(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) SURVIVAL

Now that Taylor knew what was killing her, Taylor’s mindset switched from finding out as much information as possible to strategy.

The woman on the bus was an unwilling suicide bomber. That much was no longer in doubt. She had been coerced, threatened, and cruelly broken down until she carried death with her into a crowded public space, and every loop ended the same way because of it. 

Understanding that did nothing to make the situation easier to accept, nor did it bring the sense of triumph that breakthroughs were supposed to carry. If anything, it left her feeling bitter, and still very exhausted, aware that knowledge alone had not saved her even once. Still, however grim the realization was, it did not simplify anything so much as it replaced confusion with an entirely new set of problems, none of which felt any less daunting.

This was because her next course of action was obvious in theory, even if it felt nigh impossible in practice.

She had to figure out how to survive the bombing.

The most obvious solution presented itself immediately, and she rejected it just as quickly. She could avoid the bus entirely. She could stay home, take a different route, leave earlier or later, or invent any number of reasons to be somewhere else when the explosion happened. Each of those choices was tempting in its own way, promising safety through distance and cowardice, and each of them would almost certainly spare her life.

But Taylor had learned, the hard way, that avoidance was never how the loops worked.

After her very first death loop, the locker incident, she had come to a realization she would have preferred not to make, though it certainly increased her understanding of the loop in general. 

The way forward had never been about sidestepping the loop entirely or refusing to engage with it. Every attempt to escape had only resulted in the loop finding a different traumatic, and no less painful, way of ending her life anyway. What finally broke that cycle was ignoring every instinct screaming at her to do otherwise, and remaining in the exact place where she was always meant to die.

That distinction mattered because, despite staying there just as long as she always had, she had somehow survived. As if the loop itself could no longer justify resetting her.

 It meant that while she was not doomed to die in this explosion forever, she also could not pretend the loop did not exist. If there was a rule to this particular cycle, then she would have to satisfy it in the same way she had before, by seeing it through and changing the outcome from inside rather than outside.

She did not know what that rule was yet, but she could feel it, the same pressure she had felt during the locker loops. It was an invisible weight pressing down on her choices, a sense of certainty that the world was nudging her toward a specific moment and daring her to survive it.

She did not know the exact moment the bomb detonated, but repetition had given her something close to certainty about the window. The explosion always came after the woman reached a particular point in her speech, after the fearful declaration that with Lung gone, there was nothing holding her back anymore. Taylor knew the words by heart now. She could recite them days later if she wanted to, because the phrasing never changed and the cadence never varied, as constant as everything else in the loop should she not interfere.

And that, in turn, told Taylor something else.

The woman who had implanted the bomb was referred to only as her, but context filled in the gaps easily enough. Someone capable of placing an explosive device inside another person’s head would almost certainly be a tinker, or at the very least someone with access to specialized tinkers, given the technical and biological expertise such an action would require. Combined with Lung’s involvement, the timing of his arrest, and the sheer reach necessary to kidnap an entire family and kill a child without immediate consequences, the conclusion pointed in one direction.

The woman was likely high up in the ABB.

The thought settled uneasily in her chest, heavy with implications she did not have time to unpack. A villain tinker with no regard for the sanctity of human life was a terrifying thing to contemplate, especially in Brockton Bay, but chasing that line of thought would not help her survive the next few minutes. Speculation could wait. Survival could not.

However, while knowing when the bomb would go off helped, knowing how to prevent it from killing her was the real challenge.

She was fifteen years old, regardless of how old and worn her mind felt after everything she had endured. She did not have super strength, armor, or any ability to disarm a bomb implanted in someone else’s skull. The hard lessons she had learned surviving Sophia Hess and the other loops, the constant vigilance and sharpened instincts forged through fear and repetition, offered her nothing useful here. Fighting the woman would not stop the bomb, and it might even make things worse by inciting panic or provoking retaliation from the other passengers.

Even if she somehow managed to overpower her, the bomb would still detonate, and there was every chance that any struggle would only hasten that outcome.

Warning the bus would not work either. She had already tried that, over and over again, and it always ended the same way. Confusion gave way to fear, fear to arguments, and precious seconds were burned in pointless shouting while nothing meaningful changed.

So what could she actually do?

If she had boarded the bus earlier, maybe she could intercept the woman before she ever got on. But that would only shift the tragedy elsewhere. The bomb would still exist, and it would still kill innocent people, even if Taylor never saw it happen. She would still be responsible for, in a way she was not willing to accept, because of the knowledge that she could have done something if nothing else. 

Worse, altering the conditions too much risked changing the loop in unpredictable ways, potentially triggering the explosion earlier rather than preventing it.

But honestly, chasing hypotheticals was pointless. It was a waste of time and mental energy she could not afford.

There had to be a way.

With a tired sigh, Taylor stood and began making her way toward the front of the bus. The motion was almost automatic now, as she did not even consciously decide to move at first. She simply did, her feet carrying her forward while her mind turned the problem over, searching for something she had missed.

She was half tempted to feel annoyed, because confronting the woman had accomplished all that it realistically could, but the feeling vanished the moment she saw it.

Mounted in its plastic housing, bolted securely to the interior paneling near the front of the bus, was the emergency hammer.

Taylor slowed, her gaze fixing on it as her thoughts screeched to an abrupt halt.

An idea bloomed in her mind.