by Zack Mason
He really should have broken up with her when Mark had flown off the handle. Their friendship was more valuable than some shallow romance. Funny how crystal clear hindsight can be.
His main concern was what Mark would say. He didn't care if Mark rubbed his nose in it, he just didn't want to hurt the guy again.
Headquarters was enshrouded with night when he got back, all of its lamps extinguished. He went up through the elevator. Light flooded the dark hall outside its doors as they slid open on the second floor.
"Hardy?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Guess the new security system works. It said you were a friendly."
Hardy smiled and walked in. Mark looked to have been sleeping.
"Man, I was out for the night. Thought you went home to be with Laura."
"Yeah, about that...she flew the coop."
"What?"
"I mean, she's gone. Took off. Hightailed it."
"Why? Where'd she go?"
"How should I know? Left a note. It said ’Bye, Hardy.=@
Mark's brow creased in concern. "Are you sure she wasn't kidnapped? I wouldn't put something like that past Rialto..."
"No, Mark. It was just a matter of time. The only reason she was with me was ’cause I could buy her things. I knew that."
"She wasn't like that."
"Yes, yes she was. You just couldn't see it."
"Then, why did she leave me? I've got more money than you do." Even in the dark of the room, Hardy could see Mark's face darken.
"Who knows. Same reason she left me? Whatever that reason is, only she knows it."
Mark stared at him for a full minute, both men silent. "So, are you done with her then? Even if she came back, are you done with her?"
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah, I'm done," he sighed, having finally resigned himself to the truth about a woman that had infatuated his heart. "Let's get some sleep. Tomorrow we're gonna find Ty."
Surreal was the only way to describe it. The scene unfolding before them was so eerily familiar, one which had played over and over again on television sets throughout their lives. They'd seen the black and white photographs. They'd seen the pale, grainy color video of Jackie Kennedy in her pink dress crawling toward the trunk of her vehicle, having just witnessed the violent death of her husband. Mark had even been to the Book Depository Museum once.
But this...
This was real life. Full vivid color, up close and personal.
The President's motorcade was coming around the corner. Mark and Hardy watched its progress from the other side of the street opposite the book depository. They kept away as far as they could without handicapping their ability to operate. Knowing Rialto could recognize them, Mark and Hardy resorted to disguises. Not your average handlebar mustache disguises either, but professionally done latex masks which altered the shapes of their faces.
They spotted Ty. He stood at the front of the crowd, about a hundred feet away. Mark and Hardy would not approach him until they were sure where Rialto's men were. Otherwise, they might walk into a trap.
Hardy's job was to keep an eye on Ty, observing who took him and where they went. Meanwhile, Mark scanned the scene for Rialto, Usher, or Grey Tuft.
Bringing more than a concealed handgun to a presidential assassination was liable to get them arrested or worse, so they resolved to just follow Ty and his captors to wherever they were going to hold him. Then, they would return for weapons.
Mark studied the faces in the crowd as well as he could from that distance. He couldn't resist glancing up at the famous window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository from where Oswald would take his shots. Mark was about to witness first hand whether or not there had really been a conspiracy or just a single shooter.
He had no doubt there was a shooter up there. Mark could see the shadow of a man just beyond the window's opening. A rifle snaked out as Kennedy drew closer.
To his astonishment, Mark saw that it was obviously not Lee Harvey Oswald up in that window. Oswald was clearly wearing an orangish shirt and standing down on the sidewalk in front of the depository, watching the motorcade pass by.
Mark shook his head to clear it. If that was not him, then Oswald had a twin. It certainly was the spitting image of the accused assassin.
On the grassy knoll, two men dressed in suits stood together just behind a picket fence at the top of the small hill. One of those men looked strikingly like Rialto. Now, that is interesting, Mark thought.
Inconspicuously, the two men behind the fence raised rifles to bear on the string of official cars. They fired their weapons, one very quickly after the other, followed shortly by a third shot from the shooter up in the depository. After that, the man behind the fence who didn't look like Rialto fired a fourth shot.
Mark could see the panic etched across Jackie Kennedy's face as she madly scrambled to get away from the horror that had just invaded her life. The motorcade accelerated. People screamed. Cops ran, darting to and fro, barking orders, adrenaline rushing.
Mark calmly made his way over to Hardy. The scene they'd witnessed had not been unexpected. Mark didn't believe it was preventable either. The mysterious force that held his children in eternity would never allow such a monumental event to be changed. There had been a few unpredicted twists however.
"So, what happened?" Mark asked.
"Grey Tuft and a couple of thugs grabbed Ty and dragged him behind that building over there. You figure out who really killed Kennedy?"
"Yeah, and you won't believe who might have been involved."
***
Mark followed the men holding Ty as discreetly as possible to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Dallas. Hardy hung back, providing security for Mark. If Mark were ambushed by a time shifter, Hardy would be far enough away to see it and shift back in time to prevent the ambush on Mark.
Mark observed the warehouse and then fell back to give Hardy a report.
"Where is he?" Hardy squinted in the sunlight.
