by Lee Isserow
“The fuck?” Hayes said, Kali echoing the words back to him.
“Kali, is it?” Campbell asked, turning his head, gesturing for Hayes to observe an earpiece in his left ear.
'… Yes..?' she said, nervously.
“My name is Theodore Campbell, I gather you've been listening to our conversation thusfar?”
'This is so fucking weird...' she said to herself, forgetting he could hear her. 'Yes sir, Mister Campbell, yes I have.' she sputtered, correcting course.
“I believe you have not had a chance to explain to Mister Hayes the gravity of our situation.”
'I tried...' she said. 'But as you've probably gathered, he's a pig-headed ballbag, who doesn't pay attention half the time.'
“Hey, I'm right here!” Hayes said, the words ignored by both Campbell and Kali.
“Would you please reiterate to him the finer points, I doubt he will accept them coming from me.”
'Sure, uh, ok. Let me put this into simple terms...'
“I am not a fucking pre-schooler, Kali.” Hayes shouted, his eyes darting upwards, as if she were actually standing nearby. “And you don't take orders from him!.
'I don't take orders from you either, numbfuck.' she said, throwing waves of feedback reverberating under his skull. 'Shut up and listen. Ok?'
He did as he was told, not audibly responding, but giving a finger to himself. As she saw it in the lens, Kali rewarded him another burst of electric screams.
'You're off the grid. Off. The fucking. Grid. Do you understand what that means?'
“Yeah.” he said.
'Do you actually fucking understand the severity of the situation?' she repeated. 'There's no coming home. I had to jerry rig a fucking solution just to be able to talk to you. The reality you're living on is floating fuck knows where in the meta, spiralling parallels of its own off into the ether, billions of worlds disappearing into nothingness for every particle shifting in a different direction. Do. You. Fucking. Understand?'
Hayes took a moment to take in everything that was said. His eyes roamed the room, darting around, focus lost in middle distance, trying to comprehend the scale of the situation.
“No coming home?”
'Did you stop listening at that point? Billions of people on parallels are ceasing to exist every millisecond that dimension stays wherever the fuck it is.'
“How do we get back on the grid?”
'That's the fucking problem.' she spat. 'Whatever happened... when we lost Darvish... that device turned the jump point into a singularity, and when it closed with a boom, that kicked you off. We need to know what the fuck it was, who fucking did it for fucking why, and then we can start working on a fix. You get me?'
“Indeed.” said Campbell. “And given that I am certain you are in no way part of the incursion, I suggest a pact of cooperation between you and ourselves.”
Hayes eyed him suspiciously. The suspicion gave way to confusion. “What the fuck is an incursion?”
“Miss Kali, is he being wilfully stupid?”
'This is one of his better days.' she said.
Campbell sighed. “We're all going to die...” he said, under his breath, sucking in air with a swift inhale, trying to curb his anger. “Mister Hayes, may I be Frank?”
'Don't say 'I thought you were Theodore'.' Kali said, beating Hayes to his own obvious joke.
“This world of ours is under siege.”
“Ain't my business.” Hayes said. “I just wanna go home.”
Campbell gritted his teeth, continuing to attempt to hold back his frustration. “As you are well aware, that is not presently an option. We do however have the brightest minds of our world and beyond, not to mention your own operator working on a solution. But first things first.” Campbell pushed the resentment down, took another deep breath and continued. “Some days, a world is due to end.” he said, a stern expression carved into his face, warning Hayes from replying until he had finished. “Whether that be by technology or magic, alien, biological or interdimensional threat.”
“Wait, Aliens? Magick!?” Hayes interjected, instantly warned to silence by Campbell's cold, sharp stare.
“We are here to make certain that this reality perseveres.” he said, gesturing to the people hard at work in the depths of the hub.
“End Days.” Hayes said, repeating the words Campbell had used when they first met.
“The Establishment for the Neutralisation and Deterrent of Annihilation Yielding Scenarios.”
