Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “You drugging me and taking me to your little basement hideout.”

  Pete scowled. “I must have been sloppy to allow you to come back here.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, my bad. Have I hurt your feelings? I mean my feelings.”

  “Oh. So you know the truth? How interesting that I revealed that. Also, you’re really starting to piss me off.”

  “I’m pissing you off? You can’t kidnap me.”

  “I don’t have to kidnap you. I thought we could both coexist together.” Pete narrowed his eyes at Rueben like a gunslinger. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  Well, that was unexpected. Rueben was trying to think of something witty to say when Pete beat him to the punch.

  “I might not be able to kill you, but I can kill your friends.”

  “Then I’d just kill myself and undo it.”

  Pete laughed. “At an impasse, are we?” He drew a syringe from under his hoodie, and Rueben backed away.

  “You’re not going to do what you want to do.”

  “And what is that?”

  Without taking his eyes off Pete’s syringe, Rueben pointed at the TV on the wall. Surely it was still showing coverage of the upcoming summit.

  “Hah. You think you know what’s going on here, don’t you? Well, you know shit.”

  “Enlighten me, then.”

  “I’m not going to enlighten you, child. I’m going to get you out of the way.”

  Suddenly, Martha dove toward Pete from out of nowhere. Pete grabbed her, and they grappled. Then Pete drew his gun, discharging it into Martha’s chest. She collapsed backward to the floor, her hands clutched over her heart, a mass of red darkening the fabric of her dress.

  The entire bar erupted in screams, and people ducked under the tables. Rueben and Pete stood staring each other down.

  Shit. I’ve got to die and go back to save her… Without wasting a breath, Rueben dashed out into the street, and Pete followed him.

  “Don’t think I’m going to let you do this.”

  “You’re not my dad,” Rueben said.

  “God, you’re an annoying little bastard.”

  Rueben winked and jumped out into traffic. It was mere seconds before a speeding Porsche crushed him. It wasn’t the least stylish way to go down. The weight of superior German engineering bore down on his gut.

  Then he died.

  Friday, May 19, 10:35 p.m.

  Rueben came back to his body and was sitting in the booth again. The fly buzzed away. He slammed the table so hard it shook. “Damn it!”

  Aki looked concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s not working. None of it’s working.”

  Aki pulled her eyes off the TV screen showing the World Summit preparations. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have an evil psycho doppelganger!”

  Aki massaged her forehead. “Huh?”

  Rueben looked around the table. Buzz was already standing but had stopped at his friend’s desperate expression.

  Rueben scratched his head. “Look, there isn’t time.” Why the hell wasn’t he going back any farther in time? Then it hit him. During his basement imprisonment, Pete had mentioned something about “capping” Rueben at the Exit Bar. What if “capping” meant… “Hey Buzz, you think it’s possible to ‘cap’ my uh, special power?”

  “Theoretically speaking, with the right application of science and technology…”

  Rueben looked at him.

  “…yeah. I’d say it’s possible. Are you saying that you can’t go back any farther than right now?”

  Rueben nodded.

  “Hmm. Then my best guess is that someone implanted you with a nanobot that counteracts your ability to warp back at the genetic level, thus rendering you unable to warp back before the time of implant.”

  “Implanted? Buzz, I’m sitting at a bar.” Then it hit Rueben. “Shit. The fly.”

  “The fly?” Buzz said.

  Rueben dropped his head in his hands. “Yes. It bit me and flew off.” He considered dying and warping back again to kill the ‘fly,’ but it would already be too late. There’d be no warping back to before it had bitten him or implanted him with the “capper” or whatever.

  That meant there’d be no stopping Pete before he got here. His adversary was smart. And had some crazy-advanced tech—was that even a fly or some kind of tiny robot?

  Aki raised her eyebrows. “Special power? Rueben, are you on drugs?”

  Rueben let his hands fall to the tabletop. “No. It’s just that we gotta… Just…run!”

  They all stared at him.

  “What are you looking at? Just run!”

  At Rueben’s command, Martha and Buzz looked at each other knowingly. With a glance at Rueben for confirmation, they took off for the front door.

