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REPEAT OFFENDERS
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 11.2
“Leave nothing behind but footprints.” he mumbled to himself like a mantra, repeatedly reminding himself that there were consequences to any action they took, regardless of what he had bee told and how he had acted in the past, this was a different reality now. Things were not as he had been lead to believe, and certainly not how he wanted to believe. He had done things in the last few days, even though the time was shorter where they were now, the idea of time for Ivan was much longer. Technically when he thought about it, though he was trying not to, he was now ageing faster than those outside any of the anomalies they created. Ageing at a rate a few hours older than the splinter universe they had created by 'travelling back in time'.
Their job was too look about for clues while Brian reconfigured the machine for a trip forward. A preliminary search of the warehouse told them a few things, firstly that no one else was her and had not been for a couple of days. Coupling that with the evidence that Brian could get from the machine, the time device, he could see that a trip was made forward to the same starting point as before, though offset by a few seconds.
It was unsurprising as the plan all along according to Ivan, was to hit the safe deposit box in the bank after the delivery, several times or until the had enough, got tired of it or something went horribly wrong, which ever came first. Of course things had gone horribly wrong already and he had inadvertently been left to face life in an alternate branch of reality where only a couple of parameters were different, but he was still branded a criminal and wanted by the police, the bank and assumably the owners of the content of the safe deposit box.
“Guys!” George's voice rose significantly despite the distance he was away from the others, his inflection giving the sense that it was important and that they needed to pay attention. “You'll want to see this!”
Ivan stopped looking through the desk papers in the small office next to the stasis room. They had already found yet another version of Brian entombed there but the three of them agreed that it did not make sense to introduce another version of Brian into the mix. As it was there was at least two Brians and two Ivans, who know how many more duplicates there were in play across the dimensions. Adding to the list of people who knew about and could traverse the dimensions of reality was simply more complications they did not need. So they decided as a group to leave him frozen, to leave them all that way until they caught up with the future set, including Brian Prime who set this entire thing in motion.
The three men converged on the point where George was, the small fridge and freezer unit in the tiny kitchen attached to the back office, the one where they had thrown the tear gas grenade what seemed like months ago. George was looking inside a small container which was covered in icicles and had been wedged inside the freezer unit.
“What are we supposed to see, exactly?” Brian was peering inside.
“Who do they belong to?” Asked Ivan, recognising what Brains had not.
“What are they?” He said again and went to put his hand in the container, George moved it away quickly and Ivan look appalled.
“You don't wanna...” Ivan said in a low voice.
“What? What is it?”
“These are fingers. Fingers that have been...” George tipped the fingers which were a bluey white colour and looked fake in their frigidity, on to the stainless steel bench top of the kitchen and then peered at them intently. “See that? That fine working on the … what … incision? Amputation?”
Brian did not recoil at the information, instead he leaned in and examined the cut marks at the edge of the flesh. “That's precise. And looking at the length of the amputated flesh it was taken...” he started arranging the frozen digits like a weird jigsaw puzzle made of flesh and bone, lining them up into the configuration of how they were taken from the hand they came from. “.. quickly, and the hand was outstretched like this...” Brian held his own hand out and moved his fingers and thumb into the same contortion that the original hand had been when the fingertips were taken.
“Can we assume that these might just belong to one of us?” George was asking.
“Easily proved or disproved. Here.” Brian laid his hand next to the pattern of flesh on the counter, his own fingers much thinner and longer than the ones on display, the hand look nothing like his own. George was next and he too double verified his own hand and fingers against the ones lying there. He could think of no reason to be there, as the isolation and capture of Ivan in the dimension they came from was what lead him to the warehouse and no other clues had been forthcoming.
Ivan was last and dreading the comparison. He knew that he was the most likely candidate because any future or alternate versions of himself would have the same base personality that he had and still be operating under the assumptions that he had been, that he was free to act and do as he so desired with no lasting effects. That power and range was a heading mix that made him drunk with possibility and then his actions flowed from there. Nothing to stop him from acting the same way again, unless they other team had come up with a way to check Ivan in check?
Something like slicing his fingers off with an industrial strength laser?
He laid his hand next to the decoupled digits and could not look at the results. Instead George leaned in and made a few painfully ambivalent um's and ahh;s before saying “You're good.”
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