Chapter 162: Book 3 Chapter 14.1: The Telltale Chirp

The movie’s orchestral music surged as the scene shifted to a ballroom. The lead couple twirled happily in each other’s arms as the music faded out and the screen faded to black, roll credits.

“That’s a bit trite,” Harley said.

“I think it’s sweet,” Lee said.

“You just like ballroom dancing.”

“That’s irrelevant to the larger themes and narrative of the movie,” Lee protested.

“But true.”

“Yes,” Lee admitted.

“It’s less fun than it looks,” Skye said. She was half-asleep on Vell’s shoulder as movie night reached its conclusion. “Especially that viennese waltz. Real pain in the butt to keep up that pace.”

“You’ve taken lessons?”

“A while back, yeah,” Skye said. “I took some lessons during the summer with an old boy-”

The sudden pause did not come due to Skye being uncomfortable talking about her exes around Vell, but because she now realized Lee was staring at her with wide, pleading eyes.

“Do you want a lesson?”

“I don’t want to impose,” Lee said.

“I can give you the basics, but don’t expect to be ballroom ready,” Skye cautioned.

“Understandable. Vell, I’ll need to borrow your girlfriend a moment.”

“Fine by me,” Vell said. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

He was also quite tired, and looking forward to finally going to bed. He tried to rest and relax while Skye gave a rudimentary dance lesson that was, blissfully, quite short. Lee grasped the basics and reached the limit of Skye’s ability to teach her in a few minutes.

“Well, you’re a natural,” Skye said. She turned back to Vell and caught him mid-yawn. He’d had to wake up early this morning for a group project, so he was already long overdue for some sleep. “And you are losing consciousness. Maybe we call it a night here?”

“I could go for some sleep, yeah,” Vell said.

“Well then goodnight, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” Skye said. She kissed Vell on the cheek and grabbed her purse, waving goodbye to everyone else as she left. The room cleared of friend’s until it was just Lee and Harley, helping Vell clean his dorm.

“I’m surprised Skye isn’t staying the night,” Harley noted. “You’ve been pouring on the Harlan charm.”

“Yeah, no,” Vell said. “She is surprisingly understanding, but she wants to take it slow given, uh, literally everything.”

Even someone as patient as a saint might still balk at some of the details of Vell’s life. Given an enigmatic game with a mysterious goddess, the attention of a butterfly-based time lord, and a personal rivalry with the literal worst person in the world, Vell came with a lot of baggage.

“Well I’m glad things are working out, at whatever pace it may be,” Lee said.

“Yep. Nice that she’s the good kind of crazy.”

Vell stopped midway through cleaning to glare at Harley.

“She’s not crazy.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad, but like, she’s a Marine Biologist, Vell,” Harley said. “They’re all a little crazy.”

“She doesn’t like Michael any more than we do,” Vell said. Skye had a very fraught relationship with most of her associates in the Marine Biology department, which went a long way in making the loopers trust her.

“Okay, I think I put my foot in my mouth here,” Harley said. “Skye’s cool and I was trying to compliment her but fucked up. My bad.”

“Mm. It’s fine. I think I’m just a little snippier since I’m tired.”

“Well then go to bed, man!”

“Yeah, maybe I should. I’ll-”

The sound of a chirping cricket cut Vell off mid sentence. It was doubly surprising by virtue of being incredibly loud and entirely unheard of on campus. As far as Vell knew, there were no native insects on the campus island, especially not crickets.

“That’s weird.”

“Must’ve gotten loose from the entomology department or something,” Harley said. The cricket chirped again. “Man that’ll get annoying real quick.”

“I’ll try to chase it off as I leave,” Lee said. “See you tomorrow, Vell.”

Harley and Lee left, and Vell headed back to bed, to lie down and enjoy a good night’s sleep. He managed to close his eyes just before the cricket chirped. Vell let out a low sigh of displeasure and turned over in bed, to roll further away from the window.

Chirp.

Vell grabbed a spare pillow and put it over his head.

Chirp.

Chirp.

Chirp.

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Luke was enjoying something Vell could not -restful sleep. Vell shared the burden of exhaustion by knocking fervently at his door at about one in the morning. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and examined his former roommate as he stood outside the dorm.

“Vell? What’re you doing?”

“Can I crash on your couch for the rest of the night?”

“Sure. What’s left of the night,” Luke said. Despite being woken at this ungodly hour of the night, Luke would not turn Vell away when he needed help. He’d be grumpy about it, though. “What’s your issue? Everything alright?”

“There’s this cricket outside my dorm,” Vell said. “Yours is the furthest away.”

“You came all this way to get away from a cricket?”

“It’s a loud cricket,” Vell said, as he laid down on the couch and tried to close his eyes. “It’s like-”

Chirp.

Vell’s bloodshot eyes snapped open in an instant.

“Like that.”

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Harley had meant to put an excessive amount of syrup on her pancakes, but she ended up with even more than intended when she saw Vell storm up to their usual table and slam down into his seat. His hair was a mess and he had dark circles under his eyes, along with an uncharacteristic amount of stubble on his chin.

“You okay, bud?”

“No, I am not,” Vell growled. “That fucking cricket did not shut up all night.”

“Did you get any sleep, dear?”

“No! I spent half the night trying to bury my head enough to drown it out and the other half trying to chase it or get away from it,” Vell ranted.

“I’m sorry, Vell, I thought I’d scared it off before I left,” Lee said.

“It’s fine. Fine. The bastard’s persistent, I’ll give him-”

Chirp.

“How the fuck is it here?”