  Rueben grabbed Aki’s wrist and followed them.

  “Stop.” She slipped off her shoes. She started running in bare feet toward the entrance as Rueben now struggled to keep up with her. “Now, what the hell is going on?” She couldn’t quite run in a straight line—what with all the alcohol coursing through her system—but she still ran faster than he did. Running and endurance had never been big priorities for him, and he thought that had been a mistake.

  He caught up with her as they reached the door. He took in her inquisitive and intelligent dark eyes and felt a pang of guilt. She was too smart to allow him to keep stringing her along in the dark about his powers. “Just trust me. Can you do that?”

  “Well, you got us this far.”

  Rueben shrugged and remembered all the doubts she’d had several time warps before. “I know the stakes are high, and I know that you have a lot of doubts and questions. I can’t tell you everything. But, I also know that justice is blind for people like us. Whatever I’m putting us through, I’m not taking that lightly.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Rueben. I needed to hear that.”

  He held out his hand. “I know you did.”

  She took it, and they ran to the street curb. Rueben bent to catch his breath. At the moment, the only person in sight was the wild-eyed homeless man from before that he seemed to keep running into on the streets. The man sat on the ground, munching on a fried chicken thigh from a bucket of Hurley’s Chicken: Best dang chicken in the galaxy.™ “He’s trying to kill you to keep you distracted,” he mumbled.

  Rueben raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  The homeless man picked himself up and wandered off.

  Buzz and Martha rejoined Rueben—they’d originally gone the other way—and Buzz pointed at Chicken Man’s departing back. “Haven’t we seen that guy before?”

  As Rueben was about to respond, he saw Pete five yards away from him, peering inside the Exit Bar’s front window.

  Martha pointed at Pete with one hand while she dug in her clutch for her badge with the other. To Rueben, she said, “Isn’t that the guy who was talking to Pout…”

  Pete turned then, and he saw them.

  Martha drew out her badge like a gun. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to raise your hands slowly.”

  Pete shook his head, disappointed. Then he glared at Rueben. “I see this isn’t our first interaction. And politely conversing as adults didn’t go so well…”

  “Politely conversing?” Rueben clenched his hands into fists. “Eat shit.”

  “I see. So sad we’ve come to this path. But I will carry out my plan. One way or the other.”

  Rueben started backing away until he came to the sidewalk’s curb. Behind them there was a gap in the traffic. “Go to hell.”

  “Your friends first.”

  Aki turned to Rueben. “What’s going on?”

  “Run!”

  As Pete silently reached under his hoodie, Rueben leapt out into the street. His friends followed. “Come on!”

  They’d made it to the other side when traffic started flowing again. After a garbage truck roared pas
t, Pete stood on the other side of the street with his silenced pistol extended.

  “Down!” Rueben ordered. They hit the ground as Pete pulled the trigger. A car passed between him and his target, and there was a screeching of burned rubber.

  Buzz yelled from the concrete as they all picked themselves up. “Holy shit, Rueben. What have you gotten us into now?”

  “Trust me. Now move. Run!”

  “Wait.” Martha stooped over on the sidewalk. “I dropped my badge.”

  Rueben grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the badge, glittering under a street lamp. “No time.”

  For a moment, Martha resisted, then she turned away from her badge, and the foursome took off at a sprint around a street corner to put some distance between them and Pete, who had started across the street.

  Aki sucked in a breath and blinked as she tried to shake off her alcohol. Too bad it wasn’t that easy. “Who is that guy? How did you know he was going to be out here?”

  “Aki. Right now, I can’t tell you how I know. I just know, and I need you to trust me.”

  “Trust isn’t in my nature.”

  They kept moving at a fast jog. Rueben huffed in a breath, wishing he was in better shape. “Yeah, but staying alive is. Let’s get out of here—it’s not safe.”

  Rueben knew that Pete was smart, and he’d find them eventually. He had advanced technology and stuff on his side. What they needed was an advantage.

  What they needed was a set of wheels.

