Fixer Redux

by Gene Doucette

“No, I would not.”

  She struck a pose he’d last seen in a martial arts film, which was to say if they weren’t in the middle of a life-or-death struggle, he’d find it funny. As it was, he did find it somewhat amusing. Then she launched herself at him, in some wild combination of kicking and punching that would have been impressive if he didn’t have the means to evade it. He stepped to the right and threw a punch at her throat…and missed her. She got out of the way.

  “You caught up,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We’re in the future. Have you ever been?”

  She looked around, which was cute. The future didn’t look any different; that was why it was so hard to tell when you’d arrived there. If they were near anybody, it would have been obvious much sooner, because regular humans tended to be off-focus when viewed from the other end of things.

  “You weren’t moving faster,” she said. “You were moving sooner. That is a trip. And now?”

  “Now we’re on the other side of time. You can’t see what I’m going to do, and I can’t see what you’re going to do.”

  She laughed.

  “Dude, that was a huge mistake. You literally just took away your only advantage.”

  He had more to say, but unlike when Corrigan had a chance to finish the job and punted it, she saw the opportunity for what it was, and went right at him.

  He was a head taller, and had at least sixty pounds on her, and she was fighting with a bad shoulder, but that didn’t matter at all. When she said she’d been combat training since she was a child, clearly, she wasn’t exaggerating.

  Inside of three seconds, she’d punched him twice in the nose, cut his knees from under him, and done something to his elbow that made it feel like his entire arm had been ripped off. He ended up on his back, blood gushing from his nose, his head spinning, and thinking it would have been awesome if he’d just stayed in bed on the day of the State House bombing.

  She had the heel of her palm pointed at his nose, as if it was a loaded gun.

  “I’m going to kill you with this next shot,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that, before I did it. Oh, and it was nice meeting you. Family should stay in touch, right?”

  A hand—an extra-long hand, with an extra set of knuckles and what looked like claws at the end of it—grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled.

  The Kilroy threw her a good ten feet.

  She rolled into a crouch, and got a look at the thing that had just attacked her.

  For the first time, Corrigan saw fear in her eyes.

  “What the fuck, what the fuck, Corrigan, what the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a Kilroy. Ever seen one before?”

  Corrigan got up. He was really woozy, but it seemed important at this moment to not show weakness. He didn’t know exactly how far this little arrangement with the Kilroy Prime really extended.

  “I…I’ve seen them, but I didn’t think they were real.”

  “They are. And they don’t like people like us.”

  “They?”

  The Kilroy Prime opened its huge mouth and shouted.

  It was a horrific sound. Sheila dropped to one knee. Corrigan nearly ended up on his back again, and he knew it was coming.

  “Kora-gan-see-stop-she-see,” the Kilroy hissed.

  “It talks?” Sheila whispered. “What the fuck.”

  “I brought you into the future,” Corrigan said, “so they could meet you.”

  She crouched into a battle stance.

  “Why don’t they like people like us?” she asked.

  “Because when we change the future, it causes them pain. I’ve experienced it from this end myself, and it’s awful. You know how the future blinks out of existence for a half second? Imagine living in that future.”

  “That’s stupid, dude.” She looked at the Kilroy. “It’s stupid…Kilroy, I guess. I do that all the time. He does that all the time.”

  “It’s worse the bigger it is,” Corrigan said. “Step out of the way of a bullet is bad when you’re nearby, but otherwise, it’s not a huge deal. Setting off a bomb when it wasn’t supposed to off is another thing entirely.”

  “Aw, come on, really?”

  “Really,” he said. “They knew you were out there somewhere, but they couldn’t find you, so they asked for my help. It took me a while to figure that out, because they’re not great conversationalists. Also, my last encounter with them wasn’t all that fun. As you can imagine.”

  “All right, well, I guess I’ll have to fight this…nightmare first, to get to you. No problem.”

  “I still don’t think you understand,” Corrigan said. “This isn’t the only one of them. It’s an entire species. And you’re surrounded.”

  “Maggie?” Jeanine said.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked. “Is something happening?”

  She’d managed to salvage a headset from the downed chopper, so she could keep in communication while also running back to the scene. There were sirens in the distance, and two more helicopters were already circling the dock. She was pretty sure they were from the news stations and not law enforcement. There was supposed to be a no-fly over the area, but big explosions draw crowds and that was that.

  “Yeah,” Jeanine said, “but I couldn’t begin to tell you what.”

  “Just describe what you see.”

  “All right. Corrigan is just standing there. The target is fighting, but she’s not fighting him. She’s not fighting anybody. Is he, like, doing this with his mind or something?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Because he can dodge bullets, so, this looks… I mean, it looks like he’s using telekinesis on her.”

  “Hang on, I’m here.”