“You missed out a 'D'.” Hayes said. “Also, that's a really shitty name.” his tone was once again wry, mocking.
Campbell looked to the floor, as if almost embarrassed by the name. “We get that a lot.” he said, in a hushed tone, sucking at his teeth, before looking back up at Hayes. “Unfortunately, our founder was quite adamant about it.”
“Kinda sounds like you end the days...” Hayes continued.
“Indeed.”
“You could'a called yourselves the Day-Savers. World-Boom-Stoppers. The Don't-Die-Gang. Anything can be an acronym, y'know.”
“Thank you.” Campbell said, steely. “I'll take that under advisement, and ignore those suggestions completely.”
“Wow, you're kind of a dick...” Hayes said, resulting in a kick of feedback from Kali.
'Play nice.' she instructed.
“I thought this might go faster if I spoke your language...” Campbell said, a wry smile teasing at the corners of his lips.
“Well, this is nice and all,” said Hayes. “But I'm gonna get on outta here and go back to the jump site, do some scans or something.”
“Mister Hayes, you will do no such thing!” Campbell boomed, rising from his chair to tower over the agent. “The fate of this world is tied directly into your exile status. It might well be that your arrival into our dimension was the very thing that made this entire fuck up possible. Have you ever seen a world burn, Mister Hayes?”
Hayes took a moment, he was taken aback by the passion and fervour of the man standing across from him. “I try to avoid stressful situations.” he said.
“The clock is ticking, Mister Hayes!” Campbell spat, pointing at the LED panel, ticking ever closer towards the five hour mark. “When that clock hits zero, our world ends. Your life ends. Do you understand the severity of the situation? Think about it for a moment, a fast fucking moment, and then tell me, will you work with us?” he took a moment to catch his breath, staring unblinkingly at the musclebound moron sat in the chair before him, silent.
Hayes looked over his shoulder at the counter as it decreased with every second he wasted thinking about his decision.
“Well...” said Hayes. “It's not like I've got anything better to be doing...” he scoffed as Campbell collapsed back in his chair, anger pulsating off him in waves. Hayes holstered his weapons, smiling to himself at once again for making a calm, collected man lose his shit. “So, we gonna get started, or what?”
8
5.5 hours to the end of the world.
The ENDAYS staff were suspicious of Hayes, eyeing him with distrust over their shoulders and across from their consoles, as he watched the large screens embedded in the wall. The rumours had started when they picked up his arrival, and since his capture, were circulating virulently. An infectious spread of conjecture about who he was, where he was from, what he could do, and whether he could be depended upon. The clock continued to tick down, now just under five and a half hours. Every second counted, and this temporary new addition to their ranks was making everyone uneasy.
“So, who's this big, bad threat y'can't handle yourself?” Hayes asked, as Campbell gestured for an analyst to put information on the screen.
“Two days ago, three-T predicted an Endays level event, or E.D.E., as we call them.”
“Three-T?” Hayes asked, already fearing yet another ridiculous acronym.
“The Think Tank. A quantum computer that analyses everything in its grasp. From news sources, to satellite feeds, trans-dimensional ri
pples down to the smallest radio wave and least-read blog.”
“What the fuck is a blog?”
“An explanation for another time...” Campbell said, as the analyst pulled up a satellite feed of Hayes's arrival. “The epicentre of the event was your arrival. Our clairvoyants advised monitoring your activity, certain that if you were not the original source of the E.D.E, you would at the very least be directly connected to it.”
“Clairvoyants? Really?” Hayes scoffed, his scepticism met with an angry glare from Campbell.
“Given the... events that followed, our analysts concluded that this was the work of a party we've been dealing with for some time.”
“I do like parties...” Hayes said, another glare shot across his bow.
“They call themselves 'Nth Degree'.”
“Oh, I might have met those guys, shot them a little bit. What is it with you people and shitty names?”
“I stress, that is what they call themselves. This is the fifth E.D.E in the last eight months that has a dimensional slant to it, and based on the loss of your partner, and our resulting ejection from the grid, this is their most successful attempt at our destruction to date.”
