by Keith Hughes
“Glenn.” His copy moved to stand so the door would conceal him. Ness moved away from the door and faced it. Another adrenaline spike revved his heart as he prepared to face the persistent predator. An abrupt surge of fear made him uncomfortably hot, and Ness unzipped his hoodie, which provided only marginal relief.
It makes sense Glenn would be watching the cameras.
He had hoped by making this exploration so soon after Bertrand’s departure, he might catch them unawares—before they got around to disabling the doctor’s keycard, at least. But he had also hoped Paul and Glenn had called it a day after leaving the scientist’s house.
The door issued its now-familiar buzz, and Glenn strode into the room. He paused, looking quizzically at Ness, but his puzzlement was short-lived. The copy smacked Glenn in the back of his head with the doctor’s gun, causing his eyes to roll back before he dropped heavily to the floor.
“You’re improving,” Ness observed.
His copy gave him a smirk as he returned the weapon to his waistband. “It’s a gift. Anyway, I should be going. Be seeing you!”
After giving him a jaunty wave, his double vanished, leaving Ness alone with the unconscious Glenn. Realizing he had to go back and help himself, he used the PDA to jump five minutes into his past. Reliving the same events from another perspective remained a strange experience, but when he returned, the events had led to the same end, except his hand ached from the blow to Glenn’s head.
Ness contemplated the possibility of Glenn deactivating the card before confronting him, but it allowed him to open the inner door to the lab itself. He propped the door ajar with one foot as he dragged Glenn inside by the arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Change of Leadership
Wednesday, September 03, 2008 10:32 p.m.
The impulse to squeeze the life out of something, or someone, with his bare hands made Paul’s fingertips tingle. He had harbored the desire for many long years but had yet to give in to the impulse. Even so, it remained his psyche’s typical response to frustration. His father had taught him at a young age that lashing out physically would not be tolerated. The irony of the lesson being administered with the back of his father’s hand had not been lost on the young man. Paul’s father had been driven to enforce it several times, but when he used a two-by-four to punctuate his instruction in Paul’s thirteenth year, it finally stuck. However, the yearning never lessened, and in fact, it grew in potency as he aged. He could envision someday he might be unable to prevent himself from acting, but he had not yet surrendered to such a lack of control.
As Paul had grown to adulthood, he’d found other ways to assuage his hidden monster, one of them being the glass of scotch he held with surprising ease, given his mental turmoil. He gazed at the night sky from his desk chair as he sipped. Light from the parking lot and other nearby buildings prevented him from seeing the stars. He preferred the blank heavens, however. The empty skies eliminated any need to acknowledge a higher power, allowing Paul to indulge in feeling he was a step above lesser mortals.
He took a deep pull on his scotch, but before he could swallow the amber liquid, the sharp trill of his phone interrupted his enjoyment. He gulped the liquid rapidly with a stab of anger at the wasted enjoyment of its unique flavors before spinning his chair to face the desk.
“Robbins,” he barked into the phone.
“S-sir, this is Larry in the security office.” The voice sounded young, right out of college or even high school. Most importantly, Larry sounded afraid, and Paul could not help but drink in the boy’s fright as if it were the nectar of life. “I have a class one issue to report.”
Paul set aside his glass, feeling his heart rate increase. An incursion into the building would mean action and possibly the use of lethal force. It almost appeared like a gift from above, or perhaps below.
“Class one? An intruder?”
“Yes, sir.” Larry sounded more confident. “White male, around forty years old. Entered using the card of a Dr. Bertrand, but the database shows Bertrand is around thirty years older.”
“Where is he now?” Paul opened the drawer where he kept his gun.
“This is the odd thing, sir. He used the card to enter the building and get to a lab on the third floor. Um, the PU lab. He was on video the whole way, right until the lab’s reception area. For a minute or so, there were two of him before the feed changed to show an empty room.”