  Maggie got through the gate. The ICE agent who took a round in the chest was sitting up against the fence, and gave a thumbs-up as she went past. Jeanine and the third ICE agent were twenty yards closer, looking deeply perplexed at what was transpiring before them.

  In the open space in front of the containers, Sheila Corrigan was in the middle of a life-or-death battle with empty space. And, she was losing that battle.

  “Tell me that’s not exactly what I said,” Jeanine said.

  “It’s not. What you’re looking at, is someone getting beaten to death by a gang of invisible killers.”

  “No shit.”

  “I do not shit you, agent.”

  “Well. That’s something for the grandkids.”

  Sheila looked nearly done, and a few seconds later, she was. She took a brutal hit, one that rocked her head sideways and sent a spray of blood across the pavement, and then she fell over in a heap.

  Corrigan stepped forward and stood over her, protectively, and began to talk.

  They couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it looked like he was in negotiations with the wind. He put his hand on his chest, nodded, and then made a gesture that looked as if he was shaking hands with someone who, again, was invisible.

  Then he bent down, picked Sheila up, threw her over his shoulder, and walked her away from the crates.

  “Hey Maggie,” he said, a little sooner than he should have, addressing a spot Maggie wasn’t occupying.

  “Corrigan, what are you…”

  “Handcuffs. Get handcuffs.”

  “Is she…”

  “Get handcuffs.”

  He was addressing a space to her left.

  “Good, thank you,” he said, to nobody.

  Jeanine looked at Maggie, confused, then stepped into the space Corrigan was addressing, and held up a pair of handcuffs.

  “Yes, I’ll put her down for you,” Corrigan said. “I’m sorry, Maggie, my head is in the future, I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  21

  Sheila Corrigan was chained to a wheelchair, awake, and still looking as if she’d been run over by a herd of trucks. Both of her legs were broken, as was her left arm. Her right arm was okay, but the shoulder above it was not. The spot where Erica Smal
ls shot her had become badly infected, and it remained touch-and-go on whether Sheila was going to lose a limb over the matter. That was before considering the somewhat high likelihood of sepsis.

  One of her eyes remained swollen shut, a week after the beating, but other than a lost tooth, she was expected to come out of the recuperation with more or less the same face, without any reconstructive surgery needed.

  Sheila and her wheelchair were in an interrogation room in the Boston Police headquarters. She’d been driven there from Mass General in an armored vehicle, guarded by twenty officers in riot gear, down a street that was closed for this reason. All that, despite the fact that she couldn’t walk—there was a real possibility she never would again—and was cuffed to the chair.

  For the past half hour, Justin Axelrod had been in the interrogation room with her, asking all the obvious questions: who did she work for, what was her goal, and so on. She had, thus far, declined to answer.

  “Is she doing anything?” Maggie asked Corrigan. They were in the observation room on the other side of the one-way glass, along with Erica. Erica was supposed to have returned to her job by now, but expressed interest in being present for this interrogation. There were probably a host of legal reasons why she wasn’t supposed to be there, but nobody bothered to cite them, and so she was allowed in.

  “Anything like what?” he asked.

  “In the future. You know what I mean.”

  “She’s nearly answered a few times, but no.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to incriminate herself,” Erica said. “She doesn’t have a lawyer in the room or anything.”

  Maggie laughed.

  “Oh, there won’t be a trial,” she said. “I think she knows it too. She’s going to a black site.”

  “I didn’t think those were real,” Erica said. “What about due process?”

  “There are loopholes. To begin with, the site isn’t on U.S. soil. You would be surprised how much that very fact changes how we interpret our own laws. Besides, do you want to try to explain, in court, who did that to her face? I don’t.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Anyway, legally, she’s dead. Died a week ago in the fight on the dock.”

  In the future, Sheila kept shooting glances at the window. Justin was in the middle of asking her about the tech she was using, and how expensive it was, and did she want protection from these people? Because he could offer her protection.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?” Sheila asked.

  “You’re referring to…”

  “You know exactly who I’m referring to. I’ll talk to him.”

  Justin turned to the window, and shrugged.

  Maggie looked at Corrigan.

  “Go ahead, if you want to,” Maggie said.

  He didn’t really want to. He wanted to go back home and be done with all of this. But Justin Axelrod had made all of Corrigan’s legal problems go away, so he figured he owed him a little.

  “Sure,” Corrigan said.

  He walked around and got buzzed into the room. Justin met him on his way out.

  “Anything you can get out of her will be helpful,” Justin said, quietly. “Just keep her talking.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Corrigan waited until Justin was out, then took a seat. Sheila looked up at him with her one good eye, and tried a smile her face wasn’t entirely capable of.

  “Hey there, cousin,” Sheila said.

  “Hi,” he said. “How’s the…um, how’s the everything? How are you?”

  “They’re thinking I may get to stand again someday, and they’re holding out hope I stop pissing blood soon. Those friends of yours went to town, huh?”

  “They aren’t my friends.”

