Pandemonium

by Christian Kallias

  I haven’t forgotten. I just have a bad feeling about today. I wish I could shake it, but I can’t. It lurks in the back of my head, eating at my confidence with every passing moment. I need to regain control and fast.

  Three

  Mission completion time: T minus 487 minutes

  We arrive at Confederate Road. That road bears the name since Geneva was once part of the Swiss Confederation, made up of multiple cantons that merged together to create Switzerland near the end of the thirteenth century. Of course, today the notion of country doesn’t exist anymore. The seven dome cities left standing are all part of the United Nations of the World.

  New Geneva is one of the largest cities on the European continent now. Which is surprising as it was quite a smaller one pre-World War III. Today, it’s one of the most advanced technological ones, too. Not long ago, it was also where most of the mega corporations had their headquarters; until they moved them to New Paris and its highly advanced dome shields and lower crime rates.

  It’s time to enlist Eleanor’s help. At least try that is. I dread meeting her again more than I am willing to admit it to myself or to Tanya. We were close once, very close, like brother and sister close. We also made one hell of a team when we went into battle together.

  We sweated, bled, and did everything we had to do to always come back alive from our missions, as a tight unit. We never left the other behind, no matter the state we were in. I can sincerely say I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for her acts of bravery under fire. I’m sure she feels the same about me. Memories overload my mind in this moment.

  We enter the building where her apartment is located. I stop in front of her door and freeze, looking at her name engraved into the small copper plate near the doorbell. My finger hovers next to the touch control.

  “What’s wrong, Cole?” says Tanya.

  I don’t answer.

  “Cole, I understand you’re not feeling well today, but unless you get your shit together, we’ll both perish, and I haven’t signed up for this! You hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I don’t think you do, Cole. I’ve never felt you so agitated before.”

  “Feeling yourself die will do that.”

  “Cole, it was a nightmare!”

  “How do you explain that the target was right, then? This doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.”

  “I’m willing to recognize that the situation is peculiar, yes, but perhaps it’s just a side effect of time travel. Perhaps you acquire some sort of discombobulated precog ability from it.”

  I think about what she says. It’s true that during the time transfer I feel something indescribable, a state of pure consciousness detached from human experience, where time doesn’t seem to have any meaning. Perhaps in that state I glimpse into my own future, and my subconscious serves this back to me in my dream state. That could explain it.

  But even so, am I or am I not destined to die? How does this explanation help me?

  “I’ll tell you how it helps, Cole. You know what could happen, therefore you have the edge required to change your own destiny. But not if you keep obsessing about the one thing you fear the most.”

  There is wisdom in her words, and it helps me calm down, at least a little. Except, I never thought I feared death before today. Not since Vassiliki died, anyway.

  And that’s part of what made me the unrelenting, unstoppable agent that I have become. She’s right, though, I need to get a grip and start grounding myself in the present instead of letting the past eat at my soul in large chunks, making me afraid of my own future in the process.

  I don’t even realize it but my finger touches the doorbell controls. The sound of the chime brings me back to the here and now. I swallow hard.

  “Tanya, activate privacy mode.”

  “Cole, it’s against standard operating procedure to deactivate me during deployment.”

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, Tanya.”

  “Very well,” she says, her tone angry. I hear the confirmation beep that she has turned herself off.

  When the door opens, my eyes focus on the barrel of an old .357 Magnum aimed right at my face. My focal point changes from the barrel of the gun to Eleanor’s cold and emotionless face.

  She barks at me, “What part of ‘I’ll kill you, motherfecker, if I ever see your face again’ didn’t you understand, Cole?”

  “I need your help.”

  “I don’t give a feck! You don’t get to come here and ask for anything but a bullet, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I recall our last conversation. Right after her court martial, right after I testified against her. My heart fills with shame and regret.

  “I can’t change the past, Eleanor, no matter how much I wish I could. But, please, hear me out. If what I have to say doesn’t matter to you, then you can go ahead and shoot me.”

  She looks at me differently. I don’t know that look. Is it curiosity? Is it disgust, or something else altogether? Whatever it is, it makes her think. That much, I can tell. She puts her thumb on the hammer and slowly uncocks it.

  “You have balls, I grant you that. Speak, but make it short. Seeing you causes a host of memories and years of repressed anger to resurface.”

  I can understand that. In fact, I can imagine that killing me is at the top of her bucket list. If our positions were reversed, I might actually feel the same. But no matter how much she hates me right now, part of her recognizes that I saved her life many times. Too many to count.

  It feels like I have ten thousand ways of starting this conversation, but I settle for the most direct one.

  “Here’s the deal: I need your help to stop a dirty bomb from detonating in New Geneva today and incinerating most of the population with it.”

  I see her eye twitch. I can tell she is processing the full weight behind my words.

  “For the sake of argument, let’s say I believe this is true. Why me? Why come to the person you’ve betrayed for help? You must have known I want nothing more than to blow your head off.”

  She is right, of course. Why her? I could have requested a full platoon of military soldiers to accompany me, and it would have been granted. So why did I come here?