Paul smiled at the guard’s obvious confusion, easily recognizing his employee’s handiwork. Glenn had spotted the use of Bertrand’s card and investigated using the special device Paul had given him to disable any cameras in its vicinity, replacing the feed with a previously saved loop of the footage. The situation the guard described exactly matched Glenn’s use of the tool.
“My training never covered something like this.” Larry sounded perplexed, but Paul would not edify the curiosity of a lowly security guard. “Should I call the police?”
“Absolutely not!” Paul snapped before modulating his tone. “I will investigate myself and call the authorities should the situation warrant it.”
“Yes sir—”
Paul ended the call before the guard finished agreeing. He checked to make sure his gun held bullets and racked a round in the chamber. He slid the firearm into a pocket, as it would not be wise for him to be recorded carrying such a weapon in the building.
Whoever this person is picked the wrong day to sneak inside this building.
He suspected there would be a little disposal job for Glenn to take care of after he dealt with the mystery man. Wearing a self-satisfied smirk, he left his office, his hands twitching. Maybe they would finally be allowed to do the work they were made for.
* * *
The lab’s door bumped against Ness as he pulled the unconscious Glenn into the lab by his wrists. It scraped against the killer’s side until his feet cleared the door’s arc, allowing it to swing shut, cutting off the only source of illumination. Ness was briefly disoriented by the utter darkness of the interior room. No sooner had his brain processed that than the lights came on automatically, making him blink. He shoved the body to the side of the doorway before pulling the gun from Glenn’s shoulder holster and tossing it across the room. He pressed his fingers against Glenn’s neck, searching for a pulse. He had a brief flare of fear when he could not find anything, but he shifted his fingers onto the vein and found the thrumming rhythm. Reassured Glenn was still alive, Ness stood and surveyed the lab.
It turned out to be a relatively large room, bigger than he had expected. The size did not perturb Ness, but the amount of storage options around the room did.
This is going to take forever.
Near the center of the space sat four oversized tables like the ones in his high school chemistry lab. They had nearly indestructible black tops and drawers on the long sides going all the way to the floor. Several shelving units and cabinets lined the plain gray walls. A metal desk that reminded Ness of the doctor’s old WMU office sat near the door. A section of wall near the entrance painted a contrasting burgundy held an incongruous painting of a jar full of flowers on a picnic table.
“‘Done soonest that which starts soonest’ and all that rot,” Ness muttered. The shelves were the easiest place to search, as he didn’t expect Dr. Bertrand to put the second device in such a visible location. Ness checked the cabinets, which were full of electrical parts and esoteric tools for using them, but the PDA was not among them.
On the lab tables, he found classic equipment like Bunsen burners and racks of test tubes, but the PDA was not there. The contents of the desk could mostly be summarized in a single word: papers. The only exception had been a large bottom drawer, where the box for the PDA spawned a surge of excitement. He lifted it to the desktop, smiling in victory. The sensation turned out to be short-lived. His elation turned into vexation when he discovered the carboard container held only empty packing material and an instruction manual.
Suddenly, the door buzzed. Ness dove behind one of the lab tables, and the lock clicked. Heavy footsteps on the floor echoed the thud of Ness’s heart.
“You might as well come out, whoever you are. There is no escaping this facility now that you’ve been caught.”
The wielder of this strong, deep voice had clearly grown used to being obeyed. Ness risked a peek above the table.
Paul Robbins.
The movement attracted Paul’s attention, and he shifted his gun. Two bullets crashed into the lab table, forcing Ness back into his crouch as surely as a hand on his shoulder.
He had to stall for time. “You’re not the least bit interested in what I’m doing here?”
If Paul liked to talk, maybe he could be distracted and Ness could disable him.
“Oh, I have a good idea already.” Paul’s heavy footsteps sounded again.
Ness peeked around the corner of the table. Paul edged around the side. With his own weapon in hand, Ness flicked the safety off. He leaned out but aimed wide before firing twice. Bullets buried themselves in the wall, and Paul retreated, at least temporarily.
“But Bertrand’s research is too important to let you walk out with any piece of it.”
