by Ramy Vance
White Hoodie placed a hand on Rueben’s shoulder. “Trust me. She’s better off with that guy than she is with you.”
Rueben tried to shake the man’s hand off his shoulder. “Shut up. Quit trying to mess with my head. You murderer.”
“Murderer?”
“Yeah. You killed Aki back at the bar.”
White Hoodie thumbed his chin. “Did I? I wouldn’t have meant to. I mean, why would I want to hurt her? She has the curves of an angel.”
Rueben didn’t know what to think about this guy. Something about him gave Rueben the creeps and yet also seemed familiar. “What’s your name?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Um. I don’t know. Maybe so I don’t have to keep referring to you as ‘White Hoodie’ in my inner monologue.”
The man scoffed. “Very well. You can call me Pete.”
“Is that your real name?”
Pete’s lips curled. “Now, what do you think?”
“I think you’re not from around here.”
Pete’s eyebrows furrowed over the rim of his sunglasses.
“That metal body armor of yours.”
“Oh. Pretty neat, huh?” Pete lifted the front of his white hoodie, revealing a form-fitting body armor that hugged his lean, defined abs and chest with a metallic gleam. It seemed almost organic, but a few tiny red and green lights spotting it hinted at some kind of battery power or something. Pete lowered his hoodie.
“And that ‘supersonic glove’ of yours…” Rueben let his words trail off as he tried to read Pete’s expression from behind his sunglasses.
Pete rubbed his chin again. “Supersonic glove. Now that’s an accurate description. I call her Doris. Sure packs a wallop, doesn’t it? It’s got some surprises too. I’d show you, but it’s charging.”
Rueben followed Pete’s gaze off to the side at the metallic glove resting on the crate. Now that Rueben squinted at it, he saw a tiny red light on it too. Charging…
“So, what? Are you from the future? Or a parallel universe or something?” Rueben couldn’t help it. The words slipped from his mouth.
But Pete wasn’t listening. He’d already turned back to face the TV. “Hush. It’s about to start.”
Rueben was about to ask what was about to start when Pete picked up a black backpack that had been sitting on the other side of the desk. The man retrieved a bulky satellite phone and a notebook filled with names. Rueben could read a few of them, but he had an idea: if the camera in his smartwatch could take a picture of the notebook, Buzz could enlarge them back at his mansion—assuming Rueben was able to escape, die, and warp back to before this happened, whatever this was. He still didn’t know Pete’s plan. But with all the world’s leaders gathered in one place at the U.N. building, it couldn’t be good.
Rueben fidgeted and adjusted his wrist to try to get a clear shot of Pete’s desk and notebook.
Pete glanced at Rueben again from the reflection in the monitor. “If you’re trying to take a picture of me with your fancy smartwatch, I already disabled it.”
“You’re bluffing…shit.” A glance at his watch showed only a blank screen.
“Don’t underestimate me, Rueben.”
Something was happening on the TV now. The volume was turned low, but an attractive reporter with blond hair was gesturing at the sky off-camera. The camera then shifted upward and in the opposite direction of the U.N. building to reveal a swarm of bright lights floating toward the building.
Highly Anticipated World Summit Drone Light Show… the words at the bottom of the screen ticked by. Now the camera view tracked the lights as they stopped in front of the U.N. building just off to the side from the stage now containing over fifty world leaders and other dignitaries. Everyone stared in awe as the drones formed a giant “peace sign” forty feet in the air. Mouths opened. Hands clapped.
That’s when the bombs started to drop from the drones’ underbellies.
Chapter Seven
Monday, May 22, 7:30 p.m.
The camera shook as bright flashes of light exploded on the ground outside the building. People shouted and raised their hands as they tried to flee, but some of the drones were spitting dark blobs at the ground. When the blobs hit the ground around the stage, they detonated. Debris and shrapnel filled the air as flames rose.
