by Lee Bond
Sitting there, basking in the glory of his own brilliance, Samiel nevertheless kept an eye on all The Lines arrayed in front of him; though he’d only been active for a few weeks in the 21st century, the man calling himself Nickels had been extraordinarily active, reaching out across many fronts, affecting the lives of many, many people.
The first person he checked on was his loyal lapdog, the perennially drunk and disillusioned Special Agent Delbert Granger. With Nickels having died so abruptly in that grungy little internet café, Granger should have found no reason to deploy himself –against his Master’s wishes, no less- to San Francisco to appease any itches.
Samiel pressed a finger to Granger’s line, and watched his history spill into the air, gossamer windows carrying snapshots of the old man’s comings and goings.
A twitch appeared beneath one of Samiel’s goggled eyes, a persistent and impulsive spasm.
Granger wasn’t in Washington DC, drinking himself into a stupor in the confines of his own grungy apartment.
In one moment, he was en route to San Francisco. In another, he was talking to his lord and master concerning the very foolish decisions he’d made and the now rewritten version of his life, in another he was in a hotel room, naked as a jaybird, drinking himself unconscious.
Samiel released Granger’s line and took a long, slow look around the room. Was it possible someone was fucking with him?
“Nonsense.” Samiel was the only power in the Universe worth discussing. No one could do anything to him. He put an eye on where Garth’s line used to be. Still dim as … wait.
In excitement over his success, in the moment of joviality, he’d somehow missed a single blip of furiously burning emerald, a single dot representing a single day, the ‘present’ day, the day in which Garth Nickels had lashed out at the four Zigg-heads lurking around his property.
Somehow … somehow the man was still alive in that single day, even though everything leading up to that day had been erased from The Line.
“Not possible.” Baron Samiel dove back into The Line, an immense animal thrashing into shallow waters. He would find the cause of this impossibility and put an end to it.
***
“Well.” Garth poked his face with his fingers yet again, not precisely confident he’d continue to be bullet free. “This is … fucking weird.”
Eddie Marshall, wearing the skin of Etienne Marseilles, quirked an eyebrow at the statement. Even though he was desperate to get back to his new, greater work, eager to resume digging into what the Ushbet M’Tai had to offer, curiosity in this new wrinkle in the battle to save neo-Drake from Samiel’s clutches was too great to ignore.
“What is it?” Eddie asked imperially.
“I …” Garth shrugged helplessly. “I remember being killed, but I also remember doing everything that I did right up until I arrived here. Like … two sets of memories in my head.”
“Causal effect of the so-called save point.” Drake –as Spur- offered the only logical explanation. “You are temporally moored at a fixed point in both the local time and space of your mission.”
“Okay. If you say so.” Garth snapped his fingers. Didn’t matter what had happened, so long as it wasn’t going to happen again. “Send me back, if you please.”
“I am considering my options.” Eddie replied dryly. “This particular attempt on your life has actually wreaked significant havoc to the world.”
“Yeah, but, he can’t kill me in the past because everything I’ve done is saved up. So, like, it’s like the predator thing, or the cab thing. He’ll stop soon enough.” Garth snapped his fingers again.
“Baron Samiel may be many things, Nickels, but one thing he is not is a fool.” Eddie shook his head. “He has already noticed that though you are dead in the past of your own line, a moment of you –complete with all the things you accomplished while alive- still persists in the ‘future’ of your life. The one he took from you. As it stands, he has your death on repeat. How many are we up to now, Spur?”
“Eighty, my lord. Each individual member of the FBI team tasked to dealing with Nickels’ Unfair Advantage activities in that café has, at one point or another, been turned against him. Calculations suggest that Samiel has now used well over a thousand sidereal years of his own existence to accomplish this.”
“You see?” Eddie shook his head sadly. “You’ve brought the Baron’s true and mighty attention to you. You cannot possibly hope to win now. He’s burrowing into your life. The only reason you’re not bouncing back and forth between here and there is simply because I find it tiresome. We’ll hold you here indefinitely, I think, until you admit you’ve lost the game.”
