on the med gurney, pats his face for comfort and goes to write his mission report.
But really, Time Loops were weird and he was glad he’d yet to be stuck in one.