by Jamie Hawke
“What’re you doing?” Rose shouted.
“It was a fake,” he explained, turning to look for their next move. He froze, eyes taking in the red dots from his awareness that showed they were about to have company. Two seconds later, the nearest door opened and two security guards stepped through. A glance back showed three more coming from the other direction.
Not only was it a fake, but the whole situation was a damn trap. It wasn’t like they’d really expected otherwise, but still… damn.
7
The guards stormed in. Frank was about to run, but the smile on Keisha’s face and Esmerelda’s laugh showed they felt differently. Actually, the team was due for a good fight. Fuck it, he might as well give them the fun they craved.
He turned to the closest guard and charged, ignoring the man’s shouts. A hand reached for a gun, but not before Keisha was there at Frank’s side, pouncing, and a shot from Esmerelda told him she and Rose were dealing with the other group.
The first group came at them with tasers and swords, with the two at the rear pulling pistols. Esmerelda and Rose met the taser-holders with dodges and well-aimed strikes. Keisha charged with her pistol drawn and took down one of the shooters. As she turned toward the next, though, the elevator doors behind them opened to reveal four more guards, pistols at the ready. Frank cursed, realizing this wasn’t going to be quite the fun fight he’d had in mind. His shield took a hit while he provided cover fire for his ladies to ran back to join him. His reticle was helping, but they had the cover of the elevator doors and fancy equipment of their own.
Glass shattered as shots went off. Frank toppled the desk on its side to give them some cover. A shot tore through his coat sleeve, burning his forearm. Since he was still able to use the arm, he had to figure it was only a graze. He returned fire, cursing, and glanced toward the stairs.
Two thumps of bodies hitting the floor, and the compass buzzed from Frank’s pocket. That had to be level seven! He was ecstatic about that little fact, even if he couldn’t upgrade yet. Of course, his level didn’t matter at all if he died here.
“We need to get out of here,” Frank said, indicating the stairs.
“How many floors up are we ?” Rose protested. “We just climbed all that way…”
“You really think the elevator would be a better option right now?”
She frowned, grunted, and led the way down the stairs with pistol drawn. Less than half-way down, doors burst open a few floors below and more guards charged into the stairwell. If shots started going from above and below, they might hit each other but were equally as likely to hit Frank and his ladies.
Instead of taking that chance, the team pulled back and burst through the nearest door. They emerged into a hallway that led to more glass. On the other side, a few guards were running toward them. A glance around showed an outer ledge, so Frank shot through the glass and kicked it when it wouldn’t fully break, then shot again.
“This way,” Keisha said when she realized that wasn’t working. They followed her around in the other direction, working around to where they were able to climb up onto the roof of a café. From there they were able to use a vent shaft to climb up to the ledge above, work their way back over to the glass, and get through an open window that would’ve been too high to reach otherwise.
“Hope you have a plan, here,” Rose stated, already up and sliding out.
“There,” Frank said, joining her and then indicating a sky bridge nearby.
“You fucking maniac.” Rose laughed. “You fit right in with the family.”
He frowned, not getting that. While yes, his grandpa had always been a bit eccentric, his dad was far from it.
Shots were hitting the glass, sending spiderwebs crackling through it but not shattering it into pieces, so the group was able to run along the ledge, working their way to the sky bridge where they’d be able to get to the next building.
“To go over what just happened,” Keisha called out as they ran. “We escaped them at the school, only to come here and find a fake compass, throwing ourselves back at their mercy?”
“And get these,” Frank said, holding up the stones. “Which I imagine are fake, too.”
“So, then what was the point?”
He laughed. “I thought you all knew Rick the Dick better than I do.”
They reached the sky bridge and started running across the top, threading their way through the crowds already crossing there. People on the ground below looked up at them through the glass, pointing and shouting.
“Ohhh,” Keisha said, halfway across. “Lure him out?”
“Exactly.”
If there was one thing Frank was sure of, Rick had an ego. He had set this trap and was damn sure going to be part of it. Meaning he’d show himself, and when he did… hopefully Frank and his team would find some way to turn the situation around, to get to him and therefore, the real compass.
They reached the far side and saw more people shouting and pointing, only now it wasn’t at him and his team, but behind them. Frank turned just in time to see a burst of orange light and black smoke. He barely registered the surrounding explosions or the sky bridge starting to give out beneath him. People fell to their deaths as he was rocked back, only stopped from falling by the simple expedient of Rose grabbing hold of his wrist and pulling him up to the rooftop of the opposite building.
Another explosion hit and the building shook. Frank fell from the ledge to hit the next one down, rolling across curved glass and coming to a stop by himself in a small, rooftop garden. His body ached and his sword-hilt was sticking into his side, but he was in one piece.
When he finally managed to look up, there was Rick the Dick on the opposite side of the gap between buildings, with a bazooka aimed right at Frank’s face.
“Sweet justice,” Rick shouted, his voice barely carrying across with the wind. He rocked back as he pulled the trigger. Frank figured this was it.
He’d lost.
Something moved nearby. A shadow? All black, darting.