Vell’s sudden shout saw half the dining hall suddenly turning towards him. He ignored all the sudden attention and put his rune-engraved glasses on, trying to scan the hall for any sign of the cricket. He stormed away to scan the room while the other loopers watched with concern.

“I think this is the maddest I’ve ever seen him,” Kim noted.

“He didn’t get this pissed when his girlfriend murdered him,” Harley said. She could imagine Vell having more sympathy for a person versus a cricket, but it was still surprising to see him so furious over such a tiny thing. The cricket chirped again, and Vell flinched visibly when it did.

“Sleep deprivation can be very difficult to handle,” Lee said. “Combined with Vell’s usual daily stress, it’s not surprising.”

A table full of students nervously shuffled away from Vell as he stomped past on his cricket hunt. He had not managed to find the source of the incessant chirping, and Lee intercepted him before he could continue the hunt.

“Vell. I think you should lie down for a bit.”

“I can’t with that thing chirping everywhere I go!”

“Don’t worry, Vell,” Lee said. She put her hands on his shoulders and squeezed reassuringly. “Try going to the lair. It’s underground, thick walls, and I keep a cot there for emergencies. Put in some headphones and try to have a lie down.”

The tight grip on his shoulders managed to shake off some of Vell’s stress, and keep him from flinching the next time the cricket chirped. He let out a long, deep sigh and nodded.

“Yeah. You’re right. I need a nap.”

“We’ll handle everything out here,” Lee insisted. “And try to chase that bug off while we’re at it. Get some rest, dear.”

Vell took the advice and headed for the underground looper lair. He could hear the cricket chirping behind him as he traveled, even after putting his headphones in and turning up the volume on his music. He did his best to tune it out until he got to the lair, slammed the door shut behind him, and put his headphones firmly in his ears to blast some relaxing music. It wasn’t perfect, but he could at least lie down and try to rest his eyes for a moment.

Chirp.

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“Lady, I think we need backup,” Samson shouted. One of the roots had Harley by the throat and was not letting go.

“Just some minor overgrown plant life, nothing we haven’t handled before,” Lee insisted. “Vell needs some rest.”

A botany department project had grown out of control, and the sentient supertree was now entangling everything in its malevolent roots. The loopers had few effective tools to handle it other than Kim’s pyromancy-enhanced punches, and those could only do so much against the tree’s rapid spread.

“It’ll be fine,” Harley said, every word choking it’s way out through the strangehold the root had on her. “We know what to do next loop already. Everything else today is...just...gravy.”

It got harder and harder to talk as the root grew tighter and tighter. In spite of her words, Harley didn’t exactly want to die just yet, so it came as a relief when a massive fireball incinerated a nearby cluster of roots and burned them away enough to free her.

Vell stormed through the circle of ash and fire he’d created, partially melting the soles of his shoes as he summoned and unleashed another fireball rune.

“Oh thank god,” Samson said. “Vell, can you-

The veteran looper didn’t even look Samson’s direction as he threw out another fireburst and cleared his path. Vell stormed further across campus, and burned through a tangle of roots covering the door of his ultimate destination: the entomology lab.

The walls of the lab had already been breached by several roots, and multiple students had been crushed against walls by the hungry tendrils, with many more in the process of being slowly strangled. Vell ignored them and made a beeline for the professor’s desk. Hidden underneath, just as Vell had hoped, was one of the first people he’d met on campus, Doctor Boniventure.

“Dr. Bon!”

“What?”

“Did you lose a cricket?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you lose a god damn cricket?” Vell shouted again.

“Is now really the time?”

Another student gasped their last breath as Vell pounded a fist on Dr. Bon’s desk.

“I have not slept in almost forty hours,” Vell growled. “Did you lose a cricket or not?”

“No! I swear, we haven’t worked with crickets in weeks. Even if we lost one, it’d be dead by now!”

Chirp.

“Then where did that one come from?”

“I don’t -ah!”

The short yelp of surprise turned into a long scream of horror as a root snatched Dr. Bon by the ankle and dragged her away. Vell sighed and readied his flame runes again.

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“So, if I were to-”

Chirp.

“Do you see what I mean?” Vell snapped. “How do I kill a cricket?”

On the second loop, Vell was back in Dr. Bon’s office, this time with less murderous trees and more murderous intent.

“Well, basic pesticides would do the trick,” Dr. Bon said. She was loathe to kill a bug, but Vell’s stress was obvious even to her. “Diatomaceous earth and other silica powders can clog the airways. If all else fails, there’s always good old-fashioned swatting.”

“Great, thank you, side note, would that diato-whatever stuff-”

Chirp.

“Could that by any chance make this island entirely uninhabitable by crickets? Forever?”

“Uh. No.”

“We’ll I’ll have to find something else for that,” Vell hissed. “Thank you, Dr. Bon.”

Chirp.

Vell roared with frustration and stormed out of the room so fast he completely forgot Lee and Harley had been following him. They stayed behind while he stormed off to another possible avenue of cricket homicide.

“We got to do something about this,” Harley said. They’d made several attempts to hunt down and kill the offending cricket, or at least shield Vell from its endless chirps, but all had ended in failure. “We need to bring out the big guns. Somebody on this campus has to have some kind of super-soundproof foam or something. I’ll head to the acoustics lab.”

“I’ll keep trying to put an end to this cricket,” Lee said. The insect was so difficult to find she was starting to think it was more than just invisible. “We need to move fast.”

Counting the time loops, Vell had been awake for sixty hours, going on seventy. Sleep deprivation was already bad enough without a persistent source of acoustic torment hounding him everywhere he went. Lee and Harley split up to try and find a solution to the problem, trying their best to ignore the faint but ever-present sounds of chirping in the distance, and the occasional scream from Vell.