Time Heist

by Anthony Vicino

  Malcolm stood over Adam's body, a rigid toy soldier, smoke puffing off the end of the pistol in his hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Third Times A Charm

  There were greater than chance odds that my perception of reality had been undermined by the succession of wounds I'd sustained. Endorphins, released in the prodigious amounts my brain had been dumping into my system, can make the mind do loopy things.

  So I told myself I was hallucinating. Those protests, however, didn't make a lick of difference to the players on stage acting as if everything was truly happening.

  Ash rose on tiptoes to take the pistol from Malcolm's outstretched arm, hanging like the last branch of a decayed tree swaying with the breeze. Straining until finally the entire rotten thing crumbled.

  If Malcolm was in danger of falling, then Ash prevented it by wrapping tiny arms around his waist. A hug?

  "What's happening?" I croaked the words through blood-soaked lips.

  Malcolm allowed his arm to drop, ignored my question, and said to Ash, "Do you have his cube?"

  Ash nodded and produced a Mobius Cube from her pocket. I recognized it; the device I'd recovered from the Vault. The same one Diana had called home before she transferred to my brain, before she'd been stolen by Malcolm.

  I raced through a flurry of questions nobody was keen on answering. Ash handed Malcolm the cube before pivoting towards me, her face streaked with tears as if she'd been standing in the rain.

  She knelt, her eyes scanning the hole in my stomach left in the wake of Adam's bullet. Her hands were quick. Nimble. Gently she turned over my forearm to see the Tracker ticking away the final minutes of my life.

  "Malcolm." My nanocomp dampened the effects of the hole in my gut, but it couldn't shut out the pain entirely. With minutes remaining, I gritted my teeth and endured the fractured pain managing to slip through my defenses. "I don't understand."

  It was the missing piece. Tear-laced goodbyes were a waste of everybody's time while unanswered questions remained—questions that would haunt me if such a thing as an afterlife turned out to be true.

  "Diana, Malcolm, and you were born to walk a path. One that required extraordinary personal sacrifice and suffering. I'm sorry for that. I wish it could have been different, but I could see no other way to bring about the necessary circumstances," Ash said, her voice sounding more like the woman I'd met when I first opened my eyes to the physical world. "There could never be doubt in Adam's mind that Malcolm was his. Completely his. After Diana stole Adam's cube, there was only one way for Malcolm to prove his allegiance. Only one way to ensure we could get close enough to kill Adam and trap his mind before his consciousness could flee back to the Stream."

  "He killed...Diana," I said, struggling to string together coherent sentences.

  "Yes," she said. "That was his burden to carry."

  "Why?"

  "Because Adam would never believe me capable of such an act. Because it was the very thing he would never suspect of me." Ash paused to push a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked so young, so innocent. But I could see the blood on her hands. That stain could never be removed. "I betrayed the person I was to become the person we needed."

  We'd all been used in a game played over our heads. A game decided by the quality of our sacrifices.

  Ash rested her head on my shoulder with the knowledge that I couldn't be saved. The nanobots traipsing through me were healing the hole in my gut too slowly, but even if it were possible to mend that wound, the nanites could do nothing to save my mind from the electric charge the Tracker would soon release.

  Unlike Eve or Adam, I hadn't been born with the ability to jump back to the Stream when my brain punched out. It was that ability that made killing Adam so difficult. Getting his Mobius Cube had taken decades of careful planning and flawless execution on Diana's part. Getting Adam into the same room with his cube had proved to be exponentially more difficult.

  That plan had been kept from me. I'd been allowed to wallow in ignorance, believing Malcolm to be the enemy. I'd been used.

  Behind Ash, Malcolm knelt beside the corpse of the late President Jennings. He held the Mobius Cube to the man's forehead, careful to avoid the blood and chunks of brain oozing from the bullet hole.

  Somehow, we'd done it. I imagined Adam's consciousness being uprooted from its home and shoved into the confines of the cube; a prison for one.

  "Tell...Diana...love her," I said, thankful for the knowledge that Diana would survive thanks to Malcolm's theft.

