Fixer Redux

by Gene Doucette

  Maggie closed the channel.

  “It’s her,” she said.

  “I got that” Corrigan said. He staggered to his feet, got his bearings, and turned to face the back doors.

  “Corrigan, don’t you dare go out there,” Maggie said.

  “Give me a gun,” he said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then I’ll go out unarmed.”

  “Fine.”

  She crawled to her feet and stuck a handgun into his open palm.

  “I have another piece,” she said, “at least let me get out through the front and provide some cover.”

  “You won’t be able to touch her, you know that.”

  “I know. All the girls down at the club will give me grief if I don’t offer covering fire to my boyfriend, okay?”

  “Just don’t give her a target,” he said.

  “Same to you.”

  “I might not have a choice.”

  He had to step over Monica on the way out.

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “It’ll be fine. Stay here.”

  “Thanks, I didn’t have any plans not to.”

  In his immediate future, Corrigan reached the back door, waited three seconds, and then opened it. When he did so, he was not shot, which should have meant he was fine to do exactly that. Instead, he just pushed it open immediately, without the three seconds, pointing the gun Maggie gave him in the approximate direction of the hospital’s front door.

  He was not shot.

  The devastation was pretty impressive. Sheila’s bomb took off the back of the police van, which probably meant bad things happened to the officers inside. The two other officers were lying on the floor of the cement courtyard, either dead or unconscious. Likewise, Vera and Carl, who were in a heap near the door and not moving.

  There was a crack in the glass of the hospital’s façade. A red light was flashing on the inside of the building, creating interesting shadows.

  Corrigan had the sense that there was all this motion happening around him, just at the edge of his vision. He was in the middle of the silence—well, all except for the car alarms—immediately following an explosive detonation. What would follow would be a rush of people toward the scene.

  Sheila Corrigan, sitting on the messed-up remnants of the police van’s rear fender, didn’t look concerned about any of that.

  Sheila was shorter than Corrigan, and he thought shorter than Maggie too. She had her brown hair up in a ponytail and, unlike the version of the future he saw, she was in black clothing, not a police uniform.

  Her right shoulder was twice as large as her left. He thought this must have been the bandage, under her jacket.

  “There you are,” she said, standing. She had the interesting little rectangular device Maggie showed off earlier, in her right hand. “Thanks for setting all this up for me, I really needed this back.”

  “I didn’t set up anything.”

  “You kinda did. It messes with your head, doesn’t it? You peek into our future and see me gunning for you, and then I do the same and I see…this. How do you think it works? Last one to the future wins?”

  “Maybe. Never thought about it. Who are you?”

  “Distant cousin, I’m thinking. Never saw you at the reunions.”

  In his future, Corrigan fired the gun.

  “Whoop,” she said. In her future, she moved, and pulled her own gun. Then the future caught up and she actually did pull the gun, even if Corrigan didn’t end up shooting his.

  “Neat, right?” she said. Then she shot in her future. He stepped aside. She caught up, and didn’t fire the gun.

  “How’s the gut shot?” she asked. “You seem to be moving okay.”

  “I’m fine. How’s the shoulder?”

  “It’s healing, thanks.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “Man, you are a terrible conversationalist,” she said. “You know what I want to know? How come you don’t do anything fun with your skills?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  In her future, she sighed grandly, and walked in a circle, gesticulating. She didn’t end up doing that, and the sighing version of the future disappeared. It was the kind of surreal that made Corrigan’s head hurt. He was witnessing reactions that were only for his benefit.

  The secret future, he thought. That was what he called it when he met Harvey. The old man almost never moved—up until that last day in the hospital—so Corrigan had few chances to process how odd it was.

  Regular people had possible futures, but they always ended up on the path of one of those possible futures. Sheila was completely freelancing. She could follow one of those futures, or she could do something entirely different. If it was adequately different, all the other possible futures vanished, so when she did that, for a micro-second, it looked as if she had no future at all. That was when she was most dangerous, but the counterpoint was that Corrigan could do the same thing and was therefore equally dangerous.

  “I mean, something fun!” she said, but only in the future. When it came time to actually say it out loud, in the present, she just stood there.

  “Tell me why you’re trying to kill me,” he said, in the same manner. To Maggie, it must have looked like they were just holding a staring contest.

  “Fine, fine, Mr. all-business. It’s purely economic, okay? I offer a unique service. I can’t have you around, proving I’m not unique.”

  “You’ve never met anyone like us before?”

  “I assumed there were people like us, but no. Even if I did, I might leave them alone, as long as they’re not on national television acting like a crazy man superhero.”

  “I wasn’t trying to go public,” he said. “That was your fault.”

  “Oh, I know. Man, that was so weird, right? I couldn’t figure out what happened at first. The future popped out of existence when you jumped up; I thought Bern’s equipment malfunctioned. Whoop.”

  In the future, someone shot her in the head. She moved aside, and fired two shots in the direction of the shooter. It came from up the street, and not from Maggie, who knew better.

  “Looks like it’s time to go, Mr. Corrigan Bain,” she said. “This has been fun.”

  “Don’t suppose you’re leaving town.”

