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

by Ramy Vance

  “Well, I’m adding a few tweaks.”

  He cropped the two photos on his computer, then uploaded them. “You want to be Rosie again?”

  “You know, I’ve always wanted to have an exotic name…like…”

  “No more accents.”

  “Well, how about Moira? Moira De La Cruz.”

  She tossed her hair back and laughed.

  “You’re so goofy. I’m going to be John. John Michaelson.”

  “All right, here’s our coverup. We’re federal agents that are working with what’s his name? Marc?”

  “Woolard.”

  “Marc Woolard for permitting on the drone show.”

  She borrowed from Aki’s story. “We’re working on making sure all the security for the event is top-notch. All the world leaders have requirements, and we need to make sure that the drones used in the show are up to technical requirements and aren’t defective.”

  He looked a little nervous. “That’s a lot to remember. You talk.”

  He uploaded his photo while she touched up her makeup and wrapped a scarf around her hair. The less she could be recognizable as Martha Dragone, the better.

  He shut the laptop. “We’re good. Let’s move.”

  “Wait. I have an idea.” She dug in her purse and pulled out her keys. Then she detached a red toucan figurine from the keychain and tossed it out the window into the grass.

  Zach raised his eyes in question, but Martha only winked.

  Then John and Moira stepped out of the car and approached the guard tower.

  The uniformed guard that had been watching their vehicle was right on top of them. He showed his gun. “Halt. This is a secure area. You’re going to need to move on.”

  “We’re on the list. We’re federal agents De La Cruz and Michaelson. We’re here for a surprise inspection on the drones for tomorrow.”

  The guard checked the list and pulled out his walkie-talkie. “All right. Jeebs?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you show some federal agents the property, please?”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  The guard pressed a button on the fence, and Martha and Zach walked right through. “Jeebs will be with you shortly.”

  Martha and Zach stood on the sidewalk near the fence and waited for Jeebs. He didn’t take long. He was a muscular soldier, early twenties, dressed all in camouflage.

  “Hello, welcome to Gerhardt Military Base. I’m Private Jeebs.”

  Martha effected a cool posture. Too much friendliness could lead people to ask questions. “We’re federal agents De La Cruz and Michaelson. We’re here to do a surprise inspection on the drones for the summit event tomorrow.”

  Jeebs looked nervous. “Ummm…okay.” He motioned them toward a military jeep, and they all piled in. Jeebs drove them deeper into the base. “We don’t get a lot of visitors here at Gerhardt. Usually, the ones we get are the regulars.”

  Martha appeared nonplussed but surveyed the base with a keen eye. “Lucas Cameron, Marc Woolard.”

  “Yeah, those guys come a lot.”

  He drove up to a small concrete building and parked the vehicle. They all stepped out, and Jeebs swiped a security card at the metal door and let them in. Inside was a large lobby with shining linoleum and touch screens on all the walls.

  Jeebs walked up to a screen and called up a page. “So, this is where the drones are.” He pointed toward a list with numbers on it. “Each of these addresses corresponds with one of the two hundred drones for the light show. We do regular security checks to make sure we can get a signal on each one. And that’s it.” Jeebs turned to Martha and Zach and shrugged.

  Martha glanced around the lobby. “Okay. So where are the actual drones?”

  Jeebs looked surprised, then laughed. “Oh no, ma’am. We can’t go in there. That’s…that’s a secure location. We can just see them on the radar on the screen.”

  “But I don’t want to see the radar. I need to view the actual drones.”

  Jeebs shifted his weight back and forth. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t do that.”

  “Private Jeebs, do you know what this light show is for?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The One World Summit. It’s an event.”

  “Exactly. Do you know who is going to be at the One World Summit?”

  “Uh…not exactly. It’s a lot of important people, ma’am.”

  “No. Not a lot of important people. It’s all the important people in the world.”

  “I understand, ma’am. It’s just that here on this base we don’t—”

  “I don’t care what you do or don’t do. It is my job to protect these important people. I need to visually verify that these aircraft are safe to launch into the airspace around every international dignitary currently in power. I can’t certify that on…” She gestured toward the screen in disgust. “Your radar.”

