Stabilized Violence

I wasn’t sure which one woke me up after the last city-wide reset—light from the garage’s last bare bulb glinting off bullets, or the crackling hum of electricity of the pock-marked walls. Maybe it was sulfurous smoke left by the guns.

But when I turned, seven men lay dead. Not gangsters, not even cops like last time. These men... Their uniforms were Federal green, and patched with Reset Corps on their sleeves. On one, a shoulder radio sparked to life.

“... Mayor Bugs Moran will address the city at noon regarding the North Clark Street anomaly...”

Seems that in this timeline the psychopath finally machine-gunned his way through the opposition and reset the narrative.

I pushed myself up, mouth tasting like I licked a battery. Outside, some dog’s bark punctuated the jazz riffs seeping through the wall. The current caused one face on the floor to turn. Somehow, I knew him but couldn’t place it.

His eyes opened. His hand did too.

I reached over, snatched a gold key from his palm, and pocketed it. Then I was at the door, coat sticking to my bloodied shoulder, listening for sirens.

Outside, snow cycloned as if it had forgotten how to fall.

I crept through the alleyways seeking somewhere familiar. The trash fires smelled clean here, running on kerosene instead of ink-stained papers that changed as required. Above, a police airship drifted, its underbelly marked by some motto—Capone for Congress, Bring down Chicago’s Lightning--that changed depending on how you looked at it.

Ahead, a neon sign flickered: Sp... kea—something.

Inside, the bartender wore green cuffs with Federal stamped across them.

As I approached, he glanced at my coat.

“Gusenberg? Thought you were gone,” he said, pouring something disguised as water, into a glass.

Guess prohibition hadn’t ended.

“The Corps swept Clark Street for an hour.” He set the glass in front of me and leaned in. “You were supposed to be in it.”

“In what?”

“History. Rumors were Capone planned on plugging you.”

He straightened. I drank. The burn played with my teeth. “I need a doctor,” I said.

He laughed.

“Anyone else looking for me?”

“An artist. Red hair, paint-streaked hands? She’d asked if you’d come back to the wrong place this time. Said you’d know her even if she didn’t know herself again.”

For a second, the mirror behind him reflected a woman—eyes ice with white gloves. She turned her head toward me. Recognition came first, then fear. I didn’t know her name yet but my nerves did.

I spun around.

No one. Only bottles and patrons who looked like they wanted to vanish.

“Her name?” I asked.

The bartender shrugged. “Depends on which one you meet.”

I left, a burn inside but no fire. The airship drifted closer. Moran Condemns Riots.

Another jazz riff beat down the alley and I followed the music to a building that couldn’t decide whether it was concrete or brick, and a studio on the third floor.

I knocked.

“You’re bleeding,” a red haired woman said, eyes darting between my coat and her canvas. Her hair was a messy knot and paint stained her fingers.

“I’ve been worse,” I said.

“Heard that before.”

“When?”

She didn’t answer. Only wiped her hands on a cloth and excused herself to find something to patch me up.

I walked over to the canvas. Her painting was of the alley I’d walked through but the walls were crowded with confused faces, mouths open as if to sing something with lines that no one could quite remember.

“You did this?”

“Chicago triggers things in me, and I try to put them somewhere else.”

I winced as she cleaned the wound and stitched me up. “The night at the garage,” she continued, “officially, it was a historical confinement event. Unofficially… murderous men with expensive guns and an old set of instructions that keeps replaying.”

“What do you remember?” I touched her face.

She removed my hand, picked up a charcoal, and went back to her work. “Everything,” she said, “which amounts to nothing.”

As she spoke, something moved in the window glass. Not entirely her reflection—more the idea of her made cleaner; hair fixed, hands gloved.

I blinked. The glass became glass again.

“You’re shaking,” she whispered.

“I’m awake,” I said.

“Not for much longer. A few hours more… maybe.” She set down her charcoal and examined my coat. “You carrying the key?”

“Yes. What does it open?”

“When.”

“What?”

“The key I showed you opens a when from the Corps’ vault. But it hurts going in. It stings worse coming out. Might be better not to remember.”

I almost told her I’d already remembered more than I should. Instead, I asked, “It’s… It’s Sophie, right”

She smiled. “Sometimes. Sometimes I’m Sophie. Sometimes she is.”

“She?”

“You’ll meet her in the clean places. She prefers the version of the city where the rules hold. She’s kinder than she seems, but will kill if necessary.”

I looked at the painting again. Sketched in the top corner, the Institute of Historical Continuity emblem hovered over a dead end corner. “You drew that in,” I said.

“I sketch what’s there,” Sophie said, “even when it shouldn’t be. You should go now.”

Before I left, she touched my wrist, leaving a charcoal mark, and passed over a flashlight. Her lips briefly lingered on mine. “Come back when the snow falls,” she said and, for a second, her eyes were somebody else’s.

The alley under the emblem hid the entrance into Chicago’s veins. Tunnels of Prohibition-era brick morphing into poured concrete never smoothed. My light found carvings—badges, rings of overlapping dates, and Corps’ clearances: SECTION N/RESETTING RADIUS 40 METRES.

At a bend, my beam hit a glass door, set into old stone. The gold key moved in my pocket. I pulled it out but didn’t use it. I wanted to keep walking. But that’s when she stepped out from a corridor that hadn’t been there before.

White gloves. Tidy red hair. Sophie’s eyes with the warmth drained. A pull and a warning at the same time.

“Hello,” she said, “You smell like the garage.”

“Sophie sent me,” I said.