“My last bullet will destroy it,” Ness threatened.
Paul laughed. “This won’t last long enough.”
Ness scurried to another of the lab tables, one farther away from Robbins. Paul’s bullets gouged the floor where he had passed only a second before.
“Dr. Bertrand knew what your boss intends to do with this machine.”
Paul moved to a new position. “Oh, and what would that be?”
Ness popped out of cover and shot two rounds aimed high. Paul retreated behind cover. Ness had no intention of hitting his foe, but he knew Robbins had no such limitations.
“Sowing chaos, assassinations, world domination. The typical sort of thing for wannabe rulers.”
Ness could hear Paul’s smile. “Sounds like fun.”
Okay, not the reaction I was hoping for.
Holding a conversation with Paul as he contemplated strategies for using the time machine proved difficult. Perhaps he could do something like he had done with Glenn: make a duplicate who could jump Paul unawares. The director was much larger than Glenn, though. Ness wasn’t sure if he would be successful in disabling Paul, even taking him by surprise.
Plus, if I do this, my future copy should have already appeared.
Analyzing his current plan based on whether he had already encountered another copy of himself made his head hurt. He kept spraying bullets occasionally, trying to keep Paul back as he strained for options.
“I’m sure I can improve on whatever plans Fletcher has made.” Paul leaped for cover from another of Ness’s bullets.
He’ll soon figure out I’m not shooting to kill. More footsteps had Ness firing again, but the gun merely clicked.
Paul gave out a short laugh. “All right, now that you’re done shooting at the walls, let’s end this. Stand up.”
Knowing he had no choice, Ness carefully stood and set his gun on the top of the table. He had fired the last round in the clip, and the slide remained locked open to the empty firing chamber. The barrel of Paul’s gun appeared massive as it aimed dead center of Ness’s forehead.
As Ness finally got his first good look at Paul, an odd sense of déjà vu jolted him. The abnormally black eyes and the rest of his facial features looked familiar. In two days’ time, he would be photographing Paul Robbins’s dead body at the water park. Is this where he dies? But who kills him?
The director’s mouth twisted with a sneer, confident in his victory, but before Paul could pull his trigger, the inner door lock clicked open. Both men were astonished as Glenn stepped into the room. Paul goggled as his employee stood next to another, an unconscious copy on the floor.
“You have it.” Paul spoke quietly, as if he couldn’t accept the evidence standing before him.
“Yes, and I intend to keep it.”
Before Paul could react, Glenn’s gun shifted toward Paul. Twin booms reverberated off the walls, and the holes Ness would eventually photograph appeared on Paul’s forehead. Blood, brains, and bits of skull painted the wall as Paul’s corpse tumbled to the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Checkmate
Wednesday, September 03, 2008 10:48 p.m.
The sharp tang of gunpowder mixed with the coppery scent of exposed bodily fluids and gray matter made Ness’s nose twitch. Paul’s remains dripping off the wall was abnormally loud in the stillness following the gunshots. Before Ness could do much more than blink, Glenn had aimed his weapon at him.
“So, you’re taking over?” Ness raised his hands. “Going to snatch the new world order from Paul and John’s grasp?”
For the first time, Glenn gave a small grin, and it gave Ness absolutely no comfort.
“I doubt Paul even knew of Fletcher’s plans, but I found them after Dr. Bertrand escaped. They show initiative but look a little too humane for my tastes.”
“The original plan I heard about sounded bad enough. I don’t think I want to imagine your version.”
The killer’s smile transformed into a sneer. “Don’t worry—you won’t be around long enough to see it.”
Glenn approached, stopping only a couple of feet away.
Point-blank range.
“This is a real joy for me. I have wasted entirely too much time chasing you across the city.”
Ness stared flatly at his captor, refusing to apologize for running for his life.
“Normally, I would have already given you the same treatment Paul received, but you have been especially tricky. When I do kill you, it will be after I have retrieved everything I have come for. Now, empty your pockets.”