  "I'm sorry, Tom," Ash said. If it's possible to witness a soul shattering, then I saw it in that moment upon the face of a little girl who was so much more. "I can't do that."

  It wasn't an empty apology. It was the heart-worn regret a mother feels for the damage she inflicts on the lives of her children. I didn't begrudge the decisions she'd been forced to make, but the sadness in her eyes went deeper. Still, on the brink of death, she hid something from me.

  "Why not?"

  Ash stroked my forehead with a delicate finger. "She's still in there."

  My nanocomp dispatched what few operational nanites remained inside me to batten down the hatches, sealing the wound in my stomach and setting my brain alight with enough dopamine and norepinephrine to permanently change my body chemistry. But none of that mattered; only Diana.

  "No, Malcolm took her...when he gave me my memories." I tilted my chin towards the cube sitting atop the Beacon. "She's there, in that cube."

  "Malcolm told you what you needed to hear. To make you come. Adam had to believe victory was within his grasp. I know him too well. He wouldn't have risked coming for anything less. For that, you had to be here. But you wouldn't have come if you knew Diana was still with you. You would have tried to save her. You would have stayed away from here when we needed you most."

  "Of course I would. She's my everything! She's your daughter. Why wouldn't you want to save her?"

  "These are the decision we had to make. They aren't fair, and they certainly aren't easy."

  "Take her out. Do it now."

  "It's not that simple. The brain isn't designed to hold two minds."

  "Then how is this possible?" I jabbed my finger into my temple.

  "I don't know. Her consciousness must have bonded with the memory-retrieval nanites we gave you to combat the effects of Malcolm's virus." Ash blinked through a layer of tears. "Please, believe me, Tom. We didn't know she would jump from the cube to your mind."

  TWO MINUTES

  My nanocomp chirped inside my skull. The smothering embrace of panic snared my mind and body.

  Yesterday the thought of death comforted me. It was something I sprinted towards because it would free me from the prison of a life lived without Diana. But she was here, trapped in my mind. Doomed to die in my arms, on this floor, again.

  "Please, tell me there's something you can do to save her before...before..." My lips were a skipping record stuck on repeat. I couldn't finish the sentence.

  Ash stared blankly at me; no words of reassurance came. She turned her gaze to the floor, her long silver locks obscuring her face. "There's not enough time. Your minds are too intertwined. Tangled."

  "Transfer us there," I said, looking to the cube sitting atop the Beacon.

  "It's not calibrated for your mind, nor is it large enough. Your minds would overwrite one another."

  "Adam's cube. Put us there. Diana synced with it, maybe I can, too? If it's big enough for Adam's consciousness, it should be big enough for us."

  "I won't do that. This is our chance to stop Adam. It breaks my heart, but this is how it must be."

  "But Diana..."

  "Diana knew what she was giving up. For you, for us, for everyone. She was brave, and she loved you very much, Tom. Be brave for her now."

  Words spewed out of me, rambling with no thought for what came before or what came after. All that mattered was filling the silence. That unbearable silence.

  "No!" Malcolm shou
ted.

  The sound of another voice startled me. I flinched, causing a fresh dam of pain to burst and release its contents downstream.

  "What?" Ash pivoted to look up at my brother, but her hand stayed in mine.

  She tightened her grip when Malcolm said, "This can't be right. It's not all here. This can't be all of it. It's too small. Something's missing."

  Malcolm rose to his feet and opened his mouth, but something across the room caught his eye. His words froze on his tongue. His pupils expanded, his body tensed.

  I tilted my head to follow the path of his stare, but it was the sound that struck me first.

  The click.

  The release.

  The gunshot.

  Ash jerked, her grip faltered. She looked down, confused. Dazed.

  The red dot on her chest started small. A stain that could still be removed. A wound easily fixed.

  And then it blossomed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Dying Never Gets Easier

  Eve's silver eyes disappeared beneath a layer of storm clouds; she retreated to the Stream. Escaping before the fingers of death could grab her.