Rueben suddenly realized that his body was shriveled up on the cot. He felt sick to his stomach. He felt like dying. “You bastard. This is your plan? You won’t kill me, but you’ll kill all those people at the summit?”
Pete sighed and slowly shook his head. “You couldn’t possibly understand. Not yet.”
“Not yet?” Rueben struggled against his arm restraints, but it was no use. “I used to think you were just crazy. Now I know you’re a homicidal psychopath!”
Pete didn’t say anything and Rueben realized that his kidnapper was searching the TV screen for something or someone. When the shaky camera zoomed in on some of the police officers at the scene, Aki came into view. Pete maintained a grim face.
“Aki,” Rueben shouted. “You’re going to kill her again, aren’t you?”
“Not as long as she stays out of this, but I’ll do what I have to.”
“Oh, so you’ll kill all these people, but you don’t want to hurt her? What’s she to you?”
Pete didn’t answer, only shook his head as the camera tracked Aki sprinting toward a child searching for her parents. A bomb exploded, and its force flung Aki to the side where she lay in a lifeless heap.
“Aki!”
Grim-faced, Pete rose from his chair. He slid his notebook into the black backpack and then raised the pack to his shoulders.
“What are you doing? Leaving?” Rueben asked.
Pete picked up his satellite phone from the desk. Then he turned to leave.
On the TV screen, bodyguards were ushering the world leaders into the U.N. building. Rueben didn’t think any of them had been hurt in the blasts. But the drones were starting to bomb the doors and windows as if to get inside, presumably to hunt down the leaders.
“Come on, tell me why you’re doing this. I’ll try to understand.”
Pete made to leave the basement room.
Rueben tried to think of a way to get Pete to stay. He had to prevent this all from happening but in order to do that, he had to get more information. He suddenly recalled something Aki had said in the alleyway outside the Exit Bar. Something about the man in the hoodie probably working alone. Rueben could use that to his advantage. Maybe.
“You’re all alone. Aren’t you?”
Pete hesitated.
“You’re lonely. You have a plan. I get that. But you have no one to talk to about it…” Rueben eyed Pete’s knuckles turning white as they gripped the satellite phone by his side. Shit, maybe he does have someone to talk to…
“You’re right,” Pete said. “I am alone.”
Rueben relaxed. The sat phone wasn’t to call up some evil buddies of Pete’s.
“Then tell me what’s up. I want to try to understand you.” The next words out of Rueben’s mouth almost physically pained him to say. “I don’t think you’re evil. You’ve got a side, and I want to hear it.”
Pete turned to face him. “I don’t have to—”
“You said it yourself. I’m not getting out of these restraints.” Rueben made a show of struggling against the bindings.
Pete studied him for a few moments and then sighed. On the TV screen, the carnage continued but it was all in Rueben’s periphery. Pete was his objective. And more information.
“I do have a few minutes to kill before I start checking on things across the globe.” Pete slid the sat phone into his hoodie’s front pouch.
“Huh? Checking on things across the globe?”
Even Pete’s sunglasses couldn’t hide Pete’s irritation. He jabbed a finger toward the TV. “What is it you think I’m trying to do?”
“Uh, kill a lot of people?”
“Wrong. I’m trying to star
t a war.”
“A war?” Rueben glanced over at the TV as the last of the world leaders entered the building, and a bodyguard sealed the door behind them. “The world leaders. All together in one place…”
Pete nodded. Rueben didn’t know why Pete wanted to initiate a war between nations, but his mind started to string some things together. “This has to do with Alister Pout and his RedBook app, doesn’t it.”
Rueben took Pete’s silence as confirmation and continued. “Buzz said that Pout had sold some of RedBook’s spying software to North Korea, China, and some other countries.” He recalled security camera footage outside a dry cleaners that Buzz had been able to find where Pete in his white hoodie was conversing with Pout. “Wait, are you working for Pout?”
Pete scoffed. “Hell no. Pout worked for me—he just didn’t know it at the time. He was a puppet.”