  Rueben led them out of a back alley and up to a street and stopped.

  Martha’s eyes were wide. “Why are we stopping?”

  Rueben ignored her and snapped his fingers at Buzz. “Where’s your taser?”

  “My what?”

  Rueben sighed. “I know you have a homemade taser. Let me see it.”

  Buzz produced it, and Rueben grabbed it.

  “Shit,” Aki said. “He found us.”

  Over his shoulder, Rueben glimpsed Pete forty yards behind them, entering the alley they had recently exited. “You can’t run forever,” he roared.

  Rueben turned his back on Pete and stepped into the street. Approaching him was a red Camry. It slowed, and a man leaned out the driver’s side window. “Do you want to die?”

  “No, not this time. But you’re about to.” Rueben showed him the taser through the front windshield and hoped it looked like a gun in the night.

  The man’s eyes widened. “Shit. What do you want?”

  “Unlock the doors.” The car’s doors clicked. Rueben motioned to Aki, Martha, and Buzz, and they all hopped into the back seat. Rueben climbed into the front passenger’s seat and held the taser to the man’s head. “Just drive.”

  “Absolutely.”

  The man floored it as Pete reached the sidewalk. He fired a barrage of bullets that embedded themselves into the car’s rear end and was left standing in the rearview.

  “Anyone hit?” Rueben called to the back seat.

  When his three friends said they were all good, Rueben turned back to the driver and noticed he was trembling. He was young, not a whole lot older than him. “What’s your name, man?”

  “Ben.”

  “Hi Ben, I’m Jim.”

  Jim Lewandowski was his fake name when cyberstalking and going on tech jobs for the CIA. He figured it was the kind of name most people wouldn’t bat an eye at.

  Ben nodded, still scared shitless. He glanced at Pete shaking his fist and standing on the sidewalk in the rearview. “Friend of yours?”

  Rueben answered, “No.”

  “Where, um, to, then? Uh…please don’t kill me. Please—”

  “I’m not going to kill you. He might. Just get us out of here.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes until Aki called attention to a small blue Nissan that seemed to be following them. Rueben turned to see Pete’s muscled body crammed into the tiny vehicle. The Nissan accelerated as if to ram them from behind.

  Ben gasped and began in a terrified ramble. “Look, man, I don’t want to die. I just… You know, I don’t even drink or go to clubs. I’m a geeky guy who plays World of Warcraft on a Saturday night. I thought I’d mix it up and try to meet some girls. I clearly picked the wrong night, or the wrong bar, or the—”

  Ben screamed again and swerved to miss Pete’s latest attempt to disable their vehicle. If Pete succeeded, what was he going to do? Kill Rueben’s friends in cold blood and drug and kidnap Rueben? Lock him up in the basement again, but this time with enough serum to keep him sleeping past the beginning of World War III?

  Rueben felt guilty. They had to get Ben out of this. They’d figure this out on their own. He ordered, “Turn here.”

  It was a quick turn, one that Pete wasn’t able to take on such short notice. After Ben made the turn, Rueben instructed, “Floor it like hell.”

  It was good that the streets in this section of town were mostly deserted at this hour, and luckily, they didn’t run into any police cars. A few minutes later, they arrived at a mini-mart. Rueben told Ben to stop the car. “Let us out.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ben accelerated past a Ferrari filling up on gas at one of the pumps outside and promptly stopped the car. The four of them piled out, and Ben sped off into the night. Rueben doubted he’d ever try to get laid again.

  Buzz shook his head. “Poor guy.”

  Aki snorted. “Poor guy? Poor us. What the hell is up with that hoodie dude following us?”

  Rueben answered quickly, “Terrorist. Wants to blow up the World Summit on Monday night.”

  Aki’s eyes widened. “The U.N. conference?”

  Rueben nodded and searched for a way out of the mini-mart. Aki wasn’t going to let that go.

  “How do you know this?” she said.

  “I can’t tell you. I need you to trust me.”

  She was quiet, and Rueben suspected that a long lecture about the dark side of the CIA was on the tip of her tongue. He beat her to it. “I won’t let you rot in a Chinese prison.”

