Chương 169: 82 - HIDE AND SEEK

The night was long and arduous. Ellie and the kids slept soundly while T'balt was as restless as a nightlight. He just couldn't help but ponder all the things that Ann had said. An end to it all. He had only been a Redeemer for less than ten years of mental time, and already he'd been presented a way out. In his head, he was preparing for the long haul. 100 years. 1000 years. 10000 years. No end, no goal, and he was going to have to live through that with his sanity.

Elsewise he'd end up with the same nihilist attitude as the others, dreaming of permanent death because nothing on this earth mattered. He had solved it for this life. With his family: Ellie, his daughter, T'tania, and Acelin, who had been living with them all this time. He thought if he could see them grow up happy in a world he helped make function, he could feel as though he'd accomplished something purposeful even if it was erased at the end.

But that very idea of it being erased once he was gone tugged at his soul endlessly. In the next 100 lives, would this time he spent even mean anything at all? All he knew was that he loved them now, and didn't picture a world where they were called anything other than his family. But the fact was clear. This would end. One day, T'balt would exist and T'tania wouldn't. There wasn't a way around it. He had to prepare for that, but his mind wouldn't let him.

So he toiled awake for a while, even equipping a thinking loot so that he might get it all out of his system and still have time to think afterward. But it just made a dark pit into an infinite void. So he got up. The kids were passed out on the living room floor. Acelin, T'tania, and Genya had stayed for a sleepover. They were wrapped up, huddled together on top of a makeshift blanket cot.

T'balt knew he should've left them only, but some deep fatherly instinct told him to get closer and eat of the fruit that gave his new life meaning. He gently caressed T'tania's smooth dark hair and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She was a light sleeper, yawning and flashing her big blue eyes at him.

"Trouble sleeping again, daddy?" T'balt smiled.

"Rage, rage." T'tania smiled back, pointing her small, rounded cheeks to her ears.

"Rage, rage."

"Go back to sleep now. I just gotta clear my head." It didn't take long for her to drift back into innocent sleep, and when her eyes closed, he left the house. Hours later, T'balt teleported into a destroyed city. It was his city, the one he spent ages fighting in just for the right to live as he wanted. There wasn't a clear reason for him to decide to search here. He had been back dozens of times, and each time he found no one he was looking for. But the other options had been run through.

Can't teleport to places he hadn't been, and he had spent too much time scouring the earth already. But there was a beeping in his vision, a small red light that told his brain to look up. His tracker loot had activated. Without thinking, he teleported to the building underneath the spot and ran up the stairs to get to its roof. It was a rooftop club. Large stereos, a glass dance floor, and several full-service bars made the place feel like heaven for the teenage drinker.

But it was all turned off, only lit by the blurry moonlight escaping the dark clouds. There was a man sitting at one of the bars, head down, looking like he was nursing a particularly bad hangover by trying and failing to sleep it off. But T'balt knew just based on the location which Redeemer he had found. Monan toiled, trying to pretend to be passed out, but T'balt wasn't going to wait for him to feel better. He pushed him awake, and the man moved like he'd been lying there for years. Looked like it too.

His wavy dark hair had grown to the full length of his back and his beard down to his chest. Everything about him was dirty: his tattered clothes, his unwashed hair, and his oily skin. T'balt would've thought he stumbled on a live caveman. Monan rubbed the distress of being suddenly bothered out of his face before shouting, "Hey, T! Long time no see! How's it been, brother!?" A bunch of shot glasses were lined up on the bar. It looked like Monan was doing suicide shots of every bottle of liquor the place had.

T'balt had found him when he was three-quarters of the way through. He sat down next to the man and drank an unused shot of gin. Monan looked puzzled and then reached down the table, knocking several glasses over until he found one full of strong but cheap tequila. T'balt squinted at him before concluding that he had just walked in on an animal in their natural habitat.

"How have I been? I've been looking for you for 5 years. You left without saying anything… fucked us over pretty hard." He didn't say it with scorn. Just fact.

"Yeah… I did do that." Monan elected to just leave the response at that. T'balt decided not to push it. He wasn't here to start a fight.

"As it turns out, I should've just been checking any place with alcohol." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Monan perked up.

"This ain't just any place, T." he spun on his bar stool, putting attention on the rest of the club, which was surprisingly clean besides a bit of debris from nearby buildings.

"This is where it all starts for me. I've been forced to look at this place 11, 000 times, memorize every detail. The people, the drinks, the same damn song… It's a shit hole. People come and drink themselves silly just to pretend like they fit in or that they have a brain that doesn't think nasty thoughts… I missed it though. It had been a while since I last saw it. I was getting all nostalgic for it." T'balt scoffed.

"Hard to think someone like you gets nostalgic about anything."

"Ah yeah… See, there was once a version of me that was afraid of this shit—pandering to people. Walking to a place that goes nowhere. Trying to figure out the point of it all… that was a long time ago." He raised a toast for his second shot.

"But I like to reconnect with him now and then and have a drink with him." Monan stumbled to his feet and suddenly decided to take a piss in the corner. T'balt rubbed his temples, already frustrated looking at this man.

"I was hoping you'd be more manageable when I found you."

"Me? Never… the hell you looking for me for anyway? I figured you'd be glad I was out of your hair."

