by Cam Rogers
Paul looked at the loaded gun in his hand. Better he end it here than let them get him. Better he die by his own hand than become like Dr. Kim. Better he kill himself than live to see the world turn to a colorless and unending purgatory, stalked by monsters and tortured by memory.
Better, kinder, that he cease to be.
* * *
The machine gun stopped firing. Jack figured it had to be reloading.
He gasped like a landed fish. His chest was one massive bruise where the desk leg had punched him, his cough wet and red.
The roll across the attic floor had cost him. The snapped halves of a rib or two scraped together, spearing him with brightest pain. The jagged ends found each other as his body rapidly healed; the snapped rib-halves kissed, then fused, seamlessly. His skin crawled at the fingers-inside feeling of his chest unbruising. Back arched against it all he saw the safe was back upstairs, twenty feet away from his head, one corner half-submerged into the crumbling floor, ready to repeat its fall through the first-floor hall and into the kitchen below.
Will’s file was inside the open safe: the property deed. The key. The only real lead Jack had left inside this burning building.
Body healed but mind still flailing, he propelled himself forward and skidded across the hot floor on his unbruised chest, plunging his hand into the safe.
The stutter broke. The safe dropped through the floorboards, just as Jack snatched his arm free and popped a shield.
The room reexploded, flame billowing out from four corners, papers flying from the folder, out of the shield, to be vaporized. “No!” He scrambled, saved a few, and jammed them into his jacket.
* * *
Paul had prepared himself for moments of doubt, for trials such as this. Seventeen years preparing to overcome more than any man had ever endured in order to purchase a future for the human race. He had taken lives, manipulated nations and economies. The soul of the man he once was had long been forfeit to a greater cause. It was his duty to undo what he had done.
He took his emotions out of the equation, broke the situation down into what needed doing.
He had to live.
If he did not see his plans to the end then all of Creation would stop.
To live he had to get away from what was outside the shelter. What was outside the shelter was …
Blackness flooded the corners of his vision. He shook his head, reduced himself to an equation, a piece on the board.
What was outside the shelter was a threat. The only way out was that door. If he waited they would enter. If he allowed the enemy to dictate terms he was doomed.
Without a second’s hesitation, Paul Serene kicked the door off the hinges and came out shooting. It was the only option he had left.
* * *
The Monarch teams were coming to terms with the playfield suddenly changing. The stutter juddered, rewound further. Behind her, as Beth reloaded, Gibson’s hand rewound far enough to unslap the deactivation plates on his rescue rig.
As she swung out to take an opportunity shot at one of the team leaders, Gibson locked her from behind, combat knife pressed to her neck.
“All righty punkin’ butter, drop it.”
Beth let the rifle hit the boards.
“See, Wilder, this is why you didn’t make the cut. Stupid.” His breath was hot in her ear. “And now … now you go from being a soldier to being something I do in my spare time.”
At that moment the second Technician team swept into the rear of the barn as the BearCat gunner opened up on the hayloft from the front. Heavy-hitting tracer rounds curled and spat, ricocheting off time-locked surfaces, sending high-velocity rebounds spraying down onto the barn floor to pinball about the space, tearing men to shreds.
Gibson yelped and leaped sideways, freeing Beth to snatch her stolen rifle and roll away from him. She wheeled, dropped to one knee, and brought the sights up level with Gibson.
Gibson threw himself off the edge, into the barn below.
* * *
The BearCat was ripping into the hayloft. From the attic inside the house Jack could see Beth hunkering down, making herself as small as possible, but it was only a matter of time before a ricochet found her.
He had no weapon, and the BearCat was armored. He had a stupid idea, so he ran with it.
He ran at the blown-open attic wall, folded into the moment, and threw himself out—aiming for the BearCat. The warp negated the impact, and Jack landed boots first on the hood. The driver had time to shout a warning before Jack clamped both hands to one section of the chronon-mobility lattice that sheathed the vehicle, and channeled everything he had into it.
