The notification pinged at 9:47 PM, just as the wind picked up and started throwing ice crystals against the windshield of Yasmin's beat-up Honda Civic. Eight orders from Riverside Towers. Same goddamn building, different apartments. The algorithm was either being generous or trying to kill her.
"Bismillah," she muttered, the Somali prayer slipping out before she could stop it. Her hooyo would be proud—praying before entering that concrete tomb of a building. She grabbed the insulated bags from Panda Express, the smell of orange chicken making her empty stomach clench. Engineering textbooks lay scattered across her backseat, mocking her with unfinished problem sets.
Riverside Towers squatted against the Minneapolis skyline like a cancer, twenty floors of Section 8 housing and broken dreams. The lobby fluorescents flickered in that special way that made everyone look like corpses. Marcus Chen, the super, stood by the mailboxes sorting through packages. He looked up when she entered, his smile too wide, too eager.
"Working late again, Yasmin?"
She'd never told him her name. The DoorDash app only showed drivers' first initial.
"Just delivering," she said, moving toward the elevator. It groaned like it was digesting something. Floor fourteen first—apartment 1408. The order was massive: twelve entrées, enough for a party, but the notes said "leave at door, don't knock."
The fourteenth floor hallway stretched longer than physics should allow. The carpet was the color of old blood, or maybe that was just the lighting. Apartment 1408 sat at the end, its numbers slightly crooked. She set the bags down, took the photo for the app, and turned to leave.
That's when she heard it—scratching. Deliberate, rhythmic. Like fingernails on wood, but from inside the door. Three long scrapes, three short, three long.
SOS.
Her finger hovered over the doorbell. The scratching stopped. Then, from inside, a sound like a slap, flesh on flesh, and a muffled cry. Young. Female. Terrified.
The elevator dinged behind her. Marcus stood there, still smiling, holding a hammer.
"You should have just left the food," he said.
The hammer came down, and the world exploded into red, then black, then—
The notification pinged at 9:47 PM.
Yasmin's hands jerked on the steering wheel. The same ice crystals hit her windshield. The same eight orders glowed on her phone screen. Her head throbbed with phantom pain where the hammer should have—had—cracked her skull.
"What the fuck," she whispered in English, then louder in Somali, "Maxaa dhacay?"
Her phone showed 9:47. Still. The seconds weren't moving. She looked at the Panda Express bags in her passenger seat, steam still rising from them though she'd picked them up twenty minutes ago. Or had she? The memory felt like déjà vu through molasses.
She grabbed the bags and headed into Riverside Towers. Marcus stood by the mailboxes.
"Working late again, Yasmin?"
Her blood froze. Same words. Same inflection. Same too-wide smile.
This time she just nodded, practically ran to the elevator. Fourteenth floor. The hallway stretched forever. Apartment 1408. She set down the bags, but this time she knocked. Hard.
"Hello? Your food's here!"
The scratching started immediately. More desperate. SOS. SOS. SOS.
"I'm calling 911," she shouted through the door.
The scratching stopped. Then a man's voice, calm and cold: "She's fine. Just leave the food."
Yasmin pulled out her phone, dialed 911. The call connected, but before she could speak, the door opened. Not all the way—just a crack held by a chain. A man's face appeared in the gap. White, mid-forties, wearing a Minnesota Vikings cap.
"There a problem?"
Behind him, in the sliver of visible apartment, she saw a mattress on the floor. A chain attached to the wall. A small foot, bruised and dirty.
"911, what's your emergency?" The dispatcher's voice from her phone.
"There's a girl—"
The door slammed shut. She heard running footsteps inside, a window opening. The elevator dinged. This time it wasn't just Marcus. Two cops stood with him, their faces bored and hostile.
"Ma'am, you need to leave," the taller cop said. Badge read 'Fitzgerald.'
"There's a girl in there, she's chained—"
"We've had complaints about you harassing residents," the shorter cop—'Nowak'—interrupted. "Time to go."
"But—"
Fitzgerald's hand moved to his service weapon. "Now."