“I haven’t lost the game.” Garth laughed. “Game hasn’t even started. And you will send me back because all eighty of my ‘deaths’ won’t happen until or unless I decide to actually kill the Zigg-heads. If I don’t do it, The Line where Samiel decides to do what he’s doing disappears.”
Drake -clad as Spur- nodded minutely, an action designed to remind Eddie that for all his faults, Nickels still possessed a first rate intellect. He had, after all, cut his teeth combating the M'Zahdi Hesh, and while they'd lacked the ability to affect things on the temporal level with the kind of accuracy Samiel was capable of, they'd nevertheless still been the masters of time.
The barely noticeable curl of disdain wrinkling Eddie's lips were a bad sign, so Drake decided to step things up a bit. "While there is no indication that Baron Samiel will stop attempting to murder you in the past so long as the save point exists, there is a chance, yes, that choosing not to kill the Ziggurat addicts will affect his personal timeline. He may remain aware of the events that ultimately did not occur. You hover on the cusp."
"And none of what is occurring is important." Eddie snapped angrily. "Your goal in this life is to save Drake and Sparks from Baron Samiel, not mess about with these temporal shenanigans. Admit it. You overplayed your hand in the beginning and now you are stuck with terrible choices. There is nothing you can do. The two men are still months away from falling squarely into Samiel's lap and here you are, battling pointless battles that gain you nothing. Unless your intent is to use yourself as a foil? By making yourself such a target that he cannot refuse you, you hope instead that he'll lose interest in Drake?
"I've been lead to believe that he won't ever stop doing that, Emperor-for-Life." Memories of Lissande Amour telling him exactly that moments before shooting him four hundred years into the future to battle Samiel on more equal footing. "The whole of everything that is happening, both in the 21st century and further up The Line, it -for some fucking reason- revolves entirely around Drake Bishop. He'd sooner choose to ignore me altogether than focus all his energies on me."
"Denial to your last breath, eh?" Eddie shared a knowing smile with Drake, who positively vibrated with displeasure. He thought he knew so much. "But I notice you didn't say anything concerning my point. You've overplayed your hand, Nickels. Even if you choose not to deal with those Zigg-heads, Samiel is still watching, still planning on killing you, still ruining your life. You have many more instances like this in your future. You may never even reach the focal point. Do you have the endurance? Possibly. But I doubt you have the wherewithal. Sooner or later, Samiel is going to fall upon a method of dealing with you in such a way that will signal the end of the game. He already uses the temporal incongruity in a manner that he never has before. Drive him to true desperation and he may unlock abilities that will make him aware of what is going on. If that occurs, I'll end the game on the spot and declare you the loser."
Garth shrugged, a gesture that obviously bothered the Emperor more than anything else he cared to do. "I'll take my chances. Send me back."
The Kin'kithal hoped that the Emperor was more bothered by the lackadaisical shrug than he let on, at least enough to miss the small surge of concern he was feeling over the monarch's point; he had overplayed his hand, now that he truly thought about it. There was too much time left remaining bet
ween here and there and Samiel was thinking outside the box.
Did he have the patience to endure Samiel’s endless onslaught? Could he stand up to the endless resurrections? What if Samiel did discover a way to uproot his Emperor-approved save points? The nature of his trial said that regardless of how many times he died, he’d keep coming back, a point that would inevitably drive Baron Samiel to even wilder methods of retaliation, but there was only one moment that was irrevocably protected.
Garth didn’t want to start back on the bridge. He suspected he’d rather die than have that happen.
“You want to go back.” Eddie couldn’t keep the surprise from sounding in his voice. “There’s no actual proof that Spur’s summation will hold out, Nickels. You could be consigning yourself to an endless death loop. The kind I’ve been warning you about all this time.”
