Day 246 - Repeat Offenders - Chapter 12.2 - (1372 words)

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REPEAT OFFENDERS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 12.2

“There's a break in at the lab. Someone has tripped the alarms and I was going to go and sort it out, you guys, you should go an sort the vault and... just you know do what you do and I'll take care of...” Brian's excuse, his reasoning drifted into nothingness as he realised how ridiculous he sounded, but his brain was pounding, thumping at the inside of his skull trying to find a way out of the corner he was in.


“No, try again.” Mike's voice had lost none of the edge.


“No, I swear it is the alarm at the warehouse, someone has activated the machine, I need to go and...”


“No! Don't fucking lie to me Brian.” Mike lowered his voice even further, which added another level of menace. “Do not fucking lie to me again.”


“I...” Brian cleared his throat. “I don't know what you want me to say Michael. This is an alarm and ...”


Ivan and Harold watched from the side, it felt like the whole situation was on the knife's edge and the pressure was all coming from Brian, it hinged on how he handled himself now, on what he said.


“No one but me.” Mike ending the silence.


“Excuse me?”


“No one but me. That's what you said when I asked you, you said no one but me.”


“I'm not sure I know what you mean.” Brain looked at the other two men for help but they were like stone, impassively waiting and watching to see what the outcome would be.


“I asked you how to work the machine, and you said that no one but you could work it. I asked if you were sure, and you said again. No. One. But. Me. There was no ambiguity, no... what did you call it... edge cases? Yes, no edge cases. No likelihood that anyone but you could operate the machine, it was impossible.” Michael ran a hand through his hair and despite being a threatening as he was, he managed to look like a victim just then, like he was upset and betrayed even as he held a man on the edge of life and death.
“You fucking lied to me.” The victim was gone and replaced with the threat of violence and retribution.


“No, I did not.” Brian held a finger as if to make a point at Michael.


Ivan winced even before the move was made.


Brian's finger was snatched suddenly and bent backwards and to the side, so much further than was comfortable and safe, pulling the scientist into a twisted mess of limbs as he contorted to get the pain to subside, trying to unwind his body since his finger was gripped in a vice of fire and steel. He was bent over at the waist with a hand in the air behind his back and the pain was still there and he could not escape it fully, when he reached point where the tension loosed then Mike would move imperceptibly in the right direction to cause more pain.


“You lied to me.” Mike was saying in a soft voice.


“No, no, please no, let it go... please!” Brian was starting to see spots and was having trouble deciphering gravity.


Mike was not letting go until he had made his point or taken his toll on the scientist's deceit. “You lied to me Brian. Lied. To. Me.” He twisted one past time, hard and fast and a small pop was heard by all four men and only then Mike let go.


The pain fell away from Brian like water coming out of the bath, all encompassing and then cooled by air, the weight of it gone but the feeling it had left behind still a reminder of it's presence. His head was spinning and he needed to steady himself and find up once more. His hand stuck out to try and find purchase but what he found was the stab of fire as his dislocated finger was pushed back by the hard surface of the road they stood in. He screamed and jerked his hand back in to his chest, the pain caused by cradling it was nowhere near as bad as putting weight on the disconnected tissue in the joint. He curled up onto his back, an armadillo looking to protect itself from attack, one arm tucked in and rolling back and forward, rocking like a child with a finger stuck in a jam.


Michael had not moved, and Brian was curled at his feet, he looked down on him unblinking in the street light and waited for him to settle down. “You lied to me.”


“I did not lie to you, I just... I didn't tell you everything, but I did not lie to you!” Brian tried to shout but the whimpering noise that came out of him was far less convincing.


“You are an educated man Brian.”


“In physics, and mechanics, engineering and maths … certainly.” Brian responded on autopilot ready to troy out his credentials so hard won and earned.


“You must know what a lie of omission is. What dissimulation is? What have you done here? Which is it? You have not told the whole truth now have you?” Michael's tone had changed again to a school-masterly one, delivering a lesson and a corporal punishment in the same clipped tones.


“I.” Brian tried to stand but a foot buried itself in his chest and forcefully put him back down again with a sharp exhalation of air.


“What's going on here then?” A voice came to them from behind the sudden glowing orb of a flash light and it was centred on Michael, who raised a hand to shield the light.


Then there was a double gunshot sound and the flash light flicked and bounced in the air until it clattered on the ground, spinning it's beam across the hard pitted surface of the tarmac. The body of the police officer thumped to the roadside a few seconds later, the life remaining in him trying to stay upright but he was dying on his feet. The first bullet had cracked through a rib and lodged in his lungs, the shattered bone tearing the hole wider. The second shot hit the heart and it was all a dissipating of life and light in him then and there, he was dead before his body stopped to function, his will kept him up and the tension of his muscles took seconds to relax and let go as his mind circled around the drain before sliding away forever.


Mike held a gun in the hand that was not above his head shielding his eyes, he had fired from the hip and caught the police officer in the chest, catching the shot that opened his lungs. Ivan had aimed and shot from a greater distance but with a more direct line of sight and no pressure or distraction, and he had centred on the heart and ended the poor man's life.


“No!” came the scream of despair from Harold, the instant brutality and violence was like opening a wound and feeling the searing cold water rush in on it, unavoidable and unmanageable hurt in his own heart.


“Shit! Shit! Shit! You have to stop killing people!” Brian got on to his feet and stumbled to the cop and checked his pulse, but there was none and he got a hand print of blood for his troubles.


“Why not exactly? We had this conversation before but I can't say I fucking believe you. What are you not telling us? What are you not telling me?” Mike had not put the gun away.


Ivan had concealed his again, Harold could not even tell that there had been a gun in his hands moments before. He hoped in a desperate moment, that he had imagined it all, a product of fevered imagination and shock from learning about and indulging in, time travel.


Then he saw the blood seeping from the open chest wounds of the man in the blue policeman's uniform.