"Not where they want us to think he is," Mark replied. "They took him inside that door over there, but my new detector registered a shift signature from inside that building. Someone shifted to later tonight. Something tells me that if we were to go in that building right now, there might be some happy gunmen waiting for us, but no Ty."
"You think they shifted him out?" Hardy asked.
"I'd bet on it."
"Rialto doesn't know we have detectors yet. He thinks we're blind to any shifts he does out of sight."
"You got it. Let's jump ahead to tonight. See what we see."
"How about we take turns? If we hang on to each other, you can shift me in, and then, I'll shift you. That way we'd have up to 12 shifts before we get shut down instead of 6. That could give us an edge."
"Good idea. Let's do it."
Hardy gripped Mark's shoulder, hit his shifter, and the sky melded into a deep, dark blue. A few stars were beginning to twinkle in its wide expanse. They were now a few moments away from full twilight.
They watched as the warehouse door swung open warily. The kidnapers reemerged, dragging Ty with them. They hauled him to a warehouse on the opposite side of the run-down, industrial complex.
They were not only disguising Ty's location in time, they were moving him physically. Without the time detectors Prescott had designed, they would have been lost.
Mark and Hardy followed and staked out a new observation post, waiting patiently to assess the situation. After ten minutes, they detected another shift signature.
"You think they shifted out again to confuse us further?"
"Doubt it. They don't know we can detect them. Plus, that signature was for somebody shifting in, not out."
"Then, who was it?"
"Grey Tuft was the only guy there with a shifter before, so that was probably Rialto or Usher coming in for a visit."
"Or someone else we don't know about yet."
"Or someone else," Hardy nodded.
After another
ten minutes, that someone shifted back out.
"Should we scout it out and make sure Ty's still there?"
"Let's wait till it's fully dark first."
Once the blackness was complete enough to cover an assault, Mark pulled a pair of infrared vision goggles from his backpack. They'd outfitted themselves with all the weaponry they could possibly need to complete this mission. They would take no chances — not when dealing with Rialto and their friend's safety.
Four warm bodies glowed inside the building. Two of the figures were in a front room, and they looked to be sitting. The other two were in a large, back room. One was prostrate on the floor. The other stood over him. Most likely, Ty was the guy lying down. Apparently, there was only one guard in the room with him.
After about thirty minutes, the thug guarding Ty moved to the front of the building with his comrades. Hardy marked the time. Now would be the best opportunity to attack.
Most good plans were simple ones, but the nature of their adversaries made simplicity impossible in this case. The rescue would begin simply enough, but with shifters on everybody's wrists, it was certain to descend very quickly into unmanageable complexity.
They would shift into that back room, cut Ty free and shift him out. Rialto and crew would inevitably use their detectors to follow. They had to find a way to evade those detectors, and they had to assume Ty would most likely be unconscious throughout the ordeal.
Hardy's idea for chain shifting would not work because neither of them knew for sure if a shifter would transport three people at one time like it could two.
Still, Mark planned to use a variation of the idea. Each of them made a list of six sequential times to which they would shift and gave a copy of the list to the other. Once they had Ty, each would begin a long series of rapid shifts with Rialto and his men in close pursuit. They'd have less than a second to change their target time, so after each shift they'd change only one digit in the time, date or year. The list would allow them to meet back up if they got separated in the melee.
"I'm not sure this plan will work, Mark."
"Why not?"
"Rialto's going to have us right where he wants us. He'll have all three of us in one place at one time."
"I know. But Ty's gonna be out of it, and neither of us is going to be able to hold them off by himself."
"Agreed, but this won't work. Even if we manage to get twelve shifts in before we shut down, they can still outshift us."
Mark saw he was right. "One of us could break off from the other at some point, without shifting, escape, wait twenty-four hours and jump back in the fight. Theoretically, we'd have unlimited shifts that way."
"They can do the same thing. It'd be a never ending chase through time."
"What if we don't shift at all, just fight it out like we were trained."
"They'd shift in right on top of us. We'd be surrounded before we knew it. Both sides have detectors and shifters. This is not going to be easy. We're going to have to use our heads."
"Got a better plan?" Mark asked skeptically.
Hardy wracked his brain for a several minutes, brow furrowed, searching the scene below for an answer. "How about this? You shift in and retrieve Ty by yourself. I'll keep post up here with the infrared goggles and a sniper rifle. As soon as somebody shifts in to take you out, I'll snipe ’em from behind."
"How do we keep somebody from shifting in behind you and taking you out once they've determined your position?"
"Before I man this post here, I'll shift back and establish another sniper post 100 yards further away. If I see anybody make a move on my own position here, I will preemptively take them out. I'll basically cover myself. That ought to frustrate them pretty good. And if they try to take me out at the secondary position, I'll be able to provide cover for myself again from my primary position on this roof. If that proves to be insufficient, I can always triangulate and create a third position."
"You're going to provide cover fire for yourself? I swear, doing battle this way is really weird."
