Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  “Well,” she stammered, “I mean, you know, we knew each other when we were kids, and we’re both grown adults, and you know for some other woman…”

  “I want to know more about this.” Buzz rubbed his hands together. “Tell me, have you ever done anything together?”

  “Christ, Buzz.” Reuben smacked Buzz, and Martha cleared her throat.

  “How long do we have to do this, just so we’re clear?” Martha asked, squirming in her chair.

  “All right, you think you have enough?” Buzz asked Reuben.

  Reuben pursed his lips, and Martha noticed he appeared tenser than she’d ever seen him.

  “Are you really going to do this…suicide thing?” she asked.

  Both men nodded, and Martha scrambled to think of something, anything to stop this from happening. “Can I make a request?”

  “Shoot,” Reuben said. Yeah…probably not the right word to use.

  “I don’t want to watch,” she told them.

  “OK.” Reuben and Buzz nodded to each other. “We’ll move the supplies.”

  Buzz and Reuben grabbed a bunch of gear and took it to the adjoining room. Martha wasn’t even sure what they had. Now that Martha was alone, she wiggled and squirmed to get her hands free, feeling around the rope knots. She’d been working them for an hour now. They were tight.

  What the fuck? she thought. How did they get this tied so well? A couple of computer nerds would know how to tie a rope because?

  “Boy Scouts,” she whispered.

  But she had one up on that. She had taken a course in Afghanistan on how to handle an abduction scenario. It was taught by Marines, and they had gone over the basic knots and how to dismantle them.

  She glanced down at the bindings on her feet. Yep, that was definitely a Boy Scout knot. She racked her memory as she felt around her wrists. She replayed the video in her head. There should be a loop to pull right…about…here.

  Yep, there it was. If this loop was pulled, the ropes should come right off.

  Buzz and Reuben’s voices grew a little louder, and she stopped. It sounded like they were coming back. She waited a couple of minutes, and they didn’t return.

  Then, with one quick pull, she loosened the knots on her wrists and broke her arms free. She didn’t take long to bask in the freedom. She immediately moved to her feet and unbound them just as easily.

  She was free. She ran to the entrance, a metal door with a sensor on it.

  “Fuck it.” She shrugged and slammed it open. The sensor sounded, and Buzz and Reuben came running. But by then, Martha was already out into the hallway of the mansion.

  “Shit,” Reuben yelled. “Martha, wait.”

  She grabbed her phone as they chased her through the hallway. She dialed the precinct, and it rang endlessly.

  “Damn switchboard operator,” she mumbled. “Stop watching Netflix and pick up the damn phone.”

  She gave up and called Jake directly.

  “Yo, Jake here, talk to me.” He yawned, and Martha realized it was after midnight.

  “Yeah, Jake, I’m going to need backup.”

  No sooner had she finished giving the address than Buzz and Reuben both screamed simultaneous curses. Then they ran out the front door and through the gardens.

  Martha began chasing them. As soon as Jake got there, she would have backup to arrest them.

  When Martha finally caught them, she found them in the garden house. They sat peacefully on benches, poring over papers.

  “You assholes are under arrest.” Martha leaned over and panted as she caught her breath.

  They ignored her, which confused and concerned her.

  “This would work much better,” Buzz was saying to Reuben, “if you came back an hour earlier than now. Think you can do it?”

  Reuben shook his head. “Well, I have no control over—"

  Buzz pulled out a gun and aimed it point-blank at Reuben’s face.

  Martha screamed when he pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Reuben—Thursday, February 9, 9:44 p.m.

  Reuben and Martha stood in the doorway of Buzz’s mansion, the chime of the doorbell still ringing against the tranquil drive.

  OK, Reuben thought. We’re here. Only went back a few hours.

  For a brief moment, he wondered how. He had wanted to come to this point. It would have been the easiest place to start over. But was it dumb luck or because he’d controlled it? He had no idea.