Chronon energy flowed from him to the vehicle’s battery. Keeping his head under the roof-gun Jack poured everything he had into the BearCat’s mobility rig.
Somewhere inside the cabin things caught fire. Jack let go, scrambled over the windshield, grabbing the barrel of the weapon for leverage.
The chronon battery erupted. Then the fuel tank kicked off.
As Jack leaped clear, the BearCat exploded, the rear of the vehicle leaping skyward.
Everything went black.
* * *
Paul came out shooting, keeping the faces of those he loved—Sofia, the Jack he remembered, his own mother—at the forefront of his mind. These talismans would keep the darkness, the fear and horror, at bay. These—
The first shot took the nearest Shifter in the head. Paul caught a glimpse of a human face beneath the distortion, the spray of blood, but it made no difference. In less than a second the creature had phased through half a dozen versions of itself—all of them alive and furious.
He fired again and again, each death rendered meaningless by each Shifter’s infinite litany of potential selves.
There were not enough bullets in the world to kill even one of them.
They did not seem to mind his attempted murder. The assembled Shifters didn’t react; they didn’t move. Paul jagged right and altered course, aiming for the house, just beyond the thinning tree line ahead.
They did not pursue, but he knew they would not let him go.
* * *
Most of the barn team was dead. Those who survived were getting their shit together. Beth saw Gibson book it out the back of the barn, headed for the house. She presumed he’d be looking for Serene, looking to confirm for his boss, Hatch, that Paul was either alive or dead.
Her big problem was that Gibson had positively ID’d her. Once the stutter broke comms would be working again, and Gibson would immediately blow her cover. She should have killed him, she knew that, but she’d met his daughter. She was a sweet kid and she loved her dad. She deserved a family.
The thought flashed: Who are we really talking about here, Beth?
She had to kill him. Grabbing the lower lip of the hayloft door she bounced out, braked her boots against the outside wall, and dropped to the ground, glancing only once at the frozen, semi-exploded BearCat in front of her—Jack static, unconscious, in mid-air, at the top of that flame plume. Several men behind the garage were in the same state. The rest were falling back toward the woods.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised Jack, and ran for the house.
She came in through the front door, pushing past falling and burning debris suspended in space. That’s how Gibson got the drop on her, leaping at her through the chaos to her left with a knife in his hand.
Beth feinted left, swung the rifle right, and both combatants missed each other. Gibson landed low, pivoted, and leaped again before Beth could swing her rifle around.
The stutter vibrated, the death-thunder of the house a blast of deafening, stop-start sound. Beth shielded her head; Gibson didn’t hesitate. He got close, slashed, as a chunk of burning plaster dropped hard on the back of his head. The blade was off-target but still opened a small cut in her bicep. Beth danced out of the way.
The stutter shuddered again, harder. She had to save Jack before the BearCat exploded properly, killing him.
> “Consultant! Are you here, sir?”
“You had a family, Gibson,” she said. “Instead you wanted this.”
Gibson spun, jabbed. Beth avoided the attack easily, closed in. “It’s over.”
A rabbit-punch to the jaw sent him staggering backward, the back of his leg connecting with the couch. With one move she slapped both hip-plates—locking him solid. The ceiling overhead bulged under the weight of its own burning collapse. In about four relative seconds the room would be an inferno.
Beth got the hell out of there, cleared the distance between stoop and BearCat. The truck was balancing on its front-left tire, the rear underside of the vehicle cracked open and exploding. Jack had been hit by the blast wave as he leaped off, knocking him out and deactivating his powers, leaving him frozen.
Beth managed to get a toehold near the windshield, then leaped for Jack’s ankle. Grabbing it, she pulled herself up onto the angled roof of the vehicle, hanging on to Jack the whole while. Hoping this was going to work, she double-pumped her hands and channeled her rescue rig’s charge into him. The bars on her belt ticked off one by one, and—
Jack reanimated, all dead weight, and crashed onto her. They tumbled back over the hood and hit the dirt, hard. Beth rolled over, got herself upright. The rig had a single bar left out of five.
