Closing the Loop

The monitor flickered to life, casting a pale blue glow over Elias’ face. He winced, shielding his eyes until the brightness stabilized. The wallpaper was a generic photograph of a rolling green hill, absurdly peaceful against the frozen mud outside.

He moved the mouse, the cursor gliding with a smoothness that felt wrong after the rough mechanics of a siege engine. He found the taskbar, his heart hammering against his ribs, and hovered over the clock in the corner.

10:42 PM.

He took a breath. His fingers trembled as he clicked the date.

Thursday, December 14, 2023.

Elias sat frozen in the ergonomic chair, the cheap vinyl creaking beneath him. In his memory the timeline ran straight, a linear progression from the library in South Dakota to the streets of Córdoba, to the blood-soaked snows of Aargau. But the screen told him that while he had spent months living a lifetime of war and politics in the 10th century, the world he had left behind had waited.

He opened a browser and pulled up a news site, his eyes scanning the headlines with frantic desperation. They were a blur of mundane horrors – stock market fluctuations, a gridlocked highway in Minneapolis. No report of a history student in Brookings gone missing, no manhunt for a medieval warlord in chainmail. Just the indifferent machinery of the modern world grinding on, oblivious to the anomalies that had walked through its door.

Elias’ stomach lurched. He clicked to another site, then another, and searched his own name. Elias Larson, South Dakota State University.

The results were sparse. A listing for a Dean’s List achievement two years prior. A blurry photograph of him in the background of a high school play. No obituary. No missing-person notice. He might have stepped out for coffee.

“It’s been months,” Elias whispered, the words sounding like a confession in the quiet of the room. “Years. I’ve been gone for years, and... nothing.”

He stared at the screen, his reflection in the dark glass superimposed over the news ticker – a gaunt, hollow-cheeked stranger with dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes. The soft, nerdy boy who had checked his syllabus on this same monitor was gone. A warlord sat in his place, blood under his fingernails and the memory of a Caliphate on his shoulders.

“It’s tonight,” he said, the shock turning to cold, dawning horror. “The night I left. It’s tonight.”

Elias pushed away from the desk, the chair rolling on its casters until it bumped the wall. The universe had not only moved him and Dmitri together through space; it had folded time back on itself like a crumpled letter. He was not returning to his own era. He was returning to the exact moment he had left.

He walked back into the living room, the blue glare of the screen burned into his vision. Dmitri had not moved. The Bulgarian stood at the picture window, peering through a slit in the blinds like a sentry on a castle wall, one hand resting on the pommel of his scimitar. The amber glow of the streetlamp caught the steel links of his hauberk and made of him a statue in burnished bronze and shadow.

“The street is quiet,” Dmitri rumbled without turning. “But the ground, it vibrates constantly.” He gestured with a gauntleted hand toward the floor. “There is a beast beneath us.”

“That’s just a train,” Elias murmured, and went to the bedroom.

The quiet there was suffocating. He stripped off the layers of history. The heavy, mud-crusted braies fell to the floor, followed by the stained linen undertunic. The smell of the siege rose from the fabric like a miasma, clinging to his skin even as he stood naked in the sterile chill.

He dressed with trembling urgency. The dark jeans hung loose on his hips, the denim impossibly light and constricting after medieval wool. A fleece-lined hoodie replaced the fur-lined gambeson. He zipped it to his chin and buried his nose in the synthetic fabric, trying to drive out the scent of the stables with the chemical smell of laundry detergent.

His wallet lay in the top drawer of the nightstand, exactly where he had left it on a night that felt like a lifetime ago. His driver’s license stared back at him, the photograph showing a younger, softer version of himself, the eyes bright with a naive boredom he no longer recognized.

He pulled on his winter coat, the synthetic shell rustling loudly in the quiet house, and checked his pockets. Wallet. Keys. The armor of the 21st century.

“I need to go out,” Elias said, stepping back into the living room.

Dmitri turned from the window, slow and deliberate. His gaze swept over Elias, and a muscle pulsed in his jaw.

“What are you hiding under?” He reached out, the heavy steel gauntlet brushing the soft fabric of Elias’ sleeve. “This garb has no substance. It will not turn a blade. How will it stop the cold?”

“Blades are different here.” Elias touched the cold, metal-plated arm. “You can take the armor off. You won’t need it.”

Dmitri hesitated, his hand lingering on the pommel. The steel suit was a second skin to him, a manifestation of his worth and his duty. But the desperate, protective urgency in Elias’ eyes cut through his pride.

With a reluctant sigh he began the arduous work of stripping away the 10th century. The thud of the hauberk hitting the carpet was the loudest sound in the house; it landed in a heap, less a garment than a slumbering metallic serpent. Dmitri stood in his undertunic, the linen grimy at the hem, breathing the stale air with a look of profound vulnerability. Without the armor he seemed taller, his bulk no longer disguised by angular planes.