  He glanced at Martha and felt a calm sense of relief from her being here. It felt good being able to have friends he could trust and relax around, even when shit was going crazy in his life.

  Maybe Buzz’s nanobot would have some insight into how to control how far he warped back. But for now, he needed to focus on convincing Martha.

  Buzz met them in the foyer, padding through the halls in his red silk pajamas.

  “Do you have anything to say to her?” Buzz asked.

  Reuben shook his head. “Not yet. But very soon.”

  “You do?” Martha frowned at Reuben.

  Buzz bowed to Martha. “Come in. You’ll need a stiff drink for this.”

  Martha stared at Reuben. “What’s going on?”

  Reuben grimaced. This was the moment they had gambled on with the suicide plot, but now he had no idea how to explain this to her. A guy could get slapped, committed, or both for spouting what he had to say. He spotted a basket on a foyer table full of solved Rubik’s Cubes. He rolled his eyes. Of course, Buzz would have that. He sauntered up to the table, grabbed one, and tossed it in the air.

  He caught it with flair and then caught Martha’s eye. “Back there, as we were walking in, you were thinking about the lilacs.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged with a smile. “Yeah, you saw me looking at them. What about them?”

  “No,” Reuben continued with another toss of the cube in the air. He caught it with finality. “No, I didn’t see you look at them all. But you weren’t just noticing them. You were really thinking about them. You wondered if they had those at Frank’s Nursery near your house. You try to keep a flower garden going on your patio, but you don’t have the time.”

  “Did I tell you that?” Martha furrowed her brow.

  Reuben shook his head. “Not in the way you think.”

  “What way is that?” Her lips rose in confusion. “Was I drunk or something?”

  He didn’t answer but continued reading her mind as they walked. “You thought the fountain outside was not maintained well, and it made you think Buzz is pretentious.”

  At this point, Buzz brought her a drink, and she laughed weakly.

  “I never said that.” She clasped her hand over her heart in apology to Buzz.

  Buzz winked at her. “Oh, I take no offense. I am pretentious. In fact, some would say it’s my defining characteristic.”

  Martha faked a high and uncomfortable laugh.

  Reuben paced the foyer, taking over the space as he talked. “You think the state of the fountain is a reflection of Buzz’s character. According to you, you think he wants things to look a certain way, but he can’t keep it up.”

  She downed the entire glass down in one gulp. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m so sorry, I would never.”

  “You hate the frescoes on the ceiling,” Reuben interrupted. “And you think the design clashes with the rest of the house.”

  “How do you… I was an art history major,” she stammered, casting apologetic eyes at Buzz. “I have an eye for these things. Don’t take it personally.”

  “You find that the artist’s technique lacks soul,” Reuben continued, “and you feel it was painted as a hollow tribute.”

  Martha stopped protesting and watched Reuben with her mouth agape.

  “But I won’t stop there.” He smiled. “Let’s go back further than Buzz’s lilacs. Let’s talk about your work life.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Reuben?” Martha asked.

  “Three days
ago, you were late for work because you messed up your whole schedule when your gym was closed for renovations.”

  “Do you go to CardioMax?” Martha gasped. “And how would you—”

  “Just listen,” Reuben cut her off. “You missed the morning meeting, and you didn’t know that that was the day Sergeant Bramley would finally be filmed for the reality show. You yelled at the film crew and made a total ass out of yourself.”

  “I know I didn’t tell anyone that,” she stated.

  “And now you’re concerned about it being aired on national TV,” Reuben said. “You’re also jealous of the intern Zach.”

  Martha frowned. “The intern? No. Who have you been talking to?”

  “Just you.” Reuben winked and tossed the Rubik’s Cube to Buzz, who caught it. “You’re not ready to admit it, but Zach’s a major suck-up. You’re worried he’ll show you up, or already is. He’s doing way better at your job than you were at that stage. He does all the computer modules and gets content out of them. While you admire the help he’s been to you, you wonder if he can do the work out in the field.”

