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Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

Since Kam had been the one predominantly giving information so far, I went first. As promised, I went over all the generalities of the weekend as I'd experienced them without getting into anything personal. I repeated the story about Yantho's unexplained bout of unconsciousness in more detail, described the note I'd found in the book I'd given and Kam's own analysis of it - she confirmed this happened more or less the same in her loop - then moved on to the gift I'd been given by Zeno, and what happened on the way back from making note of how I'd connected it to what she'd described in her own written account.

Then we came to the murders, including the ones I'd concluded were fake. First, the body at the bottom of the shaft. Bardiya's corpse in the kitchen. The blood stain leading from the research tower to the bizarre symbol, then the grotesque mess discovered in the mask chamber. The sabotage of the facility the Order pinned on my grandfather. The cloaked phantom I now presumed to be Hamilcar in the hall. Yantho and Sacnicte's mysterious deaths. Lilith's confession. The destroyed initiation chamber. Hamilcar and Zeno's duel, alongside Seth's attempted theft of the Order's data. (I'd forgotten to mention all the stuff with the boys, so there was a brief digression about that.) Samium's death.

Then, finally, the chaos of the last few hours. The attack from the roof, the different accounts of what happened on the way to Samium's chamber, Fang's death, the prosognostic event, Fang's note - Kam pressed for some details, which led to me mentioning the pantry and my suspicions, based on their behavior and the conflicting information about when they were supposed to have arrived in the sanctuary, that the nature of their foreknowledge may not have been quite what it seemed - and then finally the hidden bioenclosure and everything that happened within, including her own theory and the note I'd seemingly left to myself during the fight. (I'd forgot to put that on my list too, gods, there was so much.)

It was convenient that we'd already talked about how I'd died earlier, since it let me gloss over the story, and why exactly I'd ended up back in the main bioenclosure. I just brushed it off as being in shock.

By the time I was done, Kamrusepa was staring out at the fields, deep in thought. She let out a long, furtive hum.

"Interesting," she finally said. "Very interesting."

"What is?"

"It's... difficult to know where exactly to begin," she said, surprisingly uncertain for her. Something in my account seemed to have put her in an odd state of mind, though maybe that was just the slightly sour mood she seemed to be in generally.

"No kidding," I replied.

She was silent for a few more moments, slowly pursing her lips. When a question finally came to her mind, it wasn't what I expected.

"That book," she said. "Did you ever finish it?"

I blinked, the explanation having gone on so long it took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the one I'd received from Professor Nindar. "Uh, no," I said. "I read a little more of it, but it seemed like it was just more loose psychoanalysis of the Order's members that matched less and less with what I knew the deeper it got into speculation... and I was kind of out of it after the conclave, so I didn't really have the willpower until it felt like I should return it."

She pursed her lips. "I see."

"Why do you ask?"

"Just a hunch," she answered vaguely. "I doubt the note was planted by the class coordinator - as opposed to being slipped in with your luggage later on - but I wonder if he was trying to tell you something with it. It seems an odd gift for someone who already had a closer connection to the Order than he ever did."

I shrugged. "I've thought thing, a couple times, but could never figure out what could possibly have been. Obviously I could make a copy of it now, though."

"Let's put a pin in that for now," she said, then fell silent again for another few moments. She nodded to herself, seeming to come to some kind of internal conclusion, then looked to me. "Without getting into the events themselves yet, obviously, the most remarkable thing about your account compared to the rest of ours - and this had been on my mind since our talk the other week - is... I don't even know what I'd call it. The gaps in your memory. Split personality."

I hesitated. "I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it that. The other me - or, uh, present me, whatever - it's not like we were really different people. She just had her memories of the loops, and I didn't." I adjusted my glasses; the figure we'd seen in the library earlier was crossing the grounds towards the research tower, but I still couldn't get a good look at them.

"But it is remarkable, you must admit," Kam insisted. She raised a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "Su, one thing you should know - that I've ascertained beyond reasonable doubt - is that you aren't alone in experiencing the terminus of the time loop. All of us recall ones from around the time of its breakdown. The anomalies with the pantry and the discernible passage of time - these are common elements between all accounts."

I frowned. "That's interesting to know, but what are you getting at?"