  “Right. Enemy-of-my-enemy huh? You’re a bigger bag of tricks than I gave you credit for.”

  “Do you think we are?” he asked. “Cousins, I mean.”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “We share a name.”

  “True. Maybe we’re brother and sister, huh? Dad just got around a lot.”

  “Did you know your father?”

  She tried another smile. This one looked like a grimace of pain.

  “Yeah, we’re not doing that,” she said. “I’m not giving up any more information to you than I did to agent asshole. I wanted to thank you for stopping them before they killed me, is all.”

  “Oh. You’re welcome.”

  “Also, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad to still be alive. Thing is, I’m a lot more valuable than you realize. I know they’re gonna stick me in a hole where nobody can find me, but I’ll help myself out of that hole someday, and even if I don’t…they’ll come looking.”

  “They who?”

  “Nah. I mean, I wouldn’t answer that even if I really knew the answer. I don’t. But someone. As far as they’re concerned, I’m their intellectual property. They’ll want me back. You and me, we’ll meet again.”

  Corrigan smiled.

  “You know what your big mistake was?” he asked.

  “Not blowing you up the first time, when I had a chance?”

  “No. The big mistake was pulling this in my city.”

  She laughed, and then started coughing. Some bloody saliva came out of her mouth, which she couldn’t tend to. As threatening as Sheila Corrigan sounded, she was effectively incapable of moving.

  “Luck of the draw,” she said. “Unless every city has someone like us, and I don’t think it does.”

  “Could be. Could be there’s hundreds of us.”

  “Daddy really did get around, then.”

  “He did, at that,” he said, standing. His side complained, gently, about this.

  Corrigan was a whole lot healthier than he had been a week ago, when he faced off with Sheila on the docks, but the doctors were saying to expect it to be a while before he could move around without some discomfort. Since he’d run out of reasons to put his life in danger, he was anticipating a smooth recuperation period.

  “Now if you don’t have any information for me,” he said, “I’m going to go home and get back to my retirement. Best of luck with the rehab. I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  “Hey,” she said, in the future, just as he was about to put his hand on the doorknob. “If there are hundreds of us, who do you think they’re more like? You? Or me?”

  He didn’t answer. He just shook his head and let himself out of the room.

  Maggie, Justin and Erica met him in the hallway a few seconds later.

  “I think you can get more from her,” Justin said. “You should go back in.”

  “She has nothing else to tell us,” Corrigan said. “It’s over. If you’re going to lock her up somewhere, you should probably do that. Get her out of the city, at least.”

  Justin nodded.

  “Maybe the CIA will have better luck,” he said.

  “I don’t want to know,” Corrigan said. He looked at Maggie. “Can we go home now? My retirement’s behind schedule.”

  Maggie laughed, as Justin excused himself.

  “Sure,” she said. “We gotta swing by the airport on our way.”

  “I have a few hours,” Erica said. “I wouldn’t mind a drink first. Maybe we can talk about what she said to you just now that none of us could hear.”

  Corrigan smiled.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, “but a drink sounds good.”

  About the Author

  Gene Doucette is an award-winning screenwriter, novelist, playwright, humorist, essayist, father, husband, cyclist, dog owner – and a few other things, too. He is, in other words, a writer. A graduate of Boston College, he lives in Cambridge, MA with his family.

  For the latest on Gene Doucette, follow him online

  genedoucette.me

  genedoucette@me.com

  Also by Gene Doucette

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  Becoming an overnight celebrity at age sixteen should have been a lot more fun. Yes, there were times when it was extremely cool, but when the newness of it all wore off, Annie Collins was left with a permanent security detail and the kind of constant scrutiny that makes the college experience especially awkward.

  Not helping matters: she’s the only kid in school with her own pet spaceship.

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  Nightmares aren’t the only weird things going on lately. A government telescope in California has been abandoned, and nobody seems to know why.

  The man called on to investigate—Edgar Somerville—has become the go-to guy whenever there’s something odd going on, which has been pretty common lately. So far, nothing has panned out: no aliens or zombies or anything else that might be deemed legitimately peculiar… but now may be different, and not just because Ed can’t find an easy explanation. This isn’t the only telescope where people have gone missing, and the clues left behind lead back to Annie.

  It all adds up to a new threat that the world may just need saving from, requiring the help of all the Sorrow Falls survivors. The question is: are they saving the world with Annie Collins, or are they saving it from her?

  The Frequency of Aliens is the exciting sequel to The Spaceship Next Door.

  Unfiction

  When Oliver Naughton joins the Tenth Avenue Writers Underground, headed by literary wunderkind Wilson Knight, Oliver figures he’ll finally get some of the wild imaginings out of his head and onto paper.

  But when Wilson takes an intense interest in Oliver's writing and his genre stories of dragons, aliens, and spies, things get weird. Oliver’s stories don’t just need to be finished: they insist on it.