  I turned towards the source of the gunshot. A half-dozen soldiers gathered around a solitary figure standing at the head of the entourage.

  A young man. Small, lean, and impeccably dressed. He carried himself with a familiar confidence. My mind, distracted with incoming messages of pain, confusion, and general sorrow, struggled to find recognition.

  "I can save her," he said.

  It wasn't immediately clear which of the "hers" he was referring to. I'd lost a record number of loved ones in the past few minutes.

  That thought was relegated to secondary status when recognition emerged.

  "Hamilton?" I meant the words to be a declaration, but my mouth opted for a question.

  "We've lived and died together, Tom. I hope, by now, we can be on a first name basis," Derek Hamilton said. "Call me Adam."

  It was obvious now. The lights had been flipped on and I could see the strings moving the players across the stage. We'd been outmaneuvered from the start. I replayed the scene from earlier that day, gunning our way into the Time Bank, and holding the leaders of Unity hostage. I suspected Hamilton was hiding something, but nothing like this.

  Raines and Ash had vetted Hamilton. Decided he could be an asset in overthrowing Jennings.

  "You're dead," Malcolm said, pointing out an obvious loophole in the events unfolding.

  "Now, that's a matter of degrees, wouldn't you say?"

  "You split your mind, didn't you? Half in here." Malcolm nudged Jennings' corpse with his foot and then pointed at Hamilton. "Half in there."

  "It pays to have a backup." Hamilton gestured towards himself. "In case of any unforeseen accidents."

  Hamilton gave a youthful smirk that I now knew to be nothing more than a facade for the intelligence hiding beneath. Decades ago we'd discovered it was possible to divide a consciousness into separate vessels. We just never thought Adam would actually do it. A handy insurance policy, sure, but it came with the massive drawback that each new self was proportionally weaker than the original.

  In the end, that hadn't mattered. Jennings, with only half of Adam's powers, had easily bested Eve. We'd underestimated him. We were beaten.

  "Why?" Malcolm shook his head in disbelief.

  "Let's not get hung up on details. We have bigger picture things to worry about, and very little time, so here's my offer: give me back my Mobius Cube and I will let Mandel live."

  Malcolm's posture gave, ever so slightly, at the thought. We were playing for the same team, but that did nothing to negate the years of hatred we'd fostered for one another.

  "That's not as tempting an offer as you might think," Malcolm said.

  I disagreed, but I wasn't in a position to advocate for myself.

  "Consider it a two for one," Adam said. "I'm a sucker for a bargain."

  Malcolm shook his head.

  "I'm disappointed in you, Malcolm," Adam said. "I admit, Eve's little scheme worked, I believed in you. How could I not? You murdered the woman you loved to prove yourself to me. A perverse kind of loyalty, but loyalty nonetheless."

  "I was never yours."

  "No, but you killed plenty for me, so in the end does it really matter?"

  "I killed you once. I'll do it again," Malcolm said without any degree of conviction.

  "You could destroy that cube, but it's only part of me. The rest," Adam gestured to himself with a flourish of his hands, "I think you'll find to be more difficult."

  My blood pooled on the frosted floor, spreading in an ever-widening circle to join Ash's. How long after I died would it take for the blood to freeze around the edges?

  I pivoted onto my hip and placed a knee to the floor. A volcano erupted in my gut, filling my body cavity with a lava that chewed through me before trying to escape through my mouth. Choking back tears, and the pain that came with them, I stood.

  And then I wondered why I'd bothered. Death, it seemed, was something a man needed to face standing—if not proverbially, then literally would have to suffice.

  "Diana doesn't have to die here. Not again. Tom, don't you want to keep your promise?"

  "How?"

  Adam pulled a cube from his pocket. "Like I said, it's good to have a backup."

  "Is it big enough?"

  "Plenty. It was designed for me, after all."

  "And the sync?"

  "Complicated, but leave that to me.”

  I paused, biting back the wave of nausea sloshing my insides like a martini of the shaken variety. I didn't have to die. Diana didn't have to die.

  "Why didn't you kill us in the Peregrine?" I asked.