"Since I began this venture, I've had the chance to speak quite extensively with Fang, and though not directly about this with Balthazar, have heard enough to have some understanding of his situation," she began. "Fang, regardless of what suspicions you might hold, attests to a situation more or less as you described being written in that note. That they arrived early, discovered the pantry and messages to their future self, and then acted based on that information. Meanwhile, Balthazar seems to have been unable to lose his memory of previous loops. Even now - though with how uncooperative he is it hasn't done much good - he retains more than the rest of us, snippets recalled via the one preserved in his mind." She looked at me. "The three of you - you're the only ones who experienced any sort of meta anomaly. Now, what do the two of them have in common that they don't with you?"

"Uh, well." I sighed, trying to think. "I guess neither of them tried to wipe their own memory during the loop. They either couldn't, or had no reason to."

"And you think you did?"

I nodded. "The other me knew that I'd remember that weekend somehow in the real world, and didn't want me to have to carry that burden. And she also knew that breaking the scenario - breaking continuity, introducing information that shouldn't be there - or letting me leave with more information then she'd agreed could have sabotaged the whole thing-- Trapped me forever, or something."

I guess I am trapped here forever either way, but still.

"Well, that's the thing I rather don't understand," Kam said skeptically. "You say that she would have wanted to preserve the structure of the loop, of this artifice holding the whole thing together this being you encountered to exist... and yet, Balthazar and Fang both flagrantly violated those rules, and nothing happened." She folded her arms. "Or would you tell me that revealing the whole truth and wildly derailing the course of events doesn't count as information contamination? That shooting you doesn't count as information contamination?"

There was no disputing that she was obviously right. That aspect of it didn't really make sense. In fact, I was pretty sure that it'd already crossed my mind at some point.

"There must have been some reason they bothered with memory erasure, though," I said despite this. "It couldn't have just not mattered, or the loops wouldn't have kept happening the way they did."

"That's assuming the Lady told you the truth, and we weren't somehow forced."

"Would that have even been possible?"

"I can't say for certain, I suppose," Kam said, giving me an odd look. "But in any case, the 'other you' couldn't have been motivated by that regardless, nor at least purely a desire to keep your experience unblemished. Consider her behavior. Why would she wait hours upon hours to erase her memory after getting it back the first time?"

"Well, it might not have come back all at once. I'm still not exactly sure what triggered it. Why seeing that thing..." I frowned, shaking my head. "Plus, she wouldn't have had..."

I trailed off before finishing my sentence, which would have went: 'access to the book'. I can't just tell her I got the book from Samium. That will invite too many questions I'm not ready to answer.

"But you see my point," Kam forged ahead. "Her framing the situation that way is suspect."

I frowned. "Well, I'm not sure how much of this was just me kind of, uh, reading between the lines," I said. "The conversation we had at the end - it's a bit of a blur, like something that happened in a dream."

Kamrusepa rubbed her eyes. "That's something you really ought to have led with, you know."

"I'm sorry," I said, my face flushing slightly. "I'm not used to having an unreliable memory."

She signed. "Well, nevertheless. The other side of all this, what's completely unique, is the idea of your loop serving some special purpose. Having a way it was - for want of a better word - specifically designed to go, rather than being simply emergent from a certain causal bent." Her tongue ran inside her cheek. "Hearing what I have from you about how this supposedly all began, it's more important than ever to recall that the true mystery isn't what merely happened in the loop, but its very nature. Any hint we could discover in that direction is paramount, in my opinion."

I nodded. "I think so too." It's also convenient for me to think so, since it de-emphasizes that I'm the murderer.

"Though it was interesting to learn that Theodoros turned out to be one of the culprits," she added, almost seeming to read my mind. "That's never occurred in any other account. Makes me wonder..." She tutted. "Well, we can save the details for when we're comparing the two. For now, I should honor my side of the bargain and summarize the rest of mine for you."

"Alright," I assented. "Go ahead, then."

"A lot of it, especially early on, was quite similar to your accounting," she began. "As you already read, Ophelia and I were investigating some oddities we'd noticed surrounding the event from the start, and after dinner on the first day, the two of us snuck out at night after noticing Theodoros - and possibly Ezekiel, we never confirmed it - leaving the abbey first. Combined with a few odd remarks made at dinner, we came to the same conclusion as ultimately revealed itself to you: That the men in our class appeared to me working together towards some end." Her expression grew more serious. "However, we didn't get much of a chance to fully realize our investigation. On the morning of the second day, you came to me with your note just the same, and the tour with Neferuaten also happened-- Though we didn't find a body in the shaft."