“Wait, so you’re probably pissed at us then for ruining your microwave bomb scheme.”
“That was all Pout. When I found out about his little plan, I…well, I didn’t have to do anything. Because I knew you were in the bomb’s blast radius and now was as good a time as any for you to begin your, how should I put it? Training.”
“You knew I could and would go back in time to fix it? Wait, since you can warp too, could you sense me or something? Is that why you know so much about me?”
Pete scoffed. Then he stepped over to Rueben and checked his restraints. “Look. I’ve told you enough. I need to get to the roof.”
“Why?”
Pete tapped the sat phone inside his hoodie’s front pouch. “I already said. To check on things. Technology is limited here.”
Here?
He made to leave again, then paused and turned back to face Rueben. “Actually, there is one more thing you should know.”
Rueben waited.
“There’s something familiar about me. Isn’t there?”
Rueben didn’t say anything. Pete reached up and pinched the hood of his hoodie. Then with the finesse of a magician, he pulled it back. He removed his sunglasses too. Then he laughed.
Rueben’s skin paled like frosted ash. “You. You…”
“What?” Pete laughed again, and the voice chilled Rueben’s veins. “I look like you do when you look in the mirror? Well, an older version of you.” Pete lifted a hand and traced the scar on his face. “And my voice. My laugh. It’s yours too. Annoying, am I right?”
Rueben’s mouth dropped open, but he couldn’t seem to form any words. Pete was right. He was looking at an older, mirror-image version of himself. Minus the face scar and the scars on his fingers.
But how? This wasn’t how time worked. How could he be looking at his future self?
His mind began melting into madness as Pete exited the room.
Chapter Eight
Monday, May 22, 7:42 p.m.
“No. No, no, no.”
It was a few minutes later, and Rueben still couldn’t believe it. How could he be talking to his future self? Didn’t that wreck the physics of reality? Didn’t one version warp into the other? He wished Buzz was here to explain things to him. He needed some damn rules written down so he knew what was and wasn’t possible for time travel.
Even worse was the question of how his future self could commit such wanton murder and destruction on a global scale. He would never do this. Yet, at times during their conversation, it was almost as if Pete had read his mind. Made sense if he truly was him.
Ugh. Rueben felt like grabbing his head in his hands, but he couldn’t. His restraints still held him. He also had no energy to try to figure out a way to escape, let alone kill himself so he could warp back to before Pete kidnapped him. Glancing at the time on the TV screen, he saw that his three-day warp limit wasn’t up yet. Even if it had been, all he had to do was keep dying and warping back until he’d made it to before this all went down so that he and his friends could stop it.
His friends.
That explained why Pete—future him—was so reluctant to kill them at the Exit Bar. Because they were his friends at one point. And Aki. Pete had loved her at one point, maybe still did.
Rueben blinked and shook his head. Unless there was some other explanation for everything. Again, he needed Buzz here. For a moment, Rueben wondered if Buzz had been able to triangulate Rueben’s smartwatch for his location before Pete had disabled it. Then Rueben dismissed the idea. Pete had already proven he was smart. He’d have disabled the GPS before taking him here.
So that meant Rueben was on his own. It was up to him to figure out how to escape and die so that he could warp back and fix this mess.
Even if he could, should he?
After all, Pete was him. Urggh. Time.
Wait, why was he even having this debate? If Pete weren’t evil, he’d have approached Rueben and his friends and calmly tried to explain his situation. Instead of trying to kidnap him.
Yes. Pete was obviously crazy or demented or something.
He was evil. And Rueben had to go back and stop him.
He recalled a few months ago when he’d first realized his time warp power and thought of himself as being a superhero. Well, superhero or not. Aki had died. So had countless others.
Rueben glanced back at the TV. The blond reporter was now covered in soot and helping survivors away from the fires as Mike Fury stood in the background with a machine gun tucked against each shoulder, going full-Rambo on the remaining drones hovering around the scene.
