A long, white hallway stretched out in from of the two men as they stopped sprinting for a brief moment, their U.S. government I.D. badges swinging at their sides. Alarms cried out all around, filling the hallway with their shrieking wails.

“The way out is up here. I can practically see it,” Cassius said through teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to push each other out of his mouth. “Just one more turn, maybe two until we reach the main building. The lab accident can’t reach us there.”

Making a sharp left turn, the pair was suddenly running again, struggling in a race against the mounting danger amassing in the lab behind them. Neither was sure exactly what was about to happen; these kinds of accidents were rare, and the details were usually classified, only for the eyes of a Washington bureaucrat in a government building. Both men only knew one thing for sure: When the machine malfunctioned, they wanted to be out of the building. They slowed a bit. It seemed the exit was not as close as they had assumed; this hallway was almost as long as the last one.

Why did I take this job? Cassius was silently berating himself. I could’ve been an accountant like my parents, but I wanted to be in government. When he’d heard his job would be in the Time Travel Subdivision (TTS) he’d immediately been thrilled. He’d heard the rumors about time-traveling adventures and top-secret technology. The reality was less exciting than the holomovies he’d seen as a boy--I’m a glorified security guard, he’d often think to himself. Grimacing, he realized he hadn’t done his job well enough; clearly, based on the alarms enveloping his eardrums, something had gone wrong with the building’s time machine.

“Did you... hear about the branch... in Dayton?” Mason managed to ask while breathing heavily. “When their machine… malfunctioned, nine workers got trapped... in a time loop.”

Cassius felt a bead of sweat find its way down the side of his face. This was not what he wanted to hear. Time loops were rare, but most physicists called them inescapable points on the timeline, trapping people and objects in a never-ending cycle and keeping them stuck forever in one place in time.

“Where’s the sign? Shouldn’t there be an EXIT sign here?”

“Calm down… Maybe it’s a little further.” Both men were panicking now, their palms sweaty with the nervous anxiety of anticipation.

“When we get out of here, remind me to fire the technician that screwed up.”

“Not if I get my hands on him first.”

Suddenly, a horrific thought occurred to Cassius. If someone was stuck in a time loop, they would never know it.

“C’mon, we’ve got to go! The machine could blow any time now!” They were struggling to keep running now, both trying to remember where to turn next.

A long, white hallway stretched out in from of them as the two men stopped sprinting for a brief moment, their U.S. government I.D. badges swinging at their sides. Alarms cried out all around, filling the hallway with their shrieking wails.

“The way out is up here. I can practically see it,” Cassius said through teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to push each other out of his mouth. “Just one more turn, maybe two until we reach the main building. The lab accident can’t reach us there.”