It was a figure, a person—and it had Frank. It was strong, and larger than himself. A man? Something in his hands, too. A rope, Frank realized as, with a jolt, both of them were flung through the air toward another nearby building.
Frank shouted in confusion and fear. A hand gripped his shirt, a strong arm wrapped around his torso, and that was all that held him from falling to his likely death.
The blast of the explosion hit, causing them to shake and his ears to ring. The figure released Frank and he fell, screaming now, only to land after a drop of less than a foot. A quick roll, and then he was up, trying to catch his breath and figure out what had just happened. The mysterious figure disappeared over the next ledge, leaving Frank by himself.
Frank ran to the edge of what he realized was the top of another building next to where he’d been. Looking over the edge, he saw the structure he’d been in just moments ago. Its side wall was now missing and debris was still falling as flames took hold.
His eyes scoured the area for any sign of his ladies and grandma, but all he saw was flames and destruction. His hands were trembling, gripping for weapons that it took him a moment to realize he no longer had.
Everything seemed hopeless, his mind reeling with the thought that he’d royally fucked this up, when the ninja—as Frank thought of him in the brief moment that he’d appeared, seeing the black clothes, all but an eye-slit—reappeared again, Rose at his side.
“Quickly, they’re with me,” the ninja said. “They’re safe. You all are, for now.”
Frank gawked, confused, then stumbled toward the ninja and his grandma, hope rearing its beautiful head as he crested the rise of the roof and saw that, indeed, Esmerelda and Keisha were there, too. They were pressed up against a corner of the roof, pistols at the ready, looking utterly confused.
“This way,” the ninja said, leading them around the back, directing them to a position where he had rappelling ropes ready. “Down.”
; None of them needed to be told twice, but Frank, as he latched himself in and watched the man helping Rose, a bit too close for comfort, growled, “Who are you?”
The ninja finished, then held up a finger for silence. “A friend.”
With that, he gave Rose a shove so that she was rappelling down fast, and his eyes smiled as he followed.
Fuck. Pirates, Vikings somehow involved… maybe… and now ninjas?
Frank had to laugh at it all as he followed, rappelling down after them and feeling the rush as air flew past, the smell of the explosions nearby as smoke wafted their way.
In spite of it all, the fall was exhilarating. He hadn’t managed to get his hands on Rick yet, but at least his team was safe and apparently had a new ally of sorts.
8
“What is this place?” Frank asked, eyes wide. They had run and found a subway station where the ninja had led them into a secret entrance. Inside, he had led them through near-darkness until they’d found a false wall, entering this crazy hideout.
Crazy, because it had other passages going off of it, maps of the city above, and training dummies, cots, and several mats for sparring or wrestling. It clearly wasn’t some random side room of the subways.
“The key to your success,” the ninja replied.
“I think… I need a minute. And a seat.” Frank found a cot in the corner and plopped down. The ninja stood aloof, while Esmerelda and Keisha moved over to Frank’s side nervously, the latter sitting and taking his hand. Rose stood in the middle, arms crossed.
“All of this is related, isn’t it?” Rose asked. “I mean to the hidden items, the crafting.”
The ninja’s eyes lit up and he nodded.
“So, you were the one…?” Frank asked.
“No, but we’ve been putting the pieces together. Some of us believe a future version of our group is doing it, in a sense. I’m sorry if this is all going to be confusing, but basically here’s what we know, okay?”
“Please,” Esmerelda replied. “If anyone knows anything, put it on the fucking table, because I’m lost.”
“Let me do the best I can to help,” the ninja said. “The condensed version, anyway. When time started being messed with, it became a bit of a jumble, not easy for any of us to really grasp. Suffice it to say, a version of Frank has gone forward, then back, and… sideways? Multiple versions, really.”
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Frank protested. “All I’ve done is go back, then here.”
“This version of you, yes.” The ninja held up a hand. “It’s… hard to grasp. What you should know now is that you can’t just go back and stop the original version of Rick. It’s already in motion—meaning, the alternate paths have been created. All you’d do is affect that one world, instead of merging the paths back into one.”
“The fuck?” Even Rose was looking confused now.
“Wait, I think I get it.” Frank gave Keisha’s hand a squeeze and stood up again. “Like a branching narrative, kind of. Instead of, when choices in a game create new paths for the game to go, time travel here is essentially creating new versions of our reality. Or alternate universes, sort of.”
“Simplified, and in talk that none of the rest are likely to get,” the ninja chuckled, “sure. If that helps.”
Frank nodded enthusiastically. “It does! And it’s like, you can’t just go back and delete the game, because that would be stupid. You have to finish the game and hope you get a satisfactory ending.”
“Correct. Deleting the ‘game’ in this case doesn’t work, because each time you travel you create new realities. The most we can do is try for the best outcome and work to lower the suffering of as many along the way as we can.”