  “I understand that, ma’am. But I don’t have access, even if I wanted to.”

  “Well, then who does?”

  “Mainly Mr. Cameron and Mr. Woolard.”

  “So you’re telling me that there is a locked building on federal property that no one who works on it has access to?”

  “Well, I’m sure the captain does, but…”

  “But what?” She clapped her hands together. “Get him up. If I can’t certify these aircraft tonight, not only will there be no light show, everyone on this base will be subject to legal action.”

  Jeebs now looked genuinely scared. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll find someone.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  Jeebs scurried out of the building. Zach relaxed, but Martha eyed the camera. “Don’t drop character.”

  “You’re terrifying. You know that?”

  “There’s a reason I became a cop.”

  He chuckled, and another guard came back in with Jeebs. This one was a little older, in his late thirties perhaps. He looked a little more difficult to push around.

  “Ma’am, we can’t let anyone into the rooms past this lobby. You’re lucky that you’ve even gotten this far. Everything you need to see is on the monitor right here.”

  She protested with folded arms. “No, it’s not—”

  He held up his hand and nodded at Jeebs and then the monitor. “I promise you.”

  With a couple of clicks of the mouse, Jeebs brought up another view. There it was, a still frame of the storage room. It wasn’t a live view, but it did clearly lay out its interior. Rows of miniature aircraft devices sat neatly on shelves.

  Martha didn’t want to see pictures of the drones. She wanted to be in the same room as them so she could inspect them and figure out a way to sabotage them. “That’s not what I need to see. I need to—”

  The soldier held up his hand and brought up the list view. “See, now if you click on each device number, you can pull up a photo view of the device itself.” He demonstrated and treated them to a three-sixty-photo view of a drone identical to the one they had found in Lucas’s office. About a foot wide, gray, with four propellered arms.

  “That still doesn’t show me what I want to see.”

  Jeebs’s superior placed his hand on his hips. “What agency are you with?”

  “I’m working with the State Department.”

  “Huh? What are you really doing? They may have let you onto the base, but I need to see some credentials.”

  Zach had been quiet so far, and he finally chimed in. He shoved a phone at the man. “We work for the CIA. Here are our IDs.”

  Martha snuck a peripheral glance at Zach’s phone. Buzz had apparently faked them some IDs out of Rueben’s and Aki’s.

  Jeebs’s superior raised his arms in surrender. “Fine. Show them to the warehouse and let them in.”

  She shot the man a withering glance, and he didn’t respond. He simply nodded and led the way.

  A few minutes later, they came to a door with a keypad. Jeebs entered the code and opened the door. With an arm movement, he ushered them in. Then the metal
door clanged shut behind them.

  Zach and Martha were now in a huge warehouse room. Just like in the computer photos, metal shelves held the devices as well as several tables with aluminum foldout chairs around them.

  Martha gingerly picked one up. “Does this feel a little heavier than the one in Lucas’s office?”

  Zach picked one up. “Yeah, it does.”

  She inspected it carefully. It had the standard blue LED light. Then she looked a little closer. “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “It has a digitally controlled bomb on it.”

  She started checking them all. They were all the same. “These can’t go out.” Martha pulled out her phone to send photos. As soon as she pulled up her message thread for Rueben, she had no reception. She looked at the thick metal construction all around. “There’s no reception in here. How about you?”

  Zach pulled out his phone and found the same. “We can take photos and send them later.”

  “That’s what we’re going to have to do.”

  As soon as she said that, there was a gruff, knowing chuckle, and a man wearing a white hoodie and shades stepped out from the shadows behind a shelf of drones. The hoodie was torn and scuffed up as if the man had recently been in a fight. “You couldn’t stay away, could you? I guess I’m not surprised.”

  Zach turned to her, and Martha shook her head. “Pete.”

  Pete laughed snidely. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, honey.”