"That would make sense, if Theo wasn't a culprit," I said. "He claimed responsibility for that." But then, what changed?

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Kam nodded. "Much of the rest of the day also went similarly. We were interrupted during my presentation by a message from the culprit--"

"You were using a logic engine you borrowed from Ophelia, right? You mentioned that in your account."

Kam frowned. "That's... correct, but I'd caution you against drawing any conclusions from that. Ophelia herself pleads ignorance, and it's not as if numerous people wouldn't have had access to my things." She cleared her throat before resuming. "The Order called an intermission, we saw the Apega and the apparently-rejuvenated Anna, and in the bathhouse - after I had made my suspicions clear to Seth - a fight broke out among the boys and destroyed part of the building, though in my case it was Lilith and her mother who left, not you." She frowned. "It's actually sort of odd to me that Mehit let her go on her own, uncharacteristic. Did something happen to explain that outcome?"

"I don't know," I said. "That's part of when I'd lost my memory."

She clicked her tongue. "Right, of course. Foolish question." She sighed, running her fingers through her hair. "In any event, that finally brings us to the murders." She furrowed her brow. "The first played out in much the same manner as Bardiya died in yours. We were distracted by a gunshot from the other room - the product of some trickery - but instead, the victims were Seth and Ptolema. The former was found in a similar position, half of his upper body smashed to pieces by the side of the window, while the latter suffered a blow in the head from some manner of blunt instrument. We found that the World-Deafening Arcana had been used to silence the area, and the Object-Manipulating Arcana used to both lock the door and toss an object across the room. We, however, weren't able to determine what that object was, as the cupboards appeared to be have been emptied across the floor, and none of them bore any marks of visible damage. Nevertheless, the consensus was that one of them must have been the murder weapon employed to murder Ptolema."

"Couldn't you have looked for blood?"

"Well, everything in the room was covered in blood," Kamrusepa said flatly. "The wounds Seth suffered were quite a bit more spectacular then it sounds like you witnessed afflicting Bardiya."

"Mm." I nodded grimly. "So, after that, did you end up heading to the research tower?"

"No," she said. "The idea was floated, but we eventually decided on heading to main building, and hoping that we would find the rest of the council awaiting us there." She looked downwards contemplatively. "One possible cause that occurs for the divergence could be that we hadn't discovered Neferuaten's body, nor received news for the main hall at all... well, I shouldn't get distracted by speculation." She looked back up at me. "When we arrived, with met with Lilith and Mehit, who were attempting to get into the security center, but had discovered it locked. We traveled as a group to the sanctuary core to attempt to shut down its defenses, where we encountered Durvasa and Zeno, the latter of whom claimed that he would be able to undo the sabotage on its systems, but would need several hours to do so, and that we were vulnerable so long as the culprit controlled the security center."

"That's interesting," I said. "So it ended up being a similar situation to what happened in my loop with 'Anna' trying to fix undercut the scripting that allowed us to leave, just with a different person under a different pretext."

Kam nodded. "Presumably, the Order did whatever they needed to 'adapt' the script based on the circumstances of a particular loop, with more subtlety in some cases than others. ...well, there's more to it than that, but-- Well, we've got to keep this simple for now." She bit the rim of her forefinger. "While Durvasa, Mehit, Lilith and Ezekiel remained behind with Zeno, the rest of us headed for the lower entrance of the security center. After quite a lot of fuss we managed to get inside, where we discovered another corpse: That of Yantho. He'd been decapitated, and the controls for the room completely destroyed." She furrowed her brow. "Sacnicte was also there, alive, but claimed innocence, stating that a phantom had appeared on the cameras outside of the room, and that she'd suddenly lost consciousness, then panicked and locked down the room completely after she'd awoken and discovered the bodies. Still, suspicion obviously fell on her at once. We took her captive and made to return to the core."

"You said that you thought I was the culprit in your loop, didn't you?" I frowned. "But so far, it sounds as though I couldn't have committed any of these murders."

Kam let out a single, sardonic laugh. "Well, we're about to get into the thick of it," she said. "This was when we encountered Neferuaten, and it was instantly clear that her presence was of some discomfort to Linos. We told her what we'd discovered, and she suggested the best tactic we could employ would be to simply confront Hamilcar directly, an idea Linos was vehemently opposed to." Her brow flattened. "However, it would be an understatement to say that she has him beat on just about every metric in terms of leadership presence, so our venture was easily hijacked. You've heard what happened next already.

