The flickering streetlight casts dancing shadows across the narrow alley as Viviana, Arachne, and Amber find themselves between the weathered stone buildings. The salt-tinged evening air carries an odd metallic taste, and something feels distinctly wrong about this place. Electronic devices seem to buzz with interference – phones displaying garbled timestamps, a nearby security camera sparking intermittently.

A faint blue-green glow pulses from a storm drain grate near the alley’s center, barely visible but growing steadily brighter. The sound of approaching traffic echoes from the street beyond, growing louder by the moment. In the distance, a delivery truck’s engine rumbles as it navigates the evening streets of Bayview.

The air itself seems to thicken with each passing second, and those sensitive to supernatural forces can feel reality straining at the edges, like fabric pulled too tight. Whatever is happening here has been building for some time, and the approaching sound of heavy wheels on asphalt suggests it’s about to reach a crescendo.

Viviana casts a gigantic grin as she flicks her eyes between the others, zipping up her plate carrier before tucking her jacket over it. “Hey,” Viviana says, looking kinda hot in the warmish weather. “How’s it going?” she asks. Jacket opening shows the flash of metal beneath it.

Checking her phone briefly shows those garbled timestamps, her eyes widening behind her glasses.

“What the shit?!” Viviana says in mild panic. “Is this magic?”

Arachne lows her steps, one hand lifting as though to part the tension in the air itself, her expression shifting from wary to intent as the strange pulse from the storm drain deepens its rhythm. “Something’s slipping,” she murmurs in aside to Amber, exhaling a slow breath, eyes narrowing on the flickering grate. She cuts a glance back at Viviana over a shoulder, then turns her attention back to the rumble of the delivery truck grows louder behind them, too loud now, too near. She flicks her hand up, pulling out her earpiece as her ears are assaulted with sudden feedback, tucking her phone into her back pocket. Blood wells into her fingertips from the flick of a needle-point dagger, quickly drawing sigils to weave together a ward around herself against the magical interference like clockwork, extending just far enough for Amber and Viviana if they keep in her vicinity.

Amber pockets her phone again once things start to get all wonky, giving a quiet sigh. Then there is Viviana, and she gives a curious sidelong look between her and Arachne. She awaits the latter’s reaction before deciding how to react herself. “Ghost, maybe?” she wonders as the warding goes up, but she doesn’t seem convinced. Not as her gaze flits to try to find the source of the too-loud sounds.

54:47… 20:54:48… the numbers climbing toward something significant.

A translucent figure flickers into view near the storm drain for just a moment – a woman in a lab coat, her mouth moving frantically as if trying to speak, but no sound emerges. She points desperately at the drain before fading back into nothingness.

The metallic taste in the air grows stronger, and those within Arachne’s ward can feel reality itself beginning to buckle. The truck’s brakes screech in the distance, but the sound seems wrong, inevitable, like an echo of something that has happened before.

20:54:55… 20:54:56…

The blue-green light pulses faster now, almost frantic, as if feeding on the approaching moment. Whatever is about to happen, it’s happened before, and it’s about to happen again.

Viviana had a revolver in her hands in the next few seconds as she crowds within the sigil. “Back to the future shit, maybe?” she says, leaning her head up as she spies the woman in the labcoat. Viviana looks between Arachne and Amber, and notes the pointing towards the drain.

Viviana produces a flashlight and flicks it on, aiming it towards the drain – although she was careful to stay within easy sigil distance.

Arachne doesn’t answer Viviana right away, her focus instead pinned to the flickering drain and the woman’s ghostly figure as it vanishes like breath on the glass. “Likely,” she supposes tightly, voice laced with apprehension as she observes the phenomenon. “A loop, or an echo.” Her hand lfits again, fingers splayed as if tracing threads only she can see. “Those numbers; are they time stamps or….” Her eyes cut sharply to Viviana and Amber as reality begisn to break down just beyond her ward’s range, and she feels it. “Seconds? We have seconds. I’d stay close, were I you.” Her voice drips to a near hiss as the blue-green light throbs furiously and the air ripples like heat off pavement, tugging at their reality with hungry, familiar fingers.

She inhales a breath, brows knitted. “Does anyone recall any significant news events around this specific hour for this borough?” she wonders.

“Isn’t that, like… ten minutes from now?” Amber wonders after squinting at the timer. She moves to go kneel down by the drain. The figure was pointing at the drain, so she pulls out her left hand and attempts to reach down there. Or as much as she can while still keeping within the wards.

54:58… 20:54:59…

The truck’s engine roars now, impossibly loud, and the screech of failing brakes fills the air. The ghostly woman flickers back into view, more solid this time, her mouth forming the word “STOP” over and over.

20:55:00.

A delivery truck careens around the corner at lethal speed, its driver slumped over the wheel. It slams into the alley entrance with a thunderous crash, metal shrieking against stone. The driver’s body jerks forward, neck snapping with a sickening crack.

