Limbus, Inc.

by Anne C. Petty

  2:30, it read.

  Shit! Now what?

  He didn’t know. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening thinking about the things he’d seen and heard earlier that day, but hadn’t been able to come to a decision about what to do. As far as he could tell, Limbus had his nuts in a vice and he was pretty much screwed no matter what he did.

  If he ran, they would catch him; he was pretty sure of it. That didn’t mean running was out of the question, just that he had to be ready to deal with them when they came. And come they would; he was certain of that. The question was with how much force? One, maybe two operatives he could handle. More than that would be a problem.

  Of course that was only if they sent someone in his current timeline.

  If Limbus was smart, they’d send someone back to an earlier point in his life and wipe him out before he even had a chance to become who he was today. That was the safest and most logical bet. It was what he would do, if he were in charge.

  Given that possibility, running didn’t make much sense. They wouldn’t have to figure out where he was going, just find some place he’d already been. There were more than enough points in time where his presence had been public knowledge, like the time he’d been arrested for petty larceny when he was eleven or the date of his discharge from the armed forces, and either one of those would do.

  He could drop off the face of the planet tomorrow and they’d still find him.

  So running was out.

  Nate didn’t mind that so much, truth to tell. He hadn’t run from anything in his life and hadn’t liked the idea of starting now.

  Fine, then. He’d stick around. Work from the inside and see what he could learn.

  Starting with this very assignment.

  He dressed quickly, left his spacious new apartment behind, and headed downtown for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  His recruiter was waiting for him in the prep room.

  “Right on time, as usual,” the man said, smiling at Nate.

  Nate didn’t find the expression, nor the man’s presence, reassuring in the least.

  “No need to change today,” his recruiter told him. “It’s a quick in and out job. Shouldn’t take you more than an hour.”

  Nate nodded. Tried to look at ease. Just do the job, he told himself.

  He turned toward the farcaster, intending to get inside, when he heard his recruiter clear his throat. Looking back he found the other man watching him closely.

  “Forgetting something?”

  For a moment Nate didn’t know what he was talking about, but then his gaze fell on his open locker and the hypo sitting on the top shelf.

  “Oh, damn! Thanks for reminding me,” he said, trying to appear earnest. “Guess I’m not quite awake yet.”

  His recruiter smiled. “I understand. I’m not much of a morning person myself. That’s why I thought I’d be here to see you off this morning. Here, let me help.”

  He picked up the hypo and walked over to Nate. “Give me your arm.”

  Nate had no choice. He rolled up his sleeve and presented the underside of his left arm to the other man. The hypo was pressed against his flesh and there was a quick hiss and the mild sensation of something passing into his system—then it was done.

  For a moment, he almost panicked. If they wanted to get rid of him, the injection would be the perfect opportunity. One quick shot and it was all over.

  “There,” said the other man, “all set.” He glanced at the clock, saw that there were only a few minutes left to the deadline. “You’d better get going.”

  Not trusting himself to speak, Nate simply nodded. He walked over to the farcaster, rolling his sleeve back down as he went, then he stepped inside the device and tried to get comfortable.

  Outside, his recruiter pushed the door shut and waited for the locks to engage. Nate could see the man through the porthole, watched as he lifted a hand and waved.

  “Good hunting,” his recruiter said, smiling.

  Nate nodded—what the hell was that all about?—and then hit the green button.

  He arrived in an empty apartment in a run-down tenement building, the farcaster set up in a back bedroom with peeling wallpaper and the smell of mold. A hard black case stood on the floor nearby.

  Nate recognized the weapons case the minute he saw it. He set it flat on the floor and then used one hand on either side to trigger the latches. Inside was a disassembled Mark 56 sniper rifle, the exact weapon he’d carried while point man for his recon unit. It was capable of both single and burst fire, with a maximum range of just over one thousand meters. It had been designed for one thing and one thing only—killing people at a distance.

  He should know; he’d killed more than his fair share with a weapon just like it.

  A white card had been slipped into the case alongside the rifle. Nate pulled it out, read it.

  The card listed a set of coordinates and below that, four simple words.

  Terminate with extreme prejudice.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” he said to the empty room around him.

  It seemed that his journeyman days were over and he’d just graduated to the big time. First surveillance photographs, then breaking and entering, and now assassination. He wondered how much of that had to do with what he’d seen the day before. Did they trust him with the bigger jobs now that he had a sense of what was going on or were they just setting him up for a fall? Getting ready to hang him out to dry after he pulled the trigger?

  He didn’t know.

  To his surprise, he realized he didn’t care either. All he wanted to do was get the job over with and get home again.

  He pulled out his PCD and checked his current location against the coordinates he’d been given, only to discover that the target was practically next door. He should be able to get a decent look at the place from the roof of the building he was in.

  He picked up the case, exited the apartment, and made his way up onto the roof of the building via the rear stairwell. The tenement building was three stories high and built on the edge of a residential area. His target was in a ramshackle two-story house about a block down the street. It looked familiar and for a moment he hesitated, but then he swept his hesitation aside by telling himself that all slums looked familiar. From where he stood, he could see through several of the windows and into the rooms beyond.