"You went down to the Apega," I recalled. "And learned that none of it was real."

She chuckled. "Well, no one really believed the idea at the time. We thought she was somehow deluded. Even Fang argued it would be best to proceed under the assumption it was reality." She clicked her tongue "Still, her absolute confidence was unsettling, and after that, it was if she didn't even care what happened next. Linos barely managed to stop her giving away the Order's entire game, and she refused to accompany us back up the the elevator shaft."

"Did I try to say anything to her?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. You were surprisingly quiet, in fact."

I nodded, biting my lip.

"In any case, it was on our way back that all hell broke loose. One of the golem groups attacked us, and Linos tried to get us to leave without him, declaring that he'd hold them off." She narrowed her eyes. "At this point, I was more or less sure about what the Order was trying to do, and I decided it was worth trying to force the issue. I declared that I would stay with him - despite protests - and Fang and Theo followed my lead. But the rest of you were having none of it and ran."

"If I'm following right," I said, "this group was me, Ran, Bardiya, Ophelia?"

"That's correct," she said, and paused for a moment. "I'll recount my side of the story first. After we defeated the golems - Linos simply abandoned his attempt, I suppose, which at the time disappointed me but I suppose in retrospect was the obvious outcome - we headed back for the core, expecting to reunite with the rest of you. What greeted us was a grisly scene. Zeno's artificial body lay dead, shot to pieces, while Durvasa had been bisected from head to crotch, his innards spilt all about the floor, while Mehit, Lilith, and Ezekiel took cover behind the furnace. When we asked them what'd happened, they recounted a tale where Zeno's body suddenly began jerking erratically, then turned and began attacking them with the Power, easily overcoming Durvasa and injuring Ezekiel before before shot and killed by Mehit. After this they'd inspected his luggage, but found no trace of his real body."

"Well, that's not surprising," I said. "He wouldn't have actually brought it with him. None of them would."

"...indeed." Kam paused for a moment before continuing. "After that, we asked Linos what was to be done next, and he declared that since Zeno hadn't been able to finish his work, our only hopes were to either find Anna, or failing that, to raid your grandfather's room for any clues as to his design behind what was happening. And at this stage we finally learned that the rest of you had never arrived, and left to seek you out. Which brings me to the other side of the story, I suppose." Her gaze grew slightly gentle, seeming to anticipate that I wasn't going to like what she had to say. "Because I was not there, I can't say for certain what happened, but this is the account I heard from you and Ran: Half way on your way back to the core, you ran into a second group of golems, ultimate feeling via the entrance to the wine cellar. On your way up the stairs, Bardiya stumbled and fell behind. The remaining three of you ran towards the stairs, where you were intercepted by a cloaked figure in a bird mask. After this, you lost consciousness."

"But we survived."

"You and Ophelia survived, yes," she said hesitantly. "For a while, we searched for your group to no avail, but eventually gave up and headed to the second floor in search of Anna." She wrinkled her lip, her eyes shifting away. "We quickly realized that all the doors of the Order's bedrooms were locked. Breaking down Anna's first, we found her - or the younger her, Vijana or whomever - dead, her chest gored open as if by a wild animal, and set on the bed with her eyes closed and her hands set upon her chest as if put on display at a funeral."

Oh, wait, I suddenly realized. I get why she's worried about how I'll react.

"We found Bardiya in the next locked room - Zeno's - in the same position," she continued. "But he was dead from some manner of poison, froth in his mouth. You were in Linos's room, also poisoned but alive, albeit dead to the world-- As was Ophelia, who we found in Durvasa's room. Finally, we also found Balthazar's body, similarly gored to Anna, in Neferuaten's room... and Ran too, in your grandfather's. So three of each type."

"I wouldn't have killed Ran."

She raised her brows. "I didn't say you did."

"But that's the obvious conclusion," I stated, then looked at her. "I assume Linos produced a full set of keys for everyone in this loop too, including the master keys."

She nodded. "That's correct."

"But you called these 'locked rooms'. So I assume there was some cause to view it that way."

