Day 235 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 10.2 - (1536 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 10.2

“I've made a mistake.” Brian Unfrozen was speaking to the Ivan who was out of time and George the detective who was in the time stasis bubble with them. George was smiling, widely and with what could have been interpreted as glee, but was in fact masking a great ironic horror. Ivan did not mask his at all, the creeping of all his demons across his face was a plain and easy expression to read.


“A mistake?” He gasped finally.


“Yes. I didn't know what I was up to.” Brian was caught between ashamed and unabashed, he didn't personally cause this tragedy, but the man who he was to become did. Did that make him guilty or not, he could not tell. On the face of it he didn't know if he would do what his alter ego would do, if it really was his alter ego. He didn't deny that it was him that lead this Ivan and the other partner in crime to do what they did, but it was him a few days hence, weeks maybe ahead of where he was now. He had met himself, but he had known none of this about partners and crimes, murders and excesses, it didn't make any sense, knowing what he knew now. If he new it, without the benefit of the extra time that the Brian of the very near future had, then his counterpart and the future partner of this future Ivan must know it too.


“But it is you, isn't it.” Ivan was weakened by the realisation of his reality, the enormity of the small changes and the big that lay on him now, whether he could access them or not. “Isn't it?” it was more pleading than accusing.


“I can't believe what I am hearing.” George's grin was becoming a grimace, the shock of the news, the truth about the time travelling had left him with no reaction he could easily process. Yet the full import of what it meant for Ivan was appalling, and he could not bring himself to lecture or sermonise on the subject. No amount of righteousness would correct the path they were on, and he was on it too.


“You can't?” Ivan snorted, come colour briefly returning to his face before disappearing once the fleeting heat of sarcasm's presence had left it's temporary mark. He hung his head in his hands and the dizzy feeling overwhelmed him once more, nausea coming in waves and turning him on his side, in place, curled up in a ball and seeking the cold comfort of a stone floor. The rocking motion unsettling the other two men, seeing a grown and harder man than either of them reduced to a silently crying wreck on the floor, unable to raise his head and look at the world, let alone the men in the room.


“It's monstrous. We need to destroy the machine.” George finally said, pointing at the door and the thing that kept them time locked in this warehouse space. “It's not about catching the villains, no prison sentence can ever pay back the debt you both owe. We need to stop this thing, now.”


“We can't do that.” Brian was shaking his head absently, his mind still on wondering what he knew a few short days to weeks from now that made him a mass murderer, or one that tricked others into being pyschopathic killers.


“Of course we can.” George had a point to argue, inaction was as bad as action in this case. “How can you allow this to continue?”


“We'd never, never do it again for a start, now that we know.” Brian heard the words ringing false in his ears, guessing they sounded empty to the detective's as well. He did know and he did let it happen in a very short period of time from now, how on earth did he become that person? What was that about?


“That's not good enough, the potential for disaster is too high.”


“If we destroy the machine then we can't stop any of it. None.”


“You said we can't undo the past, that we are not even travelling in time at all. We're doing that thing, like in the sci fi movies, alternate realities, ones that exist, come into creation when we travel.” George shook his head violently, he was being dragged into their nightmare, “Fuck that, not WE at all is it? You, you are the ones doing this. That's what you said.” he jabbed a finger in the air. “You said it, you said it. You. Said. It.” He folded his arms. “He heard you well enough too.” he nodded at Ivan who existed in his own world of pain, feeling the sudden, instant acceleration of guilt for the murders he had committed casually. The people he had dispatched and taken out of the way, killed because he did not believe they were going to exist minutes later, they were all alive in alternate realities, dimensions or time lines or whatever the physicists wanted to name them. They lived on, the surviving spectators and the corpses he had left in his wake. That was all he saw and heard now, pain and blood at the end of his reach.


“I did, but we can't travel to the other places they created and fix anything if the machine is gone.” Brian was calculating how to repurpose the machine, to take steps to find and reverse as much of the damage as they could do.


“We can fix this?” Ivan popped up from his position, springing to his feet and his tear streamed face looking hopeful.


“We can't un-murder anyone.” George slapped the side of his head hard, knocking himself about and making him unsteady on his feet. “Jesus! Why do I keep saying WE, YOU can't fucking un-murder anyone, YOU!” He got up in Ivan's face, a few inches from his nose, but the proximity worked the opposite effect that he was going for. He wanted to intimidate, to lay some blame and direct his anger and disbelief. Instead he got an honesty and regret so close and so intimate he could feel it seeping in his pores. It was rich and deep, like an open wound he could feel in his own skin, and the fire left him, evaporated, starved of it's fuel and he saw the soul in torment and that was his undoing.


“I can't.” Ivan whispered.


There was the gun, it was on the bench by the device and though no one had need of it for some time, no one let it out of their sight either. Ivan walked to it and picked it up, pulling back the stock and turning it in his hands.


“No!” George yelled and ran towards Ivan, diving through the space between them and slamming into the bigger man as the gun levelled and he pulled the trigger, the shot going wild and shattering a window high above them.


The two men rolled together clumsily, the gun wrested from the depressed and shocked man's grip and back in the safe hands of the detective. They separated on the floor and George came to his feet, safety checking the gun and removing the now chambered round, putting it back into the clip.


“Why the hell did you do that?” Ivan asked in a low voice, out of breath.


“What the hell would that solve, you fucking retarded.... fuck!” George was at a loss, the whole bizarre scenario was insane and beyond all reason.


“No justice can … no sentence can... you should have left me to take my punishment.” He put his head back on the ground curled into a ball.


Brian said nothing, he was staring at the broken window high above them where the bullet had exited, The stasis field was a few inches outside the walls of the warehouse. The explosion of glass and shell had stopped in midair just outside the high window. They had heard a tinkle of glass falling just afterwards as the glass inmmediately on the surface of the hole fell downawards, but all the glass and the bullet itself were pushed into a ball, a flattened clump of glass pieces stopped in a single instant with zero momentum and no gravity in place. A singular event compressed into a glass ball of shards frozen in that instant, not spread out or tracking the trajectory, they hit the time wall and just stopped there, ready to continue as soon as the field expired or was lifted.



“You don't away with it so easy. No coward's way out for you, you need to man up and fucking fix this, as best you can. Then, then you can top yourself if you want, but not until.” George knew it sounded like a string of cliches, but what else could he have said. He felt no sympathy, but some empathy was draining the anger away. He should not feel for him, the callous and unthinking mass murderer, but he could not help it.