The blue-green light explodes outward like a shockwave, and reality tears apart at the seams.

Everything goes white.

20:32:00.

The flickering streetlight casts dancing shadows across the narrow alley once more. The salt-tinged evening air carries that same odd metallic taste. But now, those who experienced the loop retain the memory of what just happened.

Viviana gives her head a shake. “Fuckin’…” Viviana says, pulling her sunglasses off to wipe at her eyes. “Ghosts,” she says, looking back towards Arachne. “I don’t remember this shit, but it looks like, uh…” Viviana gestures towards the spot where the truck *was*.

“… uh…” Viviana pauses a few moments more. “Car crash, but what the hell does the drain have to do with it?” Viviana asks, looking to Amber. A smile tugs up the edges of her lips. “Damn, that’s brave,” she says. “Feel anything?” she asks.

“… or seen the movie ‘It’?”

Arachne twists her mouth into a dour frown. “Holler if there’s anything in that,” she calls to Amber when the other woman goes to explore the grate, then points Viviana to stay where she is within the protection of the ward. Her limbs snap into motion with fluid urgency, boots pounding the alleys uneven stone as she bolts forward, her breath shallow and sharp. One hand flicks out mid-run, scattering crimson droplets that twist unnaturally in the air. They lengthen, warp, and solidify mid-motion into the shape of a slender spiderling girl, limbs sharp and marionette-thin, crawling sideways up the wall to match her pace from above. “Chesa,” she commands breathless. “Find the truck. Get inside if you can,” she demands of her marionette.

Amber freezes when things reset… then goes back to reaching to try to find what the ghost-woman was pointing at. “‘It’ was great,” she says, “That clown is my idol.” She strains a bit, “Maybe some sci-fi doohickey the crash set off?”

“The chronophages… they’re feeding… I tried to stop them but…” She gestures frantically at the drain, then at herself, her form wavering like heat distortion. “Basement… 47 Saltwind… the equipment…”

The metallic taste grows stronger, and electronic devices begin their familiar interference patterns. 20:35:12… the countdown has begun again.

a woman in a lab coat working frantically with glowing specimens, chemical spills mixing with bioluminescent samples, and the same truck crash playing out over and over.

Arachne’s spiderling skitters up the wall and around the corner, finding the delivery truck already approaching the intersection. Through the windshield, it can see the driver – a middle-aged man with kind eyes – clutching his chest, clearly having a heart attack. The truck’s cargo bay is marked with chemical warning symbols.

The ghostly woman flickers into view again, more solid now that they’re paying attention. She mouths words desperately: “Basement… 47 Saltwind… frequency…” before fading.

The blue-green glow from the drain intensifies, and electronic devices begin sparking again. 20:35 shows on working clocks – twenty minutes until the crash repeats.

“Sounds like,” Viviana says to the group. “And I could be wrong here…” Viviana says, staying safely within ward range.

“But sounds like chronophages are down there,” Viviana says, gesturing with her light towards the drain. “And we gotta go into the basement of the 47 Saltwind building to see the ghost-ass equipment,” Viviana says.

Viviana looks to Amber, and then rolls her neck back to look to Arachne. “Field trip?” she asks, flashing a too-wide smile. “Maybe… there?” she illuminates a nearby building with her light.

Arachne does not hear the warning of the woman in a lab coat since she’s taken off in hunt of the truck, hot on the heels of her spiderling scouting ahead. She swallows hard, gray eyes assessing the entire situation of the chemical warning marked on the truck’s cargo bay, the man in the midst of cardiac arrest behind the driver’s wheel. Without comms due to the interference, it makes it hard for her to call back the situation to Viviana and Amber back in the alley.

Without hesitation, she yells, “Chesa, get inside and try to hit the brake! Anything to stop and slow down the truck so I can get on it!” in hopes her spiderling can pull it off, already breaking into a sprint as fast as she can to try for the passenger’s side, mentally twisting luck into her favor with a luck-changing blessing lest she get hit by another car.

Amber yanks her hand back out of the drain when Viviana suggests the critters are down there. That’s the bridge too far, it seems. “Fuck me,” she grumbles. At this point she realizes Arachne has run off, so she chases after with a shrug to Viviana, “Maybe we can use the truck to get there?”

a woman in a lab coat working frantically with glowing specimens, chemical spills mixing with bioluminescent samples, and the same truck crash playing out over and over.

20:45:30… ten minutes until the reset.

The ghostly woman’s voice finally breaks through: “The frequency! 432 hertz! It’s the only way to stop them!”

47:33… Eight minutes until the crash resets everything again.

The blue-green glow intensifies, and reality begins to waver at the edges once more.