  She delivered a swift kick to Pete’s chest, and he laughed, grabbed her leg, and shoved her to the ground. “That move doesn’t work for you, does it?”

  She crawled away from Pete and Zach grabbed an aluminum chair and smashed it over his head. Pete whipped around, and Zach’s eyes widened.

  Martha knew the guy was more trouble than Zach had bargained for. “Leave him out of this.”

  “You should have thought of that before you brought him here. He’s part of it now.” Pete lifted the chair with one hand and bent off one aluminum leg. He raised it like a stake and lunged at Zach. Zach ran, and Pete chased him, laughing all the way. “Run, Forrest, run. I think you need to go back to Alabama where you belong.”

  Zach grabbed a metal pipe off a counter and lunged at Pete with it.

  “Very good.” Pete deflected some of the blows with the chair leg, his metal body armor absorbing the rest of them. “You have some instincts. Officer Dragone might make a cop out of you yet.”

  Zach’s eyes narrowed, and he got in a few good licks with the metal pipe before Pete doubled him over with a knee to the gut.

  Martha grabbed another lead pipe from the counter and smashed it over Pete’s head. He cursed, and it distracted him long enough for Zach to kick Pete in the shin.

  “Enough of this,” Pete growled and stepped toward them like a bully, reaching toward each of them. His calloused palms enclosed around each of their throats, and he lifted them off their feet, shoving their backs against a shelf full of drones.

  Martha flailed about to try to find another weapon, but her vision was already starting to blur. Her last thought before she blacked out was whether he would simply tie them up…or had they angered him enough that he was about to kill them.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sunday, May 21, 11:35 p.m.

  Rueben and Aki sat in a dive bar booth across from the homeless man, Jim. The bar was dimly lit, with mahogany booths and art deco-style lamps hanging over each table. It reminded Rueben of a speakeasy, and he wondered if this had been the case at one time. It was New York, after all.

  Jim appeared more than uncomfortable in the civilized environment, and Rueben wondered if inviting him out for a drink was the best way to get information from him.

  Maybe Jim would have been more comfortable sitting on the street with a bucket of Hurley’s fried chicken. Every noise startled him—the door opening, dropped change, the clank of glasses… After any sudden sound, he would stop and crane his neck as if alerted to some hidden danger.

  Once, when the cash register slammed, jangling coins on its way shut, Jim almost jumped up from the noise.

  Rueben calmed him down. “It’s all right, man. It’s only a cash register. Nothing to be afraid of.” Reuben tried to make light of it. “Well, I take that back. We should all be scared of the cash register. It’s a giant silver monster that eats your money.”

  He wiggled his fingers in a creepy alien motion, and Aki smirked, but Rueben had made it worse for Jim. He started to bolt for the door.

  “Hey, hey, hey. I was joking, man. Sorry, bad joke. Bad joke. There’s no monster.”

  Jim marginally calmed, but at least he sat.

  Drinkers sat more or less quietly over glasses, and a pool game elicited the occasional laugh.

  The waitress came by to take their orders, and Jim ordered, “Four orange juices only in a paper cup. Must be in a paper cup.”

  The waitress seemed a little confused, but Rueben nodded at her. “I’m picking up the bill. Whatever he wants.”

  She wrote it down. “Okey-dokey.”

  After she left, Jim squirmed in the booth, his wild red hair sticking out from every angle. Rueben finally got a good look at him and noticed he wasn’t a whole lot older than the guy.

  He figured Jim was maybe mid-twenties or so, with scraggly facial hair and large wire-rimmed glasses. He wore an open blue-and-red plaid shirt with a black t-shirt underneath.

  Rueben turned to Jim. “So Jim, what we invited you—”

  Jim grabbed all the sugar packets out of the condiment rack and began to arrange them in rows. “The rule of balance, everything in balance, and balance it will be. Sugar comes from sugar cane and salt from the mines or the sea. Never mix them up, or you will see just how much is not the sea.”

  Rueben and Aki glanced at each other. Maybe this was a bad idea after all.

  Aki smiled gently at him and tried to enter his world. “You like sugar, Jim?”