“Enough exposition,” Hayes said, bored of the slide-show. “Tell me where to point and shoot, I'll turn these fucks into decorative pin cushions, and the beers'll be on you.”
“That is the issue, Mister Hayes, we don't know where they are. They could be anywhere.”
“Well that's stupid.” Hayes sighed. “Did you get feeds off the singularity?” Campbell nodded, and motioned for them to be sent to the main screen. “There'll be a jump sig when that clusterfuck started ramping up. A remote activation, or we would've seen someone else caught in the time dilation.”
“We have already analysed the signature.” Campbell said, his tone tiresome. “It was not strong enough to be traced.”
The scan appeared on the screen and Hayes looked it over, thin ripples of colours laid over the top of the alley as the device activated. A rainbow of contour lines charting invisible waves.
“Kali, are you seeing what I'm seeing?” Hayes asked.
'Yup.'
“Fucking mundies...”
'Be nice.' she instructed.
“Your scans are for shit.” he said, resulting in feedback bouncing off around his skull, making him squeal like a pig that had been kicked in its pig nuts. Campbell waited impatiently for him to recover, narrowing his eyes at the insult. “You're looking at the wrong frequencies, waves and shit.”
'You literally have no idea what you're talking about...' Kali said.
“Shut up.” he muttered. “There's going to be a residual jump sig on the scene, right Kali?”
'Didn't you want me to shut up?'
“Then, not now.”
'You should be more specific.'
“You should answer the question. World at peril here!”
'Whose fault is that?'
“What, this is all my fault?”
The analysts and agents on the floor of the Endays hub had ceased working as Hayes stood before them, appearing to argue with himself. Campbell glared at them in turn as he waited for Hayes to finish bickering.
“Ok,” Hayes said, “We've got a plan. I need to get out to the site.”
“Fine...” Campbell said, motioning for an agent to join him from a glass room on the other side of the hub. “Carmichael here will accompany you.”
“Really not necessary...” Hayes said.
“Nice to meet you.” Carmichael said, holding out a hand that Hayes looked at curiously.
“What are you, a concierge waiting for my fucking bags?”
“It's... a handshake...” Carmichael said, awkwardly.
“I'm fucking with you, Carmike.” Hayes said, turning to Campbell. “Don't need a babysitter.”
“Carmichael is not your babysitter, he is a decorated Endays agent, and will be your partner.”
“Hey, did you see what happened to my last partner?” Hayes shot over his shoulder to Carmichael. “Don't need one.” he said to Campbell.
“You are to follow his instructions to the letter, do you understand?”
“Are those letters 'F' and 'U'? Because I'm not great at orders...” Hayes said.
Campbell stared at him in stony silence until he left the hub, following Carmichael through the corridors, leaving an inaudible trail of grumbles behind him.
Marcus Hayes had never been trusted out in the field on his own, and his partners rarely lasted long enough to file for reassignment. However, the fate of Cassidy Darvish was, for all intents and purpose, the messiest breakup between Hayes and a partner.
There was Mariska Travers, once the Division's highest rated shooter, who after a disagreement with Hayes's interpretation of 'boundaries' proceeded to shoot each of his fingers from his hands. She also caught the tip of his penis with a full metal round that would have had more devastating and lasting effects, were she not tackled to the ground in the midst of that shot.
Arnold Pierce was a rookie, left under Hayes's wing for what should have been a simple mission, to observe and eavesdrop on the scientific activities in a dimension that seemed close to discovering the existence of the multiverse. Hayes introduced him to a beautiful blonde named Theresa, and encouraged Pierce to contravene Division rules by taking part in an intimate encounter with Theresa.
What he failed to mention, was that forty percent of the population of the reality they were in had razor sharp genitals. First dates often started (and sometimes finished) after the question “Are you sixty or forty?”. Only a fairly small subsection of the sixty percent of the non-razor loined were willing to engage in congress with the forty percent whose loins could cause massive, terrifying lacerations. Pierce soon discovered that he was not part of that small subsection.