God damned Mike Fury.
With renewed energy surging through his veins, Rueben started to work on an escape plan. Testing his restraints, he found that they were still tight against his arms.
Well, he had a trick that might work, and it involved dislocating his elbow.
He’d discovered he could do this back in the days when he and his then-fiancée Rachel had been taking ballroom dance lessons. Rueben had discovered he enjoyed it and was stressing his body to its limits one day in rehearsal when he’d slipped and fallen wrong on his elbow. It had popped out of its socket, and Rachel had gasped and said she was going to throw up.
She didn’t, and Rueben managed to pop it back into the socket all on his own. As far as he knew, he was the only one who could do that. Hell, the elbow wasn’t even a ball and socket joint like the shoulder or wrist. So maybe technically, it hadn’t popped out of the socket. But that’s what he was calling it.
He now tilted his head downward for a better look at his right elbow. Then, grunting, he popped it out of joint and wiggled his arm against his bindings. A couple of minutes later, he had his arm free, and he quickly re-popped his elbow and extricated his other arm. Then, wasting no time, he bolted forward off the cot.
In retrospect, he kicked himself for not anticipating his legs wouldn’t be able to support him after being confined to a cot for nearly three days.
His legs wobbled, his knees buckled, and he sprawled forward toward some crates. He smacked the concrete floor with a hard slap, and one of his outstretched hands knocked over a bucket of nails that scattered on the floor like metal ants.
He was trying to scramble to his feet when he heard a spitting cough from the doorway and an excruciating pain bit into his thigh. Rueben glanced down to see the outside of his leg bleeding. Then Pete stepped into his peripheral vision while holstering his silenced pistol.
“Should have known you’d try the elbow trick.” Pete felt his elbow. “It’s been so long since I danced. I’d forgotten about that. No matter. That’s only a flesh wound…”
Rueben caught the look of fear darting across Pete’s face. It was only there for an instant. “Hold your hand on the wound,” he barked.
Rueben’s hand went instinctively to his wound. He didn’t want to die after all…
Actually he did.
He removed his hand.
“You little bastard. You’re not dying on me. I knew I shouldn’t have capped you at the Exit Bar. I should have capped you here.”
Capped? Pete had mentioned tha
t when Rueben was waking up. What did it mean?
Pete removed his backpack and unzipped it. While he rifled through it, Rueben played his hands over the red slippery floor beside him and closed his fingers around a nail. He slipped it into his jeans pocket as Pete withdrew some gauze wrap and some medical tape. “Now hold still, or I’ll really get mean.”
That’s what Rueben wanted—for Pete to get mean and kill him so he could warp back. He suddenly felt very lightheaded. He’d bled a lot.
Rueben’s head tipped back and the next thing he knew, he was lying back on the bed with Pete leaning over him and checking his straps. Now, he realized, Pete had bound his arms and legs to the rails of the cot. He wasn’t going anywhere this time. He was trapped.
Pete stared down at him, scrutinizing him.
Well, he wouldn’t stay trapped for long. He had a nail in his pocket. All he had to do was wait for Pete to leave and angle his wrist up against his jeans pocket.
Pete smirked and bent over the cot. He then performed a thorough search of Rueben’s clothes and pockets, eventually finding the nail and raising it in front of Rueben’s nose. He tossed the metal behind him where it clattered upon the floor.
“Nice try.”
“How’d you know?”
“Because I’d have done the same thing.” He pointed at his forehead. “We’re both smart.”
Rueben’s chest collapsed in defeat.
“Seriously. Nice try.” Pete left, removing the satellite phone from his hoodie’s pouch before disappearing through the doorway.
Nice try…
Rueben cursed under his breath.
Chapter Nine
Monday, May 22, 7:58 p.m.
The reporter on the TV said something Rueben couldn’t hear because Pete had never turned the volume up. And Rueben was still restrained. To a cot. In the basement of an empty skyscraper.