“The sword stays,” he growled, crossing his arms. “And the knife.”

Elias had no energy to argue. “Fine. But wait here. Don’t leave the house. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me. If someone knocks, be quiet.”

“I will be like a ghost.” The phrase was one Elias must have used once in Córdoba, repurposed now to fit the sterile quiet of the duplex. Dmitri stood by the door, a monolith of scarred muscle and tense stillness. “Go. Return before the moon sets.”

The cold of the South Dakota night hit Elias like razors as he stepped onto the porch—a clean, dry cold, lacking the wet chill of the Aargau valley, but it bit just as hard.

He walked toward the neon glow of Main Street, hands shoved deep in his pockets, weighing the logistics of a war fought with currency instead of siege engines. He needed clothes for Dmitri, something that would let a six-foot-plus Bulgarian pass in a crowd rather than look like a crazed cosplayer wandering home from a convention.

The hum of the vending machine outside the convenience store spilled onto the sidewalk with the smell of cheap coffee and floor wax. Elias pushed open the door, the electronic chime unnervingly loud in his ears. The clerk, a bored teenager with headphones around his neck, did not look up from his phone.

Elias went straight to the ATM in the corner and inserted the card. In a world where time had folded back on itself, would the bank still know him?

He typed the four digits.

PROCESSING.

Elias held his breath.

The machine hummed with a high-pitched whine that seemed to go on for an eternity. Elias stared at the screen, his finger over the cancel button, ready to bolt if the card was rejected.

AUTHORIZED.

The word flashed in green block letters. With a mechanical whirr the machine counted out bills and spat them into the tray with crisp efficiency.

Elias grabbed the stack of twenties, the paper smelling of fresh ink. Four hundred dollars. In Strasbourg it would have been a king’s ransom, a fortune to buy a mercenary’s loyalty for a month. Here it was barely enough to dress a giant.

He shoved the cash into his pocket and turned to the aisles, moving with the predatory efficiency of a man scavenging behind enemy lines.

He took grey sweatpants in XXL, the largest they had, and trusted the drawstring to manage Dmitri’s waist. He found a heavy black sweatshirt with a local grain elevator printed on the chest, ugly but thick. For footwear he had to settle for black rubber rain boots in a size 13. They would pinch; Dmitri’s feet were broad and flattened from a lifetime of going unshod or wrapped in leather.

The plastic bag rustled at Elias’ feet as he stood outside The Rusty Anchor, a low-slung building of cinderblock and peeling paint. The neon sign in the window, a cartoon marlin holding a mug of beer, buzzed with a frantic, stuttering energy that made his teeth ache.

This was it. Ground zero.

Elias checked his reflection in the darkened glass of the door. The eyes looking back had seen the mechanics of a catapult and the color of arterial blood on snow, and the boy who once owned them was a specter now. He pulled his hood up, shielding his face, and pushed through.

The bar was a cavern of noise and stale air. The jukebox thumped a bass-heavy country track that vibrated in the floorboards, cutting through the smell of cheap draft beer and frying oil. Laughter and the clink of pool balls filled the room, alien after the howling winds of the Aargau.

His eyes narrowed as they adjusted to the gloom. He found a shadowed corner near the restrooms, partly obscured by a Budweiser sign, with a clear view of the entrance. He ordered water from a passing waitress, his voice rasping. Then he waited.

He did not wait long.

The version of Elias who belonged to this timeline – the one not yet broken and reforged in the fires of a Caliphate – came through the heavy oak doors. He looked meek and defeated. He wore a tight flannel shirt and fashionably ripped jeans, with a nervous, faintly desperate energy he was trying to mask.

The Other Elias slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar, the leather creaking under him. He ordered a light beer, something innocuous, and hunched over the glass, shoulders tight, eyes darting toward the mirror behind the bottles. It was the body language of prey pretending not to be watched.

Elias watched him from the shadows, the ice melting in his glass. He looked at the curve of the boy’s neck, at the trembling finger that pushed the glasses up his nose, and grief rose in him, complicated and sour. He was mourning a stranger who was about to have his life overturned.

Then the roughnecks began to circle, exactly as he remembered them: three men in faded Carhartt jackets and ball caps stained with grease. They smelled of dirt and cheap whiskey, a scent that woke a phantom headache behind Elias’ eyes. They did not approach at once. They tasted the air, exchanged glances over the rims of their mugs, recognizing the vulnerability of the lone quarry.

The biggest, a man with a neck like a tree stump and a red beard that swallowed his jawline, took the stool beside the Other Elias. He did not sit so much as loom, invading the boy’s space with a casual, suffocating aggression.