She backed toward the stairwell, but Marcus was already there, hammer in hand. This time he aimed for her knee. The bone shattered like chalk, and she screamed as she fell. The cops watched, did nothing, as Marcus raised the hammer again.
"Should've minded your own business," Fitzgerald said.
The hammer came down on her temple, and—
9:47 PM.
Ice on windshield. Eight orders. Same fucking loop.
Yasmin sat in her car, shaking. She remembered everything. The pain, the fear, the betrayal. The cops were in on it. How many loops would this take? How many times would she have to die?
She grabbed her phone, started recording video. "My name is Yasmin Hassan. It's February 15th, 2024, 9:47 PM. If something happens to me, check apartment 1408 in Riverside Towers. There's a girl—"
The phone screen went black. When it came back on, the video was gone. The time still read 9:47.
"Okay," she said to herself. "Okay. Think."
The engineering student in her kicked in. This was a problem with variables and constants. Constants: the time, the orders, the locations. Variables: her actions, her knowledge. Each loop she learned more. The cops were dirty. Marcus was involved. The man in 1408 had a Vikings cap. There was a window he could escape through.
This time, she grabbed a knife from her glove compartment—a folding blade her brother had given her "for protection." She also pulled up Facebook Live on her phone, started streaming before she even got out of the car.
"Hey everyone, doing a late-night delivery stream. About to head into Riverside Towers."
Three viewers. Better than nothing.
The lobby was empty this time—no Marcus. She took the stairs instead of the elevator, phone still streaming. Fourth floor. Fifth. By the tenth, her legs burned and her breath came in gasps, but she kept climbing. The phone showed seventeen viewers now.
Fourteenth floor. She crept down the hallway, narrating in a whisper. "Approaching apartment 1408. I've been here before." How to explain without sounding insane? "I think something bad is happening inside."
She reached the door. The scratching started before she even set down the food.
"You hear that?" she asked the stream. Forty-three viewers. Comments started flowing.
"wtf is that noise"
"call cops"
"SCRATCHING"
She knocked. "DoorDash delivery!"
The scratching intensified. This time she noticed a pattern beyond the SOS. Scratches near the bottom of the door, child-height. She set her phone on the floor, angled to catch the gap under the door.
A piece of paper slid out. On it, drawn in what looked like crayon: a butterfly.
"Help," a young voice whispered. Not in English. Spanish, maybe? "Ayuda."
The door burst open, chain snapping. Vikings Cap grabbed her by the throat, lifted her off her feet. Behind him, she saw the girl clearly now—maybe thirteen, fourteen, Latina, chained to a radiator. Her eyes huge with hope and terror.
"Livestreaming, pendejo," Yasmin choked out, hoping the Spanish would reach the girl, give her hope. "Everyone sees you."
He dropped her, lunged for the phone. She rolled away, grabbed it, kept it pointed at him as she scrambled backward. Ninety-one viewers. Comments exploding.
"SOMEONE CALL 911"
"WHAT THE FUCK"
"IS THIS REAL"
Vikings Cap retreated into the apartment, slammed the door. She heard him on his phone: "We have a problem. The Somali bitch is streaming... No, I can't just... Fine."
The elevator dinged. Marcus stepped out, but not with a hammer this time. He had a gun.
"Give me the phone."
"It's livestreaming. You shoot me, everyone sees."
"Give me the fucking phone or I'll—"
The stairwell door opened. Mrs. Kowalski from 4B shuffled out in her housecoat and slippers, looking confused.
"Such noise! What is happening?"
Marcus turned the gun on her. "Get back in your apartment, old woman."
Mrs. Kowalski's confused expression vanished, replaced by something harder, older. "I know you," she said to Marcus. "I know what you do. I hear the children crying through the vents."
"Get back inside or—"
The old woman moved faster than should have been possible for someone her age. A lifetime of surviving—first the Nazis, then the Soviets, now this—had taught her when to act. She jabbed her walking stick into Marcus's solar plexus, and as he doubled over, she grabbed for the gun.
They struggled. The livestream viewers hit two hundred. Someone in the comments said they'd called the real cops, not the dirty ones, had given them the stream link.
The gun went off.