  “I could promise to, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “No, probably not.”

  “Later, then. Keep sharp, heal up, this’ll be a blast.”

  She raised the gun, aimed it at him at first, then turned and fired in the direction of Maggie. The bullets hit the side of the van, but served the purpose of preventing Maggie from doing what she was about to do, which was to shoot at Sheila’s back as she ran from the scene.

  Corrigan took two steps to follow, until the stitches in his side reminded him he had only just barely graduated to walking.

  To reinforce the point the stabbing pain in his stomach was already making, he touched the spot where the stitches were, and his hand came up wet.

  Bleeding through the stitches, and I haven’t even made it home yet, he thought. That seems about right.

  To his left, Maggie emerged from behind the van’s engine block, shouting commands into a radio. The agents who’d been positioned around the front of the hospital were all running, either toward the immobile bodies in the courtyard or in the direction Sheila Corrigan had fled. It was only ten or eleven people, but suddenly Corrigan realized how unprepared he was, to go back out into the world again. Those ten or eleven people looked and sounded like five times that. His grip on the present wasn’t nearly what it should be.

  But, he was tired, and stressed, and apparently bleeding.

  “Are you okay?” Maggie asked him, in between commands on her radio. Then she asked the same thing a second time. He waited until he was sure she wasn’t going to ask a third time, and then responded. To her, it must have seemed like he was not okay.

  “Don’t worry about me right now,” he said.
/>   “Are you hurt?” she asked. She also almost asked if he was okay, and if he was wounded, but the one that stuck was are you hurt?

  “Go,” he said. He then added, “I’ll stay here” before she could tell him to stay put.

  Maggie was intimately familiar with Corrigan’s tendency to respond to things that had not yet been said, and so after a quick head-shake, she joined the carnage in the courtyard.

  Corrigan leaned up against the side of the van, and wondered if he had an obligation to check up on Monica, who was probably still hiding inside, worried that it wasn’t safe yet. Then he wondered if maybe he should call someone’s attention to his bleeding. He didn’t know how much blood was too much, before it was officially a medical problem requiring some manner of triage, but surely someone there did.

  Focus, he thought.

  The spaghetti-string parade of future-movement had to be put back in the box, or he was of no use to anybody. He picked out one person at random—a paramedic, who had just rushed out of the front of the hospital on his way to the carcass of a police van—and concentrated on the far end of the man’s path. If Corrigan were feeling better, that would be the spot where the paramedic appeared the most solid.

  Then he saw the one person at the scene, next to the paramedic, who had no visible future.

  It was a Kilroy. Possibly, the same one who’d been waiting for Corrigan to wake up. Aside from their sartorial choices, it was essentially impossible to tell them apart. All Corrigan knew for sure was that this was not the same Kilroy who was killing people a few years back, but he only knew that because that particular Kilroy was dead.

  It walked through the scene, calmly, weaponless aside from those long fingers and sharp teeth.

  “What do you want?” Corrigan asked it, using the same future-only-speak he’d just been trying out with Sheila a minute earlier. Just doing this meant he was going to be fighting a lot longer to relocate the present, but, one thing at a time.

  “Kora-gan-see, fix,” the Kilroy said.

  “You said that before.”

  Corrigan was very, very glad that so far, this particular Kilroy hadn’t expressed any interest in committing murders, because Corrigan just didn’t have it in him to deal with both Sheila and a resumption of Kilroy hostilities.

  The Kilroy stopped about five feet from Corrigan. It was making an effort to appear non-threatening, which was greatly appreciated. Then Corrigan realized it was probably because he was still holding a gun. He shoved the gun in his pocket.

  “Fix,” the Kilroy repeated. “She-see, fixer fix.”

  “She. You mean, Sheila?”

  “She-see.”

  It turned, and gestured at the scene.

  “Yes, Sheila did this,” Corrigan said.

  “Fix,” it said.

  “I’m trying.”

  It put its hand on its chest and tapped.

  “Kilroy-prime,” it said, confirming that this was the same one as before.

  “I know.” Corrigan said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Kilroy-prime,” it repeated.

  “I know.”

  “Fix-help.”

  “Look, I…it’s been a long day, and I’m not a linguist. Thanks for not trying to kill me, but I have to…”

  He was going to say he had to go help, but he was pretty sure he’d just be in the way. What he really needed to go was get his head right, which wasn’t going to happen as long as a creature who was firmly stuck in the future was standing in front of him.

  “We can talk later,” Corrigan said. “When I’m better.”

  To emphasize the point, Corrigan showed the Kilroy the blood on his hand.

  “Kora-gan-see fix Kora-gan-see,” it said.

  “Yes. Sure.”

  It nodded, and walked away.

  “Hey,” Monica said, from over Corrigan’s shoulder. She was looking at the scene in the plaza, which was indeed eye-catching. She couldn’t also see the Kilroy, walking along the row of cars. Corrigan had no idea how long she’d been standing there.

  “Were you talking to someone?” she asked.

  “You heard that?” he asked.

  “Just grunts, but, you were making noises. Is this some special fixer thing?”

