Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  It was locked.

  She bounded down the stairs two at a time and reached the third floor. She ran up through the car ramp and tried to get up to the fourth floor that way.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said a burly security guard roped off the entrance with a velvet rope. “Restricted access. You’ll have to go back down.”

  Martha had that same sense of familiarity. “Thank you.”

  She rounded the corner outside of the guard’s view and peered over the railing to the fourth floor. She heard tires screeching and thought she could probably reach up there and jettison herself into the action.

  But she had a bad feeling about it.

  She pulled herself back from the railing and shuddered. That would have been a bad idea.

  Instead, she darted back to the elevator. Pout would be off it by now, and she could sneak in undetected. Martha called the elevator down and pushed the button for the fourth floor. The light blinked, but the car didn’t move.

  “Damn,” she whispered.

  The fourth floor was locked.

  She checked the ceiling. It was a flimsy plate of light tiles held together with aluminum bars. She climbed up on the support rails and, standing, could easily push the tiles out of the way. It was an empty hole staring into the dizzying shaft.

  She hoisted her whole body up through the hole and stood on the top of the tiles. She was now in the elevator shaft. It looked like an upside-down hallway. It was a deep corridor with metal railings on both sides and orphan metal doorways rising in a line all the way up.

  She grabbed onto the metal railing on the side of the shaft. These were the support rails that the elevator slid up and down on. She wrapped her legs around one, just like that rope-climbing exercise in high school gym class. Arm over arm, she slowly pulled herself up to the metal door directly above her.

  She was now even with the door, but she was still about three feet away and had no extra hands to pry open the door. She noticed the tiny red light of a sensor. She flailed her legs toward the sensor, and poof, the door opened. She concentrated on carefully climbing over rails and bars to the open door. Then, she found herself stomach-down on the bare concrete of the fourth floor.

  Success.

  She crawled away from the elevator door, and now safely away from the shaft, she stood. She drew her gun and snuck quietly around until she heard voices.

  This was it.

  This was her moment.

  She was going to catch Pout.

  She pulled out her phone and called Jake.

  “Talk to me,” he answered.

  “I’ve got him,” she reported quietly.

  “Who?”

  “Pout,” she said. “I’ve got him cornered in a parking garage.” She gave him the location.

  “What exactly have you got on him?” Jake asked.

  “Just send backup.” She ended the call and snuck around the corner. She hid behind a car and saw the white van with the weed leaf on it about thirty yards away.

  “Ma’am?” The security guard had spotted her. “I already told you, you can’t be up here.”

  She pointed her gun at him. “Yeah, well, I don’t take orders. I just give them.”

  He raised his palms in surrender. “I’m just doing what the boss said.”

  “Who’s the boss?”

  “Pout.” He chuckled. “What Pout says goes.”

  “Not anymore.” She smirked, stuck the gun in his face, and grabbed him by the ear until he gasped. “Now you’re going to tell me what’s going on up here.”

  “The same thing you’re doing,” he told her.

  “And what is that?”

  “Making the world a better, safer place.”

  “Oh, is this the villain speech?” She chuckled. “You know, where the villain is busted, and so he tells the hero, ‘We’re not so different, you and I…’”

  “I got news for you. You’re no hero, lady.”

  She pressed the gun against his temple, and his face turned cold and silent. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  He glared at her, dark eyes glinting with disdain. “The world order must be shaken to its core. Only then can greatness spout forth.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Jesus, is this what happens to all the world’s English majors? They can’t find work as writers, so they become poetry-spouting criminals?”

  He said nothing else.

  “Let’s go, Keats.” She rolled her eyes and led him by gunpoint toward the voices.

  “Bloody hell,” was Alister’s response. “George, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  The guard simply held up his palms and gestured back toward Martha and her gun.

  “Well, well, well.” Alister sauntered up to her with the slow, deliberate steps of the wealthy and self-assured. His cold blue eyes sized her up, and she could feel him visually undressing her. His wavy dark hair blew in the wind, and under his trench coat, he was impeccably dressed in sleek black that oozed sophistication.

  Martha wilted and wondered how the hell she could have possibly thought she could take him down on her own. Maybe if she stalled him, Jake would get here with backup in time.

  “What the hell are you up to, Pout?” She showily pressed the gun into George’s side.

  Alister raised an eyebrow, and the side of his lip rose in slight amusement. “All right.” He chuckled. “You want to play at the grownups’ table, little lady? I’ll play with you. But don’t forget, I’m much better at this game than you.”

  He winked, and by now, a crowd of half a dozen guards had gathered behind him, laughing.

  She moved the gun at an angle ever so slightly away from George’s head, then fired into the garage.

  “Shit,” George yelled, and Alister and his entire crew hit the ground as the bullet ricocheted off the garage's wall.

  “Tell me what you’re up to, Pout,” Martha demanded as the group rose.

  Alister’s face no longer held condescending mirth, only anger. “You’ve had your fun. But you’re out of your depth.”

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” she warned.

  He sighed as if bored. “No.” Standing only three feet from her, Martha could smell the liquor on his breath.

