The commander examined the lieutenant for a moment, then took the sheet of paper and opened it. He skimmed the letter at first, then thought for a moment that it was a joke. He stopped skimming it and read it carefully. Oxnard watched the commander, waiting to be sure the orders would be followed. The commander slowly folded the note, then looked down at the glowing blanket.
“This is for real?” the commander asked, kneeling to the ground.
“Never imagined anything like it before, sir. I didn’t think a creature of our size could maintain a natural bioluminescence,” he replied, kneeling on the opposite side of the creature, “I almost wish it wasn’t sentient and intelligent so I could open it up and see what makes it tick.”
The commander lifted the blanket and examined the creature momentarily, maintaining a torpid expression. The commander didn’t seem as impressed by the alien as Oxnard had been. He finally lowered the blanket and looked over at the lieutenant.
“How do you propose I store this thing until it’s time to leave for Green?” the commander asked.
“I can make it happen,” he replied, lifting a Delayed Injection Unit, “Just strap this baby to his arm and throw him in the storage bay. You won’t even know he’s there.”
The commander nodded, then stood up.
“If he’s just another piece of luggage, then I won’t mind. But Lieutenant – not one word to anyone about this,” the commander insisted, “I don’t want anyone becoming unnecessarily curious about what’s onboard my shuttle. Do you understand?”
“Completely, sir,” he said, “Do you need help getting this guy hidden aboard or help installing the DIU?”
“Yes please,” he replied.
Ten
(three weeks later)
“So what is it that you’re telling me, Jack?” Braxton asked as they walked down 34th Street.
“I’m telling you that your wrist shooters will be useless in most cases here. We’re talking about building exteriors that are made up of probably fifty percent glass,” Jack said, pointing up at one of the tall buildings nearby, “The cable tips will imbed nicely in the brick and cement, but if you hit a window, it’ll just shatter and you’ll be finding yourself in a face-to-face meeting with the sidewalk.”
They shuffled through the busy New York streets; Braxton struggling to appear nonchalant about the size of the man-made structures nearby. He had to be corrected multiple times by Jack, who found it embarrassing to be walking the streets with an obvious tourist.
“Which means we wasted a lot of time practicing in the woods behind that nasty house,” Braxton said, “You knew what Manhattan was like, so why did you have me thinking I was preparing to have a significant advantage over these people.”
“I thought you could learn to aim those things before we got here. When you’re airborne and falling, an eighty percent success rate at hitting a moving target isn’t a comfortable number. We needed to be closer to a hundred percent. Much closer,” Jack said, shaking his head and pointing to the street sign, “Your woman is going to be working down this street.”
“Fifth Avenue?” Braxton asked.
“Home to King Kong’s favorite building, my friend.”
They turned their attention down Fifth Avenue. The enormous building in the distance caught Braxton’s attention. It was reflecting the morning sunlight from its window, shimmering brightly above the shadows of the nearby buildings. The building seemed to stand prouder than the others nearby.
“But back to what we were talking about… are you basically saying it’s my fault for not being the acrobat you expected, so basically I’m just an ordinary Mystic like I’ve always been? And essentially, we wasted a lot of time?” Braxton said.
“You are the acrobat I’d hoped for. You’ve got the flips, the swings, and the landings down pat. You’re awesome, Brax, and that’s why you’re wearing those on your wrists today,” Jack said, “But an airborne release followed by an airborne launch toward another target… eighty percent. If you were swinging from building to building, you’d be dead by the time you cleared a city block.”
Braxton just shook his head, then drew the sheet of paper out of his pocket. He started to unfold it, but Jack’s hand reached out and stopped him.
“Evelyn McHale. You know the name and you know the floor number. You’ve studied it for days, so why do you keep checking your paper?” Jack asked.
Braxton sighed, then folded the paper again before shoving it into his pocket. They veered around the early rush of people who moved with indifference and purpose.
“I’m wishing the name would change somehow,” Braxton said, “I just wasn’t really cut out for this line of work.”
Jack laughed, then pointed toward the doors of the enormous building proudly labeled “Empire State Building.”
“That’s why you’ve got me for a coach, my friend. I’m here to encourage you when you need help saving the world,” Jack said.
Braxton just shook his head as they entered the building. Jack led the way to the elevators. Since they were headed to the sixty-first floor, they had to share the elevator ride with several others along the way. Jack wasn’t discouraged by their claustrophobic surroundings though as he was quick to open his brown paper bag and hand the modified fencing mask to Braxton.
“Really?” Braxton snickered, tucking it quickly under his arm, “Did you truly think I’d be putting it on around these people?”
“I think you’d better figure out a way to get it on before the door opens on the sixty-first floor,” he whispered, nodding toward the lighted panel of numbers.
They were making a slow progress toward the upper levels as many people stopped to get off on random floors prior to sixty-one. Right now they were just passing the fiftieth floor with three more people still on the elevator with them.
“The world is going to change today, Braxton,” Jack said with a wink, “Today the world will have a hero named ‘Mystic’ and a weird looking guy named Braxton – two completely different people.”