Jack lay insensible on the ground, barely conscious. She grabbed his jacket with both hands, dragging him toward the cover of the barn. The stutter pulsed, the house exploding outward a fraction, double-time, before retracting, then rolling out again in excruciating slow motion.
She needed to get them both behind the barn before the house gas mains went up, but Jack was a lot of dead weight. She dropped him, then got around front and hauled him upright.
“You…” Jack managed to take in enough to make an assessment. “You … saved me?”
“Not yet.” She said, pulling him off the ground. “C’mon, Trouble, get up or we’re dead.”
Jack focused. He saw the house suck itself back in, and tremble. He felt the same motion in his own bloodstream; the motion that told him the stutter was about to break. That was all he needed.
On his feet now and stumbling they cleared the barn and garage and kept sprinting, straight through the sycamores. Once they got close to the fence line Jack grabbed her arm. “Wait, wait.” Jack had stopped, was looking back at the house.
The facade of the building continued to roll outward, then stopped. Juddered. Then, all at once, drew itself right back in, in one disconcerting move. Exploded wood and shattered windows rewound perfectly, peacefully and completely, closing behind a final belch of spark and flame. Sealed.
Leaving the Joyce family home intact.
The place where he had grown up, whole and complete, for the last time.
The stutter broke. The house erupted upward and outward as the brakes released and causality leaped forward. The shock wave knocked Jack and Beth to the ground, the detonation of ether, C-4, and the gas mains blasting the building to kindling—kindling that rained down around them.
The barn had taken a fatal blow and, after a moment, it creaked and collapsed away from them.
Sycamores burned. It was all gone.
* * *
The other Shifters moved aside, flashing to new locations throughout the woods, allowing Shining Palm to come forward. To close in. To claim the man it had been stalking for so long.
Paul stared into the oncoming glare of something worse than death, his legs and mind betraying him instantly, clinging to those last moments of himness, of being Paul. These were his last breaths, his last thoughts. All he was, all he had built, was about to be turned on himself, corrupted and inverted and perverted. His was an eternity of chaos and loss. An eternity.
It flashed to forty feet closer. To twenty.
Paul couldn’t move. He couldn’t look.
He could feel it, radiating, mere feet from him now.
It roared, demanding to be seen.
He couldn’t open his eyes. His teeth, crushed against each other, strangled a scream.
The ground shuddered with a terrible roar as the Joyce house detonated. Birds shrieked to life, flying free from the forest canopy. Paul felt the wave of heat push through the trees to wash across his face.
Chronon-flow normal. Causality returned. The stutter broke.
The stutter broke, and he was alone.
Alive.
Weakly, gratefully, Paul Serene collapsed to the wet earth and wept.
13
Saturday, 8 October 2016. 9:30 A.M. Riverport, Massachusetts.
“It’s really quiet out there.”
Nick was driving slow and steady, sitting low behind the wheel, staring ahead from behind his sunglasses. Riverport at nine thirty on a Saturday morning should have been livelier—even in autumn and with most of the college crowd still away on vacation. People should have been lining up for coffee. There should have been traffic. Buskers along the Main Street area should have been laying out hats and guitar cases for the day. Not today. This morning everyone’s attention was on the university. If they weren’t laying wreaths, pinning photographs to memorial boards at the site, or just paying their respects, they were moving at half speed, processing what it meant to be the news.
“You sure they can’t track me?” The Breathalyzer’s vitals were laid out on the front seat, next to the webcam and Nick’s smashed coffee machine.
Beth was in the backseat, Jack lying out of sight with his head on her lap. “You’re good, though the cops and Monarch will be looking for your license plate.” She glanced at Jack: the face of Riverport’s tragedy—Massachusetts’s bin Laden—thanks to Hatch’s evocative on-air summary that morning. “We should ditch the cab as soon as we can.” She had gone over Jack, checking for injuries, found nothing save for a little mottling where cuts and scrapes had quickly healed over.
“They were supposed to be the solution,” Nick said.