  “Sugar rots your teeth. Bad, like fried chicken. But tastes like ice cream.”

  “Mhhmm…ice cream. What’s your favorite flavor?

  He still sorted the packets, but his answer was sure and quick. “Ugh. I hate ice cream.”

  “You don’t like ice cream?”

  “Food must satisfy the stomach, not the soul.”

  “I think they can do both.”

  Jim didn’t answer and continued with the sugar packets. They had to be arranged out on the table, then gathered, and arranged again. Rueben tried to follow a pattern, but there was none.

  Aki continued trying to soften Jim. “Hey Jim, can I ask you a question?”

  “Question request accepted.”

  “Thank you for that. What do you know about Rueben?”

  Jim continued to sort the packets on the table, over and over, with no discernible pattern. “He’s a Repeater.”

  “A Repeater? What does that mean?”

  “It means he repeats. He has had many, many lives, and he repeats in a loop and a loop-the-loop.”

  Rueben’s stomach froze. This guy knew? He was certainly no schizophrenic with déjà vu experiences as he and Buzz had guessed. The man remembered more than bits and pieces. Rueben stammered, “You’re right. How do you know that?”

  “He lives in many, many worlds. Sometimes he’s good, and sometimes he’s bad.”

  Reuben leaned forward. This guy might’ve been straight-up nuts, but so was his life. If Jim knew something about how this thing worked, he didn’t care how crazy he was. “Many worlds? Like multiple universes?”

  The waitress came at that moment to deliver the drinks. “Here you go, four orange juices in paper cups.”

  Jim grinned and inserted all the straws and meticulously arranged the cups on the table, appearing to check for symmetry.

  The waitress frowned. “Is he…okay?”

  Reuben answered quickly, “Sorry, you’ll have to forgive my brother. He’s on leave from county for his birthday. We’ll have him back in an hour.�
��

  “Ahh…”

  Jim answered, not looking up from his drink, “Not his brother.”

  The waitress leaned in over him and yelled slowly, “Can. I. Get. You. Anything. Else?”

  Jim clasped his hands over his ears, and Rueben waved dismissively at the waitress, and she nodded at him knowingly before leaving.

  Rueben sipped his beer and picked up the conversation from before the waitress had appeared. “Do you mean multiple universes?”

  Jim leaned over the orange juice cups and took a sip from each, one by one, then went back to organizing the sugar packets. “Not your brother. Carolyn is your mother.”

  Rueben nearly choked on his beer. “How do you know my mother?”

  “I talk to her often. She smells like cookies.”

  Rueben stiffened. “You don’t know my mother. She’s been gone for fifteen years.”

  With big flamboyant movements, Jim raised his palms high in the air in a gesture of confusion. “So…where oh where did she go?”

  Rueben didn’t want to talk about his mother.

  He was about to tell him as much, but then Jim continued, “That is the question you must answer. The quest on which you must embark.”

  “I’m not on a quest for my—”

  The phrase “my mother” got stuck in his throat. “I’m not looking for Carolyn Peet. What I want to know is, are you stalking me?”

  “Sometimes he’s good, sometimes he’s bad. But he must quest to find the dream where the time loops end.”

  Aki chimed in, softer than Rueben. “Hey, Jim. Rueben wants to know how you know so much about him. Can you tell us about that?”

  “Request granted. He jumps.”

  Aki frowned at the answer. “Jumps?”

  “Jumps. Like a frog. To universes.” He arranged the packets on the table in a circle and jumped his finger over them. “Bad Rueben, that is. It’s a time loop. He jumps. Like a frog. In a loop. Loop-the-loop goes the frog.”

  Rueben tried to wrap his brain around whatever Jim was attempting to say. “Bad Me travels between universes and is somehow stuck in a time loop?”

  “Universes. Like TV.”

  “TV?”

  “TV isn’t real. It’s in the air. Universes are in the air. Nothing is real. It’s in the air. And bad you…is the stuck frog. Stuck frog. Stuck frog.”