“That’s a mighty big drink for a little fella.” His voice was a gravelly scrape beneath the twang of the jukebox.

The Other Elias flinched as the heavy forearm landed on the bar. He adjusted his glasses, knuckles white around the glass, and offered a weak smile that was closer to a grimace.

“I’m just... just finishing it,” he stammered, barely audible over the bass. He slid off the stool, jerky and uncoordinated, looking for an exit that did not exist. “Actually, I think I left my headlights on.”

The red-bearded man laughed, a wet, ugly sound echoed at once by his companions. They formed a semi-circle around the boy, blocking the path to the door. “Leaving so soon? The night is young. And we haven’t even bought you a drink yet.”

The air went thick with stale beer and male aggression, choking out the oxygen. The Other Elias backed against a high-top table near the wall, his face a mask of rigid neutrality, the other two men flanking him in a net of dirty denim and predatory grins.

“We’re just talking.” The bearded man’s voice dropped to a confidential, dangerous slur. He reached out and flicked the collar of the flannel shirt with fingers stained black at the nails. “A pretty boy like you shouldn’t drink alone. It’s bad for the complexion.”

The boy’s hands came up in a defensive, pathetic gesture that Elias knew from experience would do nothing but egg them on. His voice cracked. “Really. I’m just leaving.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, his body tensing for the impact of a fist. The red-bearded man’s dirty fingers hooked into the collar, ready to haul him off the stool and introduce him to the grimy floor of The Rusty Anchor.

The universe seemed to hesitate. The jukebox thumped its mindless rhythm, the bartender wiped a glass, and the fingers tightened in the fabric. It was a brutal moment of potential energy.

The air in Elias’ lungs turned to glass. His hand, resting on the cool, sticky surface of the table, twitched with the instinct to shout, to throw the water pitcher into the red-bearded man’s face. Every muscle screamed GO, the tactical awareness honed in the sieges of Córdoba and the frozen wastes of Aargau flooding his synapses with a dozen ways to end the threat.

He remained frozen in the shadows. This timeline was a brittle wire stretched over a chasm. If he intervened, if he spared the Other Elias the brutal lesson of the night, the loop would snap. The boy would never leave, would never meet Dmitri. The reforms would die unborn, and Dmitri would remain a nameless slave in the dungeons of the Qubbat al-Khadra’, executed when the new regime took power.

The red-bearded man did not wait for an answer. With a jerk of the wrist as casual as it was violent, he hauled the Other Elias off the stool.

The boy stumbled, his heels catching on the sticky floorboards, and went down hard, the glass slipping from his fingers and shattering with a sharp, detonating crack that cut through the bass. And then he was gone. Just. Gone.

What followed lasted a fraction of a second and stretched for an eternity in Elias’ mind.

He watched the empty floor where his younger self had fallen. A puddle of spilled beer, a scatter of glass. No body. The roughnecks froze, their aggressive postures collapsing. The red-bearded man still held the flannel shirt, but the weight inside it had vanished.

“What the—” He stumbled forward as the lack of resistance threw him off balance, staring at his hand, then at the floor where the boy should have been writhing. “Where’d he go?”

Elias watched from the shadows, his breath caught in a throat scoured with sandpaper. No body. No blood. Only the evidence of an aggression abruptly erased.

The timeline had snapped shut. The loop was closed.

He held his corner for a long minute while the confusion played out. The bearded man shook out his hand and eyed the spilled beer with superstitious wariness, muttering to his friends that the kid had been wasted, or on something. They were already moving on, the adrenaline of the hunt draining into boredom.

Elias slipped out the side exit, the cold air hitting him like a reset button. He walked the five blocks home, his boots crunching on the frozen pavement, the bag of clothes swinging at his side. The passage from the neon-lit violence of the bar to the residential dark of 8th Street was a passage between worlds.

He slipped the key into the lock, the metal biting his cold fingers. Inside, the house was dark and still, holding its breath, the familiar furniture looming like dormant beasts.

“Dmitri?” he whispered into the dark.

“I am here.” The low sound resonated in the quiet house. The Bulgarian stood at the window exactly where Elias had left him, motionless as a gargoyle. The streetlamp cast a sliver of amber across his face, and his pale eyes tracked every movement Elias made. “The street remains empty. The beast beneath us sleeps.”

Elias locked the door, the deadbolt sliding home with a final thud that sealed them away from the world. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the frame for a heartbeat and let the night drain out of him—the paradox, the erasure of his past self—until nothing was left but exhaustion.

He flipped the switch on the wall, and the overhead light filled the living room with a stark yellow glare. He held up the plastic bag, the crinkle of it loud in the quiet house.

“I got you... armor,” he said, the word strange on his tongue. “For this world.”