Viviana looks to Amber. “Looks like she’s trying,” Viviana says, upnodding to Arachne. “Frequency? Like sound frequency?” Viviana asks, looking to Amber as she lopes behind, jogging easily after Amber. She snaps off the light, and tucks it away. “… dammit,” Viviana murmurs.

Arachne has directed her marionette spiderling to break inside the truck and attempt to pump the brakes on the truck while she weaves through traffic, trying to wait until the spiderling has managed to slow the vehicle down even enough for her to make the leap for the door and try to climb inside.

Amber is not the fastest, but she chases after Arachne alongside Viviana nonetheless, “Fuck me, why is there always running… not built for this shit…”

52:15… Less than three minutes until impact.

Behind them, Viviana and Amber race through the streets as the blue-green glow becomes visible even from blocks away, pulsing like a malevolent heartbeat. The ghostly woman’s voice echoes in their minds: “432 hertz… the basement… before it’s too late…”

Electronic devices throughout the area begin failing completely as the temporal distortion reaches critical mass.

Making an executive decision, Viviana peels off, bursting through the door of the nearby building and racing down it. Arachne and Amber were trying to mess with the truck part of the loop, but Viviana wanted to go down to the basement that kept being mentioned.

“Don’t know what the fuck a chronophage is,” Viviana says to herself, murmuring in the building. She draws her revolver, and aims it down the stairwell as she steps down the same, light coming up and held crossways over her revolver as she clicks it on again. “… hope this basement is fucking easy to find, too.”

“Chesa, can you get it or not?” Arachne yells at her marionette, dodging past two cars awkwardly circling around to try and continue as city traffic builds. She glances back at Amber and Viviana, noting them distantly before she makes the jump.

“Fuck, almost out of time this loop,” Amber observes, losing some steam in her running at the realization. Unable to do much from here, she watches Arachne’s minion go for the brakes.

54:45… Ten seconds.

Viviana’s flashlight cuts through the darkness of the basement, revealing a makeshift laboratory filled with glowing tanks and electronic equipment. Dr. Vasquez materializes more solidly here, pointing frantically at a sonic frequency generator. “432 hertz! Now!”

Above, Arachne’s spiderling manages to engage the emergency brake just as she leaps onto the truck’s running board. The vehicle lurches, tires screaming, but momentum carries it forward toward the inevitable crash.

The blue-green light erupts from the storm drain like a geyser, and the temporal fracture tears reality apart once more.

20:54:58… 20:54:59… 20:55:00.

The crash echoes through time as everything resets to 20:32 again.

But this time, Viviana stands in the basement with her hand on the frequency generator, Dr. Vasquez’s ghostly form pointing urgently at the controls. They have twenty-three minutes to break the cycle before the chronophages feed again.

“You found me,” Dr. Vasquez whispers, her voice barely audible across the temporal divide. “The creatures… they’re growing stronger with each loop. We have to stop them before they consume all of Bayview.”

Viviana apparently went for it, turning the frequency generator thing to 432 hertz. (Although to be honest, it was pure luck – and maybe a little bit of ghostly guidance – to even find the damn thing). Viviana heaves a sigh after she settles it upon that frequency.

Not that that stopped Viviana from raising the pistol to aim at Vasquez when she materialized. “Fuck me,” Viviana says. “Why don’t you materialize upstairs…” Viviana says. “And talk to them,” meaning Arachne and Amber, “About how to kill these damn things? I’ll figure it out as I go along or some shit like that,” Viviana says. “Or float along, whatever you wanna do,” Viviana says, starting to tromp back up the stairs towards the duo.

The inevitable means that Arachne is likely injured during that time loop before everything resets yet again. She’s discombobulated, at the very least, dizzy and squeezing her eyes shut while her mind attempts to catch up with the sequence of events. “Fuck my life,” she murmurs under her breath, rarely driven to cuss, before she flicks new drops of blood onto the floor, summoning her spiderling yet again. “Chesa, go get the truck. And this time, stop it outright. Don’t let it get here.” And instead of chasing it herself, she instead begins to work on a ritual to freeze time outright in the area, her wristwatch glowing a bright white while she begins to draw together the things she needs for the enchantment from her bag, including a gore-drenched stake that once pierced her heart, now steeped in energy. “Think this will work?” she asks of Amber. “And where did Viviana go? Do you see her anywhere?”

45:30 shows on the few working clocks. Nine and a half minutes until the crash, unless they can break the cycle permanently.

52:30… The countdown continues, but for the first time, it feels different. The air tastes less metallic. Electronic devices flicker back to normal operation.

“Keep the frequency steady!” Dr. Vasquez calls out, her form becoming more solid as the temporal distortion weakens. “Two more minutes and the loop will break permanently!”

The truck, now moving at walking speed thanks to Arachne’s ritual, finally comes to a complete stop just short of the alley entrance. The driver, still clutching his chest, manages to call for help on his now-functioning radio.