“Or merge the realities back,” a new voice said, and the group turned to the doorway to see a woman standing there, hands in her pockets, looking at us hesitantly. She was a woman with straight, brown hair with silver streaks running through it, although she looked young. Maybe a couple of years older than Frank, at most. What really stood out on her was the strange eyepiece she wore over one eye. It had a green lens and two others next to it she could swap out, and she wore a strange, steampunk-looking device on her shoulder and at her hips. Her breasts were pushed up by a sort of vest that made Frank wonder, and she wore a metal glove on her right hand.
Now that he was looking, he noticed her exposed eye was red. Strange.
“That’s your theory,” the ninja replied, referring to her comment about merging the different realities.
“Which you don’t agree with?” Rose asked.
The ninja shook his head. “Anything’s possible, but… basically a new version has been written over the old—others have tried this already, but it causes new memories and understanding of the world to layer on top of the old, causing confusion. Enough of this would threaten to drive everyone mad.”
“Maybe,” the new girl admitted. “Or maybe it would lead to everyone seeing how things could’ve been, and an advanced state of enlightenment.”
“A pretty big gamble, there.”
“Seems to me,” Rose cut in, “we’re gambling either way.”
Frank shook his head, then grasped it as if that would help it to not explode. “You all are killing me. Hold on, so are you from the past? The future? How do you know all this?”
“When you managed to travel back, you started a chain reaction of alternate realities,” the ninja explained. “There were already a couple from previous time travels, but your involvement put it to the extreme, because you reactivated it after it was stalled. As I was starting to explain before, you’ve now traveled to the future, the past, and—”
“Sorry, but I haven’t. Not to the future.”
“Right…” The ninja turned to the girl here, then back to Frank, eyes narrowed.
“He’s having a hard time telling you,” the girl said, “but we might as well get it over with. You have, but… not you, you. Other versions of you.”
“Other… versions…” Frank bit his lip, then laughed. “You all are fucking with me.”
“We’re not,” she said, a deep sorrow in her voice.
“Show them to me.”
“We can’t,” she admitted. “And not just because of flux capacitor shit, as ‘other you’ liked to say. But because…” She stood there, mouth moving as if to say the words, then looked down at the ground and took a deep breath. After a moment, she added, “Because they’ve all died.”
Now Frank was really confused, and actually getting annoyed. “How the fuck is that supposed to help me? There are supposedly other versions of me, but they’ve all died? Bullshit. As far as we know, you all are with Rick the Dick.”
“You still call him that?” The girl stepped forward, hand reaching out to Frank, but she stopped, pulling it back suddenly. “Sorry, my Frank did too. It’s hard to… oh, shit.”
“She was with another version of you,” Esmerelda voiced what Frank was starting to process.
The girl nodded. “And you’re our last hope.”
He stared, scoffed, then frowned and licked his lips. “Why me?”
“Because, Frank,” the ninja said, “you passed the early tests, you leveled up with the compass, triggering some sort of event that someone set up, and now it’s like…” He paused, hands out, moving one around as if that would help him come up with the answer.
“Like I’ve put in my quarter, so I’m the one.” Frank laughed. “Shit, so… because I traveled back, because I got it to work and used it, I’ve basically nominated myself the time hero or something? Maybe I should just go back in time and erase that decision.”
“That’s not—” the ninja started.
“I know, I know, not how it works. Still, kinda makes me wonder.”
“And if you could do that, you’d never have met us,” Keisha pointed out. “Rick would’ve remained the Pirate King, the world as you know it would’ve somehow changed or never been what you knew it to be in the first place.”
>
“Yeah, you had me at the ‘never met us’ part,” Frank admitted. He shrugged. “Fine, we’re in. No choice. Hope I don’t die, but… I guess we’ll see. What’s next?”
“Next is you all get some rest,” the ninja said. “Grab some food, sleep if you can. We have a room prepared for you. And in the morning, we’ll start your training.”
“Training?”
“Of course,” the ninja said. “You have to become one of us if you hope to stand a chance.” With that, he gestured to Rose. “Perhaps you’ll accompany me, for a bit? Give them some privacy?”
Frank blushed at that but couldn’t deny the fact that some alone time with his ladies sounded great.
“I’d like that,” Rose said, eyeing the ninja with curiosity.
“Hold on,” Frank interjected. “We trust you enough in that you saved us, but I’m not letting you take my grandma alone to wander off, who knows where.”
“She won’t be alone with him,” the other girl said.
“And… it’s not like I’m some stranger,” the ninja said. He stood there a moment longer, and then reached up, undoing the back of his mask. When he pulled it off, Frank gasped.
The eyes staring back at him were eyes he knew very well, although the rest of the man standing before him he’d only seen in a much older form, or in pictures.
“Grandpa?”
His grandpa—the ninja—smiled. “Apparently.”
“I just—how?”
Before his grandpa could answer, though, Rose had thrown her arms around him, mouth on his, and they were kissing passionately. The girl blushed, eyes meeting Frank’s, and then turned from the room.
“I’ll leave you all to it,” she said before exiting.
“Temra,” Frank’s grandpa said, pulling free for a moment, but she was gone. He held Rose, looking over at Frank. “She’s… going through a lot.”
“We all are,” Frank said, staring in awe at the image of his grandparents so young, holding each other like this. “You were… dead.”