  She gulped, and her dark eyes fired with intensity. “You can’t guarantee that.”

  “I know who we work for and how dangerous our job can get when they have to maintain plausible deniability. And I know you’re worried, but trust me—I know what I’m doing.”

  “I hope you do.”

  Buzz cleared his throat as he paced in front of a stack of propane tanks for sale. “I hate to interrupt this Hallmark moment, but we’re stuck outside a mini-mart without any wheels and a trigger-happy asshole on our sixes. Can we please think of a way out of here?”

  At that moment, the blue Nissan squealed into the mini-mart parking lot, window down. Pete had his gun pointed out the window, and the foursome dropped to the concrete. He pulled the trigger, and one of the mini-mart’s windows exploded. “I’m getting tired of playing,” Pete hollered.

  Rueben spotted the mini propane tanks beside him. Worth a try.

  He might not have had running endurance, but he had moves. Using his dance prowess and muscle memory honed during his competitive ballroom dance days, Rueben grabbed a propane tank and launched it at Pete’s car.

  He wished he had a gun to fire at the tank—would it have exploded like they always did in the movies?—but Pete sped off around the block, rubber squealing. They all panted as they rose from the concrete.

  Aki dusted the dirt off her dress. “That’s not all we’ll see of him.”

  Rueben answered, “No, it’s not. Not by any stretch. Now we need another vehicle.”

  “You’re too good a man, Rueben,” Aki said. “Which I admire. But we should have kept Ben’s ride.”

  Buzz eyed the four-seater Ferrari sitting at the gas pump. In his haste to seek cover when Pete had shot at them, its driver had abandoned his vehicle.

  “Oh, I’ve got something better.” Buzz winked at Rueben, Martha, and Aki, and with a grin, jumped in the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition, and Buzz gunned the engine. “You guys coming?”

  The
mini-mart door burst open, and the Ferrari’s owner, a middle-eastern man in his fifties, came running out. “Get out of my car! I'm calling the police!”

  Aki, Martha, and Rueben all shrugged at each other. Then, without a word, they all jumped in, Rueben and Aki squeezing into the back, Martha in the front, as Buzz took off in a squeal of tires.

  It wasn’t a moment too soon because Pete circled back in his Nissan, prepared to finish the job. He cruised up to the store and stopped, searching and not noticing his targets were in the Ferrari.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out what had happened, though, and he pivoted in his seat and fired at the Ferrari’s side. Buzz jolted out of the parking lot and out onto the street. The blue Nissan was soon hot on their bumper.

  Buzz scoffed. “Really? A Nissan against a Ferrari? Come on, let’s see what this baby can do.”

  Buzz punched it, weaving in and out of the sparse late-night traffic. The little blue Nissan tried to keep up as they wound through New York City’s streets, dodging traffic and cabs. Unfortunately, traffic eventually grew thick, and the other cars leveled the playing field. Ferrari or not, Pete soon gained on them.

  Martha shook her head. “We gotta get out of the city.”

  Aki nodded and checked her phone’s GPS. “She’s right. If we go up that way, we can get to an open road out of the city.”

  They made a quick turn to confuse the Nissan and lost Pete for a moment. That was when Aki’s phone rang. “What is this number?”

  Rueben watched her decline it, but the phone rang again and again. They all looked at each other. They knew what this was, but they couldn’t begin to fathom the how.

  Rueben grabbed the phone. He answered it and put it on speaker. “What is this?”

  Pete’s laughter always sent a chill down his spine. So sinister and dark, and his own, and Rueben knew Pete was using it to his advantage.

  “Hello, Rueben.”

  “Leave us alone.”

  “But if I do, you won’t leave me alone.”

  “You don’t know that,” Buzz said. And then, “Hey, his voice kinda sounds like yours, Rueben.”

  Pete’s laugh came over the phone’s speaker. “You going to tell them? Or shall I?”

  Rueben terminated the call.

  Aki pierced him with her dark eyes in the dimness of the back seat. “What the fuck is going on?”