Mrs. Kowalski fell, blood spreading across her housecoat. Marcus turned the gun on Yasmin.
"Your fault," he said, and pulled the trigger.
9:47 PM.
This time Yasmin didn't hesitate. She knew what she needed. Mrs. Kowalski was the key—the old woman knew, had always known. But she needed to get to her differently.
She grabbed the food, her knife, her phone, and something else from her car—her engineering textbook. Thermodynamics. Heavy enough to be a weapon, but innocent-looking enough to carry.
She went straight to the fourth floor first. Knocked on 4B.
Mrs. Kowalski answered, suspicious. "Yes?"
"Ma'am, I'm Yasmin. I deliver food here sometimes. I need your help. There's a girl trapped in 1408."
The old woman's eyes sharpened. "You know about this?"
"Yes. And I know you know. I know you hear them through the vents."
Mrs. Kowalski stared at her for a long moment. Then: "Come in."
The apartment smelled of cabbage and old paper. Photos covered every surface—a young Mrs. Kowalski in Warsaw, her wedding, children, grandchildren. A life rebuilt from ashes.
"I survived Treblinka," she said simply. "I know the sounds of captivity. But the police—"
"Are in on it. So is Marcus."
"The superintendent? I suspected." She moved to her bedroom, reached under the mattress, and pulled out an ancient Luger. "My husband's. From a dead German. Still works."
"You've kept it all this time?"
"For moments like this. I swore never again." She checked the magazine. "But I'm old. My reflexes aren't what they were."
"I'll draw them out. You just need one clear shot at Marcus. Without him, the others will panic."
They rode the elevator together to the fourteenth floor. Yasmin started her livestream again as they walked. This time she titled it: "EMERGENCY: HUMAN TRAFFICKING AT RIVERSIDE TOWERS MINNEAPOLIS."
She knocked on 1408. The scratching started.
"I'm here to help," she said in Spanish through the door. "Estoy aquí para ayudar."
The scratching stopped. Then, tentatively: "¿De verdad?"
"Sí. Be ready."
Vikings Cap opened the door, saw the old woman with the gun, and tried to slam it shut. Yasmin jammed her textbook in the gap. The door bounced open. She burst in, phone streaming everything.
The girl—Layla, she would later learn—was exactly where Yasmin remembered. But this time there were two other girls, younger, huddled in the corner. The apartment reeked of fear and unwashed bodies.
"Everyone stay calm," Yasmin said loudly, for the stream. Three hundred viewers and climbing. "We're getting you out."
Vikings Cap pulled a knife. "You have no idea who you're fucking with. The people who run this—"
"Are watching this stream," Yasmin said. "Along with the FBI, who've already been tagged by about fifty viewers."
He lunged at her. She dodged, using moves she'd learned from dying in previous loops. Mrs. Kowalski stayed in the doorway, gun trained on the hallway.
"Marcus is coming," the old woman said calmly.
The elevator dinged. Marcus emerged with Fitzgerald and Nowak. They saw Mrs. Kowalski's gun and stopped.
"Drop it, grandma," Fitzgerald said, hand on his weapon.
"I survived the camps," Mrs. Kowalski replied. "You think I fear death? I fear only silence in the face of evil."
"This is being livestreamed," Yasmin called out. "Four hundred people are watching. Your badges are visible. Your faces are recorded."
Nowak's face went pale. He backed toward the elevator. "I'm not going down for this, Fitz."
"You fucking coward—"
That's when they heard the sirens. Real sirens. Multiple cars.
Marcus raised his gun toward Mrs. Kowalski. The old woman was faster—seventy-eight years old and she was faster. The Luger barked once. Marcus's gun clattered to the floor as he grabbed his shoulder, screaming.
Fitzgerald ran for the stairwell. Vikings Cap tried to follow, but Layla, brave Layla, stuck out her chained foot and tripped him. He went down hard, head striking the doorframe.
The real cops arrived—Minneapolis PD, not the local precinct. FBI would follow within the hour. Yasmin kept streaming as they freed the girls, arrested the men, took Mrs. Kowalski's statement with surprising respect.