"A few reasons. First, I wanted to make sure you wouldn't do anything to reset this iteration."

"Pfft… Nothing kills me these days but me… and very occasionally another Redeemer. Second?"

"I want to know how to get in contact with number 2." Monan paused like he was suddenly reminded the person existed.

"Nah… you don't get in contact with them. They don't play nice, T. I wouldn't recommend feeling that one up. You'll lose your hand. They prefer to do their own thing."

"I know exactly what they're doing, which is why I need to talk to them. Tell them to hold off, but I'll help them as soon as I'm done here."

"Ain't that a little selfish?" Monan smiled.

"Asking us to put aside our plans so you can live in your little playhouse dream world."

"It is. I won't deny it. But you've been alive for thousands of years. What's 60 more to just relax for a while?" Monan spat on the ground and then rejoined with his barstool.

"What happened to you?" T'balt asked.

"I thought you wanted us to cooperate with each other. That's why you led everyone to Graceland, isn't it?"

"I'm boooooooored, man." Monan groaned, leaning a little too far backward, tipping over and falling on the floor. He landed limply, almost as if he didn't notice he'd fallen.

"That's all… I'm just bored." T'balt stood, watching him lie lazily with his eyes closed.

"You know about the Looter God, don't you, and what number 2 is trying to do?" Monan kept his eyes closed, showing no response to the accusation.

"So that means if you wanted an end to the loops then you could—""Fuck that!" Monan quickly shot up to his feet.

"I said, I'm bored. Not that I want fucking die... for good. I just need something new to respark the passion for life."

"You'd really just live like this forever?"

"Forever and ever and always. You wouldn't?" T'balt turned away from him.

"Forever is a long time. I don't know when my breaking point is, but I've learned enough about myself to know that I have one. It'll probably take fewer resets than I care to admit... But we're not the only ones in this world. Everyone else should have a right to go on just as much as we do. And since we might be the only ones that can make that happen, make everything normal again, then I think we owe it to them to try." Monan folded his arms, taking a serious note of T'balt's answer.

"Then go now. Go save the world. You don't need me. You don't need number 2."

"You know I can't. My family, I… I need to know what it's like to live happy before I go back to… what I was before." His own words severed his heart. If Zero Day had never happened, he'd still be living in a big empty house with a girl who didn't love him and a family who hated him. No direction. No purpose. Nothing. And he wouldn't know how to regain his sense of self because he wouldn't know what happened next. Monan started to laugh.

"Even if you could live to that old… you know what happens when you die. That little child of yours goes poof, right back into the fuckin ether. Doesn't matter how old she is because we're the center of the universe. No one else."

"I know… I think about that every day… Are you all certain that there isn't a way to get her back?" Monan nodded.

"Say, if I got shitfaced and tripped off this building or the gingerbread suddenly decided to take a nap in the ocean, it's all over."

"I can't just accept that there's nothing we can do. There's gotta be something. A checkpoint. Something."

"Checkpoint? You must have this confused with some other bullshit. No matter when you die, it's back to zero day. Not only do you not get your kid back, but no one you know right now will ever be the same as you know them now."

"What are you talking about?"

"Listen, T, I'm gonna really need you to get this through your thick fucking skull this time. YOU DON'T GET IT BACK… Every time you reset, there's something different. It ain't the world. It's you. Your knowledge is different. Your perception is different. Your thoughts. Everything about you. So no matter how hard you try to replicate everything down to the exact detail, you can't. You'll scratch your ass a different way. You'll duck when last time you dodged.

And not to give you a lesson in psychology, but people respond differently based on the tonality of every word you say. And I don't suppose you plan on keeping track of each syllable that comes out of your mouth… I thought not. Trying to do things the same way works fine for a couple weeks, but a couple years out from Zero Day…. Man, you get hit hard with that butterfly effect shit."

"I get it. So if we reset die, I'll never get back the Ellie I know now. Acelin won't grow into an adult the same way. I can have another kid, but it won't be my little thinker. Nothing will be the same."

"That's alright, bud. Cuz you know what will be? Your good pal, Monan. I'll always be here, and I'll never change, brother." Monan put an arm over T'balt's shoulder, but T'balt rejected it.

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm still not your brother. But that doesn't mean you can't come back and stay in Graceland."

"And why the hell would I do that?"

"So that I have one less Redeemer to worry about."

"I want you to ask yourself seriously… do you really want me living that close to you?" T'balt scratched his head.

"I didn't say you weren't an asshole. I've been living with Ellie for a while now. I'm still not a Christian, but I've realized that forgiveness is done for oneself. I don't trust you. But I think I understand why you did to me what you did. I just disagree with it. At least for me, things still matter." Monan closed his eyes and sat back at the bar to finish his remaining shots.

"Alright, fine… If that's the way it's gonna be. I guess I gotta see what happens. I'll be back." T'balt nodded and teleported back home. It would take several days before Monan found his way back to Graceland. On that day, he was drinking as well and stumbled across the land bridge. But he didn't introduce himself to its guards. He slipped past them under the cover of night and the loot of shadows. He wanted to observe the city, see what it had become in his absence. But he found himself disgusted with it all.

Normalcy was not what he wanted. It was the most boring ending he could think of…

"Sorry, bud. I'm not feeling the domesticated storyline."