“You gave me a hero name already?” Braxton whispered, watching an elderly woman depart the elevator at the fifty-sixth floor, “What about Captain Legacy or The Blaze?”
Jack chuckled, nudging him while he eyeballed the lighted numbers above the elevator door. Fifty-nine had passed and the two remaining passengers on the elevator were heading toward higher floors. Braxton rolled his eyes and turned toward the corner. He quickly put the mask on, wrapping the stocking material around the back of his head and drawing the screened front over his face.
A bell resounded, announcing their arrival on the sixty-first floor. Braxton turned around and faced the hallway as the door opened. If the others in the elevator noticed his suspicious costume as he exited, they didn’t offer any acknowledgement.
The doors closed behind them, leaving them standing in a hallway that offered them two directions. Jack lit one of the things Braxton now knew as cigarettes. He leaned against the wall and winked at Braxton.
“This is where we part ways, Bud,” Jack said, “For the time being, we don’t know each other. I’m just an innocent guy hanging out by the elevators.”
“You’ll be here when I get back?” Braxton asked.
“Yep,” he replied, “Now go find the Bilfield Office and get this over with.”
Braxton turned and started down the hall. The corridors between all the offices were well traveled this morning which didn’t come as much of a surprise to him. Unfortunately though, this meant that a lot of people were watching him with confused expressions on their faces.
He could see the office at the end of the hall simply labeled “Bilfield” on the wavy glass of the door. As much as he dreaded his job, he dreaded all the more the idea of prolonging any further. He rapidly approached the door and opened it quickly.
He found himself in a small lobby with four empty seats. He discovered an elderly woman seated at a desk beyond the glass sliding window. He appreciated her startled expression when she
finally took the time to look up at the potential client watching her.
“I’m here to see Evelyn McHale,” Braxton said.
“She’s, uh… she’s with someone-”
“It’s important that I see her immediately,” Braxton said.
The lady was now reaching for one of the Earth communicators on her desk. She lifted the handset, continually watching the anomaly at her window.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” he said, punching his fist through the glass window.
He released a bolt of energy straight into the base of the communicator, causing it to split and release some of its internal workings across the woman’s desk. She dropped the handset, gaping at him as though searching for a voice to scream with. Although the door to the inner offices may have been unlocked, he went straight for the window he had just shattered. He grasped inside the window frame and jumped, drawing his legs up and over the little shelf. Shards of glass skittered to the floor in his wake as he approached the lady who had backed away from her desk.
“Where’s her office?” he asked.
She started to shake her head, but quickly thought better of it, then finally pointed toward a hallway behind Braxton. With a muttered “thank you,” he left her to her damaged workstation and followed her direction into the hall. He discovered four doors; two on each side. The one to his immediate left was labeled “E. McHale”.
He twisted the doorknob and opened it to discover a wood paneled office bathed in the light of the early morning sun. Since the second person on his hit list was seated behind a large wood desk in front of the windows, the sunlight coming in around her offered him only a dark silhouette of his intended target. He reached out and closed the door behind him.
“Evelyn McHale?” Braxton asked, approaching the shadowy figure.
The person in the chair made a muffled sound as it moved only slightly. Braxton could feel the energy building up inside of him as he prepared for the task at hand, but as he got closer to the desk, he noticed something suspiciously wrong.
The person seated at the desk was indeed a blonde woman of about thirty, so she probably was the Evelyn McHale he was searching for. But unlike the woman he expected to meet, this one had a gag tied around her face and several cords of rope wrapped around her body.
“So, I guess it would be safe to assume you’ve still been listening in on your communicator,” a familiar voice rose from behind him, “’cause I’d hate to imagine that you’d wear a silly costume just to kill a woman.”
Braxton recognized the voice now, but refused to turn around. The calmer he pretended to be, the more chances he had of the Trigger making other false assumptions. He already had no idea why Chunk believed he had been still using his communicator. He’d turned that little device off back when Chunk was screaming about some blue alien on the shuttle and he hadn’t turned it on since.
“Why are you here in New York, Trigger?” Braxton asked, slowly turning around, “And what are you doing with my target?”
Braxton recognized Chunk and another of his unidentified Trigger friends from the shuttle seated in the dark corner of the room. There was a lamp on the table between them, but it appeared they preferred the darkness instead. Braxton was able to identify a plasma rifle in Chunk’s hand and two ion pistols on the lap of the other guy.
“I’m here in New York because this was one necessary stop among many here in this god forsaken epoch. You see, I have a list here in my pocket that says we need to get rid of certain people here. We need to change the course of history,” Chunk said, tossing a sheet of paper out onto the floor, “Did you notice that each time you guys killed somebody, some of us would be slapped with a severe case of déjà vu?”
“And did you hear the fight on the communicators when one of those cases of déjà vu killed Combatant Third Class Edwards?” the other Trigger added, “Started clutching his head, the fell over like he was having a heart attack. His last words were that the whole world was underwater.”
“And then he literally disappeared according to the other two on his team,” Chunk said, “Did you have any of the underwater feelings or the feeling that everything was replaying itself? ‘Cause if you did, those were kills that somehow affected your personal time line. Something was changed in your past that directly affected you somehow, but since you’re still alive, I’m guessing the changes weren’t significantly life altering.”