  Tall and young—but not too young—and clad in all black and swagger, she immediately knew why half of Manhattan’s women ended up in his bedroom. If she didn’t know what she knew about him, Martha wouldn’t have minded the chance herself.

  With a leather-gloved hand, he reached into his coat and pulled out a gun.

  Martha came to her senses right at that moment. She swiveled her hand from George’s stomach to Alister and pulled the trigger.

  As if in slow motion, Alister fell back, a grimace on his face, but maintained his aim with his gun.

  “You don’t get it.” He smirked as he lay on the bare concrete. “I’ve already died inside. So, to die now or to die later, it’s all the same. You, on the other hand, still cling to the toxic notions of virtue and a life worth living. It’s bondage, really. You live your life trying so hard to protect it that you never really live. You might think you have won here, but you haven’t. You see, I’ve lived my life with a greater freedom than you will ever know in ten lifetimes.”

  Martha choked back the lump in her throat. This guy even died sexily. It was at that moment that he pulled the trigger, and she felt a fiery explosion hit her forehead and rip her skull apart.

  Chapter Twelve

  Reuben—Tuesday February 14, 9:43 a.m.

  Reuben sat at his desk and tried to work. Over the past couple of days, Reuben’d had more blood and other bodily fluids extracted from him than he’d had in his entire life. He’d even had to take off Monday from work.

  At least Buzz gave him back his Apple Watch before he left. Buzz also injected him with something that he promised wouldn’t cause any long-term effects like cancer, heart disease, or blood poisoning.

  Reuben had stupidly agreed.

  Now, he sa
t at work with Julian Schaeffer’s photo taking up the entire screen on the main wall, and he was supposed to be working the angles on him. Was the kid connected with the bomb or not?

  His stomach was in knots. Either he was going to die in blood-boiling pain in a few minutes, or he wasn’t.

  In other words, in one scenario, he was doomed to relive dying over and over again until he, the guy who failed to get his yellow belt three times, stopped a terrorist attack.

  In the other scenario, he was crazy.

  Reuben honestly wasn’t sure which one he preferred.

  Sven stopped by his desk. “How are you feeling? It’s not like you to take sick days.”

  “Better.” Reuben grabbed his stomach and smiled weakly.

  Sven raised an eyebrow. “Glad to hear it.”

  Sven left, and Reuben sank into his chair. He remembered what Sven had said about being able to spot liars and knew he had not passed Sven’s bullshit detector. Now he would be on Sven’s shit list, and for what? A bunch of dumb tests by an egomaniacal scientist?

  He broke into a cold sweat.

  Whatever was going on with him, he needed to get ahold of himself, or he could ruin his whole life in one day. Well, really it had been three days, or maybe six days. Christ, he didn’t even know what timeline he was on. If that was indeed the case at all. Buzz still hadn’t been able to prove anything.

  They didn’t show this part in the comics. Man, being a superhero sucks.

  Aki swished past him in black jeans, a turtleneck, and a midriff leather jacket. Hmm. A different outfit than she was wearing on Valentine's Day the first time around. Reuben couldn’t take his eyes off her. She caught him staring and shot him a dirty look.

  Right. He immediately averted his eyes toward the computer screen and tried to start working.

  Then he heard Aki’s laughter from across the room. It sounded so free and whimsical.

  He had gotten the date last time, so maybe his whole fear of her was completely irrational. He had made her out to be this mythical goddess, completely unapproachable, when in reality she was funny and kind and super easy to talk to. She was at her desk reading printouts, and he knew this was his chance.

  Crazy or about to die, talking to her was the best distraction he could think of.

  He sauntered up to her. “Hey,” he said, leaning against the desk.

  She glanced up from the printout. “Hi.” She shifted a little in her chair and then turned back to her work.

  “You know, I’ve seen you around,” he stated breezily.

  She glanced up with just an eye movement.

  “And I know you like that band, Je Ne Sais Pas,” he told her.

  “What?” She furrowed her brow.

  “You know, that band from Montreal, Je Ne Sais Pas. You would go to May Fest every year…”

  “What the hell?” She glared at him. “Have you been doing some kind of investigative file on me?”

  An investigative file was the agency’s term for a deep search on an individual. It was usually done when there was only speculative evidence on the subject and they wanted to uncover dirt.

  “No, no.” Reuben rubbed his forehead. “I had just heard that about you, and—“

  “You heard things about me?” she cut in. “From who?”

  Reuben cringed. “Look, can I just start over?”

  Aki looked at him like he was insane. “I’m not even sure what your name is…”

  “My name is Reuben, and I know you’re going through a tough time—“

  “A tough time?” she repeated. “What are you talking about?”

  “After your breakup.” This was going from bad to worse.

  “Oh my God.” She rose to her feet. “Look, I don’t know who you are or who you’ve been talking to, or what you think you know, but my personal life is not your business.”

  “Right.” He blushed and slunk back through the office to his desk. He glanced at his watch. It was 9:47. He really wanted to die. As in now, please.

  As soon as he wished it, he heard the massive explosion. Turning, he saw a clear wave of energy rush toward him, and his blood started to boil. His skin dried up, and he felt himself evaporate.