And so on. There was a reason, or many reasons, why it was hard to find a partner who would take his bullshit. Something the agents of Endays had yet to experience for themselves.
Hayes was led to the elevator, and watched Carmichael hold his finger to the solid metal above the EDC button. A hidden biometric scanner approved his request to go above-ground, and the doors closed. The elevator glided upwards, and Hayes took another look at his new partner. They were about the same height, same body type, but he reckoned Carmichael's muscle mass was all natural, no mods or nanos to increase strength beyond normal means. That meant if it came to it, he could take him, and the thought brought a smile to his face. The agent was clean shaven, his blonde hair short and neat, slicked back. Hayes scratched at his stubble on his jaw and wondered why anyone would ever bother going to the effort of remaining clean shaven, let alone putting effort into their hair. Looks, as far as he was concerned, didn't get the job done.
The elevator coughed as it arrived above ground, and the doors peeled open, revealing a solid sheet of metal that slid sideways into the adjoining wall. Hayes stepped out, and found himself back in the lab, an old man tinkering away at a workstation with a bandage around his head. The elevator was the source of the magnetic fields he had sensed earlier. Parry glanced up as Hayes surveyed the site of his abduction.
“Mister Hayes!” the professor said, a nervous tremor in his voice.
“You and I gotta exchange words, Doc.” Hayes said, narrowing his eyes at the old man. “Don't like being stuck with needles much...”
“Yes, er, terribly sorry about that, old chap.” Parry said, withdrawing from his stool and shimmying deeper into the room, retreating from Hayes.
“Not now, Hayes.” Carmichael barked. “We have a job to do.”
Hayes turned back to his partner, barely holding back a grimace, then glanced back to Parry. “Soon as we're done, you and me, Doc.” Hayes said.
“Oh, um, yes of course. Mister Hayes, yes.” Parry stuttered. “But, may I, for scientific curiosity, perhaps we can speak of your kinesis... before you hit me, that is.”
“My what?” Hayes asked, the babbling pensioner making literally no
sense to him.
“As you, ah, succumbed, shall we say? You essentially, uh, you released a kinetic field that, well, send me flying, as it were.” he said, motioning to his bandage.
“Literally have no idea what you're talking about, Doc.” Hayes said, following Carmichael out of the room, stopping at the door to glance back at Parry. “But I will most definitely be back to take up that offer of socking you one.”
Carmichael waited impatiently at the door as Hayes dawdled down the stairs. “Please don't actually hit one of our most esteemed scientific minds in his big and important head.” he pleaded.
“Wouldn't dream of it...” Hayes said, with an expression that conveyed that he was almost definitely going to hit the scientist in his precious, clever head.
'Did he say 'kenisis'?' Kali asked. 'As in, telekenisis?'
“What am I, his stenographer?” Hayes asked.
'You don't have telekenisis.' Kali asserted.
“Nope.”
'Then what the fuck is he talking about?'
“Kali, do I honestly look like I give a shit? I got people to shoot.” Hayes said, catching a glance from Carmichael that disapproved of his intent to shoot anyone this early in the mission.
Carmichael hailed a cab, and the two of them were whisked through the London streets to the site of the singularity. The whole block had been cordoned off, blue and white police tape flapping in the wind, impotently trying to break free and whistle through the air, with lofty ambitions of wrapping around some cyclist's wheels, in turn sending them hurtling through the air into the windshield of a passing car, that would in turn crash into another vehicle, and so on. Hayes had it all mapped out in his head, a chain reaction of objects and people travelling through the air to meet with yet further objects and people. Carmichael regained his attention with a loud “ahem”, and lifted the tape up for him to duck under to inspect the scene.
Hayes pulled up the scans on his lens with reluctance, having had them fixed in his field of vision for so long after the incident. “You seeing what I'm seeing?” he asked Kali as he inspected the rubble that used to be the alley. The surfaces of what was left of the cobbles and bricks were rippling intermittently.