Braxton was suddenly grateful for the mask that was currently hiding his expression. He’d never contemplated that their actions could be creating a negative effect on their own futures.
“I’ll say it again – why are you here in New York and what are you doing with my target?” Braxton said, hoping his voice was sounding steady and threatening.
“I was getting to that, Mystic,” Chunk said, rising from his seat with the rifle aimed at the ceiling, “I’m starting to think you actually did turn off your communicator which means you have no idea that the commander is dead. You see, other than that whole alien ordeal, being trapped in that shuttle in orbit was oppressively boring. I decided to make the best of my time there and do a little research. I was pleased to discover that Chief Brown left his case full of papers on the shuttle and since I had locked myself onto the bridge to avoid that glowing alien, I had a lot of time to read.”
“This alien was really on the shuttle with you?” Braxton asked.
“What did you think I was screaming about, Mystic? Yes, there was a blue alien with glowing skin and some ugly protruding ridges on the top of his head. His eyes were large and solid black – no white portion at all. He was running around the ship crying. Why do you think I used the freakin’ emergency channel to abandon our mission, idiot?”
Braxton shook his head, wondering just how much of this information was true and how much was invented in the mind of a psychopath. With the little he knew of Chunk, it could have been either.
“Anyway, Brown had all those folders of targets which spanned every possible generation. When Edwards died from the déjà vu, I decided to find out where the generations eventually led. I followed the years and the centuries, watching the amount of targets on those papers dwindle until we made it to the late 2200’s. The branches of the family trees weren’t easy to follow by any means – especially by an idiot ‘Trigger’, but I managed to find a few connections. I found the connection to Edwards’ ancestors and I also found a connection to two others. Killing the targets on our lists would have also killed me and Combatant Second Class Chandler.”
Braxton was already shaking his head even before Chunk finished his last sentence, “So you think they planned all this out to kill three of our own? How stupid do you-”
“Obviously not, Mystic! I know that our deaths were going to ultimately be written off as unexpected collateral damage. I’m sure through the generations, we’re probably creating thousands, if not millions of ‘insignificant’ units of collateral damage,” he replied, “And no, I wasn’t willing to give my life for Legacy once I realized we’d be losing the whole planet to that ugly race of blue aliens.”
Braxton turned toward at the woman who was staring worriedly at him over top of the black gag. He felt no less confused today than he did on the day he woke up freezing to death on the USSC Foothold. Nothing Chunk was saying made any sense to him.
“What’s this about losing Legacy to the aliens?” Braxton asked, wishing he didn’t have to sound so stupid.
The other Trigger, most likely Combatant Chandler, was now up and moving around the room with both ion pistols in his hands. The woman in the chair mumbled something, but no one paid her any mind.
“When I landed the shuttle in the middle of downtown Toronto, I obviously caused quite a stir. The commander refused to give me his coordinates, so I simply forced him to come to me by getting the whole world’s attention. Oddly enough, he was able to make it past all the police and military and board our shuttle less than fifteen minutes after the ‘alien invasion’. Who would have guessed it woul
d be so easy to get the commander to obey a simple command?” Chunk said with a laugh, “Of course, it helped a bit when I shot his leg off the moment the shuttle door closed. And then I shot a few fingers off his hand when he reached for his own ion pistol. I never understood why some people had to always reach for the gun.”
The currents of electricity now coursing through Braxton’s body were no longer invisible to those around him. The white and blue crackles of electricity wrapping around his hands had already drawn the attention of everyone in the room. It was times like these that he wished he’d have gone to the Mystic Academy back on Legacy. There was no chance of a sneak attack from an uneducated Mystic in the midst of an enormous bout of anger and frustration.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re thinking of killing me right now, but first you need to hear the whole story. I have a funny feeling you might be joining forces with us once you hear it all,” Chunk said, dropping the plasma rifle into firing position in less than a heartbeat and firing a plasma round into the giant window near Braxton, “I could have killed you just now, so don’t even think about it.”
As the window shattered behind him, Braxton felt the blood drain from his head. Indeed, the Combatant could have killed him before he even had a chance to raise his hands. Nothing made one’s blood pressure drop quicker than the sudden knowledge that he should be dead now without a doubt.
“You hear me?” Chunk asked, keeping the rifle aimed at the gaping hole in the building.
Braxton nodded. There was nothing else he could do at the moment, despite the fact that his hands were still crackling with electricity. A gust of Atlantic wind was now lifting papers off Evelyn’s desk and scattering them across the room.
“Good, I’m glad we understand each other,” he said, pointing the rifle back at the ceiling, “After a little coaxing, our gracious commander was kind enough to tell me about the very alien I had tied to the seat in front of him. You see, our people recently discovered a dominant species native to Legacy – the very creature we had hidden aboard our shuttle. And yes, the commander knew about this stowaway, yet he permitted me to look like a psycho idiot to everyone else. He never addressed the alien issue over the airwaves because he wanted me to look like an insane freak.”
The Mystic Saga Omnibus (Books 1 - 5) Page 25