“Don’t care, doesn’t matter. Even if he keeps coming at me, I’ve got four hours to figure something out.” Garth jutted his chin out. “I can conquer a planet in four hours, given enough reason. Getting out from the Baron’s thumb ain’t no thang.”
“Up to a hundred experiential deaths thus far.” Spur warned. “The fabric of your existence may not be able to suffer much more.”
Garth turned to the alabaster android, eyebrow arched just so. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the ‘fabric of my existence’ is precisely as strong or as weak as your boss intends for it to be. So if anything fails, it’s his decision. Isn’t that right, Spur?”
Spur said nothing, merely dipped his head in recognition.
Rising from his chair, Garth confronted both of his captors. “Just so we’re all on the same fucking page here. The only thing that brings this to an end is me, tapping out. We got that? According to the rules of the game, I keep coming back. Forever. Until I appease the guilt in my soul, which I will do by saving Drake Bishop from falling under Baron Samiel’s control. Which I will do. Now. Emperor. Send me back.”
“As you wish.” Eddie snapped his fingers and Garth N’Chalez disappeared from view.
“This is dangerous.” Drake couldn’t keep it in any longer. “Everything about this is dangerous.”
“He needs to learn his lessons.” Eddie replied drolly, looking at a manicured fingernail. “And this is the best way. He’s no longer suited to be in charge of bringing the Universe to a new state. None of them are.”
“And you?”
Eddie flashed Drake a heartless smile. “I hear you’ve been banging around the corners of the incongruity, Drake, looking for the things I’m working on in secret. In private. Pressuring my simulations for answers. I urge you to stop. It’s not in your best interests to dig into things that are beyond you.”
“Whatever it is you’re doing,” Drake snapped, “is responsible for this mess. There’s a distinct lack of consistency and control in the other trials being run at the moment. It’d taking everything I can to keep them operational. I’ve had to do more than one reboot, Eddie. If regular trials are suffering from the … power drain … then I can only imagine what might happen with Garth’s. You’ve given rise to a fully realized Baron Samiel, Eddie. A perfect iteration in every way, shape and form. We can’t forget that.”
“He’s not going to fucking well turn into Moriarity from Next Gen, Drake. It’s not possible.” Eddie shook his head sadly, gifting his friend with a mocking, pathetic smile. “I am in full control. I always will be. And in response to your unasked question, Drake? The answer is yes. I really do believe I am the only one worthy of bringing a new Reality into existence. There are a few things locked tight in Garth’s head, things I’ll need proper access to, and the only way to get them out are if he’s Shriven. So …”
“You’re going to fix the game for him?” Drake could scarcely believe his ears. “He’ll notice.”
“I really don’t think he will.” Emperor-for-Life Etienne Marseilles smirked again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are things I need to see to.”
Drake watched the man who’d once been his best friend walk away, wondering just what in the hell was going on. Everything was off balance. Everything.
Time to see if he could find what Eddie Marshall was working on. Again. It'd be better if someone was watching Nickels, but ... this felt so much more important.
***
Garth bounced back into his body, a few seconds after formally declaring his save point decision. He smiled, gratified. He ran his mind back through everything that’d happened to him since that moment in the café, checking for anomalies and other inconsistencies.
Yep. They were all still there. It was weird and more than a little disjointing to have a head full of memories of different members of that initial Federal Task Force putting bullets into various parts of his body, but there it was. Even odd-eyed Special Agent Angela Devlin, looking incredulous as the day was long, surprised to see her specialized Glock in her hands, pumping round after round into his ugly mug.
“And here I am again.” Garth knocked a fist against the side of his head. “Ready to rock and roll.”
He wrinkled his nose. He was in that crux moment. He could, right now, officially decide to not kill Cherry Cristal and her merry band of fucktards and theoretically derail the entire chain of events leading up to one Baron Samiel killing him a bazillion times in the past.