“She would.” She glanced at the door. “You’re carrying municipal property. It’s a Class-2 breach.”

“I… I found it.”

She sighed. “I’m sure it found you. You have two choices. Open the substation and empty yourself back into the loop, or run and forget. Then everyone keeps living under the wrong sky.”

It hurts going in… Sophie’s words ripped through my head. The options moved inside me like food I couldn’t quite digest. “What’s behind the glass?”

“Continuity.”

Down a side tunnel, a speaker crackled. “…on the tenth anniversary of the North Clark Street Massacre, Mayor Moran reaffirmed Chicago’s sovereign agreement with Federal…”

“Federal what?” I asked.

“Authority. Remodeling… whatever word they’re currently using.”

Names changed. Governments changed. I wondered which word they’d use when Sophie learned to obey.

“Who are you?”

“The part of Sophie that followed orders. The part she left in the mirror when she chose painting over duty. I keep the city stitched together. I don’t enjoy it, but I will…”

I knew her bargain; duty stole warmth and left an outline. “Kill me?”

“Close you,” she said. “Sophie’s key made you a split—you left before death completed itself.”

The face… my reflection. “If I open the door—”

“You’ll finish dying. And we’ll have our city back.”

“And Sophie?”

“She’ll paint other wrong things. Or stop and live in a version where she chooses something else. I don’t decide that.”

I wish I did. Other versions of her might get by, but I wanted the one with paint under her nails and my name in her mouth.

The key thrummed, pulling toward the door.

“Do you have a different name?” I asked.

She sighed. “Verity… when I have to pick one.”

Truth choosing itself.

I placed the key in the glass because that’s what it wanted. The door accepted and we stepped through, lights dimming behind us.

The room beyond was expansive; in the center, a glass-enclosed altar stood. It looked like the garage but without the blood or bullets. Polished metal and cables that disappeared into the walls covered the base. Inside, seven men died, their gestures caught between frames of muzzle flashes. One man wore my face.

“It’s not a door. It’s a battery,” I whispered.

I took a step and the floor flickered. The massacre inside replayed on the room’s walls at different speeds—each loop, each substation feeding Chicago’s Grid.

A city running on death.

“It’s the Continuity Engine,” Verity corrected. “Built long ago after the Capone Riots and powered by stabilized violence.” She gestured to the seven men. “The loop functions efficiently, keeping the city intact. The Federal compiles its reports, and everyone awakens, nestled within a narrative that generally holds true.”

“And me?” I asked.

“You wanted to walk out of the loop,” Sophie said behind me.

She was paint-smeared and shaking, hair loose, eyes human. Verity stood with her, immaculate and exhausted. They were not the same, and they were exactly the same.

“You followed me,” I said.

“No,” Sophie said. “I remembered you here. There’s a difference.”

“But you told him to open it,” Verity said.

“I told him it was better not to remember,” Sophie said. “He never listens.”

Her accusation—warm, familiar, and stinging in the wrong places—slapped me.

“You were supposed to be one of them, and you weren’t.” Sophie’s voice trembled. “So the city started leaking.”

“You want me to go back in?”

“No,” Sophie said. “Yes,” Verity said.

They used the same mouth.

“Pick,” Verity said quietly. “We can’t keep splitting, not and hold the grid.”

“Why me?” I asked. “Why not one of the others?”

“Because you remember,” Sophie said, “and because I loved… love you. All of you. Whole.”

The floor tilted. It wasn’t the engine. Somewhere in the room, a jazz note became two, then wove into a single voice.

I walked to the altar. My reflection in the polished metal looked like someone I’d cross the street to avoid. The guns fired again. My other face turned toward me with a look of someone realizing that the end wasn’t the end.

“Can it be closed without feeding it?”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “No,” Verity said.

“What if we break the Engine? No loop. No continuity. Just the truth.”

Verity’s smile was sad. “The truth doesn’t keep the lights on.”

“The truth is a light,” Sophie said hotly.

The key pulsed against my fingertips, yearning for a decision.

I inserted it into the altar’s slot, and immediately the city seemed to constrict. The men shuddered as the muzzle flashes blurred into a single, extended flare.

Sophie, her fingers still wet with paint, reached for my hand, while Verity, gloved in white, reached for the other.

I chose them both.

If the city needed a split, it could have mine.

I turned the key halfway. The engine screamed as the room split in two. The men inside the loop fell forward slightly before freezing again.

“Hold it,” Sophie gasped. “Just—hold—”

Verity’s jaw clenched. “You’ll tear it.”

My arms shook.

Tiles cracked like ice. Then, the Engine, which had been glowing, cooled.

While the men continued to die, the moments between bullets expanded, allowing air to rush in. Like Chicago inhaled for the first time. Something in my chest learned the same a beat later.

I turned the key all the way.

The lights went out.

So did we.

I burst into morning like an oxygen-starved diver. The street was new in ways—same buildings but different dates under the grime. The airship overhead was branded with no motto at all.

A newsboy shouted headlines from the corner:

No bodies found in Clark Street Garage!

Capone and Moran questioned following reports of gunfire!

Federal sources deny rumors of experimental equipment at the scene!

Outside, snowflakes fell slowly as I walked through the alleyways.

Sophie’s studio was both familiar and changed. She appeared in the window, hair messy but hands clean. Both one person and another.

She lifted her palm as if to wave, hesitated, then let it fall.

I didn’t wave back.

Somewhere, the city exhaled through music; jazz notes echoed those from the garage like twins reuniting.

Off one wall, a government placard hung:

INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL CONTINUITY

TEMPORARY OFFICE—CLOSED.