"Tell me about it. Look, either side has the capability to keep this fight going indefinitely. As long as we stay separate, you and I can keep undoing the history that's just been made. If one of us is killed, the other can undo it. It's going to come down to which side gets tired first. If they catch us together, they can end it. We've got to defeat them psychologically, wear them out till they retreat."
"That is a better plan, but you didn't explain what to do with Ty."
Hardy nodded knowingly.
That stupid, silly grin of his was so annoying.
Still sortin' out life, but I'm doing alright
Yeah, it's good to see you too
"These Days"
~ Rascal Flatts
Mark went after Ty alone. He found his friend sitting on the hard concrete, his body listing to the side. His wrists were cuffed to two steel rails embedded in the wall, and his face was a bloody mess. Seeing what had been done to him, Mark muttered angry epithets as he moved closer.
The abusers were grouped in the front of the building. In a conventional setting, Mark would have stormed the front and taken them out before they had time to let their midnight snacks fall to the floor in panic.
However, these enemies could pop in right behind you at any moment with no warning, and if you were good enough to take that guy out, his friend would appear behind you a second later, or even a second before and stop you. You had to careful. Very careful and very smart or you'd wind up deader than a rabbit crossing the interstate regardless of how well you could hop.
Mark extracted a pair of bolt cutters from his backpack and sheared the metal links holding Ty to the wall. He'd come equipped with everything they would possibly need. Ty groaned and Mark caught him as he slipped toward the floor. He laid the big man down gently. Ty wasn't going to be contributing much to this fight.
A small closet at the back of the room housed a water heater. Mark dragged Ty into that closet and shut him inside. Then, he began to set the larger room up for the coming battle. As quietly as possible, he rolled steel drums and other heavy equipment into rows, creating barricades they could use for cover when then bullets began to fly. Rialto's men wouldn't think to move them at first.
Retreating into the small closet-like room where he'd left Ty, Mark closed the door and grabbed Ty's arm. He shifted them both to the next night, same time. Hardy was staked out on the roof of a nearby building with infrared goggles, and they were depending on him to keep any attackers at bay.
Mark flung the door back open and ran to the cover of the drums, dragging Ty behind him. Two thugs were down on the ground at the other end of the room. Blood pooled around their dead bodies. Hardy had already sniped them successfully through the walls using a .50 caliber M107. Taking a peek around a steel drum, Mark was disappointed to see the guys weren't time shifters, just your common goons.
He took comfort in the fact that Rialto and his men could only know into which time they'd shifted, but not where in the room exactly they would show up. That's why Mark had hidden in the closet while shifting.
The static hiss of a shift sizzled somewhere near the fallen thugs. Breaking glass and a shrill scream immediately followed. Hardy was on top of things all right.
Somebody had just received a rude awakening and shifted right back out.
Mark wasn't taking the bait. No bad guys were visible at the moment, but they could appear anywhere at any second. Straying from their prearranged plan was the only real danger. He hoped.
Grasping Ty's wrist, Mark shifted again, to a night three months in the future. As he'd expected, the enemy had removed all the steel drums thinking Mark would use them for cover. He and Ty were in the open now, sitting ducks.
Rialto and Usher stood confidently before them, feet spread wide, weapons leveled, ready to kill. Mark also held his weapon ready.
The question of who would get off the first shot was never answered, for Hardy interrupted with one of his own. They'd e
xpected Rialto to be looking for a sniper this time, so instead Hardy had shifted into the front of the room, a split second before Mark. This set him directly behind Rialto and Usher.
His first bullet caught Usher low in the side. The man's legs buckled and he spilt to one knee. Hardy’s aim had been compromised by the way he'd fired right as he materialized, or he would have killed him for sure.
Usher fumbled to regain control of his weapon. It went off and a stray bullet struck the floor, ricocheting wildly. Rialto started to whip around to face Hardy, but immediately reconsidered, remembering the threat Mark represented. Abruptly, he switched plans, using his own shifter to flee from the ambush.
In fact, Mark's bullet would have taken Rialto right in the chest, but the villain was already fading before the bullet crossed the space he'd just occupied.
Usher groaned on the floor. Blood leaked from a bad-looking wound. His gun had been flung too far for him to reach. He moved to shift out too. As his form faded, Grey Tuft shifted in, spraying bullets without aim. One bullet struck Ty in the calf, which elicited a low moan from his unconscious form.
Mark ran to Ty as Hardy turned his sights on Grey Tuft. Hurriedly grabbing his wrist, Mark shifted Ty to a night exactly one year after the Kennedy assassination. As if on cue, Hardy did the same.
This was it, the moment they would turn the tables.
If this didn't work, Mark and Hardy would be forced to split up and make an escape, leaving Ty behind until they could try again.
It was the same room, just more marked up now by multiple bullet scars that pocked the walls. It was also empty except for the three of them. No thugs, no Rialto, no other time shifters.
They'd guessed this would be Rialto's strategy. He knew all three of them were in here together. His best plan of attack would be to mount a full assault with a mini-army of paid mercenaries on all the windows and doors of the facility at the same time, hoping to kill or take them prisoner in one fell swoop.