  “Kind of. It’s a long story.”

  19

  In what police are calling a gas main explosion…I’m sorry, do they expect us to believe this shit?

  —former action news reporter Kim Dill, Channel 4 (live mike error)

  If there was any good news to be had, it was that this bombing took place in front of a hospital. Everyone who was still breathing by the time Sheila Corrigan vacated the courtyard, remained that way a few hours later. It meant the death toll was confined to two—the men in the back of the police van—rather than six or seven.

  This was not a particularly rosy outcome, but by sunrise, it was just about all anyone had to cling to.

  The explosion ripped the back of the van open. It began underneath the vehicle, near the rear fender, which happened to be exactly the place to put a bomb if you wanted to target the softest spot in the vehicle’s armor. The force of the blast was largely absorbed by the van and the street, which was the only reason the four people in the courtyard survived. The driver was also alive, thanks to the thick steel wall separating the cabin from the rear.

  Sheila eluded the dragnet. There had been coordinated efforts to seal off the area, in anticipation of her possible escape from the scene, set up before anybody knew she was going to be lobbing a packet of C-4. It worked fine, in the sense that everyone did what they were supposed to do; the cordon was locked down as soon as Sheila was spotted near the scene.

  It didn’t matter. Nothing short of encasing the entire region in an airtight force field would do it, and to the best of everyone’s knowledge that sort of thing was only available in science fiction books. Sheila Corrigan had the same abilities as Corrigan Bain, so in the same way Corrigan was able to evade police capture for several days, back when he was a suspect, so too could Sheila.

  As for Corrigan, as the sun shone over the still-smoking husk of the police van wreckage, he was sitting on the fender of an ambulance, drinking a cup of bad coffee and getting his head in order. He had not torn his stitches, but he did need to be re-bandaged. It came with a lecture from the paramedic who did it for him, about not doing anything strenuous for the next few weeks, which was cute.

  “Maybe you should show me how to rewrap it myself,” Corrigan suggested, “because this is going to happen again.”

  Maggie, who now sported a bandage on her head—she’d evidently whacked it in the blast—spent the whole evening on her radio. She wasn’t even in the courtyard when Erica arrived.

  “Corrigan Bain,” Erica said. “How many times do you plan to almost die before I get to say hello?”

  “You could have swung by the hospital,” he said, standing to give her a hug. “I wasn’t almost dying then.”

  She arrived with a retinue. There was an Indian man by her elbow, sporting a badge on his hip. Corrigan recognized him as a member of Maggie’s team. He didn’t recognize the other three men in her orbit; it looked a little like she was being escorted by the secret service.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I should have, but I try to avoid hospitals. I’ve had my fill.”

  “I understand.”

  The last time Corrigan saw Erica Smalls was when she graduated from MIT. He was a reluctant attendee to the ceremony—Maggie dragged him there—and only agreed to go because Erica insisted.

  That had been a few years ago. She didn’t look any different. But, she was in her twenties—time was kind to people in their twenties. In contrast, he was pretty sure he looked a hundred years older. He certainly felt that way.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, referring to her escorts.

  “They didn’t want me to come,” she said. “I said I was going anyway, and it turns out since I’m not under arrest and don’t work for the government, they couldn’t
stop me.”

  “It’s a police scene,” the agent fused to her hip said. Patel was his name, Corrigan remembered. “You couldn’t have come here alone even if you wanted to.”

  “She tried to kill me before,” Erica said, evidently ignoring Patel. “And I shot her, so they’re thinking I might be a target. I keep telling them none of it was personal, but they worry. It’s cute.”

  “You shot her?” Corrigan asked.

  “I had a lucky guess about something.”

  “Hey,” Maggie shouted, from a few yards away. “You shouldn’t be here, Erica.”

  She said it while looking at Patel, who she undoubtedly blamed for this particular sin.

  “Well, here I am,” Erica said. “Does someone want to tell me how all this went down, or do I need to take a double-secret oath or something first?”

  “Handshake,” Corrigan said. “It’s usually a secret handshake.”

  “She knew it was a trap,” Maggie said. “Corrigan can’t seem to explain how she knew, but she knew.”

  “How’d you even know to set the trap?” Erica asked. It was obvious from the question that she didn’t know about any of this until it had—literally—blown up in everyone’s faces.

  “I saw it,” he said.

  “In the future? When was that?”

  Corrigan hesitated, because when in the past did you see the future that just happened? was a distressingly complicated question.

  “Patel,” Maggie said, “get these two out of here.” She looked at Corrigan. “I’ll catch up later. If you can figure out how we just got our asses kicked, let me know.”

  Sheila Corrigan reached the door of the shipping container just as the sunrise took away the last of her cover. Her shoulder ached, she felt like she was ready to sleep for the next five days, and the phone inside the container was already ringing, which meant she was going to have to delay the sleep.

  She could also not answer the phone, but that would hardly help matters. It would go to voicemail, and then tell the caller that there was no voicemail in which to save a message, and then it would disconnect the call. (The automated voice said goodbye so officiously, a part of her wanted to find the woman who recorded it and thank her personally.) But then the caller would just call back again.