“Let’s just say for the moment,” Garth got up and checked on his drones, “that I right now one hundred percent am not going to do any killing. I totally, totally pinky swear.”
And he meant it. For the moment.
That was the good thing about being a Kin’kithal and a Specter. If there was one person he was really fucking good at lying to, it was himself.
In SpecSer, you had to be good at lying to everyone, including the person who looked back at you from the other side of the mirror. How else could you be expected to do the impossible on the regular?
Garth settled back into his chair and waited for the memories of his deaths to dissipate.
***
So far up The Line that The Line was more Baron Samiel’s own recollections of everything that had ever happened in human History than anything else, the man in question froze solid as the one bright moment in Garth Nickels’ undying line blinked. Flickered. Then, as it began filling up once more, only this time backwards, from a point in the future, to the moment of his death, the master of Time shrieked so loudly that a searing pain burned through his chest and throat.
“How is this possible?” His words, caught by the temporal incongruity, shuddered and pounded through the atmosphere, ripping through the sky all around him. Samiel didn’t care if or even how the outside world responded to this stentorian demand, couldn’t find it in him to worry that his enemies in the here and now might locate the sound and follow it back to where he was hidden.
They were more than welcome to try. His fortress was absolute. His mastery of the terrain unparalleled. Even if they managed to breach the outer defenses, they would be lost for millions of years in the temporal switchbacks. Should they somehow possess the ability to see through the rivers and lines of time tripping them backwards and forwards, there were … things … he’d been collecting across his many lives, things that would deal with them on a more permanent basis.
Garth Nickels’ life, destroyed, ruined, brought to a shuddering, halting mess weeks before that odd moment of temporal indestructability, was back in full force. As if his deaths had never occurred.
Letting another shriek rip loose, Samiel flung himself at the controls, checking and rechecking everything. Then he held his breath as several thousand years’ worth of expense slammed back into him. Whole entire lines where he’d first spent a lifetime programming each and every member of the Federal Task Force to kill Nickels at his most vulnerable moment and then other lifetimes where he’d managed to erase himself from The Lines altogether, instilling in each of those poor men and women an inscrutable, inexplicable burr in their minds, a burr removable only by killing a single man at a single p
oint, slammed into him.
“Fascinating.” Samiel hissed as the only thing to remain from all that effort were the stored memories of doing so. The whole entire stretch of The Line showed no symptoms of alteration. The men and women of that Task Force went about their lives as if nothing had ever happened. Garth Nickels stood before them, smug and wry and oh so apologetic, but not a single one of them pulled their weapon, not a single one killed him.
“This man is a danger.” Samiel checked on the lives of his foot soldiers. They were still there. Still alive, still waiting to storm that figurative castle. “He’s got some kind of temporal safeguard protecting his past. I merely thought it was a locale thing, but it’s so much more than that, isn’t it? And now I assume he’s chosen to not kill my children, and so long as he holds out on that decision, there’s nothing I can do. Oh, this is brilliant. Brilliant. The question now is do I expend more energy in trying to unravel his past? I’ve already failed in doing so dozens … hundreds of time. Wasted thousands of personal years in doing so. His past is unassailable. What I wouldn’t give to learn when you came from, Mister Nickels, or why you chose such an unfortunate name. Perhaps if you'd chosen some other moniker, I would've ignored you altogether, but ... being named as you are, I ... cannot." Baron Samiel settled back into his chair, turning over the things he might do to the man who’d popped up on his radar in such a magnificent manner. “There are no indications, my worthy foe, that you engage in time travel of any sort unless I specifically target you, and even then, you only return to some time prior to the moment of your death. Or to the moment before where you've decided to move against me. So … perhaps not time travel after all, at least, not in the manner of which I am familiar. I like the idea of this temporal lock on your history, Mister Nickels. It keeps you safe and sound and breathing, but what about your future self? I cannot end you where you’ve been, but how about where you’re going? Are you powerful enough to prevent your death in a time that you have not yet experienced?”