  He couldn’t have picked a better firing position himself.

  A low wall ran around the edge of the rooftop, just high enough to act as support for his weapon. It was as good a spot as any and Nate settled down, prepared to do the job and be done with it. Assassination wasn’t anything new for him; he had fifteen confirmed kills on his military record. It was the first time he’d ever taken out a civilian, he had to admit, but that wouldn’t matter. Killing was killing in his view.

  Do the job, go home, and figure out how you’re going to get out of this mess, he told himself.

  He opened up the case and swiftly assembled the rifle, barely having to look at it as he did so. He kept his eye on the house down the block, watching for movement in any of the rooms. It was still early, just before dawn, so he might be sitting here awhile, but he didn’t want to take the chance of missing his target. Maybe the guy was an early riser, like he was. If he could get him before the street around him began to wake up, so much the better.

  A thought occurred to him. What if it’s a woman? The note hadn’t given any indication one way or the other just who his target was, never mind whether it was a male or a female. He thought about it for a moment and then realized it didn’t make much difference to him. He’d killed female fighters during the Faith War; was this any different? Given what he’d seen yesterday in regard to what happened to an operative who failed an assignment, he was as much fighting for his life now as he had been back on the battlefield. If he didn’t do the job, his recruiter would “flip his switch,” as he’d said, and turn him, quite literally, inside out.

  Rifl
e assembled, he settled into position, kneeling in front of the low wall at the edge of the roof with his rifle braced over the top. He brought the scope to his eye and began scanning the windows for movement.

  A few of the lights were on, indicating someone was likely up and about, so he concentrated his attention on those rooms. He could see what looked to be a kitchen and a living room on the lower floor and possibly a bedroom, though it might be a bathroom, on the upper.

  There!

  A man’s upper body came into view, framed in the window, and Nate’s body acted almost without conscious thought. He had the sight picture settled on a point just to the right of the target’s nose and was pulling the trigger when the man turned his face into the light and Nate recognized him.

  Too late! His mind screamed, but he jerked his hands to the left as the gun went off, hoping it was enough.

  The bullet left the muzzle of his weapon, shot across the space between them in the blink of an eye, and slammed into the wood along the windowsill instead of striking his target as planned.

  Nate breathed a sigh of relief and slumped down against the wall he’d been kneeling against. His heart was pounding and sweat was pooling in the small of his back as the adrenaline dump washed through his system. He didn’t want to think about how close he’d just come to wiping himself out of existence.

  The man he’d been sent here to kill was … himself.

  Fuck!

  He sat there, his back against the wall, rifle in hand, and wanted to hit himself for being so stupid. How could he have missed this?

  Clearly he’d seen something yesterday that he shouldn’t have. That had made someone back at Limbus nervous enough to order not just his death, but the complete elimination of everything he’d done in the last several years, judging from the age of his other self. They weren’t just trying to kill him; they were trying to wipe the last several years of his life completely!

  That pissed him off.

  The question was what he was going to do about it.

  He couldn’t just go back and claim that he’d done the job; the very act of doing so would make it obvious that he hadn’t. Going back would also put him in range of whatever it was the recruiter had used to turn the other agent inside out and Nate had no desire to see what that felt like up close and personal.

  There was just as much risk in staying here, however. What was it that sonofabitch had said? Something about the little bastards in his bloodstream? Nate glanced down at the spot on his arm where he’d received the hypo shot less than an hour ago. What if the trigger for his punishment was already inside him, just waiting to be activated? Or worse, would turn itself on when the seventy-two hour mission deadline passed?

  The second injection was designed to neutralize the effects of the first, he realized, in a moment of stunning clarity. Without it, the operative would essentially self-destruct. It was a fail-safe mechanism; it kept the operative from remaining in the past and fucking things up in the future.

  Nor could he simply hire someone to go and waste his recruiter. If the bit about the farcaster being keyed to his personal DNA signature was correct, he was the only person who could use it.

  Unless …

  He glanced over the edge of the roof and back toward his target. He could see the other him moving around in the kitchen, oblivious to the twist of fate that had very nearly ended both their lives only seconds before. Aside from himself, he was the only other person he could think of that might have an interest in how all this turned out.

  You’re nuts, he told himself, but given the situation, that was hardly a reason not to do what he had in mind.

  Five minutes later he was standing on the front steps of the target house, gun case in hand, knocking loudly on the front door.

  After a few minutes the overhead light went on and he heard the sounds of someone fumbling with the locks on the other side. Then the door was thrown open and the figure of a man filled the doorway.

  “Do you have any idea …”

  That was as far as he got. There was a pause as the man standing in the doorway finally got a good look at him and tried to come to grips with what he was seeing. After a moment there was a whispered, “What the fuck?”

  Nate knew exactly how he felt.