“Who was?”
“You were. Monarch. Jobs. A future. Hope. You told us you’d save us.”
Beth felt that, wanted to rebuke it. She wasn’t Monarch. She was never Monarch. She was inside Monarch to bring Monarch down. But Nick was right: she hadn’t succeeded in preventing anything. “What’s your favorite movie, Nick?”
“Happy Gilmore.”
“Do me a favor and say Star Wars.”
“I don’t like art films.”
“You know that bit in The Matrix when Neo works out how to glitch it? He games the system, gets superpowers, rewrites reality?”
“Sure.”
“In this story Neo is Monarch. The Matrix is planet Earth. The hack is money, influence, shamelessness, lies, entitlement, not giving a fuck, and an overwhelming lack of critical thought on our part.”
“And actual superpowers.”
So there it was. “What tipped you off?”
“Monarch were waiting at my house. Figured they had to be watching Jack’s. So I watched his place for a while before coming in. You know what I saw?”
“The moment Jack’s house blew up a dozen Monarch goons popped into existence and dropped dead simultaneously. At the same time a BearCat materialized out of thin air and exploded on his front drive.”
“Also your boyfriend looked like ground beef when you rolled him onto the backseat. Now he looks just fine.” The cab rolled to a stop at a red light. Nick glanced at Beth in the rearview. “Is this some deep-black bullshit? X-Files, Alex Jones, Area 51, something like that?”
Beth glanced away from the traffic to look Nick in the eye. “It is a conspiracy. It does go all the way up. It involves other dimensions. It was all planned.”
He glanced at her again, then back to the road, saying nothing.
* * *
Jack risked lifting his head, peering out at the street. “Looks like the end of the world out there.” Outside was the wide expanse of river on one side and rows of uncared-for warehouses on the other.
Nick had navigated them carefully
around Main Street’s periphery, sticking to back roads when he could, eventually taking them down a rutted service track by the river. “Who builds a swimming hall out here?”
“This was residential back in the day,” Beth said. A three-legged dog skipped across the busted curb in front of them, glancing self-consciously at them before disappearing in the weeds. “Way, way back in the day.”
Jack sat upright. Beth’s hand—still thimble-clipped into her rig—slipped from his shoulder.
“Will didn’t buy this place for the view.” Jack looked at her hands, traced a finger along the rubberized thimble covering her thumb to the first joint, then the insulated wiring that led to a wrist clip of the same color and material.
“Zero State Mobility Rig,” she said. “The exo carries its own chronon charge, maintaining my personal M-J field, even in a complete causality vacuum. It means I can walk around in a stutter, as long as the charge lasts.”
The bridge was ahead. The address put the swimming hall directly beneath it.
“Before we do this,” Jack said, “I need a few answers. That morning on Bannerman’s Overlook. That show with Aberfoyle—the chop shop, the yachts, what happened to Aberfoyle and his men, the timing. The way nobody came to ask us questions. How…?”
“Do you like Douglas Adams?” she said.
“The writer?”
“He wrote that the knack to flying lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground, and miss.”
“And?”
“Same thing.”
Jack thought about that. “No it isn’t.”
“Here we are!” Beth was pointing at a decrepit building shoved snug beneath the bridge. It was completely unremarkable. The faded signage, half-lost to gravity and vegetation, read BR BURY SWI MING HALL. Beth was out of the cab, making a line for the place.
Jack followed. Colonies of seagulls and pigeons populated the underside ribbing of that third-rate bridge. Thin-stalked greenery reached up against stanchions supported by crumbling brickwork. Even the graffiti hadn’t been updated since the nineties. The hall was as broad as the bridge itself, and built from the same brickwork. Two levels, all of the windows barred and boarded-over. Double doors of steel-banded wood sat square in the middle of the construction, falling-apart sign overhead. Steps led up to the door, a concrete wheelchair ramp swerving up from the side. Grass and vegetation had spent a decade or two undermining the concrete and brickwork, splitting it, green explosions reaching for the bridged-over sky.