  The smooth undulations of the skin around Hamilton's eyes creased as he looked to the floor where Ash's broken body lay.

  "I'd hoped to capture Eve, put an end to this silly dispute." Adam shook his head absently. "I failed to anticipate Malcolm's betrayal. Underestimated the lengths to which she'd go, the suffering she'd inflict on her own children, just to spite me. She has escaped, but in the end that does not matter. She has prolonged the inevitable. Nothing more."

  I no longer felt bad about punching Hamilton in the back of the head in the Peregrine.

  ONE MINUTE

  Malcolm stared through Adam. His cheeks were as white as the knuckles with which he gripped the Mobius Cube.

  The nanite pistol Malcolm had used to kill Jennings lay on the floor where it had fallen from Ash's hand.

  "All things told, I'm willing to make a deal." Adam gestured towards the cube in Malcolm's hand with a finger too perfectly formed to be completely human. "Return that portion of my mind, I'll save Diana, and your transgressions will be forgiven."

  Malcolm's brow creased, forming deep furrows that required a team of oxen to plow. "Forgiven?"

  "For the sake of transparency, what I mean to say is," Adam let the words spill out of him like a waiter explaining dinner specials, "I'll kill you quickly."

  THIRTY SECONDS

  Malcolm waged war in his mind, weighing the pros and cons of saving my life in exchange for Adam's cube. Saving Diana was the only pro in his book.

  His eyes drifted over the pistol between us. It was too far away to help him. He wouldn't make it more than a handful of feet before the soldiers cut him down.

  But I might be close enough. Might have time for one shot.

  I'd be dead before the smoke cleared, regardless.

  I saw Malcolm's torment as he struggled with the decision to kill the woman he loved a second time.

  Then I saw it.

  “You want to save us so you can take the Override from our minds,” I said.

  Adam shrugged. "Choosing a pointless death here serves no one. Join me and see what kind of world we can build together. You, me, and Diana."

  Diana must have faced a similar choice once. I'd seen her decision years earlier in a pool of blood. I imagined her meeting that fate with
a smile. She was the strong one. I didn't want to lose her again.

  I closed my eyes and searched for her. I couldn't find her, I realized, because she didn't want to be found. She hid from me in my own mind.

  My mouth was dry, but my eyes were not. Tears formed there now. I refused to let them fall.

  She'd given her life. Malcolm had given part of himself.

  It was my turn.

  FIFTEEN SECONDS

  I shuffled forward. Slow. Unsteady. A half dozen fingers snapped to attention, inching closer to their trigger guards, ready at a word to kill me.

  Diana would want this.

  Step.

  We were too weak to stop Adam. But we could hurt him. Weaken him.

  Maybe the generations to follow could finish the job.

  "Stop," Adam said, his words a naked challenge booming across the room. The power of his voice overwhelmed me, and I nearly complied without thought for why I couldn’t do that.

  Step.

  "Nobody lives forever," I said.

  TEN SECONDS

  Something beeped, across the fog of consciousness, an alarm on the other side of a dream.

  NINE

  The alarm yanked me from my dream. I blinked, pouring everything into my used-up sack of muscles, and sprinted for the gun.

  EIGHT

  The hole in my stomach shrieked, a banshee twisting through my intestines. My nanocomp couldn't compensate for the new flood of pain overriding its operations. It could offer no power boost. No more adrenaline. Only a human determination remained.

  SEVEN

  The world moved slowly. Bullets zipped past. For a moment, shielded by a purpose larger than myself, I was invincible.

  SIX

  Tile exploded around me. Sliding feet first, I snatched the pistol, rolled to my side, and lunged to my feet.

  FIVE

  The bullets caught me. Found their mark. Ripped through flesh and muscle, rending heart from mind, body from soul.

  Every bullet birthed a new death, and there were a lot of bullets.

  FOUR

  I turned to Malcolm. He held the Mobius Cube in his outstretched hand. Nobody had fired at him, afraid to hit the device.

  I tried to raise my arm, but it was dead weight. My legs gave one massive shudder before giving out. I sank.