Knowing he had little choice but to obey, Ness placed the envelope of money, car keys, Dr. Bertrand’s keycard, and his wallet on the table. His hand slid into his pocket, and with utter despair in his soul, Ness’s fingers wrapped around the metal case of the time machine. Ness found it hard to accept this was where his life would end, and an unexpected sadness almost overwhelmed him. But Glenn’s impassive stare and his gun could not be denied. He pulled out the PDA and set it next to his empty weapon. When it left his hand, Ness’s heart sank, as if he had lost his last hope for surviving.
Grasping the decoy in the other pocket, he surreptitiously removed the yellow note identifying it as such, leaving the paper behind in his pocket as he extracted the second PDA. He placed it on the table, close at hand. He had an inkling of how he might live through the confrontation, although it relied far too much on luck for his liking.
“I always suspected more than one of these was in play.” Glenn waved his gun. “Step back.”
Ness took a large step, hoping any bit of extra space would help his odds. Glenn approached the table and examined the two devices. He raised his gun to aim at Ness’s forehead and turned to grab Ness’s modified PDA with his free hand.
“Checkmate, Mr. Rele…” Glenn’s trigger finger tightened almost imperceptibly, but before the movement could complete, he froze in place. His skin took on a grainy appearance, as if he were a life-sized sculpture made of sand. Glenn’s eyes bulged, and Ness slid to the side in case some sort of spasm caused his trigger finger to finish its job. Instead, Glenn’s body flattened into a two-dimensional figure. A strange sound emanated from within his morphing body, a crackling Ness tried not to attribute to bones breaking.
The last vestiges of Glenn’s humanity vanished as his head and feet twisted inward toward his solar plexus. He spun in the air, a multicolored ball wrapping itself more tightly with each revolution. Finally, it became too small to see and was ultimately replaced with a dazzling dot of light. Ness raised a hand to shield his eyes, but the particle drew its light back into itself and vanished with a crack loud enough to make Ness’s ears ring.
Lowering his hand, he blinked. The motion seemed to take minutes. Light g
linted off his PDA, which still hung in the air where Glenn’s hand had disappeared underneath it. The device started to fall, and to Ness, its descent and his own reactions moved at a snail’s pace. He leaped forward like a left fielder trying to catch a ball. Scarcely before the device would have hit the floor, his hand slid under it. He flopped on the hard industrial tile and lay there for a few seconds, enjoying the comfort of the PDA’s metal case gripped tightly in his hand.
“Time to get up, boyo,” he muttered to himself. “Your work is not done.”
With both Glenn and Paul coming to investigate his presence, his time had expired. Taking another quick trip around the room, Ness struggled to identify any possible hiding places he had missed, but he had covered everything he could think of. Puzzled, Ness again inspected the painting of the flowers, a surprisingly homey touch in this space dedicated to corporate science.
It reminded him of his framed picture on the ego wall in the doctor’s home. The painting did not fit with its surroundings.
Facing the artwork, Ness tried to lift it off the wall, but it would not budge. Pulling on one end brought success, and the frame swung away. A safe with another of those scan pads had been concealed behind the frame. When he swiped the keycard, a display came to life, prompting “What is your name?”
“Dr. Francis Bertrand.”
Nothing happened. He tried using the name of Bertrand’s wife, but the safe remained unchanged.
Perhaps I should take the question literally? But the doctor had no way of knowing I would come here. Why would he use my name?
Even with his misgivings, he tried anyway. “Ness Relevont.”
The safe still did not react, and he knew he had missed something obvious. When the answer finally came, he grimaced. “Nestor Relevont.”
The safe beeped before the door popped ajar. Pulling it open, Ness saw the prize, the second PDA sitting atop a small pile of papers. His hand automatically extended toward the device, but he remembered the doctor’s warning: touching it outside of his home time would cause something terrible and fatal to happen. Indeed, he had witnessed such an ending to Glenn’s life. He had no wish to experience such an event himself.