  “I don’t know. Call it intuition. This is one of those days when I fear it could be the last.”

  “And so the first dumb thought in your thick skull was to see the one person who could actually help that fear become a reality? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “It’s a long story, but there’s very little time.”

  “Bullshit, Cole!” She cocks the gun again and puts her index finger back on the trigger. “Don’t feck with me! I’m not in the mood.”

  “Easy now, I’m not fecking with you. Today Ahmed Al’Hasi will detonate a dirty bomb in the World Security Center.”

  “If you know the target, then why do you need my help? Why not take an entire army and get the job done? What could possibly compel you to put your faith in the one person you fed to the wolves to save your own ass?”

  Was that what I did? Was I trying to save my own ass? I feel a strong sensation in my heart. I can’t shake it, but I decide to ignore it. Now is not the time, and I’m already in a shitty disposition. I don’t need to pile on more crap that will only prevent me from staying focused on my objectives. I repeat that inside my head like a mantra. The mission at all cost. I need to stop Ahmed, no matter what.

  “Because you’re the only person I can trust with my life.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Cole. Maybe in your sick head you think I can forgive you for getting me discharged from active duty. And heck, maybe I deserved it. Maybe I went over the line that time. Maybe I could have done things differently. But if I did, maybe you wouldn’t be breathing right now. Have you ever stopped to think about that?”

  I have, of course, many times. That’s what made that entire mess all the more painful. Unfortunately, we can’t rehash what happened. Today isn
’t about old wounds and making amends. I know in my heart that I will have to eventually, only not today.

  “I have, Eleanor. And I can’t even describe how sorry I am—”

  She doesn’t let me finish, and the barrel of her Magnum presses hard against my forehead. I wonder if deactivating Tanya was a mistake. It would only take a thought to bring her back, but without context, she might act rashly. More than that, this is something I need to do on my own. If I have even the slightest chance to get back on my feet and accomplish my mission today, I must face my demons, my fears, and my doubts alone.

  Right now I’d give anything to be back in my luxurious apartment cracking jokes and exchanging sexual innuendos with Tanya. But if I ever want to experience that again, I have to complete the mission first.

  “Cole, chose your next words carefully, and don’t ever try to say you’re sorry to me ever again, or god be my witness, I’ll punch a hole through your brain if you do. You’ve taken everything from me. Going on missions and serving my planet was my whole life, my only reason to live and you knew it. In fact, you’re the only one who knew how important my job was to me.”

  “Alright. Here’s the deal.”

  I know Tanya would stop me from talking if she were active. I’m about to break every rule in the book. I just don’t see any other way now. I continue.

  “I’m working for a top-secret project called Rewind. They send me back in time whenever a terrorist causes serious damage to our world. The nuke I’ve told you about already exploded; it incinerated hundreds of thousands of people, and the resulting radiation would surely kill ninety-eight percent of New Geneva’s population over the next few days. I have come back in time to prevent it. This is my job. This is what the government approached me to do after our unit was . . . disbanded.”

  I immediately realize using that word was a mistake, a huge one at that. But it’s too late now—I’ve said it. I can tell from her expression that she is struggling to compute everything I have said. Her lips part to display clenched teeth.

  She moves fast. I’m impressed even though I see it coming, perhaps thanks mostly to my improved augment that gives me super-human reflex levels, or maybe simply because I would have done the same if I were in her shoes.

  She tries to slam the grip of her gun into my temple. I block the move and disarm her, but not before a single shot is fired. I feel the pain in my neck. The bullet has grazed me. I grab the antique gun and smash it in my hands. Using my repulsor, I bring it to a melting point, making my job easier.

  She stumbles back with fear in her eyes.

  “So that’s why you came here? It wasn’t enough that you rid me of my purpose, now you actually want to finish the job!”

  I shake my head. “No, Eleanor. I really need your help. I have to stop Al’Hasi, and I don’t trust anyone else to help me do this.”

  “And you couldn’t come up with a better lie than time travel? Really? Do what you came to do, Cole. If in this ghost of a man I see standing in front of me remains a shred of humanity and loyalty for your ex-partner, drop the bullshit and take me out already.”

  “I’m not here to kill you, Eleanor! And I’m not lying either. I can prove it.”

  “Yeah, right. You can prove you’ve time traveled? How?”

  “I can show you footage of what’s going to happen. I can probably even show you footage of what your day would have been if I hadn’t shown up.”

  Her eyes lock with mine, and she looks at me with an intense stare.

  “I can’t seem to find deception in your words. But that makes my head spin.”

  I can relate to that. I know how I felt when I was introduced to the concept of what would become my new job.

  “That’s because I’m not trying to deceive you. I swear on Vassiliki’s grave that I’m not.”

  Her eyes widen. She knows that I would never do that unless I was being truthful. She drops to her knees, and a tear runs down her cheek.

  “You fecking asshole. You come on the day I finally decided to put all of my pain, rage, and fears to rest. You decide to ring the doorbell mere seconds before I’m about to end it all.”