  She was quiet now.

  Reuben rushed on. “Then the day after the reality show fiasco, you went to Gigi’s Breakfast Café. You ordered a cinnamon apple crepe and researched Alister Pout in The Scene.”

  She blinked in disbelief.

  “You think he’s a jerk, a real womanizer, but he’s involved in something and you know it. But you can’t prove it. It makes you crazy. Later that night, you were supposed to go to a concert with your friend from UVA, Jenna. You’ve had a hard time connecting with her because she’s started her family, and you just don’t have that much in common anymore. In fact, you feel that way about most of your girlfriends because they’ve all started pairing up and having kids, and you’re still single.”

  She gulped at that part, and he could tell he’d hit a nerve.

  “You wonder if you’ve missed out on some ‘gene of womanhood’ because none of those things interest you.”

  A tear welled up in her eye. “Stop,” she whispered. “Stop.”

  Reuben’s heart sank. He had gone too far, and now he felt like a real asshole.

  “How are you doing this?” she whispered.

  “Martha.” Reuben gestured toward the living room. “I think you’d better sit down.”

  Reuben—Thursday, February 9, 10:31 p.m.

  Reuben, Martha, and Buzz had gone down to Buzz’s computer lair. The two guys were busy updating the timelines and yelling voice commands into the machines.

  Amidst the commotion, Martha silently grabbed a folding chair and sat down. They had told her what they were up to. Not that any of it made any sense.

  A time warp? That kind of thing only happened in dime-store novels and sci-fi movies, or that one where Bill Murray was a newscaster and the alarm clock played that Cher song every morning. What was that movie? Had these guys seen that movie one too many times?

  But, how could he have known all that stuff? Like what she was thinking about the lilacs? Or about the reality show thing at work? She hadn’t told anyone about that. Even if she had, which she was almost certain she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have told them Sergeant Bramley’s name. Plus, while she did have some kind of latent feelings about Zach the intern, he wasn’t on her mind enough that she would have told Reuben that.

  The whole thing with Jenna? While there was the remote possibility that she might have, in a drunken state, mentioned Zach or the reality show, she knew Reuben knew nothing about Jenna or that they had plans to go to a concert together. The whole thing about her feeling left behind as her peers became mothers and not understanding the need to fulfill that biological imperative; those were all deeply personal thoughts. Reuben was a good friend, an old friend. But they didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  Even that she might have chalked up to perception if he hadn’t known all about the specific details of her breakfast that day. How had he known she went to Gigi’s Breakfast Café, of all places? It was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that no one who wasn’t looking for it could find. Not only that, he specifically knew what she had ordered. There was no way for him to know that. Then, he knew she’d looked up Alister while she ate.

  It was all too weird.

  Just weird enough to warrant the insane explanation. A time warp? Suicide?

  “This one is different,” Buzz explained as they made notes on the calendar software. “How you controlled the timing of the repeat.”

  Overcome by curiosity, Martha walked to the calendar on the screen and glanced at it. Seeing all the times Reuben had had the same breakfast with Marshall, she frowned as she read about the hash browns. Were those the same ones that Marshall had warned her about?

  Martha kept scanning through the calendar, seeing several references to Reuben’s differing interactions with a CIA special agent named Aki.

  “I don’t know that I controlled it.” Reuben rubbed his chin. “I’d like to find out what patterns it’s taking to decide.”

  Martha’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this?” She pointed to a recurring event that on each timeline occurred at the same time on Valentine’s Day. “Endgame? What does that mean?”

  Buzz and Reuben glanced at each other.

  “Microwave bomb,” they said in unison.

  “Wait.” Her face paled. “You mean you guys know about a bomb threat?”

  “On Valentine’s Day at 9:47, a lot of people in NYC are going to die,” Reuben informed her.

  Martha’s heart leapt. “What? That’s, like, four and a half days away!”