"Mm, well spotted." She remained slightly apprehensive. "When we noticed the doors were all sealed, we asked Linos for an accounting of who could have locked them. He told us that - disregarding the possibility that more copies had been made without his understanding - then there should have been a total of twelve master keys in total. The ten copies made for the members of our class excepting Lilith, and original hidden in the abbey for emergencies that Linos retained, and finally one kept in the security center, which we'd taken from Sacnicte and he also held. We'd collected Ptolema and Seth's copies - passing them on to Mehit and later Zeno, which following his death Linos had reclaimed and kept, meaning they were all accounted for." She narrowed her eyes. "Excepting Balthazar and Anna, we found a master key in each of the locked rooms. So, since the Power was suppressed..."

I nodded. "If it was anyone, it had to have been someone with a key who locked themselves in. And it would almost certainly have been one of the two people who miraculously survived."

Kam inclined her head, saying nothing.

"But still," I continued. "There are other ways the trick could have been done. For example, you're not accounting for the individual room keys belonging to the council members. Unless you retrieved them, too?"

She shook her head. "Durvasa had his, and we retrieved that one, but Zeno didn't, and Anna-- Well, who knows."

"It could have been Ophelia, too." Even though Balthazar said she wasn't the culprit. "

"Well, let me finish," Kam brushed me off, leaning forward in her seat a little bit. "In your grandfather's room, we found a notebook that Linos at first suggested might have belonged to you, but under a bit of scrutiny he broke down and admitted to the farce of what was going on. Mehit was furious that they'd placed them in danger, and a schism developed over whether we should treat Ophelia and yourself or leave you behind out of fear for what you might do. The vote to treat you prevailed, but Mehit refused to abide by it, saying that she would return to the security center with her daughter and take refuge there until it was almost time for the transposition to take place. Though it was a struggle, as by this point Lilith was raving about her uncle being a liar and having betrayed her." She sighed softly, looking up at the ceiling. "We took the two of you back to the abbey to treat you with the Power, setting up in the game room on the second floor and erecting a large barrier around the entire building. When you awoke, that was when we heard the accounts."

"After that," she continued, and based on her tone of voice I could tell we were nearing the end of the story even though it didn't seem so, "a couple of hours passed where nothing happened. You seemed to be in shock, barely responsive. We kept the two of you under guard for a while, but that this point we were spread rather thin. Sacnicte eventually grew agitated and wanted to leave, saying that she hadn't agreed to this, and wanted to try and trigger the transposition prematurely-- But there was disagreement on whether, in light of Linos's confession, she should still be under suspicion. There was also a fight among the boys..." She rubbed her brow. "This part is difficult to summarize, but the atmosphere became very heated. Then there was an explosion outside, near the women's entrance. Seth and Ezekiel, who had been feuding with Theodoros, went outside and never returned. Then someone began attacking us from within the barrier with the Power, pulses of sensory deprivation, total silence and darkness brought about with Light-Repelling Arcana. It became hard to keep track of one another, and Sacnicte disappeared." For the first time, she seemed a little unsettled recounting the events, her brow knotting slightly. "When it stopped, we found everyone outside of our group, including Mehit and Lilith, drowned in the baths. The Anomaly-Divining Arcana painted a picture of how they might have been killed - a low temperature shock trap that had been set up in the women's gateway in advance, mostly likely - but not how the bodies could have been moved, suggesting an accomplice outside of the barrier. But when Ophelia scanned the area for anything living, or even ambulatory, there was nothing."

"That doesn't prove much," I said. "How long was it after Seth and Ezekiel left that the building came under attack?"

"Not long, but it wasn't instant," Kam answered. "I want to say somewhere between five and ten minutes. But I know what you're thinking, and the Anomaly-Divining Arcana made it seem like the battle happened only when we were under attack."

I shook my head. "No, that doesn't mean anything. They could have been killed by completely different means, with the incantations cast later to obfuscate that. Water is a classic trick to hide the time and details of a death, too. Sacnicte would the only one who had to die when it was all actually happening."

"You know, these thoughts have all crossed my mind, Su," Kam said. "I've had rather a long time to think about it."

"I'm just saying," I replied tiredly.

It was weird, hearing all this while physically here. It was unpleasant how easy it was to imagine it all actually playing out one bioenclosure over as she told the story, and found myself worrying about the idea of passing by the bath and seeing corpse's pointed out with little flags.

"So how did it end?" I then asked.

"Well, that more or less is the ending," Kam said. "We decided we needed to flee somewhere where the Power was suppressed after all, chose the bell tower... and that, as they say, is all she wrote." She rolled her shoulders. "What do you think?"

I pursed my lips.

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