  A shiver travels up and down my spine as the realization behind her words sinks in. Was she about to shoot herself? That would explain why she answered the door so fast, gun in hand.

  I activate Tanya in information-only mode and look at the records from the mission intel package. I check police-related information regarding Eleanor.

  Two hours from now a patrol would have found her body in her bathroom, blood spilled over her old, decrepit, and shattered mirror. The image grabs at my heart and squeezes. I can barely breathe. Why didn’t Tanya tell me all of this? Surely she knew the moment I gave her Eleanor’s name. But then again she insisted that we hurry getting here on multiple occasion. I just didn’t see what the time factor.

  But, then again, she managed to add Eleanor to the mission, and while I didn’t second-guess how she managed that, I know it’s not standard procedure to involve anyone else in our assignments. Time traveling is dangerous as it is. The ripple effect from too much change in the timeline is something that has to be carefully planned.

  That’s why Rewind doesn’t allow more than one agent on a single mission, it doubles the chances of temporal interference. So did Tanya lie to me and show me what I wanted to see when she added her to the mission?

  Or did the company actually see what we were doing and allow it for another reason? The questions are hammering my conscious mind to oblivion. I can’t think of a reason, but the fact remains, Tanya hid the fact she knew that Eleanor would not survive the day. Unless it was a compassionate act on her part. She’s been feeling more human than I ever felt lately.

  I put my hand over my mouth and let it slowly slide toward my neck. This day is getting weirder by the minute, and there are things that don’t add up. That’s when my neural net shows me another garbled image of Vassiliki.

  “Cole, you’re being used. Don’t trust anyone but yourself,” she says.

  The image flashes out of existence as fast as it came.

  What the feck is happening to me?

  “Cole? Cole!” I hear Eleanor say, but she sounds like she’s far away. Eventually, she screams my name once more, and I get back into the moment.

  “Cole! For feck’s sake, what’s going on?”

  Her eyes are red, repressed tears burning them.

  I take a knee and wipe the tear on her cheek. She pushes my arm away with little to no conviction. I help her back to her feet and sit her on her couch. I go into the kitchen and fill a glass with water and bring it to her.

  When she doesn’t take it from my hands, I drop it in front of her. She looks at it. I need to do something to get her out of this. Feck, I need to get out of this myself before this pile of shit consumes me. I want to regain control but the more time passes, the more I feel like I’m losing my mojo.

  I don’t know how to do it, so I do what I thought I would do before I saw the coroner’s report and the scene of my friend’s death. A death I somehow prevented by coming here today. It’s boggling my mind, but I can’t let it distract me any longer.

  “Do you have a brain augment?” I ask.

  It takes a little while before she nods. “The army removed mine after I got discharged, but I got another, a cheaper model from the black market.”

  I reach with my mind and easily find and hack into it. I show her what I’ve seen. I know this is one hell of a gamble. It either jolts her back into reality or will forever consume her psyche in the fiery depths of hell.

  The color drains from her face. I want to tell her I’m sorry for fecking up her life, but I know she doesn’t want to hear that from me now, perhaps never, in fact.

  She is shocked and something in her snaps. She slams her hand into the glass of water and sends it spinning on the carpet, rolling and tumbling until it smashes against the wall.

  “I want to know one thing, Cole, and please don’t lie to
me. Is this true? Are you coming from the future? Are you really trying to stop a dirty bomb?”

  “I haven’t lied to you at all today, Eleanor; all of it is true. I swear it to you.”

  I show her the mission parameters, the data, and the images of New Geneva post-detonation and continue.

  “If I don’t find a way to stop it, this is what will happen,” I add.

  There is silence for a few minutes. Time seems to stop, and I feel trapped. There’s a buzzing in my head reminding me that time is the one commodity I can’t waste, but another part of me, one that is screaming at me and telling me this is a crucial moment.

  Slowly, color returns to her face. She starts to take deeper breaths and wipes the remainder of her tears before looking into my eyes, her whole expression changing. Her look of resolve sends another shiver up my spine. Her voice is strong as steel.

  “Alight the, what do you need me to do?”

  Four

  Mission completion time: T minus 421 minutes

  I’m back on my jet bike flying toward our next destination. I can feel Eleanor’s arms around my chest, holding me tight. The last twenty minutes have been some of the most emotionally charged I have had in a very long time. We both could have been consumed by what happened back at her apartment, but we weren’t.

  In the chasm of despair, we have rekindled something we both thought we had lost a long time ago. Partnership. We both want to talk about it, but we know it will have to wait, even if it means we never get the chance to have that conversation.

  We both understand what needs to be done today. For better or for worse, we can’t let emotions, fears, and doubts cloud our judgment. Her willingness to overcome death and for one more time be part of an op to save others has brought her back from the brink. But in doing so, it has also grounded me back into the present where I need to be today more than any other day.

  I reactivate Tanya with a mental push.

  What have I missed? I see you’ve convinced her to join us.