  And then nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Reuben—Tuesday, February 14, 9:27 a.m.

  Reuben stood in the middle of the crowded bullpen. Julian Schaeffer’s senior photo innocently smiled at them from a screen, a problem rendered over global national security in MAX level capacity.

  He checked his watch. What the fuck? He hadn’t gone back three days like before. This was literally twenty minutes earlier.

  I thought Groundhog Day meant always waking up at the same moment?

  All around Reuben, hapless CIA agents scurried about trying to confirm if this college kid had a bomb or not.

  Was it really that difficult? Reuben mused. Whoever was behind this had to be way more suave, sophisticated, and connected.

  Smoking weed and posting on RedBook just didn’t cut it.

  Reuben glanced down at his watch. OK, it was 9:28, and this was the timeline where he’d skipped work yesterday.

  Which meant Buzz knew and the bomb… Fuck, the bomb was going to go off in about twenty minutes.

  Reuben really didn’t want to die again.

  He had nineteen minutes until he died again. Nineteen minutes until his blood started to boil again. There was no hope to stop the explosion on this timeline. He hadn’t gone back far enough.

  He had to figure out something.

  Fuck, he hated this.

  But what could he do? He didn’t have to wait these moments out. If dying again and again taught him anything, it was that you made the most out of the moments you had.

  But he didn't have the time. Maybe he could settle for figuring out a plan to deal with it the next time he…came back to life, or whatever it was called.

  Aki was staring at a monitor, mulling over the same thing as everyone else. How to crack this case. Maybe that was his real in with Aki.

  With butterflies in his stomach, he approached her. “Hi.”

  She smiled and barely looked up from her printout.

  Reuben made himself continue. “Listen, I have a hypothetical I wanted to run by you. On how to catch Schaeffer.”

  She set the printout down and perused him up and down. “Don’t you work in tech?”

  “I do. I know I’m not an agent. In fact, the most action I see outside of the office is when I take the tech van out to a safe house or other asset to fix the security cameras or router, but we’ve got a real situation here. Maybe some out-of-the-box ideas might work.”

  She pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair. “Go ahead,” she prodded. “I’m listening.”

  “He’s a college guy,” he told her. “What do college guys want?”

  She cocked her head and considered his words. Her raven hair shone against the fluorescent lights, lustrous and dark, and her chocolate brown eyes flashed with a fiery intensity, as though in any given moment a library of thoughts all competed for her conscious mind.

  And he had her undivided attention.

  He choked back a lump in his throat and realized who he was really dealing with. This was her in her element. “That day,” whenever it had been, in whatever lifetime, she had shared her goofy, playful side with him. But this was something different. She waited patiently for him to finish his thought.

  “I just think… I mean, college guys are all about the parties and the girls, and let’s face it, for a guy like Schaeffer, a little bit of weed.”

  She raised her eyebrows in slight agreement, so he kept going.

  “We could put the word out in his social circle.” He worked the idea out as it came out of his mouth. “A party, or free beer, free weed. Something that we could use to lure him in pretty quickly.”

  “We have an agent closing in on him already,” she pointed out.

  “In Albuquerque,” he countered. “And we’re worried he�
��s going to run.”

  Aki regarded him with interest. “You’ve done your homework. It’s an idea. But you’re talking about staging a sting?”

  Reuben shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it a sting.”

  Sting operations were costly and bureaucratic. They didn’t have the time to put that together. What was he thinking? They didn’t have time to put anything together.

  But if he kept this going, maybe, just maybe, he’d get the chance to kiss those lips before the world ended again.

  “It would be more like a trap. He meets a pretty woman there. You.” He caught her gaze as he said it. She didn’t react. She was just listening intently. “Gain his trust with a kiss.” Did he really just say that? Her eyes faltered at the line, and a tiny, almost imperceptible smile crept across her lips. “Like a final descent into pleasure before the end of the world…”

  Her lips parted slightly, and she shifted in her chair.

  He corrected himself. “That’s how Schaeffer would see it, I mean,” he continued. “He knows that life as he knows it is over. Why not trap him into one last moment of debauchery before he detonates the bomb?”

  She stared off for a moment, then held his gaze. “I like it.”

  His heart lurched. “You do?”

  “I don’t know if it will work, but given the ideas—or lack of ideas we have on how to catch this guy—I’d be willing to get behind it.”

  His heart leapt into his throat, and then he heard it. The blast. The god-awful but familiar pain of boiling and cracking and instant dehydration. Then disintegration.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Reuben—Saturday, February 11, 7:03 a.m.

  The early morning light flooded through the apartment blinds, and ‘ping,’ like a microwave oven, Reuben woke.

  He winced and rolled over in a silent argument, but it was no use. He wouldn’t be getting any more sleep. He opened his eyes in surrender and sighed deeply at the unopened Amazon package on his dresser. How long would this purgatory of time travel last?

  He sat up and raised his arms to the heavens. “Would it be too much to ask—God, Buddha, Einstein, Black Hole #2,546—to at least get my blackout curtains up at some point? I don’t know how long we’re going to do this, but it would be nice to get some good sleep every once in a while.”