  He felt a smile stretch across his face as he said, “Hello, Nate. I’m Nate. We have a few things to talk about. Do you mind if I come in?”

  Another pause, longer this time, and then the other man held the door open and beckoned him inside.

  Just as Nate knew he would.

  *

  Recruiter 46795 sat behind his desk, alternating between watching the mission clock on the wall and the red folder sitting atop his desk, next to a handheld device that contained a single switch. Personally he was betting on the folder disappearing before the clock ran out. Operator Benson didn’t appear to be the smartest apple in the bunch. Clever, and curious as well, too curious actually, but smart? Not so much.

  More than likely he’d carry out the mission assigned to him, never even realizing until it was too late that he’d just gunned down his younger self, thereby erasing every future event from that point in his timeline, wiping out both versions of himself, the past and the future, with the simple act of pulling the trigger.

  It was an elegant solution and one Recruiter 46795 was particularly pleased to have crafted. Eliminating all traces of Benson would also eliminate the failure to control Benson from the recruiter’s record, thereby solving that problem as well.

  An hour passed.

  Then two.

  With each passing moment his frown deepened and his anxiety rose. He was confident the nanobites would do the trick when the mission deadline passed, but he hated to be forced to rely on them. It was such an incomplete …

  “Did you really think you’d get rid of me that easily?” Nate Benson’s voice asked from the darkness just beyond the doorway.

  Recruiter 46795 didn’t hesitate. His hand shot out and slammed palm down on the device, triggering the switch, suddenly thrilled that he was going to personally be able to resolve the problem and avoid any lingering doubts.

  His triumphed shout died stillborn in his throat, however, as the younger Nate Benson stepped, unharmed, out of the darkness and into the light.

  The gun in his hand loomed very large.

  “You can stop that now,” Nate said, nodding toward the desktop, where Recruiter 46795’s hand was repeatedly slamming itself down on the switch.

  He jerked his hand back and put it in his lap, unable to believe what was happening.

  “How?” was all he managed to get out.

  Benson smiled.

  “Syncing the farcaster to the operator’s DNA is a pretty neat trick; keeps the average citizen from stumbling on it and mucking things all up, I’d guess. But when the shooter and the victim happen to have the same DNA, as well as the same desire for self-preservation, well, there you’ve got a problem.”

  The gun in Benson’s hand rose slightly to point directly at Recruiter 46795’s face and then he knew no more.

  *

  The farcaster whined, shook, and then seemed to shimmer before his very eyes before going still. Nate Benson walked over and looked inside the porthole. Frowning, he punched the buttons on the keypad to open up the door and looked inside. On the floor of the farcaster was a padded envelope, the kind you might mail things in.

  Nate reached inside and picked it up. Opening it, he found a single sheet of paper and a full hypo spray.

  He glanced at the note as he readied the hypo.

  Dear Nate,

  Sorry I had to do this, but you really didn’t expect me to come back there, did you? Not after all that crap you told me about the war and life afterwards? Thanks but you can keep that shit. Oh, and don’t try to use this farcaster again; I’ve reprogrammed it to send whoever uses it to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

  Nate

  Nate laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was just like him to take
advantage of a situation. Hell, he’d been doing it for years.

  Still smiling, he picked up the hypo and injected himself with it, imagining he could feel the nanobites in his bloodstreams dying off as the antidote washed through his system.

  Let the kid have his fun, he thought. In about another six months the farcaster he’d used on his second mission was going to show up in a warehouse outside of Philadelphia and he could always use that one to go home if he chose to do so.

  For now though, he’d hang around here. With all the information in his head about what was coming over the next several years, he was in position to make a good deal of money.

  That wouldn’t be so bad, now would it?

  Whistling to himself, Nate left the apartment behind and headed out to live this day over for the second time.

  Matthew

  The streets were silent by the time Matthew turned the final page on the astonishing life of Nate Benson. Evening revelers had long since gone to whatever destination would hold them for the night, and the streets were empty of all but shadows. In the silence, Matthew sat wishing he had a fire so that he might consign the manuscript to the flames. But somehow he knew that even if he had the opportunity, he could never follow through. No, he had to know more. Picking up the phone, he dialed his friend Charlie. He just hoped he was working the night shift.

  The phone rang three times before Charlie answered.

  “Fifth precinct.”

  “Charlie,” Matthew said, and he shuddered as he heard the tremor in his own voice, “it’s Matthew.” There was silence on the other end.

  “Matthew? Man, it’s four o’clock in the morning. Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Look, Charlie, I’ve got a question I need to ask you. Do you know anything about a girl named Angela Endicott?”

  There was laughing on the other end of the line. “Angela Endicott? Of course I know her. Her uncle’s one of the biggest players in the city. Why do you ask? Matthew? You there? Hello?”

  Matthew had thought that the call would make things better. Charlie was a detective, one of Boston’s finest. And if he had never heard of Angela Endicott, then she simply did not exist. And not existing would make the book that sat before him nothing more than fiction, and fiction can’t hurt you. Not normally, at least.