  “Yup,” both of the guys said at the same time.

  Martha looked from Reuben to Buzz. “Well, why don’t you tell someone? Like the government or the CIA, or something?”

  Reuben cocked a half-smile. She didn’t know he actually worked for the CIA. “What do you think is going to happen when we go to the CIA? We tell them I have some kind of special power to predict the future and that I know there’s going to be an attack? What do you think they’ll do if they don’t dismiss me as a crackpot? I know exactly what they’ll do, and it’s not pretty.”

  Martha groaned. “Well, there has to be something. You can’t just sit on knowledge like that.”

  “Welcome to my world.” Reuben laughed bitterly. “What we have to do is figure out how to stop it.”

  “On our own?” She looked at him like he’d gone insane.

  “Who else is there?” he answered. “Are you in, or are you out?”

  Buzz and Reuben stared her down, waiting for an answer.

  She took in the whole lab and the men before her. This whole thing was ridiculous. A microwave bomb? A time warp? All in the hands of a scientist and a computer tech guy who did God only knew what for the government.

  A part of her wanted to believe they were crazy. But then again, the intuition that had led her to chase down harmless dry cleaning vans wasn’t any less cockeyed.

  “We’d have almost four and a half days,” she repeated.

  Reuben smiled. “The future of the human race depends on it.”

  “OK,” she said. “For the future of the human race.”

  “For the future of the human race,” Buzz and Reuben said in unison.

  “Let’s map out a plan,” Buzz said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Reuben—Friday, February 10, 9:17 a.m.

  “We have a zero-tolerance policy for workplace violence,” Sven droned on in the emergency meeting the next morning.

  An emergency briefing had been called after the dismissal of Mike Fury. It had something to do with him leaving the agency the way he did. When an agent left that way, there had to be an investigation as to whether security had been breached.

  By law, there was a manhour quota that had to be filled for the investigation and security debrief. Sven had so far filled part of it with a long and completely unnecessary lecture on violence in the workplace. Reuben scanned the crowd, looking for Aki.
>
  “What Mike Fury did was inappropriate and inexcusable,” Sven continued, and Watson nodded gravely. “We’d like to remind everyone that your insurance does cover counseling if any of you need it after Thursday's events.”

  Reuben didn’t see her in the room full of bored agents. These guys were some of the sharpest minds the government could find. An agent having a straight-up meltdown wasn’t going to rattle them too badly, and it probably wasn’t the worst thing they’d encountered so far that week.

  As a matter of fact, many of them probably empathized with Mike, in as much as the stress of the job could make a person completely lose their mind.

  Still, Sven had to cover his legal bases, although even he seemed uninspired by his speech.

  “Any questions?” Sven perfunctorily asked in closing. No one responded, and so he nodded. “Back to work, people.”

  The crowd dispersed, and Reuben went back to his desk. He passed another operative’s computer and caught the picture of Julian Schaeffer being edited on photo software.

  “Classified,” the agent barked and turned the screen away from the hallway.

  “Sorry.” Reuben smirked at the subtle ego trip.

  Security clearances in this hallway were generally low, so the agent was taking the opportunity to let everyone know about being assigned a high-priority project. Reuben took the opportunity, however, to note that Schaeffer had made it down to lower security levels and would soon become general knowledge in the agency.

  Reuben arrived at his desk and pulled up Schaeffer’s social media pages on his phone so as not to get flagged. There he was that morning with the cute blonde tagged as Stephanie Dwyer at a shopping mall.

  Me and My Boo, the status read.

  “Hold on, Julian,” Reuben muttered. “I got ya.”

  He remembered what Martha had said about Alister Pout.

  “Where are you, you Canadian scumbag?” Reuben pulled up the traffic cams and tried to remember what Alister’s company was called. Everyone knew who he was, but no one really knew too much about exactly what he did. He did a quick online search on Pout and realized it was going to be more work than he’d thought.