"How did you know?" one detective asked Yasmin. "How did you know to stream it, to bring the old woman, to have everything ready?"
Yasmin looked at her phone. 11:23 PM. The loop was broken. Time moved forward again.
"Lucky guess," she said.
Later, much later, after statements and social workers and Layla hugging her so tight she could barely breathe, Yasmin sat in her car in the empty lot. The engineering textbook lay on her passenger seat, blood on its corner from where it had held the door.
Her phone buzzed. A DoorDash notification. She almost laughed—after everything, the algorithm still wanted her to work.
Then she saw the pickup location: Riverside Towers.
Her blood went cold.
She opened the order. The customer notes read: "Thank you for saving them. But this is bigger than one building. Check the Lakeview Apartments tomorrow. Same time. -A friend"
The order canceled itself before she could accept or decline. When she refreshed the app, it was gone.
Yasmin sat there for a long moment, thinking about loops and time and the weight of knowledge. Then she started her car and drove home. She had an engineering exam tomorrow, a normal life to pretend to live.
But she'd be at Lakeview Apartments tomorrow night. 9:47 PM.
Because now she knew: some loops you choose to enter.
The ice had stopped falling, but winter in Minneapolis was far from over. She drove through empty streets, past other apartment buildings with their own secrets, their own scratching sounds behind doors. The city sprawled around her, vast and dark and full of hidden horrors.
Her phone sat silent on the passenger seat. No new orders. Not yet.
But Yasmin knew, with the certainty of someone who had died three times in one night, that this was just the beginning. The loop at Riverside was broken, but there were other loops, other towers, other girls scratching SOS on doors that never opened.
She thought of Mrs. Kowalski, probably making tea in her apartment, the Luger back under her mattress. Of Layla, safe now but forever marked. Of Marcus, bleeding and arrested but just one head of a hydra that grew back faster than anyone could cut.
Her engineering professor always said that every problem had a solution if you could identify all the variables. But what if the problem kept changing? What if the loop wasn't in time but in the system itself—an endless cycle of predators and prey, the city feeding on its most vulnerable?
The Honda's heater wheezed, fighting against the February cold. Yasmin turned onto her street, saw her apartment building's lights flickering like dying stars. She'd go inside, study for her exam, pretend that the world made sense in equations and formulas.
But she'd keep her phone charged. Keep the knife in her glove compartment. Keep the livestream app ready.
Because tomorrow night, at 9:47 PM, she'd enter another loop. And another after that. As many as it took.
The notification would ping, and she would answer.
This was her Minneapolis now—not the one in the tourism brochures or university pamphlets, but the real one. The one where delivery drivers became unwitting heroes, where old women carried Nazi guns under their mattresses, where children drew butterflies while chained to radiators.
She parked, grabbed her textbook—still bloodstained, still heavy with more than just knowledge—and headed inside. Behind her, the city hummed with its dark electricity, its hidden networks, its loops within loops.
Somewhere, in another tower, another girl was learning to scratch SOS on a door.
Somewhere, another Marcus was counting money and bodies.
Somewhere, the algorithm was preparing tomorrow's orders.
Yasmin climbed the stairs to her apartment, each step an echo of Riverside's stairwell, each floor a reminder of how many towers stood in the dark, waiting.
She'd sleep tonight, but not well. She'd dream of hammers and guns and the sound of scratching, always scratching. And when she woke, she'd go to class, take her exam, deliver her orders.
But at 9:47 PM, she'd be ready.
The loop never really ended. It just waited for the next revolution.
And Yasmin Hassan, twenty-four years old, engineering student, delivery driver, reluctant warrior, would be there when it began again.
Because that's what you did in contemporary Minneapolis, in contemporary America, in the contemporary world—you delivered food, you paid your bills, you studied your textbooks, and you saved lives in the spaces between, in the loops that nobody else could see.
Until everyone could see them.
Until the livestream lit up the dark.
Until the scratching became a scream that couldn't be ignored.
The city slept, but its nightmares were wide awake.
And tomorrow, at 9:47 PM, Yasmin would dive